mormont

But Trump has already said he'd run from prison if necessary, and he legally could. His voters wouldn't desert him if he did, not in the numbers required to make any of the other Republican candidates a viable option. So I'm not sure his legal troubles make last night's debate any less of a sideshow.

As well as everyone else actually mentioned above.

I've never heard of her before now. She undoubtedly has a PhD though, so the scare quotes there are a choice.

The quoted tweet is a reasonable, pertinent and obvious observation. We know that Letby got the benefit of the doubt in part because people thought she was 'nice' and found it hard to credit her as a killer. Part of that was her appearance, and part of that was that she was white. White women, particularly young, able-bodied white women, are very much the avatars of innocence in our culture. I would have to say that if there's an agenda being pushed here, it is the idea that Letby's whiteness didn't matter.

Right, but that defence doesn't work, is my point. It doesn't matter what Trump believed or what his motive was in committing crimes. And in any case if his motive did matter, it has to be things that he knew at the time. It can't be something he only found out about later! But that's what he's saying now, that he's only just discovered this proof. I know it's all chaff, flailing around as is Trump's normal M.O., and that logic and reason don't matter to him or his supporters as much as vague feelings and warm bullshit. But still.

Obviously he has no evidence of fraud, but does he realise that even if he did, that wouldn't exonerate him of the charges against him? Two wrongs don't make a right. Even if the result was fraudulent, corrupt attempts to overturn it would still be a crime.

Musk was always a libertarian. Like many libertarians, he has made the journey to being a right-wing reactionary. Not a huge surprise. He did used to disagree with the right on some issues, but he has either changed his mind or doesn't discuss those issues at all any more. Again, this happens to a lot of 'libertarians'.

With this and a couple of pounds, you can buy a coffee. Seriously, identifying 'the general internet consensus' on anything is a pointless exercise. It's almost impossible to objectively identify what it is, and it tells you nothing of real value even if you can. Like fishing for used boots.

Many if not most of those starving kids she's so concerned about are on benefits, and if they were well fed, Platell would be whinging about that because their parents are lazy scroungers. It's so transparently 'why don't you all fight over scraps?' it's barely worth bothering with.

I could write a lengthy answer about how Ben embodies the best of Lee and Kirby in terms of their character tropes, but the shorter response is: as we all know, the whole reason the Avengers were the basis of the MCU was that Marvel had sold off the really popular properties' film rights. X-Men, Spider-Man, and yes, the Fantastic Four. The Avengers were the remnants that nobody wanted. They're now the leading IP, but for decades they were behind the FF in popularity (and the FF in turn were behind the X-Men and Spidey). It wasn't Iron Man on all the lunch boxes and duvet covers in those days: it was Bashful Ben Grimm. Along with Spidey and the Hulk, he was the face of Marvel for years.

Saying the FF are boring is just not true at all. Ben Grimm is easily one of Marvel's best characters, just on his own. He held down a team-up title twice, something only Spider-Man has been given otherwise. Sue is a fantastic character when written well: very few superheroes get to be mothers and almost none get to be one and not be defined by it. Written properly, she's literally the heart of the team. Reed is often, lazily, written as a sort of uncaring monster (or worse, the secret villain which is a boring, edgelord idea, typical of Ellis, who is overrated IMO) but written well is a keystone of the Marvel universe, the inverse of Doom, the man Doom wants to be but never can be. Even Johnny, Valeria and Franklin can be and have been written well. And the team, as a concept, has been very adaptable, switching out membership and working well despite it. Ryan North's run right now is getting rave reviews. The FF are absolutely a great team, better with Doom, sure, but a keystone of the Marvel line even without him.

I'm in the 'rather enjoyed this' camp. I liked the Ciri solo episode, the battle, and Cavill's last fight at the end. I tend to enjoy fight scenes in fantasy for what they are: few of them make any real sense if you know anything about medieval combat so the best way to view them is as entertaining choreography, rather like a dance but with more fake blood. Anyway, I was entertained.

Not really. On any definition, Corbyn was a massive failure. If we start with the most basic, like 'is anyone following you?', Corbyn certainly started out with goodwill and support but he squandered it. By the end he had very low support within and outwith the party. If nobody's following you, by definition you're not a leader. He was a poor communicator and had no ability to form alliances or persuade those who disagreed with him: he seemed unable to even understand different points of view and unwilling to try. He showed personal bias and favouritism, and spent large chunks of political capital on trying to rescue personal friends from (deserved) disciplinary action. We didn't get that from Corbyn. If he had a coherent vision, I don't know what it was, and I'm a political junkie. Free broadband, nationalising a couple of industries, but these are policies, not a vision. What was even in his 2017 manifesto, that you admire so much? I can't remember. As for hope... I'd guess that's not the emotion eight out of ten voters associate with Corbyn. He was certainly unable to communicate that emotion to voters. Donald Trump? I make that point just to point out that attracting a crowd has little or nothing to do with leadership skills. It really does. Being unsuited to the job of leader makes you a terrible leader, by definition.

The one thing Corbyn definitively was not, was a leader. He utterly failed at that.

I'm just going to repeat: I'm a 51 year old white cishet male and if Marvel had sat me down and asked me 'what if we made a film specifically for you? what would that look like?' my answer would have been 'Monica Rambeau, Carol Danvers and Kamala Khan teaming up, please'. Maybe adding Blue Marvel, who yet might appear. I'll be lining up to see it, and as we discussed earlier in the thread, so will a lot of folks in my demographic. What the lead actress - and she is undoubtedly the lead actress, she will in this movie have her name precede the credits, something that only Robert Downey Jr and a handful of others have had in Marvel movies - said years ago about another film is not in my mind at all. If you're trying to make an issue of it at this point, you need to have a talk with yourself.

I think there's still a chance for Twitter. If Musk were to sell up, a new owner could put it back together. None of the alternatives look like they have what it takes to replace Twitter: there's still value there. Appoint a competent board and invest, and you could make a lot of money. Of course, that relies on Musk admitting defeat and selling up at a staggering loss, not a likely scenario. But possible.

Yes, but that was more to do with them being shocking in terms of being socially transgressive then them being sexual in nature. Many non-sexual entertainments started in bars and nightclubs for that reason.

No, it really does. That's the plain reading. I'm genuinely puzzled why you aren't reading it that way? The first part of the two part test is not 'of obscene or prurient nature', it's 'harmful to juveniles or obscene'. The only reference to 'prurient' is after a list of examples including drag, where it says 'or other similar performers or entertainers who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest'. That is clearly characterising drag as appealing to 'a prurient interest'. ETA - and even if we were to parse the words in some way that does not directly say drag is prurient, the bill includes drag on a list of activities that are otherwise exclusively sexual in nature. There's nothing unreasonable in reading that as suggesting that drag is also inherently sexual.

I cannot recommend enough that everyone watch I'm A Virgo, but here's what the creator has to say about whether it's a superhero show:

Are you under the impression that if the SAG and WGA did not strike, then these ads and higher prices would not happen? Because that's not how economics works.

The bill classifies "performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer's or entertainer's gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers" as being "entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest" and "adult cabaret performance". It then goes on to say that to "recklessly engage" in such performance other than in a specified location is a crime. I can see why one might point to the 'performers or entertainers' part and say 'see, it's not about social transitioning'. But I can't see why one would say 'it doesn't say anything like that', because it is certainly capable of being read quite like that. Particularly as the bill doesn't seem to define the term 'performers or entertainers'. ETA - I would also hope we can all agree that to see a bill legally define drag as inherently of prurient interest is naturally of some concern to people who are socially transitioning. One of the biggest issues in the US for trans people is that their whole existence is portrayed or perceived as being about sexual deviance - that they are trans for sexual thrills.

Can we either spin out the electric car discussion or end it, please?

Again, I'm going to remind folks that the death of superhero movies has been declared more often than the death of various superheroes within them, and yet fifteen years after the launch of the MCU, they still make hundreds of millions of dollars apiece, and pack out theatres. The occasional flop is to be expected, but three of the top ten grossing MCU films were released after Endgame. We're some distance from '90s comic book crash territory. If you keep declaring the genre dead every six months, eventually you'll be right, I suppose.

The Lib Dem vote already dropped from the heady heights of 6.3% to 1.7%. 526 votes. Not much room for growth there. Even the Greens had only 2.9%, 893 votes. You'd need 35% of those hardcore voters to defect. I'm not buying that, I'm afraid.