I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
"New guidelines released by the Sentencing Council today would make prison sentences less likely for ethnic and religious minorities.
Two-tier justice isn't just a talking point - it's the reality in modern Britain..
This policy is, effectively, already in place, with certain offenders receiving lenient sentences for horrific crimes while others receive strict sentences for speech violations...."
jenrick is on this, vehemently and loudly, but where is Badenoch? She is useless
More detail:
A Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) means that probation has assessed an offender and done their best to consider options for that person to serve a sentence in the community (ie not in prison). It gives a judge options beyond jail. Often, there will be an argument between the prosecution and defence lawyers over whether a pre-sentence report should be ordered. The defence lawyers will know that a PSR will more likely lead to a non-custodial sentence. If a PSR is not ordered by a judge, a custodial sentence will follow in many cases. The judge is basically saying there is no option beyond custody so there is no need for probation to assess options for a community sentence. If, therefore, you are more likely to get a PSR if you are a member of a minority community, it means you have a better shot at a non-custodial sentence for any particular offence than somebody who is not a member of that community. The same goes for if you are female, and the following extract states explicitly that custody for women of minority cultural or religious beliefs may be ‘particularly acute’ meaning that it should be avoided in more cases than for women who do not belong to those minorities.
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
Thanks. Yes. The current picture seems like this: There is still a free media and free speech, though much more division and intimidation around, and the history of tyranny suggests this freedom will get curtailed in due course. The USA masses in their millions do not seem to have taken to the streets, gone on general strike and so on. The liberal top elite has been strangely silent. Where are the joint protests from Bush, Clinton, Obama, Romney etc.
There is, I suppose, a faint chance that thie silence is because if something big is being planned against the regime the first anyone else knows is when they wake up to discover a lot of leaders are in prison and the airports are surrounded and the streets are full of soldiers.
Very very unlikely, but it would explain the silence.
Has this been discussed on here? Apols if so. But that final comment by the spokesperson is decidedly ambiguous.
Edit: sorry, missed it in an earlier scan. But the latter point stands, in re any appeal.
PaddyPower should be expected to pay. It'll teach them (and the rest of the industry!) a valuable lesson about why they should care about the quality of their software.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
It does seem a fair question. Either we have independent entities or we don't.
No it is not a fair question, because she said there will not be a two teir APPROACH. Meaning the its not the governments choice but it will still happen.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
They could vote for democrats in the midterms but they probably won't. A former US colleague told me the people he knew would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, hence I cashed out on Harris. These are intelligent people apart from their support for Trump and evangelical belief in a white cloud fairy. I would not bet against them doubling down on this next time, blaming their lives turning to shit on woke, DEI and the blob still existing.
That speech by macron is sobering. How fast is this going to escalate?
It has already gone beyond trusting Trump and US so this will continue to escalate with no known outcomes
“[A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 2h Well Europe, time to take a deep breath, hitch up your pants, roll up your sleeves, and do everything you can to help Ukraine. No one else will. Its not only their freedom on the line--its yours too.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
General strike?
Short of that, expressing disapproval would probably be enough right now. If Trump's net approval dropped to e.g. -20% he is such a narcissist he'd almost certainly change course.
Of course, this relies on America remaining a functioning democracy, which is why I said 'before it's too late'.
As for whether they care: I retain an optimism that not all Americans are complete fuckwits. I accept I may be proven wrong.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
nieces, nephews, or cousins are not descendents of any kind even though they are related by blood via antecedants (e.g. common grandparents)
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien · 2h Well Europe, time to take a deep breath, hitch up your pants, roll up your sleeves, and do everything you can to help Ukraine. No one else will. Its not only their freedom on the line--its yours too.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
Good speech from Macron and not pulling any punches
Demands all countries address their defence spending and that Europe [with UK] accepts the peace dividend is over and Europe has to stand with Ukraine
He went on to say that across the political divide and all parts of government, thinking has to urgently change to address the new order and many departments of government will have to change and redirect their efforts to the defence of their county and Europe
He certainly seems to have given up on the US and clearly many extra billions will have to be found to create a force capable of standing up to Russia without US assistance
There is no way to return to the pre Trump Era, and ultimately, maybe in a decade or so, Russia may face a far superior military that will contain its warmongering but in the meantime ???
Let's all hope so anyway
I'm not going to deny it, but my opinion of M Macron has risen in the past six weeks.
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
General strike?
Short of that, expressing disapproval would probably be enough right now. If Trump's net approval dropped to e.g. -20% he is such a narcissist he'd almost certainly change course.
Of course, this relies on America remaining a functioning democracy, which is why I said 'before it's too late'.
As for whether they care: I retain an optimism that not all Americans are complete fuckwits. I accept I may be proven wrong.
Doesn't matter if it's not all of them (it clearly isn't).
It only has to be enough in the right places to control the Electoral college - which it clearly is.
As for changing course due to unpopularity, he'll just claim it's lies from the Lamestream Media and carry on.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
It isn’t different, but then a lived experience isn’t different from an experience either…
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
I have no love at all for Johnson. But I have not seen any other former PMs doing what you suggest either. Johnson was in Kiev on the 3rd anniversary of the invasion. And yes he has sadly been silent since Trump's idiocy but so have Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Sunak.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
It distinguishes between direct and collateral descent. Collaterals have a common ancestor. No-one is a direct descendant of Richard II, but not least because of Edward III, he has (according to PB experts) somewhere between fifteen and 17 trillion collateral descendents. Including of course, in order of precedence, Leon and HMKCIII.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
nieces, nephews, or cousins are not descendents of any kind even though they are related by blood via antecedants (e.g. common grandparents)
Is that the strict definition? Fair enough if so, I was using it more colloquially - but still fairly, I reckon
A niece will have about 25% of the DNA of her uncle, which makes her a quasi-descendant, to my mind. This is also observed in nature, where uncles and aunts invest in nieces/nephews in terms of time and money, because it makes genetic sense to do so. You are thereby helping your genes to persist in your descendants, even if the descent is not directly parent to child
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
It's buying two important, but related things.
One of them is time. Every day that the orange one doesn't explode angrily over us, like Mr Creosote, is a day where a bit more preparation can happen behind the scenes. And it needs to be behind the scenes, so as not to provoke President Toddler. The rest of the world can't buy enough time, but every day is a bit of a bonus.
The other is public permission for the unpleasantness to come. Even a week ago, there were plenty of non-crackpots looking forward to a Brilliant US-UK Trade Deal that would protect us from the incoming storm. I don't think any of them still do now, because of the events of the past week. When the UK goes onto a warlike footing (and I fear it is inevitable), it needs to be with the heaviest of hearts, becuase every attempt to play nice has failed.
This bit really isn't dignified, and I have to wonder when the equivalent of Chamberlain's September 1939 speech is coming, but it is still necessary.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
I have no love at all for Johnson. But I have not seen any other former PMs doing what you suggest either. Johnson was in Kiev on the 3rd anniversary of the invasion. And yes he has sadly been silent since Trump's idiocy but so have Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Sunak.
To be fair, I'm kinda hoping Blair stays silent.
I hate the way people are trying to defend Trump's foreign policy by contrasting it to the 'liberal interventionism' of Bush and Blair.
Trump isn't all bad for the stock market though. The Russian one is really flying since his inauguration.
A small piece of good news - and evidence that good guys still exist.
VoteHub will begin collecting all polls and will publish them via an open-source API. This will power our polling averages, and anyone will be free to use it. More details to come. https://x.com/VoteHubUS/status/1897351193695019252
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
General strike?
Short of that, expressing disapproval would probably be enough right now. If Trump's net approval dropped to e.g. -20% he is such a narcissist he'd almost certainly change course.
Of course, this relies on America remaining a functioning democracy, which is why I said 'before it's too late'.
As for whether they care: I retain an optimism that not all Americans are complete fuckwits. I accept I may be proven wrong.
Doesn't matter if it's not all of them (it clearly isn't).
It only has to be enough in the right places to control the Electoral college - which it clearly is.
As for changing course due to unpopularity, he'll just claim it's lies from the Lamestream Media and carry on.
Alright, alright, douse the one candle of optimism still alight in this dark, dark world if you so choose, you rotter.
I suspect you're probably right, which leaves me hoping for algakirk's faint chance that something big is being planned. I certainly can't quite square the lack of resistance coming out of the US so far - the placards at Trump's speech just looked a bit pathetic.
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
General strike?
Short of that, expressing disapproval would probably be enough right now. If Trump's net approval dropped to e.g. -20% he is such a narcissist he'd almost certainly change course.
Of course, this relies on America remaining a functioning democracy, which is why I said 'before it's too late'.
As for whether they care: I retain an optimism that not all Americans are complete fuckwits. I accept I may be proven wrong.
Doesn't matter if it's not all of them (it clearly isn't).
It only has to be enough in the right places to control the Electoral college - which it clearly is.
As for changing course due to unpopularity, he'll just claim it's lies from the Lamestream Media and carry on.
He was explaining a few days ago that egg inflation was the work of Bidenomics. I suspect he can dine out on those eggs for as long as he needs. Which might not be very long when he dissolves Congress by decree.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
nieces, nephews, or cousins are not descendents of any kind even though they are related by blood via antecedants (e.g. common grandparents)
Is that the strict definition? Fair enough if so, I was using it more colloquially - but still fairly, I reckon
A niece will have about 25% of the DNA of her uncle, which makes her a quasi-descendant, to my mind. This is also observed in nature, where uncles and aunts invest in nieces/nephews in terms of time and money, because it makes genetic sense to do so. You are thereby helping your genes to persist in your descendants, even if the descent is not directly parent to child
Fair enough in terms of DNA transmission. But if you talk about a direct line then these genetic detours don't count
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
Then what’s our PM doing ?
Getting it all wrong. The Nigel Farage of left wing politics?
(Spare me the PB lecture, everyone, about it being based on what I watched: I know, but there has been a new algorithm recently, bringing all sorts of obscure old videos to the forefront.)
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
I have no love at all for Johnson. But I have not seen any other former PMs doing what you suggest either. Johnson was in Kiev on the 3rd anniversary of the invasion. And yes he has sadly been silent since Trump's idiocy but so have Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Sunak.
To be fair, I'm kinda hoping Blair stays silent.
I hate the way people are trying to defend Trump's foreign policy by contrasting it to the 'liberal interventionism' of Bush and Blair.
Trump isn't all bad for the stock market though. The Russian one is really flying since his inauguration.
Hanwa will be salivating about their prospective MLRS orders for the next decade.
The whole argument that European and other allies should buy American weapons to win over Trump has just been blown up. Who wants to have their planes and missile launchers switched off at Washington’s whim in the middle of a war? https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1897374253462495631
Poland ahead of the game in already having placed orders.
The engineers working on Tempest will be chuffed, too.
That speech by macron is sobering. How fast is this going to escalate?
It has already gone beyond trusting Trump and US so this will continue to escalate with no known outcomes
Well every country that was protected by America’s nuclear umbrella is going to be seeking their own nukes in the near future whether obviously or covertly
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
General strike?
Short of that, expressing disapproval would probably be enough right now. If Trump's net approval dropped to e.g. -20% he is such a narcissist he'd almost certainly change course.
Of course, this relies on America remaining a functioning democracy, which is why I said 'before it's too late'.
As for whether they care: I retain an optimism that not all Americans are complete fuckwits. I accept I may be proven wrong.
Doesn't matter if it's not all of them (it clearly isn't).
It only has to be enough in the right places to control the Electoral college - which it clearly is.
As for changing course due to unpopularity, he'll just claim it's lies from the Lamestream Media and carry on.
He was explaining a few days ago that egg inflation was the work of Bidenomics. I suspect he can dine out on those eggs for as long as he needs. Which might not be very long when he dissolves Congress by decree.
Biden is still messing with the hens ? It’s all a bit Emmanuel Goldstein / 1984, isn’t it ?
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
nieces, nephews, or cousins are not descendents of any kind even though they are related by blood via antecedants (e.g. common grandparents)
Is that the strict definition? Fair enough if so, I was using it more colloquially - but still fairly, I reckon
A niece will have about 25% of the DNA of her uncle, which makes her a quasi-descendant, to my mind. This is also observed in nature, where uncles and aunts invest in nieces/nephews in terms of time and money, because it makes genetic sense to do so. You are thereby helping your genes to persist in your descendants, even if the descent is not directly parent to child
Fair enough in terms of DNA transmission. But if you talk about a direct line then these genetic detours don't count
I recall reading some theory that explained the persistence of homosexuality, in human genetics, via this "collateral descent"
On the face of it, any genes for homosexuality should die out pretty damn quick as gaylords and ladies can't have kids. However what they can do is lavish their time, attention and cash on the nieces and nephews who therefore BENEFIT from having lesbo and homo aunts/uncles. Thus the gay gene survives via the 25% of DNA handed on diagonally
This pattern is also seen in some other species. You get a lot of gay deer, for instance, and it is thought their presence, talking about opera and loitering in public conveniences, is advantageous for the non gay deer progeny of their non gay deer siblings
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
Then what’s our PM doing ?
Getting it all wrong. The Nigel Farage of left wing politics?
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
If Ukraine's resistance collapses/fails because the US stopped sharing intelligence and paused the supply of aid, then the state visit here has to be cancelled.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
It's buying two important, but related things.
One of them is time. Every day that the orange one doesn't explode angrily over us, like Mr Creosote, is a day where a bit more preparation can happen behind the scenes. And it needs to be behind the scenes, so as not to provoke President Toddler. The rest of the world can't buy enough time, but every day is a bit of a bonus.
The other is public permission for the unpleasantness to come. Even a week ago, there were plenty of non-crackpots looking forward to a Brilliant US-UK Trade Deal that would protect us from the incoming storm. I don't think any of them still do now, because of the events of the past week. When the UK goes onto a warlike footing (and I fear it is inevitable), it needs to be with the heaviest of hearts, becuase every attempt to play nice has failed.
This bit really isn't dignified, and I have to wonder when the equivalent of Chamberlain's September 1939 speech is coming, but it is still necessary.
The fact that Reform supporters’ opinion of Trump has plummeted, is a straw in the wind.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
Then what’s our PM doing ?
The PM is playing the worst hand dealt to a PM since 1940 very well. He, along with others, all holding probably losing hands, are attempting three things (and some more but this will do):
Buying as much time as possible, willing to get along with USA but prepared for the worst - which looks certain.
Under the cover of Trump's instruction to Europe to rearm, they are doing exactly that - this both flatters Trump and gives cover for creating structures which are distanced from him, including renewed nuclear ones.
Doing their best for Ukraine, with the hope they can get a deal which will be awful but defer and delay further attacks from Russia in Europe.
All I can add is that Macron and Starmer in particular should have our united support. They are trying.
If Ukraine's resistance collapses/fails because the US stopped sharing intelligence and paused the supply of aid, then the state visit here has to be cancelled.
Does anyone care about the state visit (other than the orange narcissist) ? If he does utterly screw Ukraine - and by extension, us - then cancelling a state visit doesn’t even register in terms of a merited response.
It might even be worth still have him, and just taking the piss for the entire visit.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
Wait this is based on that?! Lol, Putin is running rings around the Americans right now. It's shameful.
That speech by macron is sobering. How fast is this going to escalate?
It has already gone beyond trusting Trump and US so this will continue to escalate with no known outcomes
Well every country that was protected by America’s nuclear umbrella is going to be seeking their own nukes in the near future whether obviously or covertly
A lot of the 'realists' who like to sneer at the rules based international system never seem to mention the non proliferation treaty.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
Then what’s our PM doing ?
The PM is playing the worst hand dealt to a PM since 1940 very well. He, along with others, all holding probably losing hands, are attempting three things (and some more but this will do):
Buying as much time as possible, willing to get along with USA but prepared for the worst - which looks certain.
Under the cover of Trump's instruction to Europe to rearm, they are doing exactly that - this both flatters Trump and gives cover for creating structures which are distanced from him, including renewed nuclear ones.
Doing their best for Ukraine, with the hope they can get a deal which will be awful but defer and delay further attacks from Russia in Europe.
All I can add is that Macron and Starmer in particular should have our united support. They are trying.
I’m prepared to cut him a fair amount of slack, as I don’t entirely disagree with you. But there comes a point when there’s no time to be bought.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
nieces, nephews, or cousins are not descendents of any kind even though they are related by blood via antecedants (e.g. common grandparents)
Is that the strict definition? Fair enough if so, I was using it more colloquially - but still fairly, I reckon
A niece will have about 25% of the DNA of her uncle, which makes her a quasi-descendant, to my mind. This is also observed in nature, where uncles and aunts invest in nieces/nephews in terms of time and money, because it makes genetic sense to do so. You are thereby helping your genes to persist in your descendants, even if the descent is not directly parent to child
Fair enough in terms of DNA transmission. But if you talk about a direct line then these genetic detours don't count
I recall reading some theory that explained the persistence of homosexuality, in human genetics, via this "collateral descent"
On the face of it, any genes for homosexuality should die out pretty damn quick as gaylords and ladies can't have kids. However what they can do is lavish their time, attention and cash on the nieces and nephews who therefore BENEFIT from having lesbo and homo aunts/uncles. Thus the gay gene survives via the 25% of DNA handed on diagonally
This pattern is also seen in some other species. You get a lot of gay deer, for instance, and it is thought their presence, talking about opera and loitering in public conveniences, is advantageous for the non gay deer progeny of their non gay deer siblings
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendent is in the male line
For French kings this was so, but not for proper ones.
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
They could vote for democrats in the midterms but they probably won't. A former US colleague told me the people he knew would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, hence I cashed out on Harris. These are intelligent people apart from their support for Trump and evangelical belief in a white cloud fairy. I would not bet against them doubling down on this next time, blaming their lives turning to shit on woke, DEI and the blob still existing.
Whatever goes wrong, it can't be Trump's fault, he's only the President.
‘Twas me that asked. It felt like a wokism but clearly isn’t. It’s also a horrible term. I’d rather stick to saying soldier, pilot, sailor etc even if it is more words.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
As has been remarked elsewhere, that's a hostage that can only be shot once.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons. If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies. That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
I think we are past that point aleady. Jenrick realised that a couple of days ago, and the penny dropped for Kemi at lunchtime (well not hers of course- she doesn't do lunch) today.
Then what’s our PM doing ?
The PM is playing the worst hand dealt to a PM since 1940 very well. He, along with others, all holding probably losing hands, are attempting three things (and some more but this will do):
Buying as much time as possible, willing to get along with USA but prepared for the worst - which looks certain.
Under the cover of Trump's instruction to Europe to rearm, they are doing exactly that - this both flatters Trump and gives cover for creating structures which are distanced from him, including renewed nuclear ones.
Doing their best for Ukraine, with the hope they can get a deal which will be awful but defer and delay further attacks from Russia in Europe.
All I can add is that Macron and Starmer in particular should have our united support. They are trying.
Agree, and the new Merz government can't come fast enough.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
It's buying two important, but related things.
One of them is time. Every day that the orange one doesn't explode angrily over us, like Mr Creosote, is a day where a bit more preparation can happen behind the scenes. And it needs to be behind the scenes, so as not to provoke President Toddler. The rest of the world can't buy enough time, but every day is a bit of a bonus.
The other is public permission for the unpleasantness to come. Even a week ago, there were plenty of non-crackpots looking forward to a Brilliant US-UK Trade Deal that would protect us from the incoming storm. I don't think any of them still do now, because of the events of the past week. When the UK goes onto a warlike footing (and I fear it is inevitable), it needs to be with the heaviest of hearts, becuase every attempt to play nice has failed.
This bit really isn't dignified, and I have to wonder when the equivalent of Chamberlain's September 1939 speech is coming, but it is still necessary.
The treason of America, if that is what is to come, will need all of us to pull together. In Estonia we know we would be next, which is why support for Ukraine is as much a part of Estonian defence as the now projected 5% spending on the Estonian military. With the militia, even Estonia can put 40,000 extremely well equipped troops into the field immediately, and over 80,000 have received military training. The Finnish army is a formidable force, so is the Swedish and the Polish armed forces, and the Lithuanian and Latvian armed forces can hold on too. British, French and Danish troops are already here, but the UK contingent needs more air defence. the Estonians do not have enough to defend Tallinn and the British base at Tapa.
The civilian early warning system is ready: my nearest shelter is about 200m away. We would receive warnings through the mobile network to take shelter. My friends in the reserves have been on exercise for weeks on end in the past year, so they are as ready as they can be.
The Russian speakers are even more determined to defend Estonia- they know better than anyone how bad things are under Putin and what he would do to them if they ever came here (the same feeling is amongst the Russian speakers of Ukraine in places like Kharkiv too).
We still hope for the best, but, increasingly we are prepared for the worst. People here are shocked and horrified, but determined and ready.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Soviet terror bombing of Tallinn in 1944. Estonians do not forget.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How can someone be so dumb. 1000 years at a new generation every 25 years is a 2 to the power of 40. We are not talking about tens of millions. Nothing so trivially as small. Are you really so stupid that you can't do the maths? There aren't confounders. The maths is simple and straightforward. Can you explain what cofounders there are?. We all have 2 parents, we all have 4 grand parents, etc. It is simple. The number exceeds the total population of the planet way before you get to the end and by a massive number. Eventually those ancestors become so diverse that every ancestor is your grandparent several times over and probably at different levels eg a person might be your grandfather several times at level 40 and several at level 38, 39, 41 and 42.
If Ukraine's resistance collapses/fails because the US stopped sharing intelligence and paused the supply of aid, then the state visit here has to be cancelled.
Does anyone care about the state visit (other than the orange narcissist) ? If he does utterly screw Ukraine - and by extension, us - then cancelling a state visit doesn’t even register in terms of a merited response.
It might even be worth still have him, and just taking the piss for the entire visit.
Bring him over and then arrest him. Treason against Canada.
"New guidelines released by the Sentencing Council today would make prison sentences less likely for ethnic and religious minorities.
Two-tier justice isn't just a talking point - it's the reality in modern Britain..
This policy is, effectively, already in place, with certain offenders receiving lenient sentences for horrific crimes while others receive strict sentences for speech violations...."
jenrick is on this, vehemently and loudly, but where is Badenoch? She is useless
More detail:
A Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) means that probation has assessed an offender and done their best to consider options for that person to serve a sentence in the community (ie not in prison). It gives a judge options beyond jail. Often, there will be an argument between the prosecution and defence lawyers over whether a pre-sentence report should be ordered. The defence lawyers will know that a PSR will more likely lead to a non-custodial sentence. If a PSR is not ordered by a judge, a custodial sentence will follow in many cases. The judge is basically saying there is no option beyond custody so there is no need for probation to assess options for a community sentence. If, therefore, you are more likely to get a PSR if you are a member of a minority community, it means you have a better shot at a non-custodial sentence for any particular offence than somebody who is not a member of that community. The same goes for if you are female, and the following extract states explicitly that custody for women of minority cultural or religious beliefs may be ‘particularly acute’ meaning that it should be avoided in more cases than for women who do not belong to those minorities.
"Shalom Hamas" means Hello and Goodbye - You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance. Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How can someone be so dumb. 1000 years at a new generation every 25 years is a 2 to the power of 40. We are not talking about tens of millions. Nothing so trivially as small. Are you really so stupid that you can't do the maths? There aren't confounders. The maths is simple and straightforward. Can you explain what cofounders there are?. We all have 2 parents, we all have 4 grand parents, etc. It is simple. The number exceeds the total population of the planet way before you get to the end and by a massive number. Eventually those ancestors become so diverse that every ancestor is your grandparent several times over and probably at different levels eg a person might be your grandfather several times at level 40 and several at level 38, 39, 41 and 42.
If you read the papers, as I did this week, even the author acknowledges that your parents are not a random selection from the entire population available on the planet or in Europe at the time. That’s why it is not as simple as 40! suggests. Seriously, check out the papers - it’s all there. It’s possible that at the year 1000 everyone who has descendants is related to everyone alive, but it’s not definite. There were almost certainly individuals who were ancestors of everyone alive now. You have to go further back for everyone to be an ancestor of everyone.
"Shalom Hamas" means Hello and Goodbye - You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance. Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!
If only he'd replace Hamas with Putin and Israel with Ukraine...
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
Wait this is based on that?! Lol, Putin is running rings around the Americans right now. It's shameful.
Even if there are lots of useful minerals under Ukranian soil, there are plenty of sources that are a) better mapped and b) less likely to be in a war zone over the next few years. And lithium is pretty cheap right now.
What I don't know is whether Soviet-era geological mapping was any good. But the key thing is that, just because stuff is under the ground, it doesn't automatically mean that it's sensible to remove it from the ground.
The US just put Russia in charge of US decisions on if, or when to restore aid to Ukraine. Guess how they might choose ?
The U.S. will continue to suspend weapon supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until a date for peace talks with Russia is set, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Wednesday. https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1897294656314253351
If the US has stopped intelligence sharing with Ukraine, but is obliged to share intelligence with Britain under five eyes, can we share with Ukraine (informally) as a kind of middleman? There must be a few moral people left in the CIA.
No, that was already ruled out yesterday by the United States.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
Wait this is based on that?! Lol, Putin is running rings around the Americans right now. It's shameful.
Even if there are lots of useful minerals under Ukranian soil, there are plenty of sources that are a) better mapped and b) less likely to be in a war zone over the next few years. And lithium is pretty cheap right now.
What I don't know is whether Soviet-era geological mapping was any good. But the key thing is that, just because stuff is under the ground, it doesn't automatically mean that it's sensible to remove it from the ground.
Soviet geologists in the oil and gas sector were pretty good. No reason to doubt they wouldn't be pretty handy at finding minerals too.
That speech by macron is sobering. How fast is this going to escalate?
It has already gone beyond trusting Trump and US so this will continue to escalate with no known outcomes
Well every country that was protected by America’s nuclear umbrella is going to be seeking their own nukes in the near future whether obviously or covertly
A lot of the 'realists' who like to sneer at the rules based international system never seem to mention the non proliferation treaty.
That treaty was based on countries being safely sat under either USSR or USA / NATO protection.
With that protection gone the treaty goes with it - you may not like it but all the treaty is going to do is ensure counties keep their plans secret until they reveal their working weapons
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendant is someone who is directly descended from another person - such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so forth- in an unbroken lineage. It indicates a direct familial line without branching to siblings or cousins. For example, your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all your direct descendants, whereas nieces, nephews, or cousins are not
nieces, nephews, or cousins are not descendents of any kind even though they are related by blood via antecedants (e.g. common grandparents)
Is that the strict definition? Fair enough if so, I was using it more colloquially - but still fairly, I reckon
A niece will have about 25% of the DNA of her uncle, which makes her a quasi-descendant, to my mind. This is also observed in nature, where uncles and aunts invest in nieces/nephews in terms of time and money, because it makes genetic sense to do so. You are thereby helping your genes to persist in your descendants, even if the descent is not directly parent to child
Fair enough in terms of DNA transmission. But if you talk about a direct line then these genetic detours don't count
I recall reading some theory that explained the persistence of homosexuality, in human genetics, via this "collateral descent"
On the face of it, any genes for homosexuality should die out pretty damn quick as gaylords and ladies can't have kids. However what they can do is lavish their time, attention and cash on the nieces and nephews who therefore BENEFIT from having lesbo and homo aunts/uncles. Thus the gay gene survives via the 25% of DNA handed on diagonally
This pattern is also seen in some other species. You get a lot of gay deer, for instance, and it is thought their presence, talking about opera and loitering in public conveniences, is advantageous for the non gay deer progeny of their non gay deer siblings
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
Wait this is based on that?! Lol, Putin is running rings around the Americans right now. It's shameful.
Even if there are lots of useful minerals under Ukranian soil, there are plenty of sources that are a) better mapped and b) less likely to be in a war zone over the next few years. And lithium is pretty cheap right now.
What I don't know is whether Soviet-era geological mapping was any good. But the key thing is that, just because stuff is under the ground, it doesn't automatically mean that it's sensible to remove it from the ground.
Soviet geologists in the oil and gas sector were pretty good. No reason to doubt they wouldn't be pretty handy at finding minerals too.
Nevertheless the minerals deal is a chimera. It looks to me like a brilliant piece of prestidigitation by Trump and Zelenski
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How can someone be so dumb. 1000 years at a new generation every 25 years is a 2 to the power of 40. We are not talking about tens of millions. Nothing so trivially as small. Are you really so stupid that you can't do the maths? There aren't confounders. The maths is simple and straightforward. Can you explain what cofounders there are?. We all have 2 parents, we all have 4 grand parents, etc. It is simple. The number exceeds the total population of the planet way before you get to the end and by a massive number. Eventually those ancestors become so diverse that every ancestor is your grandparent several times over and probably at different levels eg a person might be your grandfather several times at level 40 and several at level 38, 39, 41 and 42.
If you read the papers, as I did this week, even the author acknowledges that your parents are not a random selection from the entire population available on the planet or in Europe at the time. That’s why it is not as simple as 40! suggests. Seriously, check out the papers - it’s all there. It’s possible that at the year 1000 everyone who has descendants is related to everyone alive, but it’s not definite. There were almost certainly individuals who were ancestors of everyone alive now. You have to go further back for everyone to be an ancestor of everyone.
The population of GB a 1000 years ago was a few million. 40 to the power of 2 is around 1,000, 000, 000,000. I counted on my fingers so could be out by a factor or two and I rounded down to 1000 every time I got to 1024, but of course that means I was under counting. Also there will be lines that died out which I have also ignored which again means I am undercounting.
There might be the odd person who isn't a decent of everyone who has a line that didn't die out, but it is exceedly highly improbable. On the contrary you are actually a multiple decent of everyone whose line didn't die out because the population a thousand years ago was a few million not a Trillion.
Very good analysis segment of TRIP on JD Vance's contempt for British and French soldiers who served alongside USA forces, and the blowback. I hadn't realised that the total numbers rotating in and out of Afghanistan were 100k+ in toto. His "I didn't mean them" is a bit tricky when 52 countries served in Iraq in the noughties, including 1600 from Ukr. Deep link.
Centrist Dads' supply perspicacious analysis, and context, as ever. JDV's real problem is that he does not look beyond the echo chamber in his own head.
Useful idiots for Trump continue to reverse ferret, except afaics for Nonny-Nonny-Nigel. And I bet the Leeanderthal Man too, but I haven't checked.
Feeble centrist dad likes feeble centrist dad content. Startling
Lol. I go where the analysis leads.
The Trump-enthusiasts are realising they are naked emperors, and coming to their senses a little.
Will you be?
You are very possibly the stupidest person on here, and I find your cluelessly predictable commentary enjoyable for this reason. You're like a guilty pleasure
You've said that to at least a dozen people. Poor memory, or just lots of guilt ?
No, just a lot of competition for the title "stupidest person on PB"
You won that title, at the beginning of the week.
Enough with all this small-dick energy; just try and come to terms with what you were dealt.
No, you and @kamski and the rest misunderatood the "Charlemage effect". But I am kindly letting it go because I am essentially a nice person and I know you get weirdly querulous and angry when confronted with your personal intellectual limitations. I imagine this peevishness is why your only friend is a dog, but I have no desire to make that loneliness worse, so go forth with my blessing, this sacred Ash Wednesday
We should all be kinder to each other, like me
I was intrigued by the works referred to in this discussion and went and read them. What was interesting was that the model is based on assuming that the parents are randomly drawn from all available people in a population. Which is a bit unlikely. The author admits this in his work. But what is undeniable is that if you go back enough generations you will find an individual who everyone alive is a direct descendent of. But that person is unlikely to have been either Rollo of Charlemagne. Then going furthe r back you will reach a point where everyone alive is is either an ancestor of that person or has no surviving descendants. The issue at hand was about when that would be. After one generation it’s obviously not. By 1000 years ago it’s plausible, but I think on the whole not proven, and certainly the argument that everyone alive now is descended from everyone at 1000 is not proven.
I also did some research!
And what you say is fair. The nature of compounding maths and go-forth-and-multiply does mean that one European person. 1000 years ago, can have tens of millions of living descendants now, and direct descendants at that. However the application of brute force maths can go too far, there are too many confounders, so @kamksi's claim (IIRC) that we are all direct descendants of Rollo is almost certainly wrong (I apologise if I have mischaracterised his argument, its been a busy week in which - not least - I have flown from Shanghai to London)
It was a fun argument. Especially as I am PROVABLY a direct descendant of Rollo, and also Snurtur, the Norse God of Ice and Fire,
How is a direct descendant different from just an ordinary descendant?
A direct descendent is in the male line
Ok thanks, I did not know that. A rather archaic term then. Also, a 'direct descendant' is the one where, over 40 generations, there is very likely to have been a mistake - a deception where the 'father' was not in fact the biological father.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
It does seem a fair question. Either we have independent entities or we don't.
No it is not a fair question, because she said there will not be a two teir APPROACH. Meaning the its not the governments choice but it will still happen.
Of course Parliament can change the law.
Still seems fair to me. If we're going to change the law every time the sentencing council does something the government doesn't like why have it in the first place? And if we're not going to change the law when but the government will bitch about its decisions, thus undermining it, also why have it?
The engineers working on Tempest will be chuffed, too.
Yes, no chance of that being cancelled now. If anything the MoD should be initiating a spin-off project to use as many Tempest parts as possible in a new VTOL fighter. Even if Trump doesn't disable the existing F-35Bs, buying more beyond the current batch of 48 now looks deeply unwise.
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
They could vote for democrats in the midterms but they probably won't. A former US colleague told me the people he knew would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, hence I cashed out on Harris. These are intelligent people apart from their support for Trump and evangelical belief in a white cloud fairy. I would not bet against them doubling down on this next time, blaming their lives turning to shit on woke, DEI and the blob still existing.
Whatever goes wrong, it can't be Trump's fault, he's only the President.
He's very much at the level where if people want to criticise him they have to blame advisers or people misinterpreting his wishes. Even if he did acknowledge a mistake (I accept this is an alternative universe idea) those people would not admit it.
‘Twas me that asked. It felt like a wokism but clearly isn’t. It’s also a horrible term. I’d rather stick to saying soldier, pilot, sailor etc even if it is more words.
It is used in HMF to denote or as shorthand for kinetic engagements ie literally war fighting. As opposed to what Kitson called "low intensity operations" where there will be rarer instances of flicking off the safety catch.
Afghan was war fighting, whereas NI was low intensity operations.
The engineers working on Tempest will be chuffed, too.
Yes, no chance of that being cancelled now. If anything the MoD should be initiating a spin-off project to use as many Tempest parts as possible in a new VTOL fighter. Even if Trump doesn't disable the existing F-35Bs, buying more beyond the current batch of 48 now looks deeply unwise.
About 15% of each F35 is produced in the UK - and more by UK companies outside the UK. So I think we'll be ok.
I wonder how long it will be until a major world leader states plainly that “America is now our enemy”. It surely can’t be long.
We have a major world leader called Keir Starmer. What he says is complicted by some hard facts. These facts include the facility the new enemy has to keep his nuclear installations in Suffolk, and his contracts to maintain your own. This places USA in a slightly different position from China, Russia, Iran etc.
The extent to which this is a global nightmare has yet to come home to us, and it won't be long before talk turns to how USA politics and the institutions of civil society might deal with the matter internally. No-one else in the west possibly can do it.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have to comprehend that everything Sir K and the government say and do is under the constraints mentioned here, and a million more, including stuff we can't know exists. A government of national unity would be entirely understandable. But we will be slow to go that way, as it rather lets the cat out of the bunker about where we stand.
You've expressed much more effectively than I could what I think is the obvious next question in this debacle: what will the Americans do about this? It seems to me that the American public are the only ones with any agency to stop Trump. Will they do it before it's too late? It is, I think, the defining question of our times.
What do you suggest they do?
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
They could vote for democrats in the midterms but they probably won't. A former US colleague told me the people he knew would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, hence I cashed out on Harris. These are intelligent people apart from their support for Trump and evangelical belief in a white cloud fairy. I would not bet against them doubling down on this next time, blaming their lives turning to shit on woke, DEI and the blob still existing.
Whatever goes wrong, it can't be Trump's fault, he's only the President.
He's very much at the level where if people want to criticise him they have to blame advisers or people misinterpreting his wishes. Even if he did acknowledge a mistake (I accept this is an alternative universe idea) those people would not admit it.
That speech by macron is sobering. How fast is this going to escalate?
It has already gone beyond trusting Trump and US so this will continue to escalate with no known outcomes
Well every country that was protected by America’s nuclear umbrella is going to be seeking their own nukes in the near future whether obviously or covertly
A lot of the 'realists' who like to sneer at the rules based international system never seem to mention the non proliferation treaty.
'Realism' is a useful thing, but can easily just be a cynical cover. The most blatant example is the 'Russia is inevitable, thus peace must regrettably happen' crowd - who if listened to when they first spouted it would mean that Ukraine would not have pushed back Russia in the north, nor regained Kherson.
A genuine pragmatist who thinks Ukraine cannot realistically regain all its territories would presumably have identified the moment that further resistance lacked meaningful gains, rather than a 'realist' who advocated effective surrender despite events showing that would have been a mistake. The Corbyns of the world, in other words, and the Vances.
Macron just gave a big presidential zeitenwende speech. They’re upping spending too.
I’m kind of hopeful that the mixture of friendship and healthy competition for European defence leadership with Britain could be quite fruitful.
When is our Spring budget? I am not sure that we should be waiting that long before making similar commitments. Starmer really does need to push this forward rapidly. He has doen okay so far, though I disagree with his continued belief that our relationship with the US is salvagable. But he needs to do more and rapidly.
About two weeks - 25th(26th?) of March.
I'm finding it a little disappointing (if not surprising) that they don't seem to be laying the ground of "You oldies - you remember the cold war, you remember your parents talking about the war? Now is your time to pay down for the young'uns who might be fighting for you."
Nonsense or not - that appeal and shaking up some of the disparities seems like quite an opportunity for any tax-hungry government.
I think a stronger message would be that we pay now so that our children don't have to fight.
The stronger we are the less chance Putin will try anything. All the more so if he doesn't win in Ukraine.
Did the GOP ever really believe in free trade? Was it all lies all these decades. Seems so. They clap like seals as Trump destroys the idea.
They probably thought they did, but they like winning their primaries more.
Also people rarely understand their own ideologies all that well. How many people who dream of being a Thatcherite really get the nuance of what that might mean, particularly in a modern context? I sure don't, and I have doubts most adherents would.
I cannot believe the likes of Rubio, Waltz and Kellogg will nod along indefinitely with what this administration is doing in Washington. There has to be a breaking point.
"I don’t quite understand how Shabana Mahmood can simultaneously claim the Sentencing Council is independent but then pledge there will be no two-tier sentencing on her watch. Has this happened on her watch or hasn’t it."
As Starmer has floundered, Jenrick has had a very good war too.
Shame Jenrick is such a repulsive barsteward.
Starmer has played a weak hand weakly.
Not sure anyone of any other party would have been any better.
Maybe Boris could have made us feel that we were consequential.
Yes, Starmer has been an unmitigated disaster. But Johnson? It speaks volumes that Johnson hasn't, as far as I am aware, given his .unequivocal support to Ukraine and castigated Trump since it all kicked off last week.
Come off it. Just take a look at his twitter feed. Full of things about supporting Ukraine.
In the last week? Perhaps you could help me out. If you can I will apologise unreservedly to you.
Yes, he commented after the White House meeting. I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, that he has now become a Putin backer or something?
Some people, once they have chosen a baddie, will not allow that that person might have views they agree on about anything at all.
Toppers said in the light of Starmer's abject diplomatic failure Johnson should be given a ride out. I am just saying he would be worse, and I referenced that by his inability to condemn Trump.
It's simply nonsense. Starmer has had a suffuciently goid week for his party's polling to be approving, and to be attracting praise from Tories, and Johnson is the last person to either bring Europe and America together, or lead Europe, as a person with a very low prestige in Europe.
Starmer has been poor. It's not entirely his doing. Managing Trump and Vance has been like herding cats. His simpering hand-wringing performance on Thursday could have gone worse. Indeed by the following day it had.
Many of us are disappointed he can't bring himself to say Trump and Vance are a pair of ****s, and Trump can shove the invite from the King up his diapered ar**. To be fair that is exactly what Jenrick and today Kemi have said. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for Johnson to declare the same.
But that seems to achieve nothing with Trump.
We would probably be looking at the same 25% tariffs as the E.U, and no input into the Zelensky-Trump relationship that he is having.
I was hearing today we are likely to get the tariffs anyway. Vance hates Starmer and Britain. Musk despises Starmer. Starmer is whoring the nation for nothing.
If he and Mandelson get the minerals deal back on, as they may do, they won't be.
He's also making himself more indispensable to Macron, Merz, and Trump.
The "minerals deal" has the hallmarks of a New York Mafia style protection racket.
Except the minerals deal may be utterly worthless, given it's all based on a few Soviet era geological reports.
Wait this is based on that?! Lol, Putin is running rings around the Americans right now. It's shameful.
Even if there are lots of useful minerals under Ukranian soil, there are plenty of sources that are a) better mapped and b) less likely to be in a war zone over the next few years. And lithium is pretty cheap right now.
What I don't know is whether Soviet-era geological mapping was any good. But the key thing is that, just because stuff is under the ground, it doesn't automatically mean that it's sensible to remove it from the ground.
Soviet geologists in the oil and gas sector were pretty good. No reason to doubt they wouldn't be pretty handy at finding minerals too.
Hmmm:
I'm not sure that's quite true. The Soviets were very good at finding oil and gas when they found obvious surface oil leaks. I would point out that the abiogenic theory of oil was much believed in Soviet Russia, and that turned out to be complete baloney.
‘Twas me that asked. It felt like a wokism but clearly isn’t. It’s also a horrible term. I’d rather stick to saying soldier, pilot, sailor etc even if it is more words.
I think there was a Medal of Honor game which was subtitled Warfighter, to many a laugh, only to discover it was a real term.
Comments
Has this been discussed on here? Apols if so. But that final comment by the spokesperson is decidedly ambiguous.
Edit: sorry, missed it in an earlier scan. But the latter point stands, in re any appeal.
Trump is in power. He can't be removed except by impeachment, which the Senate won't agree to;
He has total power due to immunity, granted by the courts;
He's clearly completely insane, but there's no mechanism to remove him as the only ones who can so certify him are even madder;
Even if he did, his replacement is clearly on the Kremlin's payroll;
And he's there for another four years.
The real issue is the quite shocking decision of the American public to elect a man who was a convicted criminal, a known tax cheat, a confirmed sex offender, a failed president, an open traitor and boasting about various criminal acts he would commit when elected on campaign.
They knew all this and still voted for him. Why do we assume the stupid twats care about the damage he's doing to the world *and to them?* And even if they do - well, we're back to, there's nothing that can actually be done about it.
Sequester Turnberry and Trump Aberdeenshire and donate the proceeds to Ukraine.
There is, I suppose, a faint chance that thie silence is because if something big is being planned against the regime the first anyone else knows is when they wake up to discover a lot of leaders are in prison and the airports are surrounded and the streets are full of soldiers.
Very very unlikely, but it would explain the silence.
Of course Parliament can change the law.
A former US colleague told me the people he knew would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, hence I cashed out on Harris. These are intelligent people apart from their support for Trump and evangelical belief in a white cloud fairy. I would not bet against them doubling down on this next time, blaming their lives turning to shit on woke, DEI and the blob still existing.
Are you by chance Donald Rumsfeld?
Phillips P. OBrien
@PhillipsPOBrien
·
2h
Well Europe, time to take a deep breath, hitch up your pants, roll up your sleeves, and do everything you can to help Ukraine. No one else will. Its not only their freedom on the line--its yours too.
https://x.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1897358365971636333
Ha, beaten to it.
Incest, sminchest.
Short of that, expressing disapproval would probably be enough right now. If Trump's net approval dropped to e.g. -20% he is such a narcissist he'd almost certainly change course.
Of course, this relies on America remaining a functioning democracy, which is why I said 'before it's too late'.
As for whether they care: I retain an optimism that not all Americans are complete fuckwits. I accept I may be proven wrong.
Higher taxes for the well off. Lower benefits for the poor and old.
It's pretty clear that Starmer has been buttering up Trump for economic as much as for security reasons.
If that's another rug that gets pulled, then there's absolutely no point in pretending to like the mad narcissist any longer.
The US might be uniquely powerful in the west, but Trump is burning every bridge with those who were its allies.
That has consequences, and would give us a freedom of action we're not now exercising.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but we might not be left with a choice in the matter.
It only has to be enough in the right places to control the Electoral college - which it clearly is.
As for changing course due to unpopularity, he'll just claim it's lies from the Lamestream Media and carry on.
A niece will have about 25% of the DNA of her uncle, which makes her a quasi-descendant, to my mind. This is also observed in nature, where uncles and aunts invest in nieces/nephews in terms of time and money, because it makes genetic sense to do so. You are thereby helping your genes to persist in your descendants, even if the descent is not directly parent to child
One of them is time. Every day that the orange one doesn't explode angrily over us, like Mr Creosote, is a day where a bit more preparation can happen behind the scenes. And it needs to be behind the scenes, so as not to provoke President Toddler. The rest of the world can't buy enough time, but every day is a bit of a bonus.
The other is public permission for the unpleasantness to come. Even a week ago, there were plenty of non-crackpots looking forward to a Brilliant US-UK Trade Deal that would protect us from the incoming storm. I don't think any of them still do now, because of the events of the past week. When the UK goes onto a warlike footing (and I fear it is inevitable), it needs to be with the heaviest of hearts, becuase every attempt to play nice has failed.
This bit really isn't dignified, and I have to wonder when the equivalent of Chamberlain's September 1939 speech is coming, but it is still necessary.
Trump isn't all bad for the stock market though. The Russian one is really flying since his inauguration.
VoteHub will begin collecting all polls and will publish them via an open-source API. This will power our polling averages, and anyone will be free to use it. More details to come.
https://x.com/VoteHubUS/status/1897351193695019252
I suspect you're probably right, which leaves me hoping for algakirk's faint chance that something big is being planned. I certainly can't quite square the lack of resistance coming out of the US so far - the placards at Trump's speech just looked a bit pathetic.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=t0DCU-tlu18
(Spare me the PB lecture, everyone, about it being based on what I watched: I know, but there has been a new algorithm recently, bringing all sorts of obscure old videos to the forefront.)
The whole argument that European and other allies should buy American weapons to win over Trump has just been blown up. Who wants to have their planes and missile launchers switched off at Washington’s whim in the middle of a war?
https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1897374253462495631
Poland ahead of the game in already having placed orders.
The engineers working on Tempest will be chuffed, too.
It’s all a bit Emmanuel Goldstein / 1984, isn’t it ?
On the face of it, any genes for homosexuality should die out pretty damn quick as gaylords and ladies can't have kids. However what they can do is lavish their time, attention and cash on the nieces and nephews who therefore BENEFIT from having lesbo and homo aunts/uncles. Thus the gay gene survives via the 25% of DNA handed on diagonally
This pattern is also seen in some other species. You get a lot of gay deer, for instance, and it is thought their presence, talking about opera and loitering in public conveniences, is advantageous for the non gay deer progeny of their non gay deer siblings
Buying as much time as possible, willing to get along with USA but prepared for the worst - which looks certain.
Under the cover of Trump's instruction to Europe to rearm, they are doing exactly that - this both flatters Trump and gives cover for creating structures which are distanced from him, including renewed nuclear ones.
Doing their best for Ukraine, with the hope they can get a deal which will be awful but defer and delay further attacks from Russia in Europe.
All I can add is that Macron and Starmer in particular should have our united support. They are trying.
If he does utterly screw Ukraine - and by extension, us - then cancelling a state visit doesn’t even register in terms of a merited response.
It might even be worth still have him, and just taking the piss for the entire visit.
The civilian early warning system is ready: my nearest shelter is about 200m away. We would receive warnings through the mobile network to take shelter. My friends in the reserves have been on exercise for weeks on end in the past year, so they are as ready as they can be.
The Russian speakers are even more determined to defend Estonia- they know better than anyone how bad things are under Putin and what he would do to them if they ever came here (the same feeling is amongst the Russian speakers of Ukraine in places like Kharkiv too).
We still hope for the best, but, increasingly we are prepared for the worst. People here are shocked and horrified, but determined and ready.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Soviet terror bombing of Tallinn in 1944. Estonians do not forget.
House Speaker Mike Johnson's chief of staff arrested on DUI charge after Trump speech
A Johnson spokesman said the speaker is standing by his chief of staff and "has full faith and confidence" in him.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johnson-chief-staff-arrested-dui-charge-trump-speech-rcna194986
"Shalom Hamas" means Hello and Goodbye - You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance. Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!
https://arthursnell.substack.com/p/there-is-no-minerals-deal
Even if there are lots of useful minerals under Ukranian soil, there are plenty of sources that are a) better mapped and b) less likely to be in a war zone over the next few years. And lithium is pretty cheap right now.
What I don't know is whether Soviet-era geological mapping was any good. But the key thing is that, just because stuff is under the ground, it doesn't automatically mean that it's sensible to remove it from the ground.
Guess how they might choose ?
The U.S. will continue to suspend weapon supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until a date for peace talks with Russia is set, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Wednesday.
https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1897294656314253351
With that protection gone the treaty goes with it - you may not like it but all the treaty is going to do is ensure counties keep their plans secret until they reveal their working weapons
Any further engagement with Trump is just feeding the beast. We saw that with the call with Trudeau earlier.
There might be the odd person who isn't a decent of everyone who has a line that didn't die out, but it is exceedly highly improbable. On the contrary you are actually a multiple decent of everyone whose line didn't die out because the population a thousand years ago was a few million not a Trillion.
Afghan was war fighting, whereas NI was low intensity operations.
A genuine pragmatist who thinks Ukraine cannot realistically regain all its territories would presumably have identified the moment that further resistance lacked meaningful gains, rather than a 'realist' who advocated effective surrender despite events showing that would have been a mistake. The Corbyns of the world, in other words, and the Vances.
The stronger we are the less chance Putin will try anything. All the more so if he doesn't win in Ukraine.
I will pay more for that. Any sane parent would.
Also people rarely understand their own ideologies all that well. How many people who dream of being a Thatcherite really get the nuance of what that might mean, particularly in a modern context? I sure don't, and I have doubts most adherents would.
Trump removes Mexico/Canada tariffs on cars.
I'm not sure that's quite true. The Soviets were very good at finding oil and gas when they found obvious surface oil leaks. I would point out that the abiogenic theory of oil was much believed in Soviet Russia, and that turned out to be complete baloney.
greatPrime Minister.