Inverted

I think fundamentally most dog bites/attacks fall into two categories (i) highly aggressive but ultimately not physically powerful enough to be dangerous to a human (ii) physically powerful but can be warded-off with a moderate amount of resistance. Most dog breeds, and most animals generally, do not want to get themselves killed or injured. Even when showing extreme aggression. A sufficient amount of pain or intimidation will get most dogs to give up long before they or someone else is seriously injured. The issue with pitbulls and especially XL Bullys is that they have the strength to kill and absolutely no sense of self preservation. Once they have prey in sight they will keep going until the prey is killed/maimed, they find another target, or they are physically incapable of keeping going. I've seen them get kicked by horses, sprayed with bear spray, or even shot, and they will not give up.

4 minutes is short even in a normal game this season. Giving it when there's been this amount of explicit time wasting is incredibly suspicious.

One of the downsides of him being a short, moaning-faced git with tattoos and pigeon shit hair is that if someone says "he's a woman beater" my instinctive reaction is "of course". I'm conscious that if the authorities took this approach, about 30% of the population of Brazil would be in jail, but it's good enough for me.

Just not much better than an average side. Getting 4th shows how much of a freak season it was last year.

Just finished Middlemarch - a massive read but excellent writing. A very pleasant surprise, had never read any Eliot before. Now onto this:

I thought that was embarrassing to watch for Liverpool initially and Newcastle somehow managed to show their arses even more. When you've got infinite money you've got work out something better than being compact, breaking up play, and having good set pieces and counters, I think.

He's got an elite ball-playing GK, two world cup-winning CBs, and a holding mid whos won god knows how many Champions Leagues.

Feel like Ten Hag has been a bit of a mirage. A full year in and a borderline infinite transfer budget and they're still, stylistically, a nothing team. Outstanding individuals obviously but collectively I don't see what he's done.

Getting both that handball call and the high boot not given is v lucky.

Mané remains the last player in history to get a red card for a high boot.

I don't have a TV and don't have any club or streaming subscriptions so generally I only see games when I'm visiting my parents at the weekend. Or when there's a game on in a pub I'm in.

I'm not a criminal lawyer (and not even and English lawyer in the first place) but that sounds iffy. It isn't generally done and I would guess it's because it raises the problem that the defence has no opportunity to cross-examine and therefore it causes a massive procedural unfairness. A judge might feel the unfairness is balanced out in cases where there is a genuine reason (I think I've heard of old statements being read where a witness has died) but a witness just refusing to cooperate isn't really a legitimate reason. So I imagine a judge would be wary. And you can't ask a police officer what the victim said at the time because that's essentially hearsay - it's someone repeating what they heard someone else say. If the evidence is what someone has said, then you always want it first-hand, from the person who actually said it, and you want the person who said it to formally swear to and stand by its accuracy.

The most important evidence in a rape trial is typically the victim's testimony. If she gave evidence, then the pictures and the recording would do a great job in corroborating what she said. But trying to piece together a precise sequence of events without any witness is just too much of a stretch.

Yes but what I'm saying is that for many people it still feels plausible that we are just in a short-term, random hot period. Hence the usual UK pundit types saying "of course summer is hot, calm down". It might take many more years of this kind of thing consistently happening before people realise or admit that the trend is never going to reverse, or at least not reverse within a time frame which is meaningful for humanity.

I picked the "impending disaster" option but I don't think there's going to be a sudden Day After Tomorrow type of sudden disaster. On the one hand, I think we are already in many subtle (and not so subtle) ways experiencing global warming, but still in a limited and familiar enough way that it can be dismissed. On the other, I think we are yet to experience it. But the effects will still be hard to distinguish from already-existing problems. Climate disasters in other countries will trigger new or intensified waves of global migration, which is a problem which already exists. Increasing crop failures and decreasing biological diversity will (a) increase food prices and the cost of living in the developed world and (b) lead to mass famine in the developing world. Again, inflation and world hunger are not entirely new issues, so for those who wish to ignore the problem, it will not be impossible to do so. For the first world, until London for example is literally experiencing flooding, which none of us might live to see, the effects will not IMO be anything completely new or unprecedented. It will manifest itself mostly as an exacerbation (and a dramatic one) of already-existing problems. The only truly novel things we might have to deal with in the UK might for example be for example getting AC installed in our homes.

Just finished the first and now onto the second.

Another way I forgot to mention: memes. I saw this tweet from a "People Dancing to Stravinsky" account like a year ago, and thought the music sounded really cool. Listened through the most famous Stravinsky pieces until I found it, ended up liking a lot of it. Who would've thought?

Very occassionally through music journalism (like a review says an album I like sounds like (x) or that a band I like were inspired by (y)) but generally it's just flicking through lots of Youtube and Spotfiy recommendations. Funnily I find the Spotify radio feature (i.e. when it just keeps picking the next song after your queue is finished) much better for finding new music than the Discover Weekly playlist it makes you.

It would be mad that he could go from being Porto's youngest ever captain to end up having an absolute nothing career.

Having just watched the highlights backs, it's just occured to me that as well as the first Scotland goal coming from an extended period of possession at the back played cleanly through midfield, the second goal was also a fairly neat passing move to work an overload on the far side of Norway's defence - actually, coming out of a cleared Norwegian long ball. Both were far better in terms of passing quality than anything I can recall Norway doing. For all Odegaard's moaning about playing better and having more control, Norway's game plan was as direct (if not more direct). It's just that they went from spamming long balls and crosses to Erling Haaland to spamming long balls and crosses to an Aldi version of Haaland for the last 10 minutes. Then when they were losing, they had no ideas except to just go even more direct, to the point where they just outright kicking the ball out of play at moments. It's mad how obviously good and intelligent players like Odegaard and Rodri can still be so blinkered and misunderstand games (which they have just played in) so badly. Part of being an elite athlete is obviously being a terrible loser.

Norway lucky for it to be as close. Pretty embarrassing from Haaland for his goal (although it was a penalty tbf). Scotland: 12 fouls, 4 cards (ludicrously harsh) Norway: 9 fouls, 0 cards (ludicrously lenient) The numbers tell the story - both in terms of the performances and the officiating. Comfortably deserved win.

The issue for De Gea is finding a club that's flush with cash that doesn't really care about building up from the back. United were an outlier in that respect for a long time.

I thought that Liverpool were struggling a bit with their home-grown quota, especially if they want to move any HG players out? Even if they have to pay somewhat more than you'd ideally want to for a squad player, it might be worth it in that respect.

I'm increasingly getting the feeling that the board completely lucked-out with Ange and are still otherwise clueless. Knudsen is probably the strongest candidate I've heard get mentioned but if Ajax are also after him then there's no chance.