Oh shit, I didn’t think of that!

I literally like don’t even know what you’re like talking about. I literally can’t even.

(I’ve just read further down the various responses to this question, and I’m now seeing “literally” overused in literally every other comment, my generation will literally never escape!)

I heard rumours that the new Stanley cup everyone was obsessed with for a week contained lead (not in contact with the inside of the cup, but still, why is lead there at all in 2024)

Was that rumour ever substantiated?

The title of this article really confused me because I’ve never hard of this company before.

I thought ol’ mate migaloo (the albino Humpback whale) was swimming around fucking up super superyachts.

As a poor, I’d be happy renting at an affordable rate from the state if the “rental income” was used to fund maintenance and development of state owned housing or plugged back into other social services like my tax dollars are.

I don’t like private owners and private investors profiting of my need for shelter.

We had party lines in regional Australia in the mid 90’s. The selective ringing had been phased out long before I was born, it either wasn’t available or rather as a kid I was never taught how to alert specific houses on the line. So it sort of operated more like a community chat room.

It was mostly only used for emergencies, if you saw smoke you’d pick up the handset for the party line and others would do the same and you’d try to figure out who’s back paddock was on fire and coordinate to all go down and snuff it out. Or if you didn’t recognise the livestock that wandered onto your block you’d jump on to see if anyone was asking where their sheep went.

But we also had private lines by then, so no one was really hanging out and gossiping on the party line. Occasionally the party line would be used for organised social programs like book clubs if no one could be bothered hosting at their home. We used the personal line for dialing out for calls, and kept the party line free for emergencies.

I never realised it was a party line, or a thing in other places or times in history. I thought it was a cool thing the community just installed themselves using a closed phone loop. Growing up I assumed that since the invention of affordable home phone lines, we’d just always had two phones. One for actually phoning people, and one for town meetings.