A week is a long time in politics – politicalbetting.com

System · July 28

A week is a long time in politics – politicalbetting.com

New from Ipsos US July 26-27 (changes from a week ago)Trump Favourable 36% (-4)Unfavourable 52% (+1)Net: -16HarrisFavourable 43% (+8)Unfavourable 42% (-4) Net: +1Clear boost for Harris but this is nationwide & obvs swing states are what matterhttps://t.co/1r0dyXUjoe

Read the full story here

tlg86 · July 28

First like Russell.

Morris_Dancer · July 28

FPT: Unsure if I posted this at the time, but here's a video on Lebanon and Israel and potential war that may be of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ksp5N68Ko

Also, by chance, my current lunchtime video is one also about war in a very similar area:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9S66aptjlA

FF43 · July 28

That's an impressive boost in Harris' favourables. Here's hoping

Leon · July 28

Fpt for @another_richard

“Israel has never tackled Hezbollah - its always been a low level exchange of missiles.

A proper full scale conventional war is another matter and one which should play to Israeli strengths.”

This is simply untrue

“The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War[39] and known in Lebanon as the July War[1] (Arabic: حرب تموز, Ḥarb Tammūz) and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War (Hebrew: מלחמת לבנון השנייה, Milhemet Levanon HaShniya),[40] was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israel Defense Forces”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War

TheScreamingEagles · July 28

I like Guenther Steiner's thinking, asking Sir Lewis if he thinks he can win the title this year, he know's he's the GOAT.

Nigelb · July 28

Why is the balloon from The Prisoner floating over the Olympics ?

Sandpit · July 28

TheScreamingEagles said:
I like Guenther Steiner's thinking, asking Sir Lewis if he thinks he can win the title this year, he know's he's the GOAT.

Meanwhile, the TV director has his finger hovering over the big red dump button.

I thought he was going to tell George that was a f*****g brilliant strategy!

Nigelb · July 28

Blimey.
It’s one thing to get your favourables up, but getting negatives to drop…

Fav/Unfav, ABC/Ipsos

HARRIS
July 19-20: 35/46
July 26-27: 43/42

TRUMP
July 19-20: 40/51
July 26-27: 36/52

VANCE
July 19-20: 25/31
July 26-27: 24/39

https://ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-07/Topline ABC_Ipsos Poll July 27 2024.pdf

Theuniondivvie · July 28

Leon said:
Fpt for @another_richard

“Israel has never tackled Hezbollah - its always been a low level exchange of missiles.

A proper full scale conventional war is another matter and one which should play to Israeli strengths.”

This is simply untrue

“The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War[39] and known in Lebanon as the July War[1] (Arabic: حرب تموز, Ḥarb Tammūz) and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War (Hebrew: מלחמת לבנון השנייה, Milhemet Levanon HaShniya),[40] was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israel Defense Forces”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War

Didn’t the IDF get a relative pasting, ie they didn’t get the standard 20-1 kill rate they usually expect against armed opponents? Plenty of Lebanese civilians killed of course which may have assuaged their pain.

MarqueeMark · July 28

Harris's biggest negative for me is that nasal drone - I just can't quite escape from thinking Janice from Friends...

MarqueeMark · July 28

Nigelb said:
Blimey.
It’s one thing to get your favourables up, but getting negatives to drop…

Fav/Unfav, ABC/Ipsos

HARRIS
July 19-20: 35/46
July 26-27: 43/42

TRUMP
July 19-20: 40/51
July 26-27: 36/52

VANCE
July 19-20: 25/31
July 26-27: 24/39

https://ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-07/Topline ABC_Ipsos Poll July 27 2024.pdf

Vance is a horror pick getting ever more horrible. The usual VP approval rating is +19.

FrankBooth · July 28

fpt

Is Roger not aware that Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets into northern Israel since October?

Curious take from a BBC reporter suggesting that Hezbollah have largely been going after military targets which explains the low number of civilian casualties. What might also explain the low numbers is the fact that Israel has evacuated the population from those areas something the BBC reporter didn't acknowledge.

Theuniondivvie - do you often write about how armies enjoy killing innocent civilians or do you reserve it just for Israel?

Leon · July 28

Theuniondivvie said:

Leon said:
Fpt for @another_richard

“Israel has never tackled Hezbollah - its always been a low level exchange of missiles.

A proper full scale conventional war is another matter and one which should play to Israeli strengths.”

This is simply untrue

“The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War[39] and known in Lebanon as the July War[1] (Arabic: حرب تموز, Ḥarb Tammūz) and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War (Hebrew: מלחמת לבנון השנייה, Milhemet Levanon HaShniya),[40] was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israel Defense Forces”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War
Didn’t the IDF get a relative pasting, ie they didn’t get the standard 20-1 kill rate they usually expect against armed opponents? Plenty of Lebanese civilians killed of course which may have assuaged their pain.

Yes. Israel got a bloody nose, as they admitted themselves. It’s a major reason they have never repeated the exercise - and Hezbollah is probably an even more formidable enemy now than in 2006

But Israel might have no choice. If they accept that Hezbollah can lob major missiles as they like at northern Israel then that’s a major chunk of a tiny country which becomes unliveable. Even as the south is threatened by Gaza

I imagine the Americans will be desperate to restrain them but Israel might not care

Nigelb · July 28

Pete Buttigieg on Fox is like watching a snake charmer. He just does not let them guide the conversation at all.
https://x.com/chyeaok/status/1817552850995871795

MaxPB · July 28

On F1 I think Norris is showing he's not WDC material. Poor start in a car that was capable of winning again. He needs to work on this or I think he'll be a nearly man or have to get very lucky like Jenson Button.

boulay · July 28

I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?

Nigelb · July 28

A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.

numbertwelve · July 28

If Harris has a smooth VP pick and a good convention then it is looking like she’ll still be carrying the momentum well into mid August. By that stage we would expect to be seeing the dial shift a little bit more to her - really I think the Democrats should be aiming for her to be registering small leads in a number of the swing states in the next 3-4 weeks.

Nigelb · July 28

MaxPB said:
On F1 I think Norris is showing he's not WDC material. Poor start in a car that was capable of winning again. He needs to work on this or I think he'll be a nearly man or have to get very lucky like Jenson Button.

He’s got to work on his starts.
That’s fixable; he has all the skills necessary.

If I recall correctly, there was a period when Hamilton had a series of consistently poor starts, and had to do likewise.

Leon · July 28

The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody

FrankBooth · July 28

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.

But possibly with a superior candidate to Harris? There was nothing wrong with people arguing for a competitive nomination process (yes I know she was on the Biden ticket).

Sandpit · July 28

FrankBooth said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
But possibly with a superior candidate to Harris? There was nothing wrong with people arguing for a competitive nomination process (yes I know she was on the Biden ticket).

Or as you might prefer to call it, democracy.

numbertwelve · July 28

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody

The whole opening ceremony was really poor. Easily the worst one I can remember.

kinabalu · July 28

numbertwelve said:
If Harris has a smooth VP pick and a good convention then it is looking like she’ll still be carrying the momentum well into mid August. By that stage we would expect to be seeing the dial shift a little bit more to her - really I think the Democrats should be aiming for her to be registering small leads in a number of the swing states in the next 3-4 weeks.

Shapiro is fav again in the betting. That would be a safe choice but also a relatively defensive one.

DougSeal · July 28

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody

Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.

Morris_Dancer · July 28

F1: also worth noting Perez went from 2nd to 8th. Never in contention for the win. A mile from the podium.

Also also, McLaren scored enough, in line with the necessary average, to keep them on course for the Constructors' title.

boulay · July 28

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.

It was like a teenager trying to shock their parents, nothing clever or witty about it.

Also so many LGBT people have been fighting for ages to be treated well, equally, and be accepted so creating such a target for idiots to beat them with and making such a statement is completely counterproductive.

DougSeal · July 28

MarqueeMark said:
Harris's biggest negative for me is that nasal drone - I just can't quite escape from thinking Janice from Friends...

Hasn’t hurt Starmer.

Roger · July 28

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody

I suspect the Guardian's tongue was very much in its cheek when reporting that. Or at least I hope it was! It made me laugh.

Tres · July 28

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody

ha - it's not much of an apology is it?

Sandpit · July 28

Morris_Dancer said:
F1: also worth noting Perez went from 2nd to 8th. Never in contention for the win. A mile from the podium.

Also also, McLaren scored enough, in line with the necessary average, to keep them on course for the Constructors' title.

That’s likely Perez’s last race for the team.

Tweedledee · July 28

boulay said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
It was like a teenager trying to shock their parents, nothing clever or witty about it.

Also so many LGBT people have been fighting for ages to be treated well, equally, and be accepted so creating such a target for idiots to beat them with and making such a statement is completely counterproductive.

Quite so. Hur hur, trans is just blokes in dresses got a real boost from that. Like thinking being gay is encapsulated by Mr Humphries in AYBS

MarqueeMark · July 28

DougSeal said:

MarqueeMark said:
Harris's biggest negative for me is that nasal drone - I just can't quite escape from thinking Janice from Friends...
Hasn’t hurt Starmer.

The rise of drones in political warfare...

Leon · July 28

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.

Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment

Morris_Dancer · July 28

Mr. Sandpit, aye. Ricciardo may end up returning to Red Bull.

Quite astonishing how the season's going now, given how it started.

pm215 · July 28

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.

I think there's a pretty strong argument that what the "Democratic elites" wanted was exactly what they got -- dumping Biden and a quick consolidation behind Harris with a minimum of intra-party confusion and fighting. (Well, they'd probably have preferred it to be a bit faster, but Biden wasn't easy to shift.) All those people coming out and endorsing Harris early are exactly the party elite. I think the whole thing is a good demonstration that the Democratic Party still functions as a political party machine.

MisterBedfordshire · July 28

Malmesbury said:

Carnyx said:

JosiasJessop said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

JosiasJessop said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

JosiasJessop said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:
The Tellygraf is reporting that the French train sabotage might have been done by far left radicals and not Putin. Seems unlikely. Tho given the pro-Putin sentiments of some on the French left, maybe they worked TOGETHER
Russia stopped being far left in 1991. If it was Le Pen'ite far right types then maybe.

I observed yesterday that there was a lot of confirmation bias in yesterdays speculation here as to who did it.
But there’s a strand of pro Putin love on the far left, in France. That is le point
Possibly, although I doubt that left wing rail workers are much into that rabbit hole.

And this needed some seriously knowledgable insiders to know where to set fire to the cable trough to cause line shutting chaos rather than delays.
It really does not require much knowledge. In fact, I'd argue the most knowledge required is where you can access the railway, and how to make an incendiary device that would create a hot enough fire in an easily-transportable manner. Cables, and particularly fibre optics, can be time-consuming to cut and splice. As for where; somewhere on a fast part of the network, preferably with points and/or signals. But even cabling damage on a a stretch of plain line would be a PITA for the network.

.
You do realise that railway systems, particularly newer ones like the LGVs have what is known as diversity and redundancy.

This means that you might only achieve a lot of flashing lights in a control centre and rerouting of circuits via diverse cables that have not gone up in smoke, or degraded mode operation where backup systems enable trains to pass at reduced speed and less frequently, possibly with local manual intervention.

To cause the sort of chaos (multiple entire routes hundreds of miles long closed for days) that we have seen; you need to know, in detail, the few single points of failure that will maximise impact.

SNCF will now be urgently working on eliminating or mitigating those (and feeling annoyed with themselves that they got caught out to the extent they did on such modern infrastructure).
Yes... I'm well aware, thanks.

AIUI the degraded mode systems do not allow anywhere near the same speeds, and hence capacity. More so if linesmen have to be on the track fixing the blooming thing.

"To cause the sort of chaos (multiple entire routes hundreds of miles long closed for days) that we have seen; you need to know, in detail, the few single points of failure that will maximise impact."

I disagree. It is far easier than you claim, especially with systems that rely on in-cab signalling, such as the TGV.
Depends how well they are designed and what diversity and redundancy is built in. The better designs even allow main control centre to be destroyed and the network run from a backup.

Eliminating lineside signals and all their local cabling makes things much easier, especially if radio rather than inductive wires down the middle of the track is used.

Value engineering imposed by the bean counters often destroys most of the benefits to save 10% of the costs though.

The few videos I've seen of the disruption shows people fixing and splicing cables in troughing, not even working at S&T cabinets.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clmyjz5xkylo as an example.

I wonder if the 'attack' was as simple as pouting petrol into the troughing, then lighting it.
My instant reaction too, but that is partly because of the tradition in Glasgow etc. of lifting some of this temptingly provided copper cable as an easy way to get some copper cable to sell to the dodgy scrappie. Though I expect the shift to fibre and measures taken at the scrapyard end have reduced this problem in the UK.
That’s one of the benefits of moving to fibre - nothing for copper thieves.

There have been some cases where it is suspected that copper thieves, angry at not find any, destroyed fibre as a malevolent act.

Looking at some of the pictures of the damage , to bundles of fibre, I take it they were using deducted lines for various things, rather than an Ethernet system?

Ethernet (or more accurately Carrier Grade IP Wide Area Networks) is not that widespread in Railway Signalling Systems (yet).

However older transmission systems (eg Synchronous Digital Heirarchy) allow diversity which stops a damaged fibre cable causing an outage.

However while the TVM-430 signalling is in cab, it is otherwise quite traditional, relying on track circuits and using them and inductive loops to provide "signals" in the cab which the driver reads and acts accordingly with the driver (not the system) still manually driving the train

That there are so many fibre cables indicates that (in commercial Telecoms terms) quite old point to point comms systems more akin to old fashioned Scada systems may be used rather than a bearer linked system.

Which given that the signalling is probably 20-30 years old is not entirely surprising

(100 year old signalling still in operation is not unknown on railways as it is so expensive and disruptive to renew)

A bit about TVM-430 here.

http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/signals.html

Theuniondivvie · July 28

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment

Edgy to highlight the work of an antisemitic Nazi sympathiser. No wonder there’s been fulminating.

Sandpit · July 28

Morris_Dancer said:
Mr. Sandpit, aye. Ricciardo may end up returning to Red Bull.

Quite astonishing how the season's going now, given how it started.

Given that we all thought one team was going to run away with it, and now it looks like we have three contenders for the constructors’ championship, it’s not a bad season at all. Shame about the summer break now, as the last few races have been brilliant. Today’s race was 35 laps of following strategy and timing screens, followed by a proper grandstand finish. Top six cars covered by less than 10s at the end, in a race with no safety car.

Jim_Miller · July 28

On the opening ceremony and the "Last Supper" controversy: The French Olympic committee could have learned from Michael Jordan's famous quip: "Republicans buy sneakers, too".
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29130478/michael-jordan-stands-firm-republicans-buy-sneakers-too-quote-says-was-made-jest

In other words, why offend a large fraction of your potential customers? Especially with something that has nothing to do with France, or the Olympics.

(Alternatives? It isn't hard to think of some, for example, a historical tour showing the teams of the new nations, as each joined Olympics.)

ydoethur · July 28

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?

Could have been somebody on the ground.

TheScreamingEagles · July 28

I guess somebody will be falling out of a window soon?

I might unblock Kenneth for his views on this moral degeneracy.

Putin’s family values tsar ‘leaves Orthodox priest husband for billionaire’

Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, accused of hypocrisy over alleged affair with oligarch Konstantin Malofeev

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/28/putin-family-tsar-maria-lvova-belova-konstantin-malofeev/

Sandpit · July 28

pm215 said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
I think there's a pretty strong argument that what the "Democratic elites" wanted was exactly what they got -- dumping Biden and a quick consolidation behind Harris with a minimum of intra-party confusion and fighting. (Well, they'd probably have preferred it to be a bit faster, but Biden wasn't easy to shift.) All those people coming out and endorsing Harris early are exactly the party elite. I think the whole thing is a good demonstration that the Democratic Party still functions as a political party machine.

Exactly. The whole process was the party machine asserting itself, supported by their friendly media, with no dissent or even discussion allowed.

carnforth · July 28

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
Could have been somebody on the ground.

Or just pilot and passenger.

MisterBedfordshire · July 28

Wonder if Walid Jumblatt will be gracing our TV screens again soon.

FF43 · July 28

.

numbertwelve said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
The whole opening ceremony was really poor. Easily the worst one I can remember.

I liked the boat procession. It ties the event to the city. Probably more people can see it and likely more fun for the athletes, which is what it should be about.

Clearly went on for too long and leaves the problem of the locus for the set piece events.

Sandpit · July 28

George Russell’s car 1.5kg underweight. Whoops.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2024 Belgian Grand Prix - Weight of Car Number 63.pdf

tlg86 · July 28

tlg86 said:
First like Russell.

Or not.

TheScreamingEagles · July 28

Sandpit said:
George Russell’s car 1.5kg underweight. Whoops.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2024 Belgian Grand Prix - Weight of Car Number 63.pdf

Second win of the season for Hamilton then.

Morris_Dancer · July 28

Also, that increases the McLaren gain on Red Bull in that title race, I think.

Carnyx · July 28

Theuniondivvie said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
Edgy to highlight the work of an antisemitic Nazi sympathiser. No wonder there’s been fulminating.

Also struck by the complaint that it was not shocking enough to be really complained about.

MisterBedfordshire · July 28

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment

To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.

Sandpit · July 28

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.

Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.

MaxPB · July 28

Now it makes sense why Russell was able to run the tyres for longer and why Lewis couldn't catch him on the straight. What a fuck up by Mercedes. Feel bad for George, but second win for Lewis is great for the sport and if George's car was running at proper weight Lewis would probably have won anyway but George could have got a podium for sure.

Nigelb · July 28

MarqueeMark said:

Nigelb said:
Blimey.
It’s one thing to get your favourables up, but getting negatives to drop…

Fav/Unfav, ABC/Ipsos

HARRIS
July 19-20: 35/46
July 26-27: 43/42

TRUMP
July 19-20: 40/51
July 26-27: 36/52

VANCE
July 19-20: 25/31
July 26-27: 24/39

https://ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-07/Topline ABC_Ipsos Poll July 27 2024.pdf
Vance is a horror pick getting ever more horrible. The usual VP approval rating is +19.

Even Doug Burgum might have been better.
Ramaswamy is more than slightly crazy, but would probably have worked on a Trump ticket.

FrankBooth said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
But possibly with a superior candidate to Harris? There was nothing wrong with people arguing for a competitive nomination process (yes I know she was on the Biden ticket).

There's nothing wrong with their arguing for it, but it would have been a mess, possibly a disaster.
It's a huge ask to get a new campaign up and running with only three months to go. Reduce that to two, and it's almost impossible.
To say nothing of starting from scratch with fundraising.

As it is, Harris is only just going to be able to vet and select a VP in time, for instance.

In any event, almost three quarters of Democratic voters, and the vast majority of the delegates, didn't want it.

Nigelb · July 28

MaxPB said:
Now it makes sense why Russell was able to run the tyres for longer and why Lewis couldn't catch him on the straight. What a fuck up by Mercedes. Feel bad for George, but second win for Lewis is great for the sport and if George's car was running at proper weight Lewis would probably have won anyway but George could have got a podium for sure.

I don't think 1.5k would have made that much difference - though margins were very tight at the finish. It's just hard to pass without a greater speed offset, particularly when you can't risk a desperate lunge as it's your team mate.
But huge cockup by Mercedes slightly mars a great weekend.

Nigelb · July 28

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.

It's not that controversial, though.

Nigelb · July 28

Sandpit said:

pm215 said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
I think there's a pretty strong argument that what the "Democratic elites" wanted was exactly what they got -- dumping Biden and a quick consolidation behind Harris with a minimum of intra-party confusion and fighting. (Well, they'd probably have preferred it to be a bit faster, but Biden wasn't easy to shift.) All those people coming out and endorsing Harris early are exactly the party elite. I think the whole thing is a good demonstration that the Democratic Party still functions as a political party machine.
Exactly. The whole process was the party machine asserting itself, supported by their friendly media, with no dissent or even discussion allowed.

You're just disappointed there wasn't any dissent.

ydoethur · July 28

carnforth said:

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
Could have been somebody on the ground.
Or just pilot and passenger.

Yes, very probably. Indeed, that's what happened here. But it's not just wing walkers that might have got involved, so it's not a ridiculous thing to say.

StillWaters · July 28

Sandpit said:

FrankBooth said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
But possibly with a superior candidate to Harris? There was nothing wrong with people arguing for a competitive nomination process (yes I know she was on the Biden ticket).
Or as you might prefer to call it, democracy.

Political parties are not democracies

They can choose whoever they like as their candidates

Heck, even a limited company can stand candidates

StillWaters · July 28

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?

It could have been someone on the ground

DecrepiterJohnL · July 28

TheScreamingEagles said:
I guess somebody will be falling out of a window soon?

I might unblock Kenneth for his views on this moral degeneracy.

Putin’s family values tsar ‘leaves Orthodox priest husband for billionaire’

Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, accused of hypocrisy over alleged affair with oligarch Konstantin Malofeev

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/28/putin-family-tsar-maria-lvova-belova-konstantin-malofeev/

MMA (Mrs Merton applies).

boulay · July 28

StillWaters said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
It could have been someone on the ground

Well of course but the odds would be pretty far against a small plane crashing in a field on a Sunday afternoon and hitting the one person who happened to be on the spot and didn’t notice a plane coming towards them.

Carnyx · July 28

boulay said:

StillWaters said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
It could have been someone on the ground
Well of course but the odds would be pretty far against a small plane crashing in a field on a Sunday afternoon and hitting the one person who happened to be on the spot and didn’t notice a plane coming towards them.

Force landings do tend to go wrong when they hit obstacles, which tend to contain people or have people near them ...

ydoethur · July 28

MaxPB said:
Now it makes sense why Russell was able to run the tyres for longer and why Lewis couldn't catch him on the straight. What a fuck up by Mercedes. Feel bad for George, but second win for Lewis is great for the sport and if George's car was running at proper weight Lewis would probably have won anyway but George could have got a podium for sure.

They used to be told to weave around the track and pick up as much crud as possible on the in-lap to try and make sure their car was overweight. Are they not allowed to do that anymore?

Sandpit · July 28

ydoethur said:

MaxPB said:
Now it makes sense why Russell was able to run the tyres for longer and why Lewis couldn't catch him on the straight. What a fuck up by Mercedes. Feel bad for George, but second win for Lewis is great for the sport and if George's car was running at proper weight Lewis would probably have won anyway but George could have got a podium for sure.
They used to be told to weave around the track and pick up as much crud as possible on the in-lap to try and make sure their car was overweight. Are they not allowed to do that anymore?

Yes they still do that. But at this track they don’t do an in-lap, they take the pit exit immediately after the first corner, and drive up the pit lane the wrong way to the Parc Fermé.

kyf_100 · July 28

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.

Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.

Tweedledee · July 28

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.

Charlie hebdo

ydoethur · July 28

boulay said:

StillWaters said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
It could have been someone on the ground
Well of course but the odds would be pretty far against a small plane crashing in a field on a Sunday afternoon and hitting the one person who happened to be on the spot and didn’t notice a plane coming towards them.

Yes, but it's not an impossibility.

Unlike say, 'Donald Trump has lucid moment' or 'DfE comes up with good policy on education.'

boulay · July 28

I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.

DougSeal · July 28

MarqueeMark said:
Harris's biggest negative for me is that nasal drone - I just can't quite escape from thinking Janice from Friends...

Hasn’t hurt Starmer.

StillWaters said:

Sandpit said:

FrankBooth said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
But possibly with a superior candidate to Harris? There was nothing wrong with people arguing for a competitive nomination process (yes I know she was on the Biden ticket).
Or as you might prefer to call it, democracy.
Political parties are not democracies

They can choose whoever they like as their candidates

Heck, even a limited company can stand candidates

Which is precisely one of the main reasons why governing political parties in our system should not be allowed to throw their parliamentary leadership over to their members outside Parliament, especially when they’re in power. The others main reason is Liz Truss.

DougSeal · July 28

MarqueeMark said:
Harris's biggest negative for me is that nasal drone - I just can't quite escape from thinking Janice from Friends...

Hasn’t hurt Starmer.

StillWaters said:

Sandpit said:

FrankBooth said:

Nigelb said:
A reminder that if the ‘Democratic elites’ (and a large proportion of media pundits) had their way, we would now be anticipating the chaos of a contested convention.
But possibly with a superior candidate to Harris? There was nothing wrong with people arguing for a competitive nomination process (yes I know she was on the Biden ticket).
Or as you might prefer to call it, democracy.
Political parties are not democracies

They can choose whoever they like as their candidates

Heck, even a limited company can stand candidates

Which is precisely one of the main reasons why governing political parties in our system should not be allowed to throw their parliamentary leadership over to their members outside Parliament, especially when they’re in power. The others main reason is Liz Truss.

BlancheLivermore · July 28

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo

The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose

Nunu5 · July 28

Immigrants make a bigger net contribution to the UK than in America:

https://x.com/AndrewHammel1/status/1817484142012928060

Nunu5 · July 28

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose

or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).

Tweedledee · July 28

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).

Oh look a false equivalence

MaxPB · July 28

ydoethur said:

MaxPB said:
Now it makes sense why Russell was able to run the tyres for longer and why Lewis couldn't catch him on the straight. What a fuck up by Mercedes. Feel bad for George, but second win for Lewis is great for the sport and if George's car was running at proper weight Lewis would probably have won anyway but George could have got a podium for sure.
They used to be told to weave around the track and pick up as much crud as possible on the in-lap to try and make sure their car was overweight. Are they not allowed to do that anymore?

No cool down lap at Spa, teams are supposed to take that into account though.

BlancheLivermore · July 28

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).

There is no Palestinian genocide; it's a figment of fervent antisemitic (and limited) imagination

Saddam became Public Enemy No.1 by invading Kuwait

Kuwait wasn't a Christian stronghold

Malmesbury · July 28

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).

Yes we do - try saying "The Crusades were nothing to do with Christianity, just the actions of some misguided followers"....

The Iraq wars (recent) were nothing to do with religion.

Question for the Hive Mind - is Shinto fundamentally racist or does it just have a lot of racist followers?

ydoethur · July 28

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.

You do know PB stands for pedantic betting?

Edit - also it’s worth pointing out a two seater doesn’t have to have two people in it.

Malmesbury · July 28

BlancheLivermore said:

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).
There is no Palestinian genocide; it's a figment of fervent antisemitic (and limited) imagination

Saddam became Public Enemy No.1 by invading Kuwait

Kuwait wasn't a Christian stronghold

In fact, Kuwait was one of the places where Islamic Religious police liked getting all GMP on Christians. They had a real thing for beating the crap out of Palestinian guest workers who had names they thought sounded a bit Islamic but were Christians.

viewcode · July 28

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.
You do know PB stands for pedantic betting?

coughcoughpensionersbitchingcoughcough

Malmesbury · July 28

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.
You do know PB stands for pedantic betting?

Edit - also it’s worth pointing out a two seater doesn’t have to have two people in it.

The important question was if the plane crashed on the border of Ukraine and The Republic of China....

ydoethur · July 28

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).

Well, ‘we on PB’ don’t on the whole. But plenty out there do.

Tweedledee · July 28

Malmesbury said:

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).
Yes we do - try saying "The Crusades were nothing to do with Christianity, just the actions of some misguided followers"....

The Iraq wars (recent) were nothing to do with religion.

Question for the Hive Mind - is Shinto fundamentally racist or does it just have a lot of racist followers?

Dunno. Shinty OTOH probably polarises along sectarian rather than racial lines.

Sandpit · July 28

Russell disqualified as expected. Win for Lewis 🏆 🐐

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2024 Belgian Grand Prix - Infringement - Car 63 - Technical non-compliance (Weight).pdf

Pagan2 · July 28

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.

don't watch learning is best done by experiment, crash a lot of 2 seater planes in different circumstance, nigel fararge will be a good copilot he has experience

ydoethur · July 28

viewcode said:

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.
You do know PB stands for pedantic betting?
coughcoughpensionersbitchingcoughcough

That’s the Conservative Party.

Nunu5 · July 28

When will the media love fest for Starmer end? This is just bias now.

https://x.com/keiranpedley/status/1816933324268441881

Omnium · July 28

viewcode said:

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.
You do know PB stands for pedantic betting?
coughcoughpensionersbitchingcoughcough

It's like eggs in a microwave

Malmesbury · July 28

ydoethur said:

boulay said:

StillWaters said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
It could have been someone on the ground
Well of course but the odds would be pretty far against a small plane crashing in a field on a Sunday afternoon and hitting the one person who happened to be on the spot and didn’t notice a plane coming towards them.
Yes, but it's not an impossibility.

Unlike say, 'Donald Trump has lucid moment' or 'DfE comes up with good policy on education.'

...hmmmm

Was computing the odds on those happening, when the Venus de Milo rode past on a flying pig, waving.

Is there Olympics ceremony practise in West London?

Pagan2 · July 28

Nunu5 said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Tweedledee said:

kyf_100 said:

Sandpit said:

MisterBedfordshire said:

Leon said:

DougSeal said:

Leon said:
The French have now apologised for their opening ceremony

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody
Speaking as one of those liberal lefty types who are supposed to lap this sort of thing up it was stupid, inflammatory, and needlessly offensive without any artistic merit at all. Shock for the sake of shock.
Yes it was pretty dire. The dramaturgy was bad in a basic way. And the supposedly “shocking” bits weren’t at all shocking, because modern art is always like this now, it’s become the salon art of today. The approved art of the elite - boring and predictable. Drag artists. Yawn

The NYT called it “bloated and humourless” which is as good a description as any

Celine was good, however. A powerful moment
To get away with something like that it has to be generally excellently good (or funny) and stay just on the right side of a very faintly drawn line.

For example, Life of Brian, which still has the power to get rigid humourless types apoplectic with outrage and uniquiely has managed to get a new generation of secular puritans just as outraged as it got an old generation of religious puritans outraged 40 years ago, but for a reason that went over anyones head unless they were familiar with far left loon social politics 40 years ago, that first emerged into the public consciousness in inner London Loony Left councils a year or two after the film came out.
Rule #1 of comedy and satire. You can take the piss out of pretty much anything, so long as you make it funny. But it has to be funny, and the more controversial the subject the higher the bar is for the funny.
Try doing the Life of Brian but satirising Muhammad instead of Jesus...

Quite why we make an exception for a specific religion's right to be offended is beyond me. Even South Park didn't dare go there.
Charlie hebdo
The Manchester Airport police almost certainly "offended Islam" somewhere along the way

Light blue t-shirt was just being a good Muslim when he broke the policewoman's nose
or maybe there are just idiots in every community. Why is only Islam linked to the actions of it's followers? We don't do that with Judaism (Palestinian genocide) or Christianity (Iraq, etc).

Or maybe because even surveys done by the guardian show a lot of muslims (not all by a long way but sufficient to cause concern) have views that are not copacetic with western values

Omnium · July 28

Malmesbury said:

ydoethur said:

boulay said:

StillWaters said:

boulay said:
I know I shouldn’t laugh but I’ve just heard on the news that two people have died when a two seater plane crashed in Yorkshire. “It’s believed that the victims are the pilot and co-pilot”. I mean did anyone really think that maybe there was a wing-walker who could have been one of the dead?
It could have been someone on the ground
Well of course but the odds would be pretty far against a small plane crashing in a field on a Sunday afternoon and hitting the one person who happened to be on the spot and didn’t notice a plane coming towards them.
Yes, but it's not an impossibility.

Unlike say, 'Donald Trump has lucid moment' or 'DfE comes up with good policy on education.'
...hmmmm

Was computing the odds on those happening, when the Venus de Milo rode past on a flying pig, waving.

Is there Olympics ceremony practise in West London?

Banbury is a bit far out to count.

kinabalu · July 28

ydoethur said:

boulay said:
I apologise to PB for finding it odd that the news felt the need to say that the two dead from a two person plane crashing in a field were the people on the plane.

I should of course have factored in all the immense range of possibilities where a plane crash was bad enough that it killed one of the occupants and someone on the ground, who just happened to be unluckily in that field, but one of the occupants was not killed.

I shall go and educate myself by watching a plane crash investigation series and then commit seppuku for my error.

Pedantic bastards.
You do know PB stands for pedantic betting?

Edit - also it’s worth pointing out a two seater doesn’t have to have two people in it.

Also when does a passenger become the co-pilot? There's a grey area there. Potentially anyway.

boulay · July 28

Ok, having crashed and burned re the plane report I’ve just heard another good one, re the footage of the Manchester airport kick off, 5 live news pushed the line by the lawyer that nobody deserves to be kicked by a policeman, it was a fight between two men and three police and no mention of the police being the ones attacked violently.

To give it the chef’s kiss the BBC say they haven’t been able to verify the footage. They were however accepting of the footage of the kick by the rozzer.

kinabalu · July 28

So is this why Toto Wolf looked grimfaced at the chequered flag? Did he know they'd screwed up?

What a sickener for George Russell.

RochdalePioneers · July 28

kinabalu said:
So is this why Toto Wolf looked grimfaced at the chequered flag? Did he know they'd screwed up?

What a sickener for George Russell.

I was wondering why he was gurning. As you say, now we know...

tlg86 · July 28

boulay said:
Ok, having crashed and burned re the plane report I’ve just heard another good one, re the footage of the Manchester airport kick off, 5 live news pushed the line by the lawyer that nobody deserves to be kicked by a policeman, it was a fight between two men and three police and no mention of the police being the ones attacked violently.

To give it the chef’s kiss the BBC say they haven’t been able to verify the footage. They were however accepting of the footage of the kick by the rozzer.

Think I was watching Sky News, but their anchor used the word allegedly in relation to the punches thrown by the men against the police officers but didn't use that word in relation to the kick to the head by the police officer.

MaxPB · July 28

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:
Now it makes sense why Russell was able to run the tyres for longer and why Lewis couldn't catch him on the straight. What a fuck up by Mercedes. Feel bad for George, but second win for Lewis is great for the sport and if George's car was running at proper weight Lewis would probably have won anyway but George could have got a podium for sure.
I don't think 1.5k would have made that much difference - though margins were very tight at the finish. It's just hard to pass without a greater speed offset, particularly when you can't risk a desperate lunge as it's your team mate.
But huge cockup by Mercedes slightly mars a great weekend.

Less weight is worth an extra 2-3kph on the straights which is why he was able to stay ahead even with Lewis having DRS assistance. At the same weight Lewis would have had enough to squeeze past at the end of the second straight and take the win.

DougSeal · July 28

boulay said:
Ok, having crashed and burned re the plane report I’ve just heard another good one, re the footage of the Manchester airport kick off, 5 live news pushed the line by the lawyer that nobody deserves to be kicked by a policeman, it was a fight between two men and three police and no mention of the police being the ones attacked violently.

To give it the chef’s kiss the BBC say they haven’t been able to verify the footage. They were however accepting of the footage of the kick by the rozzer.

As far as I can tell, having watched both videos, the police were indeed violently attacked, then the suspect was kicked afterwards having been tazered and restrained. He'd fought the law and the law had won. Once that had happened punishment and retribution was for the courts, not the cop.

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