“Immortality influencer” is such a good phrase btw

After the Ireland match in Budapest the other night I ended up in an Irish bar full of England-based Ireland fans. Many of them were retirement age, born in England with Irish parents, and so proud of both their Irishness and their identity as Brummies and Londoners or whatever. That’s cool!

Anyway, blessed to have been there for both games, including my first ever Ireland away trip. Went with my pal who I’ve gone to home games with for over a decade, which was special. Our third pal couldn’t make it but video called us crying at full time. Being Irish is yet again very good

Here Are The Young MEN, of course

There was the lad who owned four different pairs of jeans. Everyone called him Spider

Similar to Gladwell for me were Soccernomics and the book that inspired it, Freakonomics. As a curious teenager, having an accessible book that basically says “this is something most people believe, but does the evidence support it?” was really powerful.

And the most embarassing one: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I read it as a teenager and it completely rewired my brain to think “sociologically”. It was only after I went to college and actually studied Sociology that I realised what a charlatan he was.

Terry Pratchett, of course. I think my first was one of the more recent and less acclaimed ones, like Thud or something. But I was hooked and then went back and devoured them all. That was the first time I felt that an author became part of my identity.

I don’t think I have a moral or principled stance against Twitter, but I did just get completely sick of seeing Nazi shit all the time and getting abused by Nazis. Just not a very pleasant user experience IMO

Like, we are so starved of experimentation and originality in the charts. How lucky we are to have Rosalia, as we were lucky to have Bjork for decades