Aston Hall

Birmingham, like most of the Industrial Revolution cities, has random remnants of the time before. 

Birmingham in the context of the West Midlands is really interesting because you've got Hereford, Worcester and Lichfield, which were these big, important medieval cities and now they're the small provincial ones lorded over by Birmingham. I think I notice the difference because my part of the North West is all post-Industrial Revolution. 

Aston Hall is one of those remnants - https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/aston-hall 

In easy public transport reach of the centre of Birmingham, it counts as a hidden gem. I'd been in Birmingham for 9 years before going (a friend invited me).  

For more information about its history, including that it's the first historic country house bought during that upswell of civic pride in the industrial cities in the late 1800s please read it's Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aston_Hall 

Front and left side of the hall.  

Probably my favourite photo, because I like the contrast of the purple leaves on the tree with the brown of the bricks of the hall.

 

 Left side of the hall

 

Right side of the hall

The inside is mostly intact, with a bit of restoration here and there. Fancy fireplace And the ceiling in more detail  

In one of those "oh, I should have figured that out" moments, Aston Villa took their name from the area, and that's where Aston Hall also is. The Holte End at Villa Park is named for the Holte family that used to own Aston Hall. Which makes sense, because Villa Park is literally across the road from Aston Hall.  

Possibly because I come from an ex-industrial area, I have a soft spot for museums and architecture not associated with the posh or the clerical, which is why the current wave of buildings falling into disuse and ruin is upsetting. Take this as an example from a now-closed pub local to Aston Hall.  

I enjoyed the visit of Aston Hall. I'd like to go again, because the friends I went with brought their children and their attention span was understandably shorter than mine so the visit had to get cut short.

Formula 1 2026 - Dutch Grand Prix

This will be the last Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort for the foreseeable future - I am sad for Verstappen and his fans, but let us not pretend that F1 doesn't run on money. Also, despite everyone saying how much better than the usual Zandvoort race this was, the driver on pole position still won. And the race was dull. 

The circuit is too narrow for these cars, and they aren't going to be getting narrower, nor is the circuit going to be made wider. 

I can explain the terrible weather at Zandvoort - a colleague was holidaying just south of there. 

Not sure who was main commentating for BBC, and I'm sure it's first time nerves, but there were so many "no, that's not what that word means" malaprops. Like he obvs. knows his stuff but ... I acknowledge it might be me being a little old lady, especially as he said something that made me know I'm older than him - "it's like a one lap shootout if you've played the games" - some of us remember that being the qualifying rules!! (I did love Jennie Gow trying to relax him when she could.) 

The race itself: 

Verstappen finally got caught by the home race curse (I really will need to do that data viz at some point). That crash looked horrid. Well done Nico Hülkenberg avoiding Bortoleto in the chaos.

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This video from F1.com has possibly the most wonderful explanation of how Hülkenberg avoided Bortoleto (certainly the one with the coolest graphics) 

I think the unexpected red flag plus bonus formation lap due to Bearman really threw several teams' strategy, because I can't understand the strategy for Perez or Piastri. Ferrari's bizarre strategy choices (and the drivers disobeying everything) comes as standard. 

As does McLaren screwing up a pitstop - I thought they'd stopped those mistakes! (I do not expect better of Ferrari pitstops) 

I am taking this race as proof I was right and Tsunoda is good and he deserves a seat. And yes, I know that if every driver I wanted to have an F1 seat had one, it would be 40 drivers deep.

Are the scrutineers picking on my driver? - Update after the Hungarian Grand Prix

Just in time for the season to restart :) 

Scrutineering at the Hungarian Grand Prix:  

The difference from expected is lower than at the Belgian Grand Prix, with an χ² of 1.22. That's because of the number of cars that were tested as much as expected, 10 out of the 22. 

The three cars least tested compared to expected were the three cars that didn't finish, those of Perez, Bottas and Piastri. 

While Gasly was the most over-tested compared to expected, Hulkenberg gets to celebrate his first points of the season by having the third-highest number of tests relative to expectation. 

The season to date: Even though it doesn't come close to being significant, despite the increasing number of events, the χ² is increasing and is now up to 3.76. 

The top four most over tested are Norris, Bortoleto, Hamilton and Russell. Bortoleto still stands out in that crowd. I know it's probably still the effect of relatively small numbers, but he's not up there based on performance or number of finishes; other drivers have finished more races and still aren't as high up as he is. 

Stroll, Bottas and Perez are the drivers least tested compared to expected and are the bottom three in the championship. There is a relationship between not finishing and not being tested, because some tests are only performed on the cars that finish. The car starting to work moved Norris and Piastri out of the bottom and it will be interesting to see if Aston Martin's improvements do the same for Stroll and Alonso. 

No drivers have been tested exactly as much as expected but Gasly and Piastri come close on +0.053 and - 0.053 respectively. 

At the halfway point of the season we have an increasing χ² value, some movement at the bottom as the cars become more reliable and Bortoleto being over-tested compared to his results (even if the difference isn't statistically significant).

Are the scrutineers picking on my driver? - Update after the Belgian Grand Prix

Well I don't know if they're picking on *your* driver but they are picking on mine. Look how over-tested Leclerc is compared to the others! 

I am being a little ridiculous, but Leclerc's standardised residual of 0.83 over expected is the third highest single race value after Norris in Barcelona (+1.30), and Lawson at the Austrian Grand Prix (+1.06). 

Entirely as expected, Perez, Stroll and Russell who didn't finish are 3 of the four least tested compared to expected. 

The difference isn't statistically significant (χ² = 3.201), but this time, it's my driver. 

The Belgian Grand Prix checks were slightly different, and there were more of them than usual (36, which is the second highest of the season, the highest being at the Australian Grand Prix which had 37 checks as the expected number but that's also the first Grand Prix of the season). 

The season to date:  

The difference are not statistically significant, with an χ² = 3.746. 

Interestingly, the χ² is increasing, and has been for the last 4 races, when, at this point in the season, you'd be expecting it to start going down. 

Possibly this is because of changes in reliability as the teams improve their cars (or try to) during the season. The Aston Martins, Cadillacs, Williams and Audis keep being unreliable and not finishing, while the McLarens seem to have sorted themselves out so are being checked more often and that's disturbing the numbers. 

Norris is now the most over-checked car compared to expected. He's followed by Bortoleto, Hamilton and Russell. One of these drivers is not like the others. 

Not sure why Bortoleto is that high given he's 14th in the standings. On the other hand, he has one of the lowest DNF rates (having only failed to finish 1 race out of the 10 so far). 

Stroll, Alonso, Bottas, Albon and Hulkenberg are the least tested compared to expected. That makes sense given the number of DNFs between them. They are also the bottom 5 in the championship. 

I find it amusing the Audi have one driver in the most over-tested bucket and one in the most undertested. 

No drivers have been tested exactly as many times as expected, but Colapinto, Lindblad and Piastri are almost on 0, being at +0.056 or -0.056. 

The Hungarian Grand Prix results will be the midway point of the season. We'll see if the χ² starts to come back down.

Jojo Rabbit

There is a reason Jojo Rabbit was my top film of 2020. 

I'm going to go back to how I described the film in my 2020 film round up: 

"This is a masterwork. There is no aspect of the film that I can't heap heavy praise on - the acting, the writing, the soundtrack, the costume, the acting (I do not care that I am repeating myself). It is a fantastic, human, film that I can't praise enough." 

I'll expand that sort of chronologically. 

1: I can see why Taika Waititi chose to play Hitler. It means there's no chance anyone's going to use clips of him to glorify Hitler. It felt like that was a tightrope that he was very aware of, that the message of the film was that *that* was the terrifying thing, Nazis were average human beings doing terrible things, without glorifying any of them. And I think he mostly threaded that needle (the shot at the end of the Gestapo looking utterly pathetic without the coats for example), with the possible exception of Klenzendorf leaning slightly too close to the legend that the Wehrmacht were alright. 

I can also see why they got the Heil Hitlers out of the way at the start so everyone could get their nervous laughter out early. 

2: Really, threaded that needle, because the Nazis were very terrifying and pathetic at the same time. 

3: Scarlett Johansson did not get the plaudits she deserved. I don't know if this was released during one of the "let's all diss ScarJo" waves but why didn't she get all the plaudits?! 

She has such a difficult role, because she plays a woman who is doing her best in a difficult time, when doing the thing she has chosen to do (and the film makes it clear that it is a choice) could get her killed and the person most likely to report her to the authorities is her own son. 

And she's full of whimsy despite everything, or possibly against everything. 

(Another thing I liked was that the film lets you fill in the gaps. In any way you choose. Is Jojo's father dead, in the army, in the resistance, is there even a father figure in his life or is she just pretending?) 

4: To an extent Yorgi is the most important character because he's who Jojo could have been if he hadn't had the experiences he has during the story. And we know there's no harm in Yorgi, he's just been brainwashed. He still believes the things Jojo can no longer believe. 

And again that loops back to the film's message that the terror is, everyone involved is just another human. See also Jojo's mother shouting at some soldiers to go home to their mothers. 

5: Holy heck, Roman Griffin Davis and Thomasin McKenzie, who were children at the time, had the most difficult roles and nailed them. 

Totally nailed them. 

Excellent work by them (and whoever cast them) 

6: No really, I can't recommend this film enough. It's one of the very few films I would say everyone should watch. It's just marvellous.

Are the scrutineers picking on my driver? - Update after the British Grand Prix

At the start of the season, every second race featured a random check of a top 10 finisher. This pattern stopped about 6 races in, and I wondered if that was because of less than 15 drivers finishing. 

The British Grand Prix gave an opportunity to test this. Barcelona had technically provided one as well, but several of the “finishers” there had actually stopped on track and were only classified because they had completed more than 90% of the race distance. 

There was no check at the British Grand Prix even though there were 19 finishers. That suggests that this inspection is not a mandatory check, but something the Technical Committee can choose to carry out occasionally. 

Scrutineering at the British Grand Prix: While Car 5 (Bortoleto) looks like he's been checked far more the expected tests on first glance, compared to a statistically significant point of 2 standardised residuals, it really isn't. This is supported by the results having an overall χ² of 1.2216, when it would need to be >32.671 to be significant.

Scrutineering up to the British Grand Prix:  

The χ² over the season so far is 3.1607, which is not significant.  

The order is starting to make sense, with Hamilton and Russell who are doing well being the most over-scrutinised, while Stroll, Albon, Alonso, Hulkenberg and Bottas, whose cars keep breaking on them, being the most under-scrutinised. Antonelli has only been tested as many times as expected even though he is doing very well, but the number of events is small enough that that is not implausible.

Formula 1 2026 - Hungarian Grand Prix

Overall, the race wasn't that interesting - ignoring Verstappen and Hamilton's efforts to provide interest and entertainment, with help from Liam Lawson, who I'm sure wasn't influenced by the team he drives for. I'm not sure if it's because the track is that narrow that even the new regulations can't produce overtakes (plus the tyres going off in unexpected ways).

I'm not saying Aston Martin's season has been pants, but both cars finishing is being treated as a great success. At the same time, with one set of upgrades, they're boosted into the midfield.

Piastri appears to have inherited the terrible Antipodean luck of his manager. Possibly spending too much time in Australia explains why Bottas's brakes catching fire. Seriously, Cadillac, sort that out.

On the other hand, George Russell's luck isn't much better.

Withdrawals from the 2026 Tour de France

Unlike 2025, this year, riders were cut due to being over the time limit.  

The two unfortunate riders were Kellen O'Brien and Anthon Charmig. 

It's interesting to see how the pattern of withdrawals changes over the 3 "weeks" (weeks being used loosely here as always).  

In week 1, mid-stage abandonments are the most common, with 50% of all week 1 withdrawals being abandonments. 

In week 2, this switches to being a majority of "did not start" type withdrawals, possibly as the race caught up with people. 

Then, in week 3, it swings back to being mostly mid-stage abandonments, possibly because people have reached the "I'll be damned if I don't get to Paris after all this" mind-set. 

This pattern is repeated if you look at it as "withdrawal type by week". Which stages did the withdrawals happen on? 

This year, while a couple of the stages did have a few more withdrawals they're reasonably evenly spaced. Stage 6, the one with the most withdrawals, unsurprisingly, was the Tourmalet. Stage 15 was the one with Vingegaard's crash, while stage 13 was the one with Gaviria's horrible crash.  

You are looking at someone smug that she had figured out how to recolour charts in Excel. Because the "still ins" were a drab grey. I prefer a thematic yellow. 

Lotto-Intermarche, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA and Soudal Quick-Step were all down to 5 riders. Lidl-Trek, Bahrain Victorious, Cofidis, Decathlon, EF Education Easy Post, Ineos, Total Energies and Astana all retained all their riders. 

There's no real patterns, to this or in the Kaplan-Meier survival curve split by team.  

If the team names and colours stick for more than 5 minutes, I may recolour this to match team colours, but 23 teams is a lot of colours to keep track of. 

For the Tour as a whole, the Kaplan-Meier looks like this.  

My takeaway is that this time there was a long, slow decline, with no sudden drops, not even on the Tourmalet. 

I have been doing this for far too long and so can compare this year's Kaplan-Meier to those of the preceding 6 years. 2026 fits into the same pattern as the others, with only 2021 standing out.

Formula 1 2026 - Belgian Grand Prix

 I had a moment of revelation at the start of this grand prix - around about when Leclerc and Hamilton moved past Verstappen and Russell - this Ferrari car isn't bad. It's not as good as the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a good car, even if it's not as good as *that* rocket ship Mercedes or that Red Bull. See also sort of keeping up with the Mercedes cars after they overtake.

I'm not quite sure what to do with the information.

Mostly because having a good car isn't enough, you need good drivers (we've got that) and a solid strategy team ... which Ferrari haven't got. This time it was Hamilton who was affected by strategy gremlins. Now I am guessing they had to do some quick thinking following the 5 second time penalty but they didn't seem to have communicated the revised plan to their driver which is a really quick way of losing the driver's trust.

Hamilton did seem to be having a day of it; between the penalty and the pit-stop incident and the "not doing what he wanted doing to his front wing" and ... Thankfully the pit crew member appears to be fine.

I am of the camp that think Hamilton got walloped with a penalty where Leclerc didn't because Russell ended up out while Piastri managed to get the car to the finish.

As to other non-Ferrari matters (other than Bottas holding up Leclerc to allow Antonelli to catch him and my tin foil hat insisting it was deliberate), Hadjar and Verstappen appear to be the pairing Red Bull have been looking for for years. Not sure if that's because the way the cars are set up under the current regulations doesn't suit Verstappen as well as previous cars or Hadjar is that good (I tend towards "Hadjar is that good" but I acknowledge my biases). Racing Bull and Alpine seem to be coming along nicely, as do Audi. For Aston Martin, the only way is up. I'm intrigued about their update coming at Hungary.

World Cup 2026 - Final Network Visualisation

The unlabelled network graph looks like this: Even without the labels, you can probably guess the big circles are Spain and Argentina ;) 

The labelled graph looks like this:  

It's the battle of the Atlético Madrid players! 

Atlético Madrid have 9 players left, 3 playing for Spain, 6 for Argentina. 

Barcelona have 8, but they all play for Spain. 

Arsenal and Athletic Bilbao are next, with 3 players each. All 6 of those players play for Spain. 

Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Bayer Leverkusen have players on both teams. 

Chelsea, somehow, are the club team closest to the centre of the diagram. 

No prediction at this stage, the two teams are understandably equidistant.