Iskaral Pust

Michael Edwards is bringing back Julian Ward as technical director at FSG/Liverpool. So it does look like the DoF group all departed in that ~12 month period because of some clash with Klopp, presumably about power/influence over transfers since Slot will be a “coach” rather than “manager”. Hopefully it’s a long term benefit to have a strong DoF structure institutionalized. It’s certainly a return to the individuals who made our most successful signings. And it perhaps explains why the Nunez signing was panned in the media recently — not that I like anyone airing their grievance through media leaks; besides, the MF signings last summer were pretty good even if the approaches for Caicedo and Lavia were botched.

Fallout S1 was pretty good, even with no prior knowledge of the video game or IP. IMO it’s considerably better than a crowded genre by having lots of quirky humor, a sense of discovery rather than only and oppressive sense of control & conspiracy, a high tempo and progression, impressive investment in showing this world, plus a handful of primary characters who are individually interesting, have rational motivations & agency and have uncertain interactions with each other. Edit: my wife find it too gory so I had to watch solo

Great win for Landon in Miami. It’ll be really interesting to see if McLaren’s upgrades propel them forward like they did in the second half of last year. Piastri was doing well too until contact spoiled his race. A rare mistake for Verstappen, hitting that bollard and damaging the floor of his car. He’s not inevitable, just freakishly good. The late SC made for some exciting racing and dueling over the last 15 laps, although it effectively reduces the full race to the sprint format, which most think is an inferior format to begin with. The Miami track does not seem popular with the drivers because of the downforce conditions and tire wear on the track. I wonder if that means it’s more likely to produce random results, which could make it more popular with bored fans.

The Sorcerer And The Assassin by Stephen O’Shea is a novel of historical mystery fiction about Dominican Inquisitors persecuting and torturing Cathar heretics in the 13th century. Someone starts killing the torturing inquisitors, so an investigator is summoned, with some similarity to Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose. I don’t enjoy these visceral depictions of torture; it’s just unpleasant to read even if the novel is overall well written. Not the genre for me. The Silver Eagle by Ben Kane is the second in his series (Forgotten Legion) of historical fiction about a Roman Legion serving the Parthians in the far northeast corner of their empire following a defeat in battle — protecting a region on the Silk Road from incursions by steppe horsemen. This series is pretty good but develops very slowly as the author insists on relating the unfolding political crisis around Caesar a thousand miles away from the main characters in the legion in Parthia. I understand the desire of a historian to tell the bigger story of Roman history but it’s pretty unwieldy in the flow of the novel. Web Of Lies by Sally Rigby is a cosy-ish mystery novel and start of a new series (Detective Sebastian Clifford) as a DI from the Met retires and gets pulled into private investigation in a small town. There’s nothing revolutionary here but it’s a solid specimen of the genre. The protagonist is a slightly aloof, slightly superior upper middle class career detective, while his side-kick is an earthier, younger working class WPC. These oh-so-English class tones permeate the writing and characterization. It’s all a bit vanilla but fine for the genre.

All Involved by Ryan Gattis is literary fiction set amid the LA riots following the Rodney King beating and the trial of those police officers. It contains a series of stories about different Angelino characters through the week of rioting. It’s well written and well constructed, although the depictions of lower class urban life feel a bit overdone now. Worth a read. Steel, Blood And Fire by Alan Batchelder is a grimdark fantasy novel and the start of a series (Immortal Treachery). This felt like an unsuccessful attempt to clone Joe Abercrombie. I thought it borrowed too heavily from elsewhere without showing enough spark of its own, but someone jonesing for some grimdark may enjoy it more than I did. No Strangers Here by Carlene O’Connor is a cosy mystery fiction and the start of a series (Kerry Mystery). I found it too cosy and twee. The best I can say is that the prose has authentic Irish phrasing, dialogue and casual idioms if that’s appealing but I found the main character too whiny, self-pitying and self-involved, and the set-up of the various characters too on-the-nose. A generic cosy mystery.

Thanks. We have at least not been cutting the lawn too short all this time (it’s much longer than the lawn I managed at home growing up, although we were on amazing soil there), and I don’t see ragged tips on the grass stalks from blunt blades, but the landscapers have generally been ineffective in improving the lawn for four years so hopefully the specialists will do better. It’s not like I expect some artificially perfect carpet of lawn but it is galling to see garbage wild grass encroaching despite their supposed best efforts. And not cutting too short also makes the garbage wild grass more visible and spiky. I’ve used aeration because our house is of recent construction, which means the topsoil was all scraped and compacted just a few years ago. We have nice healthy, soft soil around the perimeter of our lot where I do most of my planting but the area generally circling the house has dense, inhospitable soil still, and was made worse just behind the house during the patio construction project two years ago (storing pavers, sand and aggregate; driving the excavator back and forth). That area of soil doesn’t drain well now in heavy rain and seems in need of some help. We do our over-seeding in the fall. I think that’s the right time for it. And we add lime in the spring to raise the PH. I think the missing piece has been a good application of pre-emergent herbicides for the weeds and wild grass, and some pesticides for the grubs in the root system. If we can just give the lawn grass an advantage over the weeds, then the over-seeding should help it dominate over time.

I’ve spent the past few weekends gardening, mostly fertilizing, aerating, weeding, etc. The new tulips planted last fall came up beautifully, as did the added daffodils. But the older daffodils only rebloomed at a rate of approx 50%. So I made sure to feed all the bulb flowers to help power them for a reappearance next spring. I’ll plant another 200 each of daffodils and tulips again this fall. The azaleas and rhododendrons and dogwood tree are all in full bloom right now and look great. Lots of bumblebees feasting, and even a few butterflies. The maples are in full leaf already, and the decorative Japanese maples added last year look very healthy. Although one of our existing young maples looks dead: it was getting too much water from the lawn sprinklers and drip line so we’ve removed the drip line and we’ll see if it can rebound next year. The new cherry tree blossomed well and seems healthy. The dozens of spruce and arborvitae are all thriving — with small birds dining on the proto-cone seed clusters on the spruce. The other flowering shrubs are in leaf now and look healthy, just not in bloom yet. we’ll see if the peonies put forth their first flowers this year (planted in fall of 2022). And the forest of oaks are just starting to leaf now; always a few weeks later than the maples and beech. We’re planning to add some new flower beds in the sunny front garden, although that’s outside of our deer fence so I’ll be locked in a battle of wills with the bastards again. They cropped five rhododendrons down to nubs over the winter even though they supposedly dislike those. And I still haven’t forgiven them for eating all of the lily blooms last summer. My only problem is that my lawn is still too full of patches of wild grass that are seeding aggressively. After four years in this house with the same landscaping crew it’s getting worse rather than better. So we’ve engaged a specialist lawn service to work on it instead: pests, weeds, over-seeding, aerating, etc. I hope that brings some improvement by next year.

That sounds hypocritical considering the major American professional sports leagues are all closed shops with no promotion, relegation or easy entry by new franchises — designed to be oligopolies that protect profits for incumbent owners. But “up to 12” being specified in the F1 Concorde gives the complainants some plausible basis, even if this is primarily a lobbying effort.

Crazy that Red Bull are falling apart like this. It’s hard to believe that a team enjoying this level of dominant success isn’t able to enjoy the peak. Usually in-fighting happens during the lean years.

Leinster, prioritizing the European Champions Cup over the URC, sent the kids to South Africa for the past two rounds of the URC and were duly well beaten in both matches. They did the same last year, which meant they were fresh for a comprehensive victory over Toulouse in the European semifinal, but then narrowly lost to LaRochelle in the final anyway for a second consecutive year, and saw the URC slip away too. They’ve already defeated LaRochelle this year, but still have to overcome Northampton and probably Toulouse.

Or Salah has made it clear that he’ll reject any transfer and sign a pre-contract with a foreign team in January. Any in-demand player entering the final year of their contract has the power.

Tokyo Vice S1 and S2 was pretty good. I just binged them over the past few weeks. I initially had low interest a year ago after watching the pilot — slow pace, lots of subtitles, awkward audience-inserts in the form of two unrelated American characters living and working in Tokyo with fluent Japanese — but was recommended to return to it by a friend after they finished S2 recently. It’s a Yakuza thriller: feuding gangsters in Tokyo abetted by corruption are opposed by crusading journalists and a few incorruptible police, all set in a culture that is stodgily centered around hierarchy, tradition and performing politeness/respect. Overall a good quality watch with well-drawn characters. I would guess the story is complete after two seasons. Rebel Moon 2 was ridiculously bad. It’s a tired retread of Seven Samurai in a Star Wars-ish setting, which sounds bad enough (did The Mandalorian’s spaghetti western in a Star Wars setting inspire this?), but the writing, direction and execution are so weak. It’s disappointing to think this is what we get for two big-budget space operas.

City and Arsenal are both in very strong form and winning comfortably (although, yes, they’ve both had a random blip in recent weeks). We’re arriving at that weird stage of the season: some teams are fighting for their lives, while others will be playing in flip-flops and imagining the beach. Also fatigue catches up with the teams who’ve been doing the Thursday-Sunday routine for EL and ECL games for the whole season, and there might be a team here or there who are deprioritizing the league now in favor of a cup.

The ‘boot room’ was a proto-DoF. It ensured a consistent style and approach across successive managers, allowed long term planning in player development and squad building, and avoided the chopping and changing in recruitment priorities that can produce a Frankenstein squad (like United’s). It wasn’t perfect but it was better than the typical approach of all-powerful individual managers and style fads. After the Souness debacle, the club tried to return to the ‘boot room’ with Roy Evans and Ronnie Moran. The biggest problem with the ‘boot room’ system was the absence of any counterbalance. Each manager was selecting and grooming their own successor, which risks blind spots and group think. If the club had any serious concerns about the outcomes — e.g. Hillsboro caused Dalgliesh to retire much earlier than planned and before he had rebuilt an aging team or groomed a successor, was Roy Evans ruthless enough or modern enough in his tactics, fitness, coaching, etc — then any intervention meant blowing up the system. It only worked so long as it was ensuring positive continuity, but wasn’t designed to deal with a need for change.

Generous of Liverpool to give their two oldest rivals the pleasure of finishing our season early. United and Everton may have been in the doldrums all season, but we’ve given them something to warm their hearts.