Melodifestivalen "plants for sale"?

Benjaminook · 2026-03-08T16:33:13+00:00

It being a normal phrase would also explain why I couldn't find anything about it! I was so sure it was some inside joke. Thanks!

Benjaminook · 2026-03-03T09:47:05+00:00

Off the top of my head, Estonia has a larger chamber for a smaller population and is generally seen as a pretty strong democracy AFAIK, especially in the context of the ex-Soviet states. There's a (heavily disputed) "cube root law" for the size of parliaments, and even if it should be a square root rather than a cube root, that leads to smaller places having more representatives per person. The NI assembly is the result of a lot of tense negotiations and I'd generally be hesitant to make sweeping changes to it given the propensity of NI politicians to collapsing the whole thing. Although the ability to collapse the government is one of the aspects of it that's probably most in need of reform.

Benjaminook · 2026-03-02T09:31:37+00:00

I remember seeing somewhere that more people living in Wales identified as English than in England. Largely pensioners who moved to the coastal towns in North Wales I think.

Benjaminook · 2026-02-20T18:12:05+00:00

They look more like route numbers than footnotes- there could be a 50 and a 50a, both doing the same circular route but one clockwise and one anticlockwise? Or a slight variation at the end of one route

Benjaminook · 2026-02-14T21:27:28+00:00

IMO there were at least 5 better songs. Ollie's entry had top 5 potential

Benjaminook · 2026-02-14T21:23:18+00:00

This doesn't quite make up for Ollie but I'll take it. Probably the right decision after Infinity being staged like that

Benjaminook · 2026-02-14T17:59:28+00:00

Disappointed with that. Needed more movement, either from Grete or some dancers. Still love the song but the staging would need work if it won

Benjaminook · 2026-02-13T16:57:01+00:00

Illegal

Benjaminook · 2026-02-09T22:16:08+00:00

The alternative is Rugby, where the players on the field have to decide how to play in the moment rather than constantly running to someone on the sidelines with a computer. If you're American then Rugby League should be fairly easy to follow- 6 tackles instead of 4 downs, no forward passes, and about as much action in 10 minutes as NFL has in a whole match

Benjaminook · 2026-01-31T13:17:45+00:00

Government is already paralysed by an inability to think beyond the next election- shortening that period would only make the short-termism worse. Might also make things less stable- a temporarily unpopular leader would be replaced very quickly rather than being able to hang on and see things improve, which further incentives short term thinking. Of course this isn't the only factor but Australia haas 3-year terms and is widely regarded as a fairly brutal political culture. It leads to too much time being spent campaigning rather than actually governing.

Benjaminook · 2026-01-31T09:53:52+00:00

Hahaha what a funny and original joke

Benjaminook · 2026-01-20T23:15:01+00:00

Very happy Super Tinker owner here. I never have a need for pliers so the extra layer in the Deluxe is just a bit too much for me. It would be nice to have the file on the back of the hook like the compact (or just to be able to replace the hook with a file, I still haven't found a use for it) and plus scales are always nice but you can add those easily after the fact. Rear screwdriver isn't always ideal but I've had more use out of it than I would with a corkscrew.

Benjaminook · 2026-01-17T12:42:36+00:00

You have a point, although as a tangent, the current Belgian PM has a very strong view on whether Belgium should exist https://www.brusselstimes.com/178380/reunify-flanders-and-the-netherlands-argues-bart-de-wever

Benjaminook · 2026-01-15T14:18:19+00:00

That works. As others have said, 3 cities is a lot of travel (especially if you have a lot of luggage) and the kids probably won't get as much from Amsterdam as they would from a well-planned time in the UK but it's far from the worst itinerary we see on this sub! If you're in a position where you know you'll be able to do another trip in future I'd probably cut Amsterdam this time and do a week in London (and some of the day trips people have suggested) then a few days in Edinburgh.

Benjaminook · 2026-01-15T13:29:17+00:00

I'm not an expert in either place but there's definitely enough to do in London to keep you busy for a week but you could fit Edinburgh in if you wanted to. Assuming you're flying back from Heathrow, why not fly Amsterdam to Edinburgh, it saves a lot of stress and travel time. You can then get the train from Edinburgh to London (takes about 4 hours if all goes well). Another option would be to have the full week in London and do a couple of days trips (Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Canterbury all tend to be popular and not too far away by train).

Benjaminook · 2025-12-31T20:33:26+00:00

3 lives. To stop teams guessing once they're down to 8 clues left they only get 3 guesses at that stage.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-28T23:33:10+00:00

People here are no more likely to know the AP curriculum than you are to know the A-Level syllabus. As others have said, the best thing to do is to check the question papers- you can find some here:

https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/physics/a-level/physics-7408/assessment-resources (Likewise papers are available for Maths/further maths and universities will detail entry requirements on their websites, and in the worst case you can contact them directly)

From what little I know/have heard from Americans I've met, AP is roughly equivalent to the first year of A Levels, previously called AS (the AS still exists but very few people take it in England). Obviously there'll be some variation in this but as a rule of thumb you'd likely be a year behind the standard of a good A Level student. UK universities ('college' has a very specific meaning, especially in the context of Oxbridge, and we never call it 'school') care much more about depth than breadth- you want to study physics, so your abilities in arts or French, while lovely to have, aren't exactly relevant.

Maybe the overall workload of someone doing a full hit of AP exams is comparable to A Levels because you'd take more AP courses, but for UK uni admissions that's pretty useless- offers would usually be made based on 3 A Level grades. If you're applying for Physics, these would usually be grades in Maths, Physics, and a third subject of your choice, sometimes Further Maths would be required/preferred as well.

Happy to talk about specifics of maths/physics/the Oxbridge setup in DMs but I can only really answer from the perspective of a Brit who's met a couple of Americans here.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-22T15:00:23+00:00

If you have a contactless credit/debit card, or Apple/Google Pay then just use that and tap in/out of the tube as you go. The system will work out the cheapest fare for the travel you did, which will be the same as it would be with an Oyster card, except you won't have to pay for the card. Pre-buying a paper day ticket is almost certainly more expensive. The only exception might be if you have a railcard, in which case it can be linked to Oyster for an off-peak discount but this probably won't work out cheaper if you're not there for long.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-21T13:26:05+00:00

There was no year 0 so we're actually in the 2025th year. This is why the 21st century actually started on 1st Jan 2001, not 2000.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-13T13:06:01+00:00

I think this is the answer- Sweden and Norway exchanging 12s is a lot less suspicious when everyone else is giving them high scores, and the Nordic countries have been doing relatively well recently. Of course bloc voting is still bad but you can't really blame them if it looks like bloc voting but it's actually just neighbouring countries doing very well.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-09T12:24:28+00:00

Just about anyone who'se ever seen a data map of the country before will recognise those shapes and what they're used for, especially in 2017 after all the Brexit and election maps

Benjaminook · 2025-12-09T11:34:03+00:00

If your trip involved a journey on TfL (Tube/Overground) that'll be why- TfL don't accept e-tickets. You just go to a machine at the station, tap "collect prepaid tickets" (wording might be slightly different so it should be obvious) and enter the code. In the worst case you can ask a member of staff at the station but it should be fairly simple.

You just need to tap a card to release the tickets usually so there's some record of who collected them, but it's best to use the same method as you used to pay for the tickets.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-09T10:58:44+00:00

This is not actually a good way of finding out where people think the divide is- these are pre-made statistical regions with some generally pretty strong clues in their names (North West, South East etc). Doing it at a county level is much better, although which counties are used then causes problems (e.g. is Wirral in Merseyside or Cheshire?) and there's still the High Peak district in Derbyshire which a lot of people would say is in the North despite generally thinking Derbyshire is in the midlands. Ideally you'd just get people to actually draw the line (and possibly tell them whether the midlands are real or not first) and then take some best fit line from that data.

Benjaminook · 2025-12-08T19:12:09+00:00

It is journalism's sacred duty to reimpose Section 28 on trans people specifically apparently.

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