Skua

How does supporting this limit anyone’s ability to vote in November?

Never mind the depths I was already on edge when I met the fucking crashfish

I suspect that this might be a tactic intended for the domestic audience. The current government is extremely unlikely to be in power a week from now, and might be doing this just to force the next government to either follow through or retract it

That is a very strange article. The headline is “How Boris Johnson Sabotaged Ukraine Russia Peace Deal In April” and the bulk of it is about how a former US National Security Council officer didn’t say that.

Frankly the NYT one seems a lot more convincing to me. That addition to the security guarantee clause is obviously completely unworkable.

Apologies, I was using “NATO troops” as a shorthand for the large number of countries involved rather than the specific command structure. You are right to bring that up

Maybe find an article that says that then. The one you linked says that yes, they were close to an agreement, but at the last minute Russia inserted a clause that was a dealbreaker

What that link actually says:

To the Ukrainians’ dismay, there was a crucial departure from what Ukrainian negotiators said was discussed in Istanbul. Russia inserted a clause saying that all guarantor states, including Russia, had to approve the response if Ukraine were attacked. In effect, Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf — a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker. Russia tried to secure a veto on Ukraine’s security guarantees by inserting a clause requiring unanimous consent.

With that change, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team said, “we had no interest in continuing the talks.”

Under this interpretation, the headline could then read “New Polling Shows Significant Ukrainian Support for War to End the War”

You said Russia was being diplomatic. Nobody is arguing that powerful countries are often cruel. So again, if this is Russia’s diplomacy towards Ukraine, do you agree that America was diplomatic towards Afghanistan?

Oh right, so do you consider America’s behaviour towards Afghanistan diplomatic then?

It’s not meaningful diplomacy to say “give us everything we want or we will take everything we want”

That’s a hard shift from “Russia is being diplomatic” to “Russia can just take what it wants”

The “deal” requires Ukraine to cede a colossal amount of territory before negotiations even begin. Even if the Ukrainian leadership was willing to give up all of that for peace, doing so here would not actually even buy them peace, only a start to negotiations that could collapse at any time. That’s about as diplomatic an offer as Ukraine saying “pre-2014 borders and then we can talk.”

If I’m understanding it correctly, it’s a case of:

• NASA finds graphene on the moon
• The moon is generally thought to have very little carbon, so the theory is that the graphene was introduced by meteorite impact
• CNSA goes to check out a patch of the moon that is, relatively speaking, quite new. As such it should have received fewer meteorite impacts
• CNSA still finds graphene, so that’s a mark gainst the meteorite theory
• Due to the structure of the stuff that contains the graphene, it may be the result of volcanic processes. If this is the case, it’s possible that the moon is not as carbon-depleted as we thought.
• If that’s true, it suggests that our theory on the formation of the moon could be wrong too, since we may have made incorrect assumptions about the composition of it

So NASA found something interesting a while back and made a best guess based on the data available, and now CNSA found some more data that might change the prior conclusions. On the other hand it is still possible that NASA’s theory is correct, it’s not like anyone found a billions-of-years-old recipe for the moon. This new stuff just tips the scales against it a little.

The Korean War had over a million NATO troops and also tens of thousands of Soviet troops and, somehow, remained a proxy war. A particularly bloody one, but there was still no actual open full-scale warfare between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Even China and America remained officially at peace, despite making up the majority of the forces on each side

Oooh I like it. I’m sure your teacher will cover this, but I’d definitely aim for the Stevie Wonder version first. The slap style that Flea plays is great fun but it’s very hard work on your hands if they’re not used to playing bass

I imagine this is kind of like steam engines right

Yeah, exactly. That’s also how coal, gas, and nuclear power plants work too. Turns out that running steam through a turbine is just a really good way to make power.

i expect this is just hydrogen?

You actually can make other fuels with solar power too, and since they’re listing it separately from water splitting I think they might be doing that. It is possible to make hydrocarbon fuels out of CO2 and water (or mlre accurately, carbon monoxide and hydrogen) with the right combination of catalysts and energy. It’s an application of the Fischer–Tropsch process, which has traditionally just been used for converting coal or biomass into more useful forms. So if that’s what they’re doing, they’re taking carbon out of the air and hydrogen out of water and then combining those two into petrol and such, using solar energy for each step of the process

I recorded a little bit of music. It’s not an actual full song or anything, it’s just an idea I had that I turned into about 90 seconds of music, but I was stuck in a bit of a rut so it feels good to have made something

Nice one! What’s the first song you want to learn?

I don’t think this is what they are directly aiming for with this specific one, but this general idea of a large field of reflectors and a central receiver can be built to store heat for a while. That lets you use solar power overnight

This sort of solar power generally doesn’t compete successfully with regular solar panels in cost, and obviously it can’t just be set up on a bunch of random roofs like panels can. Still, it’s potentially a very useful technology if someone does work out how to make it a bit cheaper or more efficient, and it still generates clean power in the process too