Alex Wilson

open.substack.com/pub/unbrande...

Off to the supermarket to buy my giant bottle of apocalypse water

Watching Barcelona v Real Madrid highlights last night and it's amazing what a dog's dinner La Liga has made of its product. Massive AR pitchside ads, AR ads next to the goal, the whole thing looks like a bad video game. No wonder no one wants to watch it anymore.

It's incredible to think how much money Richard E Grant is possibly going to end up costing the BBC and the producers of The Traitors

The FT Weekend really is a terrific product. But it would be nice if the fine people at the FT could actually deliver it to my house with any degree of consistency.

French politics understanders: the obvious take from the Limoges town hall fire is that this boosts Le Pen, but is there any chance LFI get hung out to dry and it therefore helps the rest of the left and the centre?

I know Craven Cottage has never been a cauldron, but I was in the away end yesterday and it was literal silence for almost all of the match (their first win of the season). Something has gone very wrong with English football.

This is going to be the weirdest football season ever. Man City are going to dominate the league and get relegated. Someone weird (Brighton?) could win a league title that everyone's going to spend forever debating whether or not it counts. inews.co.uk/sport/footba...

I am using Claude to build some slides. It has got good. Given 90% of consultancy time is spent fiddling with slide decks (which is neither the consultant's expertise nor what the client wants to be paying for), this feels like considerable human progress.

My personal highlight of The Traitors was Ross Kemp trying to immediately assert himself as being James Blunt's equal as bossy army man

@blurbfly.bsky.social @bendunnell.bsky.social I think it's very sad that we can't have a good faith discussion about the politics of immigration with people who mostly agree with each other, but I hope the screengrabbing and making stuff up makes you feel very superior behind your computer screens

I'm watching The Mandalorian and Grogu and it's remarkable how much it suffers from the terrible decision to have Rotta the Hut speak English (and to have Jeremy Allen White, of all people, do the voice)

Re the England game - in a world where people increasingly can't trust their eyes or believe in a shared reality, I very strongly believe we shouldn't let broadcasters surreptitiously replace real pitchside ads with fake digital ones

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Someone please teach Andy Burnham how to speak from his diaphragm when he does the loud bellowy bit. Suck your belly button in towards your spine Andy!

Actually laughed out loud at the Thursday VAT bill announcement

I wrote this a fortnight ago, but oddly relevant today given Fairford news: www.thenewworld.co.uk/matt-muir-ho...

I'm reading about the Buffalo Bills' new stadium. The taxpayer paid $850m to it, the average game ticket is $610, and season ticket holders at the old stadium had to pay a one-off fee of $750- $50,000 for the *right* to pay *more* money and buy their new season ticket. Seriously, WHAT IS THE USA?

This article is poor and riddled with factual errors. I'm fed-up of football journalists totally ignoring the Fan-Led Review, and the lower and non-league clubs that lobbied to have an alcohol pilot included as a financial lifeline to stop them going bust www.theguardian.com/football/202...

It's a huge management failure that the FA has a strategy around training age group teams to play possession football (literally called "The England DNA") that the senior team coach doesn't believe in. If Tuchel doesn't buy into the strategy, he shouldn't be in the job inews.co.uk/sport/footba...

It's not the headline of this Man City affair, but the likelihood of someone (Brighton?) sneaking through the chaos and pulling a Leicester has definitely increased

"Emili Sandé? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time"

What we learned from the great alcohol football debate: - Andy Burnham shooting from the hip is counter-productive - English people love making up a guy to feel superior to ("pint chuckers" ffs) and it should be studied - No football journalist actually read the Fan-Led Review

Manchester City deserve to be liquidated (for their true crime, those fucking horrendous double-decker advertising hoardings)

The extent to which the English have invented the "pint chucker" as a serious social problem based on a couple of viral videos deserves serious study. Much like the "nonce", they have become the phantom menace that we should both be terrified of, and feel righteously superior to.

When will Andy Burnham tackle the real problems facing English football (banning the England band)

In a crowded field, "alcohol at the football" discourse really does bring out the stupidest people with the worst arguments

This is an incredible read. I refuse to believe the US is a real country

@jim.londoncentric.media this very much feels like it has London Centric's DNA in it (I await a parody song about Westminster Bridge's ice cream vans with great interest) youtu.be/cjvvGdIt--Q?...

Manchester United fans doing "he's in your heeeeaaaaaaad" EFL slop chants is the moment they truly stopped being a big football club

Absolutely insane refereeing. If Fernandez isn't standing in the middle of the box to go for the ball, he doesn't draw a defender and Haaland isn't free. Surely this is *basic* stuff?

Absolutely zero atmosphere in this Manchester derby. It's mad what English football's become

I am in a *museum* and the *staff* are all watching loud TikToks on their phones. Infinite scroll short-video apps have melted everyone's brains. I'm genuinely starting to think we should just ban them

Getting a holiday photo in 2006: "hello, will you take this for us?" Getting a holiday photo in 2026:

hey, I just met Zeus and this is crazy but he's a swan and I'm having babies

This is nothing short of a disgrace and should be a resigning matter for the Home Secretary, frankly

Lots has changed since the last time we were here, but I didn't have "official club account getting pile-ons from bots and overseas racists" on my list. If the Premier League was actually serious about protecting players from racism, they'd pull clubs off X www.theguardian.com/football/202...

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I'm currently seeing an avalanche of social media posts ripping people to shreds for filming at gigs and sports events, and it really does feel like the culture is finally starting to change (about fucking time)

PSA: I discovered yesterday that M&S do an alcohol-free Czech pilsner that is comfortably the best non-alcoholic lager I've ever had. I demolished three of them on the train back from football yesterday like they were real beers

Considering the Premier League is supposed to be a premium product, those constantly moving LEDs around the pitch aren't half annoying and trashy