I think it's more that the English translator for Asterix (Anthea Bell) was very very good. Translating pun-heavy humour is really difficult, and you often have to be quite free with it, sometim… (View Post)

Interesting to see that when there's a top-end spike it's usually not the richest 5% but the cohort below them, the 90-95th%s... As of 2020 that's about the 58-80K pre-tax income brack… (View Post)

On the Russo-Japanese war, In Our Time did an episode on that last year -- their reading list may be worth mining for suitable books. And don't miss the pdf of Japanese woodblock prints of event… (View Post)

Yes, it's a really interesting period of history. If you can find a second hand copy, I liked Pat Barr's _The Coming of the Barbarians_ which gives the westerner's-eye-view of it by dr… (View Post)

You don't need to hypothesize a Russian belief in nonexistent US secret superweapons to explain that -- the nuclear weapons that the Russians can be 100% certain the US has are entirely adequate… (View Post)