5. So would you see countries pursuing things like Hugo Chavez's economic "reforms?"
6. So in this world, would the likes of Lula Da Silva and Evo Morales still be prominent?
7. Do Democrats ITTL remain popular in states like Arkansas and Tennessee in this TL?
8. Yes, I meant deindustrialized. But if America still underwent industrial decline while Soviet Russia underwent an economic boom, wouldn't that result in the rise of more Trumpist/Peroist political candidates grousing about how Americans are poorer than the commies?
5. What do you mean specifically by Chavez's reforms?
6. I haven't gotten that in-depth with my TL yet, but probably similar people, yes.
7. Again, see above, but probably similar to OTL.
8. It's not quite like that, the Soviets are still quite a ways behind the West still, though many are concerned with it's continuing (relatively) rapid growth. And yes, there are still plenty of populists, and it's more of a mirror image of OTL, with the center holding in the Republican Party, while it doesn't in the Dems which leads to the upset victory of Sanders in '16. His presidency is not as... revolutionary as some fear (or hope), and generally, US politics are still polarized to some extent, but it's more... normal than ours, I suppose.
While, to quote one of the reviewers of the book: "The guy from The Apprentice becomes the President," bungles a lot of things, including the pandemic, and then goes on to storm the Capitol to try and overturn the election when he loses, well...
Ah, okay. Generally not, if only because most economies aren't built mainly off of a single resource. And also, the reformers tend to be a bit more competent and less blatantly less antidemocratic and corrupt than his administration.
And also, I don't know if this is in your quote or not, it's not showing up when I press the +Quote button, but the bit about "it" being dystopian isn't about Chavez specifically (although I don't like the man), it's about the perspective of the ITTL readers on the book, because a lot of the really horrible things of OTL didn't happen there, and also having the Western Bloc win the Cold War in the most spectacular and total way possible, and then slowly losing the peace over the next several decades.
Saw a photo of a West German weather report during the 60s, still using the 1937 borders. Which felt like good althist potential.
So I tried to recreate it in paint.net with some slight changes.
The inclusion of Dresden and Königsberg.
Changes are the inclusion of Eupen-Malmünd, Danzig and Memelland in Germany.
Inclusion of the Markerwaard, as well as the proposed but never tried Danish land reclamations
Removal of the weather man as well as what I think is the half way drawn snow fall in the Alps.
(I also included the map with only the borders, rivers and cities.)
Also other alt-Kia models with different front headlights, always in this TL (the vertical front headlights being this time reserved for Cadillac like mentionned above) :
What are you talking about? Read part 1 of the timeline I posted earlier. The population of Toons crashes because of wars, nuclear exchanges and (possibly) diseases that are from Toons and can infect Toons becoming more common due to the collapse of modern healthcare systems
What are you talking about? Read part 1 of the timeline I posted earlier. The population of Toons crashes because of wars, nuclear exchanges and (possibly) diseases that are from Toons and can infect Toons becoming more common due to the collapse of modern healthcare systems
What are you talking about? Read part 1 of the timeline I posted earlier. The population of Toons crashes because of wars, nuclear exchanges and (possibly) diseases that are from Toons and can infect Toons becoming more common due to the collapse of modern healthcare systems
The graph is definitely very shocking just to see just the massive drop in the population and how long is still low untill the Toons pulled their act together and start rebuilding.
The graph is definitely very shocking just to see just the massive drop in the population and how long is still low untill the Toons pulled their act together and start rebuilding.
A typical UKSII High School final year timetable (yes, don't worry, I'm still working on the map, just haven't had a lot of time recently).
The first thing that probably seems odd is the times. UKSII regularised the notional mediaeval usage of hour 0 being at sunrise (rather than at midnight) to what we would conceive of as 6 am, so the school day starts at what we would consider 8.45am and ends at what we would consider 3.30pm (finishing early at 1pm on a Saturday). One pretty elegant side effect of this is that where we use the somewhat awkward a.m./p.m., they have the rather more convenient distinction between dí (of the day) and oidhche (of the night), which are also used with the days of the week more broadly ("dí Sathuirne" = on Saturday [during the day], vs "oidhche Shathuirne" = on Saturday night)
The UKSII education system starts with 6 years of primary school (ages 5-11) followed by 5 years of high school (ages 11-16).
After this, if you want to continue education, you can complete a broad 4-year university degree in "Arts" (encompassing literature, music, and aesthetics; Artium Baccalaureus, AAB), Theology (Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureus, SThB), "Philosophy" (meaning mathematics & natural science; Philosophiae Baccalaureus, PhilB), "Letters" (language & linguistics; Litterae Baccalaureus, LittB), or "Studies" (social sciences; Studiorum Baccalaureus, SSB). There are elements of choice and limited specialisation is possible, but there are no separate designations; you end up with e.g. a "PhilB" whatever you concentrate on, not a "PhilB in Mathematics" or "PhilB in Human Biology" - it's formally just a "PhilB".
Only at Masters level (lasting 3 years) would you properly specialise, either within one of the previous fields (completing e.g. a PhilM in Astrophysics, an AM in Music, a LittM in Spanish, an SM in International Relations...), or a "professional" field like medicine (Medicinae Magister, MedM), surgery (Chirurgiae Magister, ChM), canon law (Juris Canonum Magister, JCCM), secular law (Juris Oecumenici Magister, JOM), or education (Didacticae Magister, DidM). These are the highest taught qualifications that exist; doctorates are all completed through research with no taught element, and are not normally required for any job outside of academia. So, you can become a medical "doctor" (MedM) or lawyer at the tender age of 23.
(Non-degree-conferring vocational colleges, in addition to covering specialised trades like barbers etc, also cover "non-academic" professional fields like accountancy, management, computing/IT, nursing, etc. These courses are usually taken straight after high school and can last 2-4 years depending on subject and level.)
Anyway, let's return to high school: what you see here is a fully compulsory timetable; there's no element of choice in this whatsoever. The colour coding indicates recurring subjects (or subject groups), being:
The green subjects are Gaelic, split into literature (four times a week in 4th & 5th year, thrice at lower levels), grammar (once a week in 4th & 5th year, thrice at lower levels), and rhetoric (once a week in 4th & 5th year, absent at lower levels).
The orange subjects are Mathematics, here split into Algebra (twice a week), Geometry (includes calculus, twice a week), Statistics (once a week, Arithmetic in 1st through 3rd years), and Combinatorics (once a week, Logic in 1st through 3rd years).
The purple subjects are Philosophy, comprising Natural Philosophy (science), pure Philosophy, and "Christianity" (religious education/catechism), twice a week each.
In red we have Classical Language, both Greek and Latin, twice a week each. It is not possible to take any other language as a high school subject, although they are often offered as afterschool supercurricular activities.
Light blue is History, four times a week, and yellow is Geography, also four times a week.
So far, so unremarkable really, aside from the meshing of philosophy, science, and religion, and the compulsory classical languages. But now it gets fun: In dark blue, we have Formation/Housekeeping.
In 1st year, this is a combined subject, where all pupils are taught what amounts to a crash course in the basics of both spheres: basic clothes repair, cookery, cleaning, laundry, and ironing on the one hand, and basic home maintenance (changing light bulbs, repressurising a boiler, plunging a drain), tool use (screwdrivers, wrenches, band saws), and outdoor maintenance (gardening, chopping firewood) on the other. After 1st year, this class is sex-segregated by default - boys and girls transferring into the "other" set out of personal interest/preference isn't entirely unheard of, but not very common.
In 2nd-3rd years, boys learn to...for want of a better term, "make stuff" with materials including wood, stone, leather, clay, brick/mortar, tile, paint, and wallpaper. Girls meanwhile learn all about fabric techniques - sewing, knitting, crochet, weaving, embroidery, dyeing - as well as advanced textile maintenance (including all the intricacies of specialist laundry, complex ironing methods etc).
In 4th year, boys learn advanced domestic repair (consumer electronics and vehicles) and gardening, and in 5th year, home electrical wiring, home gas & water plumbing. Across years 4-5, boys in urban areas additionally learn boating, while boys in rural areas learn shooting - ostensibly for hunting and predator defence purposes. (An unsurprising result of this division is that UKSII's infantry is mainly rural while its navy sailors are mostly urban...). Meanwhile, girls across years 4-5 focus on advanced cookery (to include baking and butchery), cleaning, and childcare (including child health).
All of that is an intentional piece of social engineering by the government, who, while wanting to ensure that getting married is desirable in terms of having someone in your household with skills you lack, ensure via that non-segregated 1st year that all the basic skills are there so you don't end up with young adults unable to survive independently.
This leaves the white (one-off/minor) subjects, where we have:
Géillsineachd ("Subjectship") is, broadly, civics, with a few extra elements mixed in. Kids learn about government, the law, and taxes, but also things like applied economics and personal finance/budgeting. Also mixed in here is health education (diet, exercise) and sexual education. Given UKSII's conservative and non-secular character, you might expect this to be atrocious, and in some ways it is (intimacy outside of a heterosexual marriage is portrayed as a grave sin), but other aspects are surprisingly progressive: both boys and girls are taught in depth not just about their own anatomies but that of the opposite sex, and they are also taught extensively about non-abortive methods of contraception as the Insular Church sanctions this (...if, of course, only within the context of marriage).
Eagnaí ("Skills") is a highly locally varied subject that seeks to impart additional skills the school thinks are most likely to be relevant to their kids in their professional lives. At a rural school, you might visit the farm next door and learn how to harvest specialised crops (e.g. asparagus) or how to deal with lambing and/or calving. At an urban school, you might learn IT skills, double entry accounting, or LIFO inventory.
Lúth ("Agility"), which is always (for all pupils!) 11.30am-1pm on a Saturday, is two different things: physical education for boys in years 1-3, and for girls throughout high school, and military/survival education for boys in 4th and 5th years (comparable to a mixture of JROTC and scouting in the US, or of CCF and DofE/scouts/guides in the UK). Boys who are not UKSII Subjects are barred from the military element but do participate in the survival element; during military sessions, they simply get to go home. Apart from just being segregated into groups, the physical education curriculum itself differs substantially between the sexes as well: girls do largely individually competitive things like gymnastics, dance, track, hurdles, long jump, and javelin, while boys pretty much just focus on team sports. The only things both groups do are swimming and, where available, horseriding.
That just leaves Ceól and Ealain, which are music and (fine) art respectively - nothing of note to say about those really.
So, in summary, while it certainly has many flaws, and some incredibly backwards/outright sexist elements, UKSII's more humanities and pragmatics-focussed schooling arguably turns out a more well-rounded populace that is better prepared for life, even if their scientific literacy leaves more to be desired (but to be honest, how many random people on the street IOTL would remember the difference between xylem and phloem from high school, or still be able to calculate the rate of descent of a sphere in a fluid based on viscosity and mass, anyway?)
