u/BothansInDisguise

TL;DR: Nietzsche’s analogy of the whip is about discipline, distance, and resisting what might dominate us. Philosopher Skye Cleary (Columbia University) applies this idea to AI, arguing that we should not let its convenience and constant affirmation make us passive. Instead, we should keep enough distance to question it, challenge it, and preserve the effort involved in forming our own judgments.

Went to Tottenham's stadium for SOAD, and the scale of Newcastle’s problem was difficult to miss. Any new or substantially redeveloped stadium must be designed to become the North East’s principal venue for major tours and international events. Problem now is that we are years if not a decade behind on implementing an equivalent plan or vision for how that happens.

The city has largely fallen away as a regular stadium-concert destination, as regularly gets grumbled on the Newcastle subreddit, and the arena is regarded as a crap venue for concerts. Meanwhile, the Stadium of Light has established itself as the region’s regular stop for acts such as Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Pink, Elton John and Ed Sheeran.

The board can't seriously talk about competing for Premier League titles while operating with infrastructure that produces substantially less than its rivals. Tottenham can have two god-awful seasons and still just spend spend spend when they've got so much headroom for transfers and massive salaries.

TL;DR:
Modern ethics often imagines the ideal person as an independent, rational agent: someone who chooses, acts and takes control of their life. This creates a stark division between active people who do things and passive people to whom things are done. Han-Pile argues that this distinction is too simplistic. Human beings can remain ethically responsive even when their conventional power to act has been radically reduced.

A terminally ill person, for example, may not be able to defeat their illness or determine what happens to their body. Yet they may still exercise agency through how they respond to their condition, receive care, relate to others, sustain hope or come to terms with uncertainty. Their agency is neither completely active nor merely passive. It exists in the space between acting and being acted upon.

Han-Pile describes this as a kind of “medio-passive” agency. It recognises that human life is shaped not only by decisions and achievements, but also by vulnerability, dependence, receptivity and events beyond our control. Rather than treating these conditions as failures of autonomy, she asks whether they can reveal genuine ethical capacities.

The broader argument is that powerlessness should not automatically be understood as meaninglessness. When control disappears, qualities such as trust, hope, love, patience and openness to others may become more important, not less. Ethics is therefore not only about what we can accomplish, but also about how we inhabit situations that cannot be fixed.

Watching that second half, what impressed me most was not just that we won with 10 men (watched from behind the sofa for most of that second half) but how calm Tuchel stayed after Quansah's red card.

There was no panic, he'd didn't rip everything up or simply tell everyone to sit on the edge of the box. He reshaped the team, made sensible substitutions and England still looked organised despite the pressure.

It felt like every change had a clear purpose. The players knew exactly what they were supposed to do and, even when Mexico threw everything at us, we never completely lost our shape.

We have criticised England managers for years for freezing in big moments or making emotional decisions but Tuchel looked (relatively) composed, trusted his plan and the players responded.

Just a post-match ramble, and not overly worried at this stage of the tournament, but watching how much we were labouring to unpick that defence made me think of Howe’s difficulties this season (though arguably that was a bit of tactical inflexibility) with the high press tactics being found out.
High press only works if the other team tries to pass the ball out from the back. When teams sit deep against us, the press has proven to be useless. It was the exact same for England against Ghana. Ghana sat back in a 5-4-1, and England seemed to have no idea how to break them down, leading to 90 minutes of boring, sideways passing.
For Gordon, it felt like the worst aspects of his game from our season were on full display:

~ Lacked the physicality to go man-to-man against their backline.

~
Kept trying to cut inside and ran out of tricks, constantly turning into traffic.

~ Lost possession far too easily, and then out of frustration, ends up chasing after it with a clumsy challenge.

Newcastle gets killed on the break because when we push everyone forward, our midfield gets bypassed by one long ball or stray pass. Ghana didn't pose too many challenges, but we were lucky to get away with those big moments and not conceding.

As I say, I’m not so worried about it *yet* but surely something Tuchel has to think about.