Kemi Badenoch has said she does not see herself as Nigerian and no longer has a passport for the country she grew up in. … But home is where my now family is, and my now family is my children, it’s my husband and my brother and his children, in-laws.

Eh, embracing the country where you live instead of the one you were born into for whatever reason is legit. Especially if you found your “true home” at a relatively young age.

He treated the situation as a civil war rather than a criminal matter. What do you do in war? You go after all enemy combatants, you don’t try to determine if one specific soldier killed any of yours. Anyone in enemy uniform is a legitimate target unless they surrender.

El Salvador gangs do have specific ways of visually distinguishing themselves even if those are not traditional uniforms. Of course there are people wearing the same clothes and tattoos just because they think it’s cool, but that is unfortunately a darwin award case.

In this context the captured are not in prison but in a POW camp. What he’s missing is an exit strategy. Eventually you have to establish a permanent peace and release the POWs under some conditions. Not to mention obey the Geneva Convention which enumerates some rights. That’s why he’s always framing it as being tough on criminals.

Of course.

If you’ve ever seen any interview with Bukele it becomes immediately apparent he’s just another dictator wannabe who was very lucky to accidentally do something good immediately after being elected for the first time. Now he’s riding that wave until he re-ruins the country again.

He doesn’t even understand why his policy worked. He just repeats the “tough on crime” bullshit.

I remember talking with some Americans a few years ago, they worked in the tech industry, so definitely on the upper side of the income range. And even they said they were feeling the crunch around 2022-2023. I can only imagine how it felt for the regular people.

Quite the contrast with the official numbers which claimed the American economy is growing. Let’s just say that the election outcome was not surprising.

11.8 inches is about 30 cm or size 47 in the european system. Which is big but not unheard of. I personally know 2 people wearing similar shoe sizes. Very possible it’s just one guy who kept losing shoes.

Absolute best - G
Most practical as a common standard - F

This was very surprising after having seen a few Western movies from the 1940s. They were already making movies about the period which was in living memory for a lot of people.

There wasn’t a single point. The empire lost control over it’s territories gradually, losing power and relevance step by step. With one big resurgence along the way.

• 370s large groups of Goths fleeing from the Huns enter the empire. Unlike other barbarians they never fully recognize the authority of the Emperor, and continue living semi-independently in various areas of the empire.
• 395 the split into Easter and Western empire unintentionally becomes permanent. There was never any intention to fully divide it, but the position of Emperor became inherited and Theodosius had two sons (both children at the time)
• Because Emperors were children they become figureheads while the actual power is held by other people (advisers, regents, military commanders). It continues once emperors grow up. In the East this works out, but in the West it results in the collapse of the central authority
• During early 400s the state apparatus in Britain and northern Gaul becomes especially weak and various groups start forming their own “states” still owing fealty to the Empire (and even fighting for the Empire most of the time). Groups of barbarians even reach Africa and establish themselves there.
• 476 - the traditional date. The last Western Emperor is deposed and nobody put in his place, because the position was irrelevant by the time. About this time other semi-independent groups just continue acting on their own
• 490s - the Eastern empire continues on, and they want the West back, so they authorize a group of Ostrogoths led by Theodoric to take over Italy. The Ostrogoths establish their own kingdom, still nominally claiming to be the Western Empire. In pratice fully independent.
• 530s-540s - Justinian decides to finally reclaim the entire Western Empire. This if fairly successful - Italy, Africa and parts of Iberia are reclaimed. However it coincided with the first know instance of bubonic plague which throws everything into chaos and prevents the full reconquest from taking place.

Personally I’d say for most inhabitants of the Western empire, 420s were the turning point. Their immediate rulers became non-Roman, even if in theory they were still under Roman command.

Edit: this is all about the Western empire. East is a longer story and will continue until 600s, 1204 or 1453. Which is a whole another debate.

Everyone sucks here.

Both Tea, the leak, and this meme are a result of an unholy amalgam of toxic masculinity, toxic femininity and toxic dating culture.

The article is very unclear on the kind of model they used. Several mentions of ChatGPT, but it doesn’t really sound like they used an LLM.

I really hope it’s not an LLM, this is a perfect case for specialized models trained just for surgery. I really wouldn’t want my surgeon to invent stuff when it doesn’t know what to do.