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?”

Wasn’t Starlink saying it would refuse to comply with the court order to stop serving ex-Twitter in Brazil? Could this be related to that?

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.

I’m just going to take a wild guess that the two downvotes on your comment are two of the three ex-mods, based on their behaviour in this thread

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.

Ahh, thanks! My knowledge of the region isn’t great, I just remembered that story off hand - and of course, that’s the story as told by the British colonial administration too

It definitely is

I kind of like the argument that Ecuador’s Chimborazo is the tallest on the basis that it’s the farthest point of Earth from the centre of the Earth

Funnily enough, the man it was named after was against calling it that. It came about because the Tibetans and Nepalis on either side of the mountain used different names for it (Qomolangma and Sagarmatha respectively), so British surveyors concluded that there was no accepted name to put on a map and they would simply give it a new one. In English. George Everest, the prior top British surveyor in India, objected on the grounds that his name couldn’t be written easily in Hindi, but the Royal Geographic Society ignored him and the used it anyway

€6,000 is, unfortunately, well into the territory of competing with used cars. It absolutely needs to be cheaper than that to gain mass adoption. I’m sure it can be since this looks like a high-end product aimed at a very specialist market just now, but right now that is a major obstacle.

I desperately need the author of the McMansion Hell blog to cover this

Some parts of south Asia actually do use a six season model. You’ve got the four you’re familiar with plus monsoon season between summer and autumn and one other one either at the start or end of winter depending on the specific system

Before opening: this better be the oily Josh post

Edit: excellent

“Christ” means “anointed” or “the anointed one”, so “the Christ” actually kinda works

…but since “anointed” means to put oil on something, does that make Jesus the Christ fast as greased lightning?

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