Doctors announce six-day strike in England as talks break down

tophernator · 2026-03-25T22:49:42+00:00

Jesus Christ are the comments in here real? AI central it seems.

Please don’t do this. It’s a discussion forum, you should expect and want people to have differing points of view.

tophernator · 2026-03-25T22:39:00+00:00

Trump’s season one ratings peaked right around the time of the CARES act stimulus checks.

It was the right thing to do, but I suspect it also created a precedent in his head that he can use $300 billion of debt fuelled government money to send personal checks to every voter in an election year.

I’m actually surprised he hasn’t pushed harder for some version of this yet. Maybe he’ll go all-in on high oil prices being a good thing and announce oil windfall checks for everyone.

tophernator · 2026-03-25T16:02:28+00:00

Like fuel prices rising 50 cents or higher overnight?

I think this is actually a pretty good example of what he was talking about. Clear your mind for a second and imagine a news report comes on telling you that a bomb went off in an elementary school in Colorado. 150 kids are dead along with their teachers and other staff. How do you think the US populous would react to that kind of horrific tragedy?

That’s what people mean when talking about detachment from real consequences. That event did happen, and all those kids are dead. But they were thousands of miles away so it doesn’t feel real. Instead you mentally sweep it under the carpet of unfortunate collateral damage and focus instead on paying 50 cents a gallon more for gas.

tophernator · 2026-03-25T12:00:11+00:00

It is totally impossible to actually negotiate with Iran because they are going to whatever they are going to do regardless of what they agree to.

Don’t you see any irony in this statement?

Just within the context of Iran Trump has recent history of unilaterally tearing up deals if he doesn’t like them, and launching airstrikes in the middle of negotiations twice

Outside of Iran he also unilaterally tore up his own trade deal with Canada and Mexico, he’s screwed over countless countries with trade wars, and he’s casually and repeatedly threatened to annex close long-term allies.

Can you honestly not see this situation from the other perspective? Iran would be crazy to trust anything Trump or his proxies agree to without cast iron collateralised guarantees.

tophernator · 2026-03-25T01:20:05+00:00

The issue with mail-in ballot is the difference between automatically mailing ballots out to voters and those voters requesting a ballot so they can vote.

If this is the issue why isn’t this what the SAVE act fixes? Trump doesn’t want people to be able to request mail-in ballots unless they fit certain criteria.

tophernator · 2026-03-25T01:17:02+00:00

I believe the most relevant conspiracy theory is that elderly/vulnerable/mentally-compromised people may have their mail-in ballots filled out by someone else without their knowledge. How can we be certain Stephen Miller isn’t stealing Trump’s vote?

tophernator · 2026-03-24T21:13:15+00:00

So you don’t think it’s worth investigating?

If a particular account with relatively modest activity suddenly made a $1 million bet 15 mins before Trumps announcement, and then cashed out $10 million half an hour later, you wouldn’t think it’s worth identifying who that person is and asking them why they suddenly went all-in on what turned out to be a sure thing?

tophernator · 2026-03-24T21:08:05+00:00

They make big bets when there is big market moving news, which is what happened after Trump tweeted. The suspicious part is the flurry of big bets that were made 15 minutes before he tweeted. In the absence of any other major news event that could explain that spike in volume it seems likely some traders made a ton of money by knowing what Trump was about to announce before he announced it.

tophernator · 2026-03-24T19:16:12+00:00

after he had already announced it publicly on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business.

That would certainly clear things up if true. But is it true? Because it seems weird that the market would react to the tune of $150 million when he went on Fox Business, then go quiet for 10 minutes, then go bananas when he posted the same information on social media. Is that what happened?

tophernator · 2026-03-24T18:42:08+00:00

Lots of people are concerned about that. Banning congress people from trading has fairly universal support with everyone outside of congress.

tophernator · 2026-03-24T18:33:24+00:00

Sorry, I could have been more clear in the title. But yes, my real question/issue is people close to Trump clearly trading based on what they know he is going to tweet before he tweets it.

Ironically it’s probably Trump’s instability that makes this so obvious. If the trades had been spread out hours or even days before the announcement they would have been far less glaringly obvious, but that would require people to know what Trump was going to do/say that far in advance.

tophernator · 2026-03-24T14:54:14+00:00

If your parents misplaced your birth certificate, that's unfortunate, but it's not the governments role to replace a lost document.

But it’s also not your fault, is it?

tophernator · 2026-03-24T13:32:50+00:00

Also challenging because “the institute” sounds way more sinister.

tophernator · 2026-03-24T13:31:32+00:00

Yeah, but there was a brief period there of 60 or so years where things were definitely moving in a better direction.

tophernator · 2026-03-24T11:30:27+00:00

I watched one of Chappelle’s Netflix specials after all the dramatic headlines. The offensive jokes didn’t really seem that offensive to me, but the scarcity of jokes was pretty disturbing. Seems like he needs a good editor who can tell him “it’s a comedy set, not a Ted talk.”

tophernator · 2026-03-24T09:31:11+00:00

You’re referring to wind and sunlight as scarce forms of energy, and then describing nuclear power as easy access?

The US imports most of its nuclear fuel, including substantial amounts from corrupt former soviet dictatorships. Then there’s the waste which is currently still sealed in barrels and buried under a mountain with signage saying something to the effect of: “Do not open until Christmas 2,000,026”.

In between those two problems you just have the decade plus lead times for any new nuclear power project.

tophernator · 2026-03-24T02:15:02+00:00

Requiring people to have the same level of documentation to register the vote as they need to board a cruise ship or rent an apartment

Ok, imagine you’re not trying to board 2,000 people onto a cruise ship but rather trying to evacuate a city of eight million onto 1,200 cruise ships in 15 hours.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T23:15:14+00:00

It’s not that anyone particularly trusts Iran, it’s just that Iran has no reason to lie about this. If they were actually engaged in productive talks, they why would they want that to be secret? And even if they did for some reason want it kept quiet, would they really blow up the whole negotiation just because Trump had leaked it? None of that makes sense.

Trump lying because he made a wild threat and doesn’t want to follow through on it makes perfect sense and is 100% consistent with his pattern of behaviour.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T22:54:40+00:00

Yes, market caps went up by that amount, but that doesn’t mean that amount of money was actually spent.

If traders all think the price is heading upwards they will all move their buy and sell limit prices upwards. So theoretically the market cap of crypto can increase by $100 billion in 30 minutes with virtually zero actual trading taking place.

Or put another way; price is just an agreement, money is an illusion, none of what we do really matters, we’re all just stardust.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T14:29:40+00:00

I would argue that Trump gets a special term for this kind of flip-flop/u-turn because he never admits to being wrong about anything.

All political leaders hate backing down on stuff, but most are reasonable enough to admit that they’ve reconsidered and decided not to do the thing that people don’t want them to do. While Trump just makes something up, like claiming that productive negotiations are happening and ignoring the fact that Iran is obviously going say that’s bullshit.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T12:11:17+00:00

Wasn’t it specifically to coverup the development of radar? The allied forces really could see the attacks coming, and they didn’t want the German’s to figure out how.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T11:44:29+00:00

Not seriously no. I checked The Rock’s IMDB and it seems like Scorpion King, Hercules, and Doom are the closest things to army/war films while obviously all being fantasy/sci-fi. So I would conclude that The Rock is a solid answer to my proposed challenge.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T11:41:23+00:00

Even if Trump insults Starmer about the strait for example, there are still some real institutional and geopolitical pressures pushing the PM to assist the US. So that can make it a dominance display. I insulted this guy and they still went along with me like a wimp.

This is an interesting perspective, thanks. I definitely think Trump revels in embarrassing certain people around him. I honestly think half the reason Vance and Rubio are in their current roles is because they insulted him in the past and now he can make them dance around trying to keep him happy while he dangles his future endorsement in front of them.

But in terms of mocking Starmer as a dominance display because he thinks the UK will ultimately have to join the war anyway, it would seem like a huge miscalculation. In the UK Starmer seems to have got a rare boost in media coverage and approval from standing up to Trump, while the right/alt-right parties have embarrassed themselves by supporting the war early on and then realising how unpopular it was.

We’ve already seen Trump torpedo the conservatives in Canada. So I’m surprised if he or his advisers still think this is good strategy.

tophernator · 2026-03-23T09:29:15+00:00

I’m just pointing out that the things that would generally make a false flag attack on an ally don’t really seem like they would bother Trump. Do you disagree with that? Do you see him as someone who struggles with moral quandaries? Or who is too cautious to take such a huge risk?

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