rwtwm

'Hold my beer' I believe

Yeah but these are often accompanied by us flying all of our military aircraft over London. I think the analogy holds, even if ours is a bit eccentric.

I'm not American (but we do get a lot of US Pol foisted on us), so forgive me if I'm missing something... I thought the US democratic party was basically everyone more left wing than Joe Manchin. There are 'third parties', but in general the broad church argument applies... Anyway aren't USians able to actually pick the candidates that stand for those parties? So wouldn't you use the generals to vote 'against' Republicans, but then use the primaries process to vote for the shape of D you wanted? Here that's not an option, the party puts up candidates. But you have the ability to pressure the candidates even after they are elected. Might be a long shot, but is inherently less fatalistic than just giving up, or even (as seems disturbingly popular these days) calling for some form of civil war.

You've worded it best.

My version of the take is; The world will be on average easier if more people are pleasant to each other. You can't make everyone join in, but you can make the world better on average, which surely is good enough?

I'm not a 'we won't be friends' person. But I do think this is a really poor response. Who you work for is one of the biggest ethical decisions you make. You take years of training and skills and you use them for 40+ hours a week to... Well, support the actions of an industry that brings misery to millions of people.

Getting a job is hard, but it's not impossible. And you're choosing avoiding that discomfort over making life worse for people. You may be but a tiny cog in a giant machine, but if that cog has to turn you're part of the problem.

I know this is gonna come off as aggressive. I have no beef with you personally, and you are but one of hundreds of millions of people shrugging and working in destructive of unethical enterprises. But that shrugging is the system. Collectively the system doesn't work without you all dedicating half your waking life to it.

I do wish you the best, but hope you'll eventually do the hard thing. Because it's the right thing.

What was the Sheriff of Nottingham doing in St Albans?

I think a lot of people in this thread are overstating the suspicion of outsiders. International trade has existed for thousands of years. There was even limited tourism in the middle ages. It would be rare to encounter people that you couldn't communicate with, but I don't think you'd be automatically sacrificed.

I'm in London, so would fare better than most as they would definitely be familiar with outsiders. That said people in many of the old European cities would likely be able to blag their way to local universities. Oxford definitely already existed 650 years ago so I'd start by heading there.

I think all scholarly writing was in Latin at the time, so I'd need somebody to translate, but (with luck) I could move maths on a couple of hundred years. I reckon I could get basic electricity going too. Obviously the more you said upfront the more suspicious people would be, but if you drip-fed knowledge over a few years, trying to let the steps rest upon each other you could probably share a lot of what we know today.

Isn't that a 'necessary but not sufficient' condition though? I'm thinking principally of the struggles in Zimbabwe here.

I love how memes (in the Dawkinsian sense) work. Lots of people have enjoyed this, but I can imagine this being quoted as the original is lost to the sands of time.

Young people everywhere thinking that Aquaman was someone who just bought failing assets from everyone.

Jumping on here, because this is often overlooked. If you didn't know the title of the film, and someone played the first 20 mins to you you'd expect a hallmark film. Going to see the estranged wife, trying to repair a relationship, the awkwardness at the Christmas party.

The whole thing subverts Christmas movie tropes. It's not just an action movie set at Christmas. It's a Christmas movie which gets hijacked.

Even the final scene plays on the parody with the 'snow' falling, the comedy comeuppance for the nuisance bad guy, and then they kiss and drive off as 'let it snow' plays.