Dr. Gonzo

I think they both have their place for our community. I definitely don't agree with shutting the Discord down. Imo, I think the Discord needs a bit of a cleanup - but I think in the long run it's good for the community having the discord because it's a much more dynamic platform. It's just not the same as a forum - which is why it's good having the forum back too. The forum's definitely easier to follow and it's easier to reference back to discussions that were had. Discord's a much more interactive social experience because there's more real time discussion - so it can be a lot more conversational. They both have pros and cons. We're still in the early days of having a Discord server, let alone having both a forum and a discord at the same time - there's going to be some growing pains as we figure out the best ways to implement having both. But in the long run, I think having both is the best move for us as a community.

I've just been very busy so I've been less active

@Cicero tagging you because you never made the switch over to Discord and people were asking where the fuck you were constantly.

Sadly I can't use the laugh reaction as I've used up my rep points for the day.

Yeah, I'd prefer a year if that's possible - thanks!

Can I pay for a year subscription all at once? I'll start subscribing once I've moved into the new house. Glad to be back on the forum, even though I did really like Discord - we're going to keep using both, right? I'll be on both.

Yeah and what Pakistan's given is probably the equivalent of buying at a few hundred of houses in Australia. And they've sent missiles, not rockets. It's not insignificant aid. It's not like Pakistan's just sent over 5 quid and a couple of grenades. Honestly, the aid they've sent over despite the shit Pakistan has been dealing with in recent times (floods, border clashes, Balochi separatist terrorism, and a more belligerent Taliban, and serious financial trouble with the debts they have to China)... sort of makes some of Ukraine's EU allies look like stingy arseholes considering they're a lot more stable... and are directly relying on Ukraine winning this war. Looking at the trade between the countries, Ukraine and Pakistan actually have a long history of military supplies and equipment sold. And a long history of agricultural engineering products, as well as Ukraine's grain exports. Pakistan's got a long history of preferring to do business with Ukraine over Russia, which is probably a spillover from Russia and India having fairly close ties during the Cold War tbh. I don't think Russia's going to try to expand this into a larger war by dragging more countries in, because I think Russia's military has exposed itself as a load of shite that's only good at killing Wahabi dickheads the Saudis have funded, but haven't trained, in Syria. If they drag too many real countries into their stupid war, I assume they'll find themselves embarrassed.

Mexico's a fucking clown show right now, tbh. Mass protests against the current government, meanwhile AMLO is posting shit about finding mythical woodland elves in Mexico on instagram instead of worrying about their economy falling to pieces and cartels having free reign over everything in Mexico.

Pakistan's given millions in humanitarian aid and over 10,000 missiles to Ukraine...

I think if this expands to India & Russia v. Pakistan & the West, we'd probably have been passed the point of nukes being launched so at that point who's really arsed - most of us are probably dead. The whole thing would be a weird shitshow. India hates China and Pakistan and they like Russia. China likes Russia and hates India. Pakistan hates India, loves Turkey and the Saudis, has good (although sometimes its on-and-off) relations with the west (especially the US). They both like Iran, who hate the US and the west, and who like China and Russia. I think you're right it's not in the same stratosphere as Russia v. Ukraine, I think it's a lot more contentious and messy historically speaking and if it expands into an actual world war with these countries as participants... it'd be an absolute fucking mess. I think there's a lot that's less clear cut about how the fuck that would go compared to the EU, NATO and the US worried about authoritarian expansion into Europe, Europe's energy issues, and protecting US hegemony. Pakistan has a long history of weapons deals with the West & India's got a long history of weapons deals with Russia. India having better ties with Russia, and Pakistan having better ties with the US goes back directly to the cold war. Pakistan selling weapons to Ukraine sounds like something Pakistan's government was ordered to do by the US, and that they were keen to follow the order because it benefits them staying in the good graces of the US considering what happened to their last PM who did not have the best relationship with the US. Pakistan want to be like Turkey, a country that can straddle the line between western ally and working with western enemies - to best serve their own interests. Pakistan gets less leeway to act in it's own interests though because they're not members of NATO like Turkey is. Whereas Turkey's importance in terms of where it's located in the world and the NATO nuclear weapons it houses mean it's firmly a western ally... but they do get to fuck around and make deals with Russia that Pakistan can't get away with.

Isn't that the opposite of what the US Energy Dept (why were they investigating this though lol) is saying though? If it was from eating bats or pangolins, it wouldn't be a lab leak - if it's a lab leak it's from that Wuhan institute of virology or whatever it's called. If it is indeed man made, it makes China's lack of transparency in the early days of the pandemic make a lot more sense. It also is another sign that the close economic ties with China the west has need to be looked at and more western businesses probably should be incentivised to move from China, because if Russia has taught the west anything, it should be that economic dependence on an authoritarian and increasingly aggressive state is something that probably shouldn't be encouraged. And it's made all the more stark if you're talking about a country that manufactured a virus that basically fucked up the whole world for a couple of years. Also, if true, how embarrassing for China to have created this disease, being responsible for killing a shitload of people worldwide, and then having to see the western world manage to recover quicker and more meaningfully in terms of "going back to normal."

Think they’ve got untapped oil and gas reserves & are one of the world’s largest grain exporters

It’s also about resources with Ukraine isn’t it?

Oh, I thought it was about their Ukraine war I'm still not so sure the USSR was particularly innocent in their entry to WW2... didn't they carve up Poland with the Nazis? Maybe it wasn't their intent to get backstabbed by Hitler... but I think they brought themselves into the war by helping invade Poland.

Funniest things about this are: A year ago in Russia it was illegal to call this a war, instead of a "special operation." Also, the Saddam Hussein style way of thinking if you invade a country, you didn't necessarily start the war is always hilarious. How brainwashed are people to think they can invade a country and not be the country that "started it?" At least when the US and UK lied about invading Iraq, they made it more believable than just claiming Iraq attacked them. They really need to up their propaganda game, this is just sad and pathetic.

I don't like the man's father - because he was a foreign imposed dictator that came after a popularly elected PM was ousted for wanting to do what was best for his country economically - but Reza Pahlavi has said all of the right things in the wake of these uprisings & is probably now the most prominent member of what Iranians are calling the "coalition of resistance" - which is probably the closest thing this movement has to any real leadership. Despite being the son of an ousted dictator, he's rejected the notion that Iran should go back to absolute monarchy and is very strongly pushing the idea that the EU needs to be more focused on pushing towards regime change leading to secular democracy in the country. He makes a few points about why this would be an economic and security benefit to the EU (and Europe as a whole). I think he should be listened to, especially as Iranians are begging EU politicians to label the revolutionary guard (who basically now control the entirety of Iran's economy) as a terrorist group, like the US has. I still think if the IRI falls, leadership for Iran should come from within Iran... and I'm sure many of the domestic leaders in the movement there are in places like Evin. But this coalition of prominent Iranians in the diaspora is proving useful in coordinating both the diaspora and Iranians in Iran - and Pahlavi is saying all of the right things to try to persuade the west to actively do more without dropping bombs.

Tbh it's probably all bollocks his agent is making up and feeding to the press so he can get the best possible deal when he renews at Chelsea.

German-Iranian sentenced to death today: https://iranwire.com/en/prisoners/114019-iranian-german-dissident-sharmahd-sentenced-to-death-in-iran/ I think he's the guy the IRI kidnapped from Dubai because of his work with opposition groups within Iran. But still the EU refuses to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization because of the desire to have low energy costs.

Wtf was that a journo fishing to get a manager to endorse racist behavior?

I love how you’ve posted this after months of twerking for MBS

Would be funny if it hardly makes a difference because they spend so much already.

Yeah the positive stuff is really nice to see, because honestly seeing how the IRI's responded to people demanding... basic human rights... has been pretty disturbing and honestly it's not been great for my mental health. But the positive stuff, like these organizations coming together despite ideological differences for a common cause for a better Iran... it's good to see things like that in the face of the IRI's brutality. And thanks. They're mostly okay, although - they've not been totally unscathed by everything that's happened in the past few months - none of them have been killed, at least. But it's not been an easy time these past few months.

Lmao did you edit on Terry & that Chelsea crest?

Yeah, there's an argument that using sample sizes that are too high is unnecessary/inefficient for research - as well as arguably unethical (and conversely, using sample sizes that are too small is considered unscientific and unethical). But there's a few things to consider when you need to determine the sample size of a survey: 1.) population size; 2.) the confidence interval (the margin of error you're allowing for in the survey - a lot of the time with surveys you see online it's a margin of error of + or - 5%); 3.) the confidence level (how confident you are that the actual mean of the results falls into the confidence level; 4.) the standard deviation (a lower standard deviation means the values will be clustered around the mean, a high standard deviation means they're spread across a wider range) - when you haven't yet run a survey, don't know what your standard deviation's going to be... .5 is what's used on a lot of surveys. In statistics there's something called a z-score you use for formulas trying to take your confidence level and plug it into a formula to get the required sample size. For a 95% confidence level (with that +/- 5% margin of error I mentioned) the z-score = 1.96. There's a few different formulas you can use to determine a sample size. One common one is Cochran's formula, which is: necessary sample size = (z-score)2 x Standard deviation x (1-standard deviation) / (margin of error)2 , so plugging all that shite I talked mentioned above necessary sample size = (1.96)2 x .5(.5) / (.05)2 ... (3.8416 x .25) / .0025.... .9604/.0025... 384.16 And since you can't sample .16 of a person, the necessary sample size is 385. Then there's a correction formula for Cochran's formula for "small populations", which is: adjusted necessary sample size = the necessary sample size we got above / 1 + (necessary sample size from above - 1)/size of population being sampled. So filling in those variables with the Netherlands' population (which you'll see, we don't really need to do because the Netherlands does not have a small population) adjusted sample size = 385 / 1+ (384/17.5m)... 385 / 1 + ( .00002194)... so 385/1.00002194... 384.991553 & since we can't sample .99 of a person, that's 385. It's important to note that statistical significance is not always the same as research significance (though they can be related) and there are a lot of variables that go into whether a sampled population is considered quality or not. Apologies for the random statistics lesson!