It’s real https://nitter.net/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1917331380297478530#m

I am personally a big fan of Voices of the Past and Fall of Civilisations.

Voices is very specific in what it does. It doesn’t actually give you a historian’s perspective, it’s strictly primary sources translated into English and then read out as-is. Since it makes absolutely no attempt to account for material evidence or the biases of the authors it is much more about the perspective of individuals from the time than recounting accurate history, but I think that’s very interesting

As its name suggests, Fall focusses on the end of civilisations, ranging from the Greenland Norse and Rapa Nui to Han China and Byzantium.

It doesn’t hurt that the speakers in both have very pleasant voices

Vines’ version of MGMT’s Kids

Her style is a super stripped-down one with almost all instrumentation just being her voice through a vocoder. This cover includes a bit more traditional instrumentation than usual for her work, but it’s still quite stark next to the original. It comes across as very pensive, which I think works nicely with the lyrics

If Germany isn’t doing it on its own terms then it’s not Germany doing it, is it? Not only can Germany do it on its own terms, it only matters if Germany does it on its own terms.

Regardless, the responsibility Germany has does not entail giving Russia propaganda fodder for its own imperialism. That helps literally nobody.

The people that committed the crimes of Nazi Germany are dead, and good riddance to them. Modern Germany is doing the right thing by commemorating their defeat. They can do that on their own terms in their own country. People don’t get to just do whatever they want in Germany on the basis of being from a country that suffered under the Nazis.

Nobody is asking Nechayev to make a speech, but nobody is asking him to attend either and he still plans to do that. Nechayev described this commemoration as “part of the path to our reconciliation”, so he clearly thinks of it as something Germany should be doing in order to be friendlier with Russia despite Russia’s actions

This article was presumably written by someone that holds a deep personal grudge with Ian Betteridge

If Putin is going to make use of it either way, it seems to me like you might as well pick the option that makes it more likely for the event to go ahead without incident. It’s not like Germany is burning any good will with Russia here, there isn’t any to burn

Russian representatives aren’t being banned because of the behaviour of this ambassador. They’re being banned becaue they are expected to misuse the publicity of an event where Ukrainians - the Soviet republic with the second-highest military and civilian casualties - will also be present

You’ve got two parts of the former Soviet Union fighting a brutal war against each other. You probably can’t invite both sides to the same event and expect it to go okay. Which side do you invite? The one that didn’t start the problem

Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox’s grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:

• Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
• Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
• Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
• Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things

What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There’s no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you’re going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There’s also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I’m not trying to win the game, I’m saying to myself “let’s see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler”

All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there’s not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience

After this they’ll remaster Morrowind. It’ll be Elder Scrolls III 2, and two threes is six, so that’ll be Elder Scrolls VI

Imagine what it’d be like if halfway through this livestream they just shift the “I” to the other side of the “V” and reveal VI as well though

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the UK is quite similar to Canada in this regard. There’s also a convention known as “purdah” during the period beginning six weeks before the election and ending upon the formation of the new government. Under it, civil servants are expected to maintain public political neutrality and governments (national and subnational) are not to take or announce more policies/decisions than necessary

Don’t give insider trading a pass on the basis of the people doing it already being very rich. They’re specifically only in a position to do the insider trading because of how rich they are

The Cuillins are magnificent. The last time I went for a walk there they defeated me, the route had suffered under some landslides and I didn’t have the gear to do it safely, but I had a lovely day out all the same

Trials cyclist Danny MacAskill is from the island these are on, and he went home to do a video that shows them off wonderfully

Ahh, the goth chick

Oh we humans would never eat another animal

Neutrinos almost don’t interact with other matter. You use neutrons to start fission

Magnificent! Nice to see a different angle of it from the usual too. It looks quite late in the day in this photo. Was it actually empty or did you have to stitch together a couple of shots to get one with nobody in it?

A scientist who has served time in prison for editing human genetics. It was with the intention of combatting HIV, but it seems to have been done with little to no regard for medical ethics, including misleading the parents of the babies involved and apparently putting them on the hook for the costs of the experiments if they pulled out

Well now I’m incredibly disappointed that I can’t see what it was

In technical safety terms, combustibles are harder to ignite than flammables. So diesel and olive oil are combustibles, for example, because neither of them give off enough ignitable vapour at room temperature. Ethanol does, so it gets classified as flammable, and you need to store and handle it more carefully than diesel. Then there’s really horrible stuff like triethylborane which will catch fire upon meeting oxygen even at temperatures well below the freezing point of water

Of course in casual usage they mean the same thing