In the UK, you are a king if you are a male who ascends to the throne to become the reigning monarch. Philip wasn't the monarch, he was the spouse of the monarch, and so became prince.
If you are a woman who marries the reigning king, then yes, you do become queen... the discrepancy is I'd imagine historic, in that rulers were always male, and due to this king is greater than queen. So a female spouse of a king can be a queen, and the king is still in charge. But if a male spouse of a queen becomes king, then because king is greater than queen, it confuses the issue of who is the actual reigning monarch.

Seems sexist nowadays, but then monarchies are an anachronism in any case.

It doesn't just happen, though. It happens because elections aren't representative. In a first-past-the-post system, voters for smaller parties will never get representation. Which means that sometimes they vote tactically for the 'least bad' major party.

Red 50%
Yellow 40%
Green 10%

In FPTP, the outcome would be something like: Red gets 70% of seats, Yellow gets 30%, Green gets nothing.
In PR, the outcome would be: Red gets 50% of seats, Yellow 40%, Green 10%.

But also, under FPTP there are people who want to vote Green, but vote Yellow instead because Green will never win and Yellow are 'less bad' than Red... if we switch to PR, the votes may be more like:

Red 50%
Yellow 35%
Green 15%

... so moving from FPTP to PR not only makes representation more democratic, it also empowers individual voters to vote for their preferred party rather than for a tactical 'least bad' compromise.

All that the vaccine is doing is saying to your body "protect against this thing". It's not experimental, because viral vector vaccination is not a new process. And it's not gene therapy. The AZ vaccine uses a viral vector to deliver instructions for your body to build the CV19 spike protein. That's it.

Do you eat meat? Then you're transporting foreign DNA into your body. What is the problem here? The AZ vaccine is delivered by an adenovirus. Adenoviruses are unable to integrate with or alter your DNA. That's why they're used as vectors. Also, they're modified so that they can't replicate. It's simply a delivery mechanism.

It's like receiving a parcel from Amazon. You just get the parcel, you don't fuse with the delivery driver.

I take your general point, but the data suggest (see my previous link), that the risk of blood clot from taking the vaccine is less than the risk of blood clot from catching Covid. Sure you can gamble that you won't take the vaccine and will hope to avoid Covid, too... but when the number of blood clots is so tiny, so statistically insignificant as to suggest no link at all, it's a different question.

It's impossible to determine why they banned it, given the previous history. I'm from the UK, and was against Brexit...but with the AZ vaccine the EU has behaved terribly. We had Macron inciting anti-vax hysteria in France with his comments about AZ, we had similar but lesser issues in Germany, we had bans for people over 65, then okay for older people and bans for younger people, etc... we had EU leaders claiming the vaccine was ineffective... and at the same time the EU going crazy during the supply issue, and demanding 100% of AZ vaccines stay in the EU... even though they didn't want them, they "weren't safe" and "weren't effective". Absurd. And impossible to disentangle all of this from Denmark suddenly banning it because of non-existent blood clots.

Anecdotally, just as a point of interest (a single data point does not consititute an argument), I've had the AZ vaccine. I had mild fever/chills overnight, and a bit of a headache. Within 24 hours I was back to 100%.

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This is a concern. Normally I love wet races, there is a lot of unpredictability, and it gives the best drivers a chance to shine. Hamilton for example performs extremely well in the wet.

However... at Imola this may not be so great, because of the difficulty in overtaking. A safety car at an unlucky moment could put Hamilton or Verstappen halfway down the race order, with very little opportunity to get back to the front. Rain at Imola means there's a chance of a really weird result.

Perez went out for his final Q2 run on another new set of softs.
... and he managed to top the charts. But at what cost?

This means he starts the race on softs whereas Verstappen and Mercs start on mediums. Which might already give Mercedes a strategy advantage... unless Perez can come top in Q3 and start from pole... and then accelerate away on those softs at the start of the race. But that seems a stretch. Starting on softs with a full fuel tank means he'll have to stop early. Advantage Mercedes already, surely? Even if Max starts in pole, if Ham and Bottas are 2 and 3, then you'd think those 3 cars would all be together, thus Mercedes control when Max has to pit, and you'd then fancy then to exploit this advantage, and then Ham to win the race.

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Scratch all that, Q3 was a big surprise. 1 Ham, 2 Perez, 3 Max. With Bottas in 8th! And Norris was nearly on  the front row, but had his time scratched for exceeding track limits... which was very marginal, looked like a matter of a few centimetres.

Norris is top of the charts at the moment in Q2, albeit on the softs.

Perez looks like he's struggling a bit, behind Verstappen and both Mercs, and he's on softs whilst the others are on mediums.
If Red Bull and Mercedes are as closely matched as it looks, then the performance of the second driver is absolutely crucial. Part of the reason Hamilton won last time out was that Bottas was up there at the front, whilst Perez was not... which gave Mercedes a big strategic advantage. The same could be happening again unless Perez can step up in Q3.

Denmark will be the first country in the EU to ban the AstraZeneca vaccine due to a) whipped-up anti-British sentiment following Brexit, and b) unscientific and erroneous conclusions based on a failure to understand data and context.

Irrelevant, surely? AZ aren't out for profit (in this instance). They are and always have been selling the vaccine at cost.

They did. Even a cursory search on Google will show you evidence of (and data from) the standard three phase trials.



Also... it appears that the risk of blood clots from having Covid is 8-10 times higher than the risk of blood clots from taking the vaccine (see below).
If you are distributing a vaccine to many millions of people, there will be plenty of deaths from all sorts of different causes. I bet some people have broken an arm or tripped over a paving slab shortly after taking the vaccine - it is irrelevant.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-04-15-risk-rare-blood-clotting-higher-covid-19-vaccines

Well, at first I hated Flat Earth, and all it stood for. Honestly, even thinking about Flat Earth made me feel a bit sick.
But then I read a few posts there, and I think it converted me. I'm a different person now. If someone tells me the Earth is round, I laugh at them and say no, it's not round, it's an oblate spheroid, which basically is another term for Flat. 'Round' is lunacy. I don't know what my pre-conversion self was thinking.

I don't think so, no. Not a direct US vs Russia conflict, anyway.

I'd imagine it's no coincidence that Russian aggression in the Ukraine is ramping up at the exact same time that China is flexing its muscles over Taiwan. They are likely combining against the US on two fronts, and seeing how far they can push before there is any US retaliation.

But why now? Well... Trump was a known, and largely controllable, and an isolationist, too. He pulled the US back from the global stage. New president Biden may represent a return to traditional US interventionism, which is a concern for the other global powers... but the world has changed in the last few years, China is a major player now. China and Russia are testing US resolve. The US response to both will likely be words plus perhaps some ineffective sanctions. I can't imagine there's any appetite for any more than a bit of posturing.

Man City are 11 points clear in the league. They can focus fully on Champions League now, the domestic league title is a given.
It's a different story for PSG and Real, who are both in second place in their domestic leagues, and so can't give all their attentions to the Champions League.
Perhaps this is to be Man City's year?

This is turning into a new Flat Earth thread. Brilliant.

The blame isn't directed to us as individuals, but to us a part of a collective identity of 'white', or 'straight', or 'male'. Oppression isn't merely historic. It is better now than it used to be, but it has not disappeared. Black people are still being murdered by white police kneeling on their necks. Ethnic Chinese in western countries are being assaulted because of an imagined link to Covid19.
And it's not so much 'blame' as a caution to be vigilant against racism. Similar to how an uprising of nationalism is more troubling if it comes from Germany... historical context informs the present. Doesn't mean that you, as a random person in Germany, wants to bring back the Third Reich.


Positive discrimination is a clumsy and flawed method, but with a laudable aim. There are much better approaches used in certain industries, for example some orchestras are conducting _(sorry) blind auditions. It is better not to specifically hire the black/female candidate because they are black/female, but to have a process in place whereby gender and ethnicity are removed from the interviewer's consideration. Orchestras is obviously a limited example, but it shows it can be done.

It does sound like he's definitely broken the rules. The question of whether or not he was aware of this is harder to answer. I'm sure he should have been aware, but perhaps he wasn't. Given his age and that an immediate ban would effectively end his career, I think a compromise outcome is most likely - a suspended ban coupled with a large fine (that he can easily afford).

I'm not sure it will. In a two-party system, Party A is always going to attack Party B, because they need to take votes off Party B to get seats off Party B. But in a PR election, lots of parties get seats, everyone has their own angle, and it's no longer a case of forcing everyone in your party to band together to attack the opposition.

And even if PR does result in two parties getting all the seats, then that will be because those two parties got all the votes... which is a lot fairer than it is now.

And at the same time, Real Madrid are playing really well and are winning all of their games.
This will be a tough one for Liverpool. Real will surely win overall... but as for tonight's game, it may be that Real sit back and wait for Liverpool to commit forward in search of the goals they need... and Real just hit them on the break. It's a difficult situation when you need to win by more than one goal, and easy for the opposition to just put men behind the ball and wait for you to over-commit.

I'm a straight, white male. Show me the data.
Unless you mean less than 50% of the population is white male? Which, given the approximately equal gender split, means you'd only need say a 1% non-white element for white males to drop below 50% of the population. But still by far the most powerful ethnicity and gender.

Have a look at current senators, and then tell me that white males are oppressed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_senators
And here's a breakdown of supreme court judges by ethnicity and gender: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/supreme-court-justice-minorities-history-trnd/index.html
Yes, I would have a problem with 'rights for whites'. Come back to me when whites are forced to sit at the back of the bus or work the plantation, and I'll join the resistance.

Positive discrimination is a different issue. It's an attempt to right systemic wrongs, but obviously has consequences for individuals. If I went up for a job, scored the same on the assessment as a black candidate, and lost the job because the employer wants to address their ethnic balance, then would I feel aggrieved? Yes, probably. But if we are balancing an individual against the whole society, then society should win. My loss would be a win for the greater cause.

Agreed.

As for the last paragraph, don't know how to respond and not particularly keen to quote it.

Bigots and oppression, yes, this is the root of it. 'Super straight' isn't about an oppressed minority group seeking a voice and recognition. 'Super straight' is a response to those seeking a voice. It's an attempt at oppression. Exactly the same as 'all lives matter'. And exactly the same as if the Klan rebranded themselves as 'rights for whites'.

It's a negative dressed up as a positive, that's all this is.
It's 'we don't like lesbian/gay/trans/etc' dressed up as 'straights are people too!'
And this is revealed by the need to differentiate 'super straight' from 'straight'... it's 'straight' but with an added element of 'we don't like people who aren't straight'.

The thinness of the betting markets on certain new or less well-known websites can also be a factor. You can get some great odds out there, it's often just a case of finding the right site. Unfavourable odds on one particular site might be completely different and much more appealing on a different site. Obviously with internet betting you're not limited to the betting shops in your own city... you have the whole world to go at.

Yes. I don't think this is a bad thing. Some countries have a history of coalition governments that work very well, Germany being an example.
Proportional representation is just that - the political positions of the representatives mirrors that of the electorate. It helps to prevent extremism, and the kind of oppositional and factional bickering that you get in 2-party systems... for example the pointless impeachment of Trump, when it was obvious that even if he'd gone on a massive killing spree with a machine gun, the Republicans would still have backed him.

I'm not sure about how it would work best... just that in general it's a better idea than FPTP, particularly when FPTP covers such huge regions (such as winner-takes-all for an entire state at a time).