Maximus Decimus

It was weird and I'm not sure they were ready for it. Why show adverts for Channel 9 programming? One of the adverts used the word 'pr*ck' and sky hastily added an apology for inappropriate language.

My first impression of origin..... ....Warnie looks like it's going to be absolutely rubbish.

I can't believe how we've basically got through a season without an attack.

I still have nightmares about him. I once greatly offended him by saying that the NRL in Australia was nowhere near as big as Premier League football is in the UK (when it used to be a common thing said about Aussie RL over here). I have only knowingly met one person from here who isn't an already known Widnes fan, the great Jill Halfpenny Fan who gave me a couple of old Aussie RL jerseys many years ago. I wore one last Halloween when I went as a 1980s RL player mullet and all.

I feel I can now say that it has to be one of the poorest Everton sides of my life. I've been convinced we were going down all year. When all is said and done, I think it can't be underestimated how important that 5-1 win at Brighton was. Not only was it more than 1/7th of our total goal tally, it changed the whole narrative around who was likely to go down and piled the pressure on Leeds and Leicester.

Anyone watch Succession? The finale was last night and I'm a little gutted it's over.

Watched Okolie lose his belt to Billam-Smith last night, and boy what a frustrating fight. Okolie looked to be channeling his inner Henry Akinwande. He got 2 points taken off for holding, and he suffered 3 knockdowns (of which only 1 was properly legit) yet somehow one referee had it 112-112! Fair play to Okolie, he took it really well and wasn't bitter. I presumed he'd be fuming about the referee.

My big fear with cases like this is that the improvement in technology could end up significantly stifling creativity. As I stated earlier, when you come up with a melody or a chord sequence, not only is it impossible to know if you've subconsciously heard it before, but you can't know if it's been done before. How long before we have technology that can instantly tell you if that melody or sequence already exists, however obscure, and therefore nips it in the bud before it's even started? Imagine Paul McCartney wakes up with a tune in his head, plays it for an AI machine that tells him it's the same as a melody that reached number 22 in Belgium in 1957. One of the most well-known (yet one of my least favourite) Beatles songs is simply not pursued for fear of being branded a copy.

Yeh I think the dream of a spring league is something that has just failed so often that it's hard to imagine it ever working. I think culturally it just doesn't fit for a lot of Americans, they have a sporting calendar where different sports peak at different times. Football dominates autumn and winter. The standard probably isn't bad and pretty much indistinguishable from NFL to the vast majority, but the knowledge that it is a B league will always affect perception. IIRC the XFL was doing quite well before Covid struck. It was new so very tentative but I think they'd got some OK crowds. I don't think their return has been as successful.

Another good fight last night. Haney vs Loma which Haney won with a unanimous decision. It was the usual controversial boxing decision, but aside from the 116-112 both judges had it 115-113 which certainly wasn't ridiculous. It felt very close throughout the bulk of fight, but after the 11th, where Loma looked like he could take him out, it seemed like Loma would win. However, rather than building on it in the 12th he lost that round comfortably. I personally felt like Loma won, but could understand how someone could get to a 114-114 or even 115-113. The fact that it was unanimous doesn't feel right IMO, I don't see three separate people all scoring it for Haney. I do think that there are problems with scoring in boxing. Without actually scoring it, it felt like the best moments were all Loma and that this isn't accounted for enough.

It didn't sound great live, too much falsetto.

Just putting this out there... I'm also going to put it out there that my first reaction to the British one was 'what a load of s***e' it did grow on me somewhat but most people would have been voting having heard it just the once.

They actually take bets on professional wrestling now... you'd have to be insane to bet on something like that. With Eurovision, there is still the element of public vote at least. I'm OK with the way they choose the winner as I think it's a good balance, but I won't be surprised if they go to full public voting but announced by individual countries in future. My problem with this is that I think it would benefit novelty acts and result in countries winning for reasons other than having the best song much more common. Conchita Wurst was lucky because the song was a genuine belter, but with a purely public vote they could still win even if the song was one of the worst because of what they stood for. If you take Ukraine out of it last year, who clearly won because of extreme circumstances, the winner of the televote was a very similar style song to the Finland one this year - upbeat, fast, a bit silly and quirky.

Tbf it was a song that didn't seem suited to performing live in a large arena. Too much quiet falsetto.

I know what you mean about the Aussie one. My favourites are Sweden, Lithuania and Israel.

I think there was a bit of disappointment around with how the UK one sounded live. Hopefully, she performs better the next two nights. My sisters are off to the show tonight (not jealous at all) so I'll be able to report back on how well it sounds.

Sounds like a classic example of where social media complicates things. It's easy to say stuff like that when you're in a bubble of likeminded people who will pat you on the back. It suddenly becomes a problem when the world can look at your past opinions and you suddenly need the support of the people you were slagging off. Will it make her a hypocrite when she's sat there waving flags and all that? Yes but not probably more than anyone else. I'm quite proud to be British, as I see it as entirely different from supporting the government, the royal family or football hooligans. Did I say anti-British stuff when I was younger? Almost certainly.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned Ireland's effort. A decent song but an odd performance where the main singer looked all over the place. I'm not sure if he was nervous or his voice had gone but he kept pulling away from the mike. He looked like a kid playing what he thinks a rockstar should be. That's without even mentioning the rather serious case of moose knuckle .

The best line in this is the one saying there are only 12 notes so we should be amazed we've got this far!

Funny the missus was watching the Ed Sheeran thing last night and he was showing a song he'd written to his wife, and I said he should sue himself. I personally hate these things. As someone who has written songs, it's impossible to know who you've been influenced by. The process of coming up with a melody or a chord structure is one where you can never know if it's been used before. It's like being sued for writing a wedding speech and it being too similar to somebody else's, when there are only so many ways of saying the same thing. Songs are similar, there are only a finite number of tunes.

He always looked the more likely. Garcia was getting back into it a bit, but you always felt like Davis was able to take his shots easy enough and at some point was going to catch him clean. I must say DAZN works well for me over here. No more having to record it. Just wake up and log onto my phone a bit like Netflix.

Zhang is really quite quick and clearly has power. He could be a problem for anyone I reckon. Wilder would be able to catch him easy enough, but other fighters would find it hard. The time before I saw him, he gassed out and it was one of the worst type HW fights where they're out of shape and leaning on each other. Apparently his kidney failed or something.

For me, there are a number of sports that have a fundamental flaw I find it hard to get over. For instance with Union, even when I've tried and when I watched the internationals as a younger lad, the overreliance on penalty goals is very hard to get over. Winning two kick able penalties (which happens a lot) shouldn't be worth more than scoring a try. In RL, a penalty is only really a bonus, not a fundamental aspect of points building like in Union. With AFL, even when I enjoyed the game I went, I find it hard to get over how unimpressive a goal is even at its best. A lot of the time, a goal is like a mere formality. In RL, a lot of tries are unimpressive but there are many that are.

Non-reporting is slightly different, as I'm sure they have to give it to the taxman. With clearly falsifying numbers or at least making them look better (by including all ST holders for instance regardless of attending) wouldn't it cost quite a lot if you did it a lot? I might be 100% wrong, maybe they have to do nothing of the sort, and I've got the wrong end of the stick. After all, wouldn't it constitute fraud if they were caught openly lying? I'm sure those figures are used for sponsorships etc. I suspect that whether they need to be legally declared or not, that they include all sorts of things like ST holders and free tickets given out but not taken up. After all, with the quality of camera phones now it only takes someone with far too much time on their hands to actually count the number...

Wow Joyce got totally dominated by Zhang. I remember seeing Zhang a few years ago and thinking he was totally rubbish but he looked really good last night. Joyce was exposed as usual but wasn't able to grind his opponent down. I do think without the eye he was starting to get to Zhang by his sheer constant pressure. A lot has been made that Joyce was ahead on the cards and it does seem ridiculous and home-town judges. However, it comes down to the old pressure vs effective shots argument. In the last 4 rounds, Joyce had started to outland Zhang. Personally though, I much prefer giving the round to the boxer who gets the cleaner, more effective shots off. In some of those rounds, Joyce didn't catch him properly once, whereas Zhang rocked his head right back.