Meenzer

2-0 would have been funny but that's definitely even funnier

Fun update: The venture capital-funded AI techbro "disruptors" who took over my old employer 2½ years ago and ultimately made everyone redundant have since run into a cashflow dead-end (with the aforementioned AI translation software proving to be consistently unprofitable even without humans in the loop) and have just been forced to sell out to an even more predatory company, with their seed investors ending up with a net loss on their original investment. Doesn't make up for the damage they've caused to me and my former colleagues, but it's still a mildly delicious turn of events all the same.

FYP

Slovenia, the Walter the Softy of the ex-Yugos? They're more likely to take him on a healthy hill walk

And then 5.85, just to see if they accidentally go for it

I'm off to Bakewell for the weekend soon. Lucky escape.

Listen to her mate. Second half's a write-off anyway, go and have a much better rest of the evening by doing something else instead.

There's no way Salah gets a red for doing that against a Fulham or a Burnley, but that doesn't mean it's not a red because it probably is. Fuck's sake.

Yeah, it makes sense there'd be all kinds of language overlap in central Europe given the churn there over the centuries - Sorbs in Germany, Hungarian speakers in northern Serbia and all that - but somehow a German-speaking area of Italy feels particularly odd and I'm not sure why

Would certainly be an interesting interpretation of the False Nine

Definitely the middle Milton Keynes/Oxford variant, if only to keep your brain a bit more engaged (but also Fist's point about the M25). If you weren't travelling so early then I'd say drop in on Blenheim Palace en route, but then you won't be short of gorgeous old buildings in Bath. You'll even be too early for breakfast meatballs at Milton Keynes IKEA, which is, of course, a crying shame. I can't believe I'm recommending a bookshop to you of all people, but do go to Topping & Company when you're in central Bath, it's a glorious building in its own right and costs nowt to get into unlike most things there. Charlotte Street car park served us well on a recent visit (it's massive so rarely gets properly full unlike some of the others). And if the sun's shining, get an outside table at The Stable on Kingsmead Square, the pizza and beers/ciders are decent and it's a nice spot for people-watching. There ends the sermon.

This should be a hanging offence, tbf

Yeah well Alex Yee lapped me at a parkrun when he was 15, so that's you [checks notes] put firmly in your place, apparently

What a bunch of Steve McMarshall-Barneses

Hatewatch was a fine choice of thread title

Whereas I am watching it, and just when you think there can't be any more entrants for the "name that sounds ugliest in a Scouse accent" competition, they go and sign Kerkez

On the topic at hand, I thought I'd use my "more rudimentary than it should be considering my mam's from there" Swedish and take a look below the line on the main news sites' articles about the Isak situation. It's mostly people saying he's wrong to go on strike, a handful of entitled Liverpool fans saying the kind of things you'd expect, one lad saying Isak should go back to Nigeria (!) and another one insisting the journalist has made a crucial mistake with the pounds sterling to Swedish krona exchange rate. Standard stuff, basically.

Very similar situation with my lot - they're a little younger and in my mam's case it's a Parkinsons/dementia double-header, but otherwise the setup and timeframe are very familiar indeed. My dad recently managed to dislocate the artificial hip he'd only just had fitted in April after shattering the real one. He'd already done the other one the summer before last. Anyway, he's finally accepted that a few weeks of respite care for her would do him good while he's still hobbling around, so I was up there today with them looking at somewhere to make sure it's suitable, will be back again early next week to handhold the actual move, and so on and so forth. I'm grateful for being a bit closer than you are - it's part of the reason we moved here, still commutable to London when required but takes a good chunk out of the trip to Newcastle - but I nevertheless did not expect to be effectively doing a 3½-hour commute up the A1 on a regular basis. It's got to the point where I'm grateful to have discovered a quiet McDonalds with a decent suntrap of a garden just off the main road south of Doncaster, so battered goods on a bench by the riverside sounds positively idyllic by comparison. Definitely one for next week I reckon (now watch the heatwave come to an abrupt end...)

I quite like Leicester in occasional doses (but then my standards have probably shifted since living in Peterborough). There's a punchy underdog kind of vibe about the place that I appreciate, although I suspect it mightn't take much for things to get literally punchy. Decent grub too.

These had packaging with a COMPUTER-ADJACENT FONT so were automatically the cooler choice for us Vic-20 aficionados

I was going to ask if they're decent but I suppose you wouldn't keep going back if they weren't. With both of my parents gradually falling to bits, these days I'm up and down the A1 more often than [I can't think of a decent euphemism so I'll let someone else fill me in] and I could use a stop-off that's not just yet another M&S sandwich because the queue for Greggs at Wetherby services is out the door and half way round the car park again.

Blyme. Hello! Definitely the latter, anyway; this place is famously just too perpetual.

It's "rugby", isn't it?

I've never found one that I liked yet so if you do shell out for that one eventually, report back! Whereas AF "spirits" are definitely getting there - anything with a bit of bitterness in the flavour profile will always work well even without the booze tbh. Crodino has been my go-to drink for ages, and Martini Floreale and tonic is delightful as an aperitif.