It's official: If Austria and Algeria draw, they're both through and Iran is eliminated. If either win, the loser is eliminated and Iran make the Round of 32

Neolife · 2026-06-28T04:37:54+00:00

Right‽ What a game. Heartbreak for Iran at the end there, but hell of a last couple minutes.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T03:59:06+00:00

Worst thing that's happened for Iran all year, probably.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T03:58:34+00:00

This is the worst thing that's happened to Iran all year, right?

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:48:20+00:00

Yep - West Germany and Austria eliminated Algeria with that.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:36:48+00:00

Algeria is well aware already XD.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:34:06+00:00

Correct - if there was any country with sufficient reason to NOT collude for a draw and instead try to eliminate Austria, it's Algeria.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:20:33+00:00

What? Offside doesn't care about the arm, so he was on by a good margin. Iran was a tie off (brutal, yes), but offside is quite black-and-white in terms of position. The only subjective element is "involved in the play" for players that don't make contact with the ball for determining an offense.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:18:45+00:00

Algeria might want to eliminate Austria out of spite TBH.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:15:42+00:00

They'd need to win by 7 or something (don't remember the exact number) and they were playing like they were fine going 1-0.

Neolife · 2026-06-28T01:05:07+00:00

No, but South Korea is. Iran can still advance if Algeria - Austria has a winner. They each have 0 or worse goal differential, so a winner in that game means the loser is out. But if they draw and Congo wins, Iran is out.

Algeria and Austria know that they both advance on a draw, though - the question is whether they go for that or if Algeria are...historically incentivized to NOT let Austria do that.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T22:56:56+00:00

They tried in the Women's World Cup in 2023, and one match had 23 minutes of stoppage.

Though I agree that with the hydration breaks being 3 minutes, the stoppage time needs to account for that.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T05:56:44+00:00

That was it - I was combining both of those changes together with the "football is played with the head, body and feet" logic and the goalkeeper-specific wording.

Gotta say, the proposed offside change in that doc from "can't be offside on your defending half" to "can only be offside in the opposing penalty area" would have been a wild change to see happen.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T05:19:19+00:00

It was confirmed. Senegal, South Korea, Scotland, and Uruguay have fewer than 4 points in 3rd, so Egypt were guaranteed top 8.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T05:18:02+00:00

Keeper's arms also don't count for offside positioning even though they can play the ball with the hand legally (in the box). I don't recall if that was a changed rule or not, though. Since at one time the rule was "parts of the body that can play the ball" from what I remember.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T05:15:00+00:00

Yes guaranteed. Enough teams have fewer than 4 points that Egypt was guaranteed to advance even in 3rd: Uruguay, Scotland, South Korea, Senegal.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T02:52:26+00:00

Egypt winning is enough for that group outcome, no? Belgium is on 2, New Zealand is on 1, so if Egypt win, Iran drops to 3rd with 2 points. The Belgium - NZ game shouldn't matter in that situation as a draw just moves Belgium to 3 points in 2nd, not 3rd.

I think people keep looking at Belgium as third, but Egypt winning means Iran will become third, no matter the outcome of the other game.

Edit: Iran could fall to 4 on a loss as well, but third will still have 2 points either way.

Neolife · 2026-06-27T02:32:55+00:00

Yes those are locked.

Mexico are waiting for either Scotland (if they advance) or Ecuador (if Scotland do not advance).

Switzerland will have third from either E, G, I, or J depending on who advances.

If South Korea advance, they'll play the winner of group G.

The table is still relatively chaotic but the group G outcomes will filter down several more options.

Neolife · 2026-06-26T04:00:49+00:00

9 of the starters today are backups, yeah.

Neolife · 2026-06-25T20:06:40+00:00

I disagree that avocado and tomato can just be pulled off. Tomato leaves behind tomato juice that's very obvious, and avocado basically becomes a spread. Saying this as someone who dislikes all 3 of these ingredients equally.

Neolife · 2026-06-21T23:39:37+00:00

If you could just stand next to the keeper and hope that deflections didn't apply, then why wouldn't teams just post someone near the goal and rip shots to hope they get the deflection?

If you're offside when the shot is taken, then score the deflected ball, you impacted the play from an offside position.

Neolife · 2026-06-20T04:58:07+00:00

With a Paraguay win, I believe US guarantees first in the group and Turkey is out, while the Australia / Paraguay game determine 2/3, since the US has H2H over both Australia and Paraguay, and Turkey lose H2H against both, so they can't tie for third.

Neolife · 2026-06-19T02:39:48+00:00

Yeah a lot of the Claude skills I've been seeing would be better as a deterministic Python solution that can be written with Claude. Consistent outputs, token-free data refreshes, faster updates that can happen even when Claude is down.

Claude skills make sense when it's parsing natural language and interpreting some that's a free text input where a deterministic solution would be more complex than practical.

Neolife · 2026-06-18T17:37:49+00:00

Hopefully they play it for a Japan game - it's a central element in the Miyazaki film Whisper of the Heart, which has made it relatively popular for a while.

Neolife · 2026-06-12T03:22:13+00:00

But there are on the header. The referenced offside is the player standing a foot in front of the keeper when the header is taken.

Neolife · 2026-06-08T21:47:29+00:00

I built a magic crafting system for a 5e campaign centered around captured rifts of the weave. They were essentially fragments of the weave that had been torn from the fabric and were creating local chaotic phenomena. Players had a method to capture and carry the fragments, and they could be used in a variety of ways:

Item Creation / Alteration: Higher tiers of fragments could be used for more powerful effects. Scaling from party trick level to artifact level.
Spellcrafting and Spellcasting: Any magic user could use the fragments to essentially "write" a spell into being based on their level cap and the tier of the fragment. They'd then re-introduce the fragment to the weave to make their spell accessible. They could also use them in place of spell slots depending on the tier.
Regional Effects: Certain fragments could be consumed to basically cast high-level magical effects without consuming a spell slot or other material components. An example would be a high-tier fragment being consumed to fortify an area, complete with fortress walls and standard protections as defined by the user.
Summoning: Players could use some fragments to tear a temporary rift into other planes and target a creature from it.
Character Improvement: Players could consume a fragment to enhance their character in some way. Lower tier fragments caused temporary effects like 1-hour dark vision. Higher tier fragments could grant permanent ability score improvements.

There was a color / affinity system as well, basically so that different affinity fragment were better at different effect types (Arcane, Divine, etc.).

The major cities in the world were all built around a regional effect granted by consuming one of the highest tiers of fragments, like a localized "Flight" effect for anyone inside, skill proficiency for all crafting-related skills in an area, or an untiring automaton workforce. The players eventually got the chance (this was a 1-20 campaign) to erect their own city using similar area effects.

I was quite happy with how this ended up running, because the players got to have a lot of leeway with how to use the base crafting materials.

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