The Roman Empire that famously kept its populous in line with free grain given to the poor (at least within Rome itself) as a welfare system leasting to literal half of the "Bread and Circus" term as to how the populace were kept from rioting. . .

. . . "What on earth happened to the Brits?". The civil service and the British Foriegn Office was still believed to be some institution that should be taken very seriously by other states. But the shine vanished post 2016 as UK diplomats just seemed contradictory and foolish/uninformed.

Honestly I'd say somewhere around 2018.

The UK's hard power had massively decreased, and naturally the Commonwealth by that point barely counted as a power force at large. But there was a belief in Britian, and a respect for the diplomats. I remember think peices during Brexit going. . .

There are many subtle and complex arguments one can have about the future of the BBC — but I guarantee you that no other channel or streaming service will be as committed to factual programming, children’s education, history shows, religious discussion, poetry, arts, or state of the nation debate

As an RC aircraft hobbiest it is genuinely a nightmare how many hoops we have to jump through to fly our aircraft based on rules aimed at drone pilots who never follow them anyway.

Every time there's something in the news about drone incidents I feel another set of forms appearing in my future 🙄

Back at uni the local paper had a "these take aways scored a 1 in their hygiene rating" story.
One, that we had visited a couple of weeks prior, had dropped from a 1 to a 0 with remarks like "traces of feacal matter found on food preperation surfaces".

Never went back. Closed two months later.

The designer is on Instagram and explained that the reason the other numbers are shown on the rating is to both give low scorers something to aspire to, and to remind high scorers that the rating can drop.

The fact that the standard one doesn't even come with a zero makes it even funnier.

We had a few clashes where he would always hide behind the claim he was just joking but that never sat right with me.

Half the "jokes" he made on 4th floor on deadline evening were essentially this kind of posting, and he wasn't exactly grinning.

I mean I remember him in Politics and Philosophy first year at Hull and the subject of students becoming more liberal came up and the professor asked what we thought.

Calgie went "I find I get less tolerant the more I meet my fellow students" and, yeah he's definitely the same guy he was then.

. . . to the point I think there is even a line about there not truly being a way to describe it in the T'au language.

So naturally the plot revolves around it seeming that there is a difference in opinion between two Ethereal. How can the Ethereals, the truth bringers, have two seperate truths?

In Elemental Council there is a running theme of the T'au are *unified*, point, fact, end. When Ethereals disagree they have a ritual duel that ends with them coming to an agreement on the correct path. The idea of disagreement at the leadership level is unthinkable. . .

Water Caste absolutely figuring out that love for the Emperor is already kinda abstract and if they can turn faith and love towards the Greater Good they will possibly be able to turn the humans into absolute zealots.

Which is exactly the kind of creepy "its not evil but" the Tau need more of.