One of the biggest criticisms of English is how reading a word doesn’t teach one how it is pronounced. So it’s not redundant since it addresses an actual problem.

It was indeed superseded but that doesn’t mean it disappearing was good. Limitations of printing were involved.

It is annoying to read because you’re not used to it. Were you used to it, you’d think “th” annoying. By your logic, everything you’re not already used to is automatically bad.

It being hard to type was a question from OP.

Not everyone does it, and it’s ahistorical, but I think it’d a cool way to distinguish between voiced (ð) and unvoiced (þ) dental fricatives. Why not have two different symbols for these? Eg: ðe þin faðer þinks about ðis (the thin father thinks about this).

It’s not necessarily hard to type, on my computer it just happens to be AltGr+d (ð) and AltGr+t (þ).

I’m unsure I get your point, how does waste prevent a shortage from becoming a famine ?

Also, both raw cauliflower and tinned tomatoes can be eaten almost as is.

Lol are you a Google rep?

Right, I should make myself clearer. I’m no expert in economics, I just try to build a reasoning based on what I know.

The context of his statement is that Russia is outproducing the West in ammunition, specifically artillery shells. Earlier he states Russia is producing 4 millions shell a year compared to .5 for the US. So without qualification, the statement implies Russians are somehow 80x superior as they produce 8 times more with an economy a tenth the size.

I feel he should have qualified his statement to improve reader understanding:

• in general domestic production for domestic consumption should be compared using PPP, in which the Russian economy is “merely” a fourth of that of the USA (hence my PPP comment)
• the sanctions Russia is under distort the nominal picture since they restrict trade
• weapons production is hard to put a number to, since they are very “custom” goods that can’t be easily compared or traded, and even moreso for Russia which has a huge domestic arms industry
  • granted, that last point is is much more true of things like fighter jets than artillery shells
  • still though, there is some Western focus on quality over quantity that also explains the discrepancy (or at least there was before countries realized their entire inventory wouldn’t last more than months in Ukraine)

Because he didn’t provide this context to the number he is giving, I thought that either he wanted to misled or he was not sufficiently informed, and assumed the more charitable option.

The Russian economy is less than a tenth the size of the United States or the European Union

I wish I had the self-confidence to pontificate on Russian domestic arms production while apparently being unaware of something as basic as purchasing-power-parity adjusted measurements.

I wonder the same, my theory is that this gesture is used both as a loyalty test and a way to further polarize society.

Making this gesture draws clear lines in society: those who say it was fine, those who say it wasn’t, those who don’t take a stance (ie the media calling it a “controversial gesture” or similar). So Musk & al now have a clearer idea of who stand where. It also cleaves those “for” and those “against” further away, solidifying their base.

Another explanation is this is part of the normalization of extreme rethoric and symbols. I doubt he could have gotten away with it ten years ago; who knows what they’ll be able to do and say in 2035?

Yet another possibility, he did it on a whim and the neo-nazis like Bannon are now seizing the opportunity. It’s unclear how planned this was and how intentional the consequences were.

(And all might be true at once)

It is your opinion town centres are dying from not enough parking space?

This used to be the mainstream opinion back in the sixties, but nowadays basically any “revitalisation” programme will be removing asphalt, because small business health has been shown to be correlated with how well connected the area is to public transport, and how pleasant it is to loiter in.