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I live in the Middle East (Dubai), so anything below 30 °C is considered great weather here (It gets up to 50C here and its not even peak summer yet!). Winters here are genuinely pleasant. Sunny, temps around 17-22 degrees, and not too dry or too cold.
But yeah, I can relate to being confused at people hating the rain and liking the sun. I can't tolerate heat at all. I'd go as far to say I LOVE the cold.
The most "liveable" weather, in my opinion, is cold (5 to 10 °C) nights and cool (10 to 15 °C) days. With some rain, some cloud, some sun to mix it all up. This was how Stepantsminda, Georgia was during September when I visited last year, and I loved being outdoors.
But being a guy who grew up in the Middle East, there is a novelty factor to cold weather. I loved Tokyo in Jan (0 to 5C for the most part) and NYC in Jan (-3 to 3C) for the most part. Tokyo, especially, was very nice in the winter. It was dry, sunny, and not windy. NYC felt damper and gloomier, but I still liked it.
Sapporo in January (-10 to -5 °C) was a bit uncomfortable, but I still spent most of the day outdoors. Also, if you want a winter wonderland aesthetic (piles and piles of snow, icicles, frozen lakes, daily/hourly snowfall, ski town vibes) like no other, visit Sapporo; it's amazing, and the food too.
aeqno
23hr ago
The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
AvocadoPanic
23hr ago
Do you believe that Tim Waltz actually directed this man to kill state politicians to clear up seats for him to run for the Senate?
No, but also isn't that what a Keyser Söze or John List would want us to think.
Alternately, build them with native talent(after all, Pakistan managed it, we can assume most major non-African countries have the ability to do so) and don’t publicize it until you’re done. Or just buy one from Pakistan.
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