What about those on the periphery, with minimal protection from the state both before and after the fall? For them, the only real difference was the tax collector stopped showing up.

Please don’t take this as analogous to the modern day in any way. A modern village/town will break down rapidly without access to modern logistics, which was not the case then.

If that was the case, you’d have mandatory voting like Australia.

We already started during this year. No sane leader trusted in a coin flip to guarantee our security. A possible Trump presidency was planned for.

giants existed and were romanian

Wait, what? I didn’t see any giants in my high school. Are they invisible giants or something?

Also, where were those giants during the 2nd Dacian war? Romans must have been superheroes or something to take on giants and win.

The optimistic alternative is EU countries scale up their military production and cover the gap. We were already seeing a ramp up, but it’ll have to accelerate.

Downside for the US is later down the line, exports will go down as the EU will have more domestic manufacturing.

This is more about ramping up domestic arms production to fill the gap that is going to come from US production no longer going to Ukraine.

When I’m driving, it’s actually unsafe for my car to be operated in that way

being able to consistently and reliably operate the thing without taking your eyes off the road

Considering they’d just spent the previous few questions discussing the visual-first aspect of touchscreens and accessibility issues for the visually impaired, I think that’s exactly what they were talking about.

The generalizations are about completely different devices. They talk about CT machines & automatic defibrillators later.

The funniest part is that in one of his dialogue trees, he reveals that he’s never actually been to the Semenine islands and his whole understanding of Semenese culture is based on stuff he’s read and heard on the radio. He legitimately has no real understanding of the culture he presents as superior, and no place in it.

Apparently reading so many bad takes over the last few years has destroyed my ability to detect sarcasm. Sorry about that.

If you mean added to the bible after the council of Nicea decided on the contents of the bible, no. The bible, both old testament and new, is very explicitly pro-slavery.

Ephesians 6:5

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

Totally unrelated historical fact: Hitler’s attempted coup failed, and he was appointed as chancellor later on in a completely legal manner.

I think Brexit has also been a significant factor in making UK way more xenophobic.

Personally, I don’t think it’s made the UK more xenophobic. A decent percentage of people supported Brexit due to xenophobia, and the success of the referendum made them more outspoken. Basically, Brexit is a symptom of xenophobia rather than the other way around.

Thinking about it, there’s a lot in common between the skillsets needed to be competent presidents and lawyers. Both need to be convincing, make a case to an audience, and understand the law.

About the only things I can think of that presidents need to do that has nothing to do with being a lawyer are being the head of the military and making decisions around military operations.

It’s actually worse than that. Starvation takes a long time to happen (~3 weeks). Lack of access to water causes death and desperation in a much shorter period of time. If water pipelines and/or pumping facilities get screwed up in any way, cities will become mad max much faster and in a much more intense fashion. In a water-starved population, people are mostly composed of water…

I wish we’d have that level of openness here in Romania. There’s plenty of Romanians who think of the Holocaust as a specifically German thing and are wilfully ignorant about our complicity.

Proving that you can and do follow through on existing policy is still a good thing to do.

"I’m another day older and deeper in debt.’

https://youtu.be/E5VMZqgVzRo

I knew exactly what song that’d go to, clicked on it anyway, was not disappointed. Love that song.

I guess Germans read about the fate of the Eldar & birth of Slaanesh and took that as an instruction guide.

The key thing is practice. Like any creative pursuit, your first attempts will be trash. The greatest writers, artists and musicians ever went through this too. If you care about that form of creative expression, just keep at it!