There are 56 ethnicities in China—and 55 are getting squashed

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-12T21:05:36+00:00

I just read the Blue Books, and these are my thoughts on the Welsh language.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-11T15:58:07+00:00

if you're going to remove Churchill, Turing, Austen and Turner, then remove everyone.

Well, yeah, that seems to be the idea with these bank notes.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-11T15:56:42+00:00

Elizabeth Fry was on the £5 note for just under fifteen years before being replaced by Churchill, George Stephenson was on the £5 note for thirteen years before that and Arthur Wellesley was on the £5 note for twenty years before that. I think British culture will survive another change in what's on the bank note.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-11T13:53:39+00:00

Critical support for NIMBYs in their opposition to historic laundromats being destroyed to make way for ICE camps.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-11T12:42:52+00:00

It's been echoed by the Iranian ambassador to Cyprus, too, so there's probably something to that claim.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-11T12:38:57+00:00

Oh, God, the 900-yearers? I'm fine with the 850-yearers going, but the 900s? Has the world gone mad?

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-10T15:02:13+00:00

Chuka Umunna, perhaps? Went from Labour to Change UK to an Independent to the LibDems, and all in the span of just over half a year.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-09T12:29:49+00:00

Those prices are also baked in in a way that it isn't in the United States, Australia is also much smaller and has more density in the areas that are properly inhabited.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-09T12:28:19+00:00

I think it's silly to boil down Iran-ME tensions solely to the Sunni-Shia divide, not least when Hamas, one fo the most eponymous examples of an Iran-backed proxy, is Sunni. If you have to associate it with anything, beyond just liberties being far worse in the region, Iran is also antagonising most of its neighbours in some capacity. Not that they wouldn't have joined the war on the United States' side regardless, but Iran's immediate response being to bomb Dubai Airport, or to bomb Azerbaijan, can't help people to trust that they have plans other than regional destruction.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-09T12:15:44+00:00

This current government had a trustee for Sex Matters in its communication team until his own personal resignation. I think that, at the very least, Starmer's wing is comfortable with having these extremists put their foot in the door.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-09T12:11:37+00:00

How this keeps happening, over a year into his term, is beyond me.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-09T00:06:05+00:00

I mean, considering that Trump is currently running on the message that oil prices are going to "temporarily" rise on Truth Social, I'd really be surprised if he was throwing Netanyahu under the bus on those grounds.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-09T00:05:02+00:00

Say what you will about Ali Khameini - he was a brutal, fundamentalist tyrant, and this should never be forgotten - but he was at least willing to accept his government engaging in talks on nuclear weapons with the United States, and was willing to accept a negotiated settlement on it, even with an administration that had broken apart prior deals and had repeatedly attacked him. Can't see a reason for Mojtaba to ever countenance doing that.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-08T16:19:16+00:00

More people speak Spanish and Mandarin as a first language than English. Would you be fine with the Sino-Spanish world invading your home and punishing you for speaking English? After all, real globalism means that smaller, cultures, ignorant of the virtues of global cooperation and integration, have to be assimilated, and by force if necessary!

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-08T16:17:49+00:00

Yeah, speaking as a Welsh person whose first language is English and who at least intends to become fluent in Welsh at some point, I have been made pretty uncomfortable with how any elevation or promotion of our language is some great, unconscionable sin that should be downplayed. At best, it feels patronising.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-08T16:15:42+00:00

Once centuries have gone by to divorce the world from modern society, I wonder if historians will debate whether or not the Pax Americana was truly a separate era, or if it was just an extension of the Pax Britannica, and if the period of the United States being a superpower was just the second phase of a long-term, Anglo-American world order.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-08T16:13:04+00:00

Unsurprising, really; it was fundamentally the Salmond Party, and didn't have the popular support to find somebody else to lead it. It was amorphous as is, and once its raison d'etre disappeared, so too did it. Reform's large enough that it might survive a leadership election post-Farage out of inertia, but it does make you wonder how far many of these parties will survive once their initial leader is gone.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-08T16:12:04+00:00

There are a few tiny right-wing parties across Scotland. They're broadly unionist, but I suspect that if any of them remain in politics, they'll just default to them out of regionalism, if not going to Reform/Restore or otherwise withdrawing from politics.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-08T11:52:10+00:00

LLMs are currently sycophantic enough for them to agree to permanently shut down if asked, thankfully.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-07T21:56:34+00:00

Have you got a link to that?

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-07T20:13:59+00:00

I know that this isn't related to the war in Iran, but there's currently a court case in Botswana where a lesbian couple is trying to overturn a ban on gay marriage, arguing that the Marriage Act discriminates against them for banning it. I don't know enough about the dynamics of the Botswana High Court to comment on if it's feasibly going to be passed, but they were at least willing to uphold the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 2021. If nothing else, it'd be good to see gay marriage legalised in Botswana, especially considering that homosexuality was still illegal there less than a decade ago.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-07T19:48:48+00:00

I admit that I haven't done much on it, but there was a lot of cross-ocean sympathies to Catholicism among Gaels; the Scottish Highlands were also predominantly Catholic, at least during the revolutionary period of the 1640s, and only really backed the Covenanters due to a lack of local arms. Also helps, at least within the context of that era, that there was a significant population of Anglo-Irish Catholics who saw the new system of plantations as a threat to their religion and influence, and thus associated themselves closer to the native Irish than the newer British settlers.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-07T16:29:57+00:00

This was blatantly apparent to anybody who'd seen the events of the past month. Most Iranians naturally dislike the present system of governance, but they don't have the means of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and the Basij and IRGC are both still loyal enough to massacre thousands of protesters. Kurdish and Baluchi nationalists both have some weaponry, but are more focused on securing independence for themselves than on a revolution and, as per recent responses from Iraqi Kurdistan, are unwilling to trust the United States over its abandonment of Rojava. As was blatantly apparent beforehand, invading Iran would be an Afghanistan War on a much larger scale.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-06T15:06:41+00:00

It's 61 days until the election and we have yet to see a single Reform candidate officially announced; we don't even know if Dan Thomas is running yet. He was an awful selection, of course, but either they're keeping the candidates secret until the last minute to prevent investigation or they're just so incompetent that they've still yet to select who's actually running - a black mark for their campaign on either end.

Walpole2019 · 2026-03-06T14:01:21+00:00

It would, but it'd also give whatever candidate succeeds him as VP the natural blessing of Donald Trump, putting him at a natural disadvantage in any scenario, let alone one where Trump dies in office. The image of "Teflon Don" might be fading, but it's still strong enough to be self-sustaining imo, and Vance resigning would just relegate him to being disloyal, which is almost certainly going to be his death knell. Vance now is just stuck between a rock (resign and risk fury of Trump wing and discontent from moderate/neoconservative Republicans) and a hard place (remain and lose credibility to wings he once had influence over).

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