Raithe

Depending on your view of celebrity, Nelsan Ellis has died aged 39. Probably most recognised for playing Lafayette in True Blood and Shinwell in Elementary

Life and Art?

The sad story of why NOLF won't come back

For that side note of celebrity, apparently Stan Lee's wife, Joan Lee has passed away at the age of 93. 69 years of married life.

Some traditional Cossack swordsmanship. The idea that if you get knocked off your horse, you'll be trying to clear a space around you in a crowd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFQ4SJj7jb0

It's simple. A sword like that makes sense when wielded by a Frost Giant. It is a little silly for a normal sized human to attempt to pick up a giant's weapon and wield it, but hey, in a world of magic, and strength boosting rage frenzy... Sometimes the apparent rule of cool will win out over basic physics.

Heh. From Chris Hadfield : "Working on getting my internet back - this is no Space Station."

For the old school nostalgia.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpjreO8W2G8

Security. A fairly low run but amusing action-thriller, Antonio Banderas as a former soldier having to take a low-paying job as a night shift mall security, only to have his first night on the job interrupted by federal witness on the run, a young girl being hunted by Ben Kingsley's mercenary/gang enforcer. Cue stand off between a group of assorted mall cops and the highly trained gang throughout the various shopping departments. Plus Kingsley goes through a wide variety of his accents through the whole movie.

o O (Grumble, When you hit delete to remove a word, but because you've moved the cursor just so it decides to backpage and you lose everything you had written..) I can agree on the French Revolution aspect. It's always amused me, the French King sent money and arms to the Americans purely to serve as a poke in the eye to the English. He wasn't concerned with them winning or losing, just being irritating. But the success of the American Independence laid the framework for the French Revolution and his own downfall. The Napoleonic Wars did change the face of Europe in a lot of ways, plus, the acceptance of the Napoleonic Code of law had a big effect. It's one of those things that's caused a lot of frustration between the UK and the rest of Europe over the last 50-70 years and one of the small things that troubled the EU.

Nah, that really didn't become a thing until later. Remember a lot of the indian tribes fought with the French during the war in the 1760's. On a tangent I was working on an Indian reservation in Minnesota a few years ago and became friendly with the school superintendent. (I was installing Wi-Fi in the schools) We had a conversation once that if the American Revolution had failed the indian nations would have had their own country eventually and been treated better by the British. I laughed at that and told him there is an actual country called India whose people are called also Indians who would disagree with you there. Don't confuse the Britain of today with the one from the 1700's. Possibly yes, possibly no. You should realise that the British government at the time didn't WANT India. That whole thing got stuck on us by the East India company. They kept playing the various Raj off against each other and before you knew it..bang. we were stuck with this addition to the Empire.

To be fair Guard... the tax thing wasn't the huge deal. It was you colonials wanting to grab more land from the natives we had treaties with. That was another one of those big reasons for getting rid of us. So you didn't have to deal with the treaties protecting them from land grabs.

Hm, Student Loan company got back to me with the "oh we'll give you some money to live on, but we won't cover your tuition fees. We might, possibly, give some thought to considering it if you can provide us with enough evidence from a professional person as to why you couldn't finish your degree the first time around and it actually seems suitably compelling."