Rayvin

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.

I started off thinking this was banter but honestly I'm not sure anymore. It's a full blown qualitative vs quantitative argument. I love statistical analysis of, frankly, most things - but I also think you can just watch the game and come up with fairly similar conclusions from a qualitative assessment. Then again I've only got one prediction right so far, what do I know.

I'm actually quite opposed to the banhammer on general principle fwiw The whole mod team tried to avoid this but it is what it is.

He posted a meme that made fun of trans people. Presumably with the expectation that it would trigger a bout of arguing.

I read the full range of news information I can - like I've said, I'm not buried in my echo chamber

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/13/eu-hands-britain-post-brexit-olive-branch-offer-lead-new-security/ EU wants us to lead on new security Council for Europe. Nice to see some unity although its worth pointing out that at least as far as I understood it, this was really our area within the EU anyway.

The proof will be in the pudding either way, but honestly CT while you're right about the fixtures and so on (although it's not just Burnley and us down there, even Brighton could get pulled in at this point) I feel like you're not giving enough credit to how the team has played - we were fairly unlucky to lose both of our last two games, and they were away to one very good team and one very desperate team. The fact that we're performing well enough now that even 'poor performances' are resulting in very close, very unfortunate losses - rather than 3-5 nil drubbings - should give us some encouragement.

Yeah, shame most of those voting for "freedom" are closet Putin sympathisers. He can fuck right off tbh, the unmitigated cunt.