General News Thread

[Zear0]

5 minutes ago, DJW1 said:

I always had the impression that Americans would support their President even if they hadn´t voted for him, since he was the figurehead of their country. Is that correct and, if so, has it changed in the last few years?

I work over there frequently and can assure you it isn’t. Can’t speak historically, but they’re embarrassed by him.

[Parafox]

22 minutes ago, Zear0 said:

I work over there frequently and can assure you it isn’t. Can’t speak historically, but they’re embarrassed by him.

Clearly not that many.

 

Or they don't speak up.

 

US social media is awash with MAGA supporters but not many raise Republicans seem to raise a concern. Those that do post something against MAGA get absolutely serious pelters from Trump supporters. Including threats to harm.

 

It's all gone to rat shit, even since the orange loony won his first term. 

 

One egomaniac has destabilised the whole world.

Edited 25 March by Parafox

[ramboacdc]

2 hours ago, Md9 said:

I’m sure the young people that voted for him are thrilled right now 

she is a horrible human as well 

I have a bet with a friend that she has some crazy end to her tenure. Some sort of scandal. My friend bets it will be a Lewinski moment. I am betting on social services being involved.

[ramboacdc]

50 minutes ago, Parafox said:

Clearly not that many.

 

Or they don't speak up.

 

US social media is awash with MAGA supporters but not many raise Republicans seem to raise a concern. Those that do post something against MAGA get absolutely serious pelters from Trump supporters. Including threats to harm.

 

It's all gone to rat shit, even since the orange loony won his first term. 

 

One egomaniac has destabilised the whole world.

Social media is pointing a corner of the world it wants you to see. Rage provokes interaction. Interaction means you stay on the app and get ad revenue. Twitter swung from left to right overnight when Musk took over as anger drives the social media sphere. The right in a lot of countries has figured out how to bot, or pay for fake accounts and flood it with rage bait. A lie is half way round the world before the truth has its shoes on. Its being weaponised by a lot of people who frankly dont know what they are messing with and wont be around in 10-15 years to have to deal with the reprecussions. 

 

 

[Md9]

6 minutes ago, ramboacdc said:

I have a bet with a friend that she has some crazy end to her tenure. Some sort of scandal. My friend bets it will be a Lewinski moment. I am betting on social services being involved.

I think the whole administration will have some kind of crazy end especially her , hesgeth and trump they are all pretty mental 

[MPH]

1 hour ago, DJW1 said:

I always had the impression that Americans would support their President even if they hadn´t voted for him, since he was the figurehead of their country. Is that correct and, if so, has it changed in the last few years?

err, no.

 

die hard right republicans hated  Obama, and likewise, Obama fans hate trump and everything he stands for.  Now if Trump was say in Pakistan and he was assisinated , some might see that as an attack on America, not just the person of Trump, if that’s what you mean but no, generally speaking there is a massive divide in American politics bigger than the Grand Canyon..

Edited 25 March by MPH

[Md9]

To much internet today think it’s tike to go to sleep 

[FoxesWalk]

2 hours ago, DJW1 said:

I always had the impression that Americans would support their President even if they hadn´t voted for him, since he was the figurehead of their country. Is that correct and, if so, has it changed in the last few years?

My wife is American and I visit often. 
 

America is hugely polarised politically, it’s like two groups of people inhabiting totally different realities that refuse to acknowledge the other, it’s utterly broken, moreso than here. Their court system is also utterly baffling, has a huge bearing on politics and doesn’t change until the justices die, don’t get me started on that… 
 

Trump said people would still support him if he walked down the street and shot someone, I have no doubt he is right. Forget the wars, tariffs (which are taxes on US consumers), attempted insurrection and overthrowing of an election, it turns out millions will support him even after he was found liable in court for sex offences and is named more than 38,000 times in files related to a paedophile ring (that his DOJ redacted an unknown number of files from for ? reasons). He still has 10s of millions of backers, and many extraordinarily wealthy donors from all over the world. 
 

Prior to his rise, no politician would have survived anything close to what he has been involved with. 
 

In terms of those who haven’t voted for him.. no democrats will be defending him, and I’m sure some, if not many, of his previous voters may have now turned against him based on recent events. Particularly younger voters and those seduced by his messaging on keeping the US out of wars. 
 

America has been polarised as long as I’ve been visiting regularly (10 years ish), but it has become more so with the rise of Trump and the influence of social media and rolling 24h news channels. I’d say it’s noticeably more divided now than it was 10 years ago. There is a big urban - rural divide, not dissimilar to the UK in that respect. 

Edited 25 March by FoxesWalk

[davieG]

On 23/03/2026 at 18:41, Livid said:

NCP closing 22 UK car parks from midnight on Thursday and four are in Leicester and one in Hinckley. 
 

Rutland St is the one I will miss, always used it for The Curve. Going to be looking at dodgy street parking. 

 

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/five-leicestershire-ncp-car-parks-10881491.amp

[Sampson]

2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Read an interesting Internet find tangential to this today:

 

Louis Theroux has made a documentary about the "manosphere" (a word I cannot even bring myself to say, it’s so ghastly) and the liberal Internet is doing that thing where it pretends to be appalled by something it's been staring at through the window for six years. "Have you *seen* what's happening to young men?" Yes. We've all seen. You can stop clutching the curtains now.

 

Almost every response to this stuff follows the same pattern, though: describe the pipeline, express horror, suggest better role models, move on, as though the problem is a staffing issue. As though Andrew Tate is simply what you get when there's a vacancy for Atticus Finch and nobody applies. Nobody seems especially curious, however, about *why the vacancy exists in the first place.*

 

So let's talk about status, which is what this is actually about (underneath several layers of protein powder and performative sunglasses.)

 

Human beings are, at a biological level, status-detecting instruments. We can't help it. You could raise a child in a perfectly egalitarian commune and by age four they'd have a ranking system for who gets the best stick. The brain runs on hierarchy the way a boiler runs on gas, not because it's noble, but because for a very long time it was the difference between eating and being eaten. We are apes with anxiety disorders, and the firmware hasn't been updated since the Pleistocene.

Now, the modern world has done something genuinely remarkable. Over about a century, we've taken a serious hammer to the more grotesque hierarchies.. rigid class, fixed roles, and the assumption that your postcode determines your ceiling. This is actual progress, the kind you'd defend with your life.

 

But in doing so, we've also removed something else: legible signals. Clear answers to the question "where do I stand?" And the brain, confronted with ambiguity, does not think "how thrilling, a pluralistic society full of nuance and possibility." The brain thinks *THREAT.* The brain would like a ranking, please, immediately, even a bad one, because a bad ranking is at least a *known position,* and a known position is a thing you can defend.

 

Enter the modern attention economy, which (in the manner of a casino handing you a free drink) is only too happy to help.

 

It doesn't invent the need but instead *industrialises* it. It takes every instinct we have about status and competence and belonging and runs them through a machine that converts them into metrics: follower counts, like-ratios, subscriber numbers. Suddenly you're not just alive.. you're being scored, silently and perpetually, by an algorithm that doesn't care whether you're thriving or drowning, only whether you're engaging.

 

And when the score is low, when you feel small inside a system that quantifies everything and values nothing, a very ancient subroutine kicks in. Not "how do I become secure?" That's slow and effortful and requires the kind of patient, unglamorous inner work that doesn't have a merch line. No, the subroutine says: "If I can't feel safe, I can at least feel *above.*"

 

There's a beautifully horrible experiment that demonstrates this, that I talked about last week. People were offered a choice. Option A: they receive £5, and a stranger also receives £5. Option B: they receive £3, and the stranger gets £1 (and presumably some billionaire somewhere pockets £6.) With B, they are *volunteering to be poorer.* It is, by any rational measure, stupid. And yet a significant number of people pick £3 every time. Not because it's more, but because it's *higher.*

 

Sit with that for a second. People will *pay real money* for relative position.

That is what the manosphere is selling. Not fitness tips and self-improvement. Not even misogyny, really  (though misogyny is certainly the medium.) What it's selling is the £3 option, the warm, electric certainty that you are *above* someone else. That there is a natural order, and you are nearer the top of it, and the reason you feel bad isn't that the world is broken, it's that you haven't yet claimed your rightful position.

 

"You're not lost. You're a king who forgot his crown." That sort of thing. Delivered by a man in a rented Lamborghini with the conviction of Moses on the mountain.

Interesting read. Reminds me of the classic pc game Deus Ex - humans have biological need to be judged by others or else society and working together - which evolutionary helped us survive would not be possible- first that was fulfilled by God, then in the 20th century it got fulfilled by fame and mass media - then in the games dystopian future (and thus game was from 1999) it got fulfilled by AI and mass surveillance through data mining algorithms 

 

 

“The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.”

Edited 25 March by Sampson

[Trav Le Bleu]

41 minutes ago, ramboacdc said:

I have a bet with a friend that she has some crazy end to her tenure. Some sort of scandal. My friend bets it will be a Lewinski moment. I am betting on social services being involved.

For a man who is clearly misogynistic, he seems to give a lot of public roles to much younger, fairly attractive, women.

[Trav Le Bleu]

37 minutes ago, Md9 said:

I think the whole administration will have some kind of crazy end especially her , hesgeth and trump they are all pretty mental 

Ah, you watched Dr Strangelove.

[ramboacdc]

14 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

For a man who is clearly misogynistic, he seems to give a lot of public roles to much younger, fairly attractive, women.

And then they all vanish under a scandal of some sort. Look at the head of ICE

[fox_favourite]

https://news.sky.com/story/us-airports-may-have-to-shut-as-passengers-endure-highest-wait-times-in-history-transport-boss-warns-13524468

 

World cup could be interesting if this isn't sorted soon. What a mess!! How can anyone expect people to survive without being paid. The system is silly. 

Edited 26 March by fox_favourite

[leicsmac]

8 hours ago, Sampson said:

Interesting read. Reminds me of the classic pc game Deus Ex - humans have biological need to be judged by others or else society and working together - which evolutionary helped us survive would not be possible- first that was fulfilled by God, then in the 20th century it got fulfilled by fame and mass media - then in the games dystopian future (and thus game was from 1999) it got fulfilled by AI and mass surveillance through data mining algorithms 

 

 

“The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.”

I know we've talked about this before, but it's rather darkly amazing how much the creators of both Deus Ex and MGS2, even made at the turn of the Millennium, got right about today.

[DJW1]

8 hours ago, FoxesWalk said:

My wife is American and I visit often. 
 

America is hugely polarised politically, it’s like two groups of people inhabiting totally different realities that refuse to acknowledge the other, it’s utterly broken, moreso than here. Their court system is also utterly baffling, has a huge bearing on politics and doesn’t change until the justices die, don’t get me started on that… 
 

Trump said people would still support him if he walked down the street and shot someone, I have no doubt he is right. Forget the wars, tariffs (which are taxes on US consumers), attempted insurrection and overthrowing of an election, it turns out millions will support him even after he was found liable in court for sex offences and is named more than 38,000 times in files related to a paedophile ring (that his DOJ redacted an unknown number of files from for ? reasons). He still has 10s of millions of backers, and many extraordinarily wealthy donors from all over the world. 
 

Prior to his rise, no politician would have survived anything close to what he has been involved with. 
 

In terms of those who haven’t voted for him.. no democrats will be defending him, and I’m sure some, if not many, of his previous voters may have now turned against him based on recent events. Particularly younger voters and those seduced by his messaging on keeping the US out of wars. 
 

America has been polarised as long as I’ve been visiting regularly (10 years ish), but it has become more so with the rise of Trump and the influence of social media and rolling 24h news channels. I’d say it’s noticeably more divided now than it was 10 years ago. There is a big urban - rural divide, not dissimilar to the UK in that respect. 

Thanks for your detailed replay!

[Trav Le Bleu]

39 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I know we've talked about this before, but it's rather darkly amazing how much the creators of both Deus Ex and MGS2, even made at the turn of the Millennium, got right about today.

Are you saying Trump is Big Boss?

 

Anyway, so long as Death Stranding doesn't come true.

[leicsmac]

Caught a glimpse of Tice on Breakfast today. 

 

Just wish that someone would have the courage to ask him and/or Farage the following:

 

"Why should the British voting public trust any of your foreign or scientific policy decisions when your policy platform on the most important current parts of those two areas appear to be directly against international law, opinion and the consensus of scientific data?"

[Jon the Hat]

2 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Caught a glimpse of Tice on Breakfast today. 

 

Just wish that someone would have the courage to ask him and/or Farage the following:

 

"Why should the British voting public trust any of your foreign or scientific policy decisions when your policy platform on the most important current parts of those two areas appear to be directly against international law, opinion and the consensus of scientific data?"

Hang on a minute!  Are you suggesting they have a policy beyond immigration which is not well thought out or robust?!

[leicsmac]

10 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Are you saying Trump is Big Boss?

 

Anyway, so long as Death Stranding doesn't come true.

Wash your mouth out with that comparison, mate.  He's not even brave enough to be James Johnson. 

 

But, more seriously, I was thinking more about the proliferation of digital information and the problems it represents. 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Hang on a minute!  Are you suggesting they have a policy beyond immigration which is not well thought out or robust?!

I know, shocking, isn't it?

 

It's just a bit scary though that there's still far too many people who will only see that one policy issue and screw us all. 

[Spudulike]

Is the EU finally waking up?

 

[leicsmac]

20 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

Is the EU finally waking up?

 

...I think an elaboration is called for here.

 

Particularly for quoting what appears to be a rather blatantly white supremacist Twitter source.

[leicsmac]

And just a quick reminder on the topic above, if someone argues for stronger border controls and at the same time argues for foreign or scientific policy decisions that will obviously increase the amount of displaced people, they are essentially arguing for those people to suffer and die, apparently purely for their own benefit. 

Edited 26 March by leicsmac

[Spudulike]

5 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

...I think an elaboration is called for here.

 

Particularly for quoting what appears to be a rather blatantly white supremacist Twitter source.

 

[leicsmac]

1 minute ago, Spudulike said:

 

Thank you, however I was thinking more of clarity for the motivation behind the legislation and why it's in any way desirable, rather than the event of the legislation itself.