The last line of the overview is amazing. Business strategies indeed

Donate partner instead?

No experience personally but a close friend has one, no actual oven, and it has actually turned her into a cook/baker for the first time. So on those grounds, I'd def recommend it. She's very happy with results.

Taking a couple of free days to get the whole feast ready seems SO sensible!

There's another twist: what Switzerland calls "French" dressing is something completely different (it's creamy). Even further removed from what actual French use, though.

Oh, thanks for that. Just now got round to reading it and it's a great perspective.

It's enough to have watched him for the past twenty minutes, honestly

Point is, while SA is an outlier in many ways, jury duty isn't actually the default and it's interesting to look into that. As I say, I have no horse in this race, but I have looked into it a little out of curiosity and I believe it's quite a live topic in philosophy of law.

Yes, but SA has now had a democratic government for longer than it was without juries, and yet I haven't heard about any calls to bring juries back. Believe me, the post 1994 govt was rightly extremely eager to change anything that reeked of apartheid, and yet this stayed.

Although I do think replacing juries with just a single judge is... Not great.

Ha, I was waiting for that. It's complicated. But I think it might be interesting to look into how many countries actually do vs don't have juries, bc it's not necessarily the default democratic choice. And I'm genuinely not convinced juries are more fair.

I have no real opinion on this but will just say that two of the three countries I've lived in (Switzerland and South Africa) have never had jury trials. So emotionally I don't have the same feeling that this is a wildly anti-justice move. (But, wow.)

I watched that movie at a weekend house party where all of the other guests were big horror fans (I'm not). Literally all of us hated it, except the one who brought it. She was very disappointed in our reaction. But, uh, yeah. No.

(Younger kid has been treated to a couple of gaming themed Xmas Pullis that I bought in extra big sizes in the January sale. He wears and loves them, bc they combine all his favourite things: gaming! Xmas! OVERSIZED! But for him it's not about a single theme party. It is, he might say, a Lifestyle.)

And this goes triple for kid sweaters, given how fast they'll be outgrown.
Yes I'm a Grinch and yes you can feel sorry for my kids. I do too, a bit. But I can confirm that the one I did reluctantly buy for the teen got worn maybe ONCE.
Screw that.

Knitting your own is as cool as making any other ridiculous thing. I'm not going to, but I'll admire yours. But the fast fashion - sweatshop produced acrylic, maybe with sequins for added microplastic joy - is a blight. All that exploitation for something worn a couple times a year. As a joke.