Around 2008 and again in 2013 NATO officially offered the Ukraine the opportunity to join NATO. That's something no Russian government is ever going to accept. It's right at the geopolitical heartland of Russia.

While language can surely be used for communication (as can much else), communication probably has no special role in its design or evolution.

The point of advertising is to destroy markets.

If there had been a charismatic figure in the United States who could mobilize fears, anger, racism, a sense of loss of the future that belongs to us, this country could be in real danger. We're lucky that there never has been an honest, charismatic figure. McCarthy was too much of a thug, you know? Nixon was too crooked. Trump, I think, is too much of a clown. So, we've been lucky.

Those who actually do have a valid claim to such special competence have a particular obligation to make very clear to the general public the limits of what is understood at any serious level; these limits are typically very narrow in matters of significance in human affairs.

If you go back a century in Europe, all over the place people were speaking different languages. There were dozens of languages in France and Italy, and they're all called French [and Italian], but they were not mutually comprehensible. They were different languages. And they have mostly disappeared in the last century or so. Some are being preserved, like Welsh, some are being revived, like Basque or Catelan to some extent. There are plenty of people in Europe who can't talk to their grandmother because they talk a different language.

The US reasserted control over Nicaragua in 1990. Since then, the country has experienced a steep decline. It's now the second poorest country in the hemisphere.