Aveek Bhattacharya

Lubo: "Why is Briggs teaching them to head the ball off their teammate's arms? Fire him now."

Given how hard people tried to talk themselves into anointing Chelsea and Aston Villa title challengers, every chance they'd be doing the same for us

This all seems particularly insidious when it bleeds into teaching - have heard about lecturers being told off for departing from the lesson plan because each seminar should be identical in order to be fair - which rather defeats the purpose of dialogue

Also think upward management - trying to understand the desires and idiosyncrasies of your boss/client and adapting to them is an important career skill

I think this is a bad tendency. It's good to iron out arbitrariness and make things as fair as possible, but shouldn't fall prey to the fiction that perfect fairness and objectivity is possible. Think it's useful for students to learn sooner rather than later that the world isn't perfectly fair!

Why OpenAI is a prime example of the ethical limits of capitalism Money and morality are a challenging corporate combination.

OpenAI is ten years old today! My take on how its transition from idealistic charity to profit-seeking corporation shows how capitalism squeezes morals out of business theconversation.com/why-openai-i...

Signing Wirtz and Frimpong just made a load more sense

Am I the only one who thinks Liverpool lost the 23/24 title because of Quansah's error against Man Utd? (Probably)

Interesting contrast with the dignity Andy Robertson has shown. He's won everything Salah has, watched his replacement be signed and frankly not be great, doesn't know if he'll get a contract (probably suspects he won't), but seems to have shown leadership and given his all, even as his powers wane

(Apply this more generally to other former Rangers managers who might be under consideration to coach at Liverpool)

Rangers. Bad vibes.

So what you're saying is put the England batters in the nets facing a high speed bowling machine with no bat? Might help them win, and if it doesn't, will still be cathartic

Even though Norway were the only team Scotland didn't lose to last time, glad to have swapped them out for Haiti

You wait 28 years for a World Cup group, and it's basically the same one again

It's only 48 teams, obviously they need to pad things out

Arguably the moral of Liverpool 22/23 was not to use up positive variance on spankings, but as a hater of Man Utd and Rangers, and given Liverpool weren't that good anyway in the underlying numbers, I'm not sure I agree

I think the moral of PSG 24/25 is to use up bad variance in meaningless league phase games, and the moral of Liverpool 24/25 is the opposite

(I personally think Slot has always tended to be slightly too cautious and got away with sitting back on leads last season. But I was radicalised at the chaotic altar of Klopp)

I didn't watch the full West Ham game, but seems like it was basically the same performance as against Sunderland? And people were delighted on Sunday and irate on Wednesday because they just work backwards from results

I'm quite allergic to psychological explanations though and "the body language is all wrong", which tend to be very outcome driven.

eg I don't see anybody (except Slot lol) giving the team credit for its resilience to keep coming back from a goal down (Sunderland, PSV, Frankfurt, Chelsea, Man Utd)

Apologies Jernej that my original comment was snarky, endorse Lubo's point that the underlying stats are disappointing in themselves and that bad luck makes things look even worse.

Hmm yes Brentford and Bournemouth must have psychological problems too. Sack Andrews and Iraola immediately.

(Reality is that it hasn't hugely cost Liverpool - 1pt off fourth with fifth best xGD. Big defeats to City and Forest (+PSV) turned the vibes toxic, but can't get fewer than zero points)

I want to hear about variance

This is awesome and almost as good as chocolate

Why do set piece goals in the Champions League not count??

Not pictured: Aston Villa

Full Fiscal Autonomy: The democratic case for independent fiscal policy - Social Market Foundation. Despite recent challenges to the Bank of England’s independence, this briefing suggests that over-politicisation is a greater threat to sound macroeconomic policy than empowering technocrats. It there...

Don't know if you ever read my SMF paper argue for full fiscal technocracy i.e. what you're against here: www.smf.co.uk/publications...

"Instead of vigorous debate, arguments about fiscal policy will be closed down by the government saying "The OBR says we're doing the right thing""

Chance would be a fine thing, given how the 2010s actually turned out

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