leicsmac

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce371kw2ex2o President Donald Trump has said the US will hit Iran "hard" on Wednesday, after the two sides exchanged strikes overnight. "We hit them hard yesterday and we're going to hit them hard again today," he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. He also reiterated a call for Iran to "sign a deal". Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian said in a post on X following Trump's briefing that Iran "will stand firm against any pressure or threat". For a "no wars" President, he certainly seems to be fond of this one.

https://phys.org/news/2026-06-odds-climb-el-nio-25c.html https://phys.org/news/2026-06-freshwater-boundary-breach-deepens-climate.html The latest. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fragmented-environmental-policies-failures-experts.html https://phys.org/news/2026-06-greater-international-cooperation-global-forest.html A reminder of just how few favours being tribal and divided does our species or its future.

Are you suggesting that the US State Department at the present time are somehow dishonest? How shocking!

Common sense towards someone like this referee given the current situation? Chance would be a fine thing.

Think you could extrapolate that line of thought to the world, tbh. And for me, the answer is very different. In all likelihood, but not certainly, better. Almost certainly more socially stable. The baffling (though not really) thing is not how he won the first time, but how he managed it the second time in spite of inciting a legislative coup attempt and having hundreds of thousands of bodies on this watch thanks to a virus he didn't take in any way seriously. It speaks to the degree of subversion of the very idea of truth that is present today (and that he indulges in practically all the time) that that could happen.

Who are well known for their honesty and probity when it comes to Somalian nationals under this current administration.

It's almost as if the whole thing is a well engineered racket where the ones on the inside are the only winners.

Either a Carney or an Albanese style figure, off the top of my head, would be good right now. Burnham looks like he could have at least something of the former.

I mean...

... all "legitimate concerns", apparently.

That's about the size of it. However, an additional factor here will be the concerted social media campaign to attempt to demonstrate that such batshit crazy isn't actually that batshit crazy, that people aren't alone in being batshit crazy, and therefore it's OK to be batshit crazy. That, unfortunately, has had a decent effect of drawing in people who wouldn't ordinarily be batshit crazy so far. It's something that needs addressing.

With respect to current discussion in the ****s thread: Flat fee fines for criminal acts are just a surcharge for rich people to do that crime, they have no deterrent value. Assess such fines as a percentage of total assets or choose another sentence.

FIFA has precedent on taking tournaments away from nations that don't offer visas to key personnel (U-17 World Cup in Indonesia). Of course, they would never dare to do such a thing in this case, which makes them craven as well as incompetent. That being said, this problem wouldn't exist without the bigoted stance that doesn't let a fully qualified and innocent referee into a nation simply because of his nationality.

Exhibit 19841616 on how the natural world can inflict consequences and doesn't care about borders, laws or moralising. So feel free to defund efforts to monitor and mitigate its effects at your own convenience, whoever may choose to. I'm sure that will end well.

I tried using numbers yesterday. People were thinking with their hindbrain and were not receptive, unfortunately. .....coward. There's something in that, too. Unexpectedly hotter weather has been statistically shown to cause people to cause trouble. Another thing to look forward to more in the future, I guess?

Can't say I quite get the differentation between the vehement (and justified) anger at the corruption in the modern game and the political corruption (that the current US administration embodies) that has aided and abetted it here, as well as the lack of any kind of empathy for players and refs that are often simply caught up in that same corrupt system rather than having any real say in it...but I appreciate you making your point very clear, as usual.

... you're certain of this as much as you are certain of the rest of your statement here? I guess we'll see how things play out, but I'll be honest, turning back a high quality referee and subjecting incoming teams to discriminatory border checks on account of their nationality to name but two matters, isn't a good look for a tournament which is supposed to be entirely about equality of opportunity. NB. The current US administration have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they are unbelievably objectionable to anyone with a hint of empathetic conscience, so I'm not sure there's really much room for argument there.

Honestly, just for clarity's sake mate, I made that original post with the stats not to highlight the world was in good shape (it really isn't, for all the reasons talked about), but rather to indicate that people were picking the wrong cause for the world not being in good shape. Anyone on here knows I'm hardly the biggest optimist, and I share the same concerns a lot of folk here do. It's just that responses that don't involve cool heads and targeted solutions to issues like the one that's been discussed today will make life worse for those families spoken of, not better.

It will matter to those who end up in a horribly shitty world not far away; they'll blame everyone, not just the powerful, as wrong as that may be. That being said, you may be right about the course being steered and the inability of most people to correct it, but if you are then bad times are coming no matter what, so I would think anyone with any kind of thought about the future would hope you're wrong, too.

Got it. Well, you might be right there, but those left afterwards might see it differently, depending on how it all plays out. I know it isn't popular and people like to often stay boxed within their own space and time, and I hope that I'm wrong. I fear that I'm not, though.

Surely that's a popular opinion, it's almost never not hilarious

I'm sorry, do you mean that the choice won't happen or that most people's choice on it simply won't matter?

As per above, it's entirely understandable how people react in the way you describe here. That doesn't stop the bigger picture being relevant and, if ignored, making consequences that affect every single kid alive, though.

Back on topic, judging by the conversation above this is unpopular: It's almost an inevitability that our species either goes one world or full tribal warfare followed by Mad Max dystopia inside the lifetime of most of the contributors here. Each and every person will have to choose which they prefer, or not and be remembered for that, too.

Survivorship bias and reverse recency bias are a hell of a thing.