Dead Pool 2024

[Syt]

[Duque de Bragança]

RIP Carl Weathers, you will always be my favorite acting coach.   

RIP

[Maladict]

RIP Wayne Kramer

[Caliga]

RIP Carl Weathers, you will always be my favorite acting coach.   

Dillon you SON OF A BITCH! 

[Barrister]

Toby Keith, stomach cancer, age 62.

I've never been much of a country music guy, but early 2000s Keith was huge, and I kind of liked his stuff - to the point I even had a CD or two.  Looking back he was kind of more in that bro-ish dude country, with songs like Should've Been a Cowboy, How Do You Like Me Now, Red Solo Cup, Beer for my Horses, and I Love This Bar.

RIP, I'll pour out a Red Solo Cup for ya dude.

[Maladict]

Ian Lavender, last survivor of Dad's Army.

[Maladict]

RIP Alexei Navalny.

More courage than I'll ever have.

[Josephus]

RIP Alexei Navalny.

More courage than I'll ever have.

Inevitable, unfortunately 

[Syt]

Surprised they kept him around so long.

[Sheilbh]

Surprised they kept him around so long.

I think he surprised them - I mean when did he get given Novichok?

[DGuller]

It's easy to judge from the outside, but returning to Russia after being poisoned just seemed like an excess of courage to me even at the time.  Clearly the government is no longer concerned with the blowback from your death, you yourself just tricked FSB into describing the operation to poison you, what is to be gained from walking into the execution chamber and putting your head into the noose?

[Jacob]

His actions seem consistent with someone desiring a martyr's death.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. It is very brave but I think that is also the moral force, satyagraha piece of non-violent resistance. It is precisely that you put your body and your life on the line fully knowing the risks - but you still take the stance.

For him it was opposition and above all that he was wanting to change Russia. If he left he's just another anarchist chilling in London/blowing up Greenwich, or White Russian in Paris, or oligarch in London. I don't know, but I feel that it's precisely by knowing he'll probably be killed and going ahead that he hopes he could make change.

[DGuller]

His actions seem consistent with someone desiring a martyr's death.

It's definitely a possibility, but I don't think it's the only one.  Another possibility was that he just miscalculated how important he was, or rather how important he still was. I think it would be entirely in character for him to assume that the Russian government was now the most interested bodyguard of his; after all, they tried to off him quietly with poison designed to make your death look natural, surely that means that now they don't want you to die by any means lest people start wondering?

I think that he also failed predict how much more brazen the Russian government would get since his imprisonment.  Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian government almost completely unmasked itself and doesn't even both with appearances for the most part.  It's now publicly a lawless mafia state, with a very strong boss of bosses less accountable to other bosses than he ever was.  At this stage, "it'll look bad to have him whacked" thinking doesn't apply.

[Barrister]

I doubt very much it was direct murder of Navalny at this time.  Right in the lead-up to the Presidential elections is a slightly more sensitive time.

Now I have no problem holding Puting responsible for Navalny's death - but it was more a matter of putting a once-poisoned man into a brutal Russian prison system and not looking after his medical needs.