#vanpoli Vancouver's Non-Partisan Association will have a general meeting to elect a new board. Angelo Isidorou has stepped down.

But if the NPA really believes "in an inclusive, compassionate and caring city free from hate, stigma and discrimination," 7 more also have to go:

There is a recent new word in Chinese that I think deserves introducing into the Western neoreactionary canon.

The word is 内卷 (nei-juan) which has been translated as "involution". Originally a Chinese phenomenon it increasingly applies anywhere there is modernity.

To capture the essence of what "involution" means it helps to picture a spiral in your mind. Our modern narrative says that as we progress technologically we should progress OUT of the spiral and have more free time to be capable of ever more amazing things...

But what if the progression of technology and society actually sends us WITHIN the spiral in an infinite number of ever-decreasing circles? What if we are walking DOWN the spiral staircase of progress rather than UP?

"Involution" in its original meaning has been used to describe agrarian societies and how their development actually leads to self-perpetuating processes that prevent change and progress rather than encourage it.

Increased food production has limited many civilisations and sent them into stagnancy rather than allowed them to grow. This stagnancy can continue for millennia in safe environments till threatened, other times it drives the civilisation into extinction from external threats.

Could Turkish drones be the silver bullet in Nigeria's decade long war against insurgency. Turkey has in recent years become a major player when it comes to the world of drones. Weve seen what Turkish drones did in Syria.

In Libya, in what can be described as the largest drone war in the world we saw how the LNA's goal of seizing the capital Tripoli abruptly ended after Turkeys intervention with its Bayraktar drones. There is no doubt these drones will be of immense value to the Nigerian military

The relatively flat featureless terrain of the northeast means that ground units are easily spotted, with few natural barriers to hide. The Alpha jets and L-30ZA are valuable yet limited by numbers. Besides they antiquated platforms.

While manned fighter aircraft have been used for most part of the war the NAF needs to start considering the employment of unmanned aerial vehicles on a strategic level. UAVs are useful for several reasons. Not only do they provide valuable information about the enemy

..that can be spotted from standoff distances, they are able to attack targets immediately with a far higher rate of success. In the event a drone is shot down...BIG DEAL !..the pilot is safe, back at base and able to pilot the next drone that takes off.

Bellingcat and its investigative partners have established that Russian politician, Vladimir Kara Murza, was followed by a specialist FSB team prior to his suspected poisonings in 2015 and 2017.

Members of the same FSB team, some of whom have medical and chemical weapons backgrounds, tailed Alexey Navalny before he was poisoned with a Novichok substance in August 2020.

Kara-Murza is a well-known Russian politician, film-maker and an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The circumstances around his suspected poisonings have long remained a mystery.

Travel details of FSB team members show they followed Kara-Murza on a campaign trip outside Moscow that ended less than 48 hours before his first poisoning incident in May 2015.

Kara-Murza recovered in the US before returning to Russia. Yet the same team began tailing him again just five months after he came back. He was poisoned for the second time in February 2017.

Portugal is famous for its mild climate and sunny beaches, but each year hundreds of people freeze to death and millions struggle to survive frigid winter weather.

Here's a quick thread based on my @POLITICOEurope story on Portuguese energy poverty

When I lived in Lisbon my friends and I joked that although the Portuguese were famous for melancholia, uncharacteristic (and unrealistic) optimism defined their approach to thermal insulation: homes seemed to be built as if the weather was expected to be perfect year-round.

While the weather is, indeed, really great for most of the year, it can also be really awful sometimes. In the Summer temperatures can shoot up to truly unbearable levels for weeks on end, and in the Winter the icy humidity can easily make you feel like you're freezing 24/7.

This reality is a huge problem precisely because so many Portuguese people live in homes that don't have the capacity to shelter them from the heat when temperatures rise and the cold when they drop. And that means that every year that means people die because of the weather.

This issue can be traced back to the rural exodus that took place during the second half of the XX century, when millions fled the interior to seek better futures either outside the country — immigrating to France, Germany and Luxembourg — or in cities like Lisbon and Porto.