Chris Terry-Enescu

[We see a close up of a young white male, tanned, white teeth, coiffed hair clearly an influencer on social media. It is an image such as you see when social media posts are shown on the news. In the corner of the screen is named a location: DUBAI. He is staring slightly off-camera for several silent panels of the comic strip. His eyes move slightly. He is having a thought.] From off-screen a newsreader’s commentary comes: NEWSREADER: Extraordinary images here of an expat in Dubai [The influencer’s eybrows raise slightly] …Having their first ever geopolitical thought. [CUT TO a BBC news scene. The BBC newsreader CLIVE MYRIE is talking to an interviewee next to the screen showing the social media influencer’s face. The interviewee’s name is David Jones]. CLIVE MYRIE: To explain the significance of this moment we’re joined by David Jones, our Expat Thoughts correspondent DAVID JONES: Clive, this is momentous It was caught on film at the end of an Instagram post titled: ‘Dubai Is Brilliant’. [Pointing at the screen, the influencer’s expression still the same] You can clearly see in the eyebrows here, the dawning realisation that there *might* be something in the world beyond his dickhead self. It marks a *huge* departure from all the Dubai Expat’s previous thoughts. CLIVE MYRIE: Which are…? DAVID JONES: You've Got To Get Yourself Out Here Mate, Everything Is So Clean, I Don't Have To Pay Taxes, I Am Incurious As To Why I Do Not Have To Pay Taxes, and Spa. CLIVE MYRIE: And might we see an expansion of these new Thoughts in coming days? DAVID JONES: I think we can expect to see: “I Deserve To Be Airlifted By A Country I Pay No Tax To” CLIVE MYRIE: Mmm. [Ends]

Ah, yes, the invaluable wisdom of the markets.

Greg: And the task was...?

Alex: Conquer the city.

Greg: And you?

Odysseus: Built a giant wooden horse.

Greg: And it's impressive. Completely fails the task.

Odysseus (suddenly looking very like Jason Mantzoukas): But does it, Greg? Does it?

Alex: There was a camera inside the horse.

Donald Trump bursting into a flamenco class:

If only Big Roy had ran earlier the Democrats would hold all before them

THE ROYMENTUM IS REAL

I assume this is on your email signature at this point (I did play it because of you so)

Look, the autism and ADHD come out in many ways

I've often felt you could make an excellent Game of Thrones style series modelled on medieval Romania.

So basically the Ottomans would invade Europe through Moldova and Wallachia and then they'd hit the Carparthian mountains and that's where the War for Christendom was fought.

The bit in the North West is Transylvania which was under Hungarian/Austrian/Austro-Hungarian rule and the bits in the East and South are Moldova/Moldavia (after which the Republic is named as it's historically part of it) and Wallachia, which were Ottoman vassals.

Yeah. It was also historically very empty of people even by medieval standards. Basically to do with geography, as many things are. The Carpathian mountains slice right through the middle of the country, and then on the other side of that you've got a huge plain.

It's funny as well because I am old enough to remember when one of the homophobic stereotypes was that gay men secretly all wished they were women. Make up your minds lads.

Yeah, so they had an aristocracy, the boyars, but the cities were dominated by other ethnicities and Romania was very rural historically.

It is, in part because so little is known about it. I highly recommend Neagu Djuvara's Brief Illustrated History of Romanians.

VOLITION - No. Not a disaster. Weave this into the story of you. Walk out of its *ruins*. Save those who still can be saved -- *I'm* on your side.

All it took was for the entire pre existing political establishment, including the previous pro Western parties, to be involved in the mass embezzlement of 12% of GDP.

I mean tbf, pro Eastern parties have typically done better in Moldova over the years than pro Western ones. Not true now, but this is basically the most successful the pro Westerners have been.

During the Soviet era the Cyrillic alphabet was enforced to try and reduce Romanian nationalism. There were also attempts to Russify the language a bit, not very successful ones.

I can't remember if they changed the constitution or if the courts ruled or both, but it's officially Romanian again at the moment. I'm sure if the pro Eastern lot get in again it'll change again

I frankly have a suspicion that people may have misread the kind of tricky to parse question

The Republic of Moldova has a fun thing where depending on whether you are pro Western or pro Eastern you also typically disagree on whether the language you are speaking is called Romanian or Moldovan (there are no significant differences)

But I'd guess it was because in part because in the pre nationalist era the litigurgical language of the Romanian Orthodox Church was Old Church Slavonic and monks were the main group who could read or write.

Tbf we don't completely know, a lot of the history of the Romanian language is very unknown. It doesn't turn up in records until, I want to say, the fifteenth century.

An important thing here is that Romanians were mostly a peasant people for most of their history so there was very little thought about things like their language until the emergence of liberal nationalism.

Because they speak a romance language. One of the closest to Latin, in fact. (Romanians will tell you it's the closest to Latin, but I think linguists mostly say Sardinian is)

Nationalism. Romanian is the great heir to Latin, prieten, so obviously it should use the correct alphabet

Same is true of Romanian in the 18th century and Romanian in the 19th century

One of my continual takes is that being in opposition together against a government you both hate for a long time breeds warm feelings amongst parties

It helps tbf that you do see these accents on TV sometimes, or at least representations of lighter accents from those regions. Most Americans, I dare say, have only heard South East English or some of the lighter Northern accents