Many of the people electing the pope have hopes of becoming pope one day themselves, so they elect someone they expect to outlive.

The original usage was to carry out (a command). In that original sense it was the sentence, rather than the prisoner, who was executed; but the meaning got transferred over time.

Unionized mitochondria.

Once we get good, universal real-time translation, we might start to see a new proliferation of local languages. And of small groups inventing their own cryptolects for privacy, trying to evolve them faster than AI can keep up.

Agnosia or asemia?

Secretary of Health.

Not a movie yet (AFAIK), but Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower is downright uncanny.

Is that a reference to Use of Weapons or Excession?

Wikipedia’s current events portal covers current events and conflicts with links to plenty of background info.

Only enable this feature if you understand the security implications.

They should put that disclaimer on their entire operating system.

Montreal is just a subspace of Montcomplex.

Saag paneer.

Probably the same way Putin feels about Dobby.

I ate the last one yesterday.

Did you really expect me to resist?

Sign language isn’t just another way of expressing English that can be picked up like learning a different alphabet or a secret code. It’s a full, independent language with its own complete vocabulary, syntax, inflectional system, etc. that takes as long to learn as any other natural language.

It would be great if more people knew it for the sake of communicating with the deaf, but as a means of foiling surveillance, there are many other approaches that would be more effective for less time investment. (Hell, you might as well learn a really obscure spoken language that would be less likely to be recognized or deciphered than ASL.)

Global Thermonuclear War.

Before trains, sea travel was the standard way to travel long distances even if a land route was available. Sea voyages came to represent any destination that was far enough away that communities wouldn’t be in regular contact.

I had a really good pizza topped with stinging nettle once. (It doesn’t sting after cooking.)

Assuming that

• human phenotypic traits that correlate more closely with mouse traits have more-predictable outcomes with mouse-tested medicine, and

• more-predictable medical outcomes correlate with higher survival and reproductive rates,

can’t you plug that straight into the Price equation?

So 58% of districts are at or above median income, but only 24% of districts have more drivers than riders?

Could it be that both variables are closely correlated, and the latter is just sampling closer to the tail end of the distribution?