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Tuesday, Aug 04, 2026 - 19:19 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Eye For An AI (Fine Arts)


What would the real Monet have thought of this?
[N.B. That said, he did supposedly paint some "slop" for money too.]
(Source: i.redd.it)


Several months ago, a delightful troll posted an image claimed to be AI-generated in the style of epochal French Impressionist Claude Monet on X, and requested other users to roast it. The offer was duly taken up by hundreds of eager commentators, who pointed out a general lack of coherence and an absence of emotion and tranquility, with one critic pronouncing that it "looks exactly like somebody trying to replicate the style and achieving like 20% of it" - with these being the kinder posts.

The twist is that the image was of a real Monet from 1915, and possibly worth upwards of US$60 million, for those interested in that sort of thing.

This prank is of course just the latest in a long string of episodes demonstrating discrimination against AI agents, though generative AI art has definitely come a long way since our brief coverage of DeepDaze in 2021, which was contrasted against Midjourney in early 2022. The scene has come a very long way since these early examples, though it should be noted that (an admittedly human-refined) AI artwork by Midjourney had already won a Colorado fine arts competition back then. One daresays high-quality image generation to have become fully commoditized since (with support from the increasing volume of GPT Image 2 illustrations feared on this blog)



But all ASEAN what, kawan kawan?
(Original source: channelnewsasia.com)


As another example of the penetration of AI imagery to the general populace, there has been a proliferation of AI-generated graphics in the run-up to our upcoming National Day, the most prominent gaffe of which was perhaps the AI model failing to render the crescent moon and stars on the reverse of the Singapore national flag on one banner, and thus transforming it into the Indonesian bicolour (with the crescent moon apparently representing Islam, and the stars inspired by the People's Republic of China). As kind of expected, the relevant Community Club HR attributed the mistake to their senior citizen volunteers rather than issue a simple apology for the oversight, which brought netizen queries as to whether the head honchos would claim the credit were the banner to be praised for its aesthetics.

A second mistake would have the crescent moon and stars present on the reverse, but now facing the same (wrong) way, though this appears to be a botched Photoshop job after the first error broke. That said, this may reflect a certain not-irrational basis of reasoning behind the AI model used for the above - how would an AI know what is supposed to be on the other side of an object, in this case a flag?

One could not help but pose the question to the latest and greatest GPT Image 2, which successfully generated the correct reverse image despite my sloppy grammar - so maybe the lesson here is to use the newest AI models where available...



Please pay for GPT subscription hor
[Embiggen!]
[N.B. Not all flags welcome for display here, note.]
(Source: GPT Image 2)


Switching from image-based art to music, there has been a parallel trend with AI-generated songs being soundly thrashed on Reddit, if with a few more-honest and self-aware contributors willing to admit that they can no longer be certain of discerning such AI tunes from human ones. This too goes a long way back, at least to the late professor of music David Cope's EMI program from 2001, which was later developed (and anthropomorphized) into Emily Howell, a self-learning computer program that was able to incorporate textual feedback into refining its work. One of Emily's compositions would be praised by a visiting professor as "one of the most beautiful pieces he had heard in a long time" back around 2009, only for the same worthy to deride it as having "no guts, no emotion, no soul" once he learnt that it was by an AI - which he had known all along, obviously!

AI in music has improved greatly since then too, with entire artistes - inclusive of lyrics, tunes, album art and even the persona - capable of being generated. Synthetic anime-style idols have been around for awhile, from Gorillaz on MTV to Hatsune Miku and now KPop Demon Hunters, though these did have actual human singers providing the vocals. This may not be the case for the latest crop of (AI?) stars, however, with serious doubts as to whether Spotify Top 50 jazz singer Sienna Rose is an AI bot or not - not least due to her prodigious output of eight albums in a year. The human competition isn't exactly making it very hard either, given how popular song lyrics have apparently been getting simpler and more repetitive, if with some concerns over the sampling methodology of the study.



Guy clearly spent decades in the prairie to cultivate this country soul
[N.B. Nah just kidding, it's 100% AI.]


Sure the lyrics might not exactly be earth-shattering, but the uncomfortable realisation is increasingly that AI-generated music is now more than "good enough", in the sense of being at least as good as the median (human) offering on streaming platforms. The European Union's implementation of AI transparency laws requiring chatbots to identify themselves - coming alongside China's latest ban on them posing as romantic partners and relatives - should then be recognized as the final word on whether the Turing test has been passed; it has, and not only that, it is simply the new normal.


[To be continued...]



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Thursday, July 30, 2026 - 19:42 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Head For An Eye


Closing the trade balance through modern economics
(Source: nypost.com)


As projected here in late June, the supposed sixty-day ceasefire under the Islamabad Memorandum barely lasted a fortnight, with it practically being over some time before GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP declared so on the eighth of July. Though the proximate cause was Iran attacking vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz without their permission - including at least one Singapore-flagged cargo ship - the ill-fated MoU had nearly all its fourteen terms at least bent before that. Beginning with the much-disparaged US$300 billion reconstruction fund (possibly the most obvious troll that TRUMP has made as POTUS), the Gulf states would disavow any knowledge just a few days later, with Rubio confirming that no discussion had been done on the topic. Vice-President Vance would then publicly admit that the MoU was simply a tactical break to refill oil (and maybe other) reserves, about which we can honestly evince little surprise.

This would have all of Iran's state bodies declare a week or so back that the U.S. could not be trusted - a sentiment surely largely reciprocated in Washington - and on this, both parties may well be right. The new (and yet unseen) Iranian supreme leader would further declare TRUMP's signature "utterly worthless", though seeing as it will be appearing on American banknotes, may be a considerate move towards calibration.


Look... what else did you expect??
(Source: GPT Image 2)


With the collapse of the ceasefire, much of the action has returned to controlling the Hormuz as covered in their Doha talks, with Iran adamant on their right to effectively charge a toll, if possibly under some other name or contrivance. The U.S. side has proposed several counteroffers while maintaining the illegality of tolls on international waterways, if with TRUMP reviving some old trolling with his suggestion of a 20% toll by America. There were also reports of a US$6 billion bribe for Iran to relinquish control, but one sort of understands why Iran may be wary of such unenforceable promises.

Oman, caught between the two powers, has apparently been swinging from one side to the other trying to play honest broker, seemingly alternating between the U.S. position of no tolls, and the Iranian demand of some fees one way or the other. Their latest Gulf state-backed plan appears to be for "voluntary fees" modelled after the Strait of Malacca setup alongside a two-corridor navigation scheme, which seems an attempt at saving some face for both sides (and Malacca-adjacent countries who had stuck their neck out); ideally, ships would be able to (possibly) pay some fees - officially unrelated to the act of transiting - to Iran, with America still being able to claim that they had prevented any (mandatory) fees from being imposed.

Unfortunately, this arrangement appears unlikely to work, beginning with the realisation that it would necessarily formally acknowledge an Iranian-controlled channel. Once this is codified, there is little to prevent Iran or their proxies from (literally) undermining the Omani half, which would leave vessels with no choice but to use the now-recognized Irani corridor. From there, it is frankly not that large a leap to compulsory voluntary fees, as some European nations have figured, given that the strait is not going anywhere fast.


And we have a standoff
[N.B. Still waiting patiently for Europe to get involved...]
(Source: GPT Image 2)


As it stands, America has reinstated their naval blockade of Iran from mid-July, after media linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps argued that they had no choice but to officially go nuclear; more-concrete preemptive assaults on U.S. bases in Jordan have had the American God of War pledging to "beat the f**king shit out of them", which actually comes as something of a relief given their Secretary of State's assertion of taking "a head for an eye", which recall had been foretold as TRUMP's true message sent by his Liberation Day tariffs early last year: "I am The King, My Word is Law, Those That Deny It Stand Against Me, And I Will Have Their Heads".

Dear sirs, how many heads would it take, before you would concur on this point?

Thankfully, GEOTUS's Great Fauchard of Swift Decapitation +2 has not had its smile visited on any major unfortunates since the removals of Maduro and Khamenei some months back, with Cuba (newly accused of being "The Capital of 21st Century Communism" by his Department of State, in a perhaps unintended backhanded slight towards Beijing) possibly to undergo what would amount to a mostly-peaceful handover, following a sustained blockade that has seen persistent blackouts and economic paralysis, reportedly resulting in rare riots against local Communist Party offices. The grandson of former President Castro is reportedly ready to negotiate, and one can again only hope for an acceptable compromise yielding minimal additional suffering for the civilians.



Duly noted.
(Source: straitstimes.com)


Some collateral damage may however have been sustained in another dimension, as our Foreign Minister has just raised to Rubio at an ASEAN meet in Manila. This involves the latest iteration of Amerika's Imperial Tariffs, as now imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This replaces the temporary 10% global tariffs under Section 122, with new tariffs of either 10% or 12.5%, against sixty countries ostensibly due to using forced labour - Singapore included.

On this, let us revisit the framework and explanations applied to the original tariffs from last May. Recall, it was claimed that the specific numbers did not matter, since the primary objective of the edict was to underline America's supremacy towards preserving the current world order, by demanding a symbolic bending of the knee. That intent appears to remain, from how Canada pointedly got whacked with an additional 50% tariff, after being among the very few (including China) to attempt retaliation (i.e. not fully bend the knee) previously... which has not saved them from a 73.5% pea starch tariff courtesy of China either. Offhand, the signal from both bloc leaders has the air of "sure anyone is free to be 'sovereign' and 'independent'... but enjoy being on your own then, buddy!"

The sorting into teams thereof should take some time to play out, so consider next the meaning of the tariff bands, with a distinction between 15% and 20% suggested last July. The tiers have been refined to 10% versus 12.5% doubtless after careful consideration by the American powerbrokers, and again it might be recognized that there is probably an insignificant difference between those two figures, in an economic sense. Indeed, the official story by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is that the 10% figure is for those that have made commitments to address forced labour, and the 12.5% figure is for those that have not; however, given that the definition of forced labour appears broad enough that there is essentially no way to avoid it as defined - as comprehensively argued by our Ministry of Trade and Industry - one figures that not the real intent here.



It was always going to come to this...
[N.B. Or not, given that TRUMP has just banned China's humanoid robots.]
(Source: Google Nano Banana)


Well, given that the analysis provided here from last year did appear to mostly-accurately describe the tariff gambit, please do allow for another humble interpretation, following consideration of the tier distribution as assigned:



Don't shoot the messenger please
[N.B. Itself a throwback to the very first chapter.]
(Source: kengan-manga.com)




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Tuesday, July 28, 2026 - 20:47 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

High For An AI


Elon AI towards AdonAI indeed
(Source: x.com)


There's some plenty of catching up to do on AI, despite the passage of barely a month since the last post on the subject. Beginning with SpaceX, there has been persistent doubt over the feasibility of their flagship Starmind project to run Grok (and other models) from satellites in space, with the primary technical challenge held to be cooling. In short, while space being very cold makes it seem like it would be the perfect place to plonk heat-generating graphic processing units (GPUs), the fact that it is also a vacuum means that radiation is the only way by which the heat can be dissipated. A rough estimate has a single 150kW server rack (72 GPUs) require a tennis court-sized radiator. Then, to replicate say Singapore's capacity (about 1.4 gigawatts), this would take some 10000 satellites.

Well, not a problem - Musk wants one million satellites.

This actually doesn't seem altogether fantastic - each Starship launch is planned to contain about fifty of these AI1 satellites, which gives an amortized launch cost of just one to two million bucks per satellite, perhaps less than a layman would have imagined - and also less than the projected per-satellite cost of US$5 million (US$3 million for the GPUs). SpaceX's case for economic viability then arises from their (optimistic?) projections of reduced launch costs as their Starship tech matures, starting with a price of close to US$5000 per kg of load currently without spacecraft reuse, to under US$50 per kg eventually in a decade or so.

If all this pans out, it is estimated that an AI SERVER IN SPACE would cost just a third of a terrestrial installation, which has its own hefty expenses - land acquisition, infrastructure rollouts, and buying off angry residents, to begin with. These costs are by the way coincidentally already rising, what with an AI Data Center National Day of Protest drawing large crowds on July 18, aided by valid community concerns over power and water usage, especially in more-rural areas. That said, it might be noted that space-based satellites have their own environmental issues on launch and re-entry, while dodging objections on the social costs of proliferating AI technology itself, foremost among them probably the loss in jobs. Oracle's cutting 21000 employees to facilitate AI deployment hasn't done its popularity much good, but the real shocker may be the "iron rice bowl" of GovTech retrenching too.



Team Blue-Team Red AI Divide
(Source: hai.stanford.edu)


The eventual profitability of SpaceX would however still have to rely on what they and their (Team Blue) partners can charge for the services run on their servers, and for this, a shift in focus to Team Red China is required. Countering America's now 24-entity Pax Silica as reported on last December, China has just unveiled a 29-nation Pax Sinica, more officially known as WAICO, at their just-concluded World AI Conference summit in Shanghai. While this has been described as an open challenge to America, a de-facto geopolitical reorganization and perhaps inevitably a New (AI-based) Cold War, there are conciliatory blandishments from both sides, with President Xi pushing international cooperation while not being able to resist referencing "historical injustices".

China's World AI Conference had also seen them highlight Kimi K3, a new homegrown large language model (LLM) touted as being comparable to state-of-the-art Team Blue (but mostly American) commercial offerings - particularly Anthropic's Claude Fable 5, which had been briefly restricted to U.S. nationals only in June due to its supposedly dangerous capabilities. This concern may have become moot with Kimi K3 indeed performing comparably to Fable 5 on a broad range of tasks, while being far cheaper*. That would be one thing, but the truly outrageous announcement - for Team Blue at least - is that the Kimi K3 model has been released free of charge under a modified MIT license, which to begin with is awkward for America considering their self-promotion on "openness" and "liberty"... while ringfencing their own (expensive) technology.

Possibly far more concerning than any ideological chagrin, however, is what such top-quality free LLM models imply for the valuation of American technology firms such as Anthropic, OpenAI and of course SpaceX. Kimi K3 has already wiped hundreds of billions off the likely-inflated expected valuations of the former two, and perhaps quite a bit from South Korea's KOSPI index too - though that is probably more from China's Changxin Memory Technologies announcing their own lithography breakthrough as presaged here in June, with the Dutch ASML also put on notice as to their future. Even Elon Musk has not escaped the rout, with his net worth back down to merely US$700 billion following plunges in SpaceX and Tesla share prices; for all that, he hasn't gotten anywhere near the credit due for being America's money multiplier either...



Oh no?
(Source: yahoo.com)


The narrative has thus shifted to China having erased America's supposed "six to nine month" lead in (generative) AI (that I personally had never put too much stock in, partly from how Team Blue firms don't typically benchmark** against China's open source models), and Anthropic's response has been to accuse Moonshine Moonshot AI of distilling the necessary data from their Claude model, moreover by running nearly 30 million conversations using some 25000 bot accounts. China has apparently rejected such claims as misguided, all the more as Anthropic had used millions of pirated books to develop Claude in the first place. SpaceX's Cursor is seemingly ripping off Kimi in turn with their Composer model, and the U.S. administration is expectedly looking into sanctioning the hot new Chinese tech.

Now on end-user application, while Stanford's HAI study above has America and China on opposite ends of the favourability spectrum for AI (with China a lot more positive on AI advances), it has to be said that whether people purport to like it or hate it, they are definitely using it. This is maybe nowhere as prevalent as in academia, with a history professor at an American state university discovering that 32 of his 35 students had simply copied his assignment question - hidden white text included - to an LLM, and submitted the answer (that included prompted nonsense about Madagascar) without bothering to proofread it.

This is hardly an isolated incident either, with an economics professor at Brown having a third of his class drop out after insisting on an in-person final exam following inexplicably-high scores on the take-home midterm. India has been more old-school with their exam leaks on their unfortunately-named NEET exams that has seen their Education Minister resign*** following sustained protests, and while there has been some ribbing from China about how their gaokao had been conducted smoothly, this was only after a crackdown on smart glasses, and did not cover the ample food bribes to Grand Teacher Confucius. Well, now you know why he is always smiling...


[*Returning to data centers, China's solution to the cooling problem has been to just plonk the servers underwater into the sea, while powering them using wind turbines. This has the advantage of the servers being more accessible for repairs and updates, and brings to mind the Soviet pencil anecdote.]

[**Unlike The Economist, in their analysis of LLM worldviews.]

[***It is a tough time to be a minister indeed, with our Culture Minister (Acting) getting roundly panned for joking about ministers not having time to watch movies, which was pointed out as within his job scope; he did later find time to catch one of the 100 extra screenings of Dear You. Our former Muslim Affairs minister did not fare as well, as he had to resign after diligently advancing a Muslim affair, although he did get a tribute on television out of it. One just can't win these days!]



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Monday, July 20, 2026 - 19:28 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

It Was Real To Me Darn It


There was a Bronze Age; have you heard of a Gold Age?
(Source: r/ThreeLions)


Spain have fittingly won the 2026 World Cup with a decisive 1-0 in extra time over defending champions and top haramball proponents Argentina, and while it may seem strange to apply the "decisive" appellation to a single-goal victory, Spain having twenty shots (twelve on target) to Argentina's zero should lend the claim some support. There was no shortage of entertainment before, in between and after the match itself too, beginning with a failed attempt by Ethan Hunt to loot the trophy by distracting the audience with a rambling speech, followed by Bieber and company putting up the first World Cup half-time show, and concluding with Argentina and Spain starting a bonus mixed martial arts brawl as an encore for GEOTUS - who stuck around after presenting the victors their spoils.

As a spectacle, however, the game paled in comparison to the bronze medal match, that saw England oust France 6-4 in a ten-goal circus... and somehow coming close to bottling a four-goal lead. Bukayo Saka's hat-trick was richly deserved, and may support the previous post's suggestion to sub him on against Argentina - and also the statement from a little further back that perhaps they were the best football team... had the management not messed it all up. Granted, it's hard to extrapolate from a no-stakes game to the actual final, and to be honest Spain would still have to be the clear favourites, but England may well have put up stiffer resistance than the Argies.

And for the epilogue to the Balogun saga, despite the European UEFA supposedly seeking an alternative to replace Infantino in the immediate aftermath (alongside the UEFA president boycotting the final), the sitting FIFA president has already secured the endorsement of over 200 of the 211 member nations, making his re-election something of a foregone conclusion. Calls for sanctions by the International Olympic Committee have also fallen through, and were ironic anyway given that the IOC may well be the usual frontrunners for "most corrupted sporting association" to begin with - with Infantino being a recent former UEFA secretary-general too. At some point, one has to figure being on the take as simply part of the job description, and perhaps they should just formalize the "highest bidder wins" process to maximize transparency.



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Saturday, July 18, 2026 - 21:27 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Civilization By Proxy


Colonial victims seeking redress on the world stage
(Source: straitstimes.com)


Only the World Cup finals and third place match remain, and the former will feature the foretold (and maximally lucrative) baton pass between Messi and Yamal, this coming after England bottled it once again despite arguably outplaying Argentina for an hour, and taking the lead. While none of this is particularly new to England fans (including yours truly, if along with Brazil), the manner in which it happened was painful; Tuchel (the England manager) replaced some starters with defenders after going in front, which quite predictably was an open invitation for Argentina to attack them, moreover while led by perhaps the best offensive player of all time. The most damning indictment of this parking-the-bus strategy was probably that England managed just 12% of the possession between their scoring and Argentina's 85th minute equalizer, after which the Argies won it in stoppage time to spare them further misery.

This had irate England supporters and pundits deride Tuchel as a "German spy" after the perceived cowardly botch, with world-renowned football expert TRUMP further observing that forcing Harry Kane on defence was "a little unusual" - about which GEOTUS is basically correct as usual. Tuchel would of course reject the criticisms (perhaps missing TRUMP's self-humility in making his statement) with some support from Klopp, insisting that his tactics were sound and that it was easy to condemn his decisions after the fact (and in his defence, it was not utterly impossible for England to have held out for about twelve more minutes - just not very likely), to which not a few fans retorted that they had complained during the game.

To give some additional background context, part of the reason why England fans had been against going defensive after taking the lead, was that this was what previous boss Southgate had been known for, which brought the team no major successes. Additionally, England had been causing the Argentine defence problems, and from how Argentina had barely won 3-2 against both Cabo Verde and Egypt - ranked 64th and 24th respectively, with Egypt nearly going three up - it just made sense to put the likes of Saka and Rashford on to keep Argentina honest in leaving some defenders back. As it was, the manager piled on his own defenders instead, before later claiming that ball possession was not in the English footballing DNA, unlike for the Argentines (or Spanish, or Brazilians)



Malvinas or Falklands?
(Source: bbc.com)


The spice would continue after the final whistle, as the triumphant Argentina side then unfurled a "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" banner proclaiming the contested Falkland Islands as belonging to them. The islands have remained a sore point between the countries ever since a brief war in 1982, that ended with the United Kingdom retaining the territory. Argentina's claim has been getting increasing recognition in recent years, however, with the European Union meaningfully endorsing Argentina's naming in 2023, and China officially backing their sovereignty in the same year, possibly with an eye on their own analogous situation with an island off their coast.

The display had a British minister call for a FIFA investigation given that it appeared to violate the rule against political messaging (never evenly enforced, by the way), only for the White House to stand up for principles in invoking the Argentine players' First Amendment rights to free speech - which are being increasingly curtailed in Europe, what with a proposed Digital Services Act potentially projecting control of online content onto Americans as well. This has to be especially concerning from how France and Germany are seemingly trying to ban conservative parties after they have become by all accounts the most popular options, which one hopes can be recognized as an obviously undemocratic power-grab. As Elon Musk has rightly noted, Le Pen is probably France's last hope.

To expand on the above, the main driving force behind parties such as the AfD and National Rally has been their opposition to (current levels of) immigration, and to be frank there is absolutely nothing wrong with that - a country's immigration rate should be part of the political discourse. France for example receives about three hundred thousand new immigrants annually, and there is really no call to slander those who would desire a lower number as "xenophobic" or "far-right", no more than it would be right for somebody wanting a higher rate to label those happy with the status quo thus.

The same goes for supporting measures against illegal immigration, because there is no country that allows unrestricted immigration to the best of my knowledge, and for good reason. Then, if there is some limit as to immigration, it merely follows that this limit should be enforced. Note that the point is not to be cruel - if a person wilfully overstays his visa, then he should just be informed of the law and told not to do it again (with biometrics taken for enforcement, as they would have been), and given a ticket to their original country... because otherwise what?



China's answer to the White House MMA event
[N.B. More technical discussion on A.I. and robotics advances soon!]
[N.N.B. Some way yet to Real Steel though.]


That said, for all its intensity, the football game did end with all concerned safe and sound, which is more than can be said for the many unhappy conflicts ongoing globally right now. This has led me to wonder whether they could have been resolved in a more civilized manner, say by duels or even arranged set-piece battles, to minimize unnecessary suffering and collateral damage. One of my favourite fictional examples would be the Battle of Tukayyid in the BattleTech verse, that had Terran (i.e. Earth's) defenders contract for a proxy war on a minor outlying planet, against the returning Clan exiles. But then again, maybe that is what we are already seeing with Ukraine and Iran...



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Tuesday, July 07, 2026 - 19:37 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

I Have A Card Too


Pulling a card from one's sleeves
(Original source: r/usmnt)


With the Round of Sixteen of the ongoing World Cup almost over, the biggest controversy thus far - excepting perhaps the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announcing the possible development of nuclear weapons after their team's exit - would have to be Folarin Balogun getting his red card rescinded, allowing him to play against Belgium. Such a reversal for a key player would have been headline-worthy by itself, but what really poured fuel on the fire was the revelation that it had come after personal Imperial intervention by GEOTUS, who had pressed FIFA president Gianni Infantino to perform a review. Being a FIFA Peace Prize winner does render some clout!

TRUMP's standing up for a minority birthright citizen would not be received well by netizens, UEFA and Belgium in particular, with the Belgian Football Association lodging an official appeal, and threatening to raise the matter to a FIFA tribunal if they lost. UEFA would moreover release a statement describing the FIFA decision as "cross(ing) a red line" and entirely unjustifiable. The affair would finally be settled on the pitch, with Belgium winning by three clear goals after some atrocious play from the hosts - and then paying tribute to POTUS with his dance. The U.S. team was by the way ranked sixteenth, so an exit at this stage is just about what could be expected anyhow.

That done with (or at least until the CIA discovers that Belgium is pursuing nuke development), we might examine the whole saga in slightly greater detail. Firstly, was Balogun's foul a red card? From the replay, he did catch the opposition player on the back of his calf before landing his foot on his ankle, though it did look unintentional with comparable fouls not punished with straight reds, so one figures it at least debatable.



Guy didn't get his foot out of the way fast enough
[N.B. In case you were wondering why they're both wearing pink boots, it's apparently due to consumer trend forecaster WGSN predicting Electric Fuchsia (pink) and Transformative Teal as the top colours of 2026.]
(Source: aljazeera.com)


Next, did FIFA in fact break its own rules, as accused by UEFA? UEFA's argument is that "...a minimum automatic suspension of one match following a red card is not a discretionary option", with the Belgian FA indeed citing Article 10.5 of the World Cup Competition Regulations towards an automatic suspension. Against this, FIFA cited Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, which does clearly state that "...the judicial body may decide to fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure", in dismissing Belgium's appeal. Given this, going by the letter of the law, FIFA does seem entirely entitled to suspend Balogun's punishment at their discretion.

Here, it might be pointed out - as done by some longtime footy fans, and later FIFA themselves - that UEFA are hardly strangers to overturning red cards either, and that they had conveniently kept quiet when FIFA let Cristiano Ronaldo (a European player) off the hook last year, using Article 27 too. As such, the UEFA-FIFA feud might best be described as "a corruptible force meets a morally bankrupt object" for mutual hypocrisy. Moving forward, the French FA is now appealing Olise's yellow card, and the English FA is considering that for Quansah's red. Well, it remains to be seen if President Macron and King Charles love their respective nations, as much as TRUMP did his...

On a personal note, I have only managed to catch a single-digit number of matches in part due to the inoportune timings, some of which (e.g. Portugal vs. Spain, despite its pedigree on paper) I would have happily skipped had but I known. One does get the sense that the gap between teams is narrowing in general, for example with Cape Verde (population: just over half a million) giving probably-second-favourites Argentina a huge scare, before losing 2-3 in extra time. There just aren't many real surprises and secret weapons any longer, what with analytics being conducted on about any league worth its salt.

And a last word on Ronaldinho - he's apparently just signed with Italian third division club Ravenna FC. Stunt or not, it will only add to his legend; maybe other stars have won World Cups, Champions Leagues, Confederations Cups, Copa Américas, Copa Libertadores and Ballon d'Ors (though not all of them), but have they also won a sixteen-kilogram pig in a Paraguayan prison tourney, after trying to enter with a fake passport?



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Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 17:28 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

But There Was Yet Some Joy

The better-known angle


While there has been the usual doubt over whether the stunt was staged, I personally have no doubt that Ronaldinho is able to do that, from past ample live evidence; the main question would be whether it took more than one take (now, about Stephen Curry's 105 three-pointers in a row... I dunno, man). While Ronaldinho may not be the best footballer of all time (and generally not even in the top ten in polls), or anywhere near the most effective (which should be heavily team-dependant), he might well be my favourite player (to watch). There may be more dazzling dribblers, more clinical finishers, more effective passers and cleaner strikers of the ball, but perhaps none that played with that sheer spontaneity and pleasure, at his level.

And at the end, isn't that what's important, for a game?

Change is the only constant
Nothing exists, all is becoming
Like tea warmed, sipped, welcomed




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