Driving practice for one hour – getting more comfortable with putting the gear on 2 and using the break to decelerate.
Gym – did the treadmill for 20 minutes, followed by push day. That included four reps of: bicep curls, lateral pull downs, and vertical rows. Was told by the gym trainer to not attempt wrist curls, because they could potentially damage my wrists. Was also recommended to shift from a push/pull/legs schedule to a upper body/lower body/cardio schedule, and to move into PPL a month later. Will require more research to decide the optimal route here –> and will also be looking to do my own research into which exercises can be grouped together.
Video editing – made progression with ideation and storyboarding the video. Will be making a sort of reactions/thoughts video on the Before Trilogy. Will be targeting a more quiet/artsy vibe with softer piano-style music, and will bring out some of the more overlooked aspects of the movie-> this is quite adjacent to my previous video editing attempts. The other idea (for after this) is to attempt to do a more high-paced adrenaline pumpy type Spurs season review video. Will try to speedrun the editing process in two days, simply because I'm not currently engaged in another big project and would like to keep this going.
Started watching Rocket Boys, and was quite impressed. Agreed with most of the online criticism that the show lends itself heavily to dramatisation, but I still think it's a massive step forward when it comes to Indian TV. Loved Jim Sarbh as always, and I definitely excited for the next generation of Indian indie-webserie-ish content and hope it makes into the mainstream (AND MAYBE raises the bar for Bolywood)
Main media consumption of the day was the Ben Shapiro interview on the Lex Fridman show. I'm still a large believer in taking in information from all perspectives and will maintain that Ben seems like one of the most decent and measured right-wing commentators out there.
While Conte is a relatively big manager and people know a lot about him, I thought it would still be relevant to study our new manager in greater detail!
“He needed only one speech, with many simple words, to conquer both me and Juventus. He had fire running through his veins and he moved like a viper,” – Andrea Pirlo
Hope this helps someone save time and learn about Conte! There seems to finally be an air of ambition and positivity around the club, and we can only hope it translates into results in the pitch.
P.S. : if you have any more resources, do put them in the chat, and I'll keep adding them in.
Franceso Totti- “I’m very happy with the team and with the fact that Paulo Fonseca has understood what it means to be at Roma. The coach has managed to transmit a positive spirit and energy to a team that had various shortcomings.”
Just wanted to collect some of the links so that it would be easier for fans to understand Fonseca. Regardless of how underwhelmed we feel in general, he is (most likely) our new manager and deserves our full support.
Cheers!
Edit: updated with interviews/press match conferences + more match analysis
The Mixer by Michael Cox (who currently runs the excellent Zonal Marking podcast on the Athletic) was a book that I thought would get boring really quickly. Coming into this book cold, with only an elementary knowledge of footballing tactics, I was not let down.
The Mixer takes you from the early days of the Premier League, and documents the changes that took place on the pitch and off the pitch: for example, how the back-passing rule change impacted teams significantly, or how Arsene Wenger was the first one to bring a complete fitness overhaul to the Premier League. It goes through phenomena like the rise and fall of tiki-taka football, or how false-nines and foreign number tens began to gain prominence in the Premier League.
It strikes a balance between the jargon and the overall narrative, and masterfully explains a complicated tale of tactical evolution through a mix of insightful anecdotes, a deep understanding of footballing history, and an overflowing love for the game.
The Mixer is the perfect book for a passionate fan looking to dig a little deeper into the game that they love and cherish. It will most likely change how you view the current state of the Premier League, and will definitely transform how you view a football match.
My Tottenham Hotspur Story: From this great Reddit thread
“What a beautiful thread.. let me add my story. I'm 16 and from India – started following Spurs halfway through last year. Was born (and still am) a cricket fan, and found myself with a lot more time + freedom during the pandemic, and turned to football.
I've always loved the Lilywhites but started to find myself relating to them a lot more this year. Always “outsiders”, always “with the potential”, inherently capable but rarely achieving glory, my immature teenage mind latched on to the team. I loved the ambition the club was showing and could not help but be optimistic about the entire Mourinho project. The Amazon doc definitely helped too...
It's been a wild ride. I read up the history of the club and learnt the fan chants. Two days ago, I got my Spurs jersey delivered. Now I'm staying up till 1:45am to watch a little bit of the FA Cup game.”
P.S. What happened to our form over the last two months nobody knows
Other notes: I'm capping off this entire experiment with Day 50: so it's #50DaysToOffload now, not the original #100DaysToOffload.
I tried, I tried, I really tried. But I failed.
I failed to properly appreciate this classical masterpiece. I wanted to love it, but I couldn't.
Two months into my adventure, I have finally decided to give up on reading Pride and Prejudice. I appreciate the nuance and detail. I appreciate the human details and all the hard work that went into writing this book. The planning and understanding.
It's just not for me. I could'nt get invested in the characters or the plot line. I couldn't read the book for longer than 15 minutes at a time.
I refrain from criticizing books because I'm neither a literary critic nor an author. This book was really just not for me.
Neocities is an interesting travesty. While an overwhelming majority of it's users seem to be self-proclaimed brooding teenagers, I believe it still holds immense value as a service. The delightful and self-indulgent absurdity in some of the pages I have seen over the last few days has been beyond anything I have seen in my years on the Internet. In an age when massive corporate entities dominate search results, Neocities tries it's best to live up to the original promise of the Internet.
And it does so in an unapologetic manner. Extraordinary gifs and splash pages, a lot of frogs, terribly intimate journals, and often downright ridiculous ideas, Neocities is a very refreshing reminder of where it all began.
P.S. As a self-proclaimed brooding teenager myself, I take back my skepticism of this core user base. Some of these daily public journals are very raw, and you can find yourself emotionally invested in an anonymous individual half a planet away.
