Category: annoying people

All for nothing?

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No matter who wins this afternoon’s little matchup in North London, it’s going to be a massive struggle for them to stay in the Premier League next season. The last six clubs promoted to the top flight have come straight back down, and between them, scored a record number of points. And not a record number in a good way.

Why is this? Well, the gulf between the two leagues has always been opening up, but it seems that soon after Covid, it widened into a chasm of epic proportions. And if you were in there when this happened, you now seem to have some sort of protection against relegation.

So suddenly, you have the likes of Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford and Brighton battling it out for European places. And no offence to those clubs, but they’re not exactly historically the biggest teams. But they were in the mix when it counted and now they are the new biggest teams.

Of course, 95% of it comes down to money. Plucky performances and passionate support can only do so much. And how on earth are Championship cubs meant to compete when there’s this level of financial disparity?

When you don’t have European football, and when you don’t have an assured place in the Premier League, you simply can’t attract big players. And the double whammy is that the opposition can.
And thanks to English teams performing way above the average in the European competitions this year, there could be as many as 10 of the 17 existing teams in the Premier League playing in Europe next year. Six of them will be in the top tier on the chart below, another four in that second tier.

There’s a lot of money splashing around for the other clubs when you aren’t in those top two bands.

Spurs and ManU might have had absolutely awful seasons this time around, but they were still miles clear of the relegation places. There’s just no competition anymore when it comes to going down. And while that might be a very comfortable position for the established clubs, it will slowly(?) kill the league.

Of course, I hope we go up this afternoon. We have played brilliantly all season and we deserve to celebrate with something to show for it. But at the back of my mind (and those of dirty l**ds and Burnley fans, if they’re being honest), is the tinge of realism that next season will be a hard watch.

Still… let’s deal with that if and when we have to.
COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZZZZZAAAAARDS!

EDIT: OK, a few days later now and that didn’t go well.
But I have just spotted this:

Which does kind of prove the point.

Not worried

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We should all be worried about just how much the internet and the things on the internet know about us.

Or should we?

No. Just relax, because the internet and the things on the internet clearly know next to nothing about us. Here are a few adverts and things that I was presented with just yesterday. Honestly, why are these companies wasting my time and their money by showing me stuff like… well… this?

Yeah. I’m the world biggest Manchester United fan. I never stop talking about them and my love for all things Old Traffordesque. Of course I’ll head out to a ManU bar to watch them play.
What an absolute waste of pixels.

Oh, and in answer to the question at the bottom there: no. lol.

Then there was this. No need.

I’m literally incredulous at this point. I have never shopped at Temu, I have never weighed 160kg (or even close, thank you very much), high waist really doesn’t complement my shape, and I clearly don’t understand the meaning of the word “elegant”.

I have so many questions.
What are they thinking? Is this a novelty item? Why would I be interested? And – although I really don’t want to ask this one – what actually is the fabric on the arse bit of these thundergrunties? It looks like the industrial-strength plastic they use to waterproof heavy loads on long-distance trucks.

Oh. Oh. Maybe it is. Right. [grimace]

Let’s move on: Garmin. GARMIN! Who (should) know EVERYTHING about me (including that I am nowhere near 160kg) given the data I supply them with. Garmin decides to show me this:

Wut? Are you absolutely nuts? Given that I don’t cycle and I don’t swim, this really is a stretch. For some reason, Garmin thinks that I might want to increase my average run distance by [several], then take up those two other activities and do them as well. I don’t like water or wheels.
Truth be told, I’m not even that keen on running.

Maybe Garmin is trying to kill me because I didn’t sign up for their $6 a month, AI-powered, kak package.

But hey, all of this has put my mind at rest.
Clearly, we think that Big Brother knows an awful lot more about us than it actually does.

It/He/The Collective know nothing.

Opponents and internet hypocrisy

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So, thanks to a 120+2 winning goal, it’s Sunderland that get through to face United in the Playoff Final next Saturday. Got to love that last minute winning feeling. As the “Football Away Days” FB page shared:

And it is a great photo, depicting a great moment. I’ve spotted at least two phones, but let’s not let that detract from the image and the impressive description.

No, let’s allow… er… the “Football Away Days” FB page to do that for themselves, by suggesting that the last minute winning goal (see above) should never have been allowed to happen:

Extra points for using an image taken a whole 2 seconds before the one at the top of this post.

Got to keep all the fans happy? Easy!
Simply use the narrative that Sunderland fans are amazing, and that Coventry City were cleared robbed. Just don’t do it in the same post. Separate them by at least a couple of minutes.

Well done. I’m sure that no-one has noticed.

Aaaand we’re back!

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Yesterday’s internet issue lasted well into today, but the announcement of a restoration of service came alongside a complete explanation of what had gone wrong, and a full apology.

Lol. Did it bollocks. Stuff just finally started working again at about 2 this afternoon, and we haven’t heard a peep from our ISP.

[sarcasm]Amazing.[/sarcasm]

Thankfully, and I am saying that with a very calm voice because this is now in the past, we could use the satellite TV to watch United’s playoff semi-final. And so we did.

And that was genuinely amazing.

A new record aggregate score for the Championship playoff semis, and a place at Wembley next Saturday.

They’ve been brilliant. They’ve blown Bristol City away.

Again. No chicken counting. But this does just feel better than our previous [checks notes] nine failed attempts in the playoff system.

America continues to America

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Great news this week. The group Veterans on Patrol, which the Southern Poverty Law Center defines as “an anti-government militia organization” are out to destroy the Doppler radars used to detect and track tornadoes and other weather phenomena, all across America.

You might not think that you know what a Doppler radar looks like, but you’ll probably have seen one. They’re basically the big balls that you might find on a tower near an airport or on the top of a hill like Constantiaberg.

There it is on the left. And on the right is the mast that no-one really knows the height of.

But I digress. Often.

No-one – as far as I am aware – is going after our local ball, though. But in the US, there’s a concerted campaign by the VoP group to destroy all of these facilities to prevent them from being used as “weather weapons”.

“This group is advocating for anyone and everyone to join them in conducting penetration drills on NEXRAD sites to identify weaknesses which can be used to ultimately destroy the sites,” the email stated, using an acronym for the weather radar network. The group referred to the NEXRAD system towers as ‘weather weapons,’ and claimed there were no laws preventing American citizens from destroying the ‘weapons’”.

Much to the bemusement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But, of course, there’s a serious side to this:

The NEXRAD, or “next generation radar,” network has been in place since the 1990s and detects precipitation in the atmosphere. It can also help pinpoint tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, prompting timely, life-saving warnings. 

This comes just ahead of the (May and June) tornado season, and at a time when – thanks to the Orange Shitgibbon and his Loud Mouth Space Wanker – there are fewer than ever engineers and staff at the National Weather Service to repair any damage that does get done.

And then when people die because there are no tornado warnings because the Doppler radars have been destroyed by right-wing loonies, and there’s no-one left at the NWS to repair them, it’ll all be Joe Biden’s fault.

Obviously.