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Will the Ayatollahs decide the US election? – politicalbetting.com

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  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161
    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    I

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    The most important and succesful game of the last year, BG3, was mega-woke.
    I've played it and it's a classic D&D game - it's what you make of it. You can become fantasy Hitler if you want and the game doesn't stop you, in fact it actually encourages you because it becomes easier to blast everything and everyone out of the way.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,051
    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,456
    mercator said:

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    mercator said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    I'll get back to you when I have adjusted my priors.
    In the meanwhile, everything is in a Bayesian-ce.

    My, that's epic bad taste..
    BTW why was the yacht called that? I'd assumed instantly it was owned by an academic who had to do with stats, almost certainly one who worked in pharmaceuticals, but it was apparently a charter job.
    Lynch PhD was on Bayesian probability. It was his boat not charter.

    There are some serious ironies here. You would expect a smart cookie with a statistics background to think through the implications of the tallest mast in the world. What is the danger of someone coming along with an even taller one? Would it more likely be twice as tall or one metre taller? What do the constraints ruling out option A and making B pretty unattractive tell me about my own mast?
    THanks everyone re the name.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,778
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    In random gaming news, a Chinese developer has released the first proper AAA single player game to come out of China and it's absolutely huge, it will sell 25m+ copies globally this year making it the best selling game of the year. I think what it will do is show western developers that the market for games is probably 2-3x the size of what they are targeting with their current slop and narratives in games will begin to change over the next dev cycle. Shit like Concord will stop being funded and I think games will have a more Asian feel to them again similar to how it was in the 90s and 00s.

    There's been a number of flops over the last year or so for games that have been made to appeal to the "modern" audience and I think just the same as Hollywood, the games industry is going to start to junk it all because it doesn't make them any money.

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    What's the game, and for how long will it destroy my productivity?
    Black Myth Wukong and it's about 40h long so not too bad. Plays like God of War apparently.
    Monkey !
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
  • mercatormercator Posts: 815

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. The jury by no means looked at everything because not everything was put in issue (a decision by her or her defence team, but the fact remains).
  • mercatormercator Posts: 815
    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    I

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    The most important and succesful game of the last year, BG3, was mega-woke.
    Aliens is both the best action movie in history and just one long anti racist pro diversity feminist rant.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,778

    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    I

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    The most important and succesful game of the last year, BG3, was mega-woke.
    If its descending into wokeness ratings of computer games, I am almost, not quite but almost, tempted to call for the return.
    I think the point is, of it's good, it doesn't matter one way or the other.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,260
    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,137
    rkrkrk said:

    Nice thread header although rather unsettling.

    Reminds me of Reagan's campaign working to delay hostage releases to scupper Carter (not exactly conclusively proven but entirely to form and enough unconnected people on both sides say it happened).

    Indeed. And taking it a bit further Putins best chance of winning in Ukraine, is Trump winning, which could involve Putins other friends in Iran lighting up the Middle East even more. Seems a pretty plausible strategic chain.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,778
    Carnyx said:

    mercator said:

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    mercator said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    I'll get back to you when I have adjusted my priors.
    In the meanwhile, everything is in a Bayesian-ce.

    My, that's epic bad taste..
    BTW why was the yacht called that? I'd assumed instantly it was owned by an academic who had to do with stats, almost certainly one who worked in pharmaceuticals, but it was apparently a charter job.
    Lynch PhD was on Bayesian probability. It was his boat not charter.

    There are some serious ironies here. You would expect a smart cookie with a statistics background to think through the implications of the tallest mast in the world. What is the danger of someone coming along with an even taller one? Would it more likely be twice as tall or one metre taller? What do the constraints ruling out option A and making B pretty unattractive tell me about my own mast?
    Thanks everyone re the name.
    The BBC had similar trouble - in the news reports last night, they clearly had no idea how to pronounce the name, bizarrely stressing the second syllable.
    Corrected this morning.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    moonshine said:



    I hadn’t realised @leon had left. What happened?

    He announced his retirement as a "substantive political commentator".

    Coincidentally, I announced my retirement from top flight international football at the same time.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 51,739
    mercator said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    I

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    The most important and succesful game of the last year, BG3, was mega-woke.
    Aliens is both the best action movie in history and just one long anti racist pro diversity feminist rant.
    Maybe. They shoot one hell of a lot of potential migrants...
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886
    edited August 20
    ..
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    mercator said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    I

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    The most important and succesful game of the last year, BG3, was mega-woke.
    Aliens is both the best action movie in history and just one long anti racist pro diversity feminist rant.
    We all know the pawsome real hero in that one.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,477

    rkrkrk said:

    Nice thread header although rather unsettling.

    Reminds me of Reagan's campaign working to delay hostage releases to scupper Carter (not exactly conclusively proven but entirely to form and enough unconnected people on both sides say it happened).

    Indeed. And taking it a bit further Putins best chance of winning in Ukraine, is Trump winning, which could involve Putins other friends in Iran lighting up the Middle East even more. Seems a pretty plausible strategic chain.
    Indeed. I hope I am wrong to be worried about how Iran will effect the US contest.
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,623

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 118,552
    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    That would be the Private Eye that championed Andrew Wakefield and his MMR bollocks.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886
    edited August 20

    Eating ice lollies 'should be part of school curriculum', experts urge
    https://news.sky.com/story/eating-ice-lollies-should-be-part-of-school-curriculum-experts-urge-13200065

    That's quite interesting once you get beyond the Telegraphisation of the headline.

    It's about relating science / educational appreciation to everyday experience at primary level, so is the same as the idea behind eg school vegetable patches, cookery etc.

    Primary school pupils should have the chance to eat ice lollies, plant vegetables and knead bread dough to help them learn about science, a group of experts have told ministers.

    Four major science bodies have urged the government to include a series of "essential experiences" in plans for three to 11-year-olds, along with playing with shadows, digging in soil, visiting garden centres, recycling and playing musical instruments.


    There are educational resources everywhere.

    They can all visit the anti-wheelchair barriers on footpaths preventing a lot of people from using safe routes to schools, to learn about equal rights.

    I think a really interesting one could be the pipe organ and the bells at the local church. They are the only other thing I know that inspires a level of personal devotion up there with steam engines.
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,623
    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    He was also snarking to labour voters about if they are happy with the govt they got.

    He’s become a fringe player recently.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,778
    EU Commission adjusts proposed tariff rates on China-made EVs, Tesla the big winner

    Tesla 9% from 20.8%
    BYD: 17% from 17.4%
    Geely: 19.3% from 20%
    SAIC: 36.3% from 37.4%
    Other cooperating firms: 21.3% from 20.8%
    Other non-cooperating firms: 36.3%

    https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1825836935979401386
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 70,642
    mercator said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. The jury by no means looked at everything because not everything was put in issue (a decision by her or her defence team, but the fact remains).
    Are you implying her defence team were as capable and efficient as Womble Bond Dickinson?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,506
    mercator said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    I

    Lots of people complain about woke/DEI and all that stuff but the best way to avoid it is to just not spend any money on it or give it any attention. In the end money talks and companies will adjust their strategy to make products that make them the most money, or if they don't new entrants who aren't hung up on this stuff will come in and do it and the established companies will lose their market dominance (something that is happening in gaming already).

    The most important and succesful game of the last year, BG3, was mega-woke.
    Aliens is both the best action movie in history and just one long anti racist pro diversity feminist rant.
    It's quite rayzist againt the aliens, and sexist.

    'Get away from her, you bitch!'

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,349
    edited August 20

    rkrkrk said:

    Nice thread header although rather unsettling.

    Reminds me of Reagan's campaign working to delay hostage releases to scupper Carter (not exactly conclusively proven but entirely to form and enough unconnected people on both sides say it happened).

    Indeed. And taking it a bit further Putins best chance of winning in Ukraine, is Trump winning, which could involve Putins other friends in Iran lighting up the Middle East even more. Seems a pretty plausible strategic chain.
    Indeed. I hope I am wrong to be worried about how Iran will effect the US contest.
    The Iranians have already been caught trying to hack people on the periphery of the Trump campaign, and likely also the Harris campaign. The CIA have warned both campaigns about information security, their IT guys have a bloody difficult job for the next three months.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,599
    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    Really? Seems to be some sort of weird social contagion. It will no doubt feature in future books about conspiracy theories along with Hilda Murrell the rose grower.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,051
    mercator said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. The jury by no means looked at everything because not everything was put in issue (a decision by her or her defence team, but the fact remains).
    The decisions made by the defence were, supposedly anyway, made with Letby's best interests at heart.

    My posts don't mean that I'm not somewhat troubled by what's being reported now.
  • mercatormercator Posts: 815
    ydoethur said:

    mercator said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. The jury by no means looked at everything because not everything was put in issue (a decision by her or her defence team, but the fact remains).
    Are you implying her defence team were as capable and efficient as Womble Bond Dickinson?
    Mystery. Maybe she told them not to sweat the small stuff because the angel Gabriel was going to manifest in court and proclaim her innocence. Or maybe as you say they were a bunch of wombles.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,051

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    That would be the Private Eye that championed Andrew Wakefield and his MMR bollocks.
    Different medical correspondent IIRC.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 16,965
    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,524
    Mr. Max, not been paying too much attention but I know one side (or both) has been bitching about Wukong for one reason or another. The little I've heard regarding the actual game sounds very positive.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,105
    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Hang on: have you not considered the possibility that Lynch organized the whole thing and has disappeared?

    Quite hard to organise a storm with waterspouts, even with the aid of the Jewish Space Lasers.
    Typical lefty antisemitic denigration of Jewish space lasers.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 17,454

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking?

    Or what was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking mere weeks after he'd been acquitted in America of a multi-billion dollar fraud, and days after his co-defendant was killed in a car crash?
    That's an amazing coincidence.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,426

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    Lots of people have been wrongly convicted, using large piles of evidence. Complete with jury deliberation, multiple layers of appeals etc…

    {Sir Samuel Roy Meadow has entered the chat and produced stats that prove the chat is committing infanticide}

    Claiming that questioning the narrative put out by NHS management, concerning various scandals, is “bashing the NHS”, is proven to be stupid, incidentally.

    The “protect the NHS by ignoring problems” idea has been used to cover up a large number of proven scandals.

    The quickest way to destroy an organisation is to ignore/hide issues and attempt to silence those who raise them. See the previous NHS scandals and the Met - and many more.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,426

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    That would be the Private Eye that championed Andrew Wakefield and his MMR bollocks.
    Indeed.

    But they also raised Sir Samuel Roy Meadow and Co.

    Private Eye are wrong, sometimes. But they seem to be right, more often.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 17,454

    Sandpit said:

    A long thread on why Russian conscripts are waving their white flags in huge numbers.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1825452740501282870.html

    TL:DR they’re treated as slaves, have almost no miltary training nor functional equipment, are kept hungry and sick - and those are the positive highlights of their service, before the rape and torture starts.

    Incredible though not surprising thread.

    Will we see a WWI style revolt by soldiers at the front at some point?
    I think the regime in Moscow is still secure enough that soldiers would fear reprisals against their family and themselves were they to do so.

    But everyone has their breaking point.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,062
    Firstly~; well done @rottenborough ! This was an unexpected pleasure. Was it your first? Sorry if you have had previouses, but my memory is swiss-cheese these days
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886

    On topic.

    Iran was behind a recent hack targeting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, US security agencies said on Monday, accusing Tehran of seeking to influence the 2024 election.

    The statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed the Trump campaign claim from earlier this month that it had been targeted, potentially by Iran.

    “We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” the security agencies said.

    “This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the (intelligence community) attributes to Iran,” they added.

    The intelligence community “is confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties. Such activity, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the US election process.”


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/08/20/iran-blamed-trump-campaign-hack-us-intelligence-election/

    Given that Mr Chump celebrated the hacking of Hillary Clinton's * email accounts, one would hope that he is quite laid back about it.

    * I can't recall whether it was the Russians, the Wikileaks or the Martians that he was praising.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,456

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    That would be the Private Eye that championed Andrew Wakefield and his MMR bollocks.
    Different medical correspondent IIRC.
    That's very interesting.
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,623
    Lah Dee Dah Gunner Graham is no more

    E’s ever so lah Dee dah.

    https://x.com/britcomsociety/status/1825834314946277445?s=61
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161

    Mr. Max, not been paying too much attention but I know one side (or both) has been bitching about Wukong for one reason or another. The little I've heard regarding the actual game sounds very positive.

    The developer rejected DEI consultants and they got mad, set the western gaming media on them with a bunch of bullshit but clearly it had zero effect. If anything I think it got the game more attention and has helped it sell more just like it did with Stellar Blade and Hogwarts Legacy.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,105
    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
    Every miscarriage of justice involves a jury.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 59,157

    I must be in a small minority who think William Hague's campaign to "save the pound" at the 2001 election was logical based on the evidence available at the time, that a 2nd Labour term would probably lead us into joining the Euro.

    It failed for the same reasons the Liberal Democrats did with their "Stop Brexit" manifesto in 2019, and because Blair promised a referendum on joining the Euro in any event.

    That doesn't mean strategically it was a bad move: it could easily have yielded 20-30 extra seats on a different day, and the alternative might have been to lose seats and get virtually no votes at all.

    There wasn't a huge amount else for Hague for run on at the time given he was nowhere near a serious challenger for an alternative administration.

    Of course Hague's save the pound campaign was damn stupid. Gordon Brown had already killed off any prospect of joining the Euro with his five tests, and voters knew that.
    Oh don't be silly. The five tests were so subjective Brown could just say "yes they've been met" and we could have joined the Euro, with catastrophic results when the 2007 recession hit combining that with Brown's overspending.

    It was when Blair promised a referendum, not Brown's tests, that our prospects of joining the Euro faded.
    Yeah, back in the real world, Brown's five tests ruled out joining. They were evaluated at least twice by the Treasury and, surprise, surprise, we failed each time. Heck, we did not even meet the Maastricht criterion of ERM membership, and I think the public might have noticed any move to join.

    God alone knows what CCHQ was smoking to fight an election on an issue everyone knew had been resolved. Worse, there were complaints at the time of local associations being pressed to report exaggerated numbers signing petitions. It was a Potemkin campaign. What next? LotO Kemi in 2029 to oppose sending British astronauts to Venus?
    It was clear by the 2001 election that we were not going to join the Euro. If that had become an issue in the campaign there is not doubt Blair would have done much less well than he did. Save the Pound was a success story and it worked.
    I don't think it was clear actually.

    It was by 2003-2004, but not in the period of 1999-2002 which was the sweet spot.
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,040
    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That's a typical problem with yachts. It helps to have one leg shorter than the other.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,062
    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    I'm staying out of it. Statistical analysis can point to a suspect but cannot prove guilt: guilt is a deterministic concept not a statistical one.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,599

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    Lots of people have been wrongly convicted, using large piles of evidence. Complete with jury deliberation, multiple layers of appeals etc…

    {Sir Samuel Roy Meadow has entered the chat and produced stats that prove the chat is committing infanticide}

    Claiming that questioning the narrative put out by NHS management, concerning various scandals, is “bashing the NHS”, is proven to be stupid, incidentally.

    The “protect the NHS by ignoring problems” idea has been used to cover up a large number of proven scandals.

    The quickest way to destroy an organisation is to ignore/hide issues and attempt to silence those who raise them. See the previous NHS scandals and the Met - and many more.
    But the Right are using the Letby case to claim that she's being used as a scapegoat to conceal the fact that the NHS is a failed institution. Here's Nadine Dorries:

    Has the British justice system thrown a young woman into jail for life in order to save the tarnished reputation of the NHS? I was, of course, writing about Lucy Letby, and sharing my growing unease at her conviction and my concern that the perilous state of maternity and neonatal care in our hospitals was a factor too easily dismissed by the courts.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13758789/Lucy-Letby-questions-Nadine-Dorries.html
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,426

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
    Every miscarriage of justice involves a jury.
    Interestingly, the Judge only Diplock system in Northern Ireland was rather miscarriage free.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,456
    edited August 20
    MattW said:

    Eating ice lollies 'should be part of school curriculum', experts urge
    https://news.sky.com/story/eating-ice-lollies-should-be-part-of-school-curriculum-experts-urge-13200065

    That's quite interesting once you get beyond the Telegraphisation of the headline.

    It's about relating science / educational appreciation to everyday experience at primary level, so is the same as the idea behind eg school vegetable patches, cookery etc.

    Primary school pupils should have the chance to eat ice lollies, plant vegetables and knead bread dough to help them learn about science, a group of experts have told ministers.

    Four major science bodies have urged the government to include a series of "essential experiences" in plans for three to 11-year-olds, along with playing with shadows, digging in soil, visiting garden centres, recycling and playing musical instruments.


    There are educational resources everywhere.

    They can all visit the anti-wheelchair barriers on footpaths preventing a lot of people from using safe routes to schools, to learn about equal rights.

    I think a really interesting one could be the pipe organ and the bells at the local church. They are the only other thing I know that inspires a level of personal devotion up there with steam engines.
    I was once talking to an education specialist who worked at Cogges Manor Farm Museum near Witney - fascinating place btw. She commented that it's a very novel experience for many children, as she saw on school trips.

    One child on a school trip was so fascinated by an actual kitchen garden with gooseberry bushes that he spent his whole visit helping to pick the gooseberries. Wouldn't score much on a Govesian examination, but it sure was an educational experence for him. I wonder if he has an allotment now?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 59,157
    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 47,751
    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That's normal heeling.

    A rather more technical discussion can be found here:

    https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/threads/56m-luxury-sailing-yacht-sinks-off-sicily-7-missing.247750/page-7

    A knockdown with sudden dragging of the anchor due to the high turning moment of the mast seems plausible, and if the hatches were open it could fill quickly.

    The other boat at anchor in the storm that gave the witness account notably was ketch rigged, so lower masts.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,576

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    Lots of people have been wrongly convicted, using large piles of evidence. Complete with jury deliberation, multiple layers of appeals etc…

    {Sir Samuel Roy Meadow has entered the chat and produced stats that prove the chat is committing infanticide}

    Claiming that questioning the narrative put out by NHS management, concerning various scandals, is “bashing the NHS”, is proven to be stupid, incidentally.

    The “protect the NHS by ignoring problems” idea has been used to cover up a large number of proven scandals.

    The quickest way to destroy an organisation is to ignore/hide issues and attempt to silence those who raise them. See the previous NHS scandals and the Met - and many more.
    But the Right are using the Letby case to claim that she's being used as a scapegoat to conceal the fact that the NHS is a failed institution. Here's Nadine Dorries:

    Has the British justice system thrown a young woman into jail for life in order to save the tarnished reputation of the NHS? I was, of course, writing about Lucy Letby, and sharing my growing unease at her conviction and my concern that the perilous state of maternity and neonatal care in our hospitals was a factor too easily dismissed by the courts.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13758789/Lucy-Letby-questions-Nadine-Dorries.html
    Can Dorries please just go away?
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,524
    Mr. Max, aye, I remember the ridiculous hissyfits over Harry Potter, which helped it sell a bundle.

    Quite glad there's a kickback against DEI nonsense. Hoping KCD 2 has the same commitment to historical accuracy as the original.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886

    Ukraine:

    Civilians with small children in their arms and lugging heavy suitcases have fled from Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk, where the Russian army was bearing down fast despite a lightning Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Associated Press reports.

    Local authorities said Russian forces were advancing so quickly that families were under orders to leave the city and other nearby towns and villages starting Tuesday.

    Guardian news blog

    Do we have real information on the "lightening" advance, or is this another mad msm extrapolation?

    The last numbers I saw were 53k people in the city, and 700 a day evacuating. Telegraph Ukraine podcast did an interview with someone on the ground in the last day or two.

    Is this not the one that's going to be occupied by Russia's something something something Day last May/June?
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,105
    RobD said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    Lots of people have been wrongly convicted, using large piles of evidence. Complete with jury deliberation, multiple layers of appeals etc…

    {Sir Samuel Roy Meadow has entered the chat and produced stats that prove the chat is committing infanticide}

    Claiming that questioning the narrative put out by NHS management, concerning various scandals, is “bashing the NHS”, is proven to be stupid, incidentally.

    The “protect the NHS by ignoring problems” idea has been used to cover up a large number of proven scandals.

    The quickest way to destroy an organisation is to ignore/hide issues and attempt to silence those who raise them. See the previous NHS scandals and the Met - and many more.
    But the Right are using the Letby case to claim that she's being used as a scapegoat to conceal the fact that the NHS is a failed institution. Here's Nadine Dorries:

    Has the British justice system thrown a young woman into jail for life in order to save the tarnished reputation of the NHS? I was, of course, writing about Lucy Letby, and sharing my growing unease at her conviction and my concern that the perilous state of maternity and neonatal care in our hospitals was a factor too easily dismissed by the courts.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13758789/Lucy-Letby-questions-Nadine-Dorries.html
    Can Dorries please just go away?
    To be fair to Nadine Dorries, she was a nurse in a previous life.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,426

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    Lots of people have been wrongly convicted, using large piles of evidence. Complete with jury deliberation, multiple layers of appeals etc…

    {Sir Samuel Roy Meadow has entered the chat and produced stats that prove the chat is committing infanticide}

    Claiming that questioning the narrative put out by NHS management, concerning various scandals, is “bashing the NHS”, is proven to be stupid, incidentally.

    The “protect the NHS by ignoring problems” idea has been used to cover up a large number of proven scandals.

    The quickest way to destroy an organisation is to ignore/hide issues and attempt to silence those who raise them. See the previous NHS scandals and the Met - and many more.
    But the Right are using the Letby case to claim that she's being used as a scapegoat to conceal the fact that the NHS is a failed institution. Here's Nadine Dorries:

    Has the British justice system thrown a young woman into jail for life in order to save the tarnished reputation of the NHS? I was, of course, writing about Lucy Letby, and sharing my growing unease at her conviction and my concern that the perilous state of maternity and neonatal care in our hospitals was a factor too easily dismissed by the courts.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13758789/Lucy-Letby-questions-Nadine-Dorries.html
    Exactly the same “it’s the NHS haters” was used previously in NHS, scandal after scandal.

    My father was recently in hospital. The family actively and successfully, prevented him of dying of quite basic neglect.

    I am going to get the stats on the ward he was in. If you were there, elderly and a bit unquestioning and your relatives didn’t know how to read blood chemistry and even more basic things….
  • mercatormercator Posts: 815
    Foxy said:

    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That's normal heeling.

    A rather more technical discussion can be found here:

    https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/threads/56m-luxury-sailing-yacht-sinks-off-sicily-7-missing.247750/page-7

    A knockdown with sudden dragging of the anchor due to the high turning moment of the mast seems plausible, and if the hatches were open it could fill quickly.

    The other boat at anchor in the storm that gave the witness account notably was ketch rigged, so lower masts.
    Schooner rigged (but yes two masts). I read somewhere today that multiples of this hull were built and all the others are ketches, for good reason.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,426
    Foxy said:

    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That's normal heeling.

    A rather more technical discussion can be found here:

    https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/threads/56m-luxury-sailing-yacht-sinks-off-sicily-7-missing.247750/page-7

    A knockdown with sudden dragging of the anchor due to the high turning moment of the mast seems plausible, and if the hatches were open it could fill quickly.

    The other boat at anchor in the storm that gave the witness account notably was ketch rigged, so lower masts.
    Metacentric height (and CZ curves) are fascinating.

    DK Brown, in Warrior to Dreadnought, might have subtitled it “How the Royal Navy tried to inovate while keeping the ships floating topside up”.

    Notably, they lost a couple of sail training ships in the late 19th cent.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,127
    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    Is that so? Sad to hear it.

    I quite liked Owen and thought he offered a lot to the national conversation.

    But sounds like he has strayed into the deep end of the online pool...
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,105
    mercator said:

    Foxy said:

    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That's normal heeling.

    A rather more technical discussion can be found here:

    https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/threads/56m-luxury-sailing-yacht-sinks-off-sicily-7-missing.247750/page-7

    A knockdown with sudden dragging of the anchor due to the high turning moment of the mast seems plausible, and if the hatches were open it could fill quickly.

    The other boat at anchor in the storm that gave the witness account notably was ketch rigged, so lower masts.
    Schooner rigged (but yes two masts). I read somewhere today that multiples of this hull were built and all the others are ketches, for good reason.
    Is it common for luxury yachts to have sails and masts? It sounds a bit 19th Century.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161
    rkrkrk said:

    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    Is that so? Sad to hear it.

    I quite liked Owen and thought he offered a lot to the national conversation.

    But sounds like he has strayed into the deep end of the online pool...
    It happens to everyone on Twitter eventually. Dave had it right, too many tweets make a twat.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 16,965
    edited August 20
    Foxy said:

    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That's normal heeling.

    A rather more technical discussion can be found here:

    https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/threads/56m-luxury-sailing-yacht-sinks-off-sicily-7-missing.247750/page-7

    A knockdown with sudden dragging of the anchor due to the high turning moment of the mast seems plausible, and if the hatches were open it could fill quickly.

    The other boat at anchor in the storm that gave the witness account notably was ketch rigged, so lower masts.
    On the reasonable assumption the people in that discussion know far more about the subject than I do, it looks like it was either poor handling or poor boat design, or most likely a combination of the two, that sank the Bayesian.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 17,454
    MattW said:

    Ukraine:

    Civilians with small children in their arms and lugging heavy suitcases have fled from Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk, where the Russian army was bearing down fast despite a lightning Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Associated Press reports.

    Local authorities said Russian forces were advancing so quickly that families were under orders to leave the city and other nearby towns and villages starting Tuesday.

    Guardian news blog

    Do we have real information on the "lightening" advance, or is this another mad msm extrapolation?

    The last numbers I saw were 53k people in the city, and 700 a day evacuating. Telegraph Ukraine podcast did an interview with someone on the ground in the last day or two.

    Is this not the one that's going to be occupied by Russia's something something something Day last May/June?
    The "lightning" advance in the quote you're responding to is supposedly Ukraine's into Kursk, which has slowed down a lot, although it's still moving forward more quickly than Russia is in Donetsk.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,051
    edited August 20

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
    Every miscarriage of justice involves a jury.
    Interestingly, the Judge only Diplock system in Northern Ireland was rather miscarriage free.
    I seem to recall trials being moved because 'the authorities' didn't think a jury composed of the defendants neighbours would give the required result.

    And I recall widespread 'official' concern when Ken Dodd was tried for tax evasion in front of a Liverpool jury.
    And cleared.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking?

    Or what was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking mere weeks after he'd been acquitted in America of a multi-billion dollar fraud, and days after his co-defendant was killed in a car crash?
    I'm not inclined to believe the conspiracy theory on this, as we have clear accounts of rare local weather conditions. I'm inclined to go for that, an edgy and perhaps vulnerable design of yacht, and inattention whilst at anchor.

    Fisherman Fabio was the first to the wreckage and told Sky News: "There were two sailboats half a mile away from the harbour with their anchors at sea.

    "After 10 minutes, we saw a flare in the sky. We waited about 10 minutes to see the intensity of the tornado and went out to sea.

    "We were first to give rescue, but we found no one at sea. We only found cushions and the remains of the boat."

    The weather was so bad overnight that locals described it as being like nothing they'd ever seen before.

    Waterspouts - essentially like tornados on the water - tore into the coastline.

    The yacht had been anchored. The sailing mast lights had been twinkling in the night sky. By morning, they were gone.

    https://news.sky.com/story/search-continues-for-british-tech-tycoon-mike-lynch-and-daughter-after-yacht-sinks-in-sicily-tornado-13200009
  • MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,477
    viewcode said:

    Firstly~; well done @rottenborough ! This was an unexpected pleasure. Was it your first? Sorry if you have had previouses, but my memory is swiss-cheese these days

    Many thanks. Not my first but it has been quite a while.

  • TazTaz Posts: 13,623

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
    Every miscarriage of justice involves a jury.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyx0p18kq74o
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886

    MattW said:

    Ukraine:

    Civilians with small children in their arms and lugging heavy suitcases have fled from Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk, where the Russian army was bearing down fast despite a lightning Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Associated Press reports.

    Local authorities said Russian forces were advancing so quickly that families were under orders to leave the city and other nearby towns and villages starting Tuesday.

    Guardian news blog

    Do we have real information on the "lightening" advance, or is this another mad msm extrapolation?

    The last numbers I saw were 53k people in the city, and 700 a day evacuating. Telegraph Ukraine podcast did an interview with someone on the ground in the last day or two.

    Is this not the one that's going to be occupied by Russia's something something something Day last May/June?
    The "lightning" advance in the quote you're responding to is supposedly Ukraine's into Kursk, which has slowed down a lot, although it's still moving forward more quickly than Russia is in Donetsk.
    Thank-you.

    I should have quoted the "Russian forces were advancing so quickly" and questioned the implied 'panicked' nature of the evacuation in the media reporting, which afaics does not match the numbers.

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,349

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
    Every miscarriage of justice involves a jury.
    Interestingly, the Judge only Diplock system in Northern Ireland was rather miscarriage free.
    I seem to recall trials being moved because 'the authorities' didn't think a jury composed of the defendants neighbours would give the required result.

    And I recall widespread 'official' concern when Ken Dodd was tried for tax evasion in front of a Liverpool jury.
    And cleared.
    Liverpool certainly didn’t learn, because a couple of decades later they had Steven Gerrard in court in Liverpool too.

    The chance of a Liverpool jury finding either Dodd or Gerrard guilty of anything more serious than unintentional littering, was always going to be close to zero.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,704

    I must be in a small minority who think William Hague's campaign to "save the pound" at the 2001 election was logical based on the evidence available at the time, that a 2nd Labour term would probably lead us into joining the Euro.

    It failed for the same reasons the Liberal Democrats did with their "Stop Brexit" manifesto in 2019, and because Blair promised a referendum on joining the Euro in any event.

    That doesn't mean strategically it was a bad move: it could easily have yielded 20-30 extra seats on a different day, and the alternative might have been to lose seats and get virtually no votes at all.

    There wasn't a huge amount else for Hague for run on at the time given he was nowhere near a serious challenger for an alternative administration.

    Of course Hague's save the pound campaign was damn stupid. Gordon Brown had already killed off any prospect of joining the Euro with his five tests, and voters knew that.
    Oh don't be silly. The five tests were so subjective Brown could just say "yes they've been met" and we could have joined the Euro, with catastrophic results when the 2007 recession hit combining that with Brown's overspending.

    It was when Blair promised a referendum, not Brown's tests, that our prospects of joining the Euro faded.
    Yeah, back in the real world, Brown's five tests ruled out joining. They were evaluated at least twice by the Treasury and, surprise, surprise, we failed each time. Heck, we did not even meet the Maastricht criterion of ERM membership, and I think the public might have noticed any move to join.

    God alone knows what CCHQ was smoking to fight an election on an issue everyone knew had been resolved. Worse, there were complaints at the time of local associations being pressed to report exaggerated numbers signing petitions. It was a Potemkin campaign. What next? LotO Kemi in 2029 to oppose sending British astronauts to Venus?
    It was clear by the 2001 election that we were not going to join the Euro. If that had become an issue in the campaign there is not doubt Blair would have done much less well than he did. Save the Pound was a success story and it worked.
    I don't think it was clear actually.

    It was by 2003-2004, but not in the period of 1999-2002 which was the sweet spot.
    When did Blair first promise a referendum? My recollection is it wasn't until after the 2001 election but that's a lot of years ago.
  • FossFoss Posts: 899
    edited August 20
    Driver said:

    I must be in a small minority who think William Hague's campaign to "save the pound" at the 2001 election was logical based on the evidence available at the time, that a 2nd Labour term would probably lead us into joining the Euro.

    It failed for the same reasons the Liberal Democrats did with their "Stop Brexit" manifesto in 2019, and because Blair promised a referendum on joining the Euro in any event.

    That doesn't mean strategically it was a bad move: it could easily have yielded 20-30 extra seats on a different day, and the alternative might have been to lose seats and get virtually no votes at all.

    There wasn't a huge amount else for Hague for run on at the time given he was nowhere near a serious challenger for an alternative administration.

    Of course Hague's save the pound campaign was damn stupid. Gordon Brown had already killed off any prospect of joining the Euro with his five tests, and voters knew that.
    Oh don't be silly. The five tests were so subjective Brown could just say "yes they've been met" and we could have joined the Euro, with catastrophic results when the 2007 recession hit combining that with Brown's overspending.

    It was when Blair promised a referendum, not Brown's tests, that our prospects of joining the Euro faded.
    Yeah, back in the real world, Brown's five tests ruled out joining. They were evaluated at least twice by the Treasury and, surprise, surprise, we failed each time. Heck, we did not even meet the Maastricht criterion of ERM membership, and I think the public might have noticed any move to join.

    God alone knows what CCHQ was smoking to fight an election on an issue everyone knew had been resolved. Worse, there were complaints at the time of local associations being pressed to report exaggerated numbers signing petitions. It was a Potemkin campaign. What next? LotO Kemi in 2029 to oppose sending British astronauts to Venus?
    It was clear by the 2001 election that we were not going to join the Euro. If that had become an issue in the campaign there is not doubt Blair would have done much less well than he did. Save the Pound was a success story and it worked.
    I don't think it was clear actually.

    It was by 2003-2004, but not in the period of 1999-2002 which was the sweet spot.
    When did Blair first promise a referendum? My recollection is it wasn't until after the 2001 election but that's a lot of years ago.
    He was talking about it at the 2001 party conference.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,477
    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,260

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    We might also have passed peak White Riot. There are people rooting for more where that came from, and doing their bit to bring it about, but perhaps they will be disappointed. I hope so.
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,623

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    The point's made elsewhere that the jury looked at everything, including her, and deliberated for quite a while.
    They heard the evidence. Miscarriages of justice happen but I find it hard to believe in this case.
    Every miscarriage of justice involves a jury.
    Interestingly, the Judge only Diplock system in Northern Ireland was rather miscarriage free.
    I seem to recall trials being moved because 'the authorities' didn't think a jury composed of the defendants neighbours would give the required result.

    And I recall widespread 'official' concern when Ken Dodd was tried for tax evasion in front of a Liverpool jury.
    And cleared.
    How tickled he was !!!!!
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,349

    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856

    It’s quickly becoming existential for Putin.

    To put it bluntly, he has almost no army left. That after two weeks, he’s been unable to stop a continuous advancement by the enemy into Kursk, is astonishing.

    Two weeks ago we laughed that this was a daring raid by a bunch of Ukranian special forces, to put a few blue and yellow flags around then get out quickly, but it’s clearly now turned into a full-scale invasion of Russia, with tens of thousands of civilians evacuating every day.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 56,229
    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161
    https://x.com/joshcharles_21/status/1825744810613092768

    This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856

    It's interesting that "Mick" (I have no idea who he is) thinks tac nukes are a possibility.

    I think VVP will at least threaten this, if things get extremely shitty for him.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,517
    FF43 said:

    Selebian said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.

    As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.

    But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?

    *not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
    Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas


    That is pretty normal. Looking at the boom and jib I assume it is on a beat. If it were a racing yacht or racing dingy or a racing catamaran it can be going over far far more than that. It is what they are supposed to do. If it goes too far you can let the sail out or turn it into wind, but if it goes too far the sails will spill the wind and the keel will prevent it from capsizing. In a dingy or catamaran there is no keel so you go for a swim (which I have more times than I care to remember).
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,105
    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
    Is she? Things started with a New Yorker story by a lady journalist, iirc. But in any event, most critics are saying the investigation and trials were flawed, not necessarily that Letby is innocent.
  • MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.


  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,477
    Dura_Ace said:

    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856

    It's interesting that "Mick" (I have no idea who he is) thinks tac nukes are a possibility.

    I think VVP will at least threaten this, if things get extremely shitty for him.
    He's a retired Major General.

  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,105
    Dura_Ace said:

    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856

    It's interesting that "Mick" (I have no idea who he is) thinks tac nukes are a possibility.

    I think VVP will at least threaten this, if things get extremely shitty for him.
    Tactical nukes are off the agenda imo. For a start, will he want to nuke Russia, or even Russia-adjacent Ukraine? Second, previous Russian sabre-rattling led to low key stories in the press about US nuclear bomber routine exercise flights.

    What we might see is a very large conventional bomb or several on Ukraine-occupied Russia. Civilians have been evacuated, buildings can be rebuilt after the SMO, and it will take out some of Ukraine's best soldiers.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,477
    Sandpit said:

    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856

    It’s quickly becoming existential for Putin.

    To put it bluntly, he has almost no army left. That after two weeks, he’s been unable to stop a continuous advancement by the enemy into Kursk, is astonishing.

    Two weeks ago we laughed that this was a daring raid by a bunch of Ukranian special forces, to put a few blue and yellow flags around then get out quickly, but it’s clearly now turned into a full-scale invasion of Russia, with tens of thousands of civilians evacuating every day.
    Lucky for Vlad that Trump will make them hand it all back I guess in order to keep his bessie mate in office at the Kremlin.
  • DopermeanDopermean Posts: 269
    Carnyx said:

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?

    What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking?

    Or what was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking mere weeks after he'd been acquitted in America of a multi-billion dollar fraud, and days after his co-defendant was killed in a car crash?
    The highest aluminium mast must raise the centre of gravity and also the windage making a knockdown more likely.
    Wouldn't it be the sudden change, even reversal, of wind direction as well, in such a squall/waterspout?

    Edit: and/or intensity.
    It was big enough to have to comply with loadline regs for proper ships, so should have met the stability criteria with 100 knot wind including dynamic criteria where maximum roll to windward under wind and wave is considered.
    As it was at anchor it's possible that a watertight opening wasn't closed, but that is speculation.
    There'll be a full investigation and the shipyard/naval architect will be reviewing the stability booklet in a cold sweat.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,260
    edited August 20
    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
    Could be some of that, although I'm surprised by the OJ interest. It's a bit off brand for him. Personally I haven't gone into it enough to have an opinion that contradicts the trial outcome (unlike with the other OJ for example - I still remember where I was when that monstrosity of a verdict came in).
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,623

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.


    Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,437
    edited August 20
    MaxPB said:

    https://x.com/joshcharles_21/status/1825744810613092768

    This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.

    That's nuts.

    Potatoes and tomatoes are part of the same family (as is tobacco) and they always strike me as suspicious looking. I don't know who first ate them but they were braver than I would be.

    Alkaloids are bad for you, folks!


    Could have been worse - she could have found some 'parsnips' on the beach. Hemlock water-dropwort is our most poisonous plant and a few people have died after sticking it in a stew.
  • rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
    I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.

    I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.

    Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,517

    MaxPB said:

    https://x.com/joshcharles_21/status/1825744810613092768

    This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.

    That's nuts.

    Potatoes and tomatoes are part of the same family (as is tobacco) and they always strike me as suspicious looking. I don't know who first ate them but they were braver than I would be.

    Alkaloids are bad for you, folks!


    Could have been worse - she could have found some 'parsnips' on the beach. Hemlock water-dropwort is our most poisonous plant and is sometimes mistaken for such.
    Many months ago we found loads on the beach at Southwold. The dog was very interested. I assumed parsnips, but also thought how? A parsnip freighter going down seemed unlikely. Then I looked them up. Eek.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886
    edited August 20

    MaxPB said:

    https://x.com/joshcharles_21/status/1825744810613092768

    This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.

    That's nuts.

    Potatoes and tomatoes are part of the same family (as is tobacco) and they always strike me as suspicious looking. I don't know who first ate them but they were braver than I would be.

    Alkaloids are bad for you, folks!

    Could have been worse - she could have found some 'parsnips' on the beach. Hemlock water-dropwort is our most poisonous plant and is sometimes mistaken for such and a few people have died after sticking it in a stew.
    Isn't that just the current version of someone who ate a toadstool by mistake and is spouting to friends about it - all being potential recipients of Darwin awards?

    If influencers undermine sensible caution through their own stupidity then it is a hard lesson which will be learnt in due course.

    It's not exactly complicated stuff to learn - "don't eat stuff you don't know about", and one would hope that any human being would have a pre-installed BS detector.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,437
    MattW said:

    MaxPB said:

    https://x.com/joshcharles_21/status/1825744810613092768

    This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.

    That's nuts.

    Potatoes and tomatoes are part of the same family (as is tobacco) and they always strike me as suspicious looking. I don't know who first ate them but they were braver than I would be.

    Alkaloids are bad for you, folks!

    Could have been worse - she could have found some 'parsnips' on the beach. Hemlock water-dropwort is our most poisonous plant and is sometimes mistaken for such and a few people have died after sticking it in a stew.
    Isn't that just the current version of someone who ate a toadstool by mistake and is spouting to friends about it - all being potential recipients of Darwin awards?

    If influencers undermine sensible caution through their own stupidity then it is a hard lesson which will be learnt in due course.
    Indeed.

    Although wasn't there a case recently about someone who bought a fungi book and nearly killed themselves - and it turned out that the book was ghost written by an AI?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.


    Yes agreed, I think what's been learned is that pushing these kinds of messages doesn't make that certain audience spend any additional money but it does mean people who don't like it will stop spending. I'm surprised it's taken so long for them them work it out but my sense of when things started to change was around the time Top Gun Maverick came out and Hogwarts Legacy followed up that success. Obviously both of those are media and not industry but my sense of it is that execs everywhere saw how successful Top Gun Maverick was for just telling a great, sincere story without any political messaging or undertone of calling the audience dumb, racist or transphobes etc... Then Hogwarts Legacy, which had been vilified by basically the whole western media for being associated to JK Rowling, smashed every sales record and is probably going to be the second highest revenue generating game ever after GTA5. Both showed execs that success lies in the middle, not by appealing to one group or the other and alienating everyone else.

    Since then we've had countless examples of "woke" games falling flat, the latest of which is Concord and boy is that going to flop hard after a $150m budget and first party backing from Sony and games that don't buy into any narrative doing really well. This is being replicated across all industries IMO where companies drop all of the nonsense are being rewarded by customers despite the screeching on Twitter and other social media from that "certain audience".

    I was talking to a customer of ours recently who said that they're planning to drop the calendar events based offers they've been running for the past couple of years because it's not working for them any more and it ties them into doing promotional activities tied to stuff like black history month, pride month, mental health month etc... which is really inflexible and they realised that appealing to people who like that stuff doesn't increase their overall revenue during those promo periods.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,029
    Taz said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.


    Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
    Ben and Jerry's went way beyond normal corporate wokeness - at one point they were campaigning to stop western governments backing Ukraine.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,260
    rkrkrk said:

    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    Is that so? Sad to hear it.

    I quite liked Owen and thought he offered a lot to the national conversation.

    But sounds like he has strayed into the deep end of the online pool...
    Well TBF he mentions it only occasionally not obsessively. He's become a little too 'mono' recently for my taste (Gaza Gaza, all is Gaza), also he seems to attack SKS and Labour more than he does the Rancid Right, but I haven't cancelled him. He still gives good Left polemic (usually without being crass or mendacious) and I need some of that to keep me awake and honest.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,886

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
    I'm not clear what "woke message" means here, except as a sort of version of "That !!!".

    It's about pros and cons around energy / emissions reductions we need to achieve, and how to do so. And these are reasoned, not knee jerk, decisions.
  • Taz said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.


    Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
    That’s been going on for years and is part of their brand strategy.

    I’m thinking more of those who jumped on the bandwagon a few years ago
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,500

    Dura_Ace said:

    Thread on Putin's military options now:


    Mick Ryan, AM
    @WarintheFuture

    17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.

    https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1825394692542140856

    It's interesting that "Mick" (I have no idea who he is) thinks tac nukes are a possibility.

    I think VVP will at least threaten this, if things get extremely shitty for him.
    Tactical nukes are off the agenda imo. For a start, will he want to nuke Russia, or even Russia-adjacent Ukraine? Second, previous Russian sabre-rattling led to low key stories in the press about US nuclear bomber routine exercise flights.

    What we might see is a very large conventional bomb or several on Ukraine-occupied Russia. Civilians have been evacuated, buildings can be rebuilt after the SMO, and it will take out some of Ukraine's best soldiers.
    I doubt anyone has any great wisdom as to the chance of tactical nukes being used. Mrs Putin perhaps.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,161
    Taz said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    We've definitely passed peak Woke.

    That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.

    I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
    The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
    Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.

    There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
    There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.

    It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.

    I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.


    Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
    Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 56,229

    rcs1000 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.

    Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
    And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
    I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
    I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.

    I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.

    Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
    If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.

    This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
This discussion has been closed.