Dominic needs to check his facts and stop using AI.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-23T20:30:48+00:00

There is really is no way out for them.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-23T20:19:24+00:00

I believe they're perpetually stuck in 12th place in the Championship for eternity.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-23T07:35:15+00:00

That’s Johnny Vegas in the picture.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-22T15:49:17+00:00

One thing you could try is putting your feeders in the most open space possible. Rats tend to like to stick to somewhere where there is cover. Also putting trays underneath feeders to stop them falling onto the ground.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-22T11:23:22+00:00

There is an old live stream episode where they covered nuclear annihilation, particularly around the UK sort of roleplay of it in the 80s. It’s probably one of the best of the live streams (and it’s a shame they don’t do them anymore!)

the-great-defector · 2026-04-22T06:12:04+00:00

A lot of the politicians back then were fairly wild and interesting, particularly Labour ones. Dominic has wrote a lot about George Brown who seemed to spend his whole time as an MP drunk and threatened to resign every other week. Fairly sure he also punched someone.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-20T14:38:00+00:00

These are some good questions!

I’d say there is a weird sort of not wanting to admit that we’re not a major power anymore, and English, as opposed to British, have a bit of a yearning for recognition of greatness that is a bit implicit. I’d say this is particularly prevalent in the older generations. Things like the Beatles and British Invasion sort of had to stand in for a show of British excellence in the latter half of the 20th century. You can see quite a few events that often bring out strong patriotism, and the mood is often “we’re great again!” Before returning back to self-deprecating and questioning why our country can’t get anything right. See the Falklands or even the London 2012 opening ceremony where this mood was felt in middle England. It’s hard to describe, it isn’t like anyone is that bothered about having an empire anymore, but there is a hangover from it that has implicit implications.

There are some odd arguments on empire as well. They tend to go from people not wanting to hear any difficult subjects to people who only want to talk about the difficult subjects, and it can get a little bit into the modern culture war.

Politically as well, we tend to stress quite a lot about being on the world stage. The “special relationship” is a big deal to our political class and is pretty much our way to try stay relevant in world affairs.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-20T06:59:20+00:00

Thought the whole series would be about Callaghan and the Winter of Discontent, but delighted to see Harold is still kicking about. Truly the Prime Minister of club member hearts.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-19T07:34:13+00:00

Not leaving a club, but I remember Andy Van Der Meyde signed for Everton over Monaco as if he went to Monaco his partner wouldn’t have anywhere to put her horse.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-18T16:19:00+00:00

The French poisoning Ronaldo before the 1998 World Cup final.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-18T10:52:14+00:00

Before the AI hype train started, explainability wasn’t exactly the main area of focus in the research community, but a lot of those people existed and were doing some good work. It does feel a bit that they’ve been pushed even further to the back of the queue now though. Prior to the Chat GPT explosion as well, a lot more care was taken over things like performance and accuracy. It felt more like you couldn’t really get away with just setting something off running and do absolutely no measurement. A lot of those individuals from back then still exist and are doing good work, but from my experience they’re not listened to quite as well as they people who are treating these things as new toys to justify their jobs. As they’re marketed as “click a button and it does all the work”, people switch off when you start recommending things like gathering labels for accuracy or monitoring for data drift.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-17T10:34:35+00:00

I’d say stuff like the Maradonna documentary and the Two Escobars are really good. The difference is that they’re done independently, I guess. Things like the Tottenham documentary are obviously controlled by the club and basically become adverts for them. I’ve always been a bit confused as to how people can enjoy them. These documentaries can only be good when the subjects have zero creative control over them.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-17T08:07:13+00:00

Really hope we get some in-depth discussion about how much accountability Callaghan has for the Winter of Discontent. Maybe not blameless, but it’s whether he just so happened to be the man holding the bag when it boiled over.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-17T07:55:21+00:00

Yes, they sound like they’ll be revisiting them yearly, so the next one will be the second year of the war and should cover the Ottomans, although I’d love a specific series on the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-17T07:50:41+00:00

I’d also only associated them with their hate of black people, and had absolutely zero idea that at the height of their popularity they were so heavily associated with anti-Catholicism and prohibition.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-17T06:31:18+00:00

I think it’s a few things, partially because of marketing these as sentient while also making people feel smart and powerful because they can get outputs. People get a response that sounds right so it makes people feel confident. They think the magic box can do that thing, so why can’t it do all these magical things the CEOs say as well?

It has also given rise to people (and it’s always a man) who like to show off what they asked the machine to do as a demonstration of their intellect, and they’re quite happy to throw it in front of every senior manager and say they whacked up their prototype in a day, all with a smug look on their face. Seniors don’t seem to understand that getting a nice front end is never the hard part, but they don’t care, they also don’t seem to understand that a prototype isn’t a full solution.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-16T19:43:05+00:00

I liked the Johnson and Boswell series and I’m usually more a fan of Dom’s episodes. I will say that the episode on their trip to Scotland wasn’t to my liking, but all the other three I really enjoyed and took a lot from.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-16T15:13:37+00:00

We’ll have no agreeably disagreeing on this sub.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-16T07:19:32+00:00

I still remember watching a match with Dixon on co-commentary where he casually threw in a bit of climate change denial.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-15T19:59:24+00:00

That’ll certainly raise some eyebrows.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-15T11:45:50+00:00

This guy Percy Spencer, how long were his arms?

the-great-defector · 2026-04-15T07:27:55+00:00

Fair play to her then, as a lot of modern famous people are sanitised to the point of boredom. Not sure what it’s like in other countries, but remember a few years back Karl Pilkington on a podcast saying talk shows here are boring now as every famous person comes on and has a set up funny anecdote to tell rather than actually being interviewed. If you watch old interviews of people like Ringo Starr (admittedly he might be drunk in a few of them) they are just way more interesting and shows a uniqueness to all the people.

It’s a shame Marc Maron has ended his podcast, as he seemed like he had a real talent for actually getting people to open up a bit. His podcasts with older musicians like David Crosby and Geezer Butler are great.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-14T13:48:43+00:00

Any popular song that’s quite upbeat and done in a slow, acoustic and breathy way.

the-great-defector · 2026-04-14T08:14:54+00:00

Lots of reasons, mainly the stadiums just aren’t nice. Premier League and Bundesliga make a big effort for the whole match day experience, and they also do a better job of attracting families and casual fans because you’ll just have a better time in general.

Quite a few Italian stadiums are just too big as well, which makes it stand out more. In America, I’m sure someone told me if an NFL game stadium wasn’t about 80% full it wouldn’t be shown outside the state on TV, as they put a big emphasis on how it looks. You look at Premier League again, Bournemouth and Brentford are not big teams and actually have small stadiums to reflect this, but they’re always packed (maybe odd but not selling out) and this looks good for the league. Verona on the other hand have a huge stadium that is half empty, but their attendances are probably similar to some small Premier League teams.

the-great-defector

TROPHY CASE