Grenadier

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

Today I learned that up until at least 2009 Keir Starmer was called *Keith*

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

This is a battle that the right is definitely going to lose so it's funny seeing them bringing it up every few weeks on this app

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

It's an initialism and a horrible one at that.

Britain is far better and classier shorthand for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland than 'UK'.

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@ShamebyJames2 Why would America willingly give money to an authoritarian dictatorship? And I'm talking about Hussein's Iraq here

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@BillTheKid1603 I don't think it's that big a deal, sure it'll give them some bad press on Twitter but most ordinary people aren't chronically online and will only see the actual official policies that have been approved, this is a policy that's going to be rejected so it doesn't matter

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@RepealTCPA1947 For the last time this is driven entirely by other countries falling off not England doing any intrinsically better

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@HabCorpLinguist Syria is basically this (it's also governed by a terrorist, enemies with Israel because of cultural and religious differences, etc) and it's doing remarkably well so I simply don't believe this

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@ThMerrie @KannonShanmugam Way longer- 2 hour sessions, one in the morning and afternoon, one for each party is usually the norm. No idea how effective it is though.

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@theoluminati Yeah they did write a bestselling book arguing exactly this in 1857

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@brownliberite Lord Palmerston said "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies."

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@brownliberite Compensation for slavery is a silly idea because most of these people are like 4-5 generations removed from slaves but at the same time this argument is like praising an arsonist for putting out the fire

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

Canada is like if American liberals and British conservatives came together and made a country

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

The British right would make more convincing arguments about Chagos if they focused on anything else other than "Trump says it's bad". In this era a PM defying Trump would probably be seen as a good thing

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

@JesterInABarrel Lord Denning made the same point

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

PACTO as an abbreviation would go hard though

[Gavv @gavv_ii]

As cool as “Pacific NATO” is & as much as I’d support it, I don’t think it’s possible.

🇸🇬🇻🇳🇮🇩🇲🇾Don’t want to visibly pick sides

RoK🇰🇷 is (understandably) 100% focused on DPRK

Not much interest in guaranteeing RoC🇹🇼

That only leaves 🇯🇵🇦🇺🇵🇭 and MAYBE Thailand🇹🇭

(Contd below)

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

Twitter users live in a bubble

[one dozen rats at a keyboard @PanasonicDX4500]

I wonder if these (Australian) women ever feel proud of the fact that they almost single-handedly ended ~70 years of post-WW2 American hegemony

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

larp larp larp. the russian navy is non-existent, they don't even have an operational aircraft carrier. this isn't serious defence posturing this is just for the aesthetics and the cool tiktok edits you can make

[Andreas Koureas FRAS FRSA 🇬🇧🎗️ @AndreasKoureas_]

5% GDP solely on the Royal Navy, indefinitely. Take it from applying budget cuts across every public department.

Were I premier with a substantive majority of the House, I’d happily push this and lose no sleep over the required austerity.

Also, re-establish the Admiralty.

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

This is like saying America is less patriotic than Britain because their schoolchildren have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and that MUST be a sign of defeat!

[Sir Toby Carvery @sirtobycarvery]

Superficially patriotic, but this is an admission of defeat. We have never needed to do this. Organic, understated patriotism that has defined the country for centuries (perhaps with exception of world wars), replaced with astroturfed, mandatory Polandball patriotism.

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

Saying that the original purpose of the Mercator projection is no longer needed is an argument in favour of changing the map, not keeping it. The modern "practical purpose" of a map is accuracy.

[Shakes, A Large And Particular Man @TheFatAmerican]

The function of the Mercator map was to enable safe sailing and trade

By stretching the poles, you can draw a line between any two points (any two sea ports) and the angle with respect to north will be constant

This was called a rhumb line: it’s longer than the shortest line that travels a globe, but you can calculate it very easy

This was very useful when it was extremely hard to calculate longitude and ships often got lost.

With the Mercator projection, you can just calculate your rhumb line and, even if you get blown off course, you know roughly what angle to be traveling in, so you can find your way

This is long outdated technology, but it was extremely important in its day.

The new “Equal-area Projection” serves no such practical purpose. It exists to soothe neurotic liberals who are upset that Africa isn’t large enough on Mercator and that this distortion is harmful to Africa

Its adoption reflects an affluent society where the underlying purpose of things is forgotten and the only function left is for objects to be symbols that signal belief (liberal beliefs)

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

Putting Susan B. Anthony, a feminist activist, on the dollar in 1979 is the kind of idea that you'd expect from 2020-era wokes

[Grenadier @Grenadier0009]

Idk how people can deny that they hid Nazis. Like Eichmann was famously kidnapped from Argentina

[Michael 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 @socdemmi]

People should really stop making fun of Argentinians for dumb untrue stuff like being nazis or whatever and start making fun of them for real things like their utterly deranged obsession with the Falklands