LongTimeLurker

Let's get this one out the way: does it necessarily mean much if they are not retreating from the frontlines further north and west?

49 clubs in the northern pyramid are part of the SJFA. 28 clubs once the two NCL reserve teams and BoD are factored out are not. Where am I going with that? Let's bear in mind that the majority of the north pyramid especially at tier 6 have always had a national cup as part of their season so it isn't some alien imposition from the central belt. Even in the HL it's worth bearing in mind that Strathspey Thistle, Inverurie Locos, Turriff United and Formartine United used to be junior clubs in reasonably recent times in addition to BoD. Think there's a case to be made that a national cup should be for tier 6 down given the HL and LL are at the professional game board level and potentially have Challenge Cup and League Cup involvements as well as direct first round entry in the main Scottish Cup. At that point it's only the NCL that need to be persuaded possibly through regionalised early rounds and having travel expenses covered after that. Getting this all sorted shouldn't be mission impossible.

That's way too much like common sense for Scottish football.

That's never been publicly announced unlike what happened between the EoS and WoS and isn't in any league constitutions AFAIA, so if it's not in writing somewhere let's not start pretending there are rigid boundaries on this like what happened with the Club 42 line of latitude and all the completely pointless maps of Luncarty with lines through them. Doubt anyone in the EoS would lose any sleep over Newburgh changing leagues if that's what they wanted to do. Glenrothes might start to ruffle feathers a bit and start to alarm the Highland League.

Vlad backs down after Erdogan calls his bluff:

...my recollection (others disagree) is that the junior superleagues were said at the time to have been organised the way they were partly in anticipation of that happening down the road. What happened later with Tom Johnston and 150k toilet blocks was unfortunate to say the least. An east - west LL split at tier 5 makes more sense at this point than the SJFA running a parallel feeder. It's too bad clubs in the east didn't more carefully consider what was in their long term interests when Option Z was proposed by the SFA board but junior vs senior rant seethe.....

In plenty of countries like Canada where there is no US style Second Amendment they actually do.

They'll run into the exact same problem they had getting the east and west regions in at tier 6 as LL feeders. Regardless of whether the SFA is in favour, the LL can veto this because they need to sign off on Club 42 playoff rule changes, just like the EoS were able to with the playoff into the LL despite the SFA board wanting the SJFA in as is. If the proposal helps put pressure on the LL to open up pro/rel more then maybe it isn't a complete waste of time however.

Who is more likely to be carrying a blade? Having lived in North America I came to the conclusion that the Police being armed routinely is actually usually a good thing because would be neds realise that acting up can result in getting shot restoring peace to the streets. This works as long as you don't do what the Americans did and allow private citizens to be armed as well. The Canadians found the right balance on that.

Another potential Article 5 scenario is what happens if Vlad goes after grain convoys being escorted by the Turkish navy:

Works the same way as the other end of the table. B teams are disregarded when determing who is bottom and second bottom for the purposes of relegation.

Chinese people I know tend to order chicken feet any time I am at a restaurant with them in China. I suspect it's to see if I will actually eat it and they are secretly laughing up their sleeves about my predicament: I was working In Japan for a few years and Japanese colleagues did something similar with natto (fermented beans): Very much an acquired taste that even many Japanese people prefer to avoid. Actually found it not bad and made a point of eating it pretty much every day as shown above with hachi (chopsticks) from then on to show I was more hard core about Japanese culinary culture than they were. Was told they tried this again with an American guy after I had left and made lots of approving comments to him about the Scottish guy who ate it every day. He never went back to the cafeteria after that apparently.

Missed this one as did the EoS website for some reason:

Don't think so on the CSS sugar daddy angle but happy to be corrected on that if anybody knows better. It appears to mainly be down to Gary Jardine doing a good job on building a team.

Don't think a competitive title race says anything about a league's overall quality. Just says that this season is a window of opportunity for some relatively small clubs to try to reach the SPFL with nobody spending Kelty levels of money and no sign of a former SPFL club doing much this time around now the Shire appear to have lost their sugar daddy. Posted that comment more because it's unfortunate given that backdrop that the BUs threw away a couple of games that were very winnable in recent weeks because even at this stage 8 points would be a lot to claw back. Next season could be more challenging. If Brechin City beat Bonnyrigg Rose (think they had to spend so heavily on their ground that they stuck with the same team more than they should have) in the Club 42 playoff and Darvel or Lithgae Rose move up that would probably see off both Dalbeattie Star and Edinburgh Uni by this time next year with all of this year's title chasers still around. At that point on current form two former SPFL clubs would be in the relegation zone. Even with one automatic promotion place from tier 6, it's only a matter of time until the league gets to where it should be in other words and to the point where it can be retrofitted to be more like what a junior "superduperleague" might have wound up being like with club licensing. Hopefully Bo'ness United will have its act together sufficiently to be part of that and possibly even crack on to the SPFL at some point. Ten years down the road the LL is going to be a very strong division and I honestly think that none of the current LL clubs will be able to be 100% confident at that point about being permanent fixtures at this or a higher level.

The Ukrainians are using markings that look a little like German WWII ones. It's towing the turret of a Russian tank that's probably recently had a close encounter with some modern anti-tank weaponry supplied by NATO. Meanwhile in the Black Sea:

This looks genuine: Maybe it's not just the tank that will come out of this war with a question mark over its future in terms of modern warfare. How would people have reacted in this thread in late February if someone had predicted that towards the end of the year the Ukrainians would be sending naval drones into Sevastopol's harbour to damage warships belonging to the Black Sea fleet? Think Vlad messed up in some ways by outright annexing the four oblasts recently. Prior to that there was a distinction to be made between Crimea and the occupied parts of mainland Ukraine in terms of potential red lines where the use of NATO weaponry was concerned. Now there's no difference on that between attacking the Black Sea fleet in Sevastapol and pummeling another arms depot in Kherson or Svatove with HIMARS.

Elsewhere: Some title race developing this season if the colt teams are ignored.

The game that isn't on the EoS website:

Major development if accurate:

Significant if accurate:

What they don't seem to grasp is that the NIP potentially makes NI one of the most attractive places in the UK for inward investment because of the ability to have a foot in both camps.

Prague was actually liberated by Czech partisans and the Russian Liberation Army (Red Army POWs who had agreed to fight for the Germans) before the Red Army arrived: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army#Fight_against_the_Germans_in_Prague One of the quirkier footnotes of WWII that is now largely forgotten.

Hope you told her to move out of her parent's basement William Shatner style: