mark thompson

Awesome news!

Something quite medieval about fear of the left-hander too

'Actually, in the original Brothers Grimm tale, Mitchell Starc eats the batsman limb by limb'

Day/night tests are fun because there's something very medieval about the level of fear people have for twilight

Fulham-City yesterday and Brighton-Villa today feels a little "don't eat all your Christmas chocolate now, you won't have any room left for dinner"

The chitter-chatter on Villa's long-range goals would be improved hugely by someone letting us see the change in xG value in different circumstances from 20-25 yards

those who have quit all streaming platforms, curious what your music tech setup is, i aim to reach this enlightened state in 2026

Couple of years ago I shortlisted and interviewed Yash for a role we had at Statsbomb around a large consultancy project; unfortunately soon after the project faltered and we had to withdraw the role, but I would have hired Yash - they were an excellent candidate.

(I don't think this is a real future of journalism, because the ad doesn't talk at all about the systems one would use, but it probably is the future (or present!) of how certain layers of management are thinking (shallowly, at best))

"We do not believe in resumes or cover letters. They are usually full of AI slop[...]" is a real unexpected treat in this

Cool thread

AFCON 2025 will be shown on UK TV on Channel 4. The tournament takes place over the upcoming Christmas and New Year period. Most group matches will be on 4Seven/streaming, but Egypt v South Africa on Boxing Day will be shown on Channel 4 itself.

Suffered the same fate, so I'm on the lookout for work. In my 6+ years at Forbes I covered EPL, especially Liverpool, Everton and Man City, international tournaments, and US soccer including lower leagues. I'm uniquely placed ahead of 2026 World Cup given my reporting history and areas of expertise.

This is partly a 'my algo' question-

I see bunch of small business owners on IG/YT who do "things I'm learning about the *business* side of business" videos - are there folks doing this for media businesses?

It'll never happen, but I'm really interested in what'd happen if someone *did* try that

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

damn you guys really gave Ryan Lizza money huh

“The normalization of deepfakes is something no one was asking for. It’s something that OpenAI did because it made their thing more viral and social,” Carrasco said. “Once you open that door to being okay with people deepfaking you, even if it’s your friends deepfaking you, all of a sudden your likeness has just gotten fucked. You’re no longer in control of it and you can’t pull it back.”

Deepfakes have shifted from something mainly created on seedy forums at the turn of the decade into one of the most accessible technologies today.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

The Hudl Performance Insights 2025 Research Papers are available to read now.

Nine winners used Hudl Statsbomb Event + 360 & Hudl Physical Data to build their findings and present them live on the Research Stage at the event.

Download them here 🔽 www.hudl.com/en_gb/hudlpr...

some fun results in today's new Expecting Goals newsletter -- how objective motivation affects football teams

it seems like the intuitions of the fans have this one right: everyone hates defending and loves an excuse not to have to do it open.substack.com/pub/expectin...

Aside from anything else - and I say this as someone very susceptible to extra clauses - the comma-to-word ratio in this is a bit of a red flag

Here’s the football catch of the year. Stay for the slow-mo at the end. Absolutely unhinged.

Vikings on fire, North East of England's terrified

Goalkeeper throw-in!

well, that said, 'those outlets are aiming for different things' is more of a 'market share' thing than 'huge userbase'

yeahhh, but e.g. The Onion, Semafor, The Verge are aiming for different kinds of things to the NYT but still need to make money. I guess there's a sort of 'sub-market' market share, but I still dunno

I guess so, yeah, although for written media outlets I'm less sure what 'overwhelming market share' looks like as opposed to, say, Uber, Netflix

A fairly large part of the enshitification cycle in general is 'X is heavily subsidised to artificially gain a huge userbase -> X can no longer burn cash to subsidise the artificially low prices -> revenue-raising and/or cost-cutting actions intensify'

Guti or Özil

The Redondo has a nice ring it to, actually.