RunawayFixer

If they were giant smokestacks further back, then they would be in the haze of the smog, like everything else in the background. There's a similar vertical object visible in the top right corner, far back and obscured by the haze, but I think it's a chimney just like those in the front.

I just assume that every historical movie contains inaccuracies. Narrative reasons, budget constraints, dramatization, ... I don't always agree with the creative choices, but I understand why they do it and I'm not going to let it ruin my viewing experience. I can always jump into a wikipedia rabbit hole after the movie.

I can only think of one movie where they went too far for my tastes: the Hollywood movie where it's USA soldiers who capture an intact enigma machine from a u boat.

That said, the danish military was involved in the mine clearing, only not in the way how it was depicted in the movie. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol22/iss1/4/ The actual pdf contains a better description of who did what than the abstract.

This was done by all the allies, not just Norway and Denmark. In 1945 none of the allies had motivation to stop Norway, since they themselves had decided to do it this way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_World_War_II

Even mine sweeping at sea was done by German sailor POWs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Mine_Sweeping_Administration

As legal justification as to why they could do this, the allied command claimed that these prisoners of war weren't POWs anymore after Germany surrendered, instead they were "Disarmed Enemy Forces" and thus according to them the Geneva convention no longer applied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmed_Enemy_Forces

There's also a Danish film about these POWs: Land of Mine. Good movie imo. And after seeing it a few years ago, I looked up the historical background, which is how I knew that your comment was incorrect.

I suspect that it's a reaction to the various successful media projects by Michelle Obama. In Trump's mind, the Obamas are making him look bad by being smart/successful/..., so this is Trump's attempt at showing that his first lady too can create a successful media project. Because the Trumps are tasteless and have surrounded themselves with sycophants, there wasn't anyone around to tell them how crap the movie was, so it got released as it is.

The big tell that this was Trump's attempt at trying to one up the Obamas, is that once it became obvious that the Melania movie was bombing, Trump posted a super racist video about the Obamas. He tried to one up the Obamas creatively, failed, and then resorted to insults.

Meanwhile Melania is 28 million dollar richer, so as usual she probably doesn't care that much about how bad this makes her look.

No mention of rules for pesticide and manure?

If I lived next to a farm, then I'd be worried about excessive spraying of pesticides (cancer) and manure (the whiff).

Meet the parents:
The filing states that Rodis (the father) “is a former attorney who was convicted of federal conspiracy and wire fraud and was later disbarred following that prosecution for a multi-million-dollar scheme in which he used his law license to deceive vulnerable victims for profit.”

Rodis previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud after the scheme, which “defrauded more than 1,500 homeowners of approximately $6 million,” was brought to light, according to the filing.

The filing also included testimony from a director of photography on The Cleaning Lady set, who described Rodis as “pushy and manipulative” and said that he would “frequently encourage and tell the children to hug people on set, including Mr. Busfield.”

The accusers’ mother, LaSalle, has an “equally disturbing history,” the filing states, citing that she “has had multiple civil judgments entered against her for fraudulent and dishonest behavior.” She was sued for “various claims including fraud, conversion, and fraudulent transfer,” including allegedly unlawfully repossessing a Bentley car after selling it and writing bad checks to Las Vegas casinos, according to the filing.

https://people.com/timothy-busfield-lawyers-claim-parents-of-alleged-sex-abuse-victims-have-history-of-fraud-11887859

Russia is a kleptocracy, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that they employ the same governance style in the occupied territories. From a 2012 article: "In the last 10 years Russia has imprisoned nearly three million entrepreneurs, many unjustly". https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18706597

The modus operandi always seems to be the same: the local security apparatus strongmen (almost always chekists afaik) identify a successful company that they want to raid, they lock up the business owners with bogus charges, if the business owners don't manage to bribe their way out, they get prison sentences because 99%+ of those prosecuted will be convicted & then the chekists plunder the company + sell of what remains for a pittance to one of their friends/family.

The writer tries to find reasons as to why this particular family was targeted, but it could have been something as simple as having a successful business & not having a government patron to protect them from the government. Odds wise, most entrepreneurs that are locked up, will be locked up on bogus charges, so I'd expect that to be the case here as well.

When sitting on the toilet with my pants on my ankles, my cat would crawl into my pants and start his pre sleep wash.

This is my personal experience as well with small companies: mail servers are usually in the cloud, company servers are usually on premise, cloud backups are usually with smaller regional companies. Assuming that the mail server is indicative of every other digital activity, is a flawed methodology.

Civ 3: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Palace_(Civ3)

But in my memory civ 4 was the best of the square civs: The most refined experience. Especially the ai was leaps and bounds better than the ai of the older civs or of vanilla civ 5.

A lot of words from the devs, but imo not convincing at all. It looks like they're trying to put lipstick on a turd and hope that that's good enough for people to give kissing the turd another chance.

Imo civ 5 is still the best hex civ game, especially with the Vox Populi mod. Civ 6 is interesting for puzzling, but the ai is handicapped because it's not good at the puzzles, leaving it unable to compete strategically.

It's actually the reverse. A bit of history:
Belgium used to have laws concerning the composition of both chocolate and mayonnaise. Afaik, they've both been abolished for about 2 decades now because it was deemed protectionism by the EU.

The chocolate law was replaced by a regional protection for "Belgian chocolate". By law, chocolate can only be marketed as Belgian chocolate if it adheres to the rules of the old law and is produced in Belgium. Which has been a huge marketing win for Belgian chocolate producers.

If I remember correct, the loss of the mayonnaise law lead to a massive sales boost for Devos Lemmens because buying that brand was the easiest way to make sure that you were buying real mayonnaise. Nowadays, most mayonnaise for sale in Belgium is clearly marked with things like "made according to traditional Belgian recipe", but there's no law anymore that is stopping Germans from trying to sell their mayonnaise as mayonnaise in Belgium. Aldi did try selling German mayonnaise for a while, but Belgians weren't buying it, so they've given up and they're now selling both Devos Lemmens and a store brand that is made according to the traditional recipe.

Edit to add: So there is a law for Belgian chocolate, but afaik there's no anti milk provision for dark chocolate in that law.