FWIW, we have a very similar expression (at least in British English):

“No ifs, ands, or buts”

Also sometimes used as:

“No ifs and/or buts”

“No ifs, no buts”

This is a brilliant reply, thank you!

Headcanon: The wife and husband were supposed to be on this trip. The wife discovers the affair, the other woman explains that she didn’t realise he was married. The wife leaves the husband and takes the other woman on the holiday instead.

I’m admit the term always used to baffle me too.

As a kid I could infer a lot of Americisms from the context, but it took me ages to pin down what ‘bangs’ were. The fact that it’s plural is the weirdest part.

‘Fringe’ makes sense - you have fringed curtains, fringed jackets, etc. ‘Bangs’ seems like such an odd thing to call it - is each hair a bang?

Ha, I do!

They are chunky metal squares (at a guess 1.5 x 1.5 x 0.5cm) with the Transformers faction symbols tastefully engraved into them. Autobots for the right wrist, Decepticons for the left, natch.

If you’re looking for shirts, I only feel comfortable wearing ones with french cuffs and would recommend them highly.

Normal cuffs irritate me no end, they’re tight , they move and jab against my skin constantly.

French cuffs with nice solid cufflinks are looser, soft-edged, and have a nice weight to them that stops them moving so much.

I’ll roll out

“What about the good things Hitler did?”

I use ESUN PLA+ for printing minis and would recommend it to anyone.

For reference, the only filament I’ve used that came out nicer was SUNLU high-speed PLA, but would NOT recommend for minis (it can’t cope with the constant retractions).

Oh, and also prime your models before painting them. I just use ordinary spray primer that you can get for dirt cheap - Tetrosyl Trade Spray / Hycote / Motip are all good brands. Just make sure you don’t get gloss finish and you’ll be fine!

Well if you really don’t have a preference for one or the other, it might be worth keeping an eye on the future.

People’s jobs, especially expensive jobs, are going to be replaced by software.

So ask yourself:

• What does an accountant do that wouldn’t be possible to automate in software?

• What does a lawyer do that wouldn’t be possible to automate in software?

• What does a doctor do that wouldn’t be possible to automate in software?

From where I’m sitting, medicine seems the safest bet.

Ah, so you have BMWs in the States as well?

They were doing so to find out which country you lived in, since you neglected to provide that information yourself.

I’m British, I charge my car at home, and on the few occasions I use public chargers, I interface with and pay for them through apps.

Knowing that you are from the US, though, means that YMMV. Your home electric supplies have significantly lower voltage than here in Europe, so home charging might be a less viable option.

They weren’t being creepy, they were trying to give you a helpful answer.

A friend, originally Hungarian but speaks numerous languages describes English as “easy to speak, hard to write”.

We really need a do-over with a better alphabet that allows a reader to know exactly how a word is said - one letter, one sound. Of course, I realise that it’s far too late to work - even on our tiny island we can’t agree on how words are pronounced.

Yes. Kind of. Probably.

What we have is an issue with terminology. The thing is, “white” only makes sense when specifically referring to human vision.

Our eyes have cells (cone cells) that are tuned to specific wavelengths in the EM spectrum. Three different wavelengths - one set of cone cells peak at 560nm that we see as Red, one at 530nm that we see as Green, and one at 420nm that we see as Blue.

“White” is just our interpretation of a strong signal in these three frequencies.

If, everything else being equal, our cones cells responded to higher wavelengths that our eyes can’t currently see, then our “white” might easily be what we see as “red” now, because we’d be also seeing the infra-red that we’re currently not.

We had a tape that had Asterix in Britain followed by the Only Fools And Horses feature-length episode where they go to Florida and Del-Boy gets mistaken for a mob boss.

To this day, I can probably quote both from beginning to end.

This is exactly what I thought of when I read this!

I still watch it every year, the night before my birthday. No matter what else happens or changes, TFTM has become my touchstone.

Totally real. They’re actually looking for suggestions right now for their new manifesto on Twitter, if you use it (search for #manicfesto - note the “c” in there).

Here’s the Wikipedia entry: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

Novelty candidates are a highlight of UK politics - practically every high profile election has some.

The brilliant thing is that they’re treated as seriously as the main party candidates by the election machinery - they appear on politics programmes and appear onstage stood next to the career politicians on count day.

H’Angus the Monkey, the Hartlepool FC football mascot, even got elected as mayor of Hartlepool a few years back.

There’s an entire novelty party, The Monster Raving Looney Party, which has been going strong since the 80s, and fields candidates across the country.

To be fair to him, on his first run at London Mayer, he did get nearly twice as many votes as Count Binface, a candidate who claims to be from space and wears a dustbin on his head.

I want to be sympathetic but alarm bells are ringing with the immediate juxtaposition of “that’s all fine but I genuinely begin to develop feelings for her” and “I just don’t really care all that much for a friendship”.

If the issue was that it’s painful to be around her until you can work the feelings out, then that wouldn’t be half as bad as saying that she’s not worth keeping as a friend if you can’t date her.

So kind of like Taming of the Shrew but more so?

Instead of it being a man cleverly trying to win over a woman through manipulation and abuse, it’s a woman-hating man cleverly trying to win over a woman through manipulation and abuse?

Even if it did exist, I’m not sure it’d be that watchable. Taming of the Shrew is pretty dubious as it is, but it was written over 400 years ago, so it can be excused somewhat.