Yep, my point of reference is the Daily Mail Compoface scale.

When we see an increasing number of sad looking faces on the front of Tabloid papers with the headlines "Ryanair cancelled our flight to Magala and ruined my hen party" then we'll know we're in trouble.

Erm, Europe doesn't get much oil from Iran. Most of it is imported from Norway or the US amongst others. The only route it might (and I mean might as this could easily be going overland) is Iraq or Saudi Arabia (10% in total).

The problem is that this is fucking with the global market as the countries that do import a lot of Middle Eastern fuel, notably in Asia such as the Philippines, are scrabbling to get alternate fuel sources. So Europe will have no trouble sourcing jet fuel, the question is how expensive will it get.

Europe and the UK are handling this quite well, current fuel prices in the EU are between EUR 1.50 and 2.50 depending on nation as they all have different taxation structures, supply agreements, et al. Prior to Operation Epic Stupidity (end of FEB 2026), fuel in the UK was £1.50, at the peak it's £1.80, so 30 pence per litre (about US$0.40), Germany was EUR 1.80 and peaked at 2.25, in the US prices almost doubled in the same time.

11 would be an improvement, on the dumbfuck scale where calling your crazy ex at 1am whilst drunk is a 5, voting Trump is a 11... what Trump is doing is 238, but that's only so low because that's the limit of our standard stupidometers. We got the high resolution kit out of storage but that burned out almost as soon as we turned it on.

Most Brits work in grams and kilograms these days, stone is only used by ancient laggards who refuse to adopt (and probably voted Brexit).

The lower number of UFO sightings in Italy and Spain might have something to do with the fact that in Italian and Spanish "UFO" is "OVNI" (Objecto Volantador No Identificado in Spanish). No idea what it is in Gaelic but I'm sure it's hard to pronounce.

Ireland like most countries has it's share of nutters, however unlike the US they don't give them a megaphone and a load of Adderall.

Fun Fact: Flying Saucer in Italian is Disco Volante and was also the name of an Alfa Romeo.

Erm, no we don't. Our societies can function just fine without guns of any kind.

If anything, the US is a lesson on why that is. Despite all those guns, you've still got an unaccountable dictator in charge.

So... America... With access to all those guns when are you going to stand up to the orange dictator who's taken over the "land of the free"?

Theatres tell Sony to lower their licensing fees so they can afford to run their operations without having to have 30 minutes of ads.

You're making that sound like it's a problem. It is quite literally a feature, the glasses will require frequent replacement meaning they'll have to buy new frames from Apple on a regular basis... Planned obsolescence without having to build a new product, it's the holy grail of braindead consumerism.

Of course they care about the security of their patients information... but not as much as they care about saving pennies on security.

Sadly, the answer to that question is never.

In reality we know they're upset that being white and male doesn't get you preferential treatment any more. It's not that non whites and non males were getting preferential treatment, it's that they were getting the same treatment as a white male meaning that their pale pee-pee wasn't a magic job ticket any more and they actually had to compete on their merits... of which they had few.

The thing is, Roddenberry wrote a sequel series set in the distant future, however Paramount rejected it out of hand as it involved the Federation being destroyed.

So it was turned into Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda by a different network after his death and they did a find and replace on the names. The Federation became the Systems Commonwealth, Nietzscheans were the Klingons, Vulcan became Tarn Vedra, so on and so forth. It wasn't a bad series per se, especially for the early 00s, despite the terribad acting (and I'm not just talking about Kevin Sorbo) the show runners managed to keep it interesting, worth a watch if you can get past the kitch. Maybe enjoy with a few beers.

Earth: Final Conflict was another of Roddenberry's shows produced after his death but unrelated to Star Trek. Same problems with bad acting that plagued 90s SciFi but it was still a good series (I find the Donald Trump character (Jonathan Doors) particularly hilarious now).

I did a complete rewatch of TNG, DS9 and VOY a few years back and it was a surprise to remember that none of the series really found their feet for the first 2-3 seasons. DS9 didn't become the DS9 we all remember until there were some serious changes with Season 3 (I.E. the introduction of the Dominion, Michael Dorn joining).

As for Trek, we've still got the Orville. It's green lit for S4 but Seth Macfarlane is busy.

The irony is, despite Visa and Mastercard holding a near complete global duopoly over card transactions, it was US cards that had the most trouble being used overseas simply because US banks refused to adopt the EMV standard that every other country in the world adopted. I was recently in Colombia and Americans still complain about how much their cards get rejected, never been an issue for me with either UK or Australian cards as they're fully compatible with EMV as are Colombian banks (so the cards are 100% compatible with the ATMs and terminals). It's hit and miss if an American card will work in an ATM that my cards work flawlessly in.

Had the reverse issue buying petrol on visits to the US for the simple reason that so many terminals were not compatible with EMV. I always had to go in and pay and some stations flat out refused to accept foreign cards.

But you're right that countries are now implementing their own systems to get out from under the thumb of the Visa/MC duonopoly because the government they're most beholden to can no longer be trusted. Had you told me 20 years ago that this would happen, I would have called you mad... yet here we are and it is because you and your country went mad.

The company that shmoozed the local politicians into giving them the contract made bank... the actual person doing the work was paid a pittance. Yay capitalism.

I think they're more concerned about the gene pool, 1 Latina could potentially disrupt centuries of inbreeding.