In the News

[Jubal]

I feel like the French have pretty high standards for escalation - there's a reason they're on their fifth republican governmental system already

[comrade_general]

The land of revolution!

They gave us the idea but we pretty much got it right the first time.

[Caradìlis]

Yeah, because things are going reeeaaally smoothly over where you are...

[comrade_general]

I mean there's squabbling inside of the government, but that's their job. Outside of it everyone is doing quite well. Don't let the media fool you.

[Jubal]

Update: both the UK and US governments continue to argue dysfunctionally, to the surprise of nobody.

^ I should just set up a bot to post this regularly, really.

[Pentagathus]

Doesn't really seem like news tbh. !maybe if the opposite happened you could post it here before we all fly off on unicorns to a rainbows end. pessimism

[Caradìlis]

Pessimism or realism?

[Jubal]

The pessimist, of course, would insist there isn't a difference!

[Pentagathus]

Yeah I'm a cheery boy. In other news though, I have decided not to ever take any news report I see at face value ever again:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CY-vU5d__aQ

[Jubal]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47002865

A rare bit of moderately positive news - North Macedonia (as we can now call it) and Greece have finally settled a (slightly absurd) near thirty year dispute over the name of Macedonia, which Greece objected to because Macedonia is also the name of a province of northern Greece. some Greek nationalists believe that Macedonia now can't be called such because the name belongs to Greeks, and some Macedonian nationalists literally believe that Greek Macedonia should be owned by Macedonia. Anyway, there's finally a deal been made on the issue - it's not popular in either country, but it changes Macedonia to be called North Macedonia permanently, and Greece in turn will stop faffing around preventing the Macedonians from taking part in international institutions properly.

Anyway, at least in my view deciding to not let nationalists faff around endlessly over names and instead just get on with life feels like a good thing.

[Pentagathus]

Nice

[comrade_general]

Have to admit it is silly for those folks up there to use the name Macedonia.

[Jubal]

Eh, that area was first included in Macedonia in Roman times at the latest, even if the Macedonian national identity is a pretty new one (though it's over a century old itself now). I guess I tend to see these things as kind of arbitrary and changeable anyhow - so to the extent that is silly, objecting to it on the grounds that "we own that name" is also pretty silly, and I'm glad the countries' governments have come up with an actual solution.

[comrade_general]

Your opinion is noted.

[Caradìlis]

Alexander the Meh...