Dr. Gonzo

I like how @CaaC (John)'s just guessed that @nudge might know the answer... and then she's gone and given a really good answer. nudge is officially the TF365 science teacher

I think, if Trump ends up losing this election, they'll end up trying to "reclaim" the GOP. I just hope they've learned a lesson (assuming Trump does lose) - because the people involved in the Lincoln project are a big part of the erosion of political discourse in America (which in turn, effected how the media covers political discourse in the "Anglosphere"). The sort of appeals to ethos over fact they were so good at selling to the voting public in the US are the exact sort of messaging that was incredibly effective in Brexit messaging, for instance. So while I appreciate that they've done a lot in the last few years to confront "Trumpism"... they really are the people who fostered the type of political environment in the US where a man like Trump could thrive. I think if Trump does end up winning, they've got a bit of a problem. They'll have to either throw all of their support behind moderate democrats, which tbf... is just about what they're doing right now, or go behind a new party. Another reason I sort of resent them, aside from their past history as political operatives working to get some truly shitty people elected and successfully dumbing down political rhetoric, is because I feel America is already so very conservative... and the further to the right the GOP pulls, the Democrats just can't help but follow and push a bit more to the right. Having more "moderates" identify as Democrats really just means "moderate Republicans" have been ditched by their party and have more ideologically in common with "Americas left." So for people like me, The Lincoln Project's widepsread acceptance by the left sort of underscores the feeling that America really just has two conservative parties - and that people like Bernie or AOC are considered fringe more than anything.

I think he'll be the Germany manager after he's done with us and taken another sabbatical. I hope he changes his mind though and stays a bit longer though. If we'll have to rebuild after his current side needs a bit of refreshing... I can't think of a better man for the rebuild than Klopp.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-border-insight-idUKKBN27B0MM reading this news and thinking about how little progress we've made at all on the whole Brexit issue had me thinking... has anyone else wondered what else the UK could have been up to, politically, if we hadn't farted around with the referendum and subsequently just watched our government bumble around not doing anything for the last 4 years? How many actual issues have just been put on the backburner, while the government has done pretty much fuck all to prepare businesses or individuals for what lies ahead?

@Stan's headlining

Water... or is it just the "mozzarella-juice" fresh mozarella sits in? The moon is fresh mozzarella, confirmed.

I watched The Salesman last night (it says it's an Amazon Original, but I think they just bought the rights to it). It's an Iranian film by Asghar Farhadi... and I thought it was really good.

This pyramid is the most accurate thing I've ever seen in my life

I had no idea about this! The balls on Brentford to go after Klopp. And holy shit, how persuasive of them to have him actually consider it... that sort of bodes really well for Brentford's future if they come up to the Prem any time soon tbh!

The CEO of Arapat (Iran's YouTube) was sentenced to 10 years in prison... for a video that was uploaded onto his video platford (not that he had anything to do with the creation of the video). But the video was one where an interviewer asks kids questions about what they know about how they were born (not how they were conceived or anything)... and she also answer's a kid's question on the biology of asexual reproduction vs. how mammals reproduce vs. how fish reproduce. But the government deemed it to be "too graphic" for children. So the 7 people involved in the creation of the video get between 10-12 years and the owner of the website gets 10 years. It's so strange to me what the people high up in the Iranian government decide to prioritise while they're facing a complete economic meltdown and Iran is still pretty badly hit by the pandemic. But still, somehow, it's a government priority to be policing "morality"... but really punishing people for trying to teach kids about biology. And also punishing someone who was in no way related to the creation of the "offending" content... just to send a message to other owners of Iranian social media platforms that the government expects them to act as morality police as well. It's a fucking joke tbh. Not a very good joke, but it's just so fucking sad and absurd.

They’ll probably stick around and go back to attacking democrats when they feel comfortable doing so

That is absolutely mental

I think it’s absolutely mental what they’re doing in Wales. If a shop is allowed to be open, but they’ve got to tape up aisles... why, people are already inside the shop? Also tbf you’ve got to make alcohol essential. I’d probably have killed myself in March if they took booze away

I don’t think we’re getting herd immunity to this without a vaccine, otherwise it might take years.

Yeah she is - she was born there and grew up there, but lived in Tehran for most of her adult life. Now she splits time between Shiraz & Tehran, or at least she did pre-COVID.

@nudge idk if you even care, but fuck it I want to tell someone. So apologies if you don't give a shit. I have picked two teams - which might be kind of weird because... they could potentially play each other. But I'm not a normal Iranian, so why should I support Iranian football teams normally. I'm going with teams based off family connection. I've got family from (mostly) Tehran, a bit in Shiraz, and some family up in some town by the Caspian sea in Gilan province. So for Tehran, Persepolis FC wins out because most of my family are Persepolis FC fans. It's also the easiest Iranian team to watch matches of outside Iran except for maybe Tractor Sazi. Persepolis also covers Shiraz! This is a stretch... but they're named after that ancient palace Persepolis... which is really close to Shiraz. And Shiraz doesn't have any teams in the top flight so... close enough! The next team is SC Damash Gilan, it looks like people mostly call them Damash. They're in Rasht, which I think is the capital of Gilan province. I'll probably never get to see them play unless they get promoted up a division though, because they're in the league just below the Iranian top flight. Jahanbakhsh & more importantly Mehdi Mahdavikia (imo Iran's best player in my lifetime) played for them. Mahdavikia started and finished his career at Persepolis too, so I think I've found two good clubs for me.

Iranian dissident Mehdi Amin found murdered at his residence in Canada Hopefully Iran doesn't start using Canada as it's killing grounds like Russia does with the UK. Canada needs to send a pretty strong message to the IRI that this shit isn't acceptable - especially after Iran basically told them to fuck off after killing some Iranian-Canadians on that plane that was shot down and that their families would only get a tiny settlement... and only their families in Iran (if they had any there still).

Yeah, it could be that. I went onto the club's Twitter page and they are going absolutely mental with Azeri nationalism - it's weird though because in the comments there seem to be a lot of their fans expressing dismay/disgust at the club for that. I know politics and football go hand in hand a lot, others are pretty gungho about it though. It's weird because I know a few Azeri-Iranians and they're definitely not like the Azeri nationalists you might see online (particularly the ones from Azerbaijan the country, not Azerbaijan the state in Iran) - maybe they're a bit more heated about the ethnic differences in Iran than the people who made it out? That wouldn't surprise me. It also might be a Tabriz v. Tehran thing - considering those are the two biggest cities in the country & city rivalries might exist. I know my great aunt (the one the Shah had enough of torturing and kicked out of the country) lived in Tabriz for a year or two for a while because it was sort of a hotbed for the Tudeh party (that she was pretty heavily involved in) - while she was alive she never mentioned anything about being treated differently in Tabriz for being a Persian from Tehran. But... it was a very different Iran back then, for sure. They do the "Marg Bar Diktator" chant like Persepolis does when they play Esteghal... so they can't be all that bad

Most of my family that likes football in Iran are Persepolis FC fans. I've got a cousin that likes Saipa too, so I guess I like both of those clubs. If I had to pick one, I'd probably pick Persepolis because they play in red - but it's also the equivalent of gloryhunting because I think they're Iran's biggest club by far. The clubs I know I'm not supposed to like are: Esteghal (also from Tehran like those other two, but they're also sort of the "regime" club - even pre-revolution... and if you know my politics regarding Iran: fuck the Shah and also fuck the Islamic Republic) & Tractor Sazi (I actually don't know why I'm not supposed to like them, but my cousins in Tehran all hate them).

Now that I've managed to find a way to view the matches... I am pretty excited about the upcoming Persian Gulf Pro League season that's starting at the end of the month.

One of Arizona's most successful trial attorneys too. From Wiki: Comparing his law and officiating professions, he says "A trial is nothing, pressure-wise, compared to the NFL. … I have that long [snaps his fingers] to make a decision with a million people watching and second-guessing (by video) in slow-motion. You've got to be right or wrong. I love the satisfaction when you are right — and the agony when you are wrong."[22] Hochuli finds similarities between the football field and courtroom saying, "On the football field, people like that I'm in charge and know what I'm doing, but a lot of the time, it's just appearance. I'm going to sell you on my decision. It's the same in the courtroom. You don't stand in front of a jury and say, 'I think my client is innocent.' You say, 'We're right!'"[9] Which actually makes me think maybe NFL refs are just better at bullshitting but I honestly think they're very good compared to refs in... just about everything. Although that quote I guess does highlight how much pressure referees really are under.

I can't tell you about baseball at all or what the fans of that sport think of their officials, tbh. But honestly, NFL refs are about a million times more respected by fans than any football referee I've ever seen in my life... and quite frankly, that's because they make the correct decision most of the time. The times where calls are disputed, it usually gets talked about for weeks. You compare that with the refereeing oddities we see in England now and you get at least 1 high profile error each day there's a side playing it feels like. With the NFL referees go to review the video footage, they overwhelmingly make the right call. The one time I'd heard of NFL referees being shite consistently was when the actual professional referees went on strike and they had to bring in school referees who were nowhere near as good (a lot of them are trying to become actual NFL refs and tbh it's a hard job to get, with lots of people trying to get that job and with the bar for entry being very high). It was basically like having League 1/2 referees in the premier league, it was incredible how bad they were. I think that might have actually been my first or second year in America, but it was definitely the first year I'd tried to get into the NFL so I remember that pretty vividly. With the actual referees that are supposed to be officiating, I only really remember one really really egregious wrong call after it went to video review. NFL referees aren't perfect... but they're really fucking good in comparison to referees in a lot of sports. But it's American football, it's a sport where there's a shitload of dead time - the referees aren't getting absolutely knackered constantly running everywhere. They've also got huge teams of officials and (as far as I know because they want to be a bit secretive about VAR for some reason) use far more camera angles for reviewed decisions. So there's obvious differences between the two sports - but I do think there's things we can learn from the standards the US expects of the NFL referees. We could go one step further and add a bit more transparency to VAR review by having the referees mic'd up so and asking them to explain their decision-making process to the TV. The NFL doesn't do this, but that short term XFL league from earlier this year had it (before COVID killed that league off) and... it was actually pretty great, and tbh any sport with video review should have the ref mic'd up.

Such a very British scandal, for sure. It's because the government doesn't want to address: i.) the obvious racism that clouds our society; ii.) the fact that many in government benefitted from use (or misuse, rather) of data collection & targeted misinformation campaigns.

I hope they say confirm that it's made of cheese

Yeah, he's not really put into that bad of a situation at all tbh. I do agree with @Lucas that Arsenal probably haven't handled this situation well. But at this point, the relationship between the player and club seems so badly deteriorated and Arsenal haven't really made any secret that Ozil is no longer wanted/needed by the club - they've been looking to work with him for an acceptable way out for a while now. I'm not sure how shocked he can really be that he's not been registered to play in the league this season... I think he was likely to get less than a handful of matches at all this season if he had been registered. I know it's Arsenal's fault for offering him a wage he'd never get elsewhere, so he's got no incentive to move really... but if he wanted to have any significant time on the pitch at all this season, he should have made a move away from Arsenal. He dared Arsenal to pay him without playing him, they've sort of called his bluff here.