Panto_Villan

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”

I’ve seen him in a few of these compilations over the years and I can’t even enjoy his rage because he’s such an unpleasant character to watch. He’s a weird combo of a whiny little bitch and someone with major anger management issues.

We really pick ‘em, don’t we?

**** me we've not done boring since Stevie G left, have we?

It’s all very depressing, but I feel like if either the EU or the US passed legislation forcing drinks to be sold in biodegradable packaging in say 5 years time, the big companies would be forced to figure out how to do it because those are such big markets. And once they’ve done it in one place, it’s easy to roll it out elsewhere too. Its a bit like the rules on car fuel consumption in California and Europe that force companies to raise standards everywhere.

What's ironic about all this is I have no particular affection for Purslow, and we're probably never really going to know if he's done a good job or not. If the owners saw fit to replace him then I'd be fine with it. They're really the only ones that know what he's responsible for, and whether he's done that job well. All I can see as a fan is that the club has moved forward while he's been in the job, and our transfer budget has been decent and the way we do business (no leaks etc) has been very professional. There's been no major off-field disasters related to the club that I can see, and when bigger clubs have come knocking for our best players (Grealish, Carney) then we've got very good prices for them. It's impossible to say how much of that Purslow is actually responsible for, so I'm not going to give him too much credit for it - but the fact he's still here means he's probably doing something right. I'm amazed how many people on here are apparently privvy to the inner decisionmaking of the four most important members of the AVFC hierarchy (the owners, Purslow, Lange) though. Either that, or there's a lot of gullible people willing to jump to conclusions based on almost no evidence.

It’s pretty obvious Purslow has already been fired and put on trial in The Hague for crimes against football. Source: trust me bro (also he looks sad).

Hmm. So it's the Empire I said wasn't being portrayed as one-note baddies, by which I mean they do a good job showing how many of the people (particularly the low level staff like the corporate staff in the first few episodes or the judge that Andor sees in ep7) are just normal people doing relatively normal jobs, but collectively that feeds into this massive evil empire. And even most of the actual Imperial officers aren't moustache twirling cartoon villains, they're just people with colonialist views. It's a much more nuanced take than other SW media without downplaying how evil the Empire is. Obviously Dedra is evil and has little empathy - she's a supervisor at the ISB, so she's one of the best of the best and fully devoted to the Empire. But she's interesting because she's perceptive - she can see the rebellion starting to form, see how the Empire cracking down is just fuelling the flames, and she has her own struggles as the only woman in the room and having to deal with petty backstabbing from less competent colleagues. It was cool seeing her take Blevin down a peg in their meeting a few episodes ago, for example. Anyway I think it's good for the show to have a ruthless and intelligent antagonist (and it certainly feels like she will be the main antagonist as the show develops), because in lots of the recent Star Wars fare the Empire has just existed as a bunch of mooks for the heroes to easily kill or outwit. It makes things way more tense imo. If you don't find the ISB scenes that interesting then fair enough, tastes are different. I personally think she's a great character to have in the show - if not a particularly sympathetic one most of the time.

Funny you say that, I think Meera and Syril are two of the best characters. Meera isn’t likeable but I find her very compelling to watch because she’s so competent, and the ISB scenes in general are great. It’s so much better having a ruthless, intelligent, competent Empire as the antagonists (even if they simultaneously humanise them so they’re not all one-note bad guys). Syril is probably the most interesting character in the show for me. He’s not the coolest to watch, as he’s basically the only main character who isn’t a badass in their own way, but he’s the closest thing to a normal person in the show because he’s relatively unimportant, and I’ve still got no idea where his arc is going which makes him interesting. He’s just as likely to end up a Rebel as he is an ISB Empire zealot imo. If Syril was a character in a lesser show I’d be concerned he was a waste of space, but the writing has been so good I’m sure all the time spent on him will pay off appropriately.

Another good episode of Andor today, but I think it suffers a little from being the middle episode in a three-episode arc. I think the reception would be WAY better if they'd released this three episodes at a time - as it is, they've built up a load of tension and I'm fully expecting the next episode to be absolutely great, but taken in isolation its a lot of a setup and not much payoff (yet). It's a bit frustrating to have to wait a week to see what happens next, and I'll probably have forgotten some of what was so skillfully built up here.

I’m just saying that China isn’t rich yet, and as consumption rises with wealth it’s bad news for the planet if China does get rich (like Japan and South Korea did) before it gets old simply because it’s a lot of extra consumption. Emissions per capita in China are half those of the US, and in India they’re less than 1/8th of US levels. If those countries ever reached Western levels of consumption then population levels would have to fall a LONG way to cancel it out.

To be honest China is the one that’s more interesting for me. Japan and South Korea reached Western levels of wealth before getting old, but it’s debatable whether China will. They’ll be in a very tough spot if they don’t. In the short term that ends up being what matters for emissions too. Poor countries (or more specifically ones with lower rates of female education) generally have higher birth rates and are less interested in protecting the environment, but the energy (and water and food) that goes into producing the average Western lifestyle is way higher. So if China and India and Africa get rich and live like we do, the world is screwed irrespective of population trends.

He was claiming the decline in birth rates would be the biggest problem facing humanity in 20 years time. He’s being alarmist but it is something humanity will eventually have to grapple with. The expectation of the UN is that in 2100 the world population would be 10.4bn and brith rates would be at 1.84 per woman. If that holds then in 2500 the world population is at 2bn and in 3000 it’s at 225m. There’s quite a lot of economic problems that come from a shrinking population (mostly about ever smaller numbers of young people looking after larger numbers of elderly people) and it’s quite possible my kids will live to see 2100, so it’s not a completely abstract problem. At the moment the West deals with population decline via immigration but that’s less of an option if the population is declining everywhere. Also, it’s quite striking how rapidly the population growth trends have been revised down in the past twenty years or so. It’s quite possible in another decade we might be thinking the world population will be peaking in 2050, etc. But any problem that won’t wipe out humanity for millennia probably can’t be considered our biggest threat.

Yeah, I’m surprised there’s not more chatter here about it. It’s basically like HBO did Star Wars. Some more detailed thoughts with mild spoilers (up to ep7) in the tags.

Right now I don't go out drinking very often, so I can save up for months for that one elusive pint

As others have said, it's quite rare to see someone go fully Patreon exclusive right out of the gates - and especially not with such a small subscriber count. Traditionally people do a two-track approach where they use Youtube to drive traffic to additional subscriber-only content. I guess in this case they just don't have time to do that stuff - but that's a bad sign in itself, unfortunately. You've got to build the business until it can support you; if you try and force that too early then it'll kill the business. I do feel like the price point is a bit ambitious. £2 a month feels like beer money, £5 a month feels like something you might notice. I wonder how much of that is because of transaction fees though - maybe smaller sums get disproportionately eaten up?

Yeah, but you have to remember that “free to take your own path” only applies to the strongest country in each region - that country should be free to bully the countries around them without outside intervention. Nobody else is free to take their own path though.

Unsure if serious