Its interesting that though China is on a similar trajectory and hasn't quite reached the bursting bubble point, the media has very much moved on from the "The future is Chinese!" trope.

Its the sea....

Why the dark colour around Crimea?

Surprised the US isn't dominating basketball.

Ohh captain Janway. Lace. The final brazier

I honestly thought they'd cancelled this show? Good to hear its still going.

Well. Hi.

I went out with a few girls I met on tinder. Though only one could be set to have been pure hook up and that it.

Eventually matched with my partner on there - though tinder being tinder we didn't even meet and ran into each other completely independently.

A tonne of people I know have similar stories. Most people who met their SO after 25 or so actually.

Tinder is that though right?

It's almost cliche the number of people sign up for easy sex... Get none of that. End up meeting the woman they marry.

The fundamental framing of the cold War as democracy or communism that is so common in the west annoys me so much. Its comparing a system of government and an economic system (or rather an economically focussed ideology).

Capitalism vs Marxism is a much better framing for what the cold War was about. That the USSR was a dictatorship and US a democracy is completely incidental to their economic systems.

The thing with Iran isn't that dictatorship beat democracy. On the contrary, Iran is/was pretty democratic.

The trouble is, as seen in the wake of the Arab spring, democracy in a very Conservative Muslim country often does lead to Islamicists rising to power - and much like the hard right in the west, they tend not to be too big on democracy once they use it to secure power.

Iranians we are likely to meet in the west are pretty well off city dwellers. Hence the image of Iranians as absolute vodka swigging party animals.

The rural poor have a very different outlook. Just think about how different life is for rural and urban people in Western countries and multiply it several times over.

Sure. But not many of those things were coin toss spur of the moment decisions. They came via a long chain of previous events that led people to act a certain way in particular situations.

Yes. Big historic issue in England that your chances of being scouted are much higher if you're born in the second half of the year so are the biggest in your age group.

These days scouts actively seek to look beyond this. Trying to look at fundamental ability rather than heavily physique related performance.

This is a big known issue in football. They've been working to remedy it in England this century as previously the overwhelming majority of players in the premiership were born in the second half the year, that meaning they were oldest in their school year.

I know several countries have the normal year for their school year cut offs which could be shown here.

Irrational insecurity about growing old probably.

Though I think there might be more logic to it in being a reference to a 20 year old song that was a big deal when it was new but otherwise hasn't had much of a cultural impact until this.

The word Stan angers me

I find it is a huge problem with a lot of modern Brits view of history is that we see the land and sea as a binary situation, somewhere is either one or the other.

Given years of reclamation, dredging, and swamp draining, the historic landscape of the country has radically altered. People just don't get how much used to be alluvium and other in between places.

Or, better idea, you don't have to drive home.

It's one of those things like those who boost electric cars as the only solution we need. Pretending to care whilst simultaneously opposing any thoughts of actual change.

Surely more pertinent is that some absolute monsters don't take off their shoes indoors? :p

I'm dissapointed to read little mentioned of truly bilingual people who are surely the best place to study anything like this?

If you're a shaky foreign language speaker then of course you must think before speaking more and engage different parts of the brain .

Game of Thrones and peep show. Zero matches.

Well that saddens me and surprises me. Would have expected a bit part in an episode of both that nobody remembers.

Really the Romans probably did more to bring down their own empire than did the barbarians from the outside with all the corruption and tax farming and the like. The far more simplified structure of the Germanic tribes would have been a help.

How did that work out for you? Did you catch up or forever suffer in education for it?

That's a nice positive graph. Though I do wonder on sustainability.