Sampson

Connections Puzzle #1054 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟪🟦🟪 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 Just fell for the 1 red herring group today

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Me too. Got and understood all 4 categories after a couple of misses to red herrings Connections Puzzle #1053 🟨🟪🟦🟩 🟪🟪🟨🟪 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩

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Connections Puzzle #1052 🟦🟦🟩🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟦🟨🟨 🟨🟨🟪🟨 🟨🟦🟨🟪

Eh. You haven’t learnt how this works yet? It’s Reality TV Real Housewives politics. Trump wants a new story of the pendulum swinging every week to keep himself in the news. It will be a few days of “let’s celebrate the great relationship between our countries”, the press will lap it up as “resetting relations”. Then 3 weeks down the road Trump will be attacking the UK again for not helping in the Iran war and saying the Falklands or Greenland belong to the UK and Denmark. Already seen a BBC article about how this will “revitalise UK-US relations”. Didn’t we already read all this last year when Trump came to the UK? It did, for about a week… then everyone forgot about it again. People have such short memories these days.

Took ****ing ages to get today. Just couldn’t see it Wordle 1 773 5/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩 🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Got a bit lucky in the end. The red herring on green was devilish and I know nothing about purple so couldn’t do process of elimination Connections Puzzle #1051 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟩🟪🟩 🟪🟩🟪🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪

With whom? Starmer is very much sticking to his “we don’t need to take sides between the US and Europe” schtick when it’s obvious to everyone that the old world order is dead and we do. Those who want us to ween ourselves off American and get closer to Europe will all vote LibDems or Green as they are promising that. Those who think we should get closer to the US and abandon Europe will vote for Reform or Conservatives because they are promising that. Starmer is at least publicly trying to pretend the post-WW2 order still exists and that the US is still on the side of NATO, Ukraine and Europe and play both sides. When it’s obvious to everyone else that that world no longer exists and we *do* need to pick a side to align ourselves with as the world devolves into pre-WW1 military-economic alliance blocks.

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Just made it Connections Puzzle #1050 🟩🟨🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟨🟨🟨 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦

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Failed today

I think we all have different opinions on this. I agree with CornwallFox that the financial crisis was the inflection point but not necessarily austerity as although some parts have been more pronounced in the uk . quality of life has been falling in every western country, even those who remained social democratic after the end of the post-war consensus period at the end of the 1970s. For me, capitalism had already blown its load before Covid, although Covid has massively accelerated it. I used to consider myself a liberal but I’ve definitely become more left wing over the past few years because I just can’t escape that a lot of the things the left used to say in the 80s and 90s about capitalism have come true. I do think capitalism can be fantastic for a generation or two, it can and did “grow the pie” as Liz Truss said. It did allow a lot of people to become comfortable and it did grow the middle class and upper working class and allowed a lot of people from generations of struggling to genuinely work hard and be able to give more comfortable and better lives to them and their family - and if thar happens then the growing inequality between the corporate class and the middle and upper working classes doesn’t really matter because it’s causing most of the country to have better lives. But I think like technology or sporting achievement it operates on a bell curve - and you eventually get to a point where the corporate class get too rich and begin the squeeze the middle and upper working classes, because they’ve hoovered up most of the housing, because corporate classes have more and more of the economy sitting in bank accounts earning interest as opposed to the working and middle classes who spend more and keep it circulating. Or they’ve got more and more of a monopoly or oligarchy that take more power from the state. You see it in football or F1 - the quality of both massively improved when the sky money first came in, but eventually it just caused a much less competitive and meant the middle of the pack couldn’t really compete anymore. Covid was definitely a huge accelerator in that it’s allowed an oligarchy of tech companies to almost corner and control the world market - certainty the American market. And the richest companies and people have gone from being hundreds of millionaires or tens of billionaires to becoming trillionaires and richer than basically all countries but the US and China. Not to mention their control over data and information through stuff like Palantir and Twitter means Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are basically richer and more powerful than the countries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany or Japan nowadays. With regards to the surveillance state, 9/11 definitely does have part of that. But I think bad actors have just been clever in using emotional individual cases to shouting about “getting hard on crime and immigration” for votes and power (not just politicians, people like Musk and Thiel are at the forefront of this because they get so rich off it). I think a lot of people still naively feel that “getting tough on crime and immigration” still means just hiring extra police or border guards in 2026 in an era where AI can find in a couple of minutes every drunk or half asleep and on auto-pilot Google search and post online a person made from 20 years ago they don’t even remember and present them out of context in a couple of minutes and employers or authorities can make decisions based on these, or it actually meaning more biometric checks for everyone, more facial recognition technology and AI driven cameras in normal streets, it means hotels sharing data with everyone’s stay, it means health services sharing data with everyone’s visits to the gp or hospital, it means making it easier to go through everyone’s bank transactions etc. I also think so much of the surveillance state actually comes through private companies and so much of our media that predicted these things predicted them to come through the government which is why it has been easier to enact that expected. Most people understandably have scepticism towards too much government power, but not enough people have had enough scepticism towards mega-corporate power as well, which has meant it was easier for this to all come through fighting for deregulation and corporations be able to create these massive data sharing and mining schemes like Palantir. This is probably just rambling nonsense in 2026 though. Dunno how much of this will still look the same in 5 or 10 years

I used to have a theory that South Park getting popular in Europe was a big part of the importation of that very ultra-cynical American Libertarianism philosophy of “let’s just attack all sides of the debate and not stand for anything but just stand against everything, because caring about anything is for losers” to Europe but idk.

I actually see the 2008 financial crisis as the big “before and after” moment and think 9/11 didn’t really have as much of an impact as other 21st century moments like the financial crisis, Orban/Balsanaro/Erdogan starting the age of populism, brexit, Covid, Ukrainian war etc.

I think one of the huge problems with the social internet is that it has produced a society of an insane amount of cynicism about everything that goes way beyond “healthy scepticism” and “don’t believe everything you read” into “be cynical of everything” and “don’t believe anything you read.” People don’t take people earnestly or on their word anymore and so assume everyone is performing and always have to find some terrible angle or noticeably cruel take on everything. In a way, I think the social internet has almost caused a lot of adults and thus much of politics and society to regress to being 13 year old teenagers again - that kind of everyone is fake or sheeple, you can’t just like that band/book/film, you have to be a poser or un-earnestly faking it attitude. And that kind of teenage attitude of assuming everyone else are just sheeple always just performing has really gotten its claws into politics and society over the past 10-15 years. It is a hard balance to get right though - a balance of healthy scepticism without spilling over into cynicism - but I think a lot of the social internet is kind of geared towards pushing that healthy scepticism way too far.

I think green is genuinely gettable though tbf although tough. Purple is too Americanised that I think you have to be very lucky to get it as a non American

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Ended my 4 day streak Connections Puzzle #1048 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟪🟦🟦 🟦🟪🟦🟩 🟦🟪🟦🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟪🟩🟩

”Education” and ”should be taught in schools” feel like a very long term solution though. The population is old and getting older, the median average aged voter started school at the end of the 1970s. A good proportion of the voting public were in school in the 1950s. Even if you started teaching things in school tomorrow it’s take half a century to properly influence voter habits and god knows what the AI slop-ified world looks like then. There’s a half decent chance that by then AI has mapped and understood human brain chemistry and AI can do things to get humans to make decisions without the human knowing they’re being programmed to make that decision with 99% success rate.

It’s just like anything in late stage capitalism mixed with the age of social media - it always eventually leads to being all about the money which eventually leads to oligarchy where a small number of people have the majority of the money and soft power. It’s no longer about going to have a fun day out with your friends or family on a Saturday. It’s just a mirror of society and economy becoming broken in general since 2008.

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Connections Puzzle #1047 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦

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