Dr. Gonzo

Biggest day of protests in Iran since the winter rolled around. And then the Jerusalem Post says that Khamenei has funneled $4b USD to his son's account in Venezuela. While the thievery is disgusting, and likely to go unpunished, I hope this means the end of the IRI is near and these bastards are planning on fleeing like the cowards they are. 20 independent union organizations in Iran have also made their demands for what they want to see changed in the country before they stop calling for strikes and protests: Unconditional release of all prisoners and a public trial of those responsible for suppressing protests Freedom of expression, thought, local and national union gatherings, strikes, social networks, press and political parties Abolition of the death penalty and torture Full equality between man and women in all fields + end of all discrimination against sexual minorities and the decriminalisation of sexual orientations Separation of politics and religion Sounds great to me, I hope they succeed.

That's a big enough sample size to get statistical significance for sure. Doesn't mean there aren't necessarily flaws with the sampling selection - if they're just getting 1000 samples from one city that's a flaw, for sure, and I don't have that info. But that's certainly a big enough sample size. The "ideal" sample size really is on a case-by-case basis, there's no set standard & there are a lot of variables.

Being a bigot in a lot of countries is socially acceptable, unfortunately. I agree with you it shouldn’t be, but we also live in a world where “fuck your race” is a socially acceptable insult in a big Western European nation. I think that’s pretty fucking racist. In the caucuses, the ethnic hatred between Armenians & Turks is massive & the way they publicly talk about each other is honestly appalling. By the same token if we don’t ever think racism is acceptable in the UK… then how the fuck do we explain the racial abuse we see come from the UK. There are a lot more people who think bigotry is socially acceptable than you’ve said. I agree with you in an ideal world it should never be allowed… but the world’s an absolutely fucked place. And there’s a disgusting amount of racism out in it. Even in countries where racism is largely frowned upon. 100 people is what most people who work with stats would consider the bare minimum to get statistical significance from a country. I agree with you the studies you posted took better sample sizes. I also think some of the questions posed lead to biases.

I mean there's response bias also in questions like "would you like a neighbor of another race," especially in countries where being a bigot is socially unacceptable to a lot of people and even bigots know that. That can play into whether or not people are responding to the surveys truthfully. If they aren't convinced by the anonymity of the survey, they'll be more inclined to lie. There's also this survey, which tbh I don't know anything about the methodology other than the number of responses (which isn't great, because typically you're hoping for a sample size of at least 100 for any kind of statistical significance... and for this survey they're teetering around 100 for most of the surveyed countries. But I also think the question they asked is less likely to invoke response bias from people in the west: https://www.indexmundi.com/surveys/results/8 And just looking at around the top of that list, I feel like that actually makes more sense. You've got South Africa which has struggled with racism for... fucking ages... even in a post-Apartheid world. You've got South American countries that have huge racial divides and inequity between the majority of their population & indigenous people. There's Afghanistan where the Taliban have been pushing Pashtun supremacy for as long as the Taliban has been a thing, aside from the other religious bullshit they push. There's Saudi Arabia which doesn't surprise me based off my own anecdotal experience. And a few of the big developed western countries that have had noted significant racial issues as well. The thing I'm most surprised about is China not being in the top 5, tbh, but again that's also probably just because of my anecdotal experience. I think we'll struggle to find an accurate survey that really tells us which people are the "most racist" - it's the type of survey that's going to be inherently flawed from the get-go imo because it is so hard to remove response bias. And you'd need to get pretty large samples from most (if not all) countries in the world. Either way, my initial point was very much about what we see on social media regarding football players experiencing racism. And honestly with social media & English language racial abuse, we're mostly going to find the racists racially abusing players are in the Anglosphere and other English speakers in the developed world.

I've only been to Mexico City & some cities/towns in Baja California, so I can't really help with satellite towns around Mexico City. But Mexico City is one of the cooler places I've been to in North America by a long, long distance.

@nudge some reports are saying the objects/balloons might be lost ad balloons from used car dealerships Idk if I've ever seen car dealerships use balloons to advertise in my life, but hilarious if true. Could also be bullshit to cover up the fact they've killed aliens/destroyed drug running balloons/killed aliens running drugs from Canada to the US.

Hopefully it comes to streaming soon, it looks hilarious.

Mexico City is a cool enough place in itself.

Yeah, if I were Yemeni I'd probably be so fucking angry at pretty much every country involved in that civil war. From the regional powers backing groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and on the other side the Houthis... to the western countries brought into the Saudi coalition to that war. I think that's a natural reaction to a foreign backed rebellion movement to ousting a foreign backed puppet government & having your life torn apart by so many foreign powers having a power struggle and destroying your home with modern warfare & vile tactics like starvation and disease being used as a weapon of war. Idk how they don't score higher than 34% tbh.

I've just seen this: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-nato-politics-government-romania-51d19e9fa8c53c54974e460ca5b8add3 Are these the first UFOs in this recent trend of 2023 weird shit in the air found in Europe?

Actually they just called them "objects" when they made their most recent statement... but I hadn't heard they weren't balloons so I thought they were just tired of saying balloon over and over again. I guess they're not balloons, but just weird flying things. I wonder what the fuck they actually shot down. I wonder if the debris that "might never be recovered" is cocaine or heroin that has definitely already been recovered and is either going to be used to be sold to fund clandestine operations not to be reported on the US budget... or if it's just going to be used at some US 3 letter agency party.

Back to the balloons - so the US has said the 3 "mystery objects" they shot down after the Chinese balloon was shot down were private with likely no links to China. Makes me wonder if drug traffickers were using balloons to get drugs over the US/Canada border... and China fucking around with their balloon got them noticed. No idea what organised crime is like around Canada... but I like this theory more than I like the aliens theory.

Players like that can be useful though. Milner looks on his last legs now, but he’s been a very important squad player for us with his ability to be a Jack of all trades & slotting in wherever he’s been needed. For me though Mount doesn’t seem to be as versatile as Milner imo. But Mount’s still quite young too.

Doesn’t sound like a good fit for us tbh

Some of our more reliable journos have suggested we're seriously interested in making a move for Mount. Thoughts @Cicero & @Bluewolf? I've always thought he was kind of just like a low budget Lampard but with that same big game mentality... at least up until this season. I'm not sure how well he'd really fit us in that midfield 3 that Klopp likes to play and is unlikely to shift from. Not that I think he's a bad player or anything... just think he'd probably be asking for a lot in wages and if there is a transfer fee (is his contract expiring, I wouldn't have thought so) it'll probably be an absurd amount. But I think it's also a sign that the hopes for us signing any of our top choice midfielders from last summer are dead and buried, unfortunately. But I think regardless, the rest of the footballing world has to know we're desperate for midfielders after this season... so I don't see any scenario where we're not paying over the odds for midfielders, unfortunately.

I just think with how vast space is it's weird to assume that we're the only form of intelligent life out there. There's so much out there, it seems to me that there's a decent chance that there's at least one planet out there in space that's like earth that's got many life forms of various sorts living on it like earth does.

I think the probability of them existing has nothing to do with how little we know about our solar system or our galaxy - it'd be the same probability. The lack of knowledge out there about what's going on in space is more to show why it's not unsurprising we've never had any encounters with any other intelligent life. Imo if you've got life in space... it's alien life. And if that life is about as intelligent as an ape or something, we could probably call that intelligent life. And I just think considering the overall vastness of space... it's just likely there's other life that's out there that's what we'd call intelligent. It might be really far away - it might be closer than we ever thought and we just are blissfully ignorant because we don't know enough about space just yet. It's like if we only knew definitively about one part of the Atlantic ocean, but weren't sure about it. So let's say we only knew about the Atlantic by the UK - and we know there's fish in the ocean there. But we don't know about the rest of the ocean, would we just assume that the fish in the UK are the only fish out there in the world? Just considering the sheer amount of vastness in space, it's just seems likely there's probably intelligent life out there that we've never come across.

It just seems unlikely to me that humans are the only "intelligent life" out there when you really think about how small our planet is, or even our galaxy (I think the next closest galaxy to the Milky Way is significantly bigger than the Milky Way itself). Considering the size of everything, how small of an area we occupy in space... I just think it's probable that there's other life out there that's at least as about as intelligent as us. Especially when you factor in how little we actually know about what's going on even within our own solar system... let alone beyond it. If there's life out there in another galaxy, it's no wonder we haven't found them and they haven't found us given what we know about space exploration with current technology.

If it's aliens searching for "intelligent life" there's no way they'd be wanting to come to earth in the first place - at least not to talk to humans, maybe they're interested in dogs and cats.

I think it's more likely they do exist than if they don't exist. We don't really have any proof either way though.

Looks like the same kind of cat as Peanut!

Eagles also had a player arrested for rape shortly after that game against the 49ers. It's the NFL though it's a league full of rapists, wife beaters, murderers; you name a crime & chances are that the league is pretty soft on it unless it's drugs... they really hate drugs. Unless they're performance enhancing drugs, they're softer on those than they are with recreational drugs. I don't really like either team. I suppose I'm more against Patrick Mahomes than I am for any side, so I guess I'm with the Eagles.

Didn't Barca want him during their crack smoking era though? Like where they signed Coutinho and Griezmann even though they had Messi playing in their preferred positions of the pitch and... he was Messi. I'm not sure I'd consider their recruitment during that period to be particularly sound tbh.

My wife and I are playing it together. We made a wizard named Hugh Jaynus (because for some reason that's okay, even though it wouldn't let us to Hugh Janus), answered some questions and got put into Ravenclaw and tbh it's pretty fun even though I was never really the biggest Harry Potter fan.