Mani

Music. Food. Arsenal. Videogames. Skinny jeans. (copy-)Lefty. Kisses without saliva. Non-regular exercise at the gym. He/him/they/them (plz)

[Mani @APAutomatic]

In 2008, I composed the first "A Passion Automatic" track. 7 years later, here it is: https://t.co/3VHT6rJgT0 Thank you for listening.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@CraftyLouWillis @scottjwillis Umm... That moustache is criminal(ly underrated) 👀 @scottjwillis

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@Pabs237 @OptaJoe From the final yesterday? it was 4 minutes added time first half, 4 minutes added time second half, and 5 minutes added time first half. Even with the extra 13 minutes, they're about another 15 minutes off. (Add 5 minutes from the Arg-Eng game, and still a 10 minute gap, imo.)

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@scottjwillis I remember there were reports around us looking into him before we picked up Mosquera last year too.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@LauraKirk12 or just watch the last 15 minutes of West Ham/Arsenal on a loop for the rest of time.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@scottjwillis Because modern football fandom (especially online) is a stunning showcase of the Dunning-Krueger effect in full flow?

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@FootballPak @asfand

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@themagic_tophat The one non-state changing goal was the second goal he scored when he came on against Leicester, so basically... he's changed the game every single time he has scored.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@LauraKirk12 He's the human embodiment of the "'tis but a flesh wound" gag from Monty Python and the holy grail...

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@newflameSSS @dankoogs Or get me Gilberto Mora from Mexico, plz.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@LatteFirm @Arsenal @1886_blog Pronounced kinda like "The Mace Skhaalk" with the throaty Arabic "kh" sound.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@sportingintel or maybe they've spent 116m to turn it into 116?

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@scottjwillis I also seemed to remember a 60m figure or something, but it was described as the value of "the deal", so maybe it was a loan fee plus his wage costs for the year, and then the full transfer value of 40m euros for the permanent signing?

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@Abnoxiuos @Mzr7_ I mean.... small concept indie games with great execution have been doing exceedingly well the past few years. Hades and Balatro winning Game of the Year awards despite being non-AAA kinda highlights that, imo

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@gunnerpunner him or Tielemans. De Bruyne looks tired and disconnected from the rest of the team.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@watmanAFC yeah, Max is a phenom. The mental calm he shows is beyond any 21 year old, let alone a 16 year old.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@watmanAFC and just to add, I'm also a skeptic on the hype around him, but he definitely looked good barring his mistakes. didn't watch the Ecuador match where people were really raving about him, so can't say whether this was a slight blip for him, or the hype really is overstated.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@watmanAFC the highlight reel doesn't capture his overall effect, imo. he had kimmich constantly on toast, and consistently occupied 2-3 players on his own. he let himself down a few times this game with poor touches, but could otherwise have been through on goal on his own.

[Mani @APAutomatic]

@fkhanage he actually is what we thought and hoped Guendouzi would be.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is an absolutely major story and almost no Western media covered it: India's water minister CR Patil said on Tuesday that "it is certain, not a single drop of water will go (to Pakistan) in the coming years."

Patil said that India is "actively working on it" after "directives" from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a reminder, Pakistan's dependence on water from India is close to total: the country is essentially built around the Indus river system, all of whose rivers flow through India before entering Pakistan.

The Indus system irrigates 80% of Pakistan's farmland, generates a third of its electricity, supplies its major cities with drinking water, and sustains the livelihoods of some 240 million people.

So, essentially, no water from India = annihilation of Pakistan as a state.

Pretty damn consequential, all the more given we're talking about 2 nuclear powers here. And all the more because, understandably, Pakistan's formal position is that water diversion would constitute "an act of war" (https://t.co/WLoDpGzc2W).

Unfortunately, Patil's statement isn't just talk: India already set up the legal framework to make this possible. Last year, they unilaterally suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, despite the treaty containing no withdrawal clause.

It used to be the one piece of India-Pakistan relations that worked, and had survived multiple wars and over six decades of hostility. Now India is saying officially that it will "never be restored" (https://t.co/2SnUNevFbX).

The one mitigating factor here is physics: you don't just "turn off" a major Himalayan river system. Diverting rivers of this magnitude means building massive storage and canal infrastructure in Himalayan terrain: projects measured in years.

But India IS ACTUALLY BUILDING that infrastructure: for instance it just approved in May the building of the so-called "Chenab–Beas Link Tunnel," an 8.7km ₹2,352 crore (~$280M) tunnel designed to divert water from the Chenab basin into India's Beas river system. The Chenab is one of the main tributaries of the Indus - and one of the three "western rivers" (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.

Which means that, unfortunately, Patil's "not a single drop of water in the coming years" looks like a roadmap: the infrastructure to strangle Pakistan's water supply is being approved and tendered in plain sight.

This is also a story about selective media coverage and double standards: I'm willing to bet that 99% of people in the West have never heard of any of this.

Now make this thought experiment: imagine China announced it was building infrastructure to cut off every drop of water flowing to India and its ministers proclaimed on television that "not a single drop" would cross the border. It would be wall-to-wall coverage, sanctions packages, and a thousand op-eds about Beijing "weaponizing water."

Heck we don't need to imagine because the simple fact of China merely building a hydropower dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the upstream Brahmaputra) generated exactly the wall-to-wall alarm I'm describing, even though China threatened nothing and even though Indian officials said the threat is a "myth" given the fact that the river gathers most of its volume inside India from monsoon rains (https://t.co/GBgBybBPoE). Malign intent was still presumed from the act of construction, because it's China.

In India's case, the intent couldn't possibly be clearer: it's proclaimed by ministers on the record, and backed by India's actions. But because they're a courted Western partner, what they're doing - arguably the most extreme form of economic warfare imaginable, directed at a nuclear state - largely gets silence.

Src for screenshot: https://t.co/qav4muNkij