nephihaha

The Republic of Ireland has faced similar issues because of a potential EU military. It has had pressure to join NATO for a long while, and has had rendition flights. If you watch JFK's speeches in Ireland, he hints at it several times.

It isn't mimicking as such, it's your federal government signing up to various international agreements on everything under the sun. The international agreement in question here is called "the Fourth Industrial Revolution", and you can bet they're all in on it. Just like they are with Digital ID, ID gated internet and so on.

Western governments have a tendency to try and change their publics rather than be changed by the public. They even have a name for it, "psychological nudging".

They co-ordinate most things now, rightly or wrongly.

Either way these are small change, and thanks to the slow but persistent reduction, many places refuse to accept cash and/or don't even have the facilities to deal with it!

Actually the UK has had a ridiculous number of resources despite its small size. It had good mineral wealth from coal to copper to tin (which was mined in the region before the Roman Empire) to some oil and so on. A lot of that is depleted but its mineral wealth contrasts with the Japanese home islands which had little. It has some decent arable land (although it keeps building on it) and better rainfall than some areas.

It also seems to be blessed with few natural disasters such as major earthquakes, volcanoes, larger tornadoes etc.

Quote from article: 'It all changed when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Realising that reliance on an electronic payment system left Sweden vulnerable to blackouts or sabotage, the Riksbank – Sweden's central bank – urged civilians to keep 1,000 Swedish kronor (£80) per adult at home. The government issued a brochure entitled "If Crisis or War Comes" to every household, advising Swedes to use cash regularly to "strengthen preparedness".'

The Dáil Eireann is much more fun. After an incident a few years ago, it was determined the F word was not banned there, but you could not refer to TDs (Irish MPs) as "Fascist" or "Communist".

"It was the prawns! The fokn prawns!"

Milk chocolate Kinder Surprise.

The best film Blomkamp made, and I think that's the problem. He peaked early, and his other films haven't been as good.

Yes, I totally agree. I find it funny.

This is quite a cute idea but I can already see issues e.g. the camera could be used for bullying etc.

The Camera Obscura in Edinburgh has a selection of holographic images or used to.

I read this three years ago. I think "Boys in Zinc" is a better title, although still cryptic (the coffins being made out of zinc.)

According to orthodox Marxism, the Russian empire had not fully industrialised or created a widespread bourgeoisie. It was still largely feudal and rural, and a monarchy. Some Marxists have tried to say retroactively that the Russian Revolution was a bourgeois not a proletarian revolution as a result.

Lenin tried to paint kulaks as bourgeois en lieu of actual target, and had to modify Marxism heavily to make things fit. Stalin certainly managed to industrialise much of the USSR, so fulfilled that end. Yeltsin-Putin Russia has created an actual bourgeois state, maybe allowing a workers' revolution to take place for real next time.

Or sort of. In reality, Marx was not an infallible prophet. He did not anticipate artificial intelligence or its consequences, genetic engineering, broadcast media or a host of other things. History has not followed all of the paths he suggested.

Disruption for one, since it would mean that every office would have to be turned over on a regular basis to find these things. Increasing American paranoia and insecurity were part of Soviet long term goals.

The trouble is that people have multiple contradictory thoughts, and they even think of things which they themselves disagree with. There is a vast difference between what people think and what they do.

If you edit it anonymously now, then it is likely someone will revert it.

The surprising health benefits of reading for pleasure.

https://time.com/article/2026/09/16/health-benefits-reading-...

What if the Thing was supposed to be found? People think it was for surveillance. Maybe it was to make the Americans more paranoid.

That is an oversimplification. It was the effective end of the Edwardian era, which contained some of its own tendencies.

This is a great idea. I think there are issues with possible contaminants but if that can be sorted...

I should have specified I was talking about the literature prize. Lobotomies though are definitely out of favour!!!

Actually the main problem is that apart from the weather, we don't get much sunlight in winter at all due to the latitude. It can be getting dark around 4pm. We have the opposite in high summer, which could be beneficial.

The article does have a serious point about farmland. We don't have much decent farmland here and should look at former industrial and mine sites instead (there are many of those in Scotland.)

Scotland has a lot of potential for renewables, but solar is not where I would start.

The problem with Net Zero legislation is that it is often designed in such a way that benefits government and big business. There have been exemptions for private planes and yachts, for example, even though these are highly polluting... While ordinary people can barely afford to heat their homes in winter. The main problem with Miliband is like most politicians (including Farage!!!), he has almost no experience of ordinary life.

There really isn't a lot of decent farmland in Scotland. There is a coastal strip running from Inverness round to Fife which averages about twenty or thirty miles wide, and some decent stuff in parts of Ayrshire and the lower Tweed. Good farmland in some wider valleys (straths)

Cleve Hill is off Kent, which despite housing has better farmland than anywhere in Scotland overall (and a warmer climate). Scotland is getting higher rainfall (thus far, last two summers have been bad). There isn't really a good analogue to Kent or East Anglia here.

From an agricultural POV, most of the land is upland so unsuitable for crops. As I've said elsewhere, there is a problem with suburban sprawl, particularly between Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Lothians, South West Fife... Housing is gobbling up a lot of better land, although industry and mining has made some areas unsuitable for crops too.

The major crops tend to be barley (rather than wheat) and some oats in the grain side; raspberries and strawberries (often in polytunnels); potatoes and things like beets and swedes (neeps).

The main criticism of solar in Scotland is that we get very short days in summer, on top of the weather. In high summer there is light past ten in the evening sometimes, whereas in winter it can be getting dark not long after four.

Depends where you are. In Scotland, traditionally you get golfers from all walks of life. Some clubs are snobby, but it's more widely played. Golf courses are better to look at than football fields, although graveyards can be pretty.

Golf courses were definitely a life saver (psychologically anyway) during lockdown for many people.

I was being slightly sarcastic, but even 60,000 years ago other environments were available.

Depends on the golf course but traditional links courses tend to be on sandy soil which isn't easy to cultivate either. They can easily be converted into farmland (and vice versa) in many cases since they do not have much built on them. (The UK as a whole varies a lot. Most of Scotland (and Wales) was never arable but most of England is– at least its south–because it's much flatter. In England, golf tends to be played by a narrower band of the population than Scotland too.)

I have mixed feelings about golf. I have never been able to play myself, but it keeps a lot of people happy, so I see it as an intangible like libraries or public parks. Golf courses are a lot easier on the eye than some alternatives, and function as green lungs in cities, and open spaces where people can exercise. One of my local golf courses has a healthy population of badgers and another has deer on it, so I don't see them as completely destructive. But like I say, it is not my thing, so on that level I feel shut out of it.

I think the main threat to arable land in Scotland right now is actually housing. We tend to build on the best land here, especially in areas such as East Lothian or the lower Clyde. We have miles of bland suburbia now. What some people have termed "slums of the mind".

One of the unspoken secrets of research is that a lot of people are doing it to keep themselves in a job. It is perfectly possible to do research for years which goes nowhere, just goes over old ground etc. As long as the money rolls in, someone's making a living and not necessarily dishonestly if they're at the lower levels.

East African savannah?