Panto_Villan

What? The only reason aid to Ukraine has stopped is because the Republicans control the House and their speaker is a tea party lunatic who won’t bring a bill to the floor. Everyone except Trump and the MAGA Republicans support aid more to Ukraine.

No? I admit I don’t follow it particularly closely, but my understanding was if the PGA tour merges with the Saudi one then their money is going to result in them exerting a lot of control? If you’re going reply maybe better to do it in the golf thread and tag me, as I guess we’re going slightly off-topic at this point.

The Saudis seem to be having success with golf but everything I've seen about the Saudi league is that it's just another Chinese league that will end in disappointment in five years time. Seeing Gerrard get another contract is just confirmation of that imo.

Yeah, it’s on game pass so I gave it a go. I’m enjoying it a lot too. It’s pretty rough in a lot of places (including game balance) but I can see why it’s so popular. It’s a very funny game too, especially when played with friends.

Trump would make the world WAY more dangerous. He's openly said he wants to pull the US out of NATO, and apparently told Europe he'd never help if it were attacked. So who would he actually help? Israel, probably. Maybe the Saudis because he seems to love them for some reason. But overall the entire world just returns to a "might is right" world, which either means lots of wars or lots of countries deciding the only sensible thing to do to keep themselves safe is start building nuclear weapons. Trump held up aid to Ukraine before the war because the Ukrainians refused to invent dirt on Hunter Biden for him - he literally got impeached over it. The Trump wing of the Republican party wants to cut off aid to Ukraine. I literally can't think of anything more "in Russia's pocket" than kicking the legs out from under Ukraine and then sabotaging NATO. I don't think Biden slept through any of it, tbh. If he'd launched a war with Russia over Ukraine you'd be calling him a dangerous maniac. If he'd let Putin take over Ukraine (like Trump would) he'd be an appeaser, which is equally dangerous in a different way. Providing Ukraine with weapons is probably the least dangerous thing he could have done, but then you're moaning that he's made things more dangerous by sleeping through it. What do you think he should have done, had he been awake?

Thanks. I feel like you’re massively underestimating the potential for things to get worse for the US there, tbh, but I won’t lecture you about your own country. Can you explain why you think Biden is unfit for office and incompetent? Not judging, just curious (although I doubt I’ll agree with you).

That's a name I can get behind!

Skimmed back a few pages and wow, that's a game I didn't expect to see being recommended on here. I love deep strategy games and my brain melted just looking at that thing. If you like your citybuilders then Against the Storm is a really interesting take on the genre, and I enjoyed it a lot.

I dunno. I get what you're saying, and you're right there's probably quite a lot of day-to-day decisions where there's a handful clear options to choose between. In those cases even a mentally diminished Biden could consider things and make a sensible decision, although obviously things would be much more complex if the Democrats were infighting or they didn't control both Houses. But the real concern is what happens in a crisis. Say the Hamas attack on Israel a few months ago, for instance. Even purely in terms of foreign policy it's a hugely complex situation with a lot of variables and few good options, and even the options themselves are changing by the hour. Plus there's all sorts of domestic concerns too, about how your actions would be perceived by voters and whether you'll have the political support to achieve the objectives you want to, etc. Screw it up and you're at war with half the Middle East by lunchtime. Not to say that Biden won't be able to navigate those waters in another 4 years. He's done a decent enough job at age 81, after all. But if his faculties did decline then I think it could be much more of a problem than you're making out. Where has anyone here said they think people should vote for Trump instead of Biden due to his age?

I think that misunderstands both politics and business, tbh. The fact a large organisation has so many experts is part of the reason you have a President or a CEO - when the experts don't agree with one another (which is probably all the time), someone needs to listen to the different camps and actually make a decision between them. You've seen plenty of examples in UK politics of what happens when the leader isn't fully in control, as it ends in very public scrapping between different factions. Same happens inside businesses, it's just not usually all over the news.

Fishing for a Kenneth?

Yeah. Can you expand on your reasoning for this? Are you not bothered about the potential damage Trump could do to the US institutionally, and the wider Western world? Or do you believe it's fearmongering and actually it'll all be fine if he's elected?

I think they'll go harder, if anything. Biden is still older than Trump, and it's not like politicians have much problem being hypocrites. For me personally I'm not sure both of them will die in the next five years, but I'd certainly be surprised if they both manage to get to 2028 without one of them dying or being incapacitated by a serious medical condition. I'd still vote for Biden any day of the week but the thought of there being tough calls to make about war with Iran (or China) etc and the man responsible being 85 isn't exactly reassuring. Your brain just isn't working at full capacity once you reach that age. But imagine Trump getting dementia in office. At least Biden would probably have the good grace to stand aside. God knows what would happen with Trump, but it'd probably be far more dangerous and chaotic than him seeing out his whole term in his "normal" state of mind.

This is the other problem I have with crypto - I never feel like I should sell it. It keeps going up, right? I'm sure that'll never change. I had a friend who got into bitcoin really really early, and he just sold 10% of his crypto every year, no matter what level the price was at. Smart guy. Ended up buying a house in London with the money. Realistically my money in crypto is worthless because I'll still be holding it whenever the music finally stops.

I also decided a few years back to move a chunk of my bitcoin into ethereum, because it’s more environmentally friendly and generally more useful - I thought over time it might replace bitcoin. That hasn’t worked out super well for me. I think even if it becomes the “main” cryptocurrency then bitcoin is still going to be the one people speculate on financially.

Nah halving is when the mining rewards for each bitcoin block mined are halved. Basically it means there’s half as many new bitcoins being created when it happens. I might be doing @PieFacE a disservice here but I’m always skeptical of charts like that, as there always seems to be one telling me I should totally invest right now based on historical trends, and then it magically stops having any predictive power the moment I do

Yeah, it probably will. The general pattern is predictable enough - there's some mania and prices go crazy, then there's a crash but it bottoms out at a price significantly higher than it was before the mania. Then it ticks along for a few years until something triggers a new mania and random members of the public get interested again, and the cycle repeats. We're probably due another mania stage in the next few years, although it's impossible to predict when. I thought about buying a decent amount a few years back when bitcoin was at $3k but I didn't, as I didn't have any spare money. After the last crash I told myself I'd buy some if it ever dropped below $10k again but I don't think it ever went close. I've still got some lying around but I don't think I'll ever have an opportunity to go up to a whole bitcoin again!

It's really going to be key for Biden not to make any major gaffes in the debates later this year. Last time around the Republican attacks on him being old and senile backfired, because all he had to do was look compos mentis and he'd outperformed expectations. It'll kinda be the same this time too, but the guy will be a couple of weeks short of 82 on election day and the chances of him dropping the ball are going to be higher. Sorta feel like he should have groomed a successor over his term tbh.

Indeed. I did actually start writing out the whole “actually, it’s an IFV” post myself but I decided it would be too boring and pedantic even for me (Hence why I didn’t say the Bradley was a tank, just that it has a small gun compared to a proper tank.)

Haha, yeah. Looks bloody impressive, right? That’s actually a relatively small gun by tank standards though, it’s “just” a 25mm autocannon whereas a proper tank cannon is 105mm or 125mm or so. Thats why it fires so fast and why the tank wasn’t penetrated and the crew killed (even if it was knocked out and then abandoned).

There’s a degree of irony in watching Iran casually start lobbing missiles at a nuclear-armed state, given their apparent belief that getting their own will guarantee their security.

Yeah, and there were also “productive” meetings with the Republican speaker about unlocking more US aid to Ukraine, so maybe that’ll resume at some point in the next few weeks too. I also enjoyed this video of Russia’s most modern type of tank getting ruined by a Bradley (the armour wasn’t penetrated and the crew survived, but they were forced to abandon it).

I can certainly see why the hardcore Republicans that vote in primaries want to vote for Trump. As for the polls that suggest he’ll win the election, I think it’s hard to disentangle the effect of Biden being a relatively weak candidate from people being specifically pro-Trump. Certainly the pro-Trumpers you see online seem to love him because he’s a master at making the establishment lose its mind (or just “owning the libs”).

Sounds like literally the worst person in the world. Is it true he has “I luv Stevie G” tattooed across the inside of his eyelids, so he can go to sleep reading it?

I think I just threw up in my mouth (love you really)