It’s probably either Starbucks or Costa Coffee. Those are the only popular nearby chain coffee shops in downtown Belfast with a similar logo. There’s also Caffè Nero, but they use a blue to-go cup. Personally, I’d put my money on the crew/catering wanting Costa instead of Starbucks. Costa’s a lot more popular in…

This line of argument is useless to continue. You’ve admitted upthread that the US made the correct decision at the end of WWII and that the Japanese revere the emperor in the same way they always have, and in turn I refuse to defend Japanese war crimes and their general behavior during WWII.

Well, it should be the will of the people of the countries in which monarchies still exist to be rid of them. If those countries still want a national figurehead like a monarch, then that’s their prerogative. Some countries are like the UK and Japan, some are like Spain and Cambodia, and some are like France.

The King of Spain and Queen of the United Kingdom are descended from people (Isabella and Ferdinand to begin with on the Spanish side & all the important imperialist British yahoos from (the albeit Norman) William the Conqueror onward excepting Richard the Lionheart, Henry VIII & kids, the Charles-descended Stuarts, 2…

Well, considering that this author has to pull names out of her ass to properly file off the serial numbers of what she’s writing fanfiction of, it’s probably more her than romance as a genre.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Apparently the spire just collapsed. Shit, the stained glass survives both world wars, and now this happens?

Except that the reason people are upset is that they had an expectation that things would be one way and then it turned out that a good number of people actually owed money or got a smaller refund than they normally would. Needing to shell out a couple thousand dollars isn’t a small thing for most people. Furthermore,…

The purpose of FromSoftware games for you is the fact that it’s difficult. That’s not true for everyone. I was wary of buying Bloodborne because everyone hyped the difficulty of FromSoftware games up, but I really enjoyed watching the game because it was beautiful and had great art direction. Turns out the game was…

I was under the impression that the finale of Lost still said that the Island was purgatory.

The school requirements for vaccination are fine, but this case was regarding basically completely quarantining uninfected kids and not allowing them around anyone else. That’s not cool. I want the children vaccinated, and I’m also for quarantining individuals infected with diseases that require it for the appropriate…

I’m sorry you’re getting dog-piled on, but you’re not wrong. I think the parents of the unvaccinated children are idiots, but preventing the uninfected if unvaccinated kids from going to any public places is nuts. Yes, schools have a right to tell unvaccinated kids to leave or be vaccinated, but parks and stores and…

I’m genuinely not surprised that Sanders has fallen back on another racist dogwhistle. He said blink-and-you-miss-it shit like this during the last presidential race, too.

Dear God, no. Just no. I don’t want the Republicans to be able to pass asinine nonsense with their minor majority. The sword cuts both ways, and removing a check on power will always come back to bite the US in the ass.

Properly-made, fresh biscotti aren’t really that hard or crunchy in my experience. As long as you’re using the appropriate amount of butter and bake everything as is appropriate, they’re still fairly solid, but they’re not supposed to be hard tack levels of inedible. Mass-produced biscotti, on the other hand, are…

The house itself is nice, even with the paint job, but the yard is honestly just unpleasant to look at. There’s fun kitsch and then there’s this.

That Atlantic article flat-out says that Egypt got a hell of a deal because they have one of the highest prevalences of Hep C and collectively argued with Gilead as a country. For another example in the same vein, HIV drugs get sold on the cheap to under-developed countries, and PEPFAR and the Global Fund also…

How do you explain all the academic researchers not saying a damn thing? Why in the world do you think an academic would keep their mouth shut about a cure for HIV or any variety of cancers? Why would a government worker keep their mouth shut? Why would all academics and all government researchers around the world…

I grew up brushing, flossing, and using mouthwash, and nowadays just brush twice a day. I have five teeth without fillings and had ~25 fillings done last April and May because I didn't go to the dentist for 2 years. Sometimes it's just shitty genetics, too.

However, the onset of depression can occur with relative frequency in your teens, and hormones during puberty can make kids wrecks all on their own, so it’s harder to tell if depression is a side-effect or just a comorbidity.