Ne Moe Imya

He's fine, but it's a very "we're hoping to finish 5th/6th" signing. If City signed him and he was going to be a solid backup, it'd probably help them win the league, but as a first choice, he's pretty meh.

Imagine if disgruntled Aegis employees stole some tanks from Alanbrooke Barracks and then took over Sunderland. It's utterly, utterly mad what's going on.

Russian state television continues to spread the absolute worst kinds of dehumanizing talk about Ukrainians:

Last night the neighbor came over to say that the car in our drive had the brakelights still on, despite being off and without a key. Go outside, sure enough, they weren't making it up. I thought I'd have to take it to the mechanic and pay an arm and a leg to sort it. But on a whim, I googled the problem and figured out it was the small plastic bushing that keeps the brake switch depressed that had broken. Popped off to the parts store, 5 quid later I had the bushing. Spent 10 minutes removing panels, getting it press-fit into place, and putting everything back the way it should be. Very short job but felt like I had conquered the world when I was done!

Commentator: "That Liverpool midfield not looking quite as mobile as it should." No kidding! Fabinho playing like he's wearing cement boots and Milner running as if he's just been diagnosed with arthritis.

If Lukashenko dies, that's really, really bad timing for Putin. It may sound crazy, but the range of possible outcomes resulting from that go from "basically nothing, Putin replaces him with another strongman" to "it turns into a Berlin Wall moment and ends up being the straw that breaks the camel's back with Putin's whole regime." Seriously, the last election in Belarus was such a poorly managed sham that half the country protested vehemently. It was only by extremely oppressive crackdowns and Russian support that Lukashenko barely managed to keep hold of the country. One can easily imagine a scenario where Belarusians demand new elections if he's dead, Putin doesn't have the bandwidth or military capacity to quell the budding protest movement and from there things can spiral out of control for him pretty quickly. If Belarus were to see a successful protest movement leading to some increase in democracy (or any democracy at all), the rest of the so-called "Russian sphere of influence" (i.e. the former USSR countries) will see that as a massive signal. At that points all bets are off in terms of which countries start to realise they can take advantage of the situation to reduce their dependency on Russia. Georgia could rise up and throw Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream out, or Kazakhstan might move to distance themselves more from Russia, or maybe Moldova finally decides Russia's not a threat and moves against Transnistria. Or none of that could happen, Putin could find enough FSB not already busy in Ukraine to send to Belarus, squelch whatever's happening there before it starts, and find another toady to put in Lukashenko's place. But it's definitely a potential black swan event if he dies, especially if it happens while he's in Moscow if there is any suspicion that the Kremlin did it.

He's averaged 1400 minutes/season the past 5 years, and those were his prime years! Makes Keita look like Wolverine.

In positive news, there are reports that Chelsea are going to offer 70m for Vlahovic and United are going to pay stupid money for Neymar, so at least our rivals continue to make mistakes. If we can indeed make some good decisions ourselves, at the very least a path back into the top 4 is right there. Not sure if it matters much in terms of competing for the league title, with City finishing on 90+ points every season, but it is good to see those clubs wasting money.

It's a bit of a weird one, isn't it? On the one hand, it's kind of hilarious that they're printing out ballots for the "referendum" on Belgorod declaring independence. Also that this "Russian offensive" has gone further in a day than the other one did in 9 months in Bakhmut. On the other hand, a few people (at least) have actually died, so it's probably not that funny for them! One has to suspect that the real motive here is to force Russia to re-deploy some troops to their borders, thus reducing the numbers at the location where Ukraine is going to spring their counteroffensive.

Oh, the shark wasn't anywhere near 5 meters! That would have been more than a "swim over to my float and calm down," that would have been a "get out of the ocean and never go near it again" type of thing. Brilliant pictures. It's really something to be in the ocean, isn't it? I find it compelling in a way that is strangely inexplicable. Even if I'm not seeing anything worth shooting, just snorkeling along while the small reef fish like minnows and grunts are swirling around you - it's borderline magical!

I have been getting into spearfishing lately and about a month ago I was diving under a bridge in some pretty bad visibility. Could maybe see 6-7 meters or so, that's it. So you can imagine my surprise when I got to the bottom, looked over and saw a decent-sized bull shark, maybe 5 meters or so from me, just drifting along with the current! Thankfully he wasn't interested in me in the slightest. I still had to swim over to my float to compose myself for a few minutes before I could carry on. Got the heart pounding for a moment, that's for sure!

37% to finish fourth right now on 538! Honestly can't believe it's even close at this point. In February you'd have said almost no chance at all.

22% now on Fivethirtyeight. At this point, we need to win all of our games, and have one of Newcastle or United pretty much have all the bounces go against them.

I don't know what it is now, but before Newcastle and United played last weekend I checked and if we won all 3 of our last games we were about 77% to finish top 4. Not sure about now but if we did manage to win all 3, it'd still be over 50% for sure. So all we can do is win those games and then let the chips fall where they may.

Watched this first episode as well. Absolute garbage from start to finish. Looks like it probably cost them 200 million or so to make a full season of this, but you'd think you'd spend SOME of the money paying someone to write a coherent and interesting story! The overall plot is just total mush - super spies who just want to make the world better vs. a coalition of villains whose motivation for terrorism is never even hinted at. Plus the most cliche amnesia story you've ever seen mixed in for good measure. Swerve indeed.

Yeah, it was pretty extensively reported when we brought in Salah that Klopp strongly favoured another player (I think it was Julian Brandt?) and had to be talked into Mo by Ian Graham and Edwards. To me it's massively concerning that after assembling the best recruitment team in the sport we have since dismantled it and replaced it with ... Klopp and Lijnders, I guess? It really says something that the nerds on laptops have all felt the need to leave recently as they seemingly don't have much influence on our transfer business.

Imagine the conversations in the Russian FSB offices before they planned that move. "Yevgeniy, I've got a brilliant idea!" "Do share." "We blow up our own pipeline, see? And then blame it on the West!" "To what end, Igor?" "Well, then maybe the Germans will suspect it was America or the Brits, and they will be upset that their prices for heating oil are going up as a result. And then they won't send Leopard tanks to help the Ukrainians!" "Sounds like a foolproof plan! The only thing we need to remember to do is to tell the Ministry of Propaganda not to keep saying on national television that we plan to take over Poland, the Baltics, eastern Germany and nuke Berlin!"

I was highly sceptical of Ukraine trying to hold out in Bakhmut, it seemed like they were about to be overrun a few months ago and lose a few thousand men, possibly even 10-20 thousand. Instead they somehow got Russia, which should have been fortifying and digging in against the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive to keep throwing their own men and equipment away in a battle for the 58th-largest city in Ukraine with no strategic significance. There is little doubt that it cost Ukraine dearly, but not nearly as dearly as it cost the Russians, which is why they dragged it out. Meanwhile they have up to 12 brigades of troops, rested and newly trained on Western equipment, ready to begin the counteroffensive. It is going to be fascinating to see if they can successfully roll through the Russian lines, but you wouldn't bet against them. So far Ukraine has exceeded expectation at almost every turn in this war, or perhaps it's better to say that Russia hasn't met expectations. Not that the war is going to be ended by this counteroffensive - I don't have any illusions that this war, in some form or other, won't continue until Putin is out of power. But it will be interesting to see exactly how much of their territory and people they can liberate, and how much it costs them to do it.

I mean, technically we went from a 7% chance before the weekend to a 10% chance now, so our odds are better, I guess? On the other hand, it's not like 10% means it's likely to happen, either.

I have put absolutely zero effort into investigating this, but let's just say that I am sceptical that science will make a world-changing breakthrough on energy and we hear about it on ... the Joe Rogan show?

If the main opposition guy in Russia had live-tweeted multiple crimes, we probably wouldn't care much.

I don't think 2 lbs/week of weightloss is very sustainable. At least it wouldn't be for me! I really admire the discipline of anyone who can burn 3000 calories/day while eating 2000, but it's simply unsustainable for most of us. And in my opinion, if it's not sustainable, then why bother? I know so many people who can lose 15 pounds when they put their minds to it for a few months, but then they gain it all back the second they stop. For me, the "click" moment was when a doctor told me to only try to lose 1 pound a week. I was 50 pounds over my goal weight, so it was frustrating to hear that I'd need a year to do it, but I worked out the exact number of calories I could eat (500 calories less than you burn, essentially, there are loads of calculators online) and have held fast to that for a couple of years now. It took quite a while to drop it off, but it did come off little by little and once I reached the goal (well, I actually ended up 10 pounds above my original goal, but close enough), I've stayed there. Exercise is essentially for health, not for weight loss. If you want to be healthy, you need to exercise. But if all you care about is weight loss, that's 99% just how much and what you eat. And drink, of course - probably half the battle for me was just recognising how many calories I was drinking, and immediately cutting that out and replacing it with diet drinks and water.

The thing I don't understand is why we binned off or marginalised the best recruitment department in all of football for ... this? Right as we need to go on a major buying spree, too. Give Edwards the reins and he's probably sold Salah (to much weeping and gnashing of teeth on here) last summer, a few others as well. Instead, we didn't listen to him, listened to someone else (Klopp? Lijnders? Who knows?) instead and now we're going to really struggle to get it right next summer. We obviously have one of the deepest and best forward lines in the league. I'd sell Salah - he's still got a lot of value and we have Jota/Nunez/Diaz/Gakpo/Firmino/Doak behind him. The place we're really going to need to spend is in midfield. We need probably one centre back and one forward (to replace Salah), but those can be young players 20-22 with potential. But we need a massive upgrade at midfield - Henderson, Keita, Milner, and Oxlade-Chamberlain should never see the pitch again for us after this season. Thiago, Bajcetic, Harvey, and Fabinho are all fine for depth but shouldn't really be starting next year if we want to be competing for trophies, for a variety of reasons. That means we really need 3 starting-calibre players in the centre of the park. At least 2, if we're really confident that Harvey and/or Bajcetic will continue to improve and we can squeeze one more really good year out of Thiago. But getting 2-3 players at the level of guaranteed starters for a CL-challenging club? That will cost a fortune. And the money we get from sales is not going to cut it.

Setting aside the (obviously massively important) issue that you're totally ignoring the desires of the Ukrainians and Taiwanese, this sounds sensible until you realise that you can't have peace that is only agreed to by one side. So it doesn't matter if the US/NATO/EU/whatever agree that the Ukraine should be neutral territory, as long as Russia doesn't agree then there will be a war there. Essentially Russia has guaranteed that there will be a war - the only question is, will they get what they want through that war or won't they. Same with Taiwan. It's fine for the West to say "Taiwan should be neutral and not weaponised." But as long as China doesn't agree, and they clearly don't, then you only have two choices left - either support Taiwan militarily or just let the Chinese take over. Because you can't just have one side agree to any potential peace agreement if the other side doesn't agree. They'll just keep on attacking whenever it's convenient for them.

I don't know why anyone engages with RP on stuff like this. He's either too thick to understand that he's on Putin's side on this or he's enjoying winding you all up and being contrarian just for the sake of it. I personally think it's the latter and that he doesn't believe a word he's saying. Therefore any time you engage with him, you're just giving him what he wants.