It has nothing to do with wanting to actually fight NATO. The idea is to manufacture a carefully crafted situation where Article 5 is triggered, but due to internal disagreement and individual risk, it is not fully honored.

Needless to say, any such move would be very risky.

Agreed. Great voice acting is one thing. Quality voicing a cast that gigantic is another. I first noticed with that frog in the hag’s area. You don’t even get it if you don’t cast speak with animals and talk to this random frog hopping around, but if you bother to, you get this short, amazingly acted dialogue.

The attention to detail is just off the charts.

or maybe “national security adviser,”

lol

If an edible variety has any lookalikes that similar that can be found in your climate zone, you need to steer clear from it. This isn’t the case for all varieties and all areas though. General mushroom foraging may be dangerous, but certain species can be safely selected, due to not having lookalikes you need to be worried about.

Which these are requires learning specific to your local area though. The skills do not transfer to other regions, and everything you know would need to be reconfirmed if you moved anywhere new.

One aspect that doesn’t get discussed enough is how effective their grassroots in predominantly young, male hobby spaces has become.

20 years ago, if you weren’t that interested in politics, you wouldn’t get much of it. Currently though, it has thoroughly infiltrated spaces like athletics and gaming. This was not an accident. They have a strong ground game, it just operates in spaces we’re unaccustomed to thinking about in reference to politics.

Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what’s so surprising about a bunch of professional diplomats being diplomatic with their statements. It’s not a group I expect a lot of outright, direct statements of their positions from.

I don’t know where you get your info, but China and Russia have a frenemy relationship, a friendly rivalry, basically. This goes back to Stalin’s limited support for the CCP in their early days, or even before when the Russian Tsar conquered huge swaths of land from the Qing Dynasty during their Century of Humiliation, about the time when we Americans were busy having our Civil War. We see it to this day, where China could have a huge and decisive effect on the Russo-Ukrainian War if they wished and fully threw in with Russia, but instead are happy to sit back and war profiteer while Russia takes heavy loses and the West spends money instead of making it.

Then Iran and Saudi Arabia are archenemies. Iran is a Shia-majority theocracy, SA is a Sunni-majority secular monarchy with a history of persecuting Shias, and even warming up to Israel before Oct 7th. They have a long history of conflict.

Not sure how Turkey gets on the list either, Turkey has consistently played both sides, always being in it for Turkey. I don’t see the benefit for them to actually pick a side, thus losing their benefits from the other. We see this clearly, again, in how they’ve approached the Russo-Ukrainian War. Like cozying up to Putin, but hey, have some free Bayraktars, Ukraine!

I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying to make it seem like a real WW3 with fairly even sides is plausible in the near future, but it always requires a lot of cherry picking and ignoring realities for them to spin their stories together.

though tensions between the two allies have grown sour amid mounting U.S. concerns

Should be …relations between the two allies have grown sour amid…, or …tensions between the two allies have grown amid….

“tensions” growing sour makes no sense though. Are there sweet international tensions?

Can really see the deteriorating quality of journalism in the writing used. They’re being paid for this. Supposedly anyway.