There are, inevitably, a wide range of views on the origins of WW1 - Wikipedia actually has a really good overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_causes_o...

I'd encourage anyone interested to first read more than one of the works listed in order to better appreciate the various arguments - perhaps Max Hastings' Catastrophe 1914 as a very readable restatement of the mainstream position to contrast with Clark's Sleepwalkers - before approaching fringe material like Hidden History.

The comparison with WW1 is instructive in that regard. Then, the view that conflict with Germany was inevitable was surprisingly widespread - particularly in the wake of Agadir, though it had been steadily building over a couple of decades. It's just that the nature and scope of the conflict that caught them by surprise - a land war rather than being primarily naval.

Vast amounts of money had been poured into building up the navy (always controversial - Gladstone's final premiership was ended by his opposition to a 'vortex of militarism', and Lloyd George and Churchill made similar arguments 15 years later) but those very expensive warships spent most of the conflict at anchor. Most of the pre-war spending was essentially wasted.

If we were to double our defence spending today, we might well end up pissing it up the wall on the same old mix of Trident, aircraft carriers, helicopters, unworkable AFVs, and the most limited carrier variant of F35 when the actual threats are cyberattacks, disinformation, and a variety of hybrid attacks.

And that's before you even get into the question of how it affects the US/Iran conflict.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/BgYYwfWmkzbnZHCW7

Bridge strikes are expensive - the railway often has to be shut as a precaution - and with the increase in rail services, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have lowered the level of the road to create more headroom. Yes, that's time consuming and expensive to do but the alternative would have been to ban lorries and double decker buses.

Really, it's now more of an underpass than a bridge. I don't think I've ever seen a pretty underpass, and this doesn't even appear to be a particularly grim example. It's actually much better than what it replaces, both in terms of function as well as aesthetically.

But, strictly speaking, neither of those are threats. In English law, they'd be more likely to be prosecuted as Soliciting to Murder or Conspiracy to Murder - I imagine there are similar offences in America.

It takes normal AA batteries (which I've had to replace only once), the results tally up with the properly-calibrated scale at my gym, and the app doesn't have any particular annoyances. I'm on Android and it syncs fine with Google services, but it claims to do Apple Health too.

Honestly, it's one of the better pieces of tech I've bought in the past few years, and I don't see how a fancier / more expensive brand could be noticeably better.

CSAM is an American legal concept, and the idea that child porn should be legal as long as there's no provable abuse is a peculiarly American take. Most European countries don't work like that.

Danish law appears to outlaw (roughly translated) "sexual material containing visual representations of persons under the age of 18". Whether or not a specific minor was abused doesn't come into it. So clarifying that that covers AI-generated imagery seems to be a much smaller step than many in this thread are assuming.

Part of the reason is that fashions change... that dentist was trained at a time when minor cavities were always treated as soon as they were noticed, but the more recent recommendation is to monitor and treat only if it gets worse.

The better questions are whether Pal Action deliberately sought to provoke the ban and, if so, whether it's a good idea to have given them what they appear to have wanted.

They certainly don't seem to pose as much of a threat to national security as other proscribed groups so there's no solid functional case for banning them, merely the purely legalistic one.

It's not truly universal, as people who are money laundering or financing terrorism can still be excluded, but it does allow those who've been "debanked" based on other risk metrics (such as financial vulnerability or political exposure) to have basic payment accounts.

Those complaining in the media about being debanked are generally talking about not being able access credit, do large international bank transfers, or use sophisticated banking products. Normal day-to-day spending is not affected.

But beyond that it gets woolly - how do you separate aptitude, interest, effort, and opportunity? And even if it were possible, would the work needed to identify a (presumably small) set of 'truly stupid' people really be worth the effort?

But Chrome won the vast bulk of its market share not because it was technically better in every way, but because they spent much more on marketing at the exact time IE entered terminal decline.

Coal is no longer used, and the remaining mothballed coal power stations were demolished a couple of years ago. North Sea gas is now in decline, and is rapidly being replaced by renewables for electricity generation but we'll still rely on (expensive!) LNG imports to make up the difference until the end of the decade.

https://www.neso.energy/energy-101/electricity-explained/how...

Yes, there are various levers you can pull and it's rare to find a solution that will be optimal for every use case. But, in general, sticking with the most mainstream solution is usually better than going off-piste unless you are very certain that it doesn't cover your niche.

Various controversies relating to bailouts after the financial crisis, the rise of anti money laundering controls in the late 2010s, and the Ukraine invasion have severed many of the ties but Abramovich was just one of many to take advantage in the past.

https://www.politico.eu/article/cyprus-is-losing-its-russia-... has a reasonable summary of how the relationship developed.