The ternary syntax is really my only real gripe with python design -- putting the conditional BETWEEN the true and false values feels so very messy to me.
I think it's just what you're used to. Imo it really matters that it's keywords and not operator symbols - it's meant to read closer to natural language. I prefer the c version when it's ? and :, but I like them this way round when it's if and else.
Are you just referring to how Python uses the English and/or instead of the more common &&/||? I think what the user above you was talking about was Lua's strange ternary syntax using and/or.
In JS at least, there's a concept of truthiness and falsiness. 0, undefined, null, and a few other non-boolean values are treated as false if used in conditionals and logical operations, while every other value is treated as true. I'm pretty sure python has something similar.