MrsDoyle
Oh fantastic! My ancestors are mostly Scottish, I didn't realise when I moved here to Scotland that I could just TAKE some land! Off to appropriate my next door neighbour's back garden, they aren't using it much. Next week: taking over the house my great great grandfather built. It's by the beach!
Shout-out to the nice Indian gentleman whose YouTube video walked me through disassembling an ancient laptop so I could add a bit of RAM. I ended with a few leftover screws and a rattle, but it worked! Still chuntering away (slowly, it's geriatric) on Linux. I was amazed to find a video of the exact model.
From the Guardian: "The export figures from Heard Island and McDonald Islands are even more perplexing. The territory does have a fishery but no buildings or human habitation whatsoever.
"Despite this, according to export data from the World Bank, the US imported US$1.4m (A$2.23m) of products from Heard Island and McDonald Islands in 2022, nearly all of which was “machinery and electrical” imports. It was not immediately clear what those goods were.
"In the five years prior, imports from Heard Island and McDonald Islands ranged from US$15,000 (A$24,000) to US$325,000 (A$518,000) per year."
So my best guess is that someone is running some kind of money laundering scheme involving fictitious imports... I have no idea how this would work, but those figures are insane.
The Norfolk Island tariffs are also barking.
Oh dear, I didn't read them! Little England xenophobia at its finest.
That's true actually - they are escalating pretty hard already.
As a long-term peacenik though, I hate the thought of gun battles on the streets. I wish you all the very best. I first visited the US in 1976 and have toured around a lot since then. My one single bad experience was Homeland Security when transiting through LAX. We're tourists not terrorists, jeez cool your jets! I can't imagine how bad ICE is.
I suspect your government would love it if you started shooting. They'd declare martial law. Goodbye elections, hello police state.
This happened in my country in 2021: https://youtu.be/ZZcoXdZeabA No guns involved, just a load of people prepared to stand around all day blocking the vans.
Get yourselves organised.
pleasant texture
I'd go with "rubbery".
I've been reading up on the front-runners for Pope and some of them are super old school illiberal. Though the fellow from Ghana does apparently concede that the laws on homosexuality in some African countries are a bit harsh.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/21/who-next-pope-francis-potential-candidates-succeed