Rayvin

I keep reading that they have rehearsals of the whole event, right down to the lines being delivered - so if Smith let it fly in rehearsal, why is he making a fuss now. Also, he's fucking laughing himself (Jada looks pissed though) - then we get a cut away briefly and suddenly he's storming up on stage? It's as if he takes one look at her, sees that he's sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future, and decides to go all in on Rock as a way of smoothing it over I really like Will Smith as an actor, it's actually pretty disappointing to see him behave like this. I thought Rock handled it well, there must have been some urge to thrown down verbally or even physically. I'd have expected him to be needling Smith the rest of the night about that tbh.

I mean, I think I can follow along in agreement right up until his refusal to engage the elephant in the room, i.e. nuclear weapons. If this was an entirely conventional war with no prospect of chemical or nuclear weaponry being introduced, then I would more or less agree with him - however, if we don't give Putin an off ramp he may simply conclude that he has no choice but to go down swinging. If he does that, it's just bad. For everyone. Now, I'm still not at all convinced Putin is minded to use any nukes, but if he was faced with total defeat then even for me that assumption changes somewhat. Moreover, what he's calling for is basically regime change. I mean what happens if Putin pulls out of Ukraine? Do we go in after his forces? How do we 'force' the issue? I'm not sure sanctions will be enough to do that - over time all they'll do is encourage Russia to pivot their economy to China. On the other side, we absolutely cannot trust Russia to honour any sort of agreement. Realistically though, I think our best bet is just to wait for him to die.

A bit confused now, what specifically do you mean is the thing that isn't happening? The EU has already set up the fund. I think Ukraine in the EU is something that Russia could live with tbh, I've not seen anything in their statements about opposition to that eventuality. Maybe I'm reading the wrong statements, idk. NATO was the big manufactured concern. If Putin really is following the philosophies of Dugin the fascist, then he won't be opposed to the EU. He'll just want it to be a fascist police state style setup run by Russia. Could be a work in progress for him.

Yeah but clearly we're prepared to make sacrifices to end this. Presumably the EU would cover most of the costs as part of an overall move to bring Ukraine into the fold. We'll get fuck all from Russia, there's no way this ends with an admission of fault on their side.

The White House has walked it back a bit apparently but no chance that was just off the cuff. That was a shot across the bow IMO. The UK has apparently indicated that all sanctions could be dropped if Putin leaves Ukraine. There's the off ramp.

“For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Biden, on Putin. That's some fairly unequivocal language. Rare that you see that, politically.

I don't know about Milne but I honestly think some people hate the US so much in terms of what it stands for - capitalism rather than freedom - that it blinds them to objective analysis. The fact that Russia has been actively infecting our societies with their bullshit is the thing that really shows this IMO. I mean how do these leftwingers reconcile that, I can't get my head around it. He's literally supporting far right movements in the West that in any other conversation they'd be screaming about. I think the truth actually is that they hate the US more than anything else. They hate white supremacy a bit, but it's mostly a stick to beat the US with. If it was genuine and deep rooted, they'd hate Putin too. But nah, I keep reading about how Putin is just doing to us what we did to him, that the US supports the far right elsewhere etc. And I mean ok, but you condemn the US supporting the far right. You never shut up about it. You condemn the far right in our own countries. Where is your righteous fury for Russia, who are supporting it? The left should despise Putin absolutely. He stands against everything we believe in, if we are true to our principles. They can despise the US too, but consistency of principle demands they must despise Putin. And they don't, and I just don't get it.

Yes that whole issue will have serious domestic ramifications clearly. The longer it goes on the more will come and the higher the associated costs become. You're quite right, it could force some hands.

And the only common denominator throughout that period has been... the fans.

At this point we should see if Ukraine can shrug them off, but I'm still not comfortable with the idea truthfully. I am also getting fucking sick of talking to fellow left wingers about this. Every new war crime is "well the US did it first, the US developed that, the US forced this to happen". Shut the fuck up you apologists. We all know fine fucking well that the US has committed war crimes, we all know that we need to be vigilant against such things happening in future. We knew that well before you toddled along and told us. How about calling out the stuff that is literally happening right in front of us, if you actually do care about human life, you hypocrites! Not a blanket statement fwiw, just finding the discourse very tedious now in some circles.

Guardian reporting that some Russian forces killed one of their commanders by running over him with a tank due to outrage about the extent of their losses... Can we believe any of this? Russian military sounds mental.

You just know they'll be crying out for him when Neill is sacked in 3 or 4 months. "He gets the club marra, MLF after all" etc etc. And if it did happen we'd get a re-run of January's nonsense. Has Defoe at any point said anything about a deep affection for Sunderland? They're not mentioned whatsoever in his retirement letter. You'd think he was a born and raised mackem who played for them for about a decade the way they go on. 34 goals in 3 years. For any other club, it's around minimum expectation for a striker. For Sunderland, it's enough to make you a club legend.

Ah ok, I assumed the other way. Fair enough though - as I say, only included the article as a follow up. The discourse is obviously still evolving.

That's just shameful, but kudos to your sister for remaining visible despite it. That's the sort of bravery it will take for normalisation. And they are definitely winning on that front, IMO. Anyway I just thought it was worth throwing the article up given the drama the other day.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-swimmer-trans-ncaa-b2042715.html Good article challenging some of the rhetoric around trans people competing in sports, using actual data rather than just hysteria.

I mean I only said that to avoid hurting your feelings.

I am impressed by the detailed knowledge of my proclivities Dave Mind you, a bit wide of the mark on anime, at least these days. I only doomscroll at this point in my life.

I'll try anything once

I think that general principle is very literally the lifeblood of the forum tbh

I'm still on Destiny 2 myself 7 years on and still going.

The only metric I can think of that would support the existing status quo would be to limit each club by a percentage increase based on its previous year/3 year sponsorship driven revenue generation. The big clubs are already saturated on that front and would be unlikely to exceed a (for instance) 10% increase in previous years sponsorship revenues. We would be particularly affected by it since Ashley did so very little to make a commercial success of us on this front. It would be incredibly unfair of course but no team in the league would be hit by it more than us, I suspect.

Is Starmer going to challenge him on that though, or would that risk offending the Brexit faithful?

We're not going to be signing superstars because this is a longer term project, they've said as much. I like what they've done with the team so far on just £90m - if £60m more is in line with that in terms of return on investment, then that's fine by me.

This is a salient point indeed. If restrictions are being lifted, what was the point from an 'authoritarian, control oriented' POV? There clearly was none, which blows their entire fucking standpoint out of the water. Also I'm now seeing some of the anti-vax people I know coming down with COVID, and it's fully wiping them out. The attempts to put a brave face on it are painful. You were wrong, lads. That's it. You believed a conspiracy theory propagated by people who hate you, and they did you up good and proper. That's all there is to it. The scientific community, and experts, the people who spend their lives dedicated to protecting you from your idiocy and conspiracy theories, were right. See also Brexit, Trump, voting for the Tories, mental health and late stage capitalism.

I do say that tbf.