Mental Faculties.

Fun fact: my joint headteachers were named Mrs. Staab and Mrs. Savage, and believe me when I say they gave credence to the theory of nominative determinism. In fact, I’m not convinced they were entirely human. That’s mere conjecture, but we can be absolutely certain that the new headteacher of a private school in West Sussex isn’t even remotely human.

The Cotesmore School recently appointed a digital headteacher created by artificial intelligence to the top job. And I actually think this makes an awful lot of sense. Headteachers are often de facto arbitrators of justice, which feels like a role better suited to a dispassionate, disinterested computer program than a terrifying Austrian lady with a short fuse (Staab). Even if it does make the £10,000 term fees look like a bit of a rip-off.

Suppose they better enjoy it while they can before Sir. Keir abolishes private schools altogether. Tough luck, Tarquin. Viva la revolution. Even if the revolution is being led by a nerdy lawyer with a knighthood. Tres anti-establishment. Fight the power.

WTF WWE.

Football and wrestling. One is a theatrical performance in which musclebound men prance around and occasionally act as if they’ve been assaulted, and the other is wrestling. Game’s gone. Sorry, the absence of Soccer AM has left a footy banter-shaped hole in my heart. But someone out there is doing the Lord Bendtner’s work and keeping football funnies alive. Even if they have called it ‘Soccer’.

These are Soccer Slammers. Bootleg action figures of some of your favourite no-nonsense, ‘four-four-fucking-two’, English managers cosplaying as wrestlers. So now you can see what would happen if Big Sam Allardyce, Harry Redknapp and Steve Bruce were to fight it out in a battle royale equipped with nothing but a pint of wine, a car door, and some questionable murder-mystery novels. What a time to be alive. Just in time for Christmas as well. Make a 35-year-old man baby’s dreams come true this festive period.

It is absolutely criminal leaving Stone Cold Sean Dyche out of this, though. That bloke fears nothing. Except Strepsils and winning.

Rosetta Stoned.

What has the world come to? 21-year-old students are no longer getting off their faces and making bad decisions. Alright, maybe some are. But one of them is using AI to decipher text from Ancient Roman scrolls that were carbonized by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79AD and rendered unreadable for nearly two millennia. Nerd. Hope he gets bullied.

The Herculaneum papyrus scroll is so fragile that it would fall apart if researchers tried to unroll it, but fortunately nobody understands fragility better than Gen Z. Luke Farritor created a program that was able to identify a single word without having to lay a solitary bitten fingernail on the scroll, opening the door to eventually deciphering the rest of the text.

With 95% of material from the classical period having been thought to be lost, technological advancements such as these may grant us access to some long-lost ancient wisdom as well as some less savoury stuff about slavery, gender roles and infanticide (Plato was a wild boy). And that’s probably why somebody was sufficiently chuffed to give Luke $40,000 as a prize for his efforts. Shame there isn’t a chance in hell he’s going to splurge it on anything even remotely exciting. He’ll probably sensibly invest it in property, or something. God, I hate this kid.

On the Run.

Despite being a victimless crime like fraud or fly-tipping, most retail proprietors tend to take a fairly dim view of shoplifting. But some embrace it. Distance, a French running brand, encouraged shoppers to steal from their Parisian flagship store this week… if they could outrun a security guard.

Sounds simple enough. Most security guards are just wannabe hard men with big egos and bigger bellies. How difficult could it be to outrun a glorified parking warden? As it turns out, quite difficult indeed.

This particular security guard was actually undercover French sprinter Meba Mickael Zeze, who can run 100m in under 10 seconds. That’s probably why he was able to catch 74 would-be shoplifters during his shift. Not a bad return, but the article did say that 2 people managed to get away with the merchandise. Doesn’t exactly bode well for Zeze’s chances in the upcoming Olympics if he’s getting outpaced by some random bloke in a beret eating a croissant and smoking a cigarette.

Park the Bus.

When unsure what to get a friend for their birthday, most people end up going for a cop out Amazon voucher redolent of ammonia and corporate greed (that sentence will make more sense in a couple minutes). But when you’re a B-List celebrity/chairman of a Welsh football club, you can buy your more successful, more famous, better-looking mate a park for his special day.

Rob McElhenney has submitted proposals for the “Ryan Rodney Reynolds Memorial Park” in Wrexham to celebrate his co-owner’s 47^th birthday. The cynic in me wants to shit on this. And not just because it’s a park and I identify as a spaniel. But while this could be accused of being self-promoting wanky bullsh*t, it does also mean that the people of Wrexham will have a new park as a result. Say what you like about these gentlemen, they do put their money where their conjoined mouth is.

But I really can’t shake the feeling that I ought to find this whole circus annoying by now, and the fact that I don’t is immensely concerning and makes me fear I’m becoming soft in my old age. Either that or I enjoy the mental image of a 60-year-old bloke from Scunthorpe crying into a pint of John Smith’s and getting progressively more pissed off by these “f*cking Yank wankers coming over here and ruining our beautiful game”. Let it go, Terry – she’s never coming back.

Taking the Piss.

Amazon take more than their fair share of flack. Whether it’s for their alleged union busting, supposedly shoddy working conditions, environmental impact or data privacy concerns, their brand bashers have a veritable cornucopia of pain points to pick from.

One of the common criticisms online focusses on the pressure under which Amazon allegedly place their drivers to meet delivery targets, forcing those drivers to either put pressure on their bladders or piss in bottles. Yikes. Again, allegedly. At this point I would like to proclaim myself to be a proudly paying Prime patron. Don’t point your phallus-shaped spaceship at me, Jeff. I’m on your side.

Now, thanks to Boris Johnson’s long-lost 16^th child, Oobah Butler, you can buy real Amazon driver piss… on Amazon. Meta. Or at least you could. Butler bottled up urine found outside the Amazon fulfilment centre, branded it as ‘Release’, and listed it for sale on the platform. Granted, the product did eventually get removed, but not before it was listed by Amazon as the #1 best seller in the category.

So, should workers soiling themselves be enough to convince you to take your business elsewhere? I suppose it Depends. That joke about adult nappies works better on octogenarian Americans. They’d be pissing themselves.