It was about this time last week when I first saw that ad for Gemini, Google’s new artificial-intelligence chatbot. If you’ve been watching much of the Paris Olympics, you know the one I’m thinking of. The spot, called “Dear Sydney,” features a father whose daughter idolizes the American hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. His daughter “wants to show Sydney some love,” and while he describes himself as “pretty good with words,” the dad adds, “This has to be just right.”

“Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is,” he types, “and be sure to mention that my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day.”

I have never seen an ad that made me so thoroughly depressed about the product it was selling, and I watch Trump ads for my job. Why would you get a robot to write a fan letter from your daughter? What other meaningful personal interactions are we supposed to want to swap out with a multimodal large language model?

And apparently I’m not alone. For days I kept seeing people bring up the ad. It “takes a little chunk out of my soul every time I see it,” New York magazine contributing editor Will Leitch wrote, in one representative take. On Friday, Hollywood Reporter offered some good news: Google was taking the spot off the airwaves. We did it, Joe.

Arsenal’s Preseason Tour Justifies Arteta’s Transfer Priorities by Eric

Arsenal Football Club has just completed a relatively successful pre-season tour and jetted back to England. Although the best single aspect of the tour is that we made it through with all our projected first XI in good health (or out resting), the Liverpool game drove home some fundamental truths that justify Arteta’s transfer priorities.

Oleksandr Zinchenko was skinned alive in the run-up to Liverpool’s first goal. Yes, he was guarding Mo Salah, who is a difficult cover for anyone. However, the minute Liverpool played that ball into space and forced Zinchenko into a foot race, there was no other way that play was going to end except with us picking the ball up out of the net.

It’s not just a lack of pace that hampers Zinchenko, it’s a lack of understanding of the angles he needs to take in pursuit once he’s beaten. His deficiencies at LB are glaring and it’s easy to understand why. He’s not a natural LB. He isn’t even a natural defender. He’s playing that position as a tactical adjustment from the manager, an adjustment that brings strengths and weaknesses.

The strength of the inverted FB is that it gives Arsenal an extra body in possession to ping the ball off while we try to dominate the football. But when the player in the inverted position is Zinchenko, he will always be under threat from the pacy wingers that populate EPL rosters. Enter Riccardo Calafiori.

The news got a bit buried, with so much going on in national politics, but Tuesday was a bad night for Republicans who have stood up to election-deniers in their party.

In Maricopa County, the largest and swingiest county in America’s largest swing state, Republican primary voters ousted Stephen Richer, an incumbent who had made a national name for himself by standing up to Trump allies such as Kari Lake over the last three years. The man who defeated Richer, state Rep. Justin Heap, never outright disputed the legitimacy of previous elections, but his supporters sure have—he was recruited to run by a now-indicted fake elector, touted the endorsement of two congressmen who pushed for the state’s 2020 election results to be rejected, and was backed by Lake, who falsely accused the incumbent of adding “300,000 illegal ballots” to the tally in her 2022 run for governor. Republican voters also ousted a member of the board of supervisors (which is responsible for election day voting and ballot tabulation) who had, like his colleagues, drawn the ire of the Trump orbit for doing his job.

It was not just Richer or Maricopa, though. In Yuma County, on the border with Mexico and California, another Republican election official, Richard Colwell, is on the verge of losing his race to a conservative activist named David Lara who has spread conspiracies about elections. Per Bolts’ Alex Burness:

Lara has often lied about elections in Arizona, saying election fraud has taken place for “many years, wide open.” He has also floated punishing that fraud with the death penalty. His complaints helped inspire parts of the debunked film “2,000 Mules,” which is popular on the right for alleging the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The New York Times reported in 2022 that the movie drew from a purported investigation that Lara conducted alongside another county resident into election tampering.

TODD BOEHLY AND HIS SPENDING SPREE by Ken 1945

I came across this article on Facebook and found these incredible figures along with two facts.

1. Since the American billionaire took over Chelsea (20th June 2022), the Blues have not won a single trophy.

2. They have spent nearly twice as much money on transfers as any other side in world football.

Here are the figures that were produced by “Livescore” and they are in euros :

It turns out Arsenal is still very interested in Victor Osimhen, despite what we previously believed. So, there was some news about Chelsea potentially signing Osimhen on loan while negotiating Lukaku’s move to Napoli. That made us wonder if Arsenal ever had any interest in the Nigerian striker. If they did, it would be strange that they would let him join Chelsea on loan, especially since they could have made a similar deal themselves.

According to Corriere Dello Sport, it seems that Arsenal has renewed their interest in the Serie A striker. Arsenal has been a fan of Osimhen for quite some time, and they definitely don’t want to see him go to Stamford Bridge.

It’s actually quite interesting that the player himself, according to that report, doesn’t see Chelsea as his first choice for his next club. Considering the hefty £110 million release clause, it might seem downright impossible to entertain the idea of signing Osimhen on a permanent deal.

However, there’s some positive news about that swoop. Napoli is actually open to letting the hitman go and is considering loan offers for the player. A loan deal is definitely within Arsenal’s budget. In fact, the successful loan deal with David Raya should give them some encouragement that they can bring Osimhen on board and see if he’s the right fit for them next season.

Surely, whether you’re a fan or not, bringing Osimhen on loan could be a fantastic transfer opportunity for Arsenal. It’s definitely something they shouldn’t overlook, don’t you think?

Marseille’s insistence on signing Eddie Nketiah in this transfer window looks like it will pay off, as the French club seems extremely keen to make him their Number Nine, but it appears that Arteta and Edu are still nowhere near agreeing with OM on the terms of the deal.

With Roberto de Zerbi as the coach now, Marseille expects to challenge for the French Ligue 1 title this season and it is natural that he wants to do his shopping in the Premier League, and of course Arsenal and Marseille have a great recent history of doing business that has worked out for the French giants.

But it seems that yet again, they have not matched Arsenal’s terms, as Fabrizio Romano revealed in his Daily Breifing on CaughtOffside this morning:… Arsenal reject a new proposal from Olympique Marseille for Eddie Nketiah. Understand the proposal is in the region of €27m but was still considered not enough to let Eddie leave. OM agreed personal terms with Nketiah but still no agreement with the Gunners.

Sometimes I just wish Arsenal could finalise all their transfer deals earlier, especially as it was suggested this morning that Arsenal simply cannot confirm any new arrivals at the club until it is certain that our sales are going through.

This makes sense of course as we can only have so many players in our squad, but why do I keep getting this niggling worry that everyone will be trying to argue about every penny right up until the final hour of the transfer window?

The Arsenal US pre-season tour has made it clear that Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly are the ones who will shape the future of Arsenal. They have proven themselves to be more than capable against Premier League opposition.

In the upcoming 2024–25 season, Mikel Arteta should fully integrate them into his first-team squad. The Hale End duo’s impressive pre-season performances against Bournemouth, Manchester United, and Liverpool indicate that they will quickly establish themselves as full-fledged first-team players.

While some may disagree, the two young players are fully prepared. Fans should be excited to see what they can bring to the table.
Nwaneri is a versatile attacking player who can step in for Odegaard or Saka when needed, and he’s also capable of playing as an LCM against teams that employ a low block.

As Arteta said at the end of our USA tour about the youngsters that had joined the squad: “I’m really pleased with all of them. Unfortunately, I wanted to give opportunities to all of them, but we didn’t have enough time to do so, but especially the ones that played, I think they performed & responded incredibly well.

“So that’s something that we take from the tour as well, that we have a lot of talent there that we want to use & they show that they are very much pushing to earn the right to play with us.”

Arsenal fans will definitely be having mixed feelings now that Emile Smith-Rwe’s transfer to Fulham has been confirmed. midfielder made his first team debut in September 2018, when he came on as a substitute in our 4-2 win against Vorskla Poltava, creating history as the first player born in the 2000s to debut for the club.

After a couple of very positive loans with RB Leipzig and Huddersfield, he was welcomed to the Arsenal first team alongside Bukayo Saka.

During The Gunners 2021/22 season Smith-Rowe was a beacon of light as an academy graduate enduring nearly 2,000 minutes of Premier League game time and 33 matches too in which he scored ten times with two assists to his name.

Since then the injury struck youngster has failed to cement his position in perhaps the best Arsenal team since the 2003/04 Invincible’s team.

Despite being plagued by injury in recent times the Englishman is still regarded as one of the most promising youngsters in the Premiership who could certainly benefit a mid-table side like Fulham and I would think that if he can stay fit he would play just about every game next season.

We’ve answered more than 100 of your questions since kicking off the Mailbag last season. Today, we’re sharing some of our favourites! From the moral mazes of modern football and Jürgen Klopp’s legacy, to who we’d pick to take a penalty and which European food we’d take into battle, we’ve had a bit of everything. So sit back and enjoy as Luke rummages through the best of the Football Ramble Mailbag 23/24!

Got a question for next week’s Mailbag? Find us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

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Early on the morning of July 31, a group of about 70 people arrived at the anodyne office of the cargo company Atlas Air, in White Plains, New York. 

They were members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)—an activist group that focuses on equity issues in New York City—there to stage a fake “press conference” to highlight the Department of Defense’s contracts with Atlas Air.

A man in a gray pinstripe suit played the CEO of the company, which is the single largest operator of 747 freighter jets in the world. “Atlas Air is so proud to do its part to support the US military,” the actor enthused. “I am especially proud that, through our DoD contracts, Atlas Air has made multiple deliveries to Israel in the last 10 months.” He added with gusto: “As the bombs keep raining on Gaza, the dividends keep raining on our shareholders!” 

Those behind him, dressed as pilots complete with sewn-on epaulets, cheered as he held up a graph with a line going up—“more bombs equals higher profits!”

It began with Tim Walz on Morning Joe. 

Auditioning for the Democratic nod for vice president, the Minnesota governor steamed through complaints about the Republican politics of the present. Sen. JD Vance, Walz said, “gets it all wrong” when he talks about small-town values. “It’s not about hate. It’s not about collapsing in. The golden rule [in rural America] is mind your own damn business.”

Walz argued Republican policies had destroyed Vance’s imagined idyllic America; conservatives had pushed division through book bans and an isolated world wrought by trickle-down economics. “We do not like what has happened,” Walz said, seeming to speak for an unmentioned mass of people, “where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle because you end in some weird fight that is unnecessary.” 

The host laughed.

The Premier League season is fast approaching and Luke, Jim, Vish and Andy have worked out how Arsenal can finally get to Man City and win the league… Hire Zlatan Ibrahimović in the Jason Tindall role.

Today, we hear how Zlatan’s beef with Pep Guardiola is still raging on in 2024. Elsewhere, news has broken that West Ham might be signing a new forward for the 56th time under their current ownership. Plus, Vish auditions to be Gennaro Gattuso’s interpreter.

Sometimes may be bat, sometimes may be foot…

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

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Fred Trump III, Donald Trump’s nephew, very much hopes for a bipartisan national effort to better support the needs of disabled people, a passion driven by being the father of a disabled son. That’s why he tried—when his uncle was president of the United States—to use his family ties to push for disability rights.

Fred did manage to have a White House meeting with disability advocates that his uncle Donald attended. Later on, he was met with comments by Donald that Fred “should just let” his son, Donald Trump’s grandnephew, “die”—an anecdote he recounts in a new book, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way.

The former president, Fred Trump says, has never met his grandnephew William. In fact, he’s never even tried to. Donald isn’t the only Trump family member to share that attitude, according to Fred—who, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t think “anything positive happened” for disability rights under Trump’s administration.

When JD Vance appeared as a special guest at the 2021 summer conference of the Napa Institute, a Catholic organization that seeks to “advance the re-evangelization of the United States,” he was weathering a storm for a talk he had given that week to a conservative group in which he assailed the Democratic Party for being led by childless people. He had also proposed that parents be granted more of a say at the ballot box than people without kids. During that speech, he had called out Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being non-parents. (Harris was a parent to two stepchildren, and Buttigieg adopted twins the following month.) Asked at the Napa Institute event about these remarks, Vance did not blanche. He doubled down and even singled out AOC for promoting what he called a “sociopathic” view of the family.

Vance, then a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, told the crowd of Catholic activists that he had gotten into “trouble” for his earlier comments. But he stood by his remarks, saying “My basic view is that if the Republican Party, the conservative movement stands for anything… the number one thing we should be is pro-babies and pro-families.”

He emphasized that not enough Americans were procreating: “We have, I believe, a civilizational crisis in this country, where we have unhealthy families, we have families falling apart. We have the rise of childhood trauma. And even among healthy intact families, they’re not having enough kids, such that we’re going to have a longterm future in this country.”

After being wrongfully detained by Russian security forces for more than a year on bogus espionage charges, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been released following a massive prisoner swap, the Journal confirmed on Thursday.

The swap—which also reportedly includes two dozen prisoners total from six countries, including former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American Radio Free Europe editor Alsu Kurmasheva—comes as a major win for the Biden administration and advocates of press freedoms. The WSJ in particular kept Gershkovich’s wrongful detention front and center in the media throughout his detention, reminding the world that journalism is not a crime. Among those efforts were the hashtag #IStandWithEvan and a front page dedicated to Gershkovich on the first anniversary of his detention. The page was largely blank with the headline, “His story should be here.”

In a statement, President Biden called the exchange “a feat of diplomacy,” adding, “Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”

Gershkovich’s family, and the families of some the other American hostages, joined Biden at the White House on Thursday afternoon to celebrate the news. “This is a very good afternoon,” Biden told reporters. He added that he and the families who joined him in person had just spoken to the newly-released Americans by phone from the Oval Office. “I told them, ‘welcome almost home,'” Biden said.

As the Democratic National Convention kicked off its virtual roll-call vote this morning, the Uncommitted movement—an organization that successfully pushed thousands of primary voters to choose no one instead of casting a ballot for President Joe Biden because of US backing of Israel during its war on Gaza—called on the party to let a member of their delegation speak. 

The movement would like a five-minute speaking slot for a humanitarian aid worker who has recently returned from Gaza. Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted organizer, said at this morning’s press conference that the delegates from his group communicated this request to the DNC via email “maybe a month ago.” They have not yet received a response. 

Nationwide, as previously reported in Mother Jones, the Uncommitted movement earned over 700,000 votes—and 30 delegates to the convention. As we wrote:

The movement’s impact was notable, especially in swing states: 13 percent of voters in Michigan, just under 19 percent in Minnesota, and just below 15 percent in North Carolina voted “uncommitted.” In Illinois, a state without an “uncommitted” option on the ballot, voters wrote in “Gaza.”

Today, we're bringing you a special teaser of what you can expect every week on the Football Ramble Patreon.

For just $5 a month, you'll get an extended version of every Wednesday episode of the Ramble, which features 20 minutes of Ramble Uncut! Think spicy takes you won't get on the main show, correspondence from other Patreon subscribers, behind-the-scenes news and regular updates from Matt Le Tissier's newsletter (obviously).

Starting today, any new Patreon sign-ups can get 15% off an annual subscription! You'll get extended episodes of every Wednesday episode (meaning you'll get to hear Ramble Uncut every week), as well as access to our Discord and ad-free versions of every Ramble, On The Continent and Upfront episodes. Just head to patreon.com/footballramble now!

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

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Bad news, everyone: the Amazon seller who sold Pete a durian for us to try today had to cancel the order due to “supply chain issues.” More news as we get it.

That leaves Pete, Luke and Jim with plenty of time to tuck into some other breaking news: Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane’s debuts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Plus, Arsenal sign Italian defending dreamboat Riccardo Calafiori, Conor Gallagher might be about to buy an interrailing ticket to Madrid and Steve Bruce eyes up the next season of Death in Paradise. Plus, which footballer would make the best medieval blacksmith?

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

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Need some good old-fashioned espionage sorting out, but don’t have access to a drone or a two-way mirror? Pete Donaldson is now available for hire!

He’s joined by Luke and Jim in a suspicious room full of cameras and microphones to talk about pre-season happenings and fresh outcry about the possibility of Premier League matches overseas. Meanwhile, there are fishcake protests in Norway and – at long last – a proper punch in a football match. Plus, you won't find a better durian-based fact on any other podcast than this one today. Guaranteed. So come join us!

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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The finale is here! And Pete brings perhaps the best episode of the lot for you today. We pick things up at the start of April, where barns were burning everywhere, Nottingham Forest’s X admin was setting fire to bridges everywhere, and the Premier League approached its exciting conclusion.

And don’t forget some memorable s**thousery overseas – from suspicious activity in Hungary’s U14s league, to a Dutch referee officiating a game and then lifting the title for one of the teams. All that and much more on today’s final Football Ramble Best Of 2023/24!

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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