@cstross for a second there I misread the question as being about a writing *curse*, and with you being you I was *worried*.

@cstross sounds like a plan :D

@cstross for sure, the probability at founding that any institution will survive for 80 years are pretty slimbut I wonder if the probability of a 67 years old institution to survive 80 more years aren't significantly higher: they should have already gone through at least a couple of generational changes and other events that cause the early failure of most institutions.We do have a big handful of examples of institutions that lasted for centuries, or even millennia (not unchanged, and in many cases their current state wouldn't be recognized by the people from the time of their founding, but they are still there)

@rk @cstross that's the job of the President in a parliamentarian republic, and there is no *guarantee* that they will do the right thing, but at least they have been chosen every few year because they look like they will

@Uilebheist @cstross deep down it was mostly about Berlusconi, but you know…

@cstross @tsturm OTOH they could auto-ban names that use a suspicious mix of specific characters from different unicode blocks, as defined by the unicode consortium itselfunicode.org/reports/tr39/(there are libraries that do all of the dirty work for you)if they allowed for a manual override (after reasonable checks) for that one author who really wants to sell a book titled “don't go to aⅿazon.com” I'd think it would be a pretty reasonable restriction

@tessarakt @cstross that's more or less the same in Italian law.However I would expect¹ permanent circumstances such as a tight curve or a pedestrian crossing to be properly indicated in advance with signs and, if needed, a lower posted speed limit, and to have to adapt myself to circumstance that are changeable, such as the weather or works (these should come with a lower posted speed limit, tbf) or the road being full of protestors or whatever.¹ not that I'd *trust* them to always do it. posted speed limits in Italy tend to be chosen by mysterious processes, in many cases

@cstross In safety engineering we define ‘safety’ as “freedom from unacceptable loss” (the immediate follow up question everybody always asks, “unacceptable to whom?” is where this gets political)

@cstross even Trump, under “every time he uses one of his powers¹ parliament revokes it and it can't be used again” would probably be much better than “we still have a 18th century absolute king, but he's not for life so we call him president”¹ other than soft powers and the ability to keep themselves and their close relatives above the law when committing — in moderation — private crimes, I guessof course, I'm not Canadian nor USian, and I'd rather keep our own style of head of state, thanks.