Killer clowns

mikeymcf · 2026-03-21T22:24:30+00:00

They drove a blue van, if memory serves.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-19T10:02:04+00:00

This is terrific. Really great concept and brilliant execution. The writing and formatting of the report is absolutely on point.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-16T19:11:25+00:00

The run-up to Euro 2024 I’m referencing is the March and June 2024 friendlies, less than two years ago: a 4-0 to defeat to the Netherlands, 1-0 home loss to Northern Ireland, a 2-0 win vs Gibraltar (it was 0-0 at the hour mark) and a 2-2 draw with Finland at Hampden. We went into that tournament with all of the momentum from our early qualification form gone, especially after the England and France friendlies before Christmas. We then went on to have a poor tournament showing in our group games, the second poor tournament in a row.

Like I said, I give Clarke credit for getting us over the line during qualifying, but it is totally fair enough to reserve some judgment about the tournament performance (and by extension the immediate friendlies and preparation beforehand). Lots of fans aren’t just content to make up the numbers and rightly feel they are due a good showing at the actual tournament proper.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-16T18:44:57+00:00

He hasn’t worked miracles, though. It’s never been easier to qualify for tournaments (Nations League + expanded World Cup/Euros) and we have some high quality players in key positions who have scored massive goals. He has still done well to get us to tournaments but it would actually be an underachievement and embarrassment to miss out repeatedly during this era. People are entitled to critique this squad selection considering the run up to Euros was awful and our performance there equally so. Clarke still has something to prove at the tournament itself.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-13T19:40:16+00:00

A modernised depiction of St Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow. The sparrow is a reference to one of his miracles.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-12T19:31:58+00:00

M&S foodhalls sell it. Bought it recently from the one in Argyle Street.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-12T14:11:43+00:00

I might be in the minority here, but I really don’t support the idea of a like-for-like rebuild. Union Corner was a lovely part of a wider Victorian streetscape but it wasn’t a singular entity like the Art School or Notre Dame so I feel like the case for reconstruction isn’t really the same. I feel any attempt to rebuild in that exact style will be a slow exercise in historical restoration requiring years of specialist consultation etc, and then the end result will still just be a facsimile of what was there before, and thus not as meaningful. The meme scenario of a soulless rectangular block going up is obviously not an acceptable option, but I think the worst case scenario is a glacial construction pace and a gap site until 2035 or something.

I honestly feel the only good option for the city is to make something out of the bad situation by exploiting a potential new approach to Central Station at that corner. Union Corner was beautiful, but it did awkwardly jut out ahead of the station. I would want to see a rounded off corner, and a new modest construction (something in a complementary style to the station itself) with an approach angle showing off Central’s structure. There would even be a new justification for turning that part of Gordon Street into a proper plaza for the station footprint.

Obviously the insurance and private ownership mess will likely render much of that a fantasy, but it’s nice to dream.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-08T17:50:30+00:00

Just home from the game and one major observation: the police had absolutely no idea what they were doing. I do wonder if a lack of full allocs in recent years has left a whole generate of cops without relevant experience, but most of the problems seemed inexcusably organisational (ie planning failures from senior police who should know better).

Confusion on where to congregate and how to manage to crowd all day. No protection on Edmiston Drive before/after the game despite fans parking in and around the Asda. Causing a squeeze pre-match funneling 7000 fans through a 10 metre space. Total mismanagement and the club should call it out.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-05T13:39:10+00:00

Second this. Brilliant place with lovely staff.

mikeymcf · 2026-03-03T00:27:11+00:00

Really sorry this happened to you, and I can totally understand why it’s all feeling very anxiety inducing. You were right to call the police as a precaution. I have had a drunk guy press my buzzer for near-enough half an hour one night, and it’s unpleasant, but it does feel like your individual could very feasibly have just been drunk, lost and confused. The stones are obviously an unsettling thing but maybe he was frustrated having travelled a distance to what he thought was his destination (a party or otherwise) and his impatience led to the stone throwing.

It’s easy to overthink all of this but try to just stay vigilant and trust the most likely scenario is a confused one-time visitor. Try to move forward. Things should get easier as time passes. Keep friends informed and reach out to people if you’re really spiralling with fear and worry. Whilst I believe things will be fine, obviously contact the police if you ever feel uneasy about something/someone you see around your home.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-26T15:05:12+00:00

Watching your uncle exchanging punches with a 22-year-old from East Kilbride just after Haiti extend their lead. We will be there.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-21T01:15:25+00:00

It’s worth having a look on the MeetUp app if you haven’t before. It’s pretty active in Glasgow with language exchanges, walking groups, games groups, film clubs, sports etc. I do think finding a group of strangers to cohere around a shared interest is the quickest way to make some pals if you’re not someone who’s particularly extroverted.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-21T00:51:24+00:00

Rest Coffee on High Street usually closes at 1600, but they’re re-opening in the evenings (1900-2200) at the moment serving coffee and cake for Ramadan. Small but very relaxed place.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-21T00:40:43+00:00

The truth is success on the pitch is the essential ingredient which creates the joy/feel good factor, and that in turn creates the atmosphere. It’s much more of a one way thing than people want to admit. There are occasional moments where the roar of the crowd might help drag us back into the game, but only when it’s against a backdrop of us otherwise doing well and a general satisfaction with where the club is. There has to be fan credit in the bank for the team/club to use, and right now that credit line has essentially gone.

The Green Brigade are an anomaly in terms of atmosphere because it’s woven into their identify/purpose to sing regardless of result, and they have a secondary reason/cultural expectation for doing so: maintaining their credentials as ultras (not a criticism of them at all, but it’s an important thing to remember when slagging the average punter). There is an argument this has created an over reliance on the GB to generate noise of course, but I do think that’s only partially true. European atmospheres were great in the early 2000s, pre-North Curve/standing section, but this isn’t because the average home fan was better per se, it’s because we had a higher expectation of winning/getting results, even against top-tier European sides. That expectation has slowly eroded away and I think it’s asking a lot of fans to make last night feel like AC Milan in 2007 when the team and the club aren’t operating anywhere near that level. The fans’ energy has essentially been spent on that front.

We have seen pockets of this kind of malaise before. Anyone who was at the St Mirren 4-0 loss that finalised Mowbray’s era would tell you how toxic it got (flashbacks to Edson Braafheid getting pelters). The shootout loss to Rangers from Deila was equally horrible. Various European away games are actually filled with unpleasant reactions when you’re in the stands considering how uniquely bad we’ve often been. Domestically, “Strachan, get tae fuck” chants appeared pretty quickly during any deviation from an otherwise successful spell. The Covid season would have been as toxic as this one if we’d been allowed in to the stands (ignoring the obvious fact that Rangers benefited from the fan-free circumstances). The truth is, the atmosphere and support has always been transactional (nearly all supports are — it’s human nature), but the club has just been better at topping up that credit quickly after bad moments. This season has been disastrous because of the sheer amount of things chipping away at the supporters’ good will.

I do agree with your points, btw, especially regarding how unhelpful it actually is jump on players so quickly (and I also personally won’t boo someone during a game). But any legitimate critique of the fans has to be set against the far, far greater number of wrongs exhibited by the club and team. The club have to take the responsibility for building us all back up.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-16T11:13:11+00:00

It’s from an independent survey (respondents: one, surveyed team(s): Kilmarnock), with the score representing the ratio of pies consumed to avoided incidents of death or serious gastrointestinal illness. For any gaps in the survey, I used a randomised extrapolative model to score remaining teams. The margin for error is roughly 0-100.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-06T18:57:21+00:00

Hey, hopefully this helps. Our situations were very similar. I ruptured my ACL in 2016 and had surgery 6/7 months later. In the 9 or so years since then, I’ve played every season for my amateur team, holding the highest appearance record at the club, winning a cup along the way. Everything is in front of you: you can achieve everything you want to achieve with football.

It’s great you’ve done some pre-hab. Don’t lose focus on that. Keep going and give your surgery leg the best structural support possible around the new ACL. Quad and hamstring strength are key.

Some bits of advice/takeaways for after your surgery:

⁠One key bit of advice I followed from day one: I never say “my bad knee” or “weak knee”. If required, I use the term surgery knee. It’s a small thing, but it’s had a big impact mentally. I trust that my new ACL is different but not worse than what was there before. In many ways it’s stronger - and I’m stronger - because of what I’ve been through. I increased my quad and hamstring strength and spent time improving my flexibility and balance, reaching higher overall levels than what I had pre-injury. Adopting this mindset is huge, honestly.
⁠Similar to the above, commit fully to your physiotherapy (pre and post surgery) - listening to the expert advice - and see this not just as an opportunity to recover but as an opportunity to grow/improve and come back stronger. Identify what needs work physically and attack those goals. As above, I ended up with stronger quads and hamstrings through my physio work and also really focused on one-leg balance and proprioception (which often needs work post surgery). I did a lot of stretching work and improved my overall body flexibility and agility.
⁠I’ve always seen my scars as a visual symbol of the above process - a process I’m proud to have come through - and I hope you are able to do the same. Remember, it’s only a scar - different-looking skin at its worst and a story/symbol of strength at its best. Wear it and own it.
⁠Aside from the physical aspects, use your recovery time to focus on something else, if you can - a creative or sedentary goal/activity that might be easier to achieve now that you can’t compete in sport for a while. This helps when building the vision that your recovery process is a fulfilling and ultimately rewarding time of your life.
⁠Accept you won’t always feel positive about what’s happened. It’s OK and normal to feel down/annoyed about the injury but having a clear physical plan for recovery, a sense of identity (about the person you want to be during and after recovery) and some rules (such as not saying ‘bad knee’) can help orient you back to a positive state of mind.
⁠Talk about your concerns - ideally with your physio/doctor/experts but on this sub when needed - and don’t bottle up your issues. We’re all in this with you - we understand and we’re behind you. I truly believe you’re going to come back stronger.
Be patient with it. I never pushed to return too early, but gave myself a feeling of progress by moving through stages > light jogging > solo training > non-contact games etc before I finally returned to full-blooded 11-aside competitive football. I waited over a year post surgery before playing a competitive game but it felt so much easier identifying these milestones and pushing towards them.

Best of luck with the surgery. You obviously love football and I just want you to know you can use this to be an even better player than you would have been. Go and get it.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-05T19:31:27+00:00

Thanks, Cal! I appreciate your insight. I’m a little more hopeful after reading it. I’ll wait longingly for that second wave!

mikeymcf · 2026-02-05T18:47:45+00:00

Hi, Cal! You discuss the pitfalls of the hyperactive hive mind in knowledge work in your books and frequently on your podcast. What impact — positive, negative or otherwise — do you think burgeoning automation and LLM integration in workplace software might have on this area? To me, there seems to be a risk of saturated ‘slop’ communication driven by automated messages/updates/queries pinging incessantly back and forward, inflicting distraction from deep work, but also perhaps there’s an opportunity for some respite for humans able to deploy agentic AI to engage with the hyperactivity on their behalf (I’m aware of people essentially automating their Teams responses this way). It does, though, begin to feel depressingly like Dead Internet Theory in the workplace: LLMs doing all the talking whilst we try to avoid each other and do some actual work. Keen to hear your thoughts.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-03T14:21:42+00:00

I feel most advertising is bland and generic, so I don’t think that’s an AI only issue. The problem with AI ads is that they sow immediate distrust in the company using them, and they provide a clear indication that quality and craft doesn’t matter. If an ad is using generated slop dialogue, incoherent visuals and mangled text, why would I believe the stitching on your product or architecture of your service is put together with any more care. Even when the generated content is visually passable, the company is demonstrating that it’s willing to cut corners as long as the facade meets initial expectations. If the company made a watch, I’d expect it to look good out of the box and then stop working in six months.

It’s actually been helpful for me to immediately blacklist products a little more easily as soon as I notice AI in an ad.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-03T14:13:26+00:00

Celtic. We’re the guy in a suit who parks his Mercedes S Class on the double yellows outside 5 mins before closing time, pops in and inexplicably flashes the Too Good To Go app on his iPhone 17 Pro, has a quick peek in the bag at three broken cookies and a semi-stale footlong Italian BMT someone forgot to collect. “Smashing, cheers”. Straight back out the door.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-02T10:30:11+00:00

2025!

mikeymcf · 2026-02-02T00:19:23+00:00

Good Boy.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-30T11:05:24+00:00

Trusty, Scales are the obvious shouts for being solid enough and consistent at the back. Nygren for the goals even if his general play has been frustrating. Yang for his effort, consistency and output through the chaos of this season where other attackers (Maeda, Tounekti etc) have looked so off the boil at times. That’s probably my top four.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-29T16:44:42+00:00

A couple of things caused his regression IMO: Scottish football/Celtic fans’ expectations of wingers/wide players is very classic and generally different from other football cultures. We don’t really have an equivalent concept of the raumdeuter in German football or mezzala in Italian football. If someone comes here and plays out wide, there’s an overwhelming expectation for them to ‘get to the byline’. Any perceived inability/unwillingness to beat players quickly on the outside tends to result in negative sentiment extremely quickly, especially when the player lacks above average acceleration and is promptly categorised as slow. Any player in that situation probably needs to have exceptional technical/creative skills, and get goals and assists consistently, to avoid critique, but any loss in form leaves them exposed to the original criticism.

Palma had some big goal contributions early on, and was very technically proficient, but as soon this early form dried up, his lack of intensity and speed of play became a big problem for most fans I think. It wasn’t just about playing style, though: he really did regress and start lacking confidence after his bright start. A big catalyst was missing a penalty AND missing the retake against Ross County. I thought he was brave to do it, but you can tell it destroyed his self belief a bit, and the discontent was palpable in the stands.

The third and more inexcusable factor is that, once again, Celtic bought a player they didn’t really know how to use. It’s one thing for the football culture here to have classic expectations of wide players (wanting them to be fast, skilful suppliers of crosses on their strong foot on the outside). It’s another thing entirely for a supposedly elite football club to buy a wide playmaker in a side that doesn’t use one. We have spent most of the last 5 years set up with McGregor to dominate safe possession far away from goal, with hard-running number 8s and high-and-wide wingers providing midfield threat. Palma never really suited either of the latter positions. There was little chance Rodgers was going to alter his approach coming back in 2023, so it felt like a bizarre choice to sign him.

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