So, one of our two protagonists is a slave conscript in the space army that conquered his homeworld

We're not told if they just rolled up and enslaved some percentage or all of the population, or if this is some sort of punishment for something somebody in his family or general vicinity is alleged to have done against the new space-y overlords, or if it's just a bit of bad luck that when he was a child his family needed cash to pay taxes or whatever and made the painful choice to sell off some of their extra children. I'm beginning to suspect we'll never get an answer to this, which is a pity because I think that would really affect my view of the worldbuilding.

But at any rate, he's a slave, all his comrades are enslaved, they'll blow up if they try to desert escape. The evil military of the evil empire is controlling them through the triple threat of pain, instant death, and the intense loyalty they've been socialized to have for their teammates since childhood - no good running if you leave them behind, right? So far so good, but it still seems that this is an amazingly error-prone and inefficient means of running a military. I mean, coercion is always an inefficient means of getting labor out of people, but it just strikes me as ultimately a bad plan, no matter how many failsafes you think you have, to put the job of subduing new worlds into the hands of the people who are themselves suffering in a very personal way from the time you conquered their world. It sounds like the kind of thing that works right up until the very minute it doesn't and when it stops working, as it's bound to, sooner or later, the fallout will be spectacular and possibly literal.

I don't think the powers that be have adequately thought this through, is all.

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A partial list of things Moonpie doesn't like and is deeply suspicious of:

Raccoons
Opossums
Squirrels
Other dogs that she is unfamiliar with which are minding their own business
Other dogs that are NOT minding their own business but are barking at her or approaching too rapidly
Men
Strange adult humans who are in her home
Strange adult humans who attempt to speak to her
People on bikes
People with shopping carts
Anybody who wants to clip her nails

She will bark at all these things. Now, it's a bit situational. She doesn't mind children at all, and is patient with the adults *with* children. If Finn gets to the strange human or dog first and indicates that he thinks they're best friends (he thinks everybody is his best friend who isn't a cat), Moonpie will be shy but curious and certainly will not freak out even if Finn is cozying up to a big dog who is intent on getting right in her face. She is gradually learning not to overreact to the dogs she sees every day. And, oddly, she does better on crowded streets full of people/bikes/dogs/etc than on empty streets where there's only one or two of them passing by.

But it's still a problem and as soon as I can I have to organize proper training on this. Happily, most people actually react positively when a chihuahua suddenly barks at them and has to be restrained (which I am quite diligent about). They wouldn't smile and joke "That's your killer, right?" and say "Oh, she's just trying to protect you!" if she was a pit bull charging at their ankles... though to be fair, if she was a pit bull she'd probably be a lot more chill about people in "her space" (yo, Moonpie, you don't own the sidewalk and you definitely don't own the sidewalk across the street). But it's not right for me to depend on the goodwill of strangers. She's got to stop.

A secret recording of parliament members in Iceland revealed who they really were.

What else are we not hearing from our representatives?

As always, I'm gonna focus on one small thing, namely, the defense of "Well, it was a private conversation!"

This ought to be self-evident and probably is to everybody who isn't a raging hypocrite, but when you're a public figure in a public place, your conversation is not private. And when you, an elected official, go and air your private opinions in public, they are no longer your personal private opinions that are nobody's business but your own. They're information that the public can use when deciding whether or not to vote for you in the upcoming election or, better yet, to mobilize for you to leave office.

Sorry.

It's one thing to say that Joe Q. Random Truck Driver shouldn't be fired from his job for the things he said at a bar one day, or Dr. Random Doctorperson. Elected officials are doing a very different job, and they got it in no small part based on their opinions, so they're SOL on that front.