Dr. Gonzo

Some shit that was spread around the Armenian community in Glendale to try to get Armenians to hate Jews.

How much pressure are both of these dickheads under now? Poch looks like a shadow of when he was a good manager at Spurs. His comments post-match after they got beaten by Everton are amusing too, considering the fortunes of the 2 clubs. One manager's operating on a shoestring budget and his club's financial violations have actually been penalised. Meanwhile another has an endless wad of cash and his club's financial violations are seemingly ignored. Chelsea fans are usually quick to turn on their managers, not as quick as their players, but still quite quick. And I think that's been a mistake for them in the past... but I'm not sure I'd have any faith in Poch after those comments. Saying you need to spend to compete is fine, but after you've spent a lot and the side looks worse for it... it makes you look like a bit of a fucking moron ; if Chelsea are seriously going to go spend an absolutely ludicrous amount again... 1.) that's hilarious, 2.) I can't imagine they'd want him to spend it. With Ten Hag, there's just been some serious regression for United on the pitch and he's demonstrated man management that makes me think "if I were a United player, I'd hate this guy." He did win manager of the month recently, but United still seem like a worse side than they looked last season. I assume Poch is under more pressure because this season he's basically looked pretty fucking useless... but I still can't look passed these 2 as being the next to go, even if I was wrong about one of them being the first to get the sack.

It's mental to see how radicalised people have become on reddit over this conflict. Pro-Israelis justifying absolutely insane genocidal rhetoric that would make the Nazis proud, pro-Palestinians that seem like they would be mortally wounded if they had to admit that what happened on October 7th was a barbaric act of terrorism. Social media really brought about the death of nuance in discourse in a way I never would have imagined.

Social media, especially the site formerly known as twitter, is full of people happy to pile on with hateful shite anytime anything comes up that is remotely close to whatever culture war shite is being promoted by the US news media. This has to do with whether or not women can do something on TV that's typically been a job reserved for men - so of course the chronically online who have nothing better to do with their lives than be useful idiots fighting culture wars online take to the culture wars. With something like "women can't talk about football on TV as good as men can" - that's going to get a huge number of misogynists and incels bitching and moaning about women. Yes, they should be more focused on trying to lose their virginities and fixing their miserable personalities that have them sad and lonely. But that's difficult, whereas being hateful little shits that blame women for all of life's problems comes easy to them.

Joey Barton is a massive twat. His family is full of nasty people, but the only reason Joey's not considered the worst Barton is because his brother literally killed someone by taking an axe to their head. Or as Joey Barton would describe it "my brother went to jail for a little scrap." The less attention we give to him and his thoughts, the better. Some people are just better off ignored. It's commentary - a man or a woman can possess the same skills to be a good commentator, it's not like they have to physically compete to give football commentary. Same with pundits.

The evolution of fullbacks isn't even that new. Cafu and Roberto Carlos are good examples of how some top fullbacks of the past were also incredible attackers - and in Cafu's case, an incredible defender as well as an incredible attacker. It's just as football has progressed, attacking fullbacks have evolved a shitload. Pep and Klopp have shown you don't even need to have the attacking fullback attack from the wide for these players to be incredible playmakers.

I do think if Israelis are serious about not wanting to appear genocidal on the world stage, they should do something about the political culture of extremists they've cultivated. this is insane genocidal rhetoric that does nothing to create peace between the two people. This is akin to shit Nazis said about Jews and that's why Israel gets criticised for acting like Nazis. Innocent Israelis and Palestinians end up dying because crazy people like this dickhead and the leaders of Hamas have power and they just want to kill off their "enemies." That is the most horrific thing about this conflict. For decades the world sits back and watches as innocent people die because two sides of genocidal fuckheads refuse to stop being genocidal fuckheads.

Again though, that's not really an issue with the sample size - the number of people that were asked the question is fine. That the findings are extrapolated to the entirety of the population from a sample of the population isn't really an issue with the survey. That's what surveys do, you take a sample size that's big enough to give you the confidence interval you want... and then you can take the data and use that to extrapolate to say "these are the findings for this population with whatever confidence level we used." The issue is we don't really know much else about the methodology. How was the question worded? Where did they find the 500 respondents? Were they all outside mosques? Because you'll probably find more diehard believers at Mosques. Every survey like this will have issues with bias - and there's things that can be done to minimise bias and get better results. And yes, getting a larger sample size can help (although you'll find after a certain point, adding to a sample size really doesn't change a whole lot). The Telegraph is reporting on the study because it's shocking to say 40% of UK Muslims support Sharia law. They don't really have a care about any bias problems in a survey. They care about spreading information that makes people afraid of Muslims and wants to end immigrants from those countries coming to the UK. But regardless of whatever biases do exist in the methodology that might taint the results... as someone who works with statistics an awful lot at work, I think its definitely concerning that any survey could lead to 40% of respondents being pro-Sharia law. Anything above 10% in a study with a 95% confidence interval would be concerning to me, even if the actual study had massive flaws. Because it is insane to me that people could have family that have brought them away from that kind of shit, or even found themselves fleeing or displaced from that shit, and still want that brought to the UK. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if one of the problems with this is asking immigrants from Muslim countries if they're a "British Muslim" might invoke a reaction like "absolutely not" - my mum's from a Muslim country, she is very much not religious and doesn't identify as religious at all even if her grandparents were practicing Muslims and her parents, my grandparents, identified as Muslim but in practice were very secular. So are they excluding a group of people they would have wanted included in the survey simply by the way the question is phrased? Are they limiting the possibility of appropriate respondents by making the population only "British Muslims?" Cos I am just shocked by even a very flawed survey (and I don't know how flawed this survey was) would end up with those results - although I still think it is concerning if that many believers felt that way in the UK. Regardless if nothing has happened in 17 years later to make Sharia law closer to happening - that's still a dangerous view to be held by a pretty large number of people.

I think options 1 and 3 bring the world closer to world war 3, so that's not great.

The military alliance with the US and UK is also a very strong deterrent, if they have a signed alliance it means an attack on Guyana will be responded to by all 3 nations. The huge increase in troops was probably a concession they need to make because the US and UK most likely don't want the optics of sending in troops to fight for oil companies and want to be able to point to the fact that they're strengthening Guyana so that it can defend itself if need be.

Stanistan.

Wanting a military alliance with the UK/US and buying US weapon systems is absolutely them feeling the support of the US and UK. This is the kind of support Saudi Arabia gets. Guyana will get US aid, that is then going to be turned around and spent on US weapon systems. In return, Guyana is armed to the teeth with advance military equipment as a deterrent to Venezuelan aggression. The US gets to feed its military industry complex, so they'll see it as tax dollars well spent.

But that sample size is good enough to give a 95% confidence interval in a population of 4m. The number of people asked isn’t really an issue to give out a statement saying x amount of people out of 4m people feel this way. You can say “it’s not enough people” but maths says it is. There’s always a degree of “wrongness” with surveys. They aren’t claiming to be 100% accurate. There’s other biases (sampling bias - so not getting a diverse enough group of people responding from to accurately reflect a population; response bias - who knows who answered truthfully and who didn’t; even the way the questions are worded can create a bias). I have no idea what possible flaws in the methodology - it definitely has some, all surveys do. They are all accurate and inaccurate to a degree. I think it’s strange 40% of the people asked were in a Tory stronghold and still they got the results they did tbh.

I do because I think the photos are being distributed as “revenge” for when Hamas paraded stripped captured IDF forces after their attack.

40% of UK Muslims wanting Sharia Law in the UK is still fucking disturbing and shocking. I’m the son of someone who was sent running from living under an Islamic theocracy. Iran wasn’t a free country, but it was a hell of a lot more free than it would become after 1979. A lot of people’s lives changed for the worst, a lot of people got arrested, tortured, and/or killed just for political views. They made pop music illegal! They even had to control what kind of entertainment people could enjoy! A lot of families from Muslim countries that fled the places where extremists pushing their insane views. For 40% of them to want that same kind of shit brought to the UK is nothing short of insanity. There’s nothing wrong with the sample size either. If there’s 3.9m Muslims in the UK roughly (that’s what Google told me so it could be wrong I just went with the first # I could find quickly to save time), if you want a survey with a 95% confidence interval - you’d only need a sample size of about 395 for a population of 4m. Obviously that doesn’t mean there aren’t other flaws in the methodology for the survey. But sample size isn’t one of them.

I would say it would be profoundly stupid for Maduro to go ahead with this annexation. Having said that, the kind of person that could lead an oil rich nation like Venezuela to economic failure is probably profoundly stupid.

These authoritarians with expansionist land grab goals are really something else. The US flies military planes over Venezuela to deter them from stealing land that doesn't belong to them and does belong to a nation friendly to the US. Venezuela calls it a provocation. Clearly someone's been taking lessons from Putin!

Just trying to let you know there's more to the world than the news and social media are showing you.

Now you're cooking with gas

Aw bless, do you think media coverage is necessary for a war to be going on? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

Honestly? What a fucking stupid thing to say. What progress has happened in Qatar? Pretty sure rights for the migrant workers (the people who are virtually slaves) didn't change at all. They're still an absolute monarchy that supports suppression of human rights in Iran. They're still a state sponsor of terrorism. The thing is now if mention Qatar to people, for a lot of people their mind goes to "omg that was the best world cup ever" or "I like their F1 track" - does it work for everyone? No, and I don't think anyone claimed it would work for everyone. Just because the term "sports washing" is fairly new, doesn't mean it's a new concept. Did China and Russia host the Olympics just for fun? Did China use their opening ceremony to try to highlight their military might to demonstrate their love of athletics? No. They hosted the Olympics for the same reason everyone hosts the Olympics or why everyone who hosts the World Cup wants to host it: partially as propaganda & partially to boost tourism. You don't need to use the words "sports washing" or have the media tell you what countries you're meant to like and dislike for the concept to be fundamentally the same. FFS the Nazis famously used the Olympics as an international propaganda event - what makes you think authoritarian governments would suddenly stop seeing it as a fantastic propaganda opportunity. I would say all Saudi Arabia or Qatar have to do is avoid starting any wars to see the good work of their sports washing go to waste... but I think Azerbaijan's proven that even that doesn't matter.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2023/12/07/Blinken-Guyana-Venezuela-Essequibo/7051701954496/ ExxonMobil's heavily invested in Guyana, so it's basically a given that if Venezuela does attempt to annex the area that the US will have a serious response.

Texas and California both have fringe weirdos that always talk a big talk on succeeding, but I doubt it ever happens because regardless of how big of an economic driver they are for the US... part of the reason they do so well is because they're a part of the US. I won't say it'd never happen because shit like Brexit also made very little economic sense, I think both in the short and long term, happens and a lot of voters in any democracy will go with what resonates with them emotionally. Both California and Texas have more to lose than to gain if they became independent states.

Tbh I don't think this has as much to do with the boycotts - the industry at large is having a slower than average holiday season.

Yeah that's very shit. He was in very good form and Matip at his best is one hell of a defender. Sad way for him to have likely played his last match for us.