Lee Feagin

Stay humble.

I swear I spend about 10 min per day just turning off lights around my house. And yes, it is worse when the kids are home.

This is breaking my brain:

Average length of a basketball court: 28 meters

Average width of a penalty box: 44 meters

And this is the zoomed-out view:

Wow!

JA Westenberg on Mastodon:

Why does seeing people experience pure, unapologetic joy over a comic book movie make some internet critics so furiously angry? Because rage is often just a mask for loneliness, grief, and boredom. When someone else’s happiness feels like an insult, the problem is you.

Well said. And something that can be applied to things far beyond comic book movies.

Full article: Hating Marvel Movies Is Not a Personality

Patch Tuesday didn’t go so well.

I was “checking in” for my physical later this week and one of the questions was: “What kind of contraception do you practice with your sexual partners?”

One of the options was Coitus Interruption. I’m assuming that’s the medical term for pulling out? 🤣😂

We used to be able to buy things in this country

Many decades ago, humans developed a process by which they could go into a store, pick an item off the shelf, and pay for it at the checkout counter. A few years ago, we lost it. Now you ring a buzzer, wait for an overworked employee to unlock an item that costs $5.99, and navigate the emotional complications of feeling like both a suspected criminal and an entitled ass.

Usually, i would try to come up with a kitschy comeback to the quoted passage. On this one, I got nothing. Because this is real.

The enshittification of science…we have embraced ignorance to the highest degree…and we (collectively) will suffer for it.

Robbed doesn’t even begin to describe it.

My son got home last night from his summer internship in Europe (Budapest, specifically). Along the way, he kept track of his travels through an app called Polarsteps. Here’s a summary image:

18 separate cities….quite impressive! So happy he was able to make these travels happen. It’s invaluable to see more of the world than just your own backyard.

40 + 6…

A little rainy today, but I got my free Starbucks mocha for my birthday. It’s kind of fitting that I picked out a soccer jersey this morning. It’s been a good soccer summer!

The hardest part about the World Cup being over is going back to all of the newsletters and headlines surrounding American-only-based sports. Basketball. (American) football. (Not necessarily American) golf and hockey. Having a really hard time caring about any of it.

I still love baseball. And maybe I get back into that. Its everyday nature helps in that.

Update: Perfect example

Sigh.

The Folds

In another (better) timeline, these two have been happily married for years.

Sadly, it didn’t happen.

Credit to Spain, though. Their plan to neutralize Messi was just never give Argentina the ball. And it worked.

Can he do it one more time?

Clouds showing out today

No notes.

Trump Media & Technology Group to launch Truth API to sell to Wall Street

President Trump’s social media platform announced plans Thursday to sell Wall Street firms early access to its “most market-moving” posts.

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, said it would launch “Truth API” — a direct data feed that would give investment firms “real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts.”

The naked grifts are just never-ending. We’ve come a long way from Carter having to give up his peanut farm.

White House teleprompter operator made more than $100K betting on Trump’s speeches: Sources - ABC News

Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to the president who has been operating Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations he used his inside knowledge of the president’s speeches to win more than $100,000, the sources said.

In the land of things that do not surprise me at all.

So, let me get this straight. You “lose” NBC and no price lowering. And when you get it back, you raise prices. Not by $3. not by $5. Or even $10. Nope. By $15 per month.

WTF.

Customer service is awesome.

Hegseth wants to test troops for low testosterone | AP News

When asked what conditions Hegseth was looking to address with the new policy, the Pentagon referred to Hegseth’s remarks in the video that mentioned keeping troops “strong, resilient and capable” and that the rigors of the modern battlefield demand “maximum psychological and mental readiness.”

What is this obsession with “manly” troops, whatever “manly” means to these people. It’s getting a little homoerotic, if you ask me.

Manton Reece

Sometimes it feels like my job is just to manage thousands or millions of queued background tasks and make sure all the servers are perfectly in balance.

This. So this.

Lindsey knew better. He chose worse.

Lindsey Graham was a pathetic man, a true cynic and a faithless servant of the Constitution.

I think this line says it all.

Mark Downie on Mastodon:

Beef, One Piece, Avatar live-action all had 2+ years between S1 and S2. You can’t ask people to binge a show in a weekend and then wait two years to care again.

Could not agree with this more.

Did I just block off my work calendar for Tuesday’s WC semi-final match between Spain and France?

Yes. Yes, I did.

Watching the Spain / Belgium game in LA. On the broadcast, they’ve mentioned, numerous times, how hot it is. “Baking” is a word they’ve used.

It’s 80 degrees.

I’ve heard many retorts to the (American) English announcing style of World Cup matches since the Cup began several weeks ago. “Nothing compared to the announcers in Spanish!” I’m told.

Having watched several World Cup games from hotel rooms outside the U.S. these past two weeks, I can assure you the level of drama and theater is WAY up there with the U.S. announcers as compared to say the German and Hungarian announcers we listened to. It was like watching a golf broadcast during the Spain / Portugal game last night. Brutal.

Midnight Train to Stockholm

Such a good read, regardless. But this passage is perfection:

Then I stopped by the men’s room, which featured a decorative fish tank whose sole occupant had a full-frontal view of the urinals. If reincarnation is real, Henry Kissinger is in that tank.

There is an undeniable irony when the Museum of Communism charges for entry.

I feel very jaunty carrying an umbrella around Prague.

Even in Amsterdam I find someone wearing an Atlanta United jersey!

What always strikes me being in an international airport in another country is just how much it’s like any international airport in the U.S. Same hustle. Same busy-ness. Same overpriced, mediocre food. Our similarities really do outweigh our differences. :)

After a long struggle to stay open (prices going up, staff shortage), my beloved coffee spot will be closing this Friday. I could point out the utter convenience of Spiller Park, I mean, it was within walking distance of the house. But it’s more than that. It was a place where they knew me. I was a “regular”. They knew my order without even having to say it. That doesn’t happen that often anymore.

Man, I’m going to miss this place.

Isn’t it funny that the words resign and re-sign have two very different meanings?

You think it ever occurs to racists to NOT start with “I’m not racist but…”?

France coach Didier Deschamps says MetLife Stadium pitch ‘really tough’ on players’ muscles

“We have played in the heat (at MetLife) so, if there is some rain, good, because the grass will be faster and the quality will be better, much better than the one in New York,” he said, referring to the venue that FIFA is calling the New York New Jersey Stadium.

“The pitch in New York was really tough — it took a lot out of the players’ muscles.”

This is further than he was willing to go immediately after the Senegal match, when he initially said he was not sure how to answer a question about the pitch, before describing it as “a special surface — it’s different.”

France midfielder Adrien Rabiot was a little less guarded, though, as he said it “seemed more like an artificial pitch … hard and rigid.”

Really starting to think that no pitch surface is acceptable to players except maybe their own.

The noun is inactive. The verb is deactivate.

That is all.

Jeremy Doku wants to be there for the birth of his first child. That should be the end of it

The baby will always be there. Let us leave aside, for a second, the awful yet very real possibility of complications and tragedy in childbirth, and grant the point. The baby, yes, would be waiting for Doku on his return. That is both true and beside the point.

Doku would not have been there, would not have experienced that moment. He would not have had the shared epiphany with his partner, felt the surge of hormones and emotions, the automatic, pre-rational connection with the baby. It is a hoary old cliche that the birth of a child — particularly your first child — is a life-changing event, but it happens to be true. There is no substitute for being in the room. You can’t get the same effect by hearing the story later.

The fact that we’re even having this conversation is just…I don’t even know. It’s baffling. Your child should take precedence. Period.

Messi just can’t stop 🐐-ing

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Lea Thompson in anything from the 80’s where she was not absolutely getting it done. 💯

Watching the Norway match and there is a striker named Sørloth. Like this man is from a Lord of the rings novel or something.

Fox to Acquire Roku in $22 Billion Deal

On a call with analysts, Murdoch, executive chair and CEO of Fox, called the acquisition a “defining moment” for his company, and one that “pairs Fox, the leader in live news and sports, with Roku, the leading connected TV platform. This acquisition will strengthen and expand our position in the high growth digital video ecosystem and unlocks new ways to serve our audiences and partners.”

Not that I would ever buy a Roku before this, but I’m definitely not buying one now.