Captcha? It should be an archive. It's an economist article (that economist), about the war in Ukraine. It has such wonderful pearls:
As Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author, wrote this year, “most governments stopped seeing wars of aggression as an acceptable tool to advance their interests, and most nations stopped fantasising about conquering and annexing their neighbours.”
The Correlates of War Project, an international research outfit, has collected data on every interstate war fought since 1816, after the Napoleonic wars. These data confirm that wars—meaning conflicts between states with at least 1,000 battle deaths in one year—are becoming much rarer. In the past three decades there have only been five, including the current one between Russia and Ukraine.
Emphasis mine
War is also rare between democracies (the number of which has increased in the past 200 years), perhaps because voters tend not to like the costs of it and boot out their belligerent leaders. Some scholars even argue that, depending on how strictly you define democracy, two have never gone to war with each other.
Why do these people celebrate being leeches to society and seemingly aren’t self-aware?
Because a person's goal in a capitalist system is to do nothing while getting everything. To ascend from the exploited to the exploiter. It's wrapped in rosy language such as "passive income", but that's what it is. If a person can be a neet outside their parents' basement (which seems to be the case in what you describe), one must ask where's the money coming from
A French military aircraft breaching Niger airspace from Chad
Funny, a few days ago I was told it would be impossible for the French to bomb Niger, because Algeria would close their airspace. Guess there are other options?
Aye, I figured it required clarification because when one reads "flamethrower" in media, it usually brings up the image of a WW1 style firehose with a backpack canister, wielded by a gasmask-wearing German. Which I suspect might be intentional.
They're still horrendous weapons, imo. But surely it's not as horrific as using white phosphorus, like the yanks did in Iraq?
Almost as if a privileged upbringing like that gives one free time and resources to actually study, instead of just being dead tired from being exploited
Question: I sometimes like to check out the modlog, but most of the time when I click on the removed comment to check the context (i.e. if it's someone screeching about tankies), I can see a reply to the deleted comment, but not what's above it. Clicking "show context" does nothing. Clicking "see all comments" and then searching on the page doesn't show the deleted comment or the reply to it. What am doing wrong?
Sorry for the captcha, there was none for me, so I didn't expect there to be one. Apologies