I meant work designated for this thread...

But you raise an interesting notion. I don't think work will run out before Humanity has colonized the solar system and then space. So there is some work to do still.

"Work" is a measure of physical change. In that sense there is no shortage of "work". In the practical sense applicable to mankind I imagine "work" could run out sooner than later if we could work together instead of trying to stand upon one another. Less "us" than "them", which pretty much just means there is an elite group of humans (men and women) with high social class, wealth, and power that wish to keep it and pass it on to their descendants and are willing to do anything it takes to do so. I imagine a wonderful day when we all just swear off "money" and share with our neighbors. The elite have no real power if their pawns lay down arms and side with the other color pawns^[1].

Some threads deserve to wait longer before their death.

Yes, probably the fact that pawns can only move a single space forward under normal play would make them little more than meat shields between the other forces. But who knows. There may be a more complex nature to the game. It might be interesting to explore.

In real life the pawns greatly outnumber of the specialized classes and they are far stronger than in the game.

I never said women weren't human. I only said they weren't men.

Too soon to die.

What does the board setup look like?

I had assumed a normal board setup. Now things are getting interesting. What if you placed the pawns on the sides instead of in normal formation?

+--------+
| RNKQNR |
|P  BB  P|
|P      P|
|PP    PP|
|PP    PP|
|P      P|
|P  BB  P|
| RNQKNR |
+--------+

The pawns are still fucked, but who knows... Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of ways that you could setup the board. If you put some thought into it you might be able to think up a way to give the pawns a fighting chance.

Unlikely. Some boards are known to have long running threads. For example, motorcycle forums tend to have "picture challenge" thread where somebody is "it" and posts a wacky photo idea that the players have to try to satisfy (usually something like "your bike next to rare noun" or "your bike doing rare verb"). The idea being that it's a game played in the real world intended to get people out riding their bikes looking for the target of the current game. These threads are usually indefinite so they never close and the forums are often international with thousands upon thousands of members...

*COUGH*art*COUGH*

Here is a game of chess played out when one of the pawns realises what is really going on - as shown on a Commodore VIC-20 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el9S1GNp4vQ

Currency conversion fees are definitely a way for them to skim a little off the top. And if there are no fees, you know that they screw you by picking an unfavourable currency conversion rate.

I regularly have to transfer between EUR / GBP, and it definitely pays to shop around a little on how you do the transfer.

But the very easiest solution would be for Britain to finally join the Euro. No more conversion fees! Transferring money anywhere within the eurozone is so easy and transparent. Most banks don't even have a separate page for international / national payments anymore, it's all one system.

I managed to cancel the direct debit instruction with my bank before PayPal managed to collect the funds. PayPal have noticed and e-mailed me to say that my bank account link can now be used to withdraw funds but not to fund things. There's no change to the so-called "completed" payment: it still says paid using the bank account, with my credit card as a backup funding source, and my card hasn't yet been charged.

I did some Googling. Apparently PayPal/eBay scams exist, where people pay using PayPal using a direct debit (whereby PayPal will advance the money and are required to give three days' notice before charging the direct debit), and they then cancel the direct debit and ensure the card will fail too. After something like three weeks, PayPal then recover the money from the recipient who has probably already sent the item. So, if that's anything to go by, the payment should be charged to my card, but if for some reason they don't do that, then I can expect all hell to break loose with my airbnb booking

Well, I dug up something else:

That explains why my card hasn't been charged yet. The best I can hope is that since PayPal didn't offer me the choice about currency conversion, they will ultimately charge the card in yen. If they don't, I will contest it with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

By the way, aside from the obvious designed-to-scam behaviour of their system, PayPal did actually make a mistake. I called them during the day after the night when the bad transaction happened. I explained that the money hadn't yet been taken and I wanted it taken in yen from my card, and they said they would effectively remove the direct debit instruction and cause it to revert to the card. They didn't seem to understand the part about yen, and generally said some things that made me think they didn't really know what they were doing, but nevertheless, what they said they would do, they didn't do. I then called them a day later to follow up, and they said I should have called sooner (?!). I think this gives me at least a little bit of ammunition.

For the record, my card offers me 0% markup on the Visa exchange rate, and no flat-rate charge either, for foreign transactions. You can see why I want to use it.

[EDIT]
In other news, we got through the concert with the Prokofiev without anything too terrible going wrong, and I spent most of yesterday completely incapacitated by it

Can't ML just do:

$lockTimeout = 30;//5;