For the other nations in nato it would be for the best (imo obviously). Republican usa is not a reliable ally and the other nato nations have not all come to terms with that new reality yet. If the usa quits nato, then it instantly removes all doubt and the remaining nations of NATO can immediately start work on improving the alliance, instead of being stuck in limbo for a few more years while they’re hoping that the usa will somehow magically unfuck itself.

The article/slideshow I linked is not a specific scientific study that was done in London, it’s a summary/aggregate of other studies that are referenced at the end of the slideshow. It was a study summary made for London, but the science behind it is a lot more general.

I’m from Belgium and from my own personal experience, I find that well done low speed zones really do improve the flow of traffic. Cities in the Netherlands have been at it for probably over 2 decades, Antwerp has followed their example since about a decade and now other cities in Flanders are copying Antwerp’s homework. When done well, it works really well and almost noone wants to go back to how it used to be. You’re right in that coordinated traffic lights are a big part of why the traffic flows much better, but in congested streets, a lower speed is needed to keep that flow going.

In Belgium we also have a big example of how to not do street renewal/traffic improvement programs: Brussels.

The evidence of studies says that you are wrong.

Here are some key points from a study summary that was made for London: 20mph zones do not appear to worsen air quality and they dramatically reduce road danger. They also support a shift to walking and cycling, generate less traffic noise and reduce community severance. In 20mph zones vehicles move more smoothly with fewer accelerations and decelerations. This driving style produces fewer particulate emissions.

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/speed-emissions-and-health.pdf

My bad for assuming wrong.

And yeah, sarcasm with just text doesn’t work very well, got to add something for making obvious that it is sarcasm, or plenty of people (me included as you saw) will assume otherwise.

Fault? I didn’t mean to imply that China is responsible for starting the latest bout of civil war in Myanmar, because they weren’t. There’s really no reason to believe that whenever something bad happens, some outside big boogeyman is entirely to blame. If you want to know what caused the current civil war to start, try looking it up, but please don’t make assumptions.

If you can’t look it up because of time constraints or other reasons, then accept that you don’t know. It’s impossible to know everything, so there’s nothing wrong with not knowing some things. But imo not knowing something and knowing that you don’t know, is a lot better than making assumptions and inventing alternate facts.

China is a direct neighbour of Myanmar, with a history of political meddling in Myanmar and also of setting up illegal exploitative businesses by entrepreneurs. But even without the meddling, they are direct neighbours, which should be enough reason for Myanmar journalists to want to know what is going on in China.

At first glance that top map already looked bad, but then I zoomed in on the legend and the cutoff for the white areas is an annual deficit of 60.000 … What a ridiculous scale, that entire map should be blood red.

The internet did not end up in the trash heap after the dot com bubble burst. Ai too has real world uses that go beyond the current planet wrecking bubble.

Fascists don’t respect democracy or even other people’s rights, so it’s logical that democracies should not trust them in positions of power. It’s basically the paradox of tolerance: “if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”

And if you want to see what happens when these kinda of people are left unchecked in the cause of retaining the “moral high ground”, just look at the USA. The USA democrats have been giving in for 40 years against increasingly perverse transgressions by republican actors, and now it’s a dumpster fire on the cusp of becoming a full blown dictatorship.

Great find.

I checked a few other historic front pages on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_newspapers The Oxford Gazette from 1665 used the same month-day format. The first edition from The Guardian from 1821 also used it. Some British news papers like The Times never stopped using it, while The Guardian is now using day-month. So it was the British after all.

I wondered whether maybe the us americans had continued using the old style and it was Britain that changed, but no: Britain appears to have been using the day-month-year order since medieval times. This latin letter from William Wallace from 1297 has that order: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Lubeck_Letter

*Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the Year of Grace one thousand two hundred and ninety seven. *

The latin line with the date starts with “datum”.

I actually think that’s a fair question, the distance between Ireland and Scotland is less than the English channel and that can be crossed by rail. If I were to travel to Japan or some other place that I don’t know, then I’d assume that some of the islands are connected by rail and some aren’t, so in a conversation it would be natural for me to ask the same question: can I go there by rail?

Regardless of whether or not this is ai:
There’s no evidence that there was a roadblock.
If there was a roadblock, then we still don’t know whether or not it was put up by Hamas.
Despite there being sound recording on site, no cries of “thank you america” are recorded. As well as it being a ridiculous claim that panders more to american republican sensitivities (they said thank you) than any normal behaviour, there is again no evidence for this happening.

This xheet reads like one of those stories that ends with “and then everybody clapped”: totally made up.

The same kind of misinformation has existed long before ai image generation became a thing. To increase the credibility of false narratives with a non critical audience, the video and audio only needs to vaguely resemble what is being described. They could also take a snippet from a real video recording from another place and time + real audio recording from yet another place and time, and call it good enough.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html?guccounter=1

This article lists 7 schools that are known to have had funding taken away as punishment. Harvard is just the only one that dared to publicly speak out against the bullying and now the bully is trying to make an example of them.

The republican war on higher education is older than Bannon’s graduation from high school. Trump already targeted them during his first term. Ron Desantis has been doing the same in Florida. Texas republicans have been going at it for years as well. And that’s the ones that I know about.

It’s retaliation for this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/harvard-trump-funding-antisemitism-columbia-b2733306.html So Harvard isn’t the only target, but they’re the ones that dared to publicly stand up against the bully and now the bully wants to make an example out of them. It’s basically a repeat of Ron Desantis war on higher education, but now on a national scale.

Here’s an overview of how other universities are faring: https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html?guccounter=1

No, most coal comes from plants in swamps, because the water helped preserve the organic matter.

Plants in swamps die -> organic matter on the bottom of the swamp -> peat -> brown coal -> black coal.

Oil apparently comes mostly from plankton.

On the different origins: https://www.carboeurope.org/how-are-fossil-fuels-formed-the-science-behind-oil-coal-and-natural-gas/

Welp, I’ve taught my parents to use the fakespot site before doing a purchase on Amazon. Fakespot was never a perfect tool, but it was easy to use and better than not checking review quality at all.

Emigrants likely consume less traditional media of their home country than people who still live in their home country, so they are more likely to form their opinion based on the (mis)information that they are fed on social media and hearsay gossip instead. Simion in particular is apparently very good at meme messaging: https://euobserver.com/digital/ar13f54193

Social media memes are very good for spreading populist propaganda like “easy solutions to complex problems” and “hatred of the other”, but bad at nuance and informed discussions. They’re a populist’s wet dream.

The emigrants also do not face the real consequences of their choice. If Simion increases corruption/graft in Romania, hijacks traditional media, breaks education, … The Romanian not living in Romania, will be far less affected by this than the people living in Romania. Same as what happens with the German Turks who vote for Erdogan: they don’t have to build their lives in Turkey, but thanks to the wrecked economy their Euros are worth much more, so they get to live as kings when on vacation in Turkey.

My impression of the conflict: The partition of British India into independent India and independent Pakistan was very violent and traumatizing for lots of people, and also left some unsolved border disputes. The independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan was likewise very violent and saw India helping the Bangladeshi people gain independence. Both events are long enough in the past that people could have gotten over the hate by now, except that it gets refreshed with new violence every few years. In the last few decades there’s been several terror attacks in India that were sponsored by the Pakistani state. But now India too has a religious fundamentalist government, so maybe they’ll be trying to return the favor. Authoritarians love creating external enemies, it helps them stay in control of their own population.

It’s like the saying goes: true beauty is on the inside.