Boxing Day is the Robbie Williams of holidays.

Babel is the epitome of the author stopping and turning to the camera every 15 pages and assuring you that whatever her characters are saying or doing, don’t worry, she the author is exactly the right type of [insert preferred left political descriptor].

Not so much a fan of this I must admit.

Growing up in suburban New York we had to make dinner reservations at the local Chinese place on Christmas. They opened up a second overflow room downstairs for only Christmas and you would routinely see half your congregation there.

And they were singing Bye bye Miss American Pie Drove me Chevy to the levee But the levee was dry And good ol’ boys drinking whiskey and rye This is the day Tiny Tim did not die The day Tiny Tim did not die

Ousmane Dembele and Lamine Yamal being top 2 for a 2025 list is particularly funny since it’s obviously a Ballon d’Or reaction but Ballon d’Or counts the last half of 2024 and first half of 2025.

Somehow I missed the guardian top 100 list came out last week. These things are always insane and tough to put together, and nobody knows whether they’re rating on performance or potential. But it’s legit insane that Christian Pulisic isn’t on the list.

I hope some of you are engaging in a typical Jewish Christmas this year. My family growing up maxed out the stereotype. Every year we went: Movie -> Jewish Deli -> Movie -> Chinese food dinner -> Movie. Oh also a very Jewish screaming match on Christmas Eve to determine the movies we’d see.

Update I forgot the Scotland naming conventions. It’s fourth tier lol.

My wife went extremely obscure this year for my Christmas kit haul. Spanish third division Scotland second division England fourth division German eighth division (!!) Jupiler Pro League Czech First League And Serie A

We ready.

here's a hot for Bluesky take: a lot of tech-criticism is so bad and focused on a kind of stupid imagined STEM-humanities culture war that some companies have been able to build whole brands around being "evil tech bros 😈" making supervillain promises despite their shit being vaporware

It’s not a big thing except to those of us wit have to cover it. But when you stop and think about it it’s *absurd* that the NWSL released their HIP new rule and did not release a list of players that would qualify for salary cap exceptions under its criteria. Like it’s just basic comms malpractice

I think a lot of people in news, or other content endeavors have had the experience of having the good idea fairies all descend with suggestions right before you go live. I’ve certainly experienced it in good faith and bad faith. And I think it’s not really that hard to distinguish between the two.

it's wild like Real Madrid had dropped a total of three points all season and were in the process of locking up a clear win in a Clasico when the players and upper management decided the manager had to be shown his place

see also our discussion on @doublepivotpodcast.bsky.social this week open.spotify.com/episode/4Rk9...

Christmas Eve power rankings not meaning like power rankings related to Christmas Eve actual European soccer power rankings on Christmas Eve open.substack.com/pub/expectin...

Damn.

Well 2.5 out of 3 years into our time here in Belgium it finally happened. The eight and six year old had a conversation in front of me in French to keep me from understanding what they were saying.

we talked about why there are different kinds of analytics on Antoine Semenyo and what we think of the different teams targeting him here: www.buzzsprout.com/819853/episo...

It isnt a problem necessarily for men’s coach’s to work in the women’s game. But it is a problem when men’s coaches decide to work in the women’s game because they can’t get jobs in the men’s game. Which is like all the men’s coaches who decide to work in the women’s game.

Slop in front of the paywall and bespoke taste-makers behind it is where we’re headed.

Trying to get the six-year-old to bed: Mommy: the sooner you go to sleep the sooner it’s Xmas 6YO: that doesn’t make any sense M: time feels like it goes faster when you’re asleep 6YO: no it’s doesn’t… it’s when you’re having fun! That’s an actual thing people say

Me trying not to comment on a matter central to the discourse out of professional prudence.

Oh my God, they’re posting Zerohedge. If you’re not familiar, ZH is a right wing propaganda operation, ostensibly about financial markets, but more focused on sewing general discord.

So for lots of people who bet for fun, “I’m betting on side xyz” is indistinguishable from “I’m rooting for xyz” and usually smart bettors take advantage of times when rooting interest lets them get great prices on the other side. Sometimes the sports book takes the other side though.

All of these ridiculous contortions are driven by trying to walk a line between owners who want to spend money and owners who think women’s sports are attractive as an owner because you don’t have to spend money on the players.

You can tell NWSL is super pumped about the reaction this new rule will receive because they released it in such a prime news breaking window and not just before a big holiday or something.

It is incredible how unpopular the president is given that the economy remains resilient (despite lots of signs of weakening in the labor market).

If I see one more person spread the "all GDP growth is AI" nonsense.... Avg QoQ ann. % change for GDP in 2025 after three quarters is 2.5%. Avg for consumption is 2.2%. The idea that AI investment is the source of all growth is just completely wrong.

Everybody wants control over who can see their posts and also everybody wants control over which posts they can see.

this claim is entirely based on health care and substantially based on misunderstanding European health care systems

It is such a disquieting experience to get get a flood of replies in your mentions from people who then seem become enraged m that you have read those messages and engaged with them.

It is absolutely excruciating when you have a post break contain and a whole avalanche of people who seem literally unable to read come storming into your mentions.

Elected politicians of the Democratic Party have a real problem in that there is no media organ with reach that amplifies them when they distance themselves from silly left takes like getting mad about Sydney Sweeney. So republicans can lie that democrats believe what the dumbest leftist posts.

The maga divide summarized: does the gutter racism that is the mortar of our coalition apply to Jews or not? And if it doesn’t do we mean that or are we just pretending for the moment?

Ooooooh a legal document how fancy.

What this really is, is “I came to this angry because of the Big Account that wanted me to be angry about it, and then I looked at it and the reason I was angry was wrong, but I’m still angry so there has to be some way to justify it.” Very common on here.

Man. One of the biggest bummers of growing up is fully realizing that mental health and addiction struggles aren’t limited to difficult teenage years but people’s demons follow them to adulthood.

The history of "Judeo Christian" terminology is actually pretty fascinating. It originated as a social justice ("woke") term in the 1920s and 30s as a way to include Jewish and Catholic immigrants and push back against Protestant nativism (including the Klan). But ofc now it's used differently.

The reason I was never a fan of Judeo-Christian is a moniker was that it was always apparent it’s just a placeholder until they feel like they can get away with dropping the Judeo.

It is interesting that “we didn’t use AI” is the claim and not “did AI make the game worse.” It suggests the question of the quality of the thing produced is secondary to an abstract ethical concern. And while being willing to pay more for an ethical product is great. Gamers ain’t those consumers.

And in every generation an appeal to ancestry is a pretty disqualifying first step to claiming the mantle!

Talking to some other dudes my age about how our overwhelming memory about what we learned about the 70s when we were kids in the 90s was high gas prices and scarcity. And, uh yeah, maybe we should have realized that inflation has a long tail in its cultural impact.

Love to pod about how Morgan Rogers definitely can’t keep this up.

Discovered 6-7 has made it to the six-year-olds class. Also discovered she knows how to say it in Hebrew so that’s fun!

Listen content of the message aside, the odds that somebody, even a white man, on Bluesky talking about politics never voted for a woman for president really are quite low! Sometimes people just have bad opinions.

Arsenal gave up five total shots for 0.20 xG. Thats about as dominant as it gets even if it did t quite feel that way in the moment (take it from an Everton fan, it felt that way in the moment on the other side).

There are three dunks in my life I’m pathetic enough to remember and still be proud of years later. One was a comprehensive takedown of Alexi Lalas being an insincere preening prick and the other two were of Conor Friedsdorf. All long since deleted but I think of them fondly.

Man the discourse around art and AI is poisonous. There are lots of super duper valid criticisms of AI but if the one you’ve found yourself making is also one that a sketch artist could have made verbatim in response to the invention of the camera then you’ve probably gone wrong somewhere.