Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Ha-- and I got an autocorrect in there. Should be "casus belli". 000
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Unless it's a joke I'm not getting, an autocorrect of "cause belli" (a Latin phrase meaning "cause for war"). 100
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I was trying to figure out if it was an autocorrect or a Latin joke I wasn't getting. 270
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026I don't think there's any evidence that being stubbornly wrong about basic facts is harmful to a political candidacy. 010
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Plot twist: They're in the horsenettle. 070
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I'm picturing our human champion shouting "Molon labe!" (or however it transliterates) at a charging lion now. 030
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Though I suppose if you're going to do it, thanking the person you were making eye contact with the entire time is just polite. 040
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026You Scots are shameless. Where I come from, it's illegal to get off while you're on the bus. 130
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Georgia is really only a flyover state if you're going to or escaping from Florida. 120
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026And to be clear, I'm not saying the guy *didn't* abuse his wife and/or kid-- I have no way of knowing!-- but I do hope I don't join in celebrating someone's death based on a headline's worth of information. 011
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I get the framing can affect initial reactions. It was more the intractability as additional information was provided that got me feeling like I was on Facebook. (I did see one guy say the equivalent of, "Thanks for pointing that out. I'm deleting my initial comment," so kudos to him.) 110
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Read some of the replies to that and was honestly shocked at the way people dug in their heels when people who actually read the article added some context. An exchange of abuse allegations and somehow the majority were automatically assigning blame to the person who ended up dead? 110
Reposted by Patrick BrettellMarc Korman @mkorman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Essential water use alert due to our power issue at the Potomac filtration plant. www.wsscwater.com/news/2026/se...wsscwater.comUrgent Request – 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, September 29, 2026: Essential Water Use Only Issued for All WSSC Water Customers; Power Outage at Potomac Water Filtration Plant | WSSC Water 003
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026". . . so he'd dump his load . . . on my property." 020
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026This might be a "fish doesn't notice water" thing, but I'm in the US and can't say I've noticed. But aren't you saying it's used literally? 100
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Doesn't "contemporaneously" hold that meaning, or am I not understanding what you're referring to? 110
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I can't think of any instances of "step foot on" being used idiomatically. What's the context/meaning? 100
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I can understand resistance to the change (though it's not one of my pet peeves) because we've lost a concise way to express the old meaning and the new meaning already has a concise way to be expressed. 120
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I've literally only heard of it because of people complaining about people saying they haven't heard of it. 081
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Why does full diesel storage affect gasoline prices? 410
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Obviously this is a deception and they're sending the juice in another direction on a bus. 000
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I don't think those words would have meant anything to her. 020
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Same, but I chalk it up to replicating the language likely to be used by someone expressing those sentiments (or maybe trying to push people to the left-coded response?). 020
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Wouldn't they need veto-proof majorities for that? 000
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026She apparently can't count to 1, so . . . 000
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026She told me how scary nuclear power was and how dangerous it was to be anywhere near it. I declined to tell her that she was standing a couple hundred meters downwind of the research reactor I was heading to. 3520
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I once told a Greenpeace person that no, I would not sign up to give them a monthly donation because I thought their stance on nuclear energy was harmful to the planet. 1420
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I thought it was, "You can't fuck goats 'ironically'." 120
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026You're right-- on the Internet it's always best to make the least generous inference possible and insult the person because you can't do that nearly enough to people's faces. 120
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026The "my turn" stuff started with Dole (or earlier, maybe), so that could have been a reference to him. 100
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I wonder if Gary Hart gets caught if he doesn't run (or foolishly challenge the press to catch him). 110
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I think you're right and also that a Romney win in 2012 becomes a better than 50/50 chance. 3640
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026It sounds like Beetlejuice lost control first. 020
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026I think you misunderstood: You have to pay her not to talk about it. 090
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Slightly better than my inference but still really dumb! 061
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026It's late, so I'm struggling to understand this. Is xwanyex making the argument that south Asians, by immigrating here, are stealing what's his, and therefore he's not going to debate it? 1110
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 19/09/2026You're wrong and I'm not gonna tell you why. 010
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026described here. *In fact, much like the words "literally" and "literal" are often used as emphasis. 100
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026I thought Cameron's point was that it just didn't make sense. I'm saying there are people who understand the idiom as emphasis rather than the literal* meaning that you (and I) give it. It doesn't mean Piker is any more "right" in a general sense, but it does mean he's more coherent than is being 1/ 100
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026I agree he misused it. I'm saying his misuse is common enough that the other poster's understanding of it is understandable. 000
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026You're using the phrase: 1. As I understand it 2. As seems logical to me 3. As I believe intended by *most* people But I *have* seen it used the way the other poster is describing-- as though it's just for emphasis or saying "focusing on the raw metric". 311
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Ask your doctor if Bleptic is right for you. Do not take Bleptic if allergic to Bleptic. Under some circumstances, patients taking Bleptic reported feelings of euphoria and nocturnal emissions. 030
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Just learned that I was definitely wrong. In talking to some Air Force and Army personnel, I learned they've shifted from weight and height standards to a waist-to-height ratio. 000
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026I don't think he's using that account as an example. He's agreeing with her. 060
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I realize the WSJ would likely verify this sort of thing, but I really wonder if that's supposed to be WEIGHT-to- height ratio-- a fairly routine standard throughout the military. 020
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I take it more as positioning. If you're "centrist", you have no common ground with them to which to appeal. You're more easily dismissable. 030
Patrick Brettell @patrickbrettell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026No, my answer is "It's not a valid comparison unless there's a lot of discourse happening that I'm not seeing (which is certainly possible)." 120
