Mike Fast

Iain McGilchrist's The Matter with Things is more philosophy of the universe book than cosmology book per se, but it's the best book I've read on the question of "Why is everything here?" He's a neuroscientist by training who turned that into writing more broadly. The book is weighty but worthwhile.

Texas scheduled San Jose St (#146 in Sagarin), UTEP (#181 in Sagarin), and Sam Houston St (#201 in Sagarin) for the remainder of their non-conference schedule.

I honestly don't think they're getting dinged by the committee for losing to Ohio State.

A man, a plan, ekranoplan!

These are agonizing decisions in the best of circumstances. For a parent, gender dysphoria is something you can only perceive by its effects. The government getting involved just adds obstacles to understanding and finding the best outcome. It brings fear into the process rather than clarity.

I wanted to stay in touch as my older kids went off to college. We now have a family discord. So. I feel your pain.

YouTube video by Paul Kingsnorth Iain McGilchrist: 'Change your Way of Seeing.'

Quoted from this podcast, relevant discussion starting around the 1:14:43 mark and following four minutes or so

www.youtube.com/watch?v=stQg...

"They've just gone out there with their grand vision of how the world should work, but they haven't made themselves work properly, and so they reproduce the tyranny that they're trying to replace in the first place."

Kingsnorth: "It's always struck me that one of the reasons that political revolutions inevitably fail is that the people who carry them out precisely haven't done that.

"But actually nothing in the world would ever change if everybody thought that way. It only changes because often quite small groups of people start think quite differently about what life should be like."

"But the one thing you can really definitely deal with is the thing that is under your control, which is your own way of thinking, feeling, and being. And you can start that tomorrow. And then they tell you but that's so small, but what does it matter what I do?

McGilchrist: "The third element in the picture is that of changing your own heart and mind…In fact there is nothing more important than the disposition of your soul towards the world, and it's the only thing you actually have control over. These other things you can only minimally influence.

I'm listening to one of my favorite sages, Iain McGilchrist in a conversation with Paul Kingsnorth, and I thought this interchange between them was fascinating and very worthwhile:

Thanks. I didn't even know Eddie Plank was from Gettysburg.

Addie Joss is my best guess.

I'm trying to figure out who Gettysburg is supposed to be.

As long as you make your shot, you can go back for another vote?

I vaguely remember caring about that maybe 20 years ago for reasons I have since almost completely forgotten. Something about managing disk space, maybe?

Boner pill ads at 2X volume are also considering an endorsement

Honk if you love candy!

If he's in Boerne, Texas, right now, he should get his bbq there, and then come to Padadena for your inestimable company.

This seminar by @alisongopnik.bsky.social was really good. It's ostensibly about AI, but ventures into some fascinating topics about childhood development and caregiving, and what I really loved was how Alison tied all that together. If this is where AI research goes, it makes me much more hopeful.

Do you think a Harris County jury really would have returned convictions for this? If I were sitting on that jury, I would have a really hard time not reflecting on the stupidity of both the state and the city in creating a problem where there was no problem.

I remember seeing the tattoo numbers for the first time on the arm of my engineering professor at the U of Oklahoma, Dr. Leon Zelby. He had been imprisoned at Auschwitz. It made it all very real. Evil for which words do not suffice.

oh wow, Judges 9, a parable for our times

"When we hate and vilify others for ideological reasons, when we demonize and dehumanize others for nationalistic reasons, when we use and exploit others for economic reasons, we are on the highway to hell—we have chosen the well-worn road that leads to war and destruction."

I have a ton of thoughts on Waldrep's splitter and know it better than some of the others, but those aren't really thoughts I can share here.

I don't think your "low spin rate" quite gets at the full definition, in that I don't think some of those current low-spin-rate pitchers are doing anything much different than the higher-spin splitter pitchers. But I feel like it's still part of the equation.

But I have a sense that might not encompass the full historical definition of the forkball. And of course, pitch type nomenclature is inherently fuzzy.

I wish we had pitch tracking data for some of the pitchers from the Guide to Pitchers era, and then I feel like we'd have a better answer. There's not really anyone in the majors now doing what Linebrink and Contreras and Speier were doing 15 years ago.

Spinning Yarn: The Forkball | Baseball Prospectus What are some of the distinguishing characters of one of baseball's most unknown pitches?

Rob, would you take issue with how I defined the forkball here?
www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

If so, it's not only about the low spin rate but also flipped over the fingers to have some top-spin. It's not a pitch that is very common anymore, not even Senga's.