Inverted

"The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a bomb, is a good guy with a bomb." - The US Department of Defence

I think the more limited coaching time with intl football perhaps makes it more worthwhile to focus on a defensive system. I'm obviously not a coach but if I had to guess, training lots of attacking variations and positioning is probably a slower and more complicated process than training your defensive shape and marking scheme for whoever your next opponent is. So if you're trying to get the most out of a group of players with a limited familiarity in only a couple of weeks of training, you probably get more out of your time by focusing on defensive preparation, even if it means leaving your players largely to work it out themselves creatively. This is probably why it's also a big advantage to have players who are used to playing with each other, and to have a kind of philosophy instilled and maintained in the national team like with Germany, Spain and Chile in their tournament wins. With club football there's just so much more time that at a certain point continual defensive coaching is going to bring you more and more limited returns. You can only drill a team into its shape so well. At a certain point you have to move on to working on how your team attacks, and developing a deeper kind of understanding than just picking the players and sending them out, and hoping your training gets a clean sheet and the players get a goal.

Guardiola hit the nail on the head with Mourinho back in 2011: "Outside of the field, he has won the entire year, the entire season and in the future [it will be the same]. He can have his personal Champions League outside the field. Fine. Let him enjoy it, I'll give him that. In this room [the press room], he is the chief, the fucking man. In here he is the fucking man and I can't compete with him." Sadly he lacks the determination to do any work except in the press room these days and satisfies himself and his flock just by sitting on his arse talking endless screeds of shite.

Since I started working on my dissertation I've put on a little weight, I might need to start looking at getting back into a bit of proper exercise. Normally I get enough exercise just by walking, since my commute has a 20 minute walk either way, and I normally do a lot of walking during a day in uni. But since classes finished a few weeks ago I've been working from home mostly, eating a bit more, and only exercising with a bit of push-ups and that in the house. I fucking hate running and I have zero stamina, but I still prefer it to the gym.

Russia is annoying as fuck because in terms of their material significance they're scarcely above the Netherlands and Belgium. Their power being what it is is purely because their government is happy to spunk huge amounts of money on their armed forces and nuclear arsenal whilst their country lives in poverty. Say what you like about the Soviet Union but at least they didn't launch any chemical weapons attacks on NATO states. Russia's oligarchic, crony-capitalist religious-authoritarian government these days has far less respect for international law.

A beautiful soul and a beautiful player.

Even more snow overnight. Driving basically impossible and I don't think the trains are running. I think I'll leave the house tomorrow.

I didn't say it was a lot of work, just the same work.

Huge snowfall in my bit, it's a red warning over most of the Central Belt so the roads are deserted, can't count on the trains either. Uni's closed today and tomorrow so far. Unfortunately a snow-day for a student basically means you just keep doing the same work, but trapped in your house instead of the libray.

Three arrested for manslaughter. Definitely sounds like some major negligence is behind this. If Londis are a franchise, then I'd think the chain of liability stops with the store owner, rather than the company itself.

Fucking hell I don't know I would have reacted. Even talking about bones breaking gives me chills. I've never actually broke anything. I probably would have thrown-up instantly if I saw my fingers in that condition.

Im in my last year and applying for traineeships atm but the legal market is so fucked that im pretty sure I'm not getting anything this year. Meanwhile there's a 2-year 30k p.a. grad scheme with the Department for Intl Development open, and its in East Kilbride, which is about 10 minutes from my house. I'm tempted to apply for it. It's going to be more money than a 2-year traineeship would be, even at a biggish law firm and probably for easier work. Plus the legal market would probably be more settled after 2 years and there will be more traineeships. The only thing is whether 2 years of non-legal work would fuck my chances of getting back into it - but then maybe they'd appreciate the practical experience. Plus before you go into a traineeship you have to pay £8k to do your Diploma in Legal Practice for a year, so if I did the grad scheme I could save the money for it, rather than taking a loan. Having to go into the real world is a pain in the arse.

Not really hip-hop, but I stumbled across this young London producer who's got an album out recently, it's really amazing jazz improvs with a slightly hip-hop production.

How fucking shit is The Voice. I've not watched singing competitions since I was little but I'm in the living room and my parents are watching it and I seriously cringing, it's unbelievably irritating. Most of the contestants are downright bad singers. Not even just in the sense of them having weak intonation or poor technique, but even just their taste and musicality. They're all trying runs and ad-libs that even if they could hit, wouldn't add to the song. It's primarily just mediocre singers with no solid foundation in music showing off and the crowd whooping and screaming whenever they sing loudly. I'm being told that it's just because I'm really into the nitty gritty of music and that I'm overthinking it, but seriously you don't need any particular ear to hear that these people can't sing. What the fuck is going on here? How is this shite popular?

Dembele is amazing at going past a man but literally nothing else. Liverpool purposefully left him unmarked so he would get the ball, go storming through the centre, and they could swarm the ball off him.

Don't Look Now 6.5/10 I felt like I liked what it was trying to do but ended up a bit bored, and the look of the film doesn't really hold up well since the 1970s. There's a lot of interesting scenes especially with the visuals but sometimes it descends into fairly boring, excessive slo-mo shots. Donald Sutherland is really good in it but overall the plot is a bit dull, although with again some interesting ideas and moments. I could maybe give it a 7 since it at least tries some new unusual things for the time, and is a really original, slow-burner of a thriller film.

Despite putting off any serious new book buying until after the semester, I saw this in a charity shop for £2 last weekend and I'm now close to finishing it. I went for it since I knew the author was quite well regarded in the area and it's a short read at about 160 pages. I'm surprised how much she crams into it - I was totally unaware of the period right after the revolution but she fits in a lot of detail in a brief and really readable narrative. I've now realised it's easy to find a PDF of it online so I guess I wasted £2 in hindsight

"Stor Tuborg, tak" You're good to go. In other news, I had discussions with a few pals about going a city break kinda thing in the summer, like Hamburg or Krakow, but then a discussion sparked up in our wider group about a holiday in Greece or something and everyone seems into that idea, but tbh I can't be arsed. I've been there and done it and I can't be arsed with another week of no sleep, shite cringey clubs, sweating out my nut, trying to chat up horrendous burds, and everyone having 3rd-degree sunbrun. Especially if it's not even a small-ish group of my close pals, but instead a big hode-podge including people I don't even like. I'd rather have chilled 4/5 days in a nice city with a few sound cunts, see some sights, drink a substantial amount of beer, and try a club or two.

The issue with the pay gap is that it makes it sound like men get paid more than women for the same roles which is basically impossible to get with. It drives people away because it simplifies the problem it tries to draw attention to - the aggregation of various different factors that make it harder for women to earn as much. They can be partly voluntary through things like a lot of girls feeling socially pressured to be less assertive from a young age, or more restrictive things like maternity leave stalling your career a lot, while men have too little leave, meaning that men lose out too, just not in career terms. The use of the buzz word just leaves people on one side saying "there is no pay discrimination" and being right in a purely literal sense, and feminists confusing the issue by lack of clarity. People tend to just talk past each other. And people bringing in the pay of casts in major Hollywood films also fucks the discussion because the pay negotiations for actors' rates are not remotely comparable to the wage system for normal people. Edit: and Peterson annoys me because although I can't question his reputation as a psychologist and I honestly sympathise with him sometimes (because the horrific makeup of his fanbase means that people assume he's a bigot by association), but he is also guilty of simplifying things. On the pay gap thing he isn't trying to dismiss womens' concerns but instead look more deeply into the solutions, and struggling against people who want to paint him either for or against. But in other areas he is guilty of the same thing. He attacks things like "cultural Marxism" without real explanations of what he means, and grossly simplifies or distorts the message of various philosophers with a leftist leaning, often criticising them with no reading of their actual work. The thing is that the pay gap issue is way more visible, and it allows him to paint himself as the voice of reason in the face of shrieking leftists, when actually he displays very similar impulses in other areas of debate.

Tbf me, with no knowledge or experience, slitting a cows throat is different from it getting a rod shot into its brain by somebody who's killed hundreds of cows in his life. Im okay with animals dying, but even then I wouldn't like for an animal to die in a painful way when it's quite cheap and easy for it to be killed or stunned instantaneously.

In amongst uni reading I'm getting through this in bits and pieces. Quite a good, easy read on a time and place where I've only got a rough idea of the history. It's getting to that point in the year where my coursework totally knocks me out of my urge to read for leisure, but I've got these lined up in my Amazon cart for whenever things quiet down.

Im a bit mixed on it because I do love meat, but I think I could live without it. At home, my mum has basically always cooked dinners with meat. The only kinda meal we'd have without meat is maybe pasta. When I was in Denmark and paranoid af about money, I genuinely looked at meat like a treat. After a month when, I realised how expensive everything was, I would only buy minced pork or beef now and then, when it was reduced. I also sometimes bought leverpostej, which is a kinda cheap liver pate than they're mad for over there. So yeah for about 8 months I went almost without meat. I'd sometimes go weeks without a single bit of meat. At most, I'd have meat maybe a couple of meals in one week. Now that Im alright at cooking, and I know I don't "need" meat, I've definitely been thinking I should try cutting more and passing on all the meat that my mum makes. I lost a shitload of weight in my year abroad, so I guess I accidentally stumbled onto a decent diet out of money worries and sheer cluelessness about feeding myself. Lots of rye bread, root vegetables, mushrooms, broccoli and potatoes.

You Tyskies need to calm with your bread elitism until you've lived on this stuff for 8 months

Tbh for such a small moment, the tooth in the shower really gave me a chill up my back hahaha Although it's totally different in terms of tone, it really made me think of Martyrs. You're horrified half the time but you're also completely engrossed in the film. Must be something about French directors.