Skua

While the experiment is not the first for space-to-Earth laser communications, it’s the first using a commercially available ground station, according to Morizur.

The article should have mentioned the NASA test, though

No need to reference Orwell, the Forever War is already its own piece of dystopian fiction

I’m using the term “allowed” in the sense of “China agreed to this and put it in its own law”. Freedom of navigations exercises are a way to tell a country “Do what you promised, we are willing to fight you about it if you don’t”. Since China has not actually stopped this exercise, it is following the treaty despite all its complaints. Even America follows the treaty, despite having not signed it.

Being signatories to a treaty is not decisive if no one follows the treaty.

Yeah, this is true. The treaty is just the specific set of terms (almost) everyone agreed to and continues to follow. Since everyone almost everyone agreed to it and everyome does follow it, it’s an easy point of reference to get international cooperation on. I’m sure the reaction would be quite different if China had fired on this ship vs if it had done so in a world with no agreements on territorial waters and innocent passage. In the latter case, a lot of countries would probably just tell Germany “well why did you sail a gunship where you weren’t supposed to?”

There is UNCLOS, which China signed up to. It defines the limits of territorial waters (they are not extensive enough to cover the whole Taiwan strait even if the same country controlled both sides) and also permits passage through straits even when they would otherwise be against that law so long as you only travel through and don’t stop

No, but it does include other things that mean Germany would be allowed to do this regardless of whether you consider Taiwan to be part of the PRC or not. Territorial waters don’t extend far enough to cover the whole strait, and you’re also allowed to sail through territorial waters - even with military vessels - so long as you stick to the middle and don’t stop.

Who decides what is an international water way?

Pretty sure this is a reference to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS. China and Germany are both parties to it, and doing what Germany did here is absolutely fine under it.

He must be close to resurrecting himself through sheer rage

I suppose there’s the Olympic team? Although that doesn’t include the republic of Ireland, and Northern Irish people can choose which one to compete for

I think part of the issue is that there’s far less parity between the countries in football compared to rugby. All four teams are always at or near the top level in rugby, whereas only England is typically good at football, so a Lions equivalent would basically just be the England team again

I honestly can’t think of a way to rephrase “we invented international football” to fit the “no skins” original, so this acknowledgement of the reference will have to do instead

They are. The post could swap one of them out for Re or Rø instead and it would work, though

Rankine isn’t pointing a gun at Kelvin because of this, but Kelvin is pointing one at Rankine because Rankine is an abomination that should not be

The UK doesn’t compete in international football, the constituent countries of it do. Although of them, only England is even occasionally able to challenge Germany

They’ve added to the post that slack tide is “something else entirely”. If they mean the point when the height of the tide is halfway between low and high tides, which is how I understood it, that should be one of the fastest-moving moments. As opposed to slack tide, which is when it’s not moving at all.

That’s when the tide isn’t going in or out, which is more likely to be closer to the high and low tides

And they intentionally shake the gameplay up with each installment. I’m glad they do. Otherwise there’s little point in doing a new one

Oh, I’m not disagreeing with you by any means. I just thought it was kinda funny that they had the direction of the invasiveness of that particular animal backwards

For Civ 6, I’d say winning each victory once. Try to do it with different civs each time too. You can set your goal as winning a game on the highest difficulty if you want, but personally I don’t find that to be as interesting as the shift in gameplay necessary to win the different victories without just militarily crushing everyone else.

North American grey squirrels are an invasive species… in Europe. They seem to be able to outcompete the native red squirrels here

There’s a delightful little red squirrel sanctuary near me run by a couple who I would guess to be in the boomer generation. The wife fell ill and wound up almost permanently bedridden, so they moved to a house that would be easier for her and which also had some attached land they could use. The husband turned it into ideal squirrel territory and set up feeders by the window so that the squirrels would come visit his wife while she was stuck in bed

I chose Amazon and a bag design as the example specifically because it’s a real story (although not a rucksack, I misremembered that part)