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Be interesting to see who starts up front. Yengi does have the most minutes under his belt. There's every chance he starts with Lazetic and Nisbet coming off the bench later on. Also, I wonder if Thelin will be swayed by letting him play against his brother. There is also the fact we might have a few new faces tomorrow - maybe too many - and Thelin won't want to throw them all in at once. But it's the first time in a long time that we've got some excitement around new signings, may even have boosted the ticket sales slightly. Keen to see Karlsson, a bit more of Lazetic, maybe even Gyamfi if fit enough, and even Armstrong in an Aberdeen shirt is intriguing. But just win Aberdeen, because I'm sick of the negativity, pundits tipping us for the bottom six and people questioning Thelin's shelf life. Can't be arsed with another week of it. As someone else said further up the thread I think - the season starts now.

The world would be a better place if we all avoided social media!

Why schadenfruede? I always understood it to be the taking pleasure in anothers suffering and, well, he's dead so he's not suffering. There's certainly a ruthless symmetery to him dying this way though. I've seen bits here and there of what Kirk had to say for himself and I can understand why he pissed a lot of people off. Equally though I've seen a few things where he's engaging very respectfully and compassionately with black single mums and trans people who some will tell you he hated. Thing is it's all clips and very often important context can be missed and often deliberately too unft. One thing that does seem clear is his main schtick was to try and get more conversation across the political divide which I can respect. It's not so much the method of death but the fact it was in front of his wife and kids that makes the reactions so distateful to me, I've read his wee girl ran to him for comfort scared by the shot though I can't say that for certain. It's a horrible mental image regardless, and, truthfully, one I've struggled to shake..... you may be onto something with staying off social media.

I can understand it. If I had known who the lad was, I'm sure I'd make jokes and have a dark sense of humour about it. There is certainly a large element of schadenfreude about a Christian who claimed that the right to have a gun was a God given one, was then indirectly a victim of that attitude. It made me smirk when I read about it. Although I guess that that is a long way away from cheering. I saw a couple of clips of his "debates", where he came across as an insincere nasty (troll) shite, lacking in empathy and love, so I can see why some might have cheered (of course, those would have been curated for sharing to show him in a bad light). Putting it down to "disagreeing with him politically", seems a bit simple. I might disagree with Nicola Sturgeon or Ruth Davidson politically, but wouldn't cheer their deaths. A sneering populist prick like Farage, I might, not because of political disagreement, but because of his insincerity and deliberate rabble rousing. I don't doubt that there was another side to this character that I'm not witness to, of course, so I'm only speaking hypothetically as far as this lad is concerned. The method of his death, too, is of little concern to most because of the disconnect of not being personally involved or intimate with the situation. I think empathy is quite difficult to maintain across internets and oceans, or states. I think there is a definite tit-for-tat element when it comes to empathy these days - you didn't show empathy for thousands of dead Palestinians, why should we show empathy for this guy - but there's probably also a ceiling to how much empathy people can hold onto too. I have little zero empathy or otherwise for the lad, his death just doesn't register - much like any other non-entity celebrity. An equivalent would be princess Diana - obviously a tragic death, but I don't feel that I need to muster feelings about it. I think it's healthy to be immune to such incidents. It has made me feel good about not being on social media though, and glad not to have ever heard of the lad. I'm obviously doing something right.

It's always about power isn't it, never the people. Re conspiracies I did ponder yesterday that the biggest beneficiary of Kirks murder is actually Trump. Why? Well, we ain't heard Jeffrey Epstien mentioned much since it happened..........

Definitely crazy times and my wife and I talk about it quite a lot. As many of you know, we were forced out of California, lost jobs, and kids kicked out of school, all because of California politics. It’s a very divided country with very differing beliefs. However, I don’t know how a civil war would play out, most of the major cities are democratic and outside everyone else is republican, it’s not quite the north south divide. the conspiracy theory is that Charlie Kirk was such an up and comer that he was becoming too popular and influential. The dems had a stronghold on the young vote until recently when Kirk, Ben Shapiro etc started their college tours and talk about the other side of what students learn in college. The dems are losing the young vote. immigration is such a key issue at present too and I am sure you hear about the ICE raids. Population decides the number of govt seats each state gets, and that includes illegal aliens. Remove illegals and places like California, democratic, lose seats while places like Florida, republican, could gain. That decides an election. Little here is done for the good of the people, it’s all left or right and who must win. This is the perfect time for both parties to make a clear effort to tone it down and get along but they won’t do it.

The republican party’s Ben doak. Hugely popular, 31 yr old. Many felt a future president. Family man, Christian, founded turning point USA about 12 years ago. Spent a ton of time on college campuses promoting free speech and openly encouraged debate between differing viewpoints. He felt college campuses were very left leaning so was committed to help dialog between differing viewpoints and parties. There’s a ton of stuff about him online but, as is the case with politics today, depending who you read you’ll get very differing viewpoints.