Panto_Villan

It won’t surprise anyone to learn that this week’s episode is excellent. There’s a bit with an Imperial cruiser that I particularly enjoyed.

Oh yeah, Ukraine clearly isn’t at fault here and I’m not trying to say it is. The only reason this happened is because Russia was firing missiles at Ukraine. It’s just a shame so many of the major info sources on Ukraine seem to have turned into clickbait.

I’ve gone off a lot of the accounts I’ve been following on Twitter after this missile attack and the Kerch bridge attack. Quite a few people who initially seemed well informed seem more interested in confirming their biases these days. It always seemed a distinct possibility that the missile was an errant Ukrainian S300 missile defence missile, especially when the debris images came out and it looked exactly like a S300. Lots of people claiming on Twitter that even entertaining the possibility was just fuelling Russian propaganda ironically are just giving Russian propagandists more to work with. A lot of them are the same accounts that seemed to be convinced that the Kerch bridge attack was a result of the US giving the Ukrainians long-range ATACAMS ammo for their HIMARS (which was clearly not the case, especially in hindsight) and ridiculing anyone that thought differently.

I wonder if they'll do what they did with Snake Island and just put up a Ukrainian flag and then leave, basically daring the Russians to try and take it back with all that Ukranian artillery nearby? As you say, it makes absolutely no sense to try and leave soldiers there to defend it.

Glad he put in a good performance today, for his sake as much as ours. Perhaps another player who will benefit immensely from playing in a position that they're actually suited to? But we'll have to see how it goes, as he's been terrible for a long time prior to this.

You act like it’s an amazing act of deduction, but it probably only took a 5 minute chat with Danny to discover what setup allows him to play at his best. I’m sure he’s been around long enough to know what works for him and what doesn’t.

Yeah, this is what I’m thinking too. Although I’d rather he wasn’t there at all.

I don’t understand why McGinn is on the pitch

To be fair the president can just veto any legislation from congress that he doesn’t like, so that second part is only relevant if you’re the party in opposition.

Senators serve 6 year terms so it’s always good to win senate seats, and while you need both houses to pass legislation it’s obviously easier to only need Republican assistance in one house than both. Also the Senate specifically is the one that gives approval for judicial and government posts, so it’s quite important. It’s how the Republicans have engineered their dominance of the Supreme Court.

I guess there’s an argument to be made about whether Biden specifically is looking like a strong candidate or not. I’ve seen quite a few opinion pieces arguing he shouldn’t run again. Personally I think he wins the Biden vs Trump matchup, because Trump is such damaged goods at this point (and that’s what these elections are showing, along with a pushback against the loss of abortion rights). But I think he’ll lose against DeSantis, who is barely half his age and more likely to be the Republican candidate imo. I think the democrats (and America) would be much better off with someone like Newsom tbh.

I think we’d be getting a bit ahead of ourselves to start worrying about that, tbh!

Yeah, the incomplete info I’ve seen on Twitter seems to suggest most of the Russians have already withdrawn. Maybe they took a lot of casualties last night, maybe not. But it doesn’t appear like there’s a lot of Russians stranded on the wrong side of the river.

Facebook has been wildly profitable for a long time. It’s a much better market for ads than Twitter because it has far more info on each user and hosts many more communities, whereas Twitter is mostly just a place for people to argue with each other. I imagine Instagram is profitable too (within Facebook) for the same reason. So I guess it’s largely down to the type of social media. Advertisers pay more money for more targeted traffic.

They don’t need to attack over the massive river to drive the Russians out, Ukraine holds territory to the north which is on the eastern bank. They can just attack south from that instead.

I’m not sure it would. Part of the problem is regulation and content moderation - a company with that many users would quickly find itself fined out of existence if it didn’t have a team that was at least mostly on top of that stuff. Which means you need to have quite a lot of income to cover the daily running costs, at least so far as I can see.

Realistically it’d be extremely difficult for the Ukrainians to attack over the river though, even against a Russian force in disarray.

Twitter has never made money. Not sure who would want it.

It’s worth opening this tweet and reading the whole thread. Sounds like tonight might be an absolute disaster for the Russians.

It’s quite possible we’re witnessing the most disastrous takeover of all time here. I’ve warmed to Twitter since I started using it to follow the Ukraine war, but I think I’d be fine with it collapsing if it was sufficiently funny. Which it is so far.

Yeah, a top-class episode. I'm not sure if I preferred the action in Ep. 6 over this one or not; they were both quite different and stick in the mind for different reasons. I'm just sad there's only two more weeks left of this (and then it'll take roughly two years to make the next series).

It’s hard to know. He’s deliberately positioned himself as being as culturally extreme as Trump, but without being as irrational or incompetent, because that’s the most plausible path to the Republican nomination. It’s possible he’d tack towards moderation for the election proper, and perhaps even further in office. He was formerly more moderate (although you can say that about most Republicans). But equally he might not. Would Trumpism work if you don’t fully commit to it? TBH even if his policies are identical DeSantis would be better than Trump because he’s not an idiot. I can’t imagine him believing Putin over his own intelligence services, for example. I think if he ran he’d win the nomination. I also think there’s a reasonable chance Trump would run as an independent out of spite if that happened, which would be hilarious!

I love that you edited this and now it makes even less sense than before

Poor guy is 29. They’re already fitting him for a coffin.

“Play like your dad’s not watching”