Pretty sure it was the other way around, if your analogy holds at all. The original government fled to the island as Maoist communist rebellion took over. So it would be like if the Union was on the island and confederates took over the mainland.

Lots of great answers already, but one interesting thing that seems to be like it would keep more mammals from evolving to fly:

extra weight of the young during gestation.

Egg-laying birds get to breed but don’t carry around that extra weight for nearly as long or as heavy. That’s got to be a huge evolutionary advantage, right?

Go MTSU Blue Raiders!

I think the more direct inspiration was Gus March-Phillips. The recent movie “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a fictionalized telling of the work that the team Ian Fleming was on, based of some of the recently declassified missions.

Either way, if you’re interested in the topic it’s a really fun movie.

Useful Charts has some solid content. From what I’ve seen it’s well-researched, but like anything on YouTube from a random person you should verify important facts you care about. He’s good about correcting (almost always very minor) errors in follow-up videos, but the fact that he had to occasionally do those talks you something.

He’s interesting to me because personally he has a Christian background but converted to Judaism, but he also does well-researched educational material as his day job, so he presents info well.

https://youtube.com/@usefulcharts

Eh, you’re probably right, but I also know a lot of people from various Houston burbs and they all lean right/MAGA, so I’ve got some observational bias going on too

Houston is as well considering it’s massive but full of mostly sprawled suburbs and tons of oil people or friends/relatives of oil people.

It is in the context of a guy singing. The next line is something like “if it was a dog that had howled thus, he’d have shot him”

“Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hail souls from mens’ bodies?” – Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

(Guitar/lute strings used to be made from sheep gut, for anyone confused)

I am one of the bosses. I’ve been around lots of businesses that do this kind of thing, including tiny startups.

I’m telling you for most businesses, if they’ve bothered to send someone on a business trip that costs $2500+ per person for an important reason, they aren’t going to cancel it over $250. That’s foolish.

The percentage doesn’t change for a team vs individual. 3 people also need 3 plane tickets, 3 hotel rooms, etc.

$250 is a rounding error for most international business travelers. That’s the cost of one moderately nice business dinner for 3 people. Between airfare, hotels, and meals, that’s less than 10% of the cost of almost all international business trips, with the possible exception of some quick jump from Toronto to Detroit for a lunch meeting.

Same for a lot of international leisure travelers.

This is a filter to keep ‘the poors’ away

Ha. Funny

Comment hasn’t been edited.

That’s also just what I could find in 30 seconds on Zillow. Pretty sure you could get stuff even cheaper (no structures in property, for insurance) with a little effort

I didn’t say Canadian tundra, I say Canadian North.

Hers a listing in northern SK for $129k CAD that’s nearly 12k acres. That’s $10.75 CAD per acre. That’s pretty cheap in my book.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1412-2nd-Ave-Edam-SK-S0M-0V0/453901932_zpid/

Outside of the awesome ‘national parks’ answer from someone else, I would have to assume the best cost-to-surface-area purchase in the world would be really cheap land in the American West, Australian outback, Russian tundra, Canadian North, etc. Assuming it doesn’t have oil on it, some of those areas, land practically given away. Sometimes you can get governments to pay you to take it on and try to do something useful with it.

If you consider that ownership usually includes mineral rights for miles under the ground, this really starts to look like the obvious choice of your looking for volume, not just area.

I mean, The Mandalorian started by cutting someone in half with a door 60 seconds into the first episode. It’s not exactly “little kid stuff.”

I think it might have been more interesting if they ran it in reverse. You could build fancy stuff immediately, but you’d have to know that in the next world XYZ would disappear or stop working… All the way until near the end you have people fighting in 1.2 beta, unable to sprint, no combat update, limited weapons, etc

They had municipal elections in odd numbered years, while major congressional, state, and national elections are all in even numbered years.

If you want more people to vote in municipal elections, sync them with the major elections that draw people’s interest. That much makes sense.

But they should have shortened a term, not lengthened one, to get them synced.

Seems like there should have been rules that the only way to do this would be to shorten a term by a year, not lengthen it. Democracy without smart checks like that is begging to be abused.

Seems like a good way to increase turnout. But still…