MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
I think people who make non-specific complaints about the opposite sex into memes are (mostly unintentionally):
- Encouraging people in so-so marriages to see the negatives in their current situation
- Warning off unmarried people against marriage
and therefore making the world a worse place for the sake of a cheap joke that isn't even funny. I wish they would stop.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Yes, but the anonymous sources with access to the Iranian side and the anonymous sources with access to the US side disagree on what the deal says.
This is exactly what I would expect to see if the deal was going to fall apart at the last moment, or if what we actually have is an incredibly thin deal - probably a 60-day ceasefire and opening of the Straits of Hormuz with essentially everything else TBD.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
These comments are especially rich given that, following the Euro 2020(/1) Final in which England lost to Italy on penalties because every black English player who attempted a penalty kick missed while every white player who attempted a penalty kick scored,
To anyone familiar with the history of the England team, criticising a team which reached a major tournament final for going out on penalties is either performative fan grousing or idiocy. Southgate's team did well to make a World Cup semi-final and a Euro final. Going out on penalties after a great run is what the best English teams are supposed to do. (Admittedly against Germany or Portugal and not Italy). The fans are just doing their job by grousing about the men who missed spot-kicks. Southgate especially knows this - he has a special place in this story after his Euro 1996 miss.
Part of the idiocy of English fandom is that we consistently think we can win the World Cup, and then feel hard-done-by when we don't. This time England do have a chance based on rankings, betting odds etc. and anything less than a semi-final slot will be a legitimate disappointment, but ex ante at the time Southgate was appointed anyone who suggested that a World Cup semi-final and two European finals would be a bad haul would have been laughed at. The criticism of Southgate for playing dull, negative football is fair, although I think England are in the place of old-school Italy (we aren't good enough to expect wins and beauty, and the fans prefer wins) than old-school Brazil (for whom winning the World Cup while playing ugly football would be a disappointing result). So is the criticism for turning Euro 2024 into a slog given our piss-easy draw. (The only difficult match was the semi against the Dutch).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Senior estate agents are "hired gun negotiators". (The junior agents who arrange viewings and such like are their minions/apprentices).
M&A bankers are arguably doing the same work with businesses instead of real estate. Again, you are a minion/apprentice until you make MD level when you become a hired gun negotiator.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
I remember a video of London-based NY Giants fans singing "You can shove your fucking cheese up your arse" (to the tune of "She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes") before the London Giants-Packers game in 2022 that went viral because this was both more offensive and far more creative than the US norm. It is pretty mild by English football standards.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
rugby hooliganism
I would say rugby (at least Union - I don't know enough about League culture because the game isn't really played in southern England) hooliganism is the exception rather than the rule in the UK. I spent several years in Richmond in south-west London. Despite football (in the form of Ted Lasso) putting Richmond on the map, it is very much rugby territory - the "tailgate"-equivalent for England Rugby games happens in Richmond with fans arriving by tube, drinking for a couple of hours, and then taking the shuttle busses run by the (one professional and one semi-professional) local rugby clubs to Twickenham stadium. And being around 10,000 drunk rugby fans feels completely safe.
UK 'football factory' style clubs
I think "English" is correct here. Scotland has a tradition of football hooliganism, but it explicitly sectarian and associated with the Glasgow rivalry between (Irish Catholic) Celtic and (Scottish Protestant) Rangers, rather than the violence-for-violence's-sake of English hooliganism.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
If they get out of the group stage, it will be for the first time in their history.
They probably will, which just shows that the 48-team format is diluting the standard of the competition.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
English fans traditionally riot after a loss rather than a win - the American hooligan practice of burning your own city after a win is particularly strange to us. But win or lose, I hope someone in the English ultras is talking to their Canadian counterparts about plans to party in DC like it's 1812.
For whatever reason, Scottish travelling football fans are happy drunks rather than mean drunks. If Scotland win the world cup, there will be a giant fan love-in which will provide convenient distraction while the corrupt US and FIFA officials who made it happen make arrangements with Satan to open the Donald Trump Infernal Ski and Snowboard Park.
I don't think this is an argument about wokeness. This is mostly an argument about strongman vs institutional leadership. You can be a anti-immigration conservative without being a wannabee corrupt dictator - see for example Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Riikka Purra in Finland, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, or 45% of Swiss voters. All these people get called fascists, accurately in the case of Meloni (her party is the institutional successor of Mussolini's Fascist Party), but I haven't heard any of them called mafia dons.
If AI was being developed in Meloni's Italy, I don't know whether Anthropic would attract the banhammer, but I suspect the decision would be based on the actual national security threat and not the kowtowing skills of the CEO or the hair colour of the spokeschick, and I know that whether or not this was the case Meloni would be making a real effort to make it look like it was. Seconding @BurdensomeCount, the same will continue to apply in London whether we have Burnham or Farage as PM.
Fairly obviously, you can also be a wannabee corrupt dictator (or even a successful corrupt dictator, like communists) without being a right-populist. But for whatever reason this hasn't happened in my lifetime in the main Western democracies on a larger scale than a big-city political machine.
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