Dr. Gonzo

I wish. I’m very shit at sleeping generally & I think it’s really hard to sleep on planes.

He's been great so far, tbh I think he's been our best performer so far (granted, it's early days and we've had a few bad performances before this 9-0). He's started every match so far, I don't know if that will be the case once Thiago is back tbh - but if he keeps performing well, it's possible. I certainly think he's not far away from being a permanent starter if he keeps developing. No idea how far he is from an England cap - I don't know how Southgate views midfielders like him tbh. I don't think he will want to break away from central midfield of Rice & Phillips though... so if he does make it into the England squad, I don't think he'd regularly play in the centre where Klopp likes playing him. Idk if he played as a central midfielder or a winger for you though.

How long are the episodes? I need to load up some content for a very long flight and now that I'm close to done with Better Call Saul, I need something to watch on that long flight. Is it just the one episode out now, or two?

It happens, it's been a long week

I said for the word rival? I think I just misunderstood @Stan

The year Dortmund were shit under him though they weren't terrible, they still created decent chances. They just were shit at putting those chances away. We've looked bad in all 3 league matches though, so it's maybe worse. I think it's a bit lazy journalism to say "look he had 7 years at Dortmund and it went to shit" and then see our current form and think "ah ha, it's the 7 year curse" - I don't think we've been tremendously unlucky. I think we've just been bad.

Doesn't that sort of go against "the competitive nature?"

But were we even at the same levels? We were good, but not great, and mostly a cup team in that era. Chelsea were expected to compete on pretty much all fronts.

Tbh I don't even think those games are that "classic" other than the ghost goal one (but I'm biased).

Well it's football, so put the "normal" definition back in the dictionary because it's stupid to call every team your rival even though they literally all are rivals because you are facing them in a competition for something Imo your footballing rivals are the ones like derbies (for us Everton) or your hated enemies (Manchester United). A lot of Liverpool fans do hate Chelsea, but mostly for reasons that Chelsea are generally disliked by a LOT of clubs: far right dickheads & racism... and even I know that's not what a lot of Chelsea fans like about their club and it's probably something that pisses a lot of them off too. In essence, this.

Pretty impressive Liz Truss has managed to piss off a key ally before ever becoming PM.

Nah not really. Arsenal and Chelsea are both big matches but I wouldn’t really consider either a rival

Well why would that continue beyond a brief period? Tbh that was really just fueled by the detest Mourinho and Rafa had between each other. That’s going to be a motivating factor in how the players react too. Idk what you mean by “players, manager, and clubs” being at each other if you don’t give a fuck about the fans… because what else could club mean? Their boardrooms? As far as I know they never hated each other - they probably liked the media hype around the fixtures because marketing.

It's probably because in a lot of peoples' eyes we aren't/weren't rivals. There's no real connection for us hating Chelsea other than: having a lot of money & that the Chelsea fanbase has a lot of fucking tories. So from a lot of Liverpool fans perspectives, seeing Chelsea fans work themselves up about us was particularly funny - like a lot of them got bored of Fulham being their local rival so they had to make up a rivalry about us. Not so much from the lads we know on the forum, who are pretty sound, but a lot of the "banter" from Chelsea fans did end up making a lot of us seriously detest them because it just reeked of classism. But despite the classic matches from that era... it's not like we were ever really in competition with Chelsea at that time. We were never really serious contenders for the league title, other than one year (where Chelsea didn't win) - it was more of Rafa just having us punch above our weight in the CL against them in the "ghost goal" match that I feel really kicked off the "rivalry." That Rafa & Mourinho detested each other maybe made it seem like more of a rivalry to neutrals. And I'm sure it didn't help that the media wanted to constantly bring up Lampard v. Gerrard, and they probably had a hand in manufacturing some animosity between the fans... but I don't think that made many Liverpool fans or Chelsea fans treat it like a serious rivalry. Just the smooth brain lads like @The Liquidator treated it as a serious rivalry. I guess it depends on your definition of "rival" though.

Honestly age doesn’t excuse the performances over the last 3 matches. It’s only a few months ago this old squad was working really hard and making other teams scared. Imo it’s a mix of complacency and tactics that just don’t really work + too much reliance on players that have been injury prone for years. That leads to tactical decisions that don’t work - Milner & Henderson as the pivot has never really worked throughout Klopp’s tenure. It’s not helped when Milner isn’t holding his position the whole match & when you’ve got Henderson, Elliott, and Trent all occupying the same pocket of space most of the match… we hardly had any actual midfielders in the centre of the pitch. That’s the biggest failing of yesterday, it was a massive tactical breakdown. The only thing I will say about age of players being an issue is we just can’t rely on Milner for anything other than an experienced player off the bench. But the alternative is playing Henderson with 2 teenagers alongside him in a match away to a massive rival - We’re not that far removed from injury crisis ruining one of our seasons before. I think this season could be similar in that regard. But it should be better, but the players need to pull their fingers out because it’s not age that’s making players lose concentration. And it’s not age making Milner and Henderson completely unable to hold their positions.

Most of the republican party since Reagan have been neocons. The MAGA crowd has been the biggest ideological shift the party has seen in decades.

My friend told me a similar joke. Three Finnish men walk into a bar and each order a beer, one finishes his beer and asks for another. The other two glare at him for talking so much.

I've got a friend from Sweden who says the reason it's controversial is because she's too social and having too much fun to actually be Finnish - I dunno anything about Finnish stereotypes really other than they like drinking a lot, but sounds like they're pretty fucking funny stereotypes

I'm not surprised. Game of Thrones spinoffs are going to be how HBO milks content people are familiar with like the way Disney milks Star Wars and Marvel. Bet once Westworld is done, HBO tries to make some spinoffs out of that too.

Yeah, Liz Cheney (and her father before her) are definitely not people you can call RINOs - their party's traditional ideology is who they are at their political core. I hate her political beliefs, personally, but I don't think she's as morally depraved as the MAGA-cult brand of republicans. Her and Kizinger (idk if that's his name, but it's close at least) are repugnant politically, but are at least true to the values of their party and not white nationalists. Meanwhile the MAGA branch of their party seems to be primarily ideologically driven by white nationalism, religious fanaticism. They do both crossover in their craven loyalty to the billionaire class and corporate interests though.

How does that make her a RINO (not rhino, it stands for "Republican in Name Only") if she has the actual conservative values of the republican party? This new wave of Republicans with no real actual values and no real plan for governance other than tax cuts for the wealthy and promoting culture wars and division are the true RINOs. They're both linked by their slavish devotion to the ultra-wealthy and corporations, but outside of that... there's a smaller wing of the party that stands by the party's ideological principles - and then team MAGA that's taken the reigns which really only cares about using culture wars and identity politics to divide the country so they can retain power. The media, of course, loves the MAGA cult because their pushing of division - and when they're in control of the executive branch, the scandals they generate on nearly a daily basis, generate people giving them the clicks and views that keep the ad revenue paying them. So it's no coincidence the US is doomed to having it's electorate having to wage culture wars foisted upon them instead of voting for serious people who are driven by political ideology.

I think she's going to run to split the vote between real republicans and whoever the MAGA-cult candidate ends up being - Trump or DeSantis most likely. Interestingly enough, it appears a member of Trump's inner circle has trashed his own "best defense" of the FBI raid situation with the classified documents - he claimed he had declassified the documents because he could just declare them declassified. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone has said they don't have the paperwork to declassify the documents in question. This demonstrates that: There's a proper procedure for declassifying documents that Trump was aware of The procedure requires documentation He understands the procedure, or at very least the legal representative of his administration understood the procedure So he knew he can't just declassify info by simply declaring it declassified. He knew there was a procedure to follow and document and he did not follow or document it. So what would be his legal defense now? That he can't tell right from wrong because he's never faced any accountability for his crimes? If that's the case, he's not got the moral character to be in any position of power.

Too cowardly to play us even though we've also been shit so far this season...

I think Erdogan is an awful shitty human, but there's no doubt his foreign policy game is very strong. The Ukraine-Russia war has been nothing but a series of wins for him. He's even leveraged Russia's deepened ties with Iran to restore diplomatic relations with Israel, which I think signifies that Israel and Turkey have plans for Syria and are counting on Russia not being able to maintain their strong presence there as this Ukraine war keeps dragging on.

So a long time ago, I read this book because I thought "well if the Iranian government hates it, it's got to be really good" ... ... so I read it and read it... and kept waiting for the shocking parts with blasphemy and for it to get interesting. And it wasn't blasphemous in the slightest and was just a really, really, boring book, imo. I now know the dream sequences featuring Mohammed are just considered blasphemous because they're just a depiction of Mohammed... but I think it seems incredibly fucking stupid to get so offended by the book and for people to call for his death (and pay to have a bounty made on him)... but I just don't think that it was really blasphemous despite the prediction. If anything, the dream sequences make Mohammed not look like an evil piece of shit and instead show him as someone who resisted being tricked by the devil. Rubbish book, though, but he doesn't deserve to get attacked or killed because the book is shit. Really shows the fucking idiotic priorities of the Iranian government, though. They've got money to throw at a potential murderer for a guy who wrote a book, but they won't do a fucking thing for the Iranians living in Iran. Evil monsters hiding behind their religion.