Rayvin

While I agree, I wish to point out that he's taken more responsibility in those comments than I think I've ever see any political figure manage in any capacity, ever

I think Vance is 100% a cryptobro asset. He worked for Thiel for several years being groomed into what he is and was then sponsored to the tune of $15m dollars by Thiel once again to win his seat in the senate, coming from absolutely nowhere to do so. Trump took him as VP as part of a deal with the cryptobros sponsor his campaign. What Vance otherwise believes changes to fit his needs - it's not long ago he was calling Trump a nazi. He is there only to advance Thiel's agenda, I'm sure of it.

Yes, I get your point but I still think that gives them a little too much power versus reality. The markets need society to be stable as much as governments need the markets to be. If society is in chaos because the government is failing, the markets are going to have a bad time. It's all interdependent IMO. Which was, I might add, my great belief in assuring world peace for the past years. The fact that everyone's markets were interdependent. All of which has now been turned on its head by Trump of course who doesn't give a flying fuck about markets from what we've seen so far. Shows what I know.

Thiel and the cryptobros... they seem completely untouchable at the moment, the new power in US politics. I don't think they get taken down until political power asserts itself over financial power once again.

They might be driving it, but markets aren't actually in active control of anything. They're just dogs chasing cars. Essentially what you mean is, no one is running the country and the entire system is in anarchy.

Speaking as someone who has been right there with you on this front for years and who has complete respect for the view, and agreement in the need... where on earth do you see that coming from? I look at the current landscape and there's just nothing there. For all people can take considerable issue with Momentum and how it went in the end, it was the last genuinely reformative movement that didn't come from the right, and it was crushed by the centre, We were defeated in full. I see nothing anywhere that suggests anyone is remotely prepared to pick up the pieces of that. Again - I am completely with you, but for all my attempts to justify a protest vote against Labour last time out, the reality is that all I achieved was voting for a party (SNP) that honestly aren't a million miles better anyway - and which felt in the end like a very weak gesture that had no point or merit to it. I wish now I'd stuck to just spoiling the ballot - equally as pointless, but more cathartic. The sort of shift we need is probably one that spans borders tbh. It's not going to be a UK only event.

Who cares man Maybe true but it's not about them and almost certainly never will be tbh. Let's enjoy it without give them a second thought.

Genuinely do love this guy. He's what the TrueGeordie should have been. The latter now being a generic youtuber who has inserted himself up Trump's arse.

Think I'd be prepared to accept "like a new signing" to secure him to a new long term deal tbh.

Why are the rest of us still putting up with this shit. Tell him to fuck off, we'll go it alone. Are we really that incapable of standing on our own two feet?

Also it's year one, if they have to do 'bad stuff' now is the time to be doing it. There's a lot of bad stuff, but better now than nearer the next election. I don't think there really are any other options out there, which is what is so depressing about this.

The thing that annoys me a bit in all this is that the reports at the start of the season were that he was pushing us to sign a new deal, and we were dragging our feet because of how long he had left. That does make sense in a way but it's not worked out very well.

He's now asking for all of Ukraine's energy, minerals and natural resources, with no security guarantees...

That looks like the print edition, it was nowhere to be seen on the online one. I'm also going to add, although you'll know this, that they've made the focus on everything other than the cuts which she has, in the small print, been 'forced' to do. It's about tax rises and the economy failing to kick on. In other words it's all selectively critical and ignoring the things that they should be happy about. This supports the what I said - pandering to these people is pointless, none of them actually care about reality.

The reports are that he turned down our first offer of a new contract, though as ever these are just reports rather than anyone seemingly stating fact. We've subsequently shelved it again, perhaps waiting to see where we finish in order to determine what can be offered based on how high we finish. I don't think that's necessarily any great cause for concern, but we'll see I guess.

Went and checked the Guardian for how these cuts (and now further tax rises) are being reported - absolute outrage from everyone in sight. No worries though, it's not aimed at winning over the enemy middle class lefties. It's aimed at winning over Reform voting morons...! Onwards to the Daily Mail then! Wait... there's nothing here? Top story about a submarine accident, something about Prince Harry, couple of things about Trump... celebrity tat.. Nothing on Labour and these policies. How surprising. It's almost like the people they're trying to win over are disingenuous and don't give a fuck. Weird.

Fair. Completely fair. I really hope you and your wife don't get caught in this though.

Once this fiasco is over with, how do the Democrats respond? Do they go back and imprison all these people again? Do they lock up the Trump administration. I personally think optics be damned, they should go for the entire fucking platform - but then I suppose it means the next time this comes up, Trump 2.0 will just do the same thing, like it normalises it.

I sometimes think about going into it but between what you've outlined and the fact that it would take over my entire life until I die, I just don't think I'm prepared to 'give' that much of my life for this country. And yes they'll all be under orders to toe the line at the moment, I refuse to believe all these people are this small minded. Which somehow actually makes it all the more sad.

Like, who do Labour think they're kidding on this shit. Seriously. None of the right wing culture war losers are going to look at any of this and think 'actually, maybe Labour are my cup of tea after all'. It is never, ever going to happen. This posturing achieves absolutely nothing.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/26/university-of-sussex-fined-freedom-of-speech-investigation-kathleen-stock University of Sussex fined half a million for protecting trans people Bridget out in front claiming that Free Speech is a must. They might be right tbh, but in this climate I'm sorely tempted to assume they aren't.

I actually don't have a very informed view of Rogan, but people talk about him like he's the arbiter of common sense. He seems hugely significant in politics now in an almost Oprah like way.

Yeah and he always kinda was, but the reality at the heart of it is that they are speaking to a genuine issue, just in a really unhelpful way. They would hold up the most extreme "woke" positions, suggest they were literally around the corner for lived reality, and then tear them apart. And on that stuff, they were right... but that stuff is like super fringe, really unrepresentative material. In the end my view was that both sides were extreme positions who needed each other to survive, and I think that remains the case even now. Trump is always harping on about the radical left, it's just that he's thrown that blanket over a lot more people than actually exist within it. I mean I didn't wake up from that and realise that the other side was right, I just woke up and realised that neither side were living in reality. Peterson for me at least was a difficult one because a lot of his psych stuff was genuinely helpful to me. I mean he's a wreck now anyway, all this has totaled him mentally. I don't actually think he was really one of the ringleaders or anything, just someone who tried to ride the wave and was consumed. The other seductive aspect to all this is the harnessing of a very real and very frustrated desire to just change the shit that we live in. I think that resonates for a lot of people - the right harnessed it, the left were beaten back.

I'm going to add that when I first joined here in my mid 20s, I was leaning toward all of this noise. I had my own insecurities from various childhood traumas that some of this anti-feminist/SJW stuff fed into and I found it quite validating at the time to see people push back against things that made me feel attacked. In the end it was actually Brexit that saved me from it tbh - that was the first time I really appreciated how many of these people were just straight up lying to me. Once the mask slipped I found I could suddenly see all of it for what it was, I went into therapy and properly dealt with my insecurity and the warped perspectives it could sometimes take me to. But I suspect it's that basic issue across a lot of people that makes this stuff so successful. It validates them when they feel attacked. Anyway, some of these guys ended up with huge platforms off the back of all of it, and several of them were amongst those exposed as having been on Russian payroll a year or so ago. I guess we don't know exactly when that started but even so, Russia either saw a huge opportunity in this or instigated it.

Right, so the easiest way to explain it from the mainstream point of view, is that it was a large group of male gamers attacking a female developer/other women out of misogyny. The media sticks to this line but it really doesn't do it justice. The gamergate group at the time claimed that it was about ethics in video games journalism and a protest against mass collusion of media outlets. It wasn't that - I mean that's a legitimate point even now, but that's not what this was about. The gamergaters explain their position per the following video - please note it's written for adolescent gamers and you may find the delivery annoying, but in terms of setting out the actual sequencing of events, it covers everything and explains how it became the culture war - be warned, you'll be amazed at how petty and insignificant the whole thing feels, at least from its origins: The short version is - a guy and a girl who were prominent in the gaming community broke up. The girl cheated on the guy. He wrote a blog post about how awful she was. A section of the gaming community said some mean things about her. She complained to gaming journalists/media people she was friends with - they all came together/colluded to attack the wider gaming community for being incels/misogynists. The wider gaming community lost its shit about being called out like that and the notion of "SJW" was defined for the first time and an organised resistance to it was created. This became a months long pitched battle that consumed a large percentage of gamers in some form or another, and as we now know, the anti-SJW side won. Because it's their ongoing narrative that now shapes the culture war even outside the online space. The whole pushback against wokeism is the same exact phenomenon, and has its roots in gamergate. Youtube became the key battleground and it's where lots of prominent content creators were set up to discuss these anti-feminists/anti-SJW talking points. Sargon of Akkad was a key one, he's still going and now runs a private media channel that supports Reform. Jordan Peterson could not have become prominent without this, in fact the movement adopted him more than he adopted it. The whole community leaned into and supported people like Joe Rogan, so he became aligned with those values. Shapiro is another one, but there were plenty of them. Not all of them still exist but they were the guys who did the original work laying the foundations for people like Andrew Tate. It's also why they dominate social media, because they've been doing this for 11 years now. Gamergate was the first battle we lost, and we lost it because when the real media picked it up, they went with the 'all gamers are incels' line and alienated a lot of people immediately. It never really stopped after that point, it just morphed into other things. The Alt Right came from it. MAGA. I think it probably even did enough to tip Brexit tbh (all the talking heads it spawned were anti-EU, all getting millions of views). I know it's stupid and ridiculous given what it was about, but... butterflies and hurricanes.