#and don't get me started on footballers

[jerswayman]

there is not a single sportsman, outside of lewis hamilton, with even an ounce of fashion sense. not one. not a single man who knows how to look good in anything other than sweat and a jersey.

[fcaruana]

as someone from argentina, can you please share how things are in your country with franco now in f1? and like how fast things have changed and the hype he got, the difference between f2 and f1 etc? i'm so curious to know, i assume he'll head back home after the brazil gp since there's a bit of a break and argentina is right there. i'm picturing pure chaos

oh it's INSANE the amount of support he gained in two months. he already was pretty well-known in argentina after fans pushed a campaign to get him sponsors for f2 last year. he wasn't going to be able to jump from f3 to f2 until argentinian fans came through and started making noise. when franco came there was a hundred people outside his hotel. bizarrap's dad saw the campaign and the rest is history

but while thousands of argentinians followed his f2 races, the vast majority of them already were motorsport fans. now, in f1, EVERYONE is supporting him, even people who hadn't watched a single f1 race before. right before the f1 announcement franco had 552k followers on instagram. now he has 3.2 million !!!!!

i've overheard people talking about him at the supermarket and the doctor's waiting room ??!&# which is crazy. i haven't seen something like this for an argentinian athlete in a long while. he said he hates the messi comparisons but i can see this worship getting near that level in the future if all goes well

they're planning a banderazo for interlagos so watch out for hundreds of argentinians flags. it's gonna be insane

[neverbesokind]

Oh my god it's The Alchemy day I have SO many thoughts about this song so I'm gonna try and condense them.

First of all, the song starts and ends with "This happens once every few lifetimes," which is a statement filled to the BRIM with irony, in my view. The entire album up to this point has been concerned with two romances, both of which Taylor states she felt were destined and fated and "storybook" in their own ways. The entirety of TTPD is exploring how these fated, destined, storybook romances could actually crumble, and with it, her faith and belief in the existence of fate and destiny and storybook love.

But THEN... almost at the end of the standard run of the album, Taylor states that she's getting back from recovering from this tragedy - "I'm back / The hospital was a drag / Worst sleep that I ever had". She gets back from the messy process of healing from the events described on the album, and despite everything finds herself falling in love again.

This is why the title is significant, too. Alchemy is the pseudoscience of making a material into something more valuable. And this reflects the emotional process of Taylor falling in love again - she felt like the past two tragedies took the shine off of everything, killed her belief that love could ever work. But then, despite everything, she falls in love again and the normal, even tragic world she lived in before is transformed into something golden.

And then the first line repeats again, to reflect the cyclical nature of what she has experienced. Obviously, "this" doesn't happen once every few lifetimes, it's happened twice before on the album and is happening again in this song. She's falling in love, she's finding something beautiful and fated, and she can't help but find it gorgeous and meaningful, even if she's been shown again and again that she might be proven wrong in the end. And it feels so special that even if it's obvious that it isn't a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it feels that rare and that precious.

In this song, love is the alchemy, the process of turning normalcy into meaning and beauty, and she can't help it.

[angelle-is-tired]

Ngl I've always kinda hated the way D'Jok's ego problem was resolved in season 1, cause to me the issue is that he thinks he's the star of the show and needs to learn to value his team mates, and it feels like that's the lesson they were going for with the Wambas match where they would've literally lost if Tia, Micro-Ice and Rocket hadn't gone all out in the second half, but then D'Jok literally beats his idol in the next match and the lesson becomes that he actually is the best and just has to be humble about it, it just feeds his ego even more

Also sidenote but D'Jok being the in-universe fan favorite sk feels forced, like nothing he's done at that point made him stand out from the others in terms of skill, like yeah he's done some impressive stuff but so has literally everyone else what makes him so special

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[acquiescest]

irt the lrb what would you say if i said liam & noel spent new years 2023 together in paris

what would you say if i said liam bought the house in france (the one with noel's name carved into the walls) in march 2023 and that month noel talked about wanting to spend several months in paris

which could mean nothing

[quatregats]

Still debating whether or not I want to try for a second draft of the Hornblower time loop fic or just do some basic edits and throw it into the world as fanfic was intended to be published

[brasiliangp]

seeing all those 'the euros are about tactical precision, talent, art and organization while copa america is just about savages throwing hands' posts when almost every single euros game has had an own goal so far

[adore-gregor]

🤞

[sportsthoughts]

ok this is one genuine question i have about hockey... why do the games never start on time

[quincyhorst]

If you haven't realized already... At least on this setting, Brockenborg's use of militar hissatsus was because of their original intent of being used aganist Aliea Academy. I still couldn't explain where or who created things like Gunshot, U-Boat or similar; but all I know is that they were passed on to these germans, expected to be used once Japan fell to the aliens. Most of Operation Sicherung was funded by german goverment and its defence section, though the German Soccer Federation had also its part, specially when choosing the children to train. Hell, the director of the project, Wilhelm von Wolfgang, is the coach of germany's current best team and Theodor's representative. His sucessful communications within both the goverment and the bundeswehr were enough to commence these plans.

Of course, fear leads to do stupid choices, and it proved true when Japan managed to fend off Aliea without the use of any outsider help, rendering OS useless and a total waste of money and time for anyone involved. The german goverment was quick to sweep everything under the rug and give monetary compensation to all the children's families, alongside the coaches/staff emplyed to train them. However, as to be more positive, OS had left them with only one useful thing: The perfect lineup of the upcoming Euroleague. So, they decided to join in and start fresh as the alien fear was wearing off. Not wanting Wolfgang near this team at any chance, the GSF opted instead to employ Gretchen Löw instead, given she had done the best directing within the OS matches.

But of course... Now here's where the problems come. You have a bunch of confused german children, believing that the sky was going to fall at any moment, with hissatus that were meant to "fight" other kids like them... Poor Löw was forced to unite some disjointed puzzle pieces from the start. And of course, remember... Germany + any militar motif will always sit bad with the rest of the world (And rightfully so!). Of course, soon the players found a way to 1- Either give their own style to their soccer or 2- Take use of what they had learnt to their benefit.

...I'm very aware that this idea won't ever help to tone down all the creepy implications Brockenborg has within its hissatsu lineup, or similar things. Hell, there are things that I genuinely have no idea how to explain in-universe, such as the Blitz formation (Maybe it was something originally taught in OS?). And there's still some plotholes with some topics (Thorsten's mask...). So, don't be surprised if this changes from time to time, be it small or an entire renewal.

We shouldn't forget too that the FFI was originally a Garshield ploy to cause tension within countries and later on a World War, so who knows... Maybe he had a part to play on Brockenborg's funding too. Those militar hissatsus were chosen in purpose to cause tensions even in the tournament (????)

[bueris]

rant post because I hate british tourists as much as the rest of the world 🫶

okay gonna be so fucking honest I genuinely despise british tourists that go to other countries and just drink and make an entitled nuisance of themselves. first of all it's so disrespectful that they think it's okay to act so disruptive and down right disgustingly in public let alone a whole other country that has absolutely no reason to tolerate them, second of all they're national fucking embarrassments like seriously do you know what you look like? bumbling down city streets drunk with not so much as a lick of self awareness, you don't look like you're so cool for having a good time, you look like a prick with no self control, it's embarrassing to hear what the people I loath to call fellow brits get up to you make my country look more like a joke than it already is. know your place. third of all the entitlement is insane, you blow off to a whole other country and expect all the social norms to be the same? fuck off you twat, the world isn't yours and your complete disregard for the way other people live their lives makes you an absolute cunt, no excuses.

on top of that, this makes me genuinely despise british drinking culture, so much shit revolves around alcohol it's ridiculous. I know this country is shit, I know it's about coping but have you ever thought for a second that maybe, just maybe, we could make things better if our first reaction was to try and change the government instead of drinking? even outside of that it's so difficult to enjoy parties and social events because of drinking, you're either pressured to drink or you end up watching people get so drunk they completely fly off the handle. it's funny to make a joke about but it's an actual problem. every friday night is a fucking nightmare because it's always ends up with shattered glass in places literal children (and everyone else mind you) could go and hurt themselves on. the fact that people think it's acceptable to trash public spaces and act like absolute bellends in bars, pubs and wherever else you might like to get drunk is absurd and horrendous, if you think it's okay or "in the name of good fun" I don't fucking like you, I genuinely wish you the worst.

I'm not a puritan, drinking is a personal choice, I just urge you to fucking think about how much you're drinking and have some consideration for where you are and how much you drink. don't be a cunt, it's easier than you think. you get overly excitable when you drink? either limit yourself or do it at home I'm so sick of being scared and embarrassed about drunk people.

[mechahero]

@5mind asked- hc + 💪 for a sport-themed headcanon thematic headcanons (accepting)

He's downright terrible at most sports. Can't play most of them for the life of his or struggles with some of them because his hands are tiny and can't grab the ball worth a hill of beans. However, he does like baseball! Or rather, he only likes the part in baseball where he gets to hit the ball.

Only the part where he can hit the ball. That's it.

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

ted lasso needs to wrap up 3 seasons worth of plots in the next 2(?) episodes. i don't know bc i thought this ep was the last but alas, it seems to not be ??

what are they doing? wasting time on edwin akufu causing problems for sam bc of ........ spite?? making dani "even my dirty socks deserve friends" rojas be mean to his friend and also behave shittily on a plaNE where the attendants had to clean up the mess he made......... ?? the uncle holiday ?????

like, at the end of the day i get it bc they've never had proper plans for 99% of the characters. we saw roy tackle a press conference last ep which is like character growth!! we've seen jamie grow continuosly. and none of the other players ever get depth, so what is there to wrap up in their storylines????????

but like. jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

[meowmeowmessi]

NOT THIS??? https://twitter.com/Teta_2023/status/1644126646415560706

They act like the terms of his contract aren't publicly available and we didn't see it all play out since last season omg they really believe this innocent little blorbo image they've made up for this grown ass man and his European superiority complex so tired of them

[adore-gregor]

my football team is so hopeless