Burning Gold

Nevada's state senate actually passed a bill that would award all of the state's electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote, only to see it vetoed by the governor. They could've avoided all this

Yeah, lazy from me. What I meant was Hitler was so unfathomably bad that "not as bad as Hitler" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. Good news from Wisconsin. I was worried this morning when Milwaukee was all in and Biden still only had a very narrow lead

I mean no one's near Hitler, but Castro was certainly further to the side of violence/radicalism than can be considered decent. But also no one as prominent as Sanders on the right has been trying to rehab Hitler's image. Castro's certainly a more palatable character, but that sort of doesn't matter if the media are able to make it binary and put him in the Bad category. Completely agree with you on the partisanship of Miami Cubans, but it's about whether you can exercise them. Trump has in a way that Romney and McCain weren't able to. It staggers me that they'll vote for a man whose selling point is that he'll continue trying to cripple their homeland, where their families still live. But I guess that's where the "Castro took away my slaves" meme comes from

They keep saying the mail-in votes will be largely Democrat leading according to their data, but what data is that? The polls have got it dramatically wrong (again), so is the mail-in vote data more reliable?

Does it have to be Stalin? Bernie Sanders spoke about Castro in rather glowing terms quite recently. Coincidentally, the Cuban vote in Miami may have just won Florida for Trump

It never seemed that bad, but looking back there was Sturridge, Agger and José Enrique all missing a lot of time. Not sure how much of that you can blame on Rodgers though I think it's the lack of preseason plus the fact we're straight into 3 games a week. Usually you get a few weeks to ease you in before European competition kicks in, whereas this year those weeks were taken up by the league cup

Surprised to read these, to be honest, given the amount of complaints there are about the level of officiating in both of those sports . There's a very real campaign for "robo-umps" in baseball, while the shout in NFL is "pay the refs" because the volunteers they get aren't deemed good enough. It's impossible to say whether they're better or worse than Premier League referees, but it's certainly not all rosy over there. One thing I do think they get right is that the referees/umpires barely have to move. In the NFL, they may have to adjust their position slightly to get a good view, but there are so many of them they only have to worry about a small section of the field. They certainly don't have to run up and down all game to keep up with the ball while also trying to stay out of the way. Eliminating the physical fatigue and those others distractions makes it so much easier to get the decision right when they have to.

The other thing is what happens if they get it wrong. At the moment, they can take a few days to obfuscate and lie and maybe say that actually it was the correct decision. Maybe put out a few conflicting stories so people's anger isn't concentrated on the actual problem. If they went down the live audio route and got it wrong (which will happen), there's nowhere to hide. There would have to be some level of accountability and repercussions, and they won't be doing that

It's a big loss. There's an argument that van Dijk is the best player in the league. Certainly up there with De Bruyne and Salah for me. His presence in defence will be missed as will his the quality of his passes from the back. But Matip and Gomez are both good defenders; if they step up, the drop-off from van Dijk won't be too precipitous. Gomez's form is a bit of a concern, but if these are the "mentality giants" we're always told they are, they'll be fine. My primary concern is depth. One of them will have to miss time at some point; they're both injury prone, and no one can do 3 games a week for as long as they're being asked to anyway. Once that happens, it starts to sound a bit like the skeleton dance because their only cover is Fabinho, Fabinho's cover is Henderson, Henderson's cover is Wijnaldum. They all also can't do 3 games in a week in their own position, let alone cover someone else's, so there's a serious amount of shuffling that needs to be done. Not sure Pepe's the answer, but bringing in another CB in January is key. I don't know what the pecking order in the reserves is, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some of Phillips, Koumetio and/or Sepp van den Berg in meaningful fixtures before January. I'm not writing them off, but it's clearly not ideal. My other concern is Adrian because he's both shite and completely rogue. It's so much harder to be organised and focussed as a defensive unit when you can't even trust your goalkeeper to be in goal.

What do you think Pickford's problem is? I'm never convinced by the approach of signing a credible backup (putting aside how credible we think Olsen actually is) in an attempt make your number 1 better. It's never going to have that big an effect, and it won't last long beyond Pickford realising he's got the better of Olsen. If by some miracle it does have a big effect, you need to be asking questions about your number 1's attitude. Maybe you need to ask questions about his attitude anyway that you thought this was a good idea. We tried this several times with Mignolet, and all it got us was two keepers who weren't good enough instead of one. Chelsea have just done it with Mendy and I imagine it'll go the same way. It's just spending money to avoid dealing with a problem properly

Varies based on the severity of the case. Broadly speaking it's 5-14 days before symptoms (usually closer to 5), then another 5-10 days of symptoms after which you're either mostly fine or you're in trouble. The reason for the 2 week isolation period is to cover the 5-14 days it takes from exposure symptoms to make sure you don't get symptoms. If you do, it can be a different story. Worth also noting that it can be multiple days between exposure and a positive test, even if you're being tested daily This is from April, so old information, but should be broadly accurate

Broadly agree, although I don't think he's that sick at the moment; he looks fine and I don't think he'd risk a live appearance if he was liable to collapse or have a coughing fit at a moment's notice. To go from positive test to hospital to fine within about 3 days is extremely fucking suspect Do we know what brought on the test? Was it symptoms or just part of a routine testing regime?

Countless? How many high profile players we'd notice have had it? I could probably name 10. I'm not losing my mind over it, but I think the "no worries, just 2 weeks out" attitude is a bit naive given what we do and don't know about it. My concern with Long Covid in this context is that minor cases which the general population wouldn't notice (minor fatigue and breathing issues could easily be put down to a more sedentary lifestyle in lockdown/whatever we're in now) could have serious implications for a professional sportsperson but won't be counted/recored so we don't know what the prevalence is. Optimum time other than the summer, I guess, but it feels a bit defeatist to assume you're going to get it and just hope the timing is kind. I wonder how the probabilities change for symptomatic cases; not sure about Mane but I know Thiago had symptoms, albeit reportedly mild

Nah, it was silly of me to suggest this could turn into a serious problem

Death rate's extremely low for that age range, but is the chance of having it longer than 2 weeks really that low? I've seen nothing to suggest that. Dybala had it over a month before he started returning negative tests. Potentially more serious are the reports of long term complications for those with even mild cases. Depending on what they are, they might not be noticeable to you or I, but potentially career threatening for a professional athlete. I've not heard anything about that from the players who had it before, but it's not something to be taken for granted

It's absolutely mental that Mane and Thiago have got corona and people are just taking it as "oh 2 weeks out, no biggie". Has the potential to be a serious problem

That's 28,000 historic cases they've just "found" this weekend. What does this mean for the figures and projections that have informed the measures taken this week? What an absolute fucking shitshow

I'm really skeptical about the benefits of this. The only transmission vector this would affect is catching it off surfaces, which I believe has been shown to be practically impossible anyway. These will do nothing to reduce your risk of catching the virus off someone who has it (which is the most likely method). Bit of a waste of time and probably creates a false sense of security Hypochloric acid is probably fine in anything other than large doses, but I certainly wouldn't question anyone who didn't want to walk through a chamber saturated with it.

One of the reasons you don't see beat cops any more is that budgets won't allow it, which is why calls to "defund the police" are particularly bizarre, especially from the left. An excuse to further cut funding to police departments would be a Conservative's dream if they thought it would fly with voters. There's certainly a case to be made that communities could be more effectively supported by funding other initiatives, but it's a bit weird to frame that by demanding that money be taken from the police. And it's incredibly naive to think that money taken from the police will be used to fund those things rather than just... not spent. There's a hell of a disconnect between the slogan and the "rationale" which I think is quite revealing. Even in the US, where police departments are funded through the roof, the focus should be on de-empowering them (is that a word?) and ending things like qualified immunity and officers' general feeling of infallibility. Defund (or abolish) the police is one of those things @Steve Bruce Almighty was referring to which just turns off moderate or centrist potential-voters

Yeah, really looking forward to this. Is it a weekly thing or has it all been released at once? Basically want to time the 30 day trial so I can listen to all of it

Hunger is the question for me. There were times last season when it felt like we were winning through sheer force of will, and with the title under their belt now and no fans in the stadium, I'd be concerned those moments won't be there this season. Then again, we won the league by so far last year, and Klopp has a reputation as being one of the best motivators around, so maybe those things won't make enough of a difference. Personally, I would like another centre half and I'd like another forward if Minamino is who I think he is (i.e. not an impact maker). The fact we wanted Werner but didn't get him suggests Klopp does too but either the money isn't there or the right player isn't. Midfield is actually the area I'd focus on the least as we've got good depth there, but I'm not going to say no to a player of Thiago's quality. I thought we'd get him at the beginning of the Summer because there was just too much noise with none of our regular journalists denying it, but now I'm quite skeptical because it's been so long.

I think he'll always be a squad player here, to be honest. He just doesn't fit how we want to play anymore. I think he needs to look at moving on

If you're just looking at the numbers they posted to say they deserve to be player of the year, then yeah, that is a bit lazy. You need to consider more than that: context, match winning goals and performances, etc.. I know it's an individual award, but it's a team game, so for me you have to consider the team's performance as context. As I've said, that doesn't mean they have to win the league, but there has to be some indiciation the player in question has dragged his team up the table, and with City the opposite has happened. They may have only dropped one place from last year, but they're 20 points short (with one to play) of the points total put up by largely the same team. I don't think you can take any player from a team that's underperformed to that extent and say they've had the best season of anyone in the league.

They're on very close to 2 points a game. I don't think it's controversial to say that's a disappointing season for this City team

For me, yeah. One of the best players in the league, and top of goals + assists (lazy) but he hasn't actually contributed to his team doing well this season (weird). I'm not saying it's an outrageous choice, but is wrong