Rayvin

I rely on it quite a bit as a consultant but I can't disagree with most of the stuff mentioned about it. There are some people who use it to 'remain visible' which is honestly probably something I should do more of. Oddly enough, am in the exact same position Am currently trying to get the one I'm involved with to pivot to a sustainability model before the funds dry up entirely. Challenging stuff..

I'm not remotely interested in anything he has to say at this point. I'll wait until I read it second hand. I don't think I could possibly have less respect for the man.

Sorry to hear that @wykikitoon Fucking dismal state of affairs that you're been pushing since January. No words, frankly. Condolences.

Sorry to hear that MF. Fwiw, I can't think of a much better way to go out than to spend the evening before having a curry with my son. Sorry also to Renton for the news of his sister too. I remember you mentioning the situation a while back. Difficult months ahead to be sure. Condolences to you both.

Aye, sorry to hear that MF, hope you're able to see him without any fuss.

Why would she have any more of an insight into this than other scientists? It's not like she's claiming to have escaped the lab with this information, she's claiming she can identify it from the genome sequence. If thats true, why has every other scientist in the world missed it? If she gets her work past peer review I'll treat it seriously. The idea that she's intending to release the information so that laymen can understand it is concerning - means she can just create a narrative that vaguely looks like it fits, release it to the public and it'll be swallowed whole without any scrutiny.

Cummings won't be able to control or predict anything 30 years into the future so if that is his philosophy, he's a fucking idiot. We'll be back inside the EU within 20 anyway.

Some mackem knacker posted the last tweet there about Danny Graham scoring more goals than ASM, and ASM has responded with the one starting "That's true" It confused me too but I think that's the right of it I don't know what the first image in the post is about though, or why Tom posted them in reverse order

They arrested him and he "died in their care". Honestly I wouldn't have put it past them to have watched him get infected and then simply observe him die from it without intervention. Speaking out against the CCP is bad for your health in China - this is a country and harvests the organs of political dissidents after all. I do note that after this death they decided to brand him a brave hero rather than a dissident. I broadly suspect that he was probably at best "allowed to die" by local Chinese officials seeking to protect themselves from criticism. We'll never know of course but China hasn't done much to warrant a great deal of faith.

China almost certainly either ended or allowed that doctor to be ended. No question there, entirely within the scope of their usual operating policy. But that doesn't mean they inflicted this themselves. My understanding is that they're hugely embarrassed about this - their universities have had a 25% budget cut across the board to all -active- R&D which, had this been something they were going to use to gain ground on everyone else, isn't the sort of response you'd expect. I think they stopped reporting numbers because they were the runaway leaders in the whole issue at the time and were looking incredibly incompetent. And in fairness, the CCP is indeed incredibly incompetent. Corrupt governments always are. But I don't think they did this with the intent of spreading it around the world just to fuck over everyone else. It's been nowhere near effective enough for that, it's harming China in a number of ways anyway, and I just don't think they're actually that fucking evil. Imagine if they were exposed ffs. The entire world versus China. They'd fucking brick it.

Perhaps Ashley has decided that the only way that the club gets sold is if he manages to break into the top 6 in order to finally hold some manner of influence over the PL.

Nah we talked it through with that Arsenal fan and we've decided not to sell for now as they're not willing to pay £40m.

I'm not really sure any of this counts tbh, depends how far back in time you want to go as to the cause of why we're here. I could say that we've furloughed people so that capitalist enterprises don't go under because we've told people to stay home to protect the socialist NHS which is in need of protection because it has been stripped bare over many years as a consequence of capitalist/neoliberal austerity. I just don't think we can call this socialism if there's not an overall strategy aimed at bringing in socialism behind it. It's just 'desperately spending money to prop up as much of the economy as possible' in my eyes. The risk if we start calling it socialism is that we're going to have to spend the next 20 years trying to tell people that actually, if socialist components to society had been implemented properly we wouldn't have lengthy periods of austerity following it. And we'll fail at explaining that. All the public are going to see from this is "The Tories are doing socialism" and then 5 years later "holy fuck, socialism sucks - it's ruined the country". It feeds into that whole complete oversimplification of the matters at hand that landed us austerity in the first place.

Socialism carried out by a bunch of people who don't believe in it, are woefully incompetent anyway, and who have literally no plan or intention of moving towards a sustainable outcome. It's basically as if some twat coked up and let loose with the family credit cards, overpaying for things, and buying things he doesn't need - and when the rush passes, he'll be left penniless and in debt with no better option than to make his family even worse off than they were before in order to pay everything back. It's not socialism, it's just incompetence.

The fact that we paid £40m for Joelinton doesn't mean anyone else would have tbf I think £40m - £50m is about right in terms of what he's worth within our team, maybe with some add ons. Not sure he's done enough to justify that to a buying club yet though - maybe next summer but I can't really see anyone coming in for him at that level presently.

I guess now is the time where we are using the total power of "walking away" as a negotiating tactic. We've been told for years that this is the move that will bring the EU to their knees, so it's the moment of truth...

Aye but he's our best player by a country mile. He will be expensive even under Ashley, and while you guys will inevitably have the cash, whether you're prepared to overspend on him is another thing. He's a star though, and fans have really warmed to him for his character too. He'd be a big loss to us. At the same time this club is going nowhere so I kind of hope he manages to escape as soon as possible and go somewhere with some vague hope of winning something.

It's the rage I watch for. It's validating.

Pie spot on as usual. The BBC should hire him at this point, he'd be a superb journalist outside of even the satire.

I saw an article in the Guardian the other day which i -think- is encouraging, sort of. It was a series of interviews done with redwall voters - they "liked" Boris because he was positive and patriotic, and while their faith in him has been shaken now, they're still with him. With Starmer, they're not clear what he stands for and are wary. However, there's a lot of time before the next election and Johnson seems to be just about the only Tory they care for. Since he won't contest the next election, it's unclear to me that the Tories have anyone who could win them over on the same basis. They might of course just move the goalposts when the time comes, but they may also being telling the truth. Maybe it is a personality cult around Johnson more than anything else for a lot of them.

I find myself increasingly 'done'. I imagine this is the point at which idealism, which I suppose I clung too longer than most tend to, fades into nothing more than grim pragmatism and hoping to die before it gets really bad.

Bring it on, it's the will of the people.

Russian asset. Him and Parky I reckon.

The weird thing with Wikileaks is that I think the majority opinion on it would be that its broadly supported by left wingers. Would suggest that Putin is playing both sides against each other.

That is very true actually. And lends credence to the notion that they could indeed be a Russian op. But is that because they're not saying anything, or because the press have moved on?