Not gamified, but the best language-learning system I’ve ever used (sorry if total immersion) is the donation-supported Language Transfer.

Intuitive and not just bunch of rote memorization. Made up of roughly 10-minutes audio files, available in YouTube, SoundCloud, or the simple but elegant app.

The languages available are French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Swahili. All taught by one man, who is Greek-British!

I know someone who works in a university group related to privacy issues. He refuses to have a smartphone because of the ease which which almost anyone can track you and your activities. I think he has an old flip phone.

It makes more sense to refer to RFK Sr. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.

“Whatabout…”

But how much do IP laws actually protect the little guy? When a large corporation can bankrupt me by prolonging litigation until I have nothing left, what leverage do I really have?

There are certainly cases where small creators and inventors were able to overcome this disadvantage, but I suspect that they are the tiny minority, celebrated when they do achieve it.

I’m not sure there has been a president in anyone’s lifetime we didn’t commit multiple crimes against humanity. Roosevelt had the Japanese internment camps. Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs. Maybe Jimmy Carter was the only one.

I guess if you can’t rely on human intelligence, you have to hope that artificial intelligence can do the job.

At the start of the second world war, Germany was much less mechanized than other countries. I think the US had one car for every five people, the UK one car for every 10 people, France won car for every 15 people, and Germany one car for every 30 people. Something like that.

The Germans used more horses in World War II than they did in World War I.

The thing was, what they did have they used effectively, including using radios for communications, which none of the other countries were doing at the time.

It’s incumbent upon every member of society to protect the weakest and most powerless, or else you are complicit in wielding the boot.

I’ve heard persuasive arguments that Chamberlain did the only thing possible for Britain at the time. Their defense industry was just spinning up and they needed more time to have any chance at facing Germany. The Spitfire had only just started production, for example.

When I was in grade 9, in 1977, my science teacher told us about his solar panels. He was projecting that they would pay off the investment in about 20 years. How much better must that be now (and we are talking about Ontario, Canada, hardly the best place for solar power)?

The only real question is whether he is doing this to enrich himself, or because Putin told him to do it.

I’ve probably played through it 5 times, using different skill trees.

Definitely a thing for days like Valentine’s.

Stirrups had been invented before the Mongol invasion, but they were not in widespread use in Europe. The Mongols had other advantages, including tactics, that gave them a decisive advantage.

The other reason that the Mongols became less invincible, of course, is that their enemies learned to use their tactics and equipment.

The Mongols had superior technology too: stirrups so that they could shoot arrows while riding their horses instead of dismounting every time they shot.