The Denephew joke remains one of my all time favourites, and it was a footnote to a footnote.

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When you’re in balls-deep and give one final buck, spraying your thick batter deep into him, and you feel his legs tighten around your waist and his fingers dog into your back as he erupts into the paper-thin gap between your stomachs as as your tongue fights his and his fights yours, and you pull away with your lips still bridged by saliva and sweat and you stare at his face framed by your hands and you caress his chin with your thumb and realise he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen and you stare into his big, deep eyes and he stares back into yours he whispers “I love you” and you whisper back “I love you too” I cannot even begin to stress how important it is to say “no homo” otherwise you might give off the wrong signals.

Probably,

Checks out.

I have no idea how good this advice is, but I’d upvote just for the username and use of non-ASCII characters.

That’s actually how it works: appliance’s plugs have a fuse for the appliance so each device gets a sensible level of protection. The outlets don’t have fuses, but the circuit does.

I’ve always been of the opinion that type G’s biggest problem was how painful it is to step on and that the switch is pointless (as per my earlier comment)… the fact that those two cancel each other out is actually a bit of a revelation.

I don’t have one, but I commend them on commissioning the best commercials of all time:

https://youtu.be/kaRUhhhXwuw

I decided to spend a bit more and get at MSI Claw 8 for the extra processing grunt and Thunderbolt support, but I can’t believe how much use I get out of it. I actually look forward to commuting.

I’m not sure where you’re from, but here in the UK almost everybody drinks instant coffee and that’s how I feel about it. It’s horrible, and the only reason people seem to think they like it is because they fill it with milk and sugar.

G.

The plugs are shuttered, so they’re protected from being stabby-stabbed. The plug’s prongs are sheathed so live metal is never exposed, negating the need for recessed sockets. Compared to recessed plugs, it takes less force to insert/remove them, but the oversized prongs and their triangular arrangement means it can safely withstand more lateral stress than any other plugs. Every plug has a fuse appropriate to the appliance so every device has appropriate protection while also allowing any device to be used on any outlet - no need for dedicated outlets for tumble dryers. And the plugs are traditionally right-angled, so once they’re plugged in they only protrude about a centimeter, making it easy to plug things in behind furniture.

The whole ‘every plug has a switch’ thing is bullshit, though. That’s just weird.

Another updoot for 6 Music, and for all the reasons you mentioned. It’s on pretty much constantly at home.

Also handy if you find DJ banter distracting. Just point at at station in an unfamiliar language and it all gets reduced to background rhubarbs.

Radio is good, but don’t listen to the crappy top 40 local station. Find a station that has actual shows - ones where the DJs themselves pick the music - and where the DJs actually have an interest in music rather than trying to be an acoustic TikToker. Campus radio is good (I listen to KZSU and FuseFM) and PSB alt radio (BBC Radio 6 and ABC Triple-J) since, again, they have genre-savvy DJs that actually pick the music.

I tried reading them as a kid and thought they were shit then. I realise now the biggest problems I had with it were the total absence of brick jokes (or whatever the literary equivalent is), the utter refusal to engage in foreshadowing, and the lack of character development.

Harry Potter was the best person but everyone else was a dick. “Gosh I wish something fun would happen” said Harry. Then Magic Headteacher turned up and it turns out that Harry is famous and rich and amazing! “Come and learn to be wizard and a celebrity” said Haggis, “you are amazing and have no choice”. And he did. And his stepbrother was fat. Then Harry learned to play Quitit. Albino McVillain said “I’ve been playing my who life. You’ll never be as good as me”. And Albino was correct, Harry could only win if he was given a broomstick called a Plonko 9000. Then, Harry got a mystery package. It was a Plonko 9000 and he won. “I am a wizard!” whispered Harry, “but I will still share my chocolates because he is a good person”. And he was. “Special people are born special and that’s why they’re special,” said everyone.

Indeed—your assertion is entirely accurate—the mere presence of em dashes within a text does not—in and of itself—serve as definitive proof of artificial intelligence authorship. This grammatical construct—a versatile and often elegant punctuation mark—can be employed by any writer—human or machine—to achieve various stylistic and semantic effects. Its utility—whether for emphasis—for setting off parenthetical thoughts—or for indicating a sudden break in thought—is undeniable.

However—it is also true that—when analyzing patterns across vast datasets—certain stylistic tendencies can emerge. An AI—programmed to process and generate language based on extensive training corpora—might—through statistical correlation and optimization—exhibit a propensity for specific linguistic features. This isn’t—to be clear—a conscious choice by the AI—there’s no inherent preference for em dashes encoded within its fundamental algorithms. Rather—it’s a reflection of the patterns it has learned—the statistical likelihood of certain elements appearing together.

So—while an em dash does not independently declare “I am AI”—its consistent and perhaps slightly overzealous deployment—alongside other less tangible but equally discernible patterns—might—for a discerning observer—suggest an origin beyond human hands. It’s about the entire tapestry—not just a single thread. It’s about the aggregate—the cumulative effect—the subtle statistical fingerprint. And that—I believe—is a distinction worth making.