Maybe by staying quiet until She had all the facts? All they basically did was make the writer’s situation even worse by inserting themselves into the story.

Ugh. Why does Lena Dunham believe it’s important to share her perspective?

This citizenship crisis is killing me slowly. HOW DO THESE PEOPLE NOT KNOW?! DO A QUICK GOOGLE SEARCH!!!

You’re fined for not showing up. You are allowed to take a ballot and put it straight in the box with nothing on it if you don’t like any if the candidates. There are rarely long queues and there’s often a bbq, cake stall or book sale on and bit of a community air to the whole thing so it’s not onerous.

I should add, in the lower house (house of reps) you have districts of roughly the same number of constituents (we have some weird gerrymandering, but nothing like the US) so whoever wins the district wins the seat, and whoever wins the most seats forms the government. It’s not a direct “you got 75% of the vote so…

Australian/American here. The Liberal party (our conservatives) actually align pretty closely with the US Dems, the Labour Party is further left... we’re a lefty society in general. Without really knowing the American situation well a lot of people here seem to think the liberals are evil like the Republicans, but…

To be honest, a lot of this seems better than our winner-takes-all system. I would love to vote for the Democratic Socialists, get a few of our people into the House and Senate, and force the larger Democratic Party to give in to some of our demands to form a coalition government. As it is, I (obviously because I am…

Yes. It’s not much ($50 last time I checked) but voting is compulsory. And we like that... the result is remarkably centrist governments and occasional changes in power that don’t destabilize much at all, because you have to fight for everyone’s vote... “turning out the base” is not the goal, you have to appeal to the…

Please clarify that you’re talking about the US... Our 2016 Australian Federal Election turnout was 91% of eligible voters, and that was the lowest since 1925. It was blamed mostly on two unpopular choices (our current PM and opposition leader are historically, together, the most unpopular leaders we’ve ever had) plus…

Chickpea water as a substitute for egg white is fucking bonkers, the first time I tried it (side note: I am a qualified patissiere) I was gobsmacked. I’ve not made pavlova as yet but I have used it for macarons and they were magnificent.

I think because we are one of the few countries that have compulsory voting, when a non-compulsory vote is needed it is not such a big deal to go ahead and do it. Despite being very American in a lot of ways, I feel we swing British in our rule-following streak.

Yes, and that’s the reason you’re confined to a penal island, btw.

I’m so sorry to inform you, but you just disqualified your country from the mild goodwill you had just earned.

Maybe (definitely) if they conducted elections that way participation will be higher.

We share that friend on Facebook. And as much as I enjoy his musings, that really threw me off, too. I mean...just...why?

You’d be surprised. I have a facebook friend who very proudly posted about how he sat his elderly father down and came out to him as... really into BDSM. Like, he made that old man listen at length to how he loved sex dungeons and nipple clamps. HIS FATHER. He was really, really proud he had done this, too.

Also cocaine is legally classified as a narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act.

Everything about Rose’s drug arrest appears to be sketchy.

That thought occurred to me, as well, though you don’t have to search too far to discredit Charlie Sheen.

I REALLY want to see this movie when it comes out now. And Ridley Scott’s director commentaries are amazing, so there’s that to look forward too if he does one.