The French will never agree.

Their stance has always been, if France is threatened we will use every weapon in our arsenal.

They do not have end the world stocks of nukes like the US or Russia so their attitude is, “Fuck with us and we will end you.”

Capitalism also needs a functioning environment to continue…

Current politics in the US: Our guy (that is ten years past retirement age) is so much sharper than your guy. (who is also ten years past retirement age)

Well, at least the front hasn’t fallen off.

Still worthy of pity

Not from me. They are adults, they made their bed. Their children are the real victims.

To be happy at other people’s misfortune is not ok.

I honestly don’t think this applies here. This is a direct result of their own actions. No one forced them.

To me this is a case of: You reap what you sow.

I’m not saying anything goes either but if people around you use less and fewer interchangeably, there is no communication breakdown at all.

Do you know the correct times to use practice vs practise?

People thinking the English language is static and has to follow rules.

This Is English, my friend. The top dog of non-proscriptive languages where meanings change over time and reflect current usage.

Want to force everyone to follow the rules?

Start speaking French.

I know, I have seen them.

I was sysadmin for a Bankruptcy and Insolvency Firm for more than a decade and walked into 100s of businesses on the point of failure. Many of them could not be saved simply because their systems were so bad it was better for a buyer to buy their equipment and start with a clean sheet.

The ice cream business was going under because the partner who had been the access self starter had an argument with the others and had walked out 18months ago.

The access system ran the entire business (accounting and wages were on other programs but the db feed them data) and he was the only one who had any idea.

Shit started to go wrong and they had no idea what to do.

I believe you. I can even guess the story.

In the late 80s/early 90s a staff member (self taught in office/access) quickly threw together something at the request of a manager as a stop gap wile a new proper system was specked out.

The person learned as they went and the system grew in functionality and complexity until the term spaghetti code was a massive understatement. It became their job.

The new proper system never arrived and they have been making do for the past 30-40 years.

I ran into the same thing a decade or so ago and it was a nightmare, but it was just an ice cream franchise, not prison related

The prisoner transport system ran on MS access lol

This is just…Well, if you wrote a prison escape movie that involved accessing an Access DB to reroute a transport you would be laughed at.

Sort of, although Pom is at least a century older as Seppo was coined during world war 2. It comes from the rhyming slang Yank to Septic Tank to Seppo.

It came from the swagger of the US service men in Aus during the war and the implication that many of them are full of shit.

Don’t put yourself down like that. It really was a good piece of fiction.

That’s a great story you have there, you should pitch it to netflicks.

Which China has never ruled

True, the CCP claiming The Philippines would be seen as ridiculous by the rest of the world.

Then again, the CCP has never ruled Taiwan either…

Seeing that most cargo ships sail under flags of convenance, how do they plan on telling the difference between fiends and foe?

They don’t want control, only profit.

And they will struggle to get that. They will spend billions and years setting up the infrastructure to extract resource wealth of the region, which is considerable, then the problems will start.

Yes, because they are currently the ones with the support (or at best acquiesce) of the most of the tribes.

But the currently in the previous sentence has a very short half-life.

I am not telling China to stop, far from it. It will be fun to watch their grand plans to fall to shit the same way the USA’s did.

I thought that the billions they have already pissed away on the belt and road project would have been a cautionary lesson. But it seems not.

Afghanistan was an ally of Alexander as well, until such time as it was no longer beneficial to the tribes in control.

The world sees Afghanistan as a country in the modern sense, when it is actually a tribal society that is no more politically cohesive than it was in Alexander’s day.

When you are travelling and ask an American where they are from, they will often say their state, rather than the USA. To them this means a lot as they identify with their state more than with their nation but to outsiders it means nothing, we see than all as Americans.

Afghanistan is the same but a 1,000 times more intense. Ask them what they are and they will reply Pashtuns, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baloch, Sadat, and about half a dozen others.

Ah well, it looks like it is China’s turn to pour money and material into Afghanistan in the hopes of profit and control.

I am sure it will go as well as it did for the USA, the USSR, the British Empire, The Russian Empire… and Alexander and the Macedonians.