Oh he knows. I bet he’s known since the second month of his special military operation. He just can’t do anything about it, he’s on railroad tracks that lead nowhere except disaster.

He’s a strongman, his power is based on his reputation, which is based on being able to make decisions that result in keeping the Russian people safe and secure. Had his invasion succeeded, this would have been good for him. But it didn’t, so now everyone has to ask: what have they paid, what have they gotten for it, and are they happy with their leadership based on that?

I think it’s pretty hard for anyone anywhere to argue that the past few years have been good for them, so Putin has to worry about his popularity. But wait, there’s no way to realistically remove unpopular Russian leaders, and that means … his actual life is in danger if anyone wants him out badly enough, which you gotta figure some powerful people in Russia probably do by now.

That’s the problem for Putin. Peace will be the death of him, and he knows it.

Yeah, I think that’s most people. Have you tried a light roast coffee though? They’re not common at all, and most people don’t like them in my experience. Those two things are probably related.

Okay that’s fair. Would you notice the flavor difference between strawberry and choc milk though? Because that’s on par with the flavor difference between the two coffees. Dark roasts taste roasty, light roasts taste fruity. My comment on bean color was a minor side note that I ended with, the much bigger difference is in the flavor.

Given then that we have these multiple, fully independent differences that could be noticed (different beans, different flavor, not having caffeine), a bunch of people missing all of them is not likely imo, unless all of them are particularly oblivious. All it takes is one person to notice, after all.

Possibly. I will admit that it’s uncaffeinated people we are asking to distinguish between the two, which is worthy of consideration.

Still though, it’s like looking at toast and not noticing how toasted it is. Colors are something that just stand out, a lot, unless you’re pretty distracted. If we were running a single individual through the trial then sure, but multiple people? I don’t like the odds.

The red flag for me was saying he switched the decaf for the highest caffeine roast available.

Decaf is roasted pretty dark, because the roasty flavors that creates help cover up some of the flavor destruction you get from the decaffeination process.

High caffeine roasts are light ones, though, because the roasting process itself slowly degrades the caffeine.

Thus, he’s saying he replaced a bunch of dark roast decaf coffee with one of the lightest available, and nobody noticed. That’d be like swapping someone’s chocolate milk for strawberry milk and them somehow not noticing. You’d even see the difference the moment you looked at the beans, because almost-black and very light brown are different colors.

Next time someone wants to share this story, say you replaced the decaf with a similar roast of regular. That will at least sound plausible to the coffee people.

But the dozen or so workers on board didn’t seem bothered.

I mean, yeah, they’ve still got that whole “earn a paycheck” thing to worry about.

Once you lift the narrative requirement, the number of hits balloons into the millions. I would personally draw the line between education and edutainment on the issue of thoroughness. Education needs to be fairly thorough, while edutainment can skip all the boring (but necessary for full understanding) parts and exclusively handle the fun ideas-based stuff, usually with some oversimplification here and there just to keep things moving in an entertaining way.

I would describe Kings & Generals on youtube as a solid example of good quality military history edutainment.

If you’re looking for a medical drama that health care workers seem to find an acceptable representation of their work, take a look at The Pitt. Apparently they put a lot of effort into being as accurate as possible.

Overall I think your definition of edutainment as requiring a narrative is overly restrictive, I think we could call narrative-less science shows like this edutainment, despite lacking narrative:

https://youtu.be/5HKH1ZjGutA

All that said, the specific combination of scientific accuracy, narrative and for-adults does seem to be a rarer combination of traits. I cannot think of very many at all, and those I can do tend to fudge some of the accuracy here and there for dramatic appeal.

Now that’s a sign of an impending apocalypse.

They used local guides, who knew the routes, dangers and resources they might encounter.

no Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Belligerents list

Found your problem.

Except that in my experience, even a supporter of said party, when talking about how a member of ours “just toes the line” is communicating a negative, not a positive. That’s not a good, genuine guy we’re proud of, it’s someone to watch out for.

Colloquially too, the way I was raised, it’s a bad thing, you did not want to be a line-toer. And I’m not referring to discussions of politics, but how it was used in day to day conversation. I’ve been accused of toeing lines, for instance, with the implication being that continuing may get me in trouble some day and I should be a little more careful.

Perhaps it’s a regional thing.

The same dynamic I was discussing appears in that case as well. The politician may not agree with the policy, and may be willing to violate it, but still toes the party line.

If someone was doing something somewhat shady, but still keeping within the bounds of some rule, you might say they are similarly toeing that line.

The big question to me has become, can you toe a line in a positive way?

Yeah, I just made another edit to my original comment. lol

For the traditional toe the line imagery, it helps to imagine a very rebellious kid that you have firmly told to absolutely not cross some line under any circumstances.

Imagine the kid looking you dead in the eye and smirking, as they stretch out their big toe and put it all over the line while barely not crossing it.

This captures the aspect that you don’t have to follow the spirit of the rules or believe in them in any way, you simply have to follow the letter of the instruction to be “toeing the line”. There is an inherent malicious coloring to the term that is important, where people that only toe the line are bad people.

edit: It needs to imply that you’re searching for ways to break a rule and get away with it on a technicality.

edit2: This got me curious enough to google the origin of the term, and it actually has a wikipedia article, amusingly. Apparently it has a military origin, and the article makes no mention of the negative connotations I mentioned. This makes me think my personal interpretation is actually incorrect, and I now wonder why I picked up on it. In the US, toeing the line does have a subtle negative connotation to it, and people that do it are looked down on somewhat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

I see nothing wrong with suggesting that, so long as it is made clear he is discussing one of many theoretical possibilities.

Is he a kook? He does kinda look like one, but so do a lot of legit scientists, so that’s not a good measure.

I have a feeling this has probably been studied, but I’m not a sociologist so I wouldn’t know where to look.

Yeah, that game is great. I hardly ever play it anymore, I can’t remember the last time I booted it up, yet for some reason it has been allowed to take up hard drive space for many, many years now.

The dynamic between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea probably reflects on all of us at a certain level, and comedians have always been good at putting up a mirror.

Though I have been surprised before at how well-researched some Monty Python skits can be, when younger me only saw a bunch of dorks doing silly things.

Sugar addiction is a thing.