iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

A long-overdue update to my England goalscorers chart for 20+ goals: Harry Kane is now in the 90s. Every goal plotted against the opponent’s kick-off Elo, plus a breakdown of goals against sides rated above 1,900. Saka, Rashford and Beckham added too.

England’s 27 selected goalscorers, ordered from most to fewest goals, showing opponent Elo at kick-off through 6 October 2026. Players appear vertically, from Harry Kane (91 goals) to David Beckham (17). Horizontal boxes show medians and the middle 50% of ratings; red crosses represent individual goals. Three goals without verified Elo are excluded from the distributions but included in player totals.

Horizontal stacked bars showing each player’s total England goals, in descending order. Red segments represent goals against opponents above 1,900 Elo, light grey represents opponents at or below 1,900, and dark grey indicates unavailable ratings. Labels show the above-1,900 count and percentage of total goals. Kane leads with 19 of 91 goals (20.9%). Overall, 156 of 823 goals were against opponents above 1,900.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Lost in the moment of abandon therunoutgrooves.substack.com/p/lost-in-th... Come and read about 'Shine Like Stars', but stay for the Screamdelica-inspired graph.

Line chart on a red background styled after the Screamadelica album cover. Eleven tracks in running order along the x-axis, from 'Movin' on Up' to 'Shine Like Stars'. Three data series on a 0 to 1 scale: valence (mood) in yellow, energy in blue, volume in black, indexed from the album's quietest track to its loudest. Individual tracks are dots; heavy lines show a centred three-track average. The valence line rises to a peak at 'Loaded', annotated as the album's joy summit, then falls steadily for the rest of the record. Energy and volume hold up longer and spike at the penultimate track, 'Higher Than the Sun (Dub Symphony)', annotated as the loudest track and almost joyless, before all three fall to the closer, 'Shine Like Stars', which sits low on every measure. Title: The joy ebbs out of Screamadelica before the volume and energy do. Source: Spotify, The Run Out Grooves

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Imagine the suggestion of retrospectively changing the rules on something.

Tice says government trying to 'retrospectively change rules' after Reform's £72m in donations

Reform plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Yes, it's the children who are wrong.

Are teenagers growing dimmer?
The latest global school tests reveal shocking new declines - The Economist.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

0.65 dB quieter before 1983. 1.54 dB in the cassette-and-CD years. Above a decibel through download and streaming. Each format gave artists a reason to abandon the ending. Each time they doubled down.

The closing track is quieter than the rest of its album in every era, and the gap widens rather than closes after the CD arrives. Before the CD it stands at 0.65 decibels; in the CD-peak years of 1983 to 1989 it more than doubles to 1.54, and it holds above one decibel through the streaming era. The physical constraint that first encouraged a quiet ending disappeared with vinyl; the habit did not.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Five years of writing about the last song on albums, and today a peer-reviewed article based on the data is free to read: The cover feature in this month's Significance, the RSS magazine. 2,284 albums, 1953 to 2026 and one question: "Are closing tracks actually different?"

Cover of Significance magazine, September 2026 (volume 23, Issue 5). The masthead features the title "SIGNIFICANCE" in bold red text against a beige background. The left side includes logos for the Royal Statistical Society, the American Statistical Association, and the Statistical Society of Australia.

The central illustration depicts a stylized figure in a blue top holding a large red vinyl record with a white and blue centre directly in front of their face, completely obscuring it. In the bottom right corner, text in red capital letters reads "VINYL ANALYSIS" above the subtitle "WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH ALBUM CLOSING TRACKS?".

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

GW2 in the bag, not much shuffling as yet. Hull are up five expected points on results and half a point on transfer activity.

Team MedianPts
Arsenal 82
Manchester City 79
Chelsea 69
Liverpool 66
Brentford 63
Brighton 59
Manchester United 59
Newcastle United 58
Bournemouth 55
Leeds United 54
Crystal Palace 50
Nottingham Forest 48
Aston Villa 47
Everton 45
Tottenham Hotspur 45
Fulham 42
Sunderland 39
Coventry City 34
Ipswich Town 32
Hull City 28

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

First chapter of @jonnelledge.bsky.social latest has given my a Pixies earworm and later a Tony Hayers brain worm.

Chapter 1: 31 inventions that built our world.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Thinking about my ex-colleague who persuaded National Express to renumber the 701 to Woking a few years ago.

A notice which displays the details of the Woking 925 bus from Heathrow - a deliberate Dolly Parton reference she asked for.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Some expansion to the suite on the models this year - now including EFL. GW0 projections

Team MeanPts
Wolverhampton 85.39717
Burnley 85.15719
West Ham United 84.41518
Southampton 78.2058
Middlesbrough 77.14255
Millwall 69.2872
Sheffield United 69.10837
Norwich City 67.47884
Derby County 63.23851
Bristol City 62.84584
Birmingham City 61.93944
Wrexham 61.417
Swansea City 61.29295
West Bromwich Albion 60.56143
Watford 57.56164
Stoke City 57.02702
Preston North End 55.54769
Queens Park Rangers 54.88845
Blackburn Rovers 51.9435
Lincoln City 50.9193
Cardiff City 50.15551
Charlton Athletic 49.37876
Bolton Wanderers 49.15933
Portsmouth 48.20775

Team MeanPts
Leicester City 74.97954
Oxford United 72.33438
Stockport County 72.00746
Wycombe Wanderers 71.47899
Plymouth Argyle 71.07728
Luton Town 70.57354
Sheffield Wednesday 68.94402
Huddersfield Town 67.72688
Reading 65.88028
Mansfield Town 64.07983
Bradford City 63.1209
Leyton Orient 62.67759
Stevenage 61.97697
Peterborough United 60.72634
Blackpool 60.36459
Barnsley 60.1825
Notts County 58.2919
MK Dons 58.33115
Wigan Athletic 58.06376
Bromley 57.76077
Cambridge United 54.94435
Doncaster Rovers 52.83842
Burton Albion 52.2241
AFC Wimbledon 51.80485

Team MeanPts
Chesterfield 74.09206
Grimsby Town 71.78517
Barnet 71.60408
York City 71.4701
Swindon Town 69.48479
Oldham Athletic 69.0786
Salford City 68.82293
Colchester United 68.02609
Walsall 67.56241
Crewe Alexandra 66.92979
Port Vale 66.9521
Exeter City 65.15539
Rotherham United 65.13104
Rochdale 64.71685
Northampton Town 64.60717
Fleetwood Town 62.90075
Bristol Rovers 59.92379
Gillingham 55.25852
Accrington Stanley 55.14153
Crawley Town 53.99847
Cheltenham Town 52.19488
Shrewsbury Town 51.75254
Tranmere Rovers 50.07707
Newport County 46.8046

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

A brilliant article that tells you when the ban started and that there's no announcement on an end date.

Thames Water announces when 2026 hosepipe ban will end

(No they don't)

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Already today I've seen this, and on LinkedIn, one pensioner was complaining it was no help to him because he already has a free bus pass, and another was complaining he doesn't get a free bus pass despite having "paid in all his working life" - he lives in Spain.

'Bus fare cut is no good for those who drive,' says Durham man

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

(You can write the submarine letters first)

Simpson Tide (3G04, S9E19, Mar-98) - It's my first day.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Hang it in The National Gallery in London.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The player who was the joint top scorer before the 3rd/4th play-off in 1994 failed to get one. At least this game is on TV, and I don't have to lean on a score update from Matthew Kelly on Stars In Their Eyes.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Thoughts based on what I've read and mood music. Ed Miliband to get Foreign. Lucy Powell as DPM to get a big devolution brief and big office at No 10 North. Louise Haigh to be Minister of pulling levers. Much bigger role for the office of the PM.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Two very different perspectives of match momentum there.

BBC match momentum - a few phases England dominated, mainly level.

FIFA match momentum suggests Mexico should have been three up by the 35th min.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Angine de Poitrine have let themselves go.

Join Sophia Money-Coutts and Cleo Watson for The Poshcast if you are a maniac.

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Mitchell Stirling @mitchellst.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Model update. One and a bit rounds of the World Cup gone, 32 games fed in. Here's my model's single most likely knockout bracket, every tie showing each side's chance of winning that match. Spain edge it on the modal path. France, Argentina, and England all looking strong. The semis are coin-flips.

Tournament bracket showing the most likely 2026 World Cup knockout path after 32 group games. Full round-of-32 to final, both halves funnelling to the centre. Each tie shows both teams' probability of winning that specific match; the advancing side is shaded. Top half: France beats Germany then the Netherlands to reach a semi-final against Spain, who came through Portugal and the USA; Spain edges it 52-48. Bottom half: Argentina beats Australia and Colombia, England beats Mexico and Brazil, and Argentina takes the semi 51-49. Final: Spain beats Argentina 55-45 to be modal champion. France, Spain, Argentina and England are the four strongest sides; the semi-finals are near coin-flips.

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