Long-running franchises need just the right amount of object permanence. Not so little you're not rewarding viewers' investment, but also not so much it fossilises around you.

Bond's soul travelled to the black mountain and fought three faceless apparitions of his father, and now he's back.

We've taken the approach that is mostly right (and has some benefits in letting us include low-participation votes), but this reflects not just that parliamentary procedure is complex, but that it remains complex in part because the ambiguity is useful.

But on the other hand, abstaining is sometimes a deliberate political choice, which the UK Parliament doesn't officially recognise or allow to be recorded

When we reviewed the voting summary approach last year for TheyWorkForYou, we switched from seeing absent as the same as abstaining - because the most likely interpretation in most cases was "would have voted the same as party, but not there today" research.mysociety.org/html/2024-vo...

Oh no I'm just being mean, it just seems like one of those things that isn't going anywhere useful.

Oh wow, a chance to lead on Solid!

Picking a number did feel like a hostage to "Australia-understander" fortune.

Victoria also has a really interesting take on the coroner, where they've picked up the kind of systematic investigation functions that start to make the institution make sense.

You can create an even better australia than actually exists in the aggregate.

The unironic skeleton key to TLJ is Knives Out because they are literally doing the exact same thing: they spend 75% of their length unpicking genre tropes and hinting the genre itself may be outmoded before the entire final act is one big celebratory reaffirmation of all of them

This is the Halloween book all over again.

Very literal hero's journey happening here.