Montreal is just the real subspace of Montcomplex.

Probably the same way Putin feels about Dobby.

Sign language isn’t just another way of expressing English that can be picked up like learning a different alphabet or a secret code. It’s a full, independent language with its own complete vocabulary, syntax, inflectional system, etc. that takes as long to learn as any other natural language.

It would be great if more people knew it for the sake of communicating with the deaf, but as a means of foiling surveillance, there are many other approaches that would be more effective for less time investment. (Hell, you might as well learn a really obscure spoken language that would be less likely to be recognized or deciphered than ASL.)

I’d say devices like metaphor and synecdoche are compression tools for meaning, and devices like rhyme and meter are checksums for error correction.

Time zones were originally mandated for the sake of railroads: before trains each town used its own local time, and each locality refused to change their clocks to match anyone else’s. So time zones were set by the federal government because there was little chance that every town in the country would reach a consensus otherwise.

When DST was introduced much later, time zones were already an accepted thing—so the federal government gave states the discretion to adopt DST or not. But they have to take it or leave it: they can’t make it year-round because that would effectively move them to a different time zone, which is still the prerogative of the federal government.

It’s called a dummy pronoun.