Is it true?
Well, it's true that it's a rumour...

I have always thought charging for checked luggage is a perverse incentive. All the faffing around trying to find room in the overhead compartments for the oversized suitcases people bring as carry on...

Yeah, I mean, what would the Holy Father know about theology?

(2/2) ... in which the Dear Leader is reported to have obtained 107% of the popular vote.

Also, remember to exercise the franchise. The various tricks by which an incumbent government can place its thumb on the electoral scale mostly work by casting doubt on genuinely close elections. Make it too big to rig, so the only option left is full North Korea... (1/2)

Out of position, that should read!

So even if the strait opens, the tankers are all going to be out of commission, waiting to load in the Gulf of Mexico. I suppose some of them might load a bit of Venezuelan crude, or conceivably divert to Brazil.

Six and a bit weeks? Was it a particularly slow tanker? I thought it was about three weeks via Suez/Gibraltar and about four via the longer route around Africa.

Umm - a little bit! Personally I find those email encryption thingamajigs an absolute pain in the arse and I refuse to use them. I'd rather accept the small theoretical risk of interception.

(Appreciate this kind of misses your point, but it's not as if your serostatus is a secret...)

So is Hormuz open or closed? Or is it Schrodinger's Strait, open and closed at the same time? It looks like a few ships went through it overnight, with some others appearing to head towards it but then turning back.

Is it actually open this time though? Or still just a trickle through the Tehran Tollbooth?

Depends how big they are. If you're halving them, 1.5 per person will be three. About right. If you're quartering them, six is too many I think.

Just the one, dear?
Guess thats inflation for you.

Why doesn't he just say, yeah, I drink way too much Diet Coke, there are worse vices.

Come to think of it, maybe Vance should be sent to Tehran. He can tell everyone there what a great guy the new Ayatollah is and see what happens. Worth a try?

And all it took was Vance to go there and talk about how the incumbent is such a good friend of his.

Thank God for that. Is Slovakia still blocking EU sanctions and aid to Ukraine, or has Fico wound his neck in?

Has the US got the oil to fill them all up? And even if it does, they'll take, what, 4 - 6 weeks to get there (if they're starting from hanging around in the Arabian Sea in case the Strait reopens)? And then another 4 - 6 weeks to get back to their destinations (refineries etc) in Asia?

I switched to a Canadian whisky called Bearface. Not that I'm a big drinker of bourbon-like whisky (or of whisky more generally).

But those non-existent buses are FREE! Free, d'you hear? Or they would be, if they existed, anyway.

Which I imagine you'd be happy to do, provided they send you a returns label / arrange a pickup. Not up to you to package and pay for return postage when its their error.

If the card issuer messes me around, I go to FOS (not sure if there's an equivalent in the You Knighted States...). This costs them £650, right out of the gate, win, lose or draw. Which no doubt incentivises them to resolve the matter with a minimum of fuss.

I've largely given up on trying to resolve such issues with the merchant. They get one opportunity to resolve it, then I do a chargeback via the card issuer.

It also has quite good public transport by North American / Anglosphere standards, though there's always room for improvement there.
Is Canada too cold for heat pumps to work?

To be fair to Canada - at least, the eastern part - its one of a very small number of jurisdictions to have a very low carbon electricity grid (a combination of geography / natural resources in Quebec and policy decisions in Ontario (with some overlap between the two) last century.

I understand the sentiment. But at some point those people who voted for him (something about eggs, wasn't it?) will surely come to their senses - right?

I'm not saying the present day United States is Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, but nor is it an absolute that someone should never hope their country loses.

I don't know. To pick an extreme example, it was best in the long run for both Germany and Japan to lose the last conflict they were involved in, even though it involved their near complete destruction and the loss of millions of lives...

Was there any significant traffic through the strait today? Didn't look like it to me. Crude stocks must be running low, particularly in Asia, by now.

Im no expert, but aren't there sanctions short of excommunication, like refusing someone communion on the basis they're not in a state of grace (so need to go to confession first)?