Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Did you know that in Georgia it is illegal to distribute water to people in queue?

What does it matter if a voting district serves too many people? It probably does in some federal system, but in a unitary multi-party parliamentary democracy politicians don't serve the people of their respective voting districts anyway. The candidates select their voting districts based on wherever they have the greatest chance of collecting most votes - the number of votes serves the party.

Third, stop re-districting. Simply let the administrative county borders serve as districts.

Not known how many are rare.

Turns out, Google created some seriously nifty infrared camera technology that detects the three-dimensional shape and angle of book pages when the book is placed in the scanner. This information is transmitted to the OCR software, which adjusts for the distortions and allows the OCR software to read text more accurately. No more broken bindings, no more inefficient glass plates. Google has finally figured out a way to digitize books en masse. For all those who've pondered "How'd They Do That?" you finally have an answer.

We should crack down on industrial-scale distillation operations.

It's Zons am Rhein that is the sole medieval city *with city walls* in Ruhrgebiet.

As always, Euro-centric intellectuals fail to recognize the difference between a republic and a democracy.

With all due respect to the Netherlands

The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming Midterms!

The delay in U.S. defense deliveries mainly affects Estonia's ammunition for the HIMARS multiple rocket launcher system, some of which was supposed to arrive already this year.

1/ Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland in January, with military support from France, Germany, and Nordic nations. Elite troops and F-35 jets with live ammunition were sent, and runways were to be blown up to prevent an invasion. ⬇️ Image
2/ The Danish public broadcaster DR reports that officials in Denmark, France and Germany say that Donald Trump's threats to seize Greenland were taken so seriously that wide-ranging preparations were made to forcibly resist a US invasion of the Danish island.
3/ The Danish and French governments worked together to create a northern European coalition to defend Greenland from the United States. Under the cover of a pre-planned defence exercise, Greenland's defences were bolstered to raise the costs of any US invasion attempt.
4/ This included sending blood to treat wounded soldiers; sending elite Danish troops and French alpine troops to Greenland; preparing Greenland's runways for demolition to prevent a Hostomel-style seizure; and sending armed F-35 jets to patrol the skies.

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I don't agree with your contention, that Operation Epoch Fury was all about China, even in this author's opinion,; and I don't see how you reached such.
Would you care to explain how you came to such a conclusion? (Yes, I read the whole piece...)

The Iran Question Is All About China

Why Operation Epic Fury Is the Opening Act of the Indo-Pacific Century

Iran is most often discussed as a nonproliferation problem, a sponsor of terrorism, a regional spoiler. Each of these framings captures a real problem, but none captures what matters most. The nuclear file, the militia archipelago stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, the question of Gulf security architecture: these only acquire their full meaning when read against the backdrop of Chinese grand strategy.

In fact, Beijing has spent years and billions of dollars building Iran into a structural asset. Everything that follows in the Middle East flows from this fact. Which is why Operation Epic Fury is the first American military campaign that threatens to sever that asset. By striking Iran directly, the Trump administration is dismantling, whether by design or by consequence, a pillar of China’s regional architecture.

The urgency of saying so plainly has never been greater. In June 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a 12-day campaign of precision strikes that destroyed Iranian enrichment facilities, killed over 30 senior commanders and a dozen nuclear scientists, and drew the United States into direct strikes on 3 nuclear sites. The Islamic Republic’s deterrent mythology, cultivated over four decades, collapsed within a fortnight. In late December, the largest protests since 1979 erupted across all 31 provinces, fueled by economic freefall and a population that no longer believed in the regime’s strength. The government responded in January 2026 with massacres that killed thousands, prompting the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization and further increasing the isolation of the regime.

China is Scrambling

The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion.

Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because every available response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf leads Beijing into a trap of its own contradictions.