"And James Bond, who did NOT die"

The best way to blog is to do it for five years, realise that some of the stuff from three years ago is quite good, and write lines you'll later like: "What an absurdity to play a game for an hour and a half and, very possibly, not score a goal at all. This is the most popular sport in the world."

Any recommendations for podcasts which have long episodes, generally not too taxing to listen to, generally quite a chill audio style? Mainly asking for background noise that you can load up for a few hours without needing to think about skipping or loading a new one, etc

This is absurd and infuriating

Important data update - Ryan Sessegnon currently leads the Premier League Carton d'Or (20) while Martina Fernández (11) is just pipping Melvine Malard (10) in the WSL. The Carton d'Or, of course, is the most fouls without receiving a card. A feat of true stamina

Villa's distribution is quite funny. Sunderland's looks like a very disciplined but one-dimensional pitcher.

Ye olde xG per game chart w/various lightweight takes: 1. Arsenal is the blueprint here, 7 good games, 4 ~equal, 0 bad 2. Man City no bad games recently 3. stacking up the bad games: West Ham (but 2 good), Wolves (0 good) and Burnley (0 good) and curiously Bournemouth 4. No "good" Tottenham game :/

I'm pretty sure that generative models *are* capable of (a form of) creativity - by nature, probabilistic systems can be used to choose less, or different, probable paths - but I'd much rather a future of 'slightly more albums like Rosalía's Lux by real artists' than 'hit button for good pop song'

Manchester United haven't eradicated their problems on defensive corners yet, despite the arrival of Senne Lammens improving the situation. However, Ruben Amorim's side has transformed their attacking corners to a point of strength. Piece on United's corners. 🔗 www.nytimes.com/athletic/679...

From the archive but I think it still stands: ‘Understand football and you’ll understand AI’ www.getgoalsideanalytics.com/understand-f...

That Doku shot was a heat check and turns out he's not cooled down yet

Jeremy Doku take ons vs. Liverpool: 5 successful/7 attempts Liverpool take ons vs. Man City: 3 successful/7 attempts

lol, what is the point of a BBC entertainment reporter writing an article analysing a primarily-BBC presenter, raising the rumour of her taking over the BBC's main chat show www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Average touch locations and passing networks broken out by quarter of the match. Got a bit too deep late for my taste.

Forest are the 'midfield vibes' meme but in this case the 'ball goes through midfield somehow' is 'Elliot Anderson'

Gotta take some fuzziness in mind with this, but this is an interesting piece www.nytimes.com/athletic/678...

How do you boil down the features of 'how a club uses data' in a way that's understandable? www.getgoalsideanalytics.com/tiers-of-data/

Flip-side of my other quote post observation - 'genuinely nice coffee shop in walkable distance' is as pleasant as it is impossible to search for. It's maybe a 'WFH/not' split, but having a 'nice thing' close by is really, well, nice

I'm often amazed at how small kitchens in ~recently-built flats are, and/or how lacking they are in cupboard/counter space. I would love a 'is this kitchen usable' filter option on search sites

It's a weekend so time for chitter-chatter- if you've moved house semi-recently, what are some things you were glad you looked out for/wish you'd looked out for, either in the property itself or in the surrounding area

Can LLMs accurately aggregate information over long, information-dense texts? Not yet… We introduce Oolong, a dataset of simple-to-verify information aggregation questions over long inputs. No model achieves >50% accuracy at 128K on Oolong!

The easiest way to fix the prequels is by making Anakin tempted to murder, but not actually doing so, because he's torn by commitment to the Jedi. Most of Ep 2 can be spent tempting him with love and revenge, before finally succumbing to love at the film's close

Regrettably having to give this bloody thing a boost again, as ever, any help is always much appreciated. ko-fi.com/lawsonsv

I don't like live-posting Traitors/Celeb Traitors (very cautious on spoilers), but I'm glad that it seemed to have been a bit of a thing on here

𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐩𝐲 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐓𝐨: databallpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ge... 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐩𝐲 𝐆𝐢𝐭𝐇𝐮𝐛: github.com/Alek050/databallpy 𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲: kloppy.pysport.org

As a result, any 𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲 supported event data provider (IMPECT, Statsbomb, DataFactory, Sportec, Opta, Wyscout and Metrica), and tracking data provider (SkillCorner, Hawk-Eye, PFF / Gradient Sports, Signality, Sportec, Stats Perform, Metrica and TRACAB) can now all be easily loaded into 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐩𝐲.

⚽ 𝐊𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐏𝐲 Another day, another big open-source football analytics announcement! 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐩𝐲, a Python package to load, synchronize and analyze football tracking and event data, now directly supports loading data with 𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲.

Just re-upping this old piece re the chat around Tarkowski's part in Sunderland's goal The video linked in the piece, so you can see what it looks like - vimeo.com/203842966

"The theory is that Burnley are positioning themselves in places which direct shots towards Heaton, with keeper and defenders working in tandem to make lives easier for themselves rather than trying to throw any body possible in front of the shot." blogarchive.statsbomb.com/articles/soc...

The 'Hide Post for me' option is one of the best features bluesky has imo

😱 Real Sociedad shock Barcelona Femení in the Liga F, inflicting a first defeat on the reigning title holders since last season’s Champions League final. For context, Barcelona only lost three league games across the last three seasons.

CBS has gotta get this guy on a call with Sean Dyche

The thought's been rattling around in my head a long while: What are the obstacles to a really good 'portfolio/archive' option for individual writers & journalists?

This is a good companion to yesterday's article. While I think there are worries about stretches of passivity with Newcastle's mid-block and having a straight line of 5, they can still ably go from mid-block -> press that you'd expect from a Howe coached side

Arsenal's corner deliveries have been a big part of their set-piece success in recent seasons. To the naked eye, Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka's deliveries are incredible, but how do they shape up in terms of the numbers? 🔗 www.nytimes.com/athletic/675...

I know that people often use burners, but if you see someone you know posting like the fans here are doing, you've gotta tell them to knock it off

At least a couple times a year I'll be doing research for something related to American soccer and I'll come across an old Grant Wahl lede that stops me dead in my tracks. www.si.com/soccer/2020/...

Tony Adams was one of the great English footballers of his generation. But what he’s done since — transforming his own life and others’ through the Sporting Chance charity he founded — is truly inspirational. “This,” he says, “is what I was put on this earth to do” www.nytimes.com/athletic/675...

We're expanding the Club Brugge Football Data Science team. As our Football Data Scientist, you'll work with one of the most advanced analytics infrastructures in football to help management, scouting, and analysis staff turn data into better decisions. jobs.clubbrugge.be/en/football-data-scientist

In the 10th edition of The Athletic's Alternative Premier League Table, @anantaajith.bsky.social looks at how each club's new faces are doing when it comes to the most important part of the game: Putting the ball in the net. 🔗 www.nytimes.com/athletic/675...

Release the full edit of the roundtable, BBC

WE - people writing today - get to define by our citations what will be considered the canon in the future. When I think something deserves to be seen as canonical, then I cite it and assign it with wild abandon. When I think the current canon doesn’t deserve that status, I pay it no mind.

One of the things about Manchester's Market Street that I find endearing is that you sometimes get two different religions of street preacher/mic'd up evangeliser. One time there was a humanists stall too and it was like hitting bingo

There is a black guy with a V shape electric guitar that stands on various corners in East Atlanta and shreds.

We don’t have many in Birmingham to be honest. Probably due to a lack of public squares. But we do have seagulls attacking rats!

bluesky question of the day: if you live in/near a major-ish city, what are the buskers/street performers like there?

Seeing this reposted into my feed reminded me of seeing a (UK) article recently that broke out grocery inflation, noting that it was noticeably higher than general inflation, and I was bewildered that that was the first time I remembered seeing that measure in a news article

I see people say things like 'why use ChatGPT to write an email, you can just write the email', but I have spent a long time wording fairly short emails/messages before. (Maybe we should call/voice note more). I think it's a skill worth working on, but I also know it can be hard

Hearts at the PSF are full today from the responses about the recent grant turn down news we shared. All of your kind words of support & solidarity, as well as your donations & new memberships, mean the world to us. We're so grateful to be in community with each of you 💛🐍💙