Dr. Gonzo

I feel like this photo will go down in history

From the US perspective, I can understand it. Like you say, there’s bigger geopolitical fish to fry from their perspective… But I was thinking more from the perspective of Afghans, some cities being given up without a fight really. But I guess that says something about how Afghans felt about the legitimacy of their government after the US announced they would leave. I certainly underestimated how illegitimate it was viewed, because I never would have guessed things would crumble so quickly.

The Iranian revolution was not initially a super unified movement. The Shah was unpopular with lots of people - from the ultra conservative to the very left wing. But not everyone envisioned the revolution playing out the way it did and there were a series of brutal purges to stifle opposition to the clerics who took power. But it’s not as simple as “the people rejected a western way of life.” The Shah was unpopular for a reason, ironically for a lot of the same reasons the IRI is unpopular, he was a dictator (and one imposed on a country that used to have a secular democracy by world powers) - the IRI is just more brutal in keeping people in line. Maybe because they don’t care what the west thinks. The two real similarities I see in Afghanistan with Iran and the revolution is: the western backed government was unpopular and untrustworthy. And: a lot of people are still scared shitless of what the future holds, because they’ve seen this film before. But like the IRI, the Taliban don’t give a shit what the west thinks. The government was rampant with corruption & western backed warlords did things like call US air strikes on people they had personal grievances with. I understand why normal Afghans wouldn’t like them. But I don’t understand the quick surrender to the Taliban, tbh. It was a brutal reign before, I suspect it will still be brutal the second time around. Regardless of how many claims they have “reformed.”

https://apnews.com/article/e1ed33fe0c665ee67ba132c51b8e32a5 that was quick

This is maybe the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time

I just can’t believe how quick the Taliban are taking over, I thought it was inevitable… but I didn’t think it would be this quick. It’s a bit frightening tbh.

Having looked at some of his social media postings... I agree with @Inverted - this is another incident of incel terrorism. The radicalisation of weirdos on the subreddits he frequented is scary as fuck, tbh. Something needs to be done about radicalising weirdos, because they'll go out and commit these awful crimes every once in a while.

I can't get the fucking melody of the intro music out of my head

The western world really needs to go back to a time where the definition of terrorism was rooted in the actual definition of terrorism (which tbf, I dunno if this gunman was politically motivated or not - so maybe he was just a fucking nutter)... instead of treating things as terror/non-terror based on the ethnicty/religion of the perpetrators. But at the end of the day, I dunno if this was terrorism or not... I just know it's an absolute tragedy. I feel for the family and friends of the victims - it's a sudden and needless loss for all of them. I think considering the number of reported gunshots... it's pretty lucky the death toll is as low as it was.

Yeah and he mentioned Gini like he was still at the club…. which is a bit weird

I'll be so annoyed if he stays and Rafa manages to turn him into something of a budget Aimar.

Vietnam was probably just as bad, tbh. They negotiated a ceasefire with the North Vietnamese in 1973, that was meant to keep the South Vietnam government in tact until the next election & a peaceful reunification of Vietnam... ... but that isn't what happened. North Vietnam violated the ceasefire in less than a year (which I guess, is not as quick as the Taliban acted). US troops stayed until 1975... but by 1974 there was basically full scale warfare again. While US troops were still being airlifted out of Vietnam, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.

US sending troops back to Afghanistan...

That was the stupidest idea with the final season - ruined the pacing of the show, they maybe could have cleaned up some of the shit writing if they had more time to tell the ending of the story. Who's idea was it, HBOs?

Apparently she's being investigated into whether or not she's an anti-vaxxer (I dunno how prevalent those are in Germany). Pretty crazy story though.

Anyone hear about this? https://www.businessinsider.com/9000-people-germany-vaccinations-nurse-swapped-vaccines-for-saline-2021-8?amp&utm_source=reddit.com German nurse decided to swap out vaccines with saline water - and now shitloads of people need to be revaccinated. Giving these people a placebo vaccine should be considered criminal and I hope they throw the book at her. All of the affected people are older than 70, so a particularly vulnerable population of people to be denying the vaccine to when they think they're getting vaccinated. Truly sociopathic behavior, though.

As a fan of stealth games, I quite enjoyed that mission. There's a lot of decent stealth moments in the "stories" part of that game... that don't really translate well to the multiplayer at all though I've made some decent progress in The Ascent and I've got to say, while it's not a perfect game and there's a few flaws (there was an awful bug that had to be patched this morning)... I think it's a very enjoyable game. It's like a weird hybrid of Diablo & Gears of War, but it just makes for a fantastically addictive little game.

I assume, at least one, of the plans to deal with space junk is "let's just blow it up." But that'll just cause more junk, that's just smaller... so it's probably not a great solution

That's the best way to be wrong though. I'd rather be happily surprised than disappointed. Maybe the players are a bit pissed off with how the last season went. And I do think Klopp's Liverpool teams always play better when they're "angry" - the manager's said something to that effect too, how he wants them to be happy generally in life, but angry and like they've got a point to prove on the pitch.

Makes you wonder wtf those purple "uncharacterised" ones are

Minamino's done well this pre-season in terms of getting on the scoresheet. I don't really watch friendlies, cos I can't be arsed caring about them... so I have no idea how his performances have looked (although his goal today takes a deflection, so he's a bit fortunate... but still done well enough to get on the scoresheet). Is this something we should be encouraged by while so many of us are wanting us to have a bit more depth up front. Because when he played us while he was at Salzburg, I thought he was their best player over two legs (which is saying something because Haaland was playing, and I believe scored at least one goal)... but in England he's just looked too lightweight to be effective (which gave me doubts he'd ever really come good here). But an attacking player scoring fairly regularly in pre-season is definitely encouraging. And I hope he does kick on a bit this season because he looked brilliant in those two matches against us (and like he'd fit in really nicely here). Would be cool to see him perform for us the way he did those matches at Salzburg.

There really has to be more regulation. Having that much "space junk" floating around is definitely going to come back around and bite us in the arse one day.

Yeah, even though we didn't see much of him last season - he was really highly rated by Olympiakos fans and so far he's never put in any performance where you'd think "holy shit this lad looks like he forgot how to play after being sat on the bench for so long" (even though he's not had many appearances).

I mean, I'm generally worried about how much crap is just sent into orbit generally. How many satellites are flying around in space? I assume not all of the ones up in space work - I dunno if that's true or not. I'm very much in the group of people that think space is very cool and I appreciate space exploration... but I really am concerned about what the hell unregulated billionaire meddling into space will mean for the world. But with the idea of orbital ads, I just read a bit of that article and felt disgusted. Yeah, it's not something we'll see when we look at the sky, right now... but like you said... you know that's exactly what the intent is. The idea of ads in space is fucking sickening tbh.

I mean, are we sure about that? Fires can spread with fast winds if not enough is done to contain those fires - which often requires a shitload of manpower. One criticism of the Turkish government has been how slow they've been to respond to fires that were already large and spreading rapidly, compared to how other similar sized fires have been dealt with in other countries. And even if work is being done to contain a fire, the wind can undo a lot of that work and the spread can continue to grow.