sfg

According to the article, Norman influence led to double letters being used to better mark out sounds, which achieves the same as diacritics. It made English mostly good enough (failures like 'lead' are rare). Being good enough, and lacking a strong central authority, the language only accepted a conservative standardisation, and avoided larger changes such as including diacritics. Without these Norman changes, there is more chance diacritics would have been added, as it would not have been 'good enough'.

Written English is a worse is better story. The Norman influenced version being the first-mover that users cling to even when better comes along.

Yes.

I find the power asymmetry is in my favour. I give money to the bookmaker or I don't.

If I don't, then the bookmaker is powerless as regards my money.

If I do, then I also gain some power over the bookmaker's money.

I don't expect many to see it the same way. Most people are more concerned than I am with the problems suffered by those whose decision making does not interact well with the existence of the gambling industry. Given their concerns, it is understandable that they wouldn't share my perspective.

I think you are right that most people who want to ban such activities want to go back to the former situation where people could only bet on sports with friends. Their position is different to mine.

I don't want to stop those who enjoy it from enjoying it for the sake of those whose decision making doesn't interact well with its legalisation. I think others care more about preventing people from acting in ways that have negative consequences than I do, so I don't expect many to agree with me.

A closed system makes long-term support easier.

Everyone I know who had one (okay, that's not many people...) loved it.

I've never heard of asking vs guessing culture before and don't know much about them, but, based on the article, I'd say guessing looks more transactional. It uses a shared history and remembers past favours ("I gave him soup, so I can seek to get his van", as the example in the article had it), which is really an implicit transaction without guarantee the other side will meet their end.

I am not even sure transactions are possible in asking culture, as it looks stateless. Askers just broadcast needs without reference to any past event, such as a favour.

This might be an equivocation, but, funnily enough, you said guessing is about understanding and for people to have an understanding is a way of saying they have a transaction (often implicit). For instance, "I gave him a pass on that, so now we have an understanding that I can do this".

A team I was on hired someone because I dug up an emulator he had written in the past (I think it was of some Nintendo console). I took a quick look at it, showed it to the other devs on the team, asked the candidate about it to check he really built it and understood it, and then we told the manager to hire him, if he passed the personality assessment. He hadn't even mentioned it on his CV as he worried it would look unprofessional.

I got another person hired as I found a Android game she had written and pushed to the Play store. Again, I don't think she mentioned it on her CV. After looking at it and talking to her about it, I told management to hire her, if they found no issues in her as a person.

In both cases they were outstanding at their job, relative to their level of seniority and pay. Both are very high up the list of people I'd happily work with again.

It might not be fair to the candidates that didn't have projects (or had ones that I couldn't find), but it was a very effective way of getting amazing people. Which makes sense as examples of work are probably better than CVs and interviews for judging someones ability to do the job.

If it does end, Amazon gift vouchers? What would be a better substitute?

If the tech is so dangerous that a closed market is necessary, then maybe it should be nationalised.

If there was a proxy service that acted as an ip mask, and there was a list of the ip addresses of such masking proxies, then could EU customers using such services solve the issue?

He’s worked with React and Svelte. He didn’t think he could get it done in time with React. How do you know he is wrong?

He said that he couldn't have met the deadline without Svelte.

I talk about political matters for ideas, education, and stimulation (mine and the other person's), rather than to beat them into taking on my position. I'd certainly walk away from a conversation long before I'm worn down into taking on their views.

I think this interchange of thought and sharing of ideas is the true essence of discourse. That other thing is more of a verbal tribal battle. I can see issues with bots swinging the political landscape in ways that cause harm, but I think there is good reason to think discourse might flourish. Fundamentally, if the competitive arguers are discouraged, whilst the curious and conversational are encouraged, or at least not hurt, then discourse itself wins.