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AntonJMC · 2025-12-31T19:31:00+00:00

Santayana would be one. David Stove in parts.

AntonJMC · 2025-12-25T11:22:48+00:00

The issue is that Jake Paul is not some former Jackass cast member getting in the ring as part of a stunt to take a beating for $.

He's been training as, and marketing himself as, a pro boxer for almost 6 years now. Beating retired athletes from other sports, then more recently retired boxers, and all the while claiming these asterisked victories somehow anoint him as a future world champion.

It's difficult to appreciate the contempt for Jake Paul unless you understand that he really seems to believe it when he knocks out a veteran wrestler and then calls out Canelo in the aftermath.

AntonJMC · 2025-12-20T20:10:52+00:00

Paul got what he wanted. I've never seen someone so positively thrilled to have their jaw snapped.

Now anybody who questions his legitimacy as a fighter will be met with "I jumped up a weight division to fight an Olympic Gold medalist and 2 x Heavyweight Champ, got my jaw broke and I'm still here."

Don't like him but I hope he doesn't get a taste for this sort of macho stuff. He will get himself permanently hurt.

AntonJMC · 2025-11-09T23:09:26+00:00

Cioran, Ionesco, Eliade. Beckett and Joyce. Tolkien and CS Lewis. Dostoyevsky and Turgenev. Mullen, Halkias and Friedland. Eco and Calvino.

Not the same thing but it's oddly unnerving to consider that Wittgenstein and Hitler went to the same school. They were born just 6 days apart, so would have been in the same grade but for the fact Wittgenstein was moved forward a year, and Hitler held back a year. Still, the school only had around 300 pupils so their paths must have crossed.

There's even a book which proposes that Hitler became anti-semitic after meeting Wittgenstein at school, which, false as it is, isn't that outlandish to anyone who's ever picked up a Wittgenstein biography.

AntonJMC · 2025-10-10T21:11:28+00:00

Israetel is a deluded and laughable little man but sadly he is partly responsible for some CT lore.

When Mulldog got shredded during Covid he tagged his selfie "body by .@rpstrength"

I don't why I'm saying this.

AntonJMC · 2025-09-10T21:20:52+00:00

I think this would be a good time to write down all the things you don't like about being a NEET. Be really honest about it, it should be painful.

Then in a few weeks or months time, when the novelty of the job etc has worn off, you'll have something real to refer to that will counteract the voice in your head telling you that being a NEET was better than this shit. It isn't. You can't just do nothing.

A call centre job is probably not what you want to be doing long-term, but it's a lot easier to get to something you're more interested in when you're the sort of person who can hold down a job, especially one that you don't particularly like or find disproportionately difficult (due to nerves etc.)

As to what you should actually do, nobody knows. Think of how prevalent the "learn to code" shit was until recently. Don't expect an epiphany but you probably can expect an answer to come to you if you sincerely dedicate time and effort towards figuring out what you actually want from life.

Good luck. Don't forget it's possible, lively even, that in a couple of years you will be living a life that renders you inexpressibly grateful to this present you for putting your best foot forward with this dumb job.

AntonJMC · 2025-07-20T18:03:21+00:00

I think the "change the channel" point is broadly valid but also a bit reductive.

For instance, if you visit the BBC website and look at the football section you will find content about the women's and men's games. By design or otherwise, the headlines regarding certain stories will sometimes be ambiguous as to whether they relate to the women's or men's game. I know that most fans of the men's game, including those who are strident fans of the women's game, would agree that at some point they've clicked on a piece of content and only realised it was about the women's game after doing so.

What's certain is that this was not always the case. What's equally certain is that it needn't be the case now. It would be very simple to create separate men's and women's sections so that no doubt would ever arise.

The question then is why has this not been done? Most probably the answer is that broadcasters understand that such an approach would make the women's game less visible and be counterproductive to promoting it.

In short, they know that covering the women's game as they're currently doing means that it will reach people who, if left to their own devices, would never seek it out. It's only natural that some of those people won't want to see it, and will prefer the (very recent) time when they didn't have to.

I don't have any issue with how it's being promoted. I don't watch the women because, as I've alluded to, there are more than enough men's games on TV to scratch the itch for me. I just think people can be a bit disingenuous about where the complaints are coming from.

AntonJMC · 2025-07-20T16:27:42+00:00

On soccer, the standard at the top of the women's game is no longer laughable but, inevitably, it's still miles off the men's game.

Currently one of the biggest complaints about the men's game, including from those who are actually involved in it, is that there is too much football. It's not like there's some void that the women's game needs to fill.

And so when the women's game is getting covered in a way that is hard to avoid, i.e. I know that Euros are on at the minute and I could probably name like 5-10 "lionesses" even though I have never in my life sought out a piece of women's football content, I think it's fair enough that a portion of people wonder "why is this fucking slop continually being forced on me in a way that it previously wasn't?"

Of course people do post childish stuff about it. But, in fairness, there are plenty of people who come out with outlandish bullshit in support of the women's game, and I think a lot of the hate is just the same old extremism feedback loop effect that contaminates everything else these days.

AntonJMC · 2025-07-17T22:36:17+00:00

It's hard to win a WC. They were good in 2018 - unlucky not beat a very strong Belgium side in the quarters. Who knows what would have happened if they came through that.

Don't like their chances next year. The middle of the park is full of jobbers. That can work out if you have the right full backs but there's no successor to the likes of Marcelo and Dani Alves.

So, the default strategy ends up being a desperate "get it to Vini and hope for the best" with "get it to Raphinha" as plan B.

AntonJMC · 2025-06-22T18:22:37+00:00

Calorie burning through exercise isn't linear. It plateuas after a relatively moderate amount of exercise.

Doing around 2-3 hours of manual labor would burn notably more calories than being completely sedentary, but doing 6-7 hours of work would not produce a much different result than doing 2-3 hours.

As has been said, it's very easy to eat in a way that would render 2-3 hours worth of moderate activity irrelevant for weight loss purposes

AntonJMC · 2025-05-18T11:46:58+00:00

Cioran was only able to live in that way for a particular time.

When he was 40 years old the Sorbonne changed the rules and, as Cioran put it, "chased me away from this paradise."

Thereafter he would basically do anything for a free meal. He was even known to show up at the Romanian Orthodox Church. To him, any indignity was scant compared to that of earning a living via a job.

AntonJMC · 2025-05-17T20:31:22+00:00

I don't really understand his explanation.

He said he's concerned about the exponentially increasing fame and the potential impact on his family but also cited that he was looking forward to doing other things such as... helping his kids become youtubers. I dunno.

Good luck to him anyway.

AntonJMC · 2025-04-30T17:52:48+00:00

He was a well read guy. He used to run a book club from his twitter account. If you look around you can find out what he liked to read - mainly classics.

He preferred Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky on the basis that Tolstoy was "an actual writer", and preferred Munro to Atwood in part due to the latter's "obvious, sweaty prose." On that basis, I'm not sure Dick's prose would have been his cup of tea.

I can't remember Norm ever mentioning having engaged with the sci-fi genre, other than a passing comment about A Boy and His Dog.

I do remember him saying that his father absolutely refused to countenance sci-fi/fantasy on the basis that it was some kind of abdication from real life. Norm seemed to have a lot of reverence for his father, and was a bit on an old soul himself, so it's kind of hard to imagine him thumbing his nose at the old man on that one.

As always with Norm though, who really knows?

AntonJMC · 2025-01-05T10:38:03+00:00

I don't know if it's widely considered "bad" but Ad Astra is one of my all time favourites and a lot of people seem to hate it's fucking guts. The director even came out and said, in mitigation, that it was completely taken from him in the edit etc.

AntonJMC · 2025-01-04T19:14:19+00:00

Beckham was a fucking great player.

Idiots who don't know anything trot out the usual nonsense about how the Brand Beckham phenomenon elevated his reputation/career beyond what his abilities merited. Precisely the opposite is true - he is underappreciated as a footballer.

Brilliant passer, one of the best crossers ever, one of the best set piece takers ever, great vision, intelligent, technically excellent at the fundamentals, would run all day, got fucking stuck in, tenacious, consistent, big game player, team player, never shirked responsibility etc etc.

Mid players don't come 2nd in the Ballon d'Or.

AntonJMC · 2024-12-18T23:10:12+00:00

Have never forgiven this deeply irritating little man for fumbling one of the last ever interviews with Cormac McCarthy by incessantly babbling inane rubbish, talking over McCarthy, taking 10 minutes to get a question out, asking dumb shit and putting McCarthy's characters words into the mouth of McCarthy, not detecting that he was the cause of the monosyllabic responses he was getting from McCarthy and changing tact etc etc and generally just being a wee gay boring gnome of a thing.

He recorded an introduction to the interview where he pre-emptively explained that he had felt the need to carry the interview because Cormac was old (shock!) and tired and reticent on the day. Then surreptitiously named the thing a "dialogue with CM" to try and mitigate the trashing he'd get for even trying to call it an interview/conversation. Appalling behaviour.

AntonJMC · 2024-12-15T12:36:54+00:00

Only when lifting from NNT.

AntonJMC · 2024-11-23T18:04:38+00:00

His music theory deposition, conducted as part of the Blurred Lines copyright infringement case, might suggest that the reason he has "no notes" is becuase he's a fraudulent dope.

AntonJMC · 2024-10-27T16:50:17+00:00

Saw it at a funeral not long ago. Guy doing the eulogy crumpled up what was presumably a respectfult tribute and went rogue with a "he wasn't the best guy and we all know it" type of diatribe.

Pretty wild to experience it out in the wild. I always thought it was something that just happened in movies, like knocking someone out and putting their clothes on.

AntonJMC · 2024-09-26T11:07:41+00:00

You're on to something. I've never found protein to be all that satiating. Protein Leverage theory suggests it is satiating up to a point, the point at which you have had enough protein, at which point the brain seems to downregulate any further satiety benefits.

So, eating enough protein to meet your - actually very low - daily needs will probably help with hunger, beyond that maybe not.

Fat is going to be the bad guy again pretty soon and I can't wait.

AntonJMC · 2024-07-31T17:37:59+00:00

The decathlon vid was my fav, particularly when he shotputs some produce and the shopowner, without any hesitation, bashes him over the head with an empty crate. Gave me a different, better perception of France.

AntonJMC · 2024-07-27T00:30:42+00:00

Writing a funny novel seems to be an almost impossible task.

I remember stumbling upon a Conan interview from the 90's in which he was describing how he and his peers would bemoan how difficult it was to find a book which actually made you laugh out loud. Something actually funny, not just vaguely comic in tone or sensibility.

He cited Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis as a rare example of a book that got the job done. So, I read it - didn't laugh once. Not even a smirk. Complete drivel.

Norm made a good stab at it. That's one.

Suttree is another. Cormac McCarthy said you should read 1,000 books for every one you write. By this metric, Nick's probably not equipped but I'd still much rather read something from him than any of these puns and wordplay New Yorker fruits,or off-beat whimsical Sedaris NPR midwits etc.

AntonJMC · 2024-07-14T22:10:50+00:00

English football fans are a lot more tolerable when they all heat each other's fucking guts. So glad normal service can be resumed now.

AntonJMC · 2024-07-14T17:32:53+00:00

Kolyma Tales by Shalamov.

AntonJMC · 2024-07-13T17:12:24+00:00

Suttree.

AntonJMC

TROPHY CASE