Three lions and red lines
Watched England's inspiring victory against Mexico at the Azteca. What a special match and occasion, one of the most memorable and iconic England games of my life.
Pickford, Bellingham and Kane were particularly inspriational. When the going gets tough, lots of England players over the years have dissappeared. They are scared. They don't want the ball. Those three were brave and stepped up and took responsibility.
Immensely dissapointed by the decision to suspend Balogun's three-match ban. A terrible precedent that undermines sporting integrity, fairness and transparency. FIFA are not true to their values, and they gaslight fans and behave as though they are beyond reproach. A redline indeed, and I suspect the beginning of a long and lasting open confrontation betwen UEFA and FIFA.
Whilst this is the most shocking evidence of corruption and collusion between FIFA and global-powers impacting the game, it is only a matter of someone missing a game. We should be just as outraged over FIFA failure to uphold worker and minority rights and safety.
Tags: football, world cup, FIFA
Standard Fireworks
Read Peter Kay's Diary, a very light and enjoyable read, as I was feeling somewhat stressed at work. The book is everything you would expect from Peter kay: warm, nostalgic, and funny, with occasional more serious notes.
Peter Kay's father used to buy Standard Fireworks, which crop up in one of my favourite stories told by Bob Mortimer! As David Mitchell says, it's a funy name. Standard Fireworks: for a bonfire night you will forget!
48 teams at the World Cup
This time round, the World Cup has expanded to 48 teams. My first thought was that this watered-down the competition. There are too many easy games, no group of death with 2 or 3 very strong teams, and minimal risk of elimination for big teams. I stand by most of this. Scotland are in arguably the toughest group. Obviously, 48 isn't a power of 2. The sense that it's watered-down feels more so since the first 72 matches only eliminate 16 teams, since 8 third-placed lucky losers go through to make 32, which is a power of 2, teams into the knockouts.
However, I was overlooking something. The expanded tournament partly addresses something wrong with the tournament: UEFA (European) nations are hugely over-represented. Let's take a look at the data by football federation. There are some quirks, e.g., for football, Australia changed to Asia from Oceania in 2010. I go back to 1998, because that's when the number of teams was last increased to 32.
For this 48 team 2026 edition,
- 2026: Asia 9, Africa 10, North and Central Americas 6, South America 6, Oceania 1, Europe 16
- 2022: Asia 6, Africa 5, North and Central Americas 4, South Ameria 4, Oceania 0, Europe 13
- 2018: Asia 5, Africa 5, North and Central Americas 3, South Ameria 5, Oceania 0, Europe 14
- 2014: Asia 3, Africa 5, North and Central Americas 4, South Ameria 6, Oceaia 0, Europe 13
- 2010: Asia 4, Africa 6, North and Central Americas 3, South America 5, Oceania 1, Europe 13
- 2006: Asia 4, Africa 5, North and Central Americas 4, South America 4, Oceania 1, Europe 14
- 2002: Asia 4, Africa 5, North and Central Americas 3, South America 5, Oceania 0, Europe 15
- 1998: Asia 4, Africa 5, North and Central Americas 3, South America 5, Oceania 0, Europe 15
The fraction of European teams has dropped from between 13 and 15 of 32, around 41% to 47%, to only 16 of 48, about 33%. This is still too high, in my opinion, but now we have twice as many teams from Africa, and more from Asia. Thus overall I think this is fairer and an improvement.
On that note, it is extraordinary that Nigeria didn't qualify. 10 African teams can make it, and they have footballing heritage and a population of 228 million, far ahead of Ethiopia, who also aren't there, at 129 millon. Egypt, who are there, are third at 115 million. Morocco, arguably the best Africa side and who might go far at the World Cup, only have 38 millon so perhaps none of this matters!
Robot
Read Robot by Adam Wisniewski-Snerg, written in 1973 in Polish, translated into English in 1990 by Tomasz Mirkowicz, and finally published in English in 2021.
This was a challenging read. The story is deliberately disorienting and confusing, as we experience the uncertainty of the protagonist. Who is he? Is he human or robot? Are the other characters real? Are there discontinuities in their reality? There are general themes of suspicion, paranoia, identity, personal agency and free-will. The robots in question aren't the mechanical sort of the AI sort; they are biological and possess a free-will. They are created by the Mechanism to follow their own instincts and will, which will somehow fulfill the Mechanism's wishes. I did not understand the plot entirely; but maybe I wasn't supposed to.
Are we in the Shelter?
'Haven't you yet noticed,' she said after a moment, 'how some of the Shelter's inhabitants, at times needlessly, strive desperately to appear exactly who they are? Hasn't it caught your attention how carefully they affect a certain innocence, how they mask their deepest feelings, even of repugnance, and how by feigning total compliance, pretend to be busy and, when the need arises, even by shamming greed and stupidity, they do everything possible to make their behavior appear absolutely normal; in short, haven't you noticed they are doing their best to hide in the crowd?''Robot, by Adam Wisniewski-Snerg
AI tipping points
Read a disturbing article about an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the DRC. The causes include a lack of clean water and sanitation facilities, i.e., clean toilets and sinks. At the same time, an AI bubble created a trillionaire and the rapid construction of water-guzzling data centers. We don’t need to solve intelligence and then solve everything else, the stated goal of Demis Hassibis of DeepMind. We need to redress poverty, inequalities and dire circumstances starting now. A long-term benefit of AI is that it’s radicalizing society and making us realize that there are different visions of our future and different ideas about what constitutes progress. AI caused our economic system to descend into an absurd caricature. First tragedy, then farce, as we were warned.
Another tipping point may be happening in academia. For the last few years, researchers have jumped on the bandwagon of AI for science, promoting hype that AI will accelerate scientific progress. This is reflected in academic literature, conferences, personal statements and webpages, and grants. From what I can tell, the bandwagon is now full. AI-scientists are ten a penny. Insights and lasting advances remain rare, and the actual expertise and value of AI scientists, in many cases, looks threadbare.
Only time will tell, but for now I am happy to ying while everyone else yangs. Paradoxically, as a consequence of the rush towards AI, actual understanding of statistics, statistical reasoning, statistical computation, and reasoning under uncertainty in general are at present rare and underdeveloped. I remain interested in AI, but through the perspective of traditional statistics and computing, and with a critical eye on who made it, how and why, and what harm it might cause.
32 Programmes
Read 32 Programmes by Dave Roberts (or should that be 32 grams?), a football book, fitting for the start of the World Cup. It's a nostalgic book, based on the author's memories of attending matches, and who he was with and what was going on in his life at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed most of it, though it took a surprisingly sombre turn at the end, as the author suffered from mental and physical health issues.
The author's memories of racism in football crowds in the 1970s sadly didn't feel that far away from where we are now in society.
Short stories
Read several colletions of short stories. First, aborted Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, written in 1902. I expected colonial attitudes about e.g., seeing the animals as resource or as something to be put to work, but I didn't expect explicit racism about non-European people.
Switched to Stories for Seven Year Olds, a collection published by Harper Collins. On the whole, we enjoyed it, and discovered some interesting stories and authors. Vardiello was a highlight, as was discovering Leila Berg, an advocate of children's rights and children's literature.
For myself, read the collection The People's City, a collection of short stories centered in Edinburgh, with a rousing introduction by Irvine Welsh and contributions from Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith.
Finally, attended a wonderful seminar by Jordan Stoyanov, an academic grandson of the great Kolmogorov. The talk introduced a few intriguing problems and their connections to probability theory. The problems discused were similar to recreational maths, for example, find random variables for which $$X + Y = XY$$ with equality in distribution. These little problems are, to me, the short stories of maths. They have intrigue that captures you, but can be consumed satisfying in a single period, without multiple strands to the story line or many characters entering.
Tags: reading, short stories, maths