MrWorldwideJr

I think if one of my arguments for not getting rid of VAR was 'where does it stop, do we get rid of substitutions or thrown ins next?' I would steer clear of accusing anyone else of using logical fallacies.

As with everyone else I'm sure I've forgotten something obvious. 1. The Wire 2. Better Call Saul 3. Pose 4. Bojack Horseman 5. Fleabag 6. Atlanta 7. The Bear 8. The Sopranos 9. The Office (UK) 10. Stranger Things Honorable mentions for Westworld and True Detective, if either of them had stopped after Season 1 I would have them on the list.

Strong 'learned the word gaslight this morning, but hasn't quite worked out what it actually means yet' vibes here.

That article covers some of the points but is limited by a lack of understanding of or interest in anything outside of the F1 bubble, which is a pretty consistent issue with Andrew Benson's articles. Its really just a chance for the teams to give their party line unchallenged disguised as a balanced piece of journalism. Its pretty clear that he's asked people inside F1 what they think and then not bothered to go outside of that or do any sort of digging into Andretti. There's barely any mention of the dilution of prize money, just a quick paragraph thrown in at the end of the list of concerns, when that is one of the main reasons, arguably the only main reason, for the teams resisting new entries. It should really be dominating any sort of article like this because ultimately the negotiation on how much it will cost up front and how the prize money will be split is what will decide whether we will have any new entrants. I would suggest that some of the concerns around Andretti's ability to run a team could also do with a little bit of actual analysis, given the size, history and backing behind their organisation. The 'Cadillac is just a branding operation' line is very much a F1 party line which could do with challenging and digging into also. Not to say that there's nothing in the article, but its very much one side of the story and really shouldn't be taken as the full picture.

The only people who have been banned for their posts in this thread got banned for posting obvious bigotry (being trans is a mental illness etc.), they all also have a long posting history in this (and often other) threads which makes it very clear that their posts were not misunderstandings or innocent mistakes, they just don't like trans people. People would get banned from this forum for posting obvious racism or obvious homophobia. Transphobia should be no different. This entire thread is a long form debate on whether being trans is even a real thing and whether trans people should get to keep the rights they already have, so lets not pretend that anti-trans viewpoints are being oppressed here.

I hope this doesn't come across as too harsh, because you're clearly not coming at this maliciously. But I find 'sensible centre ground' takes on trans people, such as this one, incredibly frustrating for a number of reasons. 1. They always involve allusions to the idea that both sides of the 'trans debate' are as bad as each other and that either side getting what they are fighting for would be equally harmful, which just isn't true. 2. They usually involve outright denial of the idea that the current trans panic is an organised and targeted attack by powerful people on a powerless minority. Instead they frame it as a simple group of good citizens who have organically come up with legmitimate concerns about trans people with no encouragement from any outside source. Again this just isn't true. 3. The solution almost always involves giving the anti-trans lobby pretty much exactly what they want but framing it as a straight down the middle compromise. What you're proposing above involves trans people losing rights that they currently have and have had for decades. Its not a compromise solution.

Worth pointing out here that the Women's Institute have said that they have no intention of changing their policy regarding trans women. They have been admitting trans women as members since the 1970s - its another good example (similar to bathrooms) of the current 'hot topic' issues involving trans inclusion having actually been in place for decades and causing no problems. I appreciate that this is the natural reaction, but its a bit more of a complex issue than it first appears. Post medical transition, the body of a trans women is majorly different from the body of a cis man, and not just in terms of any surgery they might undergo. Its not just a case of a trans woman in essence having a male body and all the sporting advantage that would entail. The process of going through hormone therapy makes major changes to your body and how it operates, including (in the case of a trans woman) reducing your muscle mass and therefore your strength. Take a look at this link for some of the effects of hormone therapy, obviously a lot of them don't relate to sport but it gives you an idea that after a couple of years your body is really fundamentally different to how it was before. For the opposite reason to this a trans man would have a big advantage if forced to compete in women's sport. The rule in many sports previously was to allow trans women to compete in women's events after a certain time period on hormone therapy. I'd urge you to take a read of this article on the swimmer Lia Thomas if you are interested. Its obviously not a scientific research paper but I think it helps to set out the idea that trans women competing with cis women isn't outrageous and that trans women, and Thomas in particular, don't gain the advantage you would expect at first. Its clearly an area which needs more research and has to be treated sensitively, but for me the current strategy of blanket banning isn't the answer either in terms of ensuring fairness by following what the science says [because frankly not enough science on this issue actually exists] or in terms of trying to promote inclusion. What I mean in terms of inclusion is that the issue of trans women in sport doesn't mainly effect pros because frankly there are vanishingly few trans women in professional sport. What it does do, particularly in the case of blanket bans at all levels which is what we are tending to see and where most sporting bodies seem to want to head, is impact everyday people. Its the one trans girl in a school who now doesn't play sport because if she wants to play football she has to play for the boys team, or the hobby runner who now doesn't enter any local races because she would have to run them registered as a man. Again its clearly not a straightforward issue, but right now we're increasingly seeing bodies treating it as straightforward by just implementing a blanket ban and hoping the problem goes away. Which for me isn't an adequate or fair response. We should really be researching this issue as much as possible with the aim of including trans women in women's events and trans men in men's events if at all practical.

I think its worth pointing out, as an addition to your post, that whilst trans people definitely want to be left alone in the context of being a major focus of mainstream politics (especially in the current sense of just being used as a culture wars punching bag), its not the end goal. What trans people want is to be left alone to live their lives and also to have their rights and conditions improved. As an example, access to gender affirming care in the UK is shocking currently. You can spend years on a waiting list for an inital appointment because services are so limited. Thats something which really has to change and improve. Its not the case that if we can just wait out the current culture war then everything will be fine for trans people. Things would be better for sure but progress is still required which needs to be pushed for as it won't be happening on its own and the reality is there will always be people who either outright oppose it or who think it just isn't the right time.

Given that Elon Musk is big into pushing 'culture wars' nonsense and trans people are the major culture wars topic for the right at the moment it's not exactly surprising that anti-trans content is being pushed onto people's timelines. Judging by the references to 'weirdo trans nutjobs' on this thread it's doing its job too.

Not sure what was more painful there. The utter nonsense of throwing an unnecessary red flag in the first place, the completely predictable outcome of the restart or having to sit through 10 minutes of the Croft and Kravitz brains trust trying to work out what would happen next. It's obvious and shouldn't need said, but the race director should be making decisions based on safety, not entertainment value. It's been clear for a few years now that that isn't the case. And given there have been 3 race directors in that time it's clearly a series decision. None of the three have these issues in other series they've looked after. There should have been no red flags today and wouldn't have been in any other series (bar maybe NASCAR). A red flag to sweep up some gravel and debris FFS.

I don't think statements like this really help political discourse either to be honest. Kate Forbes is a homophobe. That's not rhetoric, or 'you're with me or against me', or 'you're a bigot if you disagree'. I'm sure she's very nice in person, it doesn't change the fact that if you believe that gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married then you are a homophobe and that will be a red line for a lot of people. I would say a far bigger problem in political discourse at the moment is the drive to 'well actually...' instances of people being openly intolerant of minorities with 'they're not actually a homophobe/transphobe/racist/whatever and if you point out that what they said is wrong then you're the intolerant one'. This usually ties in with acting as if that somehow makes you superior to people who are willing to call it out because you are a sensible head who can rise above the fray.

Not actually going to address the point I've made then?

At the risk of stating the obvious, you can't just pick a country with B teams integrated into their structure, reel off their good players and then say 'See, B Teams work!'. All that you've proved is that if B teams exist in a structure then young players tend to have played in them at some point. You haven't proved that B teams are the reason they turned out to be good players or made any contribution to their development that they couldn't have gotten in another way. You could just as easily pick out a nation without B teams and reel off a bunch of good players who never played in one and say 'See, B teams don't work!'. This is exactly the same principle as your previous favourite country Croatia. Just because a country has B teams and reached the World Cup final doesn't mean that the two things are linked.

Will you actually be engaging with what other people have said at any point? This is about the third time today that you've made up an opinion nobody holds, written a post arguing against it and then finished off with a sage 'guess everyone on this forum is an idiot except me'. Appreciate that this is all just deflection because you realise you've been proven spectacularly wrong on your early season 'Tierney isn't actually second choice' thing, but actually having a discussion with people rather than making things up might be worth a go.

You can repeat it all you like but for many people LGBT rights are not a fringe issue, they have quite a big impact on their lives or the lives of their family and friends. Gay marriage may be settled, but plenty of LGBT rights aren't (particularly for the T part of that equation) and Kate Forbes has made it very clear she won't be progressing them and would vote against them if given the chance. That would have a direct impact on people's lives in years to come. It's perfectly normal not to want to vote for someone on that basis. If you have different priorities that's fine but voting based on who believes in your rights or the rights of your loved ones is a perfectly good reason.

You don't appear to have posted a point of view yet, just an irrelevant reference to Elton John. Feel free to give it a go at any point.

Always wild seeing the bigots on this thread having to pretend to be incredibly thick in order to keep their 'pronouns are impossibly hard' grift going.

'Not bigoted' being one of the major plus points for a song is fairly tin pot tbf.

Before I'd even hit send.

Much as this is an open attack on devolution and the Scottish parliament, the more important thing today is that its yet another open attack on transgender people by the UK government. Sad, but completely unsurprising, to see the denial of rights to a marginalised group being enthusiastically cheered on by the usual suspects. The vast majority who will post on here in the coming days about how this is an 'echo chamber' and 'you won't convince people by calling them bigots' aren't in the least bit interested in being convinced or having their views challenged. They won't be able to tell you what the GRA involves. They won't be able to tell you what the current process for legally changing your gender involves. They won't be able to tell you anything about what transitioning or being transgender involves in general. This is a 'debate' being waged on fear and prejudice. It has absolutely nothing to do with what is best for transgender people, transgender children, people who are trying to figure their gender out. It has everything to do with needing a boogeyman to point at and with the British people being all to happy to go along with hating people because they don't understand them.

'Trans' people. Jesus Christ. Said similar a few weeks ago but imagine someone coming onto a thread on gay marriage (for example) and writing 'gay' people. Absolutely horrible stuff. The whole having your point disproven with figures and immediately declaring the figures nonsense with no explanation or justification is very Oaksoft though.

To be fair, the tone of this thread from the start has been 'people who don't know very much about the subject and refuse to learn or do any research but who still have very strong opinions on it which they will refuse to share in favour of making vague implications that they are being oppressed'. It's worked well so far, why change now?

This is just yet another case of you identifying a single statistic, stripping it of any context and then acting as if it provides the final word on a complex issue when it clearly doesn't. As an example, Croatia obviously have a far better qualification and tournament record than us. They just haven't existed as a country for long enough to compete in 9 World Cups so they are down as behind us by your metric.

Oaksoft spent his final few months on the forum having an extended heads gone about trans people and 'trans cultists'. Appreciate a lot of folk might not have seen this as he kept it mainly to the gender debate thread. Not sure if that was what got him banned, but he'd certainly been building up to saying something bannable on the subject for a while. If a poster had been regularly ranting and raving about, for example, 'gay cultists' they would have been quite rightly binned, so I really don't think he can have many complaints. You can say he was just doing it for attention rather than because he actually believed it, but I would say spewing transphobic rhetoric makes you a c**t regardless of your motivations.

1. Chungking Express (1994) - d. Wong Kar Wai 2. Before Sunrise (1995) - d. Richard Linklater 3. In The Mood For Love (2000) - d. Wong Kar Wai 4. Short Term 12 (2013) - d. Destin Daniel Cretton 5. Her (2013) - d. Spike Jonze 6. Blue Valentine (2010) - d. Derek Cianfrance 7. La La Land (2016) - d. Damien Chazelle 8. Before Sunset (2004) - d. Richard Linklater 9. Boogie Nights (1997) - d. Paul Thomas Anderson 10. Shiva Baby (2020) - d. Emma Seligman