When modern-day Ukraine was formed in 1990, it was majority Ukrainian, but with a sizable Russian (and smaller Romanian and Polish) minority. Over the next twenty or so years, this minority voted for parties and politicians that favoured stronger ties with Russia. In contrast, ethnic Ukrainians supported joining (or at least aligning with) the EU. This conflict came to a head in 2014, when the pro-Russian government was overthrown by pro-EU protestors. Relations between the two groups have worsened since then, leading to pro-Russian militants seizing power in the (Russian majority) Donbass and Crimea, and joining Russia.

People can have whatever opinion on whether the shooter was right or not. But the person who modified a gun, shot his target thrice in the middle of a city, left a James Bond style message on the bullets, and rode off into the sunset without leaving a single clear photo on any nearby camera is obviously not the man who got arrested eating a meal in broad daylight with a gun and a written confession conveniently packed in his bag.

Not even by the definition. He’s accused of murder. He hasn’t been proven guilty.

isn’t France still part of Europe?

It is, it’s the UK that left (the EU, not the continent).

The Gelph-Ghibelline conflict was about secular monarchism vs religious authority. Im not sure I see the point you’re making.

That the conflict between feudal lords (French aristocrats / Ghibellines) and urban merchants (Guelph burghers / French Girondists) is much older than the French Revolution. The pope and emperor were the figureheads, but the lords and merchants were the power blocs.

Isn’t the new Syrian government an ex-IS offshoot?

The division of political ideologies into left and right derives from the French Parliament which had the monarchists on the right and the liberals on the left.

The names yes, but the basic conflict is much older, Europe itself had the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict.

Have they considered spending less on war and more on education / R&D?

The friend fell off.

Different social animals have different social structures. Wolves generally live in family units, led by the parents. Wasps and gorillas have complicated group politics, with alliances, betrayals and backroom deals. Some primitive ants have a ‘might is right’ system, with the strongest becoming the queen and fighting off challengers. Most ants have a highly democratic system, with decisions made using chemical ‘votes’ (cast by the workers; drones and queens don’t have a say).

Bangladesh is a very populous country that lies almost entirely at sea level, and the Ganga and Brahmaputra flood at least once a year. The problem isn’t not being able to swim in calm water. The best swimmer in the world would still die if he got caught in one of those currents.

At the application level? Yes. At the OS / package level? It’s still a work in progress. And you need the latter to use the former.

Fair, but it means devs will write software that can one day run on open hardware.

Ah yes, the French Revolution …

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror … A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

• Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/989759-there-were-two-reigns-of-terror-if-we-would-but

It’s memes all the way down.

Why they putting ideas in people’s heads?

If you want power over another country, attacking them is a very inefficient path. You will take losses, and you won’t be able to take their resources intact. The easier and cheaper method is to just bribe their leaders into selling you whatever you want.

The US starts wars even when it doesn’t need to, because there are a handful of companies that stand to make a lot of money selling weapons. No other country has such a large and influential military lobby, so other countries tend not to start wars for private profit.

The admins seem to not crack down on misogyny, transphobia and so on. If they’re doing it on principle - refusing to censor and letting the bigots make fools of themselves in public - then I guess I can respect that. But on the other hand, sometimes silence can be seen as approval.

I wonder if it will be somewhat better here.

If you host your own instance, you have complete control over what gets posted. If not, you have to follow your instance’s rules.

one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do.

That’s just basic bot detection, like a captcha. Karl Marx’s works are out of copyright, and Lemmy’s lead developer is a communist, hence the choice.

it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.

In general, instances don’t expect you to agree with their mods on politics or religion, but the content hosted on that instance would be somewhat biased towards the mods’ tastes. So you go from lemmygrad (far-left) to lemmy.ml (centre-left) to lemm.ee (centrist) to shitjustworks (centre-right) to lemmy.world (right-wing). Personally I’d avoid the first and last, but it’s up to each person to decide what’s right for them.

The smallest Indian city that (almost) all Indians would know would be the hill resort of Shimla (pop 170,000). However, this is because a place is expected to have a population of about 100,000 to be declared a ‘city’, so for example New Delhi is only a town.

So witches are fish?