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

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

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.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2023_BRICS_Summit_family_photographs.jpg

The leaders of the five countries it’s named for (or representatives, at least, since Lavrov is there and not Putin) all posing in front of a big display prominently titled “BRICS Summit” suggests to me that the name is official enough

You can see the smaller boat suddenly change direction as it bounces, I think it may have hit a wave and lurched to its left without any intention from the driver

Very unlikely that it is. Countries do this to each other a lot. I’m actually kinda surprised to learn that this is the first time it has happened between Japan and China

The French navy has evacuated the crew

Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko commented that he believes the Volnorez system’s capability to be overstated, describing it as practically useless. He argues that it has been deployed on the battlefield for a year without significantly impacting on the success of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) kamikaze drone attacks.

I know nothing about this guy’s credentials, but this was my first thought. I have seen so many tanks getting destroyed by drones. Are these systems not getting deployed or do they not work?

I agree it would have been better for them with the benefit of hindsight. My point is more that the decision that they did make was a pretty rational one at the time

Russia’s GDP and GDP per capita have both been a lot higher than Ukraine’s in the entire post-Soviet period. Usually about two to three times higher per capita and five to ten times bigger overall. Post-Soviet Russia hasn’t been particularly prosperous, but it has a large population and oil money. It was definitely much more able to pay for it than Ukraine.

There is the issue that at the time, Ukraine had absolutely no ability to actually pay to maintain a nuclear arsenal. Getting security agreements instead was a sensible thing to do, it just turns out that the ones they got weren’t strong enough

Well it was part of the Kiev Governorate in the early 1700s, it’s historical Ukrainian land