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"But Biden's not doing anything" https://www.cato.org/blog/most-venezuelan-asylum-seekers-were-let-legally-november

this is america, they're going to get sued no matter what. the public has already bought the whole cte thing and now believes any bump on the head is a life altering brain injury. they're going to end up giving the union a billion dollars for a fund to deal with brain injury issues and let them deal with it. (and the union will proceed to mismanage the money and get sued by players and the litigation carousel will continue. because if it is one thing we know for sure its that lawyers will get paid.)

Got this from one of my space groups.

Orlando Magic vs Detroit Pistons

Wishing him the best, he's sooooo kick ass and has been through recently.

i doubt he goes into politics. half the state hates his guts already, that's not a solid base to get votes. this is not herschel walker, a guy who was beloved in georgia before this election. i think he'd be the lions head coach long before he ever ran for public office. and i dont think he'll end up being the lions head coach.

I think his lateral speed is fine - or at least good enough for this not to be the primary limiting factor in him at least being an average defender. Right now he's one of the worst defenders in the league. His defensive IQ (recognition/anticipation is a good way to put it) and lack of concern on the defensive end is the main problem. He checks out, misses rotations, sags too far off of his man, and doesn't position himself to play sound defense. He's playing for the next offensive possession 90% of the time. You can tell how competitive he is and how bad he wants to succeed, but I do wonder how much of that is wanting himself to succeed versus wanting the team to succeed. I don't think he gets how those two are related, which is probably true of most kids coming into the NBA who have been able to dominate thus far in their lives. But on this team who's going to show him the right way to play? There's no Popovich and Duncan to set the culture and tone. We have a team full of guys who hit the court concerned about getting their own offensive stats (Ivey, Bey, Bojan, Burks, Bagley, Hami, Knox, and even CoJo). This team does not play for each other, they don't move the ball well, they don't help each other defensively, they just don't play winning basketball. A lot of that is on the players, but there's plenty of blame for the coach/system and the GM/roster-construction as well.

they have to refuse, they need the issue far more than they want a solution. The issue helps them get elected, a solution would take away the issue - or worse - give them direct ownership of whatever the new status quo turns out to be, which will be less than perfect since all real world situations are. Chalk it up to the basic ignorance of the American voter who doesn't see that the current situation is largely the result of GOP refusal to meaningfully address the issue for those 12 years. But that's how the US political cookie crumbles.

It's all very amusing to me because hostility toward immigration (including legal immigration) is a big part of the story as well. [Insert "hot dog guy" meme here]

I don't like being pigeon-holed into a "side". It's reductive and serves to diminish the perception of my agency. That puts me on the defensive, and I don't like the results when I reply while feeling on the defensive.

Finally got around to doing this, and the result is more surprising than I imagined it could be. Not because I guessed wrong correlations on the wrong attributes, but that correlations were stronger for those attributes I probably thought would be pretty weak. I looked at the correlations of each of the 14 attributes on the Statcast cards of those pitchers who had values reported for both 2021 and 2022. As a reminder, Statcast card values are reported as a percentile versus the league—if you have the greatest strikeout percentage in the league, your percentile will be 100; if you have the worst, it will be 1; if you're dead balls average, you're a 50. Rinse and repeat thirteen more times. Here are the results: xwoba/xera 0.47 xba 0.57 xslg 0.52 xiso 0.49 xobp 0.42 brl_percent 0.38 exit_velocity 0.48 hard_hit_percent 0.37 k_percent 0.70 bb_percent 0.63 whiff_percent 0.73 fb_velocity 0.90 fb_spin 0.90 curve_spin 0.93 We could have guessed that the correlations are highest for attributes completely physically controlled by the pitcher: velocity and spin. We could also guess that outcomes more closely related to those physical attributes would also be pretty high: K%, BB%, Whiff %. What I didn't expect to see were correlations so high for the attributes related to outcomes that are influenced by luck, which is basically everything else. Particularly xba and xiso, which you would think is a strong residue of BABIP. I didn't think the correlation would be zero or anything, but I imagined they would come out more in the 0.10 to 0.20 range than they would in the 0.37 to 0.57 range. I guess I underestimated the effect that a pitcher's stuff would have on outcomes, specifically on overcoming oppositional force, and the luck of that force on as regular a basis as it does.

Bijan Robinson is pretty damn good

In a straight line he is one of the fastest players in the game. But Ivey does not have a lot of lateral quickness and that is what you need for defense.

They went on to win it and Luka had a triple double. 60 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists. Another efficient performance. He shot 21-31 from the field.

what would be the precedent for a league forcing a player to quit? its his body, he can do what he wants. if its an issue, the doctors can tell him he is unfit to play. how many concussions do you think steve young or troy aikman had? they continued to play. i dont think the league can or should tell a player he is unfit to play. also, you can always pay a doctor to give you the diagnosis you want. years of litigation have shown me that. doctors are whores.

I think they’re competitive when given the opportunity. Like when they’re against each other in the Super Bowl. They’ve been in different levels for a while now. I would guess it would be something like an “analyst” position where they work together, more so than Jim working “under” John. I also don’t think he would do it unless Michigan won the National Championship, and I don’t think it would be permanent. The itch would come back.

RE: Tom Petty I'm old so I've known of him since forever, but I never appreciated what he gave us until after he died. Shame on me. Someone mentioned the song Great Wide Open. I never heard that until after he died - hooked the first time. But I wonder... What is the message in that song. Rebel without a clue. The kids name was Eddie Rebel I think. Don't be stupid, or just a name?

Lueke was the first person to block me on Twitter. For a while, the only people to block me were rapey or rape apologisty (i.e. Jay Paterno)... Then all of Sakowski's friends got in on the act when I kept reminding them of his plagiarism.

I'll give you the Packers game, because there was certainly a degree of turnover luck that helped us get that win... The Bears have lost 8 in a row though. They've gone two months without a win while the Lions have beaten multiple playoff contenders in that time. The Lions shut down the likes of Dalvin Cook and Saquon Barkley, and contained Devin Singletary, before being lit up by the Panthers on a short week with questionable field conditions. I get some recency bias, but a return to the mean seems much more likely than the sky falling on the Lions run defense. The Lions took about ten steps forward in the last two months and a couple steps back on Saturday. I don't think we should ignore the net gain.

I know we talked about this a bit earlier this week with the passing of Franco Harris. This is the best footage I've seen of the reception. Hard to believe it's been 50 years

Trying out for Woodward Sports Network...don't want to seem "brainy"