thefringthing

Right. China's position is that a declaration of independence from Taiwan constitutes an act of war against China by what is essentially a US/NATO proxy. So the US/NATO would have to trade something to China for Taiwan and it's not clear to me that they have anything to offer that matters to China.

Right, Taiwan is a de facto but not de jure country. That fact is what the person upthread was objecting to in the first place.

Would you call the Army Council of the Continuity IRA the government of a country? They claim to be the government of the Irish Republic declared in 1916 and claim the entire island of Ireland as the territory of that state. Claims are very cheap.

It's true that Taiwan's official position no longer reflects either reality or the desires of its people.

I think it would be ideal of Taiwan could be come de jure independent and sovereign, but that would essentially require some deal between China and the USA which is certainly not forthcoming.

They don't even officially acknowledge themselves to be an independent country; they claim all of China as their territory, not just Taiwan.

This is just wrong.

As of today, the governments in Beijing and Taipei agree that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it. That's the "One China" principle.

Taiwan does not assert that there is a sovereign country whose territory consists of the island of Taiwan. Taiwan's government still claims that the Republic of China still exists and that it is the legitimate state in all of China including Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang. This position is accepted by very few countries.

The fact that they are able to act in many respects as though they are the government of a sovereign country whose territory consists of the island of Taiwan is what makes them a de facto country.

I think the Criterion Channel catalogue does differ somewhat by country; I needed to use my VPN to watch Y tu mamá también from Canada.

Yes they can. By simply writing "Pay to the order of: X" in the endorsement area, the original recipient can create what's called a "third-party cheque". A bank would probably not accept this today, but it was certainly done in the past.

Support for abolition of the monarchy is about 53% in Canada, but because of the situation with Quebec, Canada's constitution is effectively impossible to amend, which makes the logistics of becoming a republic pretty daunting.

> surely residents wouldn't have rejected the installation of an adequate sprinkler system

Possibly their idea was that if they allowed the sprinkler system they would have to give up on preventing the cladding.

Say "what" again!

> I just want hot water. Give me hot water.

I always forget that Americans heat water in the microwave instead of an electric kettle.

For this reason the Great Famine is sometimes characterized as a genocide perpetrated by the British landlord class.

Canada uses the common law system (with the exception of provincial courts in Quebec), but our constitutional rights are granted only up to "reasonable limits", which gives courts a lot of room to allow legislation which nominally infringes on one of those rights but which might have an overall positive effect on the exercise of others.

Managers are not eligible to join the one big union: https://iww.org/membership/

> why on earth where professional roles being represented by an Auto workers union

An innovation in organized labour from around the turn of the 20th century known as the "industrial union" (as opposed to the "craft union") wherein the union seeks to organized all workers in a particular industry rather than a particular job. The idea is that this prevents workers of different jobs being pitted against one another, and provides more power as a strike could shut down an entire industry.

The absurd number of diacritics one must append to Latin letters in order to use that alphabet for Vietnamese is the best evidence that Vietnam should have had its own rationally constructed system like Korea.

This perspective helps a bit with the Foundation trilogy too, honestly. Asimov was not a good character writer.

The practice of referring to increases in the price of an instrument as "gains" but any decline as a "correction" is bizarre.

It's possible for both dialects to evolve, but at different rates. Present-day Quebecois French is not identical to 17th century French, but it's closer to it than present-day Parisian French is.

> As doctrine they take the second coming of Christ seriously and believe they will transform into the world wide government on his return.

I think this was the role of the Council of Fifty, which as been defunct for a long time. The last known member, President of the Church Heber J. Grant, died in 1945.

The US has about twice as many homeless people per capita as Italy.

> an American military base in Cuba is still American property

It's not. Both Cuba and the United States recognize that Guantanamo Bay is part of Cuba. They disagree about whether a pre-Revolution lease agreement is still in place or not.

The US has very weak protections for workers across the board.

In addition to South Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Quebec outlaw strikebreaking. The practice is so rare in the EU that it is usually not even mentioned in labour law.

I studied the philosophy of science a bit in university and one of my professors did some work on reactions in the scientific community to the Higgs boson discovery. I remember her remarking about how "this is a huge discovery" and "we knew we would see this; it's not a big deal" narratives were popular simultaneously.

> It's hard to convey how uncomfortable a straight keyboard is to someone who hasn't tried the alternative.

This is how I feel about the Qwerty keyboard layout.

The United States is not formally a party to the Korean War. Congress never declared war.

Irish has a vocative case that can modify names, and is an official language of a UN member state.

Cotton is good for dry heat, but wool is better when it's humid.