RE: https://mastodon.social/@IndyMediaAus/115532870112892314

So it #CouldGoEitherWay then ...

@AnthoDerv One option for avoiding 'that that' is 'that this', but then you're likely to offend another group of people who aren't fans of 'this'.
Deirdre McCloskey has a whole chapter in one of her books about writing inveighing against 'this'. I find it quite amusing. But I digress ...
A more satisfying alternative to the McCloskeys of the world would be to use 'that the ____', where what goes in the blank should be obvious to you in context.
It sounds to me like the person in question has overgeneralised a rule of thumb for avoiding imprecision and/or inelegance, though it could also be one of those cases of a sentence just sounding wrong. (Another of McCloskey's tips is to read a sentence aloud. Things that seem okay or only vaguely offensive in print can be revealed as wildly discordant when spoken aloud.)

@repeattofade @AnthoDerv I see what you did there ... 😉

@AnthoDerv I don't think it's a rule so much as a question of style. Some users of English are not fans of 'that that', for various reasons. (In my case, it's usually a concern about inelegance.)
Can you recast the sentence to avoid 'that that'? The second 'that' seems likely to be a deictic pronoun (basically, you're pointing at something) so the simplest way of recasting the sentence would be to replace the second 'that' with the thing to which it refers.
Of course, doing so may result in even greater inelegance, thus rendering 'that that' the lesser of two evils, but it would be unusual for there to be only two possible ways of expressing your idea, so keep trying.

@sister_ratched @Vandacorp Do you not value your sleep?!?

@MarkAsser @sister_ratched @Vandacorp Definitely glass half-full thinking, Mark.

@Vandacorp F***ing koels! I had one nesting in a tree next door when I lived in Narrabundah. Started squawking at about 2am and never stopped.
And, yes, they make sulphur-crested cockatoos seem quiet by comparison.

In case you didn't know, Owls in Towels has a new home on Mastodon

https://mas.to/@owlsintowels

We had to shift servers when the one we were on got deleted without warning a month ago. We lost our 4000 followers and had to start from scratch, so it would be a tremendous help if you could boost this or tell someone you know about Owls in Towels! Thank you everyone for your continued viewership and engagement 💛🦉

Instead of reporting on the dollar amounts of corporate fines, the news should just say how many minutes of profit the fine represents. "The EPA slapped Apple with a two second fine," is much more honest.

Next week, the duration of the US Government shutdown will exceed the duration of Liz Truss’ Prime Ministership.

@nschultz @caity Should've looked at the earlier toots in the thread. Very obviously Henley Beach. As you were.

@nschultz @caity That's Henley Beach, isn't it? The Norfolk pine and the shade structures are suggestive but the building looks very much like the one that houses Estia.

Update on Bruce Lehrmann & the Mountain River case. A suspended warrant for his arrest has been issued after he didn't appear in Hobart Magistrates Court today. He must supply a medical certificate to court & attend a 4 December hearing. #auspol https://www.9news.com.au/national/bruce-lehrmann-court-no-show-car-stealing-charge/61a8556c-7f18-4d7a-b49d-ec13251548ea

"Judge orders White House to use American Sign Language interpreters at briefings"

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/05/nx-s1-5599118/white-house-asl-deaf-american-sign-language-judge-order

"A federal judge is ordering the White House to immediately begin providing American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation at its press briefings when President Trump or press secretary Karoline Leavitt are speaking."

#USPol #ASL #Deaf #Accessibility #Disability #DisabilityJustice

So, I’m one of the people Microsoft has been forced by the ACCC to email in Australia to offer a downgrade on their O365 Family subs (I'll eventually convince my family we don't need it) because they hid the option to take a version without CoPilot.

However, when you click on the link in the email to downgrade, rather than going to a page where you can do that, you go to a page where you are offered a new subscription to a single-user-only version.

Parsing the URL it goes to, it's pretty clear how to figure out what it *should* be, and you can complete the downgrade by changing the url to https://checkout.microsoft365.com/acquire/purchase?language=en-AU&market=AU&requestedDuration=Year&scenario=microsoft-365-family-classic&matchDuration=true&campaign=M365ClassicDowngrade&upsell=false

I’m fairly certain this is not what the Commission intended.

#microsoft #enshittification

Also, I find Krishna to be incredibly watchable. I'd probably watch her reading out the train timetable. But that's just me ...

If you're a fan of food nostalgia, you will *love* this chronicle of Priya Krishna's attempt to recreate her family's spice blend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kSLVxoZDyg