Recent content by Thande

It's true that a lot of AH is just another exercise in literary fun, in the same way most science fiction doesn't have anything too concrete to say about real-world science and engineering. But, in the same way that watching Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers towards flip phones and...

The nature of the in-group has changed somewhat, but not that much. Look at the Venn diagram between 'been on telly' and 'gets to (sometimes ghost)write highly-promoted novels in Waterstone's, usually crime novels'.

This also makes me realise I don't know how many members there are on Chinese municipality congresses for cities like Beijing or Shanghai. Obviously those are mostly rubberstamps but it'd be interesting to compare. Can't find anything for Beijing, but Shanghai has a wiki article and it has an...

NYC council made me have that realisation as well. 51 single-member districts for one of the biggest cities in the world. I was thinking "well this is like the London Assembly and obviously there must be some lower-level councils for the boroughs or something", but nope.

Wow, that second map really does show how cosy-codominion the 'nonpartisan' system can be.

Yeah, I guess that could work.

Great article idea. Interestingly Churchill at one point also planned to write some articles similar to Baen's later "Alternate Generals" anthology, where he imagines scenarios like "Ramsay MacDonald in the French Revolution". Roy Jenkins, his biographer, was rather glad he never wrote them...

Yeah, but 'Dominion' was invented in this context because they wanted to make Canada a kingdom but without upsetting the US. While I suppose some civil servant with a chart might later want Ireland to have the same title as the other 'white dominions' (but even then, Australia is formally a...

Very interesting @prime-minister ! But shouldn't it still be the Kingdom of Ireland if it never became part of the UK in the first place?

I'll probably just get around to it in like 5 years, like I waited that long to watch The Mandalorian because I wouldn't let myself get Disney+ till I'd already cancelled Netflix.

I've not been able to see the show as I'm not paying for another subscription, so it's great to see this deep dive.

Thanks Jared - sorry I never got around to writing something myself, I really need to make time for contributing to anthologies.

Interesting. A significant question is what then happens in Algeria as a consequence. I think the Germans would still want to keep Vichy around as breaking the Armistice terms might trigger Algeria joining Free France (at least in theory) and Germany and Italy were not in a position to try to...

Thanks, that's a good point. I know me so I'm probably going to talk myself into doing it 1952 onwards anyway...

Also, as the eclipse in North America was in the news recently, another thing suitable for this thread is how old those maps showing where you can view the eclipse from are. I thought this was the oldest one I was aware of, from 1706, was this one of a solar eclipse crossing Europe...