I tried punching in 243 and it gave me an equation that resolves to 235.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=(lim+((x^2-100)%2F(x%2B10))%2C+x->13)^5+-+([lim((e^(8x)-1)%2Fx)%2C+x->0]+-+[[lim+((x^2-36)%2F(x-6))%2Cx->-5]+-+lim(cos^2+x+%2B+sin^2+x)%2C+x->36])

Tried it a few other times and it seems to sometimes like giving something that results in 3^5 (which would be 243 on its own) followed by subtracting a bit from it, which ends up making it the wrong answer. In the link above, it basically goes (3^5) - (8 - (1 - 1)), so if you only keep the first brackets it would be correct.

I believe the point is that the speaker typically doesn’t vote unless needed to break a tie. So if the NDP select one of their own as the speaker, they would have 46 votes, to the 44 Con and 2 Green votes, an exact tie. Of course, they would still have the speaker as tiebreaker, so it doesn’t really make a huge difference, but it’s seen as a bit more tenuous than actually having the 47 votes in the typical fashion, which they could accomplish if a conservative or green MLA takes the role of speaker.

To be honest, I’m not 100% sure on why the tiebreaker is seen as worse exactly. I understand there’s an expectation for the speaker to act neutrally, so maybe it’s just an unpleasant look if the speaker is regularly voting in favour of the NDP to break ties.

Regardless, it wouldn’t technically be a minority government as I understand it. It’s not as though the NDP couldn’t rely on their own speaker in matters of confidence. It just would give Rustad something else to rant about.

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Scoredle tells me after the fact that it was a sure thing, the path I was on, but man.

It seems feasible if you don’t imagine they’re all big novels. A lot of nonfiction you might borrow several of in one visit and not read front to back. Think recipe books, handicrafts, anything along those lines. Could also be smaller things like children’s books, poetry collections, etc., or some of the books were unusually expensive.

We already got to those ones.

This made me curious so I looked a bit into it. Seems that milquetoast as an insult originates from an old comic character of the same name, and it’s at least feasible (and perhaps likely) that said character was named after milk toast.

I think there’s a couple reasons they do it this way.

One is that the pre-order bonus is still available despite the game effectively being out. I imagine they spare themselves some unwanted difficulty or dissatisfied responses from people who otherwise would have missed it.

The other is this very thread. Server issues are common on an expansion pack release. This gives them a convenient excuse to put in the apology announcement. It’s a small thing but who knows, maybe it has some impact.

It’s definitely a silly twisting of words (and their double key system for the pre-order and full purchase only sillier).

I spent a few months in Germany years ago, and “Americans” (Amerikaner) tended to be used to refer to people from the Americas (either NA specifically or NA and SA collectively) in my experience. If you wanted to say someone was from the US, you’d say something more like “aus den USA.”

The Founders Trilogy (book 1: Foundryside) by Robert Jackson Bennett uses a system of magic called Scriving wherein objects have written upon them instructions that sort of convince the objects that the laws of physics work in different ways. Over long ages engineers found ways to build engines for scriving that had commonly used instructions and essentially allowed more advanced technologies by creating “programming languages” of a sort, if you will, that work in proximity to the engines. So you get this very advanced society with technology built over this magic system, and a main character whose MacGuffin allows for messing with others’ scriving as your setting.

I quite enjoyed the trilogy, and they seem to fit the kind of vibe you’re looking for. Over the course of the books they dive a lot into both the way the magic functions and the history behind how it came to be as it is.

The last digit of pi is clearly the i, which would be equivalent to 19 after converting to base 10.

Interestingly I can think of a couple games that get around the mon-game issue you mentioned, and in pretty different ways.

Ooblets (which I haven’t played, but appears to be popular with 91% positive on Steam) has you grow your mons in a garden, and rather than pitting them in fights with other critters, you do dance battles. It appears to be a bit more slice-of-life vibes but with the monster-collecting element.

And Cassette Beasts (which I have played, would recommend to anyone who likes monster collectors easily, and is 96% positive on Steam) dodges the issue in a different way. You don’t actually capture and train monsters… you record them, and that recording lets you transform into that kind of critter. Successfully record a Traffikrab in a fight, and you can then transform into one later. You are still fighting the wild ones, but you aren’t enslaving any or having them fight for or serve you in any way. The equivalent of trainer battles is fighting other people who also do this.

I don’t know exactly how it works in the US (probably it varies by state), but to give an idea, in Canada employment can end typically in one of three ways: quitting, being fired, or being laid off. (Some other less common cases exist of course like long term injuries or medical issues etc.)

Generally being fired means it was somehow the employee’s fault (anything from not being good enough at the job to being caught doing something actively wrong), while being laid off is due to lack of available work (when a business has to scale down, or dies completely). Laid-off workers can start collecting employment insurance almost immediately, and have certain rights to getting their job back if the company suddenly has work available again, among other things (i.e. it’s not meant to be possible for employers to use layoffs as a way of getting rid of employees they can’t or don’t want to fire).

A fired employee can’t get employment insurance as immediately since they’re seen as at fault for their own job loss from a legal perspective, but if the firing was wrongful, then they might have legal recourse against their employer.

The US is again probably very different in details but the basic difference of employee-at-fault job loss vs the work no longer existing is essentially the same, I think.

After Jones Soda did the six-pack of Thanksgiving dinner themed sodas (including Turkey & Gravy), this kind of thing just doesn’t surprise me any more. I guess it’s meant as more of a novelty thing than something people would actually use in seriousness.