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Comment by martopix | Hacker News Reader

I love how one of the articles on the HN frontpage says "Oxford", the other says "European researchers"

EUROfusion is a consortium of national fusion research institutes located in the European Union, Switzerland and Ukraine. It was established in 2014 to succeed the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) as the umbrella organisation of Europe's fusion research laboratories. The consortium is currently funded by the Euratom Horizon 2020 programme. [0]

-- Wikipedia

So the reason it is called European is that it was conceived by the EU and it's partners and it primarily funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 funding programme.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20170830004728/http://horizon202...

I think the point that your parent commenter was making is that Oxford is in the UK and the UK is no longer a member of the EU or Euratom, although it has various agreements with both.

I think OP was commenting more on the emphasis, i.e. one of the titles highlighting the name "Oxford" just because it's famous. The UK is still in Europe and will likely be for decades to come.

I'm wondering about what you know that we don't? Is there a project to move the UK physically out of Europe?

Or will this fusion go out of control and demolish the UK in a nuclear fireball?

It was tongue-in-cheek, but born from my own paranoia and despair. The last few years have made even the concept of "Europe" feel kind of shaky.

JET is based near Oxford, and in an article from the BBC provides useful geographic context for the UK audience. I don't think it is mentioned because Oxford is "famous".

The UK didn't float away or anything. It's still in Europe.

Geographically, yes. Politically, much less so - unfortunately.

Consensus among geologists is that substantial portions of that island did in fact drift away from what we know as France.

Plate tectonics has everything moving, so although I am an amateur, it seems the fact that the British Isles are moving away from Europe doesn't prove much.

You mean the rosbifs actually live on our land ? JEANNE, AU SECOURS !

Well, any EU country can opt out of the EU, but they cannot leave Europe - unless you redefine basic geographical concepts.

I'm not sure it's Brexit related - but I've noticed more and more that when the UK media uses the expressions Europe or European, they are referring to the European continent as if the UK was not part of it. I've even heard it used in this capacity in a work presentation which caused confusion in the multi-national audience - "in Asia it's X, in Europe it's Y, in the UK it's Z...". I consume quite a bit of UK media so I knew what they meant but others pulled them up on it and the presenter seemed initially perplexed that anyone would think that "Europe" included the UK.

Has been like this for a long time before brexit and was surprising to me too when I moved to the UK nearly 20 years ago. “Europe” in colloquial use in the UK usually refers to mainland Europe, not the British isles (or even Ireland)

You might've noticed more and more but it's always been the case

It's probably related to brexit in that this outlook is very likely at least part of why Brexit happened (or rather why the UK was never a particularly good fit for the EU)

I can say ‘in California X and in the US Y’ without implying California is not in the US.

"Fog in channel, Continent cut off!"

But people living in Oxford are European? If one article says "North American researchers" and another article says "Researchers from California", would that be strange to you as well? Or if one article said "African researchers" and another said "Researchers from Rwanda"?

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