BenVimes

I'm just getting to the end of reading Orconomics, and it had a somewhat novel take on this. Basically, elves live so long that their entire personality can change century over century because they meet, and subsequently outlive, so many new people.

The really quick, really accessible version is the Extra Credits videos, though understand that they simplified a lot of things, and made some mistakes (which they admit to in a follow-up video).

The Great War YouTube channel also covers some of the same ground in an accessible but more rigorous manner, though I don't remember them going over all the "clash of empires" background stuff.

On the far other end, I liked the book The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan. It's a dense tome, but it's chock full of details.

Same with me and WW1. There are so many more factors to the start of that conflict than the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

My wife is from an Eastern European country, and whenever we visit her folks I have a similar experience. Every single restaurant reeks of smoke, and there is apparently no political appetite to change that.

The Stone Angel.

It's a miserable story about a dying old woman regretting all her life choices. It's also required reading in Canadian high schools because the author is Canadian.

And then, on top of all that, my teacher absolutely insisted that its only major theme was "hope" and docked marks for having any other interpretation.

They also had to cram sensationalist words like "scorching" in there, because apparently the Venn diagram of the WWE and American politics is nearly a circle.

Protip: jump back in the water after you raise the level for the first time.

If that doesn't make sense right now, it will in a few hours.

I'm 188cm (6'2") and grew up in a fairly insular community of Dutch people and their descendants. I thought I was average height until I left that bubble went to university.

This is my read of it as well.

Canada's military is small enough that there is typically only one officer with the rank of General (or Admiral if they are from the navy), and their position is the Chief of Defence Staff. I think a second General is appointed if Canada gets a seat on the UN Security Council, to act as the senior military advisor for the delegation.

There are more Lieutenant Generals (and Vice Admirals), and the CDS is appointed from their ranks when a new one is needed.

EDIT: To clarify further, there are multiple ranks with the word "general" in them. In order of increasing seniority, they are (with equivalent navy ranks in parentheses):

1. Brigadier General (Commodore)
2. Major General (Rear Admiral)
3. Lieutenant General (Vice Admiral)
4. General (Admiral)

I've been a Star Wars fan for almost three decades and I think almost all Disney Star Wars is "fine" at worst. Even most of the things I didn't like had some sort of redeeming qualities, or I could recognize that I wasn't the target audience. The only thing I truly hated was Rise of the Skywalker, which is quite possibly my least favourite Star Wars thing ever.

I realize this puts me in the very small minority among Star Wars fans, and it's the reason I tend to avoid fan discussions these days - the relentless negativity is exhausting and leaves little room for discussing the things about Disney Star Wars I find good and/or interesting.

They do seem to have half-assed it. Maybe they searched something like, "who built the ark in the Bible," and ended up on the page for the Ark of the Covenant by mistake.