Sorry I’m not well enough versed in American politics to know who’s blue or red.

Whether you should vote or not doesn’t depend on the people around you. It is your right to have your say. The result is the cumulative effect of everyone in your area doing the same. Whether you think you’re surrounded by millions of blues or millions of reds doesn’t make any difference. Your perception may be incorrect, and your analysis, that there is literally zero chance that your vote will matter, is incorrect.

Nobody knows the results of an election until the votes are in and have been counted. It doesn’t matter that your area has always been red, blue, green, turquoise, pink or whatever. Areas can change allegiance, and it is by individuals getting out and voting.

If you don’t vote, you strengthen the position of those who vote the other way. It is not considered a protest vote because the system would prefer to consider this as voter apathy. If you want to register a protest vote and “none of the above” isn’t an option, find the official way to spoil your ballot paper and do that, but whatever you do, get out and vote.

Well everybody likes to think they’re original.

(I did check the comments before I posted this and am vaguely disappointed that I am.)

I think it’s fair enough. If they accept your spam then they have to accept everyone else’s spam too. No it doesn’t make any difference that your stuff is free. Reddit subs are usually for discussion not marketing; there are channels to spunk your adverts down and you should use those instead of trying to insert them into discussions. No it doesn’t make any difference that your free stuff means you don’t have a marketing budget. We all know today’s free stuff is tomorrow’s subscription stuff, and yeah I can already see you’re about to scream at me that you don’t ever intend for that to happen. But the simple fact is if your stuff takes off then you’re going to have to make more time for it but free stuff isn’t going to pay your bills and you’re going to have to start raising cash one way or another.

What you should be doing is to continue being a positive contributor, and put your promo stuff on your “about me” page. Anyone who is interested enough in you will look at your profile, see your stuff and maybe then consider engaging with your products.

Forget the 10% ratio, remember the rule NO MARKETING, and then everyone will be your friend again. The 10% rule is not intended to say “you can spam this much and no more”, it’s to allow people to talk about actual products they like (that others have made) and point to them without those pointers being misconstrued as promotion.

“…votes…” No, the rules are for preventing spam, the voting is to highlight high quality posts over the low quality stuff.

“…billionaires…” What an odd strawman. Business of all sizes from freebie shops like yours up to Microsoft are NOT ALLOWED TO SPAM chatrooms. You’re likely to see more stuff about billionaire businesses simply because they’re bigger, not because they have some privilege you don’t.

I mean come on, there are enough fucking adverts everywhere without discussion groups being full of that shite too. Advertise in advert channels. Chat in chat channels. Don’t mix the two. Of course you’re proud of the stuff you’ve made and that’s a good thing, but there is a time and a place for promoting it and that place is NOT a discussion group.

Does anyone want any toast? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

I hope he was wearing a sonky

OK so next time you’ve done your work for the day, try going home early. Do let us know how it goes.

You aren’t paid by the hour as long as it suits the company. As soon as it suits you, you’re damn well going to sit there until 5pm staring at the ceiling if you have to, THEN you can go home.

Well if Brutus took over, Brutey?

This whale is near. That country is far away.

I know someone who insists LOL means “lots of love”.

His text “My mother-in-law died last night LOL” still fails to parse.

Next time you’re driving somewhere, just pick a pedal and push it to see if it has the desired effect. If you go faster that’s the gas. If you go slower that’s the brake. If neither of them do anything try switching the engine on. You might need to fiddle with the gearstick as well, one of them makes you go backwards, the others are forwards. Just experiment and you’ll figure it out.

Preferably well away from any othe traffic.

We even like combining them in one thing. Tyres are measured using inches for one dimension and millimetres for the other two.

Why would you demand metric everything and not metric time?

Clearly someone who’s never accidentally tasted dandelion milk.

Oh I don’t know. Healthy people, kept healthy by science, live longer, earn more, tithe more; some even get to reverse tithe (where they keep 10% and give the rest away).

It’s a single example that disproves the hypothesis “science and religion must always oppose”. Only one example is needed, in the same way that the Riemann hypothesis only needs a single zero off the critical line to prove it’s false.

Because back when the only way to listen to new music was to buy it, then find out a load of it was absolute tripe, then not be able to take it back.

So fuck 'em. I download first, then if I like it I buy it. There’s quite a few CDs on my shelf that I first pirated. And no CDs that are full of lame filler shite.

British Christian here, with an engineering degree. I think knowledge is a good thing. But it’s not the only thing; faith is important too. Balancing the two can be tricky because we always want more “why?” and God isn’t always going to answer that. But He is good, infinitely good, there is no evil in Him, and He has promised to be with us forever. There are times when you just have to switch your analytics off and trust, and find the peace within “I don’t know.”

Setup for one of those elf on a shelf gags?

I think it’d be the “like this” option.

It sank into the ocean after Putin pressed the wrong button.