Yes, the worst thing you can do to someone who has nuclear weapons is to put them in a situation where they have nothing left to lose. I'm sure a major reason for the sanctions on Putin-associates is to destabilise his allies sufficiently for them to want to remove him. It's difficult to imagine him backing down voluntarily or due to Western pressure.

As for him winning Ukraine, there's a huge difference between taking control and holding control. He can certainly capture the key cities and assume command of the country, but the longer this goes on and the bloodier it gets, the more the Ukranians unite against the common foe. I read an interesting article by Yuval Noah Harari (author of the excellent 'Sapiens') the other day, where he argues that by effectively uniting Ukraine against him, Putin is ensuring that he can never retain control of the country in the longer-term.

The instability of the middle-east is an unintended consequence of western involvement, not the primary aim. The aim was oil (money).


The Georgia nonsense stones were put up in 1980, a different era. Rate of population increase has been slowing dramatically since then. Indeed, many countries (Japan as an obvious example) are taking steps to increase their birth rate. Population increases in western countries are generally due to immigration, which is completely independent of the country's birth/death rate. I'm not generally a fan of animated data visualisations, but it's worth going to this link and pressing the play button on the chart to see each nation's progression across the demographic transition model.

This image shows the final state of that chart, with nations moving towards a position where deaths>births (falling population [excluding immigration]).



This image is a view of that chart with the 'average annual change' box ticked. It shows the relationship between changing birth rate and changing death rate over the last 60 years. You will note that most western countries are below the rising diagonal, so either already have, or else are moving towards having, a falling population (excluding immigration).

Maybe the ideal scenario is that the sanctions hurt the Russian elite enough that they oust Putin (which would mean assassinate Putin). Probably the only (or at least safest) way to bring him down is from the inside. Whether that's oligarchs or top military officials, or some combination of the two, who knows, and who knows if it's even remotely likely.




TBH, talking of drunk bears, I'd welcome Yeltsin back about now.

There's a world of difference between engineering a situation and taking advantage of a situation. I would not be at all surprised to see a government use the pandemic to implement otherwise unpopular new laws. Similar to what we saw in the US after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. Governments take advantage of situations all the time.

But it doesn't mean the 9/11 planes were a CIA plan, and it doesn't mean the Covid pandemic is fake or engineered. It's not, it's real. Remember, this has caused huge economic damage as well as countless deaths. If governments don't care about the deaths, they certainly care about the money.

The problem I suppose is that sanctions etc need to go far enough, but not too far. If Putin is put in the situation where he has nothing left to lose then he becomes even more dangerous - difficult as that is to believe. It's not great if he gets pushed into a corner where all he has left is the nuclear weapons.

Well, I suppose one thing we can reasonably conclude is that Red Bull are better than they appear - Verstappen is much faster than Perez, so if that is Perez's true position, then Verstappen's true postion should be some way above him.
We could maybe do that with all the teams, we know for most of them which is the better driver of the two. If the worst driver comes top in testing, then the team is better than they appear.

That's my thought, anyway. But maybe I am grasping at straws, desperate to learn something from these tests!

I wonder how accurate Putin's intelligence is. I don't mean Russian intelligence, I mean the parts of it that are communicated directly to Putin.
I mean, if you are a senior Russian official, are you going to tell Putin the unvarnished truth, or are you going to tell him what he wants to hear (or at least spin it a little bit that way)?

If you're an autocrat, then you're surrounded by 'yes men'. If you ask one of them if you can take Ukraine within a week, what's the answer going to be?

It's difficult to frame it as 'woke radicalisation' when the antipathy towards Putin encompasses pretty much the entire world. Even China - hardly a friend of the west - is abstaining in the UN instead of supporting Russia.
It's basically Putin plus his puppet Lukashenko vs everyone else. It might be worth considering whether it's Putin's actions that is causing everyone to unite against him, rather than some delusion (or wafer-thin excuse?) of a global Russophobia.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. If Red Bull are going out of their way to say they're scared of another car, that just makes me think Red Bull are really strong and everyone should be scared of Red Bull.
That said, yes, I'd love to see Ferrari back at the top too... it's where they should be. Is it realistic? Who knows?

Apologies, then. I inferred it because if you are talking about someone being a dirty driver last season, then it's weird that you don't pick the obvious dirty driver (Max) to talk about, rather someone who was often on the receiving end of his antics. I'm not saying Hamilton is perfect, of course he isn't, but he's certainly a lot cleaner than most multiple F1 champions, Schumacher being the obvious example. And he's certainly a lot cleaner than Max. I'd assume anyone who looks at Hamilton vs Verstappen last season, and comes away with "Hamilton is a dirty driver" is a long way from impartial, and probably a Max fan (or just Hamilton hater). So apologies if that's not the case.



You're right, you didn't mention it. But the fact remains he is the dirtiest current driver out there by some considerable distance.



Alonso is probably my favourite, and I think his talent deserves way more titles than he has, and certainly more than Vettel (who I think is over-rated). I also like Lando, and think he is under-rated - TBH I think he's better than Russell, and I don't understand all the fuss about Russell being the next big thing. And yes Ricciardo is fun. I will also miss Kimi this season. As for Max, I think he is one of the top three for talent, along with Alonso and Hamilton... just don't like the arrogance and the "win at all costs and f*ck the rules" dirtiness.

Well, the top four drivers today were two Mercs and two Red Bulls. I know we can't read too much into pre-season testing, but this is kind of disappointing as I'd really hoped we'd see some others up there. I've seen people saying that McLaren and Ferrari look strong as well, but we will see if they can challenge. And the big question that we still don't really know the answer to - will the teams be more closely matched, and will they be able to race closer together?

An interesting few days, but somewhat disappointing to see the usual names at the top.

Russian Grand Prix cancelled!
Russia stripped of Champions League final, which will now be played in Paris!
How'd ya like that, Putin?

The west stands with you, Ukraine (albeit several thousand miles away, in absolute safety).

This is the about the extent of the response so far, which highlights the powerlessness of the west. Nothing to stop Putin, nor even to encourage him to slow down.

Seems unlikely. I'm a bit perplexed here, last year Verstappen was clearly the dirty driver, which was reflected in his numerous penalties. I mean, I've never ever seen him back out of any situation, he just goes for it no matter what, whether there's room or not, whether the other driver stays on the track or not. Hamilton's driving is more responsible, based probably on the fact that he is just a lot older. He knows when to back out and settle for second and 18 points, in a way that Verstappen doesn't. With Verstappen it's always 25 points or nothing. The weird thing is, the way he became champion in the end was because of Masi breaking the rules, not Max. But certainly with a more sensible attitude Max could have become champion before the final race, just by accepting second a few times rather than driving into people and crashing out.

I mean, take the aftermath of that final race as an example. Lewis congratulated Max. That must have taken a hell of an effort, but it's what he did. Now imagine it the other way around, Hamilton leading for most of the season, Max closing in over the last few races... final race he has the championship in the bag, then the officials f*ck it up and give the title to Lewis. Can you really imagine Max congratulating him? More likely Max would drive straight out of the course still in his F1 car and go on a mad rampage of destruction across the city.

The question I suppose is how much does any of this actually harm Russia, and does it harm the west too?
Putin isn't really dependent on a network of allies, I would assume that Russian government officials are mostly replaceable 'yes men'.
An international travel ban, cancelling flights etc., would probably be met with a shrug of the shoulders. Russia would respond tit-for-tat by banning all western flights over its own ludicrously vast airspace, which would hurt the west.
An arrest warrant probably wouldn't bother him either.
Blocking Russian gas/oil sales harms the west.
Trying to cut Russia out of the financial system means they'll probably just cozy up to China some more.

I'm certainly no expert on any of this, just trying to understand what his limits are or what possible western response could cause him any concern at all. The only thing is NATO countries sending in troops, which seems very unlikely. So what's left? The west providing background support to the Ukranians, leading to some horrible attritional war that could continue indefinitely.

I don't think there's much chance of Djokovic getting the number one spot back. And Medvedev hasn't really been lucky, he's been performing to a fantastic standard and consistency, and fully deserves it. Yes Djokovic's vaccination issue has precipitated this, but arguably it was coming anyway. When Djokovic goes head to head with most players, he just swats them away as if they're nothing... but he's never been able to do that with Medvedev.

Here's their head to head record. Ignoring the first couple of matches, where Medvedev wasn't yet at his current level, they've been quite evenly matched. And I do wonder if Djokovic has some psychological scarring from the US Open final last year, where he was on the verge of history, and Medvedev just blew him away.

It's difficult to guess where he's going to stop, but this map shows the NATO countries. What are the chances of Finland suddenly applying for membership? The west is looking pretty powerless at the moment, and bringing Finland in is one of the few things they can do that will hurt Russia.

Belarus is effectively part of Russia at the moment, and is housing a load of Russian troops. Lukashenko has chosen his side.

If Putin takes Ukraine, this would just leave Finland and I suppose Moldova caught between NATO and "Russia". Presumably even Putin wouldn't push into the Baltic nations, but a direct link to Kaliningrad must be tempting, and with Belarus under the thumb, all he needs is a tiny chunk of Lithuania.

I've been wrong about Putin (including in this very thread!), so am happy to be wrong again... I'd certainly agree that he can't be negotiated with, or at least not very successfully, but for me one of the scariest things about him is that he seems very rational. It may be my misunderstanding based on his media persona and a lazy stereotype of the cold, calculating Russian, but I don't think this invasion is some hot-headed emotional action. I think he's assessed all the variables, and is confident that he will come out of this stronger than when he went in.

Everything seems to have fallen into place for him (or maybe he has been carefully manouevreing maneuovering orchestrating it all). He knows that the US won't send troops in. He has China on-side. And Russia isn't particularly dependent on the West for anything, and any sanctions that would really hurt (e.g. on gas or oil) would arguably hurt the West more by pushing up global prices.

I'm interested to find out if he seems rational to anyone else, or if it's just me seeing something that isn't there.

One weird thing that the teams seem to all be talking about, and which is a completely new thing for me, is "porpoising", where the cars bounce up and down on the track. Apparently it used to be a thing way back in the previous ground-force era, and it has caught the teams off-guard this time around, as it's not something that shows up in the testing, just on track. Might be interesting to see if it affects everyone to the same extent, and then how quickly those it does affect can rectify it.

Yeah, it seemed inevitable, but I'm quite surprised that Djokovic ceded the number 1 spot so easily. The question I suppose is how long is Medvedev likely to remain at number 1? His big points to defend come later in the season, by which time Djokovic will likely have dropped a lot more points due to missing tournaments. It seems likely Medvedev will stay at number 1 for quite a while. And I have to say maybe Djokovic will not return there.

I propose we change our avatars so they are not pictures of Vladimir Putin, as a sign of disapproval for the war.

But seriously, yes, it's starting to get pretty bad now. I had assumed that Putin would just see how far he could push the West, and then back down at the last minute. He's counting on the West not to send troops in, and counting on Russia (with Chinese support if required) to withstand any sanctions. He's far from being an idiot, and will have planned all of this out very carefully. Unfortunately he knows exactly what he's doing, and he believes he will come out on top.