(May I add: JGP and JVDF had games for the ages! Also this new chap Kenny (tremendous debut, delighted for him). Watching it again this morning, what a game!)

Tbf, a gutting loss for La Rochelle. Harry Byrne is an ice-eyed assassin. Fair play to him. Great game.

Addendum: Ioane will not like this reply tomorrow.

Fair. He also got smushed / road killed at least three times. His frailty in defence freaks out his team mates both inside and out which, in this match, allowed Duanivucu to have a field day (what a player!) However, as entirely correctly pointed out by you, he effected a crucial tackle very well.

One uninvited boot placed on Greenland’s soil, we bankrupt you.

The other half are total morons. The blast furnace of US softpower over the past year has utterly and irrevocably changed the world order. This is the irrecoverable part of Trump’s malignant vandalism. Institutions can be repaired and buttressed. Trust of friends/allies, once lost…

The administration’s decision, in the aftermath of justified outrage at the killing of Renee Good, is to ramp the numbers of masked little green men? That, in itself, is deeply unsettling.

Someone should pass Trump a note “The ECB and all domestic central banks of the EU and the UK have primed their holdings of US Bonds (of all terms) for immediate sale….Just sayin’”

A measure of the state of the social fabric in the US, the FBI assume jurisdiction over the Renee Good matter and the majority of US citizens assume it is motivated by politics and corruption of the rule of law. So much winning.

Slava Ukraini.

Rugby twitter was a gem. Informed and generally hilarious. The post Musk feed invasion by bots, outrage farmers, incel-nazi slime, et al pushed me off. Deleted. Bluesky remains a bit milquetoast.

FIFA and “a principled stand”… I think I may have discovered a problem here.

1) Distraction Politics (Epstein Files related)?
2) 19th Century Imperialism (via a RISK game board)?
3) Manchurian Candidate (Ukraine/ undermining NATO)

…all of the above?

Nada…

Keir, who appears to be a generally decent sort, is not very good at politics. Underestimates the deep EU institutional resentment resulting from the Tories gleefully vandalism, dreadful timing, trying to procure selective access by stealth…brick wall. The ignored gap is security.

The US is going to run Venezuela…? Anyone have a clue as to what that means exactly?

Big year! Curious that bad things are often the best things. (Admittedly, only in retrospect.)