Nobody Cares About World News

[Sid]

Not every old person dies of it. I was more struck by the photo of her doing a zoom call in front of a screen. Liz was born before television was invented. The changes she has seen during her lifetime are amazing, and yet she's living in a 900 year old castle that *hasn't* changed much at all during her life.

Windsor Castle has always been her real home, where she spent most of her weekends and holidays.
Only a few minutes away from her beloved horse races at Ascot.
Large parts of the castle are more or less a museum, very worthwhile visiting, but I doubt that the private quarters are still in the middle ages or 18th century.
But like most royals and noble families they love to stick to the more traditional styles.

Her majesty in her living room at Windsor Castle:

 

[Free]

Chinese airliner carrying 132 people crashes in southern Guangxi region | CNN

A China Eastern Airlines jetliner carrying 132 people crashed in the mountains in southern China's Guangxi region on Monday afternoon, according to the country's Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC).

www.cnn.com

An amateur video of the crash shows the plane at almost 90 degrees as it hit. (All I can find on youtube right now is a computer simulation of the flight crash).

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

France Is Still Standing After the First Round of Presidential Elections

The good news was that, in the first round of the French Presidential election, on Sunday, while Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extremist, anti-republican National Rally, once again advanced to the forthcoming second round, it was with a minimal increase to her tally from five years ago, and significantly if narrowly behind that of the incumbent President, the liberal republican Emmanuel Macron. Nothing is settled, but, though a Le Pen victory in the second round, on April 24th, is not out of the question, it seems at the moment improbable. Adding the votes that went to center and left candidates in this round to Macron’s tally, and adding the votes that went to the even more extreme-right candidates to Le Pen’s, it seems unlikely—not out of the question, but unlikely—that she will be able to cross the fifty-per-cent threshold.

 

[bubblesort]

Ukranians celebrating le Pen's defeat on Reddit.


I'm glad she lost, but remember, she still won 43%. That's the best she's ever done, so this is progress for her and her conservative backers. I find it incredible that she made progress like this, given her close relationship with Putin.

 

[Tirellia]

Ukranians celebrating le Pen's defeat on Reddit.

I'm glad she lost, but remember, she still won 43%. That's the best she's ever done, so this is progress for her and her conservative backers. I find it incredible that she made progress like this, given her close relationship with Putin.

She made progress because people detest Macron. The majority of Macron's votes came from people who detest Le Pen only slightly more than they detest Macron. It was a choice between a dogshit sandwich and a catshit sandwich. The garnish on the Le Pen sandwich was just slightly less appealing.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

As I pointed out in another thread, this election was a record low turnout for a French presidential election. And it still saw a higher percentage of the electorate vote than any US presidential election.

 

[Free]

 

[bubblesort]

Some of them resisted, and they had a shoot out! It looked something like this:


Note: I only just now noticed, Mike wears what looks like a Ukraine patch on his sleeve. In this scene he jokes about stealing a tank. That's kinda crazy.

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

Hurrah! I hope.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Peony]

Hurrah! I hope.

We’ll, I think hurrahs are warranted - they’ve had a cracker of a first week with a positive Quad meeting in Japan and a great start at repairing relationships with France & our Pacific neighbours. I know the next few years won’t be easy, but a Labor government with a progressive and intelligent Green and Independent cross bench probably has the best chance of achieving useful outcomes.

Albanese was around for the Guillard minority government a decade or so ago, which was (IMO) one of our best-performing governments recently, so I have high hopes he can pull it off even if he’s not our most inspirational leader.

 

[bubblesort]

Moldova applied to join the EU last week. I hope they get accepted. I know European politics are always super complicated and weird, but they seem like a great fit, culturally. Moldova came in second in the popular vote at Eurovision this year (behind Ukraine), which shows that on some level, most of Europe culturally accepts them, I think?

Helping Moldova is in Europe’s interest | Financial Times

Helping Moldova is in Europe’s interest Brussels should grant the country EU candidate status to counter Russian attempts to exploit economic hardship Paula Erizanu In some respects, such as its appro...

www.evernote.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Ooops!

£68m of cocaine delivered with bananas to two supermarkets in Czech Republic

Czech police searching more stores on same delivery route while contacting overseas counterparts about shipment from Central America

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

 

[Free]

Bananas for scale?

 

[Isabeau]

First time a (male I assume) Prime Minister has been accompanied by his husband to NATO summit (Luxembourg PM)

 

[Free]

New Zealand's government classifies the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization

Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio and four other members were federally charged earlier this month with conspiring to overthrow the government by attacking the Capitol in the Jan. 6 riots.

www.npr.org

Can we get a little of this kind of intelligent governing over here in the U.S., please?

 

[Soen Eber]

Ooops!

£68m of cocaine delivered with bananas to two supermarkets in Czech Republic

Czech police searching more stores on same delivery route while contacting overseas counterparts about shipment from Central America

www.theguardian.com

Evernote link

I'm learning Agile at the moment and all I can think of right now is "put the banana in the box. put the banana in the box. put the banana in the box. put the banana in the ..." on and on and on.

It's the syntax for ... I dunno now, I think either two way binding bananas to boxes or some such thing.