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.

⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ 
⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜ 
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 

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.

It’s a 14 book series. It’s generally acclaimed for its world building and depth, but understood to be a bit of a slog in the middle. The original author, Robert Jordan, died while writing the 12th book, and Brandon Sanderson was chosen by Jordan’s widow to finish the story using notes left by Jordan for his successor. I never finished it myself but I understand these final works were very well received, and Sanderson is a great author himself.

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.

I use Downpour. They all kind of have the same pricing service. $12ish for a monthly one credit, buy more at the same price. Downpour lets you either use their app for syncing or just download the MP3 and/or M4B (a format similar to MP3 but with chapter stops for books) to use however you’d like.

Though I’m not sure it supports gifting. Someone else suggested Libro.FM which is very similar but I know does have gifting.

I avoid Audible personally, they’ve historically taken a huge cut from authors. I can get basically the same deal everywhere else. If you’re curious check out Brandon Sanderson’s various posts or media releases about the topic.

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.

I picked Caithe’s Bloom (I think it’s called, the dark purple dagger), since it fit my ele outfit. I got the reading glasses skin which a couple weeks before I’d been complaining about being unavailable in the gem store, so I guess for once the RNG gods chose kindness lol.

Tyrian 2000 is an easy choice given it’s permanently free on GOG. It’s a really fun old shmup with story and arcade modes, lots of difficulty settings (look up cheat codes if you need to make it harder) and a pretty solid amount of weapon customization. Still very much holds up today.

Annette Marie has a number of series set in her world of The Guild Codex. Urban fantasy where guilds of “mythics” (mages of various sorts) live hidden from the mundane world. The first series The Guild Codex: Spellbound is a good place to start, featuring a normal human woman stumbling into a bartending gig for such a guild. That 8 book series within the world is complete. Book one is “Three Mages and a Margarita.”

Super engaging, and has great audio narration if you’re into that as well.

Pretty close to the same at least. The main distinction would be that the Steam version still requires a copy of Steam to be running and logged in on the computer you copy it to, which at least means Steam has to have been online once ever to get the account logged in before using offline mode. GOG has offline installers that can be backed up and used without any client.

For the vast majority of use cases, it’s a pretty minor difference, but one way in which it might be significant is that the GOG installers will never stop working, but if one day years down the road Steam were to shut down, the Steam version could only run on computers that could be running offline-mode Steam. There’d probably be ways to break that simple bit of DRM, but a legal offline installer is a very nice bonus for things like archival sites or research applications.

It’s the kind of thing that even if you’re not choosing to use it, it’s nice that it exists, and hopefully it can continue to.

I took that zip file and imported it at Storygraph. That site isn’t perfect either but at least it’s building up instead of falling down, and seems to have heart. Also its recommendations, while hit and miss, are a lot better than what Goodreads has offered in the last couple years.

The two things I occasionally go back to Goodreads for at this point are the list of releases by authors I’m following, as you mention, and an FSF book club I’m in over there. That said I haven’t bothered tracking my books on GR for a while now. I really can’t see it turning around any time soon, especially now it’s Amazon owned, and Storygraph deals with that aspect of things very well.

I’ve also seen Bookwyrm mentioned around here lately as a Fediverse alternative. I’m not familiar with it or its features, but it’d bear looking at for comparison.

I largely limit myself to ebooks or audiobooks now, which generally means I’ve no need to purchase a book before the very second I intend to read it, unless I expect to be somewhere without internet for a while and need to predownload stuff.

If there’s a book in interested in but won’t be reading right away, then I put it on a TBR list. Previously on Goodreads, ATM I’m using Storygraph. Then when I’m looking to read something new I skim through the TBR list and pick something off of it to borrow or buy. In that sense it’s less a backlog and more a menu lol.

Spiritfarer is an absolutely wonderful experience that is somehow both a casual open world chill game and a game that delves deep into the topic of death, being prepared for it, and leaving people behind. Really special game.

Another Kobo user, I have the Clara HD. I like having an eInk device for ease on the eyes, it has a good backlight with a natural light setting for warmer usage at night which is nice.

I suspect most basic ebook readers would be similar. I just wanted something feature-light that was purely for reading.

I did specifically want to avoid Amazon. Basically every other retailer uses the same ebook format: Epub, either DRM free or with Adobe Digital Editions DRM. This means most ereaders can use books from most retailers. The exception is Amazon - they use their own proprietary format with its own DRM to lock you into the Kindle ecosystem. Kindles can now read non-Amazon ebooks but non-Kindles can’t read Amazon ones due to this. I find that particularly scummy and want nothing to do with supporting it, especially when most books I buy through Kobo or other sites are completely DRM free by comparison.

(There are ways to get Amazon books you own onto other devices in a pinch if you do some searching. Questionable legality, even if you own the book, which is crazy to me, but it’s not impossible. Amazon has been updating their DRM against it, but it’s still doable.)