Sports
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Communities Notes
A winning non-strategy When I headed to the Bay Area in 1984, years of success and championships followed for the 49ers, the A's, and the Giants. When I came to Boston in '07, the Patriots went undefeated (except for the Super Bowl), and the Red Sox and Celtics won championships. Then the Pats and the Continue reading
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Sun Day
Dawn in Southern Indiana, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. And Hoosiers football remains amazing. Wait, LeBron was in the G League? Am I alone in (unfairly) discounting posts and emails that include AI chatbot text and art? Doesn’t matter how good it is (and some of it is damned good), I get turned Continue reading
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Dame Time!
I love that Damien Lillard is returning to the Portland Trailblazers. He and the town love each other, and the team is already on the ascent. It's a great move. Continue reading
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Monday, 23 June 2025
I hope they haven’t moved elsewhere by then. My 2nd Generation AirPods Pro pair, nestled in their little white case, fell out of my pocket in the waiting room at the VW dealer here in Bloomington. At least that’s the last place I knew I had them. According to the Find My apps on both Continue reading
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Friday, 20 June 2025
Convenient. The 50 Best Restaurants include: Six in Bangkok Five in Tokyo. Four in Paris. Four in Lima. Four in Copenhagen. Three in New York. Two in Munich. Two in London. Two in Mexico City . Two in Dubai. Two in Seoul. Two in Barcelona. One in Gardone Riviera. One in Alba. One in Singapore. Continue reading
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Thursday
Knicks fans know how OKC feels right now. The state of Indiana would like to thank the NBA players who called Tyrese Haliburton the "most overrated" player in the league. Halliburton just won the opening game of the NBA finals for the Pacers with less than a second left against the highly favored Thunder, in Oklahoma Continue reading
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Online Sports Betting is for Losers
A few decades back my teenage son and I approached Las Vegas at night while traveling south on Interstate 15. When the skyline of the city began sparkling into view, the kid said, “Wow. Think of all the money people have made there!” This was a perfect tease for my response: “Dude, everything you see Continue reading
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Gnaws
And, not to be outdone, Bloomington. Here in Indiana, not far west of Columbus, is a stretch of highway 46 called Gnaw Bone. Says at that link that the origin of the name is “obscure.” By the way, Columbus isn’t the only Indiana location sharing its name with a bigger place elsewhere. • U.S. Cities: Continue reading
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Mittwoch
More lost privacy. 404 reports that Flock Safety, an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company, “is building a product that will use people lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches to ‘jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person,’ allowing police to much more easily identify and track the movements of specific people around the country Continue reading
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Unrealities
Developing the uncanny valley. HT to John Naughton (whom God preserve*) for pointage to Mistral's Le Chat, an AI image-generatng chatbot. It's a good answer to the challenge of making AI art that doesn't look like AI art. *This is an HT as well, toward one of John's warm conventions. And subscribe to his 'stack. It's Continue reading
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Visitations
It's still creepy. World showed off its Orb a few years ago at IIW to approximately no applause at all. A lot seems to have happened since then. Here's what Wired says about it. Such as the "@ username" in the Profile setting. I'm in a group zoom-like conference call (is it a "call"? a "session"? not Continue reading
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Jayson Tatić and the Boston Celtićs
Nobody’s talking about this, so I will: Jayson Tatum is playing a decoy. More to the point, he is playing Jokić, Dončić, or a bit of both. Not all the time (such as when he’s doing one of those step-back threes with lots of time on the clock, but enough). So let’s call him Jayson Continue reading
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Why the Celtics will win the NBA finals
Marcus Smart. Photo by Eric Drost, via Wikimedia Commons. Back in 2016, I correctly predicted that the Cleveland Cavaliers would win the NBA finals, beating the heavily favored Golden State Warriors, which had won a record 73 games in the regular season. In 2021, I incorrectly predicted that the Kansas City Chiefs would beat the Tampa Continue reading
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A thermal theory of basketball
Chemistry is a good metaphor for how teams work—especially when times get tough, such as in the playoffs happening in the NBA right now. Think about it. Every element has a melting point: a temperature above which solid turns liquid. Basketball teams do too, only that temperature changes from game to game, opponent to opponent, and Continue reading
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Why the Chiefs will win the Super Bowl
I think there are more reasons to believe in the Bucs than the Chiefs today: better offensive line, better defense, Brady’s unequaled Super Bowl experience, etc. But the Chiefs are favored by 3.5 points, last I looked, and they have other advantages, including the best quarterback in the game—or maybe ever—in Patrick Mahomes. And that’s Continue reading
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How to get fans inside the NBA’s playoff bubble
For folks visiting from the future, this post went up during the Covid Pandemic, when fans couldn’t attend ganes inside what came to be called the 2020 NBA Bubble. Here is the idea:::: Sell tickets to attend online through Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, Webex, GoToMeeting, Jitsi or whatever conferencing system can supply working tech Continue reading
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All hail the Houston Rockets—especially next year
I thought the Rockets were great in last night’s game—and say that as a Warriors fan. (I even had season tickets back in the Run TMC era, when tickets were still affordable). The Rockets’ problem was that the Warriors were greater, and it wasn’t just because SuperSteph showed up in the second half. Basketball is Continue reading
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Why the Cleveland Cavaliers will win tonight
I’m a Golden State Warriors fan. Not huge, but big enough to have held season tickets through the Run TMC years. (I grew up a Knicks fan, and liked the Celtics when I lived in Boston, but those are less leveraged these days.) So I do want the Warriors to win tonight. But I don’t Continue reading
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Remembering Bob Kauffman
When the Los Angeles Clippers open their first game at home this season, I want them to pause and celebrate their original franchise player: Bob Kauffman, the team’s all-star center for its first three seasons, when they were the Buffalo Braves. I also think the team should retire Bob’s jersey, #44. For the ceremony the team should also bring out his four daughters, Continue reading