But why would they do this? The people in charge of a system can already control it so that it benefits them. The current global financial and economic system has been carefully developed and refined over hundreds of years. I can't see any convincing reason why they would want to suddenly reset everything. It's difficult to believe that the huge economic downturns experienced everywhere are intentional and that all the governments who are trying to minimise damage are actually all in on a big secret, and are deliberately trashing their own countries.

The times weren't representative of actual pace. Hamilton didn't set a time on the softs, then when he switched to hards he locked up massively and damaged the tyres.. and then had to continue on them instead of wasting a new set. I would fully expect Hamilton to move right up to the top of the leaderboard alongside Bottas in later practice and qualifying.

This is true. The pandemic has had huge economic effects, it's just that these aren't properly apparent yet. We have had huge bailouts; the governments of many countries have been throwing money at people and businesses in a desperate attempt to keep their economies running. But this will all have to be paid for further down the line. The economic effects have not appeared on the surface yet, companies seem to be still viable, but this isn't necessarily going to continue, particularly if the handouts stop.

There is also the question, if the dollar price of a stock is increasing, of what that underlying dollar is itself worth in the climate of massive handouts. Fiat has an unlimited supply.

The UK government appear to have no grasp of how exponential progression works, and are paying no attention to the experts. You do wonder how long this stumbling incompetence can continue. Some of the papers are already starting to turn on them.

As a qualifier to some of the sensationalist headlines about current daily Covid cases being the highest ever and surpassing even the peak earlier in the year - I would point out that this is confirmed cases, i.e. those that have been determined by a test. Testing capacity is still woefully insufficient, but it is considerably higher than it was in the first wave.

Having said that, we can see that cases are increasing very rapidly at the moment. We also need to bear in mind that confirmed cases is a lagging indicator as it takes time for symptoms to become apparent. The R value is indisputably well above 1, and rising. It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Example progression of new case numbers for 10 waves of infection:

That was the second thing that came to my mind! The first thing was that she's just released her revealing Trump memoir (as mentioned by the OP) and perhaps wants to drum up some publicity that can be turned into book sales.
Some people might be tempted to conclude that she's doing this entirely out of self-interest, with little or no concern for anything else. Some people might also decide that certain personality traits have a tendency to run in families.

Yes, 2014, the start of the era of Mercedes total dominance. And before that we had the years of Red Bull total dominance.
Since 2014 we've actually had a year where Ferrari had the better car (prior to the engine being declared illegal), but they didn't have the drivers to threaten Hamilton.

I am a big fan of Ross Brawn, I think he knows exactly what he's doing, and I have faith that the changes in line for 2022 will have the desired effect of bringing the teams closer together and allowing closer racing and more overtaking. The last thing we want is for 2022 to be the start of a new era of one team being dominant.

Hi Sujonali - I've sent you a message. Posting here in case you don't see it.

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Yes, it is complicated. the biggest shame is the 'guilty until proven innocent' mentality that is common in cycling - although this is of course understandable given the history within the sport.

I'm actually a big fan of the individual time trial within the TdF. It is a level playing field that removes the advantage of having a strong team around you. The one thing I'm not keen on is having the time trial right at the end. I think you need a few real testing GC mountain stages after the TT to make it more interesting. Wouldn't it have been better this year to have a big mountain stage straight after the TT and watch Roglic and team desperately trying to overhaul the deficit?

I think it's quite complex as outlined here:
https://www.f1-fansite.com/f1-news/teams-can-still-improve-frozen-cars-for-2021/
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/how-development-freeze-will-save-f1-teams-money/4797766/

Some development is permitted, but I'd be extremely surprised if there was sufficient room for Ferrari to suddenly be right up there competing with the Mercs.
Mercedes are so far ahead at the moment, that with the development limitations for next year, I can't see anyone realistically challenging them until the rules reset in 2022.

It's not so much that it's a fork, as that it has no real use-case. I would avoid it.
As for what to buy now, BTC and ETH would be top of the list. Boring choices, but ETH looks strong with 2.0 and staking on the way, and BTC because it is often the first mover when the market turns upwards, and we still have significant room for growth before we consider a new ATH.

The second is caused by the first. When a colonial power withdraws, they rarely leave a stable and sustainable state behind. They just get out, create a power vacuum, and leave the country to deal with the ensuing chaos themselves. History is littered with examples, and often the only way to stabilise the country is by implementing martial law: instant dictatorship. But there are other examples too, it's not always the military. Rwanda/Belgium is a particularly appalling story of what can happen when colonialists leave - genocide was all but guaranteed.

Team sports are probably more reliable than individual sports, because you spread the risk of errors. If one player in a football team makes an error, it can certainly have a negative effect, but not so much as if a cyclist makes an error. The risk is spread. And the problem of individual errors becomes more extreme with how dangerous the sport is - if a runner trips up, they can get back on their feet and try to rejoin the pack... but if a cyclist crashes, there's a reasonable chance that they are out of the race entirely. If we add in the inherent uncertainty in cycling, things like mass pile-ups, the person in front of you crashes or does something stupid and you pile into them... or even just the chaos of racing over wet ground or cobbles... one tiny error at high speed can mean the end of your chances... and this isn't the case in a lot of other sports.

Crypto is extremely vulnerable to changes in sentiment in traditional markets. This is because crypto - including bitcoin - is seen at present as primarily a highly speculative asset class.

Obviously world markets are vulnerable at the moment as the economic effects of Covid 19 start to be felt. Stimulus measures are temporary and not long-term fixes; the underlying problem still remains, and handouts need to be paid for. We can expect economic turmoil to continue for some considerable time, and markets to remain extremely fragile. For crypto, this means sudden price drops can happen at any time... and it makes prices even more volatile than normal.

I don't really want to get into the left/right bad/good argument... but regardless of one's political leanings, I'd say that if a certain party really wants a certain judge to be appointed, then it's most likely because they want judgements that they agree with... so it erodes impartiality whichever party is pushing for the appointment.

Buy bitcoin. Make sure it forms a decent percentage of your total investment.
The mistake I made when I started was to go all-in on alts, and it took me a while to see it. I see a lot of newcomers making the same mistake I did.

Bitcoin still has huge room for price growth, so don't be put off by the fact that it's already expensive. It is more resilient to price drops than other coins, it has a strong use-case, and it is the safest crypto purchase you can make.

Yes. Often the best times for a smaller team to upset the odds is either at the start of the season or the very end of the season.

I don't think this game told us much, other than that Villa have problems against teams who just sit back to defend. Something to bear in mind with in-game betting - if Villa go a goal down, they may struggle to find an equaliser. Of course all that may change now they've bought Traore.

Regardless of whether lockdown is good or bad, I'd disagree with the above.
If we put in some arbitrary starting values to illustrate the point, let's assume an R value of 2, and that cases take a week to spread. Let's start from 1,000 infections. Let's assume the capacity of the Health Service is 10,000 cases.
wk1:  1,000 current cases
wk2:  2,000
wk3:  4,000
wk4:  8,000
wk5: 16,000
wk6: 32,000

If you implement lockdown at wk3, when the problem is getting worse but is still manageable, you fix the maximum cases at around 8,000, assuming that the wk3 people have already infected others who are yet to show symptoms. But if you wait one more week, then you are locking down when cases are 8,000 and will rise to 16,000.

Not saying the R value is 2, but it's certainly well above 1. There is a need with exponential progression to act before it becomes a problem. If you wait until it is a problem, then you're way too late. This is exacerbated by the fact that number of confirmed cases is a lagging indicator.

There's not even a pretence of judicial impartiality here. If a certain party is desperate to appoint a certain judge - this goes for left as well as right - then the expectation is that that judge will make decisions based in large part on political leanings rather than on what the law actually states. I appreciate that laws are complex, nuanced and sometimes subjective and contradictory, but there shouldn't be attempts by politicians to introduce bias that works in their own favour. If you're going to do that, then why bother having judges at all? This is certainly not just a US problem, it happens all over the place. It's rare that you can find a country where the ruling party don't try to introduce unfairness that benefits themselves.

Yes, McConnell blocked Obama's nomination in 2016, ostensibly because it was an election year. Now, 2020, with Trump about to nominate another Republican yes-man (or yes-woman, he's said it will be a woman)... we are in an election year, and McConnell is desperate to get the nomination in asap. They used to at least make attempts to hide this sort of hypocrisy, now it's like they couldn't care less.