Dr. Gonzo

Honestly, I think it may come from that massive explosion at Beirut's port last year - I don't think they've ever really recovered from that, and as Lebanon's biggest port (and they only had 2) - I think that's probably made a substantial impact on Lebanon's trade worldwide. Then of course, COVID had it's own serious impacts on global trade... and I think a country like Lebanon that felt other external pressures on trade would feel those issues more than most other countries. And I'm sure the Syrian conflict plays a part in that as well. But before that explosion in the port, Lebanon had some serious economic issues generally - so I think it might be a bit simplistic to just pin all of this on the port explosion. Public sector debt in the country was at an all time high in 2019 before the explosion/pandemic. The banking sector had loaned out 3/4ths of all deposits made to the government and were facing liquidity issues. They hadn't seen GDP growth in over a decade (which is crazy, actually, considering how Lebanon's middle class was among the largest in the Middle East) & Lebanon's got issues with governmental competence and corruption (sort of a theme in the region, sadly) - neither of which really bode well for having a stable economy. As you say, there's a lot of political tension/crisis's & religious and ethnic tensions also play a part in that as well.

Kind of easy to forget during this rapid collapse of the Western backed Afghan government & the Taliban's swift return to power in Afghanistan... but Lebanon is also going through what is possibly it's worst ecnomic crisis ever. Massive inflation (which has gutted it's middle class - that was one of the fastest growing middle classes in Lebanon), banks cutting off people's access to their money, food shortages, water shortages, medicine shortages, homelessness on the rise, a government claiming it has no money left, extremely long power outages, fuel shortages, etc... For many people, their lives in Lebanon have completely crumbled. It's very grim.

Does Qatar fund the Taliban like the Saudi royal family does? I only ask because Al Jazeera is weirdly upbeat about the Taliban being back in control.

They both were, imo.

Tbh it’s the least the ambassador should be doing. The US and UK are most culpable for the massive refugee crisis this will cause… and they’ll both probably be taking in the fewest refugees. The people that worked with the US and UK are most likely to get targeted for retaliation by the Taliban. Just leaving them to fend for themselves sends a bad message for the next time we do anything like this.

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