I haven’t seen my nephew in a couple years but just got his high school graduation announcement. It’s 2024, so of course his hair looks like an alpaca.
A fresh, and rather boring, #WildRedesign. So boring that I might not even have a preference?! Maybe I prefer the old one because the grungy type and bar is so corny. What do you think?
I'm one of those Caitlin Clark bandwagon jumpers on watching all the WNBA for the first time this year.
Amongst all the hand-wringing about Clark, the way commentators talk about the players and even the players themselves about how "every new player is supposed to be hazed, I was beat down hard my first year, it was part of my coming up in the WNBA"
and I'm like, uh, that's language abusers use to justify their mistreatment?
I'm used to other women's sports leagues that were organized and run by women and there's so much more mutual respect for athletes on other teams. The vibe is more like "we need to go out and put our bodies on the line every week for a year, so we don't get into petty fights or disagreements"
I honestly haven't seen this much justification for mean-spirited hazing since I watched a show that followed people going into WWE pro wrestling. It was a toxic culture where they beat the shit out of new wrestlers to "show them the ropes" and so they could "learn to work while hurt" instead of the more obvious approach which is "how do we make these moves look great without hurting each other because we're both pro athletes trying to make a living day in and day out?"
I know the WNBA is part of the NBA so a lot of culture and rules come down from the men's side of the sport, and I honestly wonder if that's the reason for the completely different experience of rookie women pro soccer players in their own leagues versus rookie pro women basketball players in the US.
honestly, I enjoy watching WNBA games because like women's pro soccer, it's more just straightforward gameplay. Games run faster, less breaks, less fouls, less bullshit personalities working the refs and making a 48min game clock last four hours (cough, LeBron, cough). You can watch a whole game in less than 2hrs and many of them are tense and tight. It's just plain great sports without as many time-outs and ad breaks.
NYC canceling their congestion pricing plan just before launch is absurd. Each time I go to NYC it seems crazier to me that any public cars are allowed in Manhattan at all. It worked in London, it works all over Europe.
Big trucks bring in morning supplies. Taxis help people around. But privately owned cars? Pay $20 for the one day you must drive around but otherwise? Subways and buses can take you everywhere.
Manhattan would be so utterly transformed in multiple good ways by cutting car traffic in half, I think everyone in NYC govt over the age of 40 is terrified of how great the change would be and are kneeling to old business owners to never even test it out.
I was a dirtbag bmx teen. I competed in (and sometimes won) freestyle events. I rode hours per day with a group of friends.
One day we practiced at a kid’s house who was a good new rider. His mom comes outside to us derelicts and is SUPER nice and offers us lunch in the form of soup and sandwiches and lemonade.
Immediately, we called the rider “Soup & Sandwiches” going forward, Soup for short.
I occasionally rode with Soup into our 20’s and to this day I don’t remember his actual name.
@evan this reminds me of taking the Long Island Railway from Newark Airport into the city and I swear the stops in New Jersey are all named the same as stops in Manhattan and it’s crazy, I just wonder how many non-native English speakers get off the train in the middle of nowhere New Jersey expecting to be smack dab in NYC.
reactions from people in 1918 are exactly what we saw in 2020, like this gem
"The church closure order was protested by Archbishop (later Cardinal) John J. Glennon to no avail, leading him to suspend temporarily the obligation of Catholics to attend Mass weekly"
Pro skateboarder Ryan Sheckler wore a "Church is Essential" hoodie all thru early 2020
"Cities that implemented what are now known as social distancing interventions earlier had much lower peak mortality rates than those which delayed action"
"In retrospect only a handful of the many “nonpharmaceutical interventions” used in 1918 worked: early closures of schools, churches, and theaters, and bans on public gatherings"
And yet, we learned almost nothing from history...
@adr I thought our 2020 public reactions would be worse based on everyone knowing a lot more science (at least pop science) now vs. 1918, but honestly, I think we're all dumb apes deep down and we followed the exact same patterns described in the paper.
I just went to the Virginia DMV to renew my driver’s license and my vehicle registration. That could not have been an easier or more efficient process. I think every interaction I have ever had with the local DMV office has been easy, friendly, and successful.
@waldoj That’s a great point. Upon reflection, I live in a conservative county run by anti-gov weirdos. The nice one 40min away was in a progressive county. I think it’s working as designed, which sucks.