Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway offloaded around 13% of its Apple holdings in Q1 2024, the conglomerate revealed this weekend. Despite selling around 115 million shares, however, Buffett reaffirmed his commitment to AAPL going forward.

Meanwhile, Tim Cook, who made the trip to Omaha for Berkshire’s annual meeting on Saturday, praised Buffett for his belief in Apple.

more…

When Apple first entered the TV streaming market, it came with a unique approach. It wasn’t focused on creating the most content, famously launching Apple TV+ with only a handful of shows. Similarly, its aspirations never seemed to be growing into the largest streamer. Despite mainstream hits like Ted Lasso, the service is still relatively niche.

All of that was okay, because Apple’s focus was on one thing: quality. Making the best of the best.

Some have called TV+ the new HBO. At one point, I would have agreed. Apple remarkably won a Best Picture Oscar for CODA, a prize Netflix has still never won. Ted Lasso scored back-to-back Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series. Sure, there were stumbles too (Amazing Stories, anyone?), but overall the service’s first few years brought critical acclaim and built a strong reputation,

More recently, however, the service’s focus on quality seems to have lost ground.

more…

Maybe the only two things I have in common with Donald Trump — and I sure hope there aren't any more than these — is that we both have funny hair and we both are legally obligated to not talk or write about certain things. My Gag Order is more correctly described as an N.D.A., otherwise known as a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It covers something I wouldn't disclose even if I could. Not at this stage, at least.

Recently in a nook or cranny of The Internet I have never visited, a person I don't know "revealed" that I had a new job. I put "revealed" in "quotes" because the revelation is not true. It is possible that at some point, it might become true but it also might not. I am in discussions about something and we haven't even reached the stage of discussing exactly how much money I'd be paid if (a) I decide I want the job and (b) they decide I'm the right person for the job. And there might even be a (c), they decide they're going to hire anybody for the job.

I have been a professional writer for…well, this July will make 55 years. That's 55 years of occasional staff jobs and a lot of freelance jobs…and even the staff positions have been the kind where you're never sure how long they'll last. The comic book might not sell. The TV series might not get picked up for another season. The publisher or the network might decide the comic book or TV show might do better with someone who was not me.

This is not in any way a complaint. It's just the reality of the profession I chose of my own free will. Elsewhere on this blog, I think I've written about people who sound like a plumber bitching that he's expected to fix broken toilets. Or, in the immortal words of Superchicken…

When I entered into discussions about this maybe/maybe not job, the folks who'd approached me asked that I DocuSign® a Non-Disclosure Agreement and I did. Why they needed this, I dunno…but as I learned the hard way when I was but a baby writer, it's better not to tell the world you have a new gig until it's absolutely, positively certain. That may not even be when you sign a contract. It may not be until a check clears.

So we've been talking on and off…and not only are they not convinced I'm their guy but I'm not convinced I'm their guy…or that I'd want to be their guy. Someone — on their end, not my end — told someone who told someone who told someone…I have no idea how many someones might be involved here…

…but a someone put it on the 'net and in the last few days, I've received several phone calls (3) and e-mails (9) congratulating me and inquiring, sometimes not so subtly, as to possible opportunities for them in this deal. Then early this A.M., I got an e-mail from one of the folks with whom I'm in discussions asking if I leaked this news which isn't even news yet and may never be. I tracked down the "someone" who posted it and he said he'd take it down and that's where things stand.

If and when anything firm develops, I'll let you know…but these things have a way of never officially ending. The discussions just grow farther and farther apart and vaguer and one day, you realize you haven't had the latest discussion in months so you say, "Well, I guess they changed their mind." When I have some time, I'll tell you a couple of tales about how some offers of the past ended with no one saying no…just no one saying yes.

Hell, I've even had offers where everyone who had to say yes said yes and they still didn't happen.

So what's going on with Trump and all these contempt fine and threats about throwing him behind bars? An associate of the Legal Eagle explains…

The second issue of Road Snacks is out featuring an interview with Nashville-based singer/songwriter Jack Van Cleaf. I like his song Rattlesnake, maybe you will, too. Road Snacks is semi-regular interview series between an ice cream shop and a touring musician talking exclusively about food on tour. I have made it my mission to find out which snacky treats touring musicians live for.

Jack Van Cleaf: That’s the thing, when I get to the gas station, they only have the small bags. The price per pound ratio doesn’t appeal to me as much, but when I get those big bags from Costco, I don’t know, something about the endlessness of it. It really, really drives me.

Gracie’s: You get lost in the bottom of bag.

Jack Van Cleaf: I do, I do. Probably at the gas station I’m gonna go with a Reese’s Cup or a Take Five.

Gracie’s: Tell me anything else about food while touring?

Jack Van Cleaf: The gas station question has me thinking about Twist of Lime Hot Cheetos. Are you familiar with those?

You can read the full interview here.

Tags: interviews · Jack Van Cleaf · music

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Looking to relax or fall asleep? Try Sleep Baseball (aka “baseball radio ASMR”). “Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio is a full-length fake baseball game. There is no yelling, no loud commercials, no weird volume spikes.”

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Last year I went on a lot of cruises which took me to remote places. As I always do when I travel, I wore my trusty Breitling Transocean Unitime. I bought the watch eight years ago because, at the time, it was the only mechanical watch that I could find that had all of the time zones (world time) AND you could switch between them with single “clicks” of the crown. No need to swing the minute hand around to find the right time. But on my cruise I ran into a limitation of the watch: it couldn’t do the weird half-hour timezones like those found in Adelaide or St. Johns, Newfoundland. This was just enough of an inconvenience for me to go deep and see if a better travel watch might exist.

I thought about not writing about this until next year’s gear post, but I want people to understand how deeply I research to find the right items. Sometimes when I read other people’s gear posts I get frustrated because they’ve obviously just chosen something that’s “good enough”, and then written about it like it was the best. I’ve made that mistake in the past (I recommended the wrong all-in-one USB cable, for example), but I generally do enough research that it doesn’t happen.

As I always do when looking for gear, I decide what matters most to me and search as widely as possible (by the way, this is also how I decided who to marry, where to live, and which house to buy). Here were my criteria:

• It must be totally self powered. I hate having to keep track of charging things while traveling and I don’t want to have to go find a new battery on the other side of the world. This eliminates any smartwatch. I did consider some of the high end solar Garmin watches, because they have really good battery life, but they are absolutely enormous.
• It must be very easy to tell the time where I am and at home, and possible to tell the time elsewhere. The Breitling allows you to tell the time anywhere at a glance… but that glance is really more of a scan and stare because the names of the places are so small. I found that I used that feature less than I expected.
• It should be lighter than the Breitling. I have small girly wrists, so the Breitling really hangs and I feel it. It also looks a bit too big.
• Ideally it would look decent. I don’t need the most beautiful watch in the world, but it is something I look at dozens of times a day, and when traveling lightly I aspire for my gear to work in a range between informal and formal.

At first I gravitated towards automatic self-winding watches. They’re totally self powered and I love the craftsmanship of them. There are a lot of good GMT watches (two time zones at once), but nothing that seemed to be a big improvement over the Breitling. I looked at every smart watch, and none of them had long enough battery life. I think I would be willing to charge once every 90 days, since I never travel for that long.

My friend Todd has a Seiko solar digital watch that sets itself over radio. It was just ugly enough that I wouldn’t consider it (sorry, Todd), and I prefer analog watches, but I went down that rabbit hole as well and searched to see if any looked okay, mainly because the functionality is so good.

As I was searching through these digital watches, I learned that Seiko made analog solar radio watches as well. Wow! I looked at every single model, most of which I found to be overdesigned and ugly. I also learned that some of them could set themselves over GPS instead of radio. At the time I thought I preferred radio, especially because the radio watches were a bit thinner, so I focused on those.

Seiko Astron Radio Watches

Confusingly, Seiko calls both its GPS and radio watches Astrons. At first I thought that all Astrons could do both, but it turns out that they can only do one or the other. These watches are only sold in Japan, so I went to a Seiko watch store in Tokyo to look at them. They actually looked a lot better than they did online.

The best Seiko Astron Radio watches use the 8B63 calibre movement. It’s solar powered, has a day of the week display, a date display, and also a 24 hour dual time display. I looked at all of them and bought the SBXY049 because I thought it looked the best. I liked that it had the names of the cities on the bezel rather than the UTC offsets that some have, and the dial looked less cluttered than a GPS one.

While I was in Tokyo it worked great. Every night at 2am, 3am, and 4am, it would try to set itself by radio. The signal is better at night, but still tough to catch, so it tries three times. In the morning you can press one button and the second hand will swing to the tiny Y or N on the dial under the 2 or 4 hour marker to tell you whether it was successful. It was fun to check every morning to see if it had set itself. Most mornings it had.

The titanium made it feel very light on the wrist and I thought it looked good. Not as good as a Rolex, but good enough. There are radio signals in Japan, China, the US, and most of Europe, so I figured that even if it couldn’t set itself every night while I was on a cruise or something, it would set itself frequently enough based on my travel patterns.

Accuracy was another downside of mechanical watches. I wear a Rolex in Vegas because I like how it looks and it’s very light and comfortable, and the Breitling when I travel. Because one would necessarily sit on a winder for weeks or months at a time, it would gradually drift by a few seconds and even by minutes eventually. I wouldn’t reset it unless it was noticeably off, but I never trusted it to be totally accurate.

When I got home to Vegas, though, the Seiko wouldn’t set itself! I have five radio clocks above my desk and they set almost every night, but I couldn’t get the Seiko to set itself anywhere in my house. I used a phone app to broadcast the US timecode locally and it did set to that, so the watch wasn’t defective. Maybe it’s because Vegas is in a valley and the watch is too weak to pick up the signal.

Either way, it was too annoying to be my new watch. The radio Seikos also can’t do fractional time zones, which I was hoping to have covered.

Citizen GPS Watches

Next I looked into Citizen GPS watches. They are much cheaper than the Seiko ones and have more functionality. They have a stopwatch feature, an alarm, and even a light meter. In my testing they set the location about 30-40 seconds faster than the Seiko, even though a simple time sync is about the same.

They have three movements, the F900, F950, and F990. The F900 is almost the same as the F950. The F990 is the newest but every watch made with it is huge and ridiculous, so I got one with the F950. Most were ugly, but I liked the one I chose which had a dark blue dial and both the city names and UTC offsets around the dial.

GPS watches have two ways to sync. They can get the time from just one satellite, or they can get their position and time from four or more satellites. If they get their position, they use it to set the time zone and time, though you sometimes have to manually choose whether you are observing daylight savings time or not.

The Citizen has the best reception of any watch I tested. With one button press it found its location and set the zone and time from within my office, away from the window. I was blown away at how well it worked, especially compared to the Seiko radio watch which couldn’t set from my office.

The basic functions like setting the watch, swapping the second time zone subdial with the main one, and getting location were easy, but setting alarms and daylight savings were complicated enough that I kept referring to the manual.

For someone with a larger wrist, the Citizen is probably the best choice. It works flawlessly, gets the best reception, and has every feature you’d want.

However, I have a small wrist, and even though it was light due to the titanium, it looked a bit big. So I started researching the Seiko GPS watches.

Seiko GPS Watches

Seiko has four main movements the 8X53, 5X53, 3X62, and 5X83. Easy to remember, right?

The 3X62 is perhaps the most elegant. It only shows one time zone and date so it really looks just like a normal analog watch, but it can set itself automatically just like the rest of them. It looks the best, but despite being less complicated, it’s still almost the same size as the other options. If you didn’t travel much and cared more about what your watch looked like, this would be a great choice. I think they have the best designs of all Seiko Astrons.

The 8X53 is the older version of the 5X53. It does the same stuff but it’s bigger and slower to move the hands. I found all of the 8X53 designs to be ugly, but if you had a bigger wrist and wanted to save some money, maybe that’s a reason to buy one. Ironically the SBXB123 is the cheapest 8X53 and I think it’s the best looking.

The 5X83 is the newest one, only out for a couple months. It is the same as the 5X53 but it moves the hands even faster and has a stopwatch. I found the designs to all be pretty ugly, and even worse it was bigger than the 5X53.

The 5X53 is the one I chose. It is the smallest and thinnest, and while it doesn’t have a stopwatch, it does have day of week, date, and a 12 hour second time with an AM/PM indicator. The Citizen had a 24 hour second time zone, which wasn’t as easy to read because of its tiny size.

I bought the SBXC117, which I think is the best looking of the options. From a distance it looks identical to the Seiko radio watch I bought, so I guess you could say I have a type. I almost bought the SBXC149, a limited edition Japan Airlines watch. For the AM/PM indicator it has a tiny spinning airplane, which I love, but I decided I’d prefer a neutral metal colored watch versus a black one.

The 5X53 is the best watch for me. It’s almost the same size as the radio version, and feels noticeably smaller than the Citizen, at least on my small wrist. It doesn’t look quite as good as the radio one, but still looks very good. I couldn’t get it to sync GPS from my office, but it easily does it outside and can sometimes get time from the office. Both the Citizen and Seiko will wait until they see bright light (sunlight) and will try to sync automatically. I think I go outdoors enough that the watch should stay in sync.

I particularly like the 12 hour home time zone subdial. It makes it much easier to glance and see what time it is back home versus the 24 hour one on the Citizen.

Are GPS Watches the New Mechanical Watches?

I’ve had a mechanical watch for over twenty years. What I love about them is the ingenuity. It’s incredible to me that watchmakers in the 1700s figured out how to make a totally self contained device that required no outside power but could keep accurate time.

And now… isn’t that what a GPS watch is? If those watchmakers in the 1700s had access to our technology, wouldn’t they use every environmental force (solar, GPS, radio, etc) to make the most accurate watch possible? I still absolutely love mechanical watches and will wear one when I’m not traveling, but in my mind these GPS watches are a continuation of the same principles.

GPS watches can do even fractional time zones where they are offset by partial hours, and they support 39 time zones around the world. They also keep a perpetual calendar and will skip days that don’t exist, like February 30th. Mechanical watches tend not to do this, so I found that I never trusted the date on my watch because I wasn’t sure if I had set it or not.

Buying a GPS or Radio Watch

Annoyingly, these watches are only available in Japan! Even if you order online, the chance you’re getting it from Japan is very high. I bought two on Chrono24.com and one on Ebay. Despite being intended for the Japanese market, they work perfectly in the US and manuals are available in English. If you order from Japan and the watch is over $600 (which they all are), your package will be delayed and you may have to pay extra taxes.

If you’re in Japan and can buy the watch tax-free, you may as well buy a new one. The prices are almost identical to used prices for the newer models.

If you’re interested in my Seiko radio watch, Citizen GPS watch, or Breitling, email me and I’ll give you a good price.

More Watch Information

I’m trying to include a lot of information here because it was very difficult to get comparisons between these watches, and I probably wouldn’t have had to buy three if I had more information.

The way all three watches handle power is ingenious. If they don’t see light for a few days they go into sleep mode and use very little power. Once they see light again they spring back into action. With regular use they can all last for months or years without being charged. Once they get low, the seconds hand starts showing the time in two second or five second increments to indicate to you that the battery is low. I think that’s really clever.

Both GPS watches show power reserve. Seiko shows it at all times, Citizen shows it when you press a button. In reality you never actually need to know what it is since they only need a few minutes of charging per day.

Citizen has another mode that sets the second time zone to UTC. I don’t know if I’d ever use this, but it’s neat. In general the design philosophy of the Citizen seems to be maximum functionality, and Seiko seems to be elegance and simplicity.

While searching for the time zone, Seiko moves the second hand to the number of satellites it is locked on. It’s really fun to watch this, and it gives you a better indicator of whether or not it’s going to work. That said, the Citizen seems to be better at finding satellites.

The solar panels are hidden behind the dial, which lets some light through. Unlike digital solar watches, there is no way to visual indication that these are solar powered. Before getting one I assumed that if I looked closely I’d be able to see what part of the watch was actually a solar panel.

The finish of the Seiko dials is very good. It’s rumored that they are made in the same factory as Grand Seiko dials. The Citizen is also very good, but doesn’t have texture on the dial.

On both GPS watches you can press both buttons at the same time and it will swap the main and “home” time zone. I’m not sure when this would actually be useful, but it is fun to watch. On the Citizen it makes a quiet beeping noise while doing it, which I didn’t like.

All three have a neat feature with their clasps where you can adjust by small amounts without having to remove links.

You can also switch time zones manually with easy clicks. In fact, you could easily never use the GPS time zone finding feature and just manually switch every time you get on a plane. I was initially worried that I would be fighting my watch when I was on a cruise because sometimes in the middle of the ocean the ship will be on its own made-up time zone. In reality neither watch will change your time zone without you doing it manually or telling it to do it automatically.

###

Photo is all three watches on my wrist. Big high five to anyone who knows why I took that particular photo.

I might make a YouTube video about these watches, so please leave any questions in the comments. I searched for info on YouTube and there wasn’t much, except random stuff from watch dealers.

I’ve been eating Chipotle most days that I am home for over 10 years. I travel about 30-50% of the year, but during covid I ordered it so much that Chipotle sent me an email to tell me I was in the top 1% of all Chipotle orderers. Even last year, when I traveled a ton, I ordered it 100 times through the app (and more when friends bought, I ordered through doordash, or forgot to scan in person). I even had it catered as the food for my wedding. I think it is an excellent mix of nutrition, taste, convenience, and value.

However, I haven’t eaten a paid meal (more on that later) at Chipotle for two months, and I have no plans on going back. Here’s why, and here’s what I eat instead.

Whenever I come back from a trip, I look forward to eating Chipotle. I often order it at the same time I call my uber, so it’s waiting for me at home. Of course I love the food I eat when traveling, but even still, I look forward to Chipotle. In early January I was coming back from a trip, and I ordered my Chipotle to be delivered.

I opened the bag and saw that there was no guacamole on the bowl. To me, guacamole is the most important part of the bowl (I’d give up meat over guac), so it’s a real bummer to have the bowl without it. Chipotle messes up small parts of the order every once in a while, and I very rarely complain. I remember complaining a couple times during covid, and no times since then. Wrong beans, missing cheese, oddly tiny bowl, wrong rice, salsa I didn’t want? No problem… it happens infrequently enough that I don’t really care.

But no guac… I’m filling out the “how did we do?” form.

I immediately get a reply back. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

…In the meantime, to make up for this, I’ve added an offer for a Free Side Guac to the rewards section of your Chipotle account for you to use within 30 days.

Now, I may lose you here. About 25% of my friends think that this is an appropriate remedy and think I’m crazy for not thinking so. In my mind, though, giving me a tiny coupon for some future order doesn’t compensate for making my meal unenjoyable.

My response:

I appreciate the quick response, but I don’t feel like a free side ofguac is adequate. I order Chipotle nearly every single day I’m home, andI order it with guac 100% of the time because I don’t enjoy Chipotlewithout the guac. It’s like pizza without the cheese.

She immediately writes back:

Thank you for reaching back. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to you due to that. I’ve removed the free side guac offer that was added to your account for this order and voided $2.82 of this transaction from your card for the missing side guac instead— this pending charge will adjust accordingly upon posting to your account within 3-5 business days.

WHAT? Instead of free guac you’re giving me the value of the guac? I’ll admit that this is petty and totally inconsequential, but at this point I was offended and decided that I wasn’t going to eat at Chipotle anymore.

I wrote back saying that I was one of their most frequent customers and explained why this doesn’t compensate for a messed up meal, but they wrote me back saying there was nothing they could do. I asked for it to be forwarded to a supervisor, and he gave me a copy/paste response about how sorry they are and how seriously they take this issue, and made no mention of any remedy.

Look, I know this is a $15 issue at most. I wouldn’t notice the $15 if they put it back in my bank account. On principle, though, I think it’s insane to deny a free meal to a customer who orders 100+ times per year, never complains, and had a bad experience.

The next day I went to Sprouts and was determined to make an even better meal. I’m principled, but if I’m not going to make my life worse to prove a point to a giant company that definitely doesn’t care at all. Here were my parameters for the meal:

• It must be made primarily of ready to use products (no chopping, no measuring, no soaking, etc)
• It must be made of entire bags/cans/packages of ingredients
• The macronutrients must be roughly 33% each
• All ingredients must keep for a long time so that I don’t have to plan how much to buy in between trips
• It must cook in the instantpot in 1 minute (plus heatup / cooldown time)
• It must cook into even portions (1,2,3, etc… no 2.5 portions)
• Everything must be as healthy as possible, whole organic / grass fed foods only
• It must taste ok

I spent over an hour in the grocery store putting different things into my cart and combining them in different ways, adding up the macros and amounts.

I’ll admit that my first attempt was a bit rough (don’t try pressure cooking shrimp), and I’ve tweaked it a bit as I’ve gone, but I now have a meal that is basically the perfect meal if you don’t care how your food tastes. And if you do care, it’s still pretty solid. I call it Warm and Brown.

Ingredients for two servings:

• One pound grass fed ground beef or lamb
• One bag frozen organic mixed vegetables (carrots, corn, peas, green beans)
• One bag frozen fancier vegetables (brussels, bell peppers, mushrooms, red onions)
• 3/4 cup red lentils (this breaks my no measuring rule, but I just use a 3/4 cup scoop, so it’s still fast)
• 2 cups water
• 1 packet organic seasoning (I’ve tried a bunch of different ones and they’re all good)
• Some salt

If you are in a rush or really don’t care what your food tastes like, you can just throw the meat in frozen or refrigerated. The meat will still be really pink, but if you just stir it around it cooks like hot pot by the time you take a bite. I’ve even done this with a frozen brick of lamb and it worked ok.

If you want it to taste much better, put the meat in the fridge the day before so that it thaws, and cook it in the instant pot on saute for a few minutes to brown the meat.

After browning the meat, or without browning it, dump the water and lentils into the pot. Dump the seasoning packet in. Dump the veggies on top. Don’t bother stirring, just set it for a minute. Stir it up and eat half of it.

I live pretty close to Chipotle, but this actually takes less time than going to pick up food. It’s slightly more work than just ordering for delivery, but takes less time and is a little bit cheaper. I think each bowl ends up costing about $10.

After I came up with Warm and Brown I got a random non-sequitur email from Chipotle giving me a free meal. My friend Noah was so incensed by this whole thing that he also reached out to Chipotle and got me another free meal. I ate both of them, but haven’t ordered any more.

Chipotle tastes better than Warm and Brown, but I don’t really miss it. W+B is healthier, just as convenient, more consistent, and doesn’t close on random holidays. I’ll reevaluate my Chipotle boycott in 2025. Whenever Cava comes to Vegas I’ll probably eat that every day because I like it even more than Chipotle.

I’m hoping that some number cruncher at Chipotle decides to look at top customers who suddenly stop ordering and realize that their petty decision to give me guac instead of a meal led me to an even more petty decision to not order there anymore.

###

Photo is a bowl of Warm and Brown

Superhuman 5 was a blast! Superhuman 6 will be the first weekend of August. You can email me if you want to lock in a spot now, but I’ll write more about it later.

I’ve been feeling a little less burnt out on writing these days… may start posting more frequently…

Anyone who’s lived in Massachusetts knows that hockey isn’t just a sport—it’s almost a religion. With that level of commitment, why leave your bets to luck? The focus here is on how statistics are reshaping the betting game, especially for hockey fans in Massachusetts who want to place wagers based on more than just gut feelings.

Understanding Basic Hockey Stats

Before getting into the specifics, it’s important to understand the basics of hockey stats and what they signify. There are several key statistics that every hockey fan should be familiar with:

• Goals For/Against: This measures the number of goals a team has scored versus the number they’ve allowed. A positive differential is a good indicator of a team’s offensive strength.
• Corsi and Fenwick: These advanced metrics calculate shot attempts to gauge a team’s ability to control puck possession.
• Save Percentage (Sv%): This stat offers insight into a goalie’s performance by calculating the percentage of shots saved against the shots faced.
• Power Play and Penalty Kill Percentages: These stats measure a team’s proficiency when they have a one-player advantage or disadvantage.

Understanding these statistics provides a strong foundation for making educated bets.

The Role of Analytics

The incorporation of analytics in sports has redefined the way fans view games. In Massachusetts, the incorporation of data-driven approaches is becoming increasingly common in the betting scene. This is significant given the state’s longstanding passion for hockey and the widespread practice of sports betting. People are moving beyond gut feelings and superstitions, relying more on empirical data to inform their wagers. In fact, Massachusetts sports betting has seen a rise in data-driven wagers, especially in hockey.

Tools at Your Disposal

In this new era, a variety of tools and platforms offer insights grounded in statistics:

1. Sportsbooks: Many sportsbooks now offer not just odds but also detailed stats on team performance, player health, and recent form.
2. Analytics Websites: Websites like Corsica Hockey provide in-depth metrics and analytics that go beyond traditional stats.
3. Social Media: Analysts often share insights and statistical breakdowns on platforms like Twitter, offering an easy way to stay updated.
4. Mobile Apps: There are apps specifically designed to offer real-time stats and predictive analytics, which can be highly valuable when making last-minute bets.

Case Studies: Intelligent Wagering

Let’s take some real scenarios where statistics played a significant role in making smart bets:

1. Game 7 Situations: Statistics show that home teams have a distinct advantage in Game 7 situations. The heightened atmosphere and local support often tilt the odds in favor of the home team.
2. Goalie Rotations: When a team is on a back-to-back game schedule, they often rest their starting goalie. Knowing this can offer bettors a significant edge.
3. Injuries: By tracking player injuries and knowing who is likely to replace a key player, one can get an edge when placing bets.

Mitigating Risks

While betting always involves some level of risk, using statistics can help mitigate potential losses. Before placing a bet, it’s important to:

1. Analyze: Look at both traditional and advanced metrics.
2. Compare: Always compare the stats from multiple reliable sources for a balanced view.
3. Watch: Follow the games closely, as the eye-test can sometimes offer insights that numbers might miss.

Smart Strategies for Data-Driven Betting

When it comes to making informed bets, there are some best practices that stand out:

1. Season vs. Playoffs: The dynamics of regular-season games differ vastly from playoff matches. The stress and stakes of the playoffs often bring out the best or worst in teams, so adjusting your stats-based approach according to the setting is vital.
2. Player Hot Streaks: It’s worth paying attention to individual players who are on hot streaks. Such patterns can often be more significant than a player’s average performance stats over a season.
3. Weather Conditions: Believe it or not, the weather can impact an indoor game like hockey. For example, humid conditions can affect ice quality, which in turn can affect gameplay.
4. Focus on Reliable Sources: Data quality varies, and betting based on unreliable statistics can be risky. Make sure to rely on trusted databases and verified insights.

By integrating these nuanced approaches, bettors can refine their strategies, making their bets more precise and potentially more rewarding.

The Ethical Dimensions of Betting and Statistics

While the focus here is on using statistics for intelligent wagering, it’s worth mentioning the ethical considerations. Ensure you’re following all laws and regulations, especially if you’re using software tools to gather your statistics. Betting should be an activity that adds an additional aspect to the enjoyment of sports, not a cause for concern or unethical behavior.

The Future of Statistical Betting in Hockey

Looking forward, the utilization of statistics in sports betting is only expected to grow. More complex metrics and machine learning models are being developed to predict game outcomes with higher accuracy. This is a trend that shows no signs of slowing down. As a bettor, staying updated with these advancements will be instrumental in maintaining an edge in the ever-evolving betting market.

Final Thoughts

Hockey enthusiasts in Massachusetts who enjoy betting should consider the critical role that statistics play. The numbers offer an objective look at how teams and players are performing, making it easier to predict outcomes more accurately. A statistical approach to betting elevates the activity from pure speculation to a more reasoned, strategic process.

The post How Massachusetts Hockey Fans Use Stats to Bet Smart appeared first on Puck Drunk Love.

Life is unfair, as a Democratic president once put it. That was John F. Kennedy, at a press conference early in his term.

Jimmy Carter did not go through as extreme a range of the blessings and cruelties of fate as did Kennedy and his family. But I think Carter’s long years in the public eye highlighted a theme of most lives, public and private: the tension between what we plan and what happens. Between the luck that people can make for themselves and the blind chance they cannot foresee or control.

In the decades of weekly Bible classes he led in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter must have covered Proverbs 19:21. One contemporary translation of that verse renders it as: “Man proposes, God disposes.”

Not everything in his life happened the way Jimmy Carter proposed or preferred. But he made the very most of the years that God and the Fates granted him.

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Americans generally know Jimmy Carter as the gray-haired retiree who came into the news when building houses or fighting diseases or monitoring elections, and whose political past became shorthand for the threadbare America of the 1970s. Most of today’s Americans had not been born by the time Carter left office in 1981. Only about one-fifth are old enough to have voted when he won and then lost the presidency. It is hard for Americans to imagine Jimmy Carter as young—almost as hard as it is to imagine John F. Kennedy as old.

But there are consistent accounts of Carter’s personality throughout his long life: as a Depression-era child in rural Georgia, as a hotshot Naval Academy graduate working in Hyman Rickover’s then-futuristic-seeming nuclear-powered submarine force, as a small businessman who entered politics but eventually was forced out of it, as the inventor of the modern post-presidency.

What these accounts all stress is that, old or young, powerful or diminished, Jimmy Carter has always been the same person. That is the message that comes through from Carter’s own prepresidential campaign autobiography, Why Not the Best?, and his many postpresidential books, of which the most charming and revealing is An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood. It is a theme of Jonathan Alter’s insightful biography, His Very Best. It is what I learned in two and a half years of working directly with Carter as a speechwriter during the 1976 campaign and on the White House staff, and in my connections with the Carter diaspora since then.

Whatever his role, whatever the outside assessment of him, whether luck was running with him or against, Carter was the same. He was self-controlled and disciplined. He liked mordant, edgy humor. He was enormously intelligent—and aware of it—politically crafty, and deeply spiritual. And he was intelligent, crafty, and spiritual enough to recognize inevitable trade-offs between his ambitions and his ideals. People who knew him at one stage of his life would recognize him at another.

Jimmy Carter didn’t change. Luck and circumstances did.

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Jimmy Carter made his luck, and benefited from luck, when he ran for president. He couldn’t have done it without his own discipline and commitment, and his strategy. He seemed to shake every hand in Iowa—but his team was also the first to recognize that the new Iowa caucus system opened the chance for an outsider to leap into the presidency. At a time when his national name recognition was 1 percent, he spent all day walking up to strangers and saying, “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.” Stop and imagine doing that yourself, even once. Carter was easier to admire—when delivering his stump speech to a rapt crowd, when introducing himself at a PTA meeting or in a diner—than he was to work for. But that is probably true of most public figures with such a drive to succeed.

Because he was so engaging in person, and made such a connection in countless small-group meetings across Iowa, he won the caucuses and went on to win the nomination and the presidency. No other candidate has gone from near-invisibility to the White House in so short a time. (Barack Obama became a Democratic Party star with his famous convention speech in 2004, four years before he won the presidency. Donald Trump had been a celebrity for decades.)

This is how Carter and his team helped themselves. Other developments they hadn’t planned affected the race—mainly to their benefit.

By early 1976, Carter had become the new thing. He embraced rock music and quoted Bob Dylan. He was as powerful and exciting a fusion of cultures as any candidate who came after him. He was a Naval Academy graduate and an Allman Brothers fan. He was deeply of the South and of the Church. He also spoke about Vietnam as a racist war. He quoted poems by Dylan Thomas. He was, yes, cool. He appeared at a Law Day meeting at the University of Georgia’s law school and upbraided the audience about the injustice of America’s legal system. Here’s just one sample of the speech, which would now be considered part of the Sanders-Warren platform:

I grew up as a landowner’s son. But I don’t think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record … ”Maggie’s Farm.”

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

But what if Hunter S. Thompson had not noticed this speech and announced that he “liked Jimmy Carter” in an influential article in Rolling Stone? What if Time and Newsweek, also very influential then, had not certified him as a serious potential leader with their coverage? What if the civil-rights figures Martin Luther King Sr. and Andrew Young had not endorsed Carter to Black audiences around the country, and reassured white liberals that he was the southern voice an inclusive America needed? (As governor of Georgia, Carter had placed a portrait of MLK Jr. in the state capitol.) What if Jerry Brown had not waited so long to enter the primaries? What if Teddy Kennedy had dared to run? What if Mo Udall had figured out the Iowa-caucus angle before Carter did? What if Scoop Jackson had not been so dull? Or George Wallace so extreme?

And for the general election, what if Gerald Ford had not pardoned Richard Nixon, turning Watergate into Ford’s own problem? (The Carter team knew that this was a campaign plus. But in the first sentence of his inaugural address, Carter thanked Ford for all he had done “to heal our land.”) What if Saturday Night Live, then in its first season and itself hugely influential, had not made Ford the butt of ongoing jokes? What if Ford had not blundered in a crucial presidential debate? What if Carter’s trademark lines on the stump—I’ll never lie to you and We need a government as good as its people—had not been so tuned to the battered spirit of that moment, and had been received with sneers rather than support?

What if, what if. There are a thousand more possibilities. In the end the race was very close. Luck ran his way.

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Then he was in office. Intelligent, disciplined, self-contained, spiritual. President Carter made some of his own luck, good and bad—as I described in this magazine 44 years ago. There is little I would change in that assessment, highly controversial at the time, except to say that in 1979 Carter still had nearly half of his time in office ahead of him, and most of his adult life. I argued then that his was a “passionless” presidency. He revealed his passions—his ideals, his commitments—in the long years to come.

In office he also had the challenge of trying to govern a nearly ungovernable America: less than two years after its humiliating withdrawal from Saigon, in its first years of energy crisis and energy shortage, on the cusp of the “stagflation” that has made his era a symbol of economic dysfunction. It seems hard to believe now, but it’s true: The prime interest rate in 1980, the year Carter ran for reelection, exceeded 20 percent. You never hear, “Let’s go back to the late ’70s.”

Probably only a country as near-impossible to lead as the United States of that time could have given someone like Jimmy Carter a chance to lead it.

Despite it all, Carter had broader support during his first year in office than almost any of his successors, except briefly the two Bushes in wartime emergencies. Despite it all, most reckonings have suggested that Carter might well have beaten Ronald Reagan, and held on for a second term, if one more helicopter had been sent on the “Desert One” rescue mission in Iran, or if fewer of the helicopters that were sent had failed. Or if, before that, Teddy Kennedy had not challenged Carter in the Democratic primary. Or if John Anderson had not run as an independent in the general election. What if the ayatollah’s Iranian government had not stonewalled on negotiations to free its U.S. hostages until after Carter had been defeated? What if, what if.

Carter claimed for years that he came within one broken helicopter of reelection. It’s plausible. We’ll never know.

Because we do know, in retrospect, that Reagan had two landslide victories, over Carter and then Walter Mondale, and that the 1980 election broke heavily in Reagan’s favor in its final weeks, it’s natural to believe that Carter never had a chance. But it looked so different at the time. History changed, through effort and luck, when Carter arrived on the national stage in 1976. And it changed, through effort and luck, when he departed four years later.

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Effort and luck combined for Jimmy Carter’s first two acts: becoming president, and serving in office.

Luck played a profoundly important role in his third act, allowing him to live mostly vigorously until age 98, and to celebrate his 76th wedding anniversary with his beloved wife, Rosalynn. He had 42 full years in the postpresidential role—10 times longer than his term in office, by far the most of any former president.

This extended span mattered for reasons within Carter’s control, and beyond it. Good fortune, medical science, and a lifetime history as a trim, fit athlete (he was a good tennis player, a runner, and a skillful softball pitcher), helped Carter survive several bouts of cancer and other tolls of aging. But his faith, will, idealism, and purpose allowed him to invent and exemplify a new role for former presidents, and to see his own years in office reconsidered.

Suppose that, like Lyndon B. Johnson, he had died of a literal and figurative broken heart at age 64. His record and achievements would have concluded with Ronald Reagan still in office, and his story would have been summarized as ending on a loss. Carter could never have received the Nobel Peace Prize, which he won while nearing age 80, in 2002. (Nobel Prizes cannot be given posthumously.)

With health like Lyndon Johnson’s, Jimmy Carter would not have had a chance to establish his new identity—and to see prevailing assessments of his role as president change as profoundly as those of Harry Truman did. As with Truman, the passing years have made it easier to see what Carter achieved, and to recognize what he was trying to do even when unsuccessful. But Truman was no longer alive to see that happen. For Carter I think the process of reassessment will go on.

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It is hard for most Americans to imagine the Jimmy Carter of those days. It is hard even for me to recognize how different the country is as a whole.

Just to talk about politics: The South was then the Democrats’ base, and the West Coast was hostile territory. Jimmy Carter swept all states of the old Confederacy except Virginia, and lost every state west of the Rockies except Hawaii. In Electoral College calculations, the GOP started by counting on California.

The Democrats held enormous majorities in both the Senate and the House. Carter griped about dealing with Congress, as all presidents do. But under Majority Leader Robert Byrd, the Democrats held 61 seats in the Senate through Carter’s time. In the House, under Speaker Tip O’Neill, they had a margin of nearly 150 seats (not a typo). The serious legislative dealmaking was among the Democrats.

In culture and economics—well, you just need to watch some movies from the 1970s, Rocky, Taxi Driver, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon (or, if you prefer, Saturday Night Fever and Star Wars). The United States was a country fraying on all its edges, just beginning to absorb the shock of the Vietnam years, in its first wave of grappling with globalization and environmental constraints.

Prevailing memories reached back far beyond Vietnam to the Korean War, World War II, and the Great Depression. In campaign speeches, Carter talked about the difference it made to him, as a boy, when Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration brought electric power to small communities like his. We on the speechwriting staff could rely on the story for applause. Enough people remembered.

There were no cellphones then, nor even bulky “portable” phones. Computers meant behemoths at major data centers.

And in civic life, Richard Nixon’s downfall seemed to have reinforced the idea that there was such a thing as public shame. It was construed as embarrassing for Jimmy Carter that his hard-luck brother, Billy, was in a penny-ante way cashing on the family fame by promoting six packs of his own “Billy Beer.” Carter, from a small-town business-owning background, felt that he had to sell the family peanut mill to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. After Nixon’s scandals and Spiro Agnew’s resignation, “doing the right thing” mattered, and Carter did so.

Jimmy Carter took office in the “before” times. We live in an unrecognizable “after.” He did his best, in office and out, to promote the values he cared about through it all.

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What did he do in office? He did a lot. He was visionary about climate and the environment. He changed the composition of the federal courts. For better and worse he deregulated countless industries, from craft brewing to the airlines. I direct you to Stuart Eizenstat’s detailed and authoritative President Carter: The White House Years for specifics. I’ll just add:

• Jimmy Carter did more than anyone else, before or since, to bring peace to the Middle East, with his Camp David accords. The agreement between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat could not possibly have been reached without Carter’s all-in, round-the-clock involvement. I was there and saw it. Any other witness would agree. (This was also the theme of Lawrence Wright’s excellent Thirteen Days in September.)

• Jimmy Carter saved the United States decades of woe with his Panama Canal Treaty.

• Jimmy Carter bought the United States several generations’ worth of respect with his human-rights policy. Can such an approach be no-exceptions or absolute? Of course not. Carter recognized as clearly as anyone the tension between ideals and reality. But does even imperfect idealism make a difference? That is the case Carter made in a speech at Notre Dame in 1977. I think it stands up well. Its essence:

We have reaffirmed America's commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy …

This does not mean that we can conduct our foreign policy by rigid moral maxims. We live in a world that is imperfect and which will always be imperfect—a world that is complex and confused and which will always be complex and confused.

I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon. But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.”

In the life of the human spirit, words are action.

• Jimmy Carter spoke to the “values” and “engagement” crises decades before demagogues like Trump or healers like Obama. In the summer of 1979, he gave an unusually sober and sermonlike address on the national “crisis of confidence.” This is generally known as the “malaise” speech, and is widely considered a downbeat marker of a down era. But as Kevin Mattson points out in his entertaining What the Heck Are You Up to, Mr. President?, the speech was well received at the time. Carter’s popularity rating went up nearly 10 points in its wake. (Also, the speech didn’t include the word malaise.) Things again started going wrong for Carter soon after that—he made mistakes, and was unlucky—but the speech deserves respect. It was a leader’s attempt to express the fears and hard truths many people felt, and to find a way forward.

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Jimmy Carter survived to see many of his ambitions realized, including near eradication of the dreaded Guinea worm, which, unglamorous as it sounds, represents an increase in human well-being greater than most leaders have achieved. He survived to see his character, vision, and sincerity recognized, and to know that other ex-presidents will be judged by the standard he has set.

He was an unlucky president, and a lucky man.

We are lucky to have had him. Blessed.

December 22, 2022

LOTS OF MEMORABLE THINGS happened in Decembers past. The final flight of Pan Am, for instance, took place in December of 1991. Three years before that, just a few days before Christmas, was the Lockerbie bombing.

But let’s talk instead about the Clash — yes, the British punk rock band led by guitarists and co-vocalists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. A number of anniversaries mark December as “Clash month.”

We’ll start with December 14th, which was the 43rd anniversary of the release of London Calling, the band’s most famous album and arguably — argues me — one of the greatest rock records of all time.

This was a double LP (back when there were such things) clocking in with 19 songs, almost all of them outstanding. If there’s a singular highlight, it’s probably “Death or Glory,” which to me is the finest song in the entire Clash canon. But on the whole its best songs are the more freewheeling and divergent: “Jimmy Jazz,” “Rudie Can’t Fail,” “Wrong Em Boyo,” and the ska-powered “Revolution Rock…”

Careful how you move, Mac, you dig me in me back, And I’m so pilled up that I rattle. I have got the sharpest knife, so I cut the biggest slice But I have no time to do battle. Hey!

What’s all that about? Who knows, who cares. It’s just fun, dammit. And, at the other extreme, a few songs prior, here’s Mick Jones getting all historical on “The Card Cheat”…

From the Hundred Years War to the Crimea, With a lance and a musket and a Roman spear, To all of the men who have stood with no fear, In the service of the King.

I mean, wow. What rock band would dream of writing a song that today? Do they even have rock bands anymore?

Only two days earlier, December 12th, was the 42nd anniversary of the release of Sandinista!  Not to be outdone, this was a triple album (three pizzas, count ‘em, in the box) loaded with 36 songs.

Trying to describe Sandinista! is like trying to describe New York City — where a portion of it was recorded, along with London and Jamaica. Where do you start? It’s a staggering — and, for its time, quite brave — melange of punk, reggae, calypso, gospel, funk, dub. And lest we forget, the record’s opener, “The Magnificent Seven,” was punk rock’s first-ever foray into rap.

The title’s reference to the ’80s-era conflict in Central America will clue in the novice to the Clash’s idealistic underpinnings, and Joe Strummer spent his career singing and speaking on behalf of social justice, the politics of Nic-a-rag-you-ah, certainly, among them.

I’d had Sandinista! hanging around for years, but had never really given it a listen beyond the obvious, like “Charlie Don’t Surf” (taken from a line in the movie Apocalypse Now) or the sweet chimes of “Washington Bullets.” All that wax, all those songs; it seemed so daunting. How does one even approach a triple album? But for no special reason I threw it onto the turntable in the winter of 1991 — already it was more than a decade old — and started paying attention.

The first things to hook you might be the steel drums of “Let’s Go Crazy,” or the oddly beautiful “Silicone on Sapphire,” which is the skeleton of “Washington Bullets” set to a host of electronic effects, xylophone, and mysteriously alternating, left channel/right channel voices. Or take a loud listen to “The Sound of the Sinners,” with Strummer as a valiumed preacher singing in desperate euphoria to his congregation. My favorite cut, though, is probably “Living in Fame,” sung the by reggae star Mikey Dread.

Three discs, 36 songs, and a lot of stylistic zig-zagging. But it never feels pretentious or over-extended. On the contrary, Sandinista! is an elegant work of art.

Where were we? Oh yes, Clash bassist Paul Simonon also celebrated his 67th birthday this month.

But most poignant of all, December 22nd marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer. Joe died from a heart attack in 2002. He was only fifty.

Several of my music heroes have left us over the last several years: Grant Hart, Pat Fish, Lou Reed. The deaths of Hart and Fish hit me on a particularly sentimental, even personal level. But from a less subjective, purely artistic point of view, I suppose the loss of Joe Strummer has been the most tragic of all.

While it’s from neither of the aforementioned albums, here’s something to clear your head. This was, you might notice, before Strummer got his teeth fixed. And behold the mullet on Mick Jones.

 

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THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME. THE (SECOND) GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME.

The post Remembering the Clash appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

November 29, 2022

IS IT JUST ME, or is the entire air travel experience broken right now?

Security lines are endless, terminals are noisier and more crowded than ever, airport lounges have become overcrowded feeding troughs, onboard service isn’t half of what it was pre-pandemic, delays and cancellations are rampant. And so on; it’s across the board.

Initially, as the COVID-19 fiasco wound down, most of the trouble could be blamed on a lack of staffing. Passengers came back faster than expected, and the industry wasn’t ready. The resulting chaos was unpleasant, but was expected to be temporary. Yet here we are on the cusp of 2023, and although things aren’t as dysfunctional as they were six or eight months ago, they still feel badly off-kilter.

What troubles me most is that we seem to be resigning ourselves to it. I fear that we’re plateauing at a sort of “new normal.” Much as I hate that expression, it’s worryingly apropos in this case. The traveling public seems to be shrugging its shoulders and adapting.

It reminds me of what happened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Initially there were howls of outrage over the establishment of the TSA and the excesses of its policies: the agonizing lines, the illogical rules and hostile enforcement. It simply wasn’t sustainable, people declared. Things would mellow out in time, they said. They would have to.

Except that’s not what happened, really. Instead, we got accustomed to it all. Two decades later, security theater, with all of its extravagant waste, and despite the millions of hours it steals from us each year, is simply taken for granted. We endure it.

Is the same sort of thing happening again? Most people have always hated flying. Now they’ll just hate it a little more?

Where and how things are wrong is easy to see. But let me cherry-pick one example: onboard service. Food, wine, amenities. If you ask me, service hit its nadir somewhere around 2004, in the thick of the post-9/11 industry downturn. The airlines were going bankrupt, one after the other, and inflight offerings were scarce. But then it got better. It was a long, slow climb, but by 2019, in the premium cabins of the US legacy carriers, the levels of luxury and pampering at long last rivaled the better Asian and European carriers.

In fact, air travel by that point had entered a whole new golden age. Service, safety and convenience had reached unprecedented levels, and tickets were as affordable as they’d ever been — an achievement I celebrated in this New York Times article in 2017.

Then came COVID-19, and now the whole bar seems to have been re-set. Today, even on long-haul flights, a first class meal is often slung at you hurriedly on a tray, and they’re giving out champagne in plastic cups. At fares that aren’t any cheaper.

Will it get better this time, as the industry regains its footing? I’m not so sure. I’m sensing this is more of a paradigm shift — a change of expectations — than a simple correlation between profitability and service levels. Customers are more or less happy with things they are, I’m told. At least it’s not 2020, the thinking goes, when they got nothing at all.

Thus the benchmark, it seems, is the pandemic-panic realm of two years ago, rather than the golden age of 2019. By this logic, even the crappiest experience is a win. The bar has been re-set because expectations have been re-set.

We can look at this situation more broadly, too. It’s a decline, I think, that extends beyond flying.

This is a nitpicky example, but why do so many hotels, even five-star places, still not stock their rooms with cups or drinking glasses? Apparently guests are supposed to stick their faces under the faucet when brushing their teeth? I was in a Hyatt recently. No glasses, anywhere. So I call the front desk. “Would you like us to bring you some glasses?”

Hell, why not skip the pillows and sheets as well. If guests want them, they can always call.

I’d also like my Uber drivers to stop canceling at the last minute, and otherwise charging me double the normal fare. And don’t get me started with the hellishness of QR menus in restaurants.

And we should probably stop there. This is trending in a rather whiny direction.

These are, I realize, first-world complaints of a selfish, perhaps even gluttonous order. The world is spinning into ecological collapse, the specter of war looms large, and so on. I understand that. But everything has its context. And it’s possible that my gripes are symptoms, warning signs, of something more consequential gone rotten.

Welcome to post-pandemic America, 2022. The land where everything seems to be settling into a half-assed, slightly shittier, and more expensive version of what we had before.

Or, I’m just impatient. I’m known to be, and you’re free to judge my dooming and glooming as unfair.

Hopefully it is, and, at the risk of sounding manic, I’ll close with something more positive, and maybe more rational:

Flying remains, if nothing else, affordable and astonishingly safe. The business just went through the most traumatic two years of its existence, racking up tens of billions in debt. Recovery, which was never a sure thing in the first place, remains a long-term work in progress.

I, indeed all of us, should probably be thrilled with things as they are. It could’ve turned out a lot, lot worse.

And so, give it time.

 

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FLYING: A LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. THE MAD, MAD SUMMER OF 2022 TWENTY YEARS AND COUNTING.

Airline cabin photo: Hanson Lu/Unsplash. Hotel room photo by the author.

The post Flying in 2022 appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

Over the years, the NHL has seen some absolutely incredibly forwards, and ranking them is an extremely hard process. But, we’ve taken on the challenge of attempting to place our top 10 most notable NHL forwards of all time down below. 

Maurice Richard:

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Maurice Richard is one of the most legendary figures in the history of the NHL, and was known for his highly prolific goal-scoring record, leading the league’s top goal scorers table five times throughout his time in the NHL, but only ever earnt one MVP award in his entire career. However, he solidified his position in NHL history, ending as a top-three finisher another five times in his career whilst also being a 13-time All-Star. 

Phil Esposito:

Between 1969 and 1975, there was only one man that led the league in goals scored: Phil Esposito. This 6-year span that saw him dominate the goal-scoring charts saw him score a total of 369 goals, which was 149 more than any other player in the NHL throughout this period. In fact, the gap that was between him and the second-placed goal scored was the same as the gap between the second-placed goal scored and the 100th-placed goal-scorer. Legendary. 

Jean Beliveau:

Notorious forward Jean Beliveau was the embodiment of a champion, featuring as the centerpiece to 10 Stanley Cup winning teams during his time at the Montreal Canadiens, and is certainly rated by most fans as one of the most prolific forwards in NHL history, and certainly one of the best Canadiens of all time, which is what has earnt him the number eight spot on our list.

Alex Ovechkin:

After finally winning a Stanley Cup, there is little than can be held against Alex Ovechkin or in his way of standing as one of the most prominent players in the NHL’s history. Having been one of the stars of the NHL for over 15 years now, seeing his name in this top 10 list should be absolutely no surprise. But if he ends up breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record, then there is no doubt his position in this list changes dramatically. 

Sidney Crosby:

As a three-time Stanley Cup winner, with two MVP awards, as well as two scoring titles, and numerous other awards, we think it’s only fair that Sidney Crosby takes his place here in our top 10 list, the man has been a prolific star of the NHL for well over a decade now, so it is absolutely not too early or too risky to begin holding him in such high esteem. 

If you’re not a fan of risks either, then take a look at some of the best NHL betting lines available.

Jaromir Jagr:

Condemned to the shadows of Mario Lemieux during his time in Pittsburgh, there is still very little doubt about the ability that Jaromir Jagr has. Whilst he is ranked incredibly highly in his productivity as a result of longevity, the numbers he managed to produce throughout the dead puck era, which is when he was in his prime, were incredibly admirable. There is no reason not to include Jagr in this list, and deserves to comfortably sit this high up. 

Mike Bossy:

Whilst highly regarded, we feel like Bossy’s positioning on these lists suffers as a result of the lack of longevity he had in the NHL and his recognition as a legend falters because of this too, which is why we’ve put him in at number 4 spot in our list. 

Despite only spending a decade in the NHL, he’s first for goals per game and is comfortably in the top-five for points per game in the league. Plus, his goal tally for nine out of ten seasons for his career was ridiculous, scoring at least 50 goals a season, which likely would’ve continued into his final season too had he played more games. 

Gordie Howe:

There is a lot to be said about this man, statistically, it’s understandable why he has this spot on the list. Bet he is someone that goes far beyond comprehension, with his mythical style of play alongside a sheer dominance of the NHL, he is truly one of the most notable forwards of all time. Furthermore, this is a man that played in the NHL until he was 51 and STILL produced quality numbers, so it’s no wonder as to why he is heralded as one of the greatest to ever do it. 

Mario Lemieux:

With Mario placed here, it’s pretty clear who is going to be number 1 on our list. However, it was certainly close, and whilst there are a lot of ifs and buts about what could’ve been for Mario Lemieux, a man who manages to save an organization twice as both player and owner and in accompaniment with his many, many achievements on and off the ice, he very deservedly comes in at the number 2 spot. 

Wayne Gretzky:

Forwards score goals, and that’s exactly what Wayne Gretzky did, his NHL record of 894 still stands to this day, and it doesn’t get more notable for a forward than that.

Conclusion:

What do you think, do you agree with our top 10? Who would you change? Is there anyone we missed? Leave a comment and let us know!

The post 10 Notable NHL Forwards Of All Time appeared first on Puck Drunk Love.

Guess which media organization was working overtime on the production line?

It was clear why Chris Wallace left Fox News late last year. Now he speaks.

Listening to Joe Biden give his first official State of the Union address on Tuesday night, I thought: This is strong. It is clear; it’s the right message in the right language. It reflects the speaker in an honest way. And it also brings something new to this tired form.

But each of those judgments rests on assumptions about speeches in general and State of the Union addresses in particular. So let me lay out my reasoning and then get to the details of the speech.

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What makes a speech “good”? Or “effective”? Or viewed as “eloquent”? Or perhaps eventually as “memorable” or “historic”?

These are trickier assessments than they might seem, and can take time to settle in. The value and effect of a speech depend on some circumstances that a speaker can control, or at least be aware of: the message, the audience, the expected length of the speech, the expected tone, from jokey to statesmanlike. But they also depend on aspects of timing and fortune beyond anyone’s control. Winston Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” pledge to Parliament in 1940 is remembered in a particular way because of how the next five years of combat turned out. As are Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “date which will live in infamy,” John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner,” and Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

By contrast, George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished” declaration one month into the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is remembered in a different way, because of what happened afterward.

(I know how it feels to be involved in a statement that history has made look foolish. While working for Jimmy Carter in the White House, I was the writer on the trip where he gave a New Year’s Eve toast, in Tehran, to the shah of Iran as an “island of stability” in the turbulent sea of the Middle East. That was the official U.S. outlook at the time, which I did my best to express. Within little more than a year, the shah was out, and the Iranian revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini was under way.)

Why many different kinds of speeches can be “good,” and what makes them that way

Some speeches are meant to excite or inspire. Political-rally speeches are in this category, the more so the closer they come to Election Day. Speeches to inspire the whole nation should obviously not be partisan. For instance, JFK in 1962: “We choose to go to the moon … not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skill.” Speeches to energize the base can be partisan as hell, because voters are about to choose one side or the other. For instance, FDR just before Election Day in 1936: “[My opponents] are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

[Read: What Biden’s State of the Union speech was for]

Some speeches are meant to console or commemorate. Robert F . Kennedy’s most moving speech may have been his unscripted statement of grief and resolve, at a street corner rally before a largely Black crowd in Indianapolis, when sharing the news that Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated, in April 1968. This was two months before Kennedy himself was shot dead. Ronald Reagan gave his State of the Union address in 1986 a few days after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, and he began with a tribute to the seven dead astronauts. I believe that Barack Obama’s most powerful address was his eulogy in 2015 for the slain parishioners at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Some speeches are meant to explain. The example all aspire to is FDR’s first Fireside Chat in 1933, on the reasons behind the banking crisis. (He began, “My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.”)

Some speeches are meant to motivate, organize, and instruct in the short run. After the “Bloody Sunday” marches in Selma, Alabama, Lyndon B. Johnson gave his most powerful speech, in urging Congress to pass what became the Voting Rights Act of 1965: “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.”

Some speeches are meant for reflection and guidance in the long term. Lincoln’s second inaugural in 1865. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. George Washington’s farewell address in 1796, and Dwight Eisenhower’s in 1961. The commencement address by George Marshall at Harvard in 1947, the Nobel Prize lecture by William Faulkner in 1950, the “Moral Equivalent of War” speech by William James at Stanford in 1906. Having told my embarrassing “island of stability” story, I’ll add that I think a different speech I was involved in, Jimmy Carter’s commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977, on the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy, stands up well: “I understand fully the limits of moral suasion … But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody … In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted.”

Some speeches are meant to get the speaker out of an immediate bind. Bill Clinton’s career is packed with examples, from the town meetings in New Hampshire that made him the “comeback kid” in 1992; to his State of the Union address in 1995 after his party had lost 54 House seats in the midterms, delivered with Newt Gingrich seated behind him as speaker; to his State of the Union in 1999, while being impeached. This last speech was about economics and domestic-reform measures and it did not mention his legal problems. After introductory formalities it began, “Tonight, I stand before you to report that America has created the longest peacetime economic expansion in our history”, and it never looked back.

Some speeches are meant to be enjoyed purely in the moment, like a play or concert. Some are meant to be reread or studied on the page. Some are dignified by quotations and fancy language. Some are best when plainspoken and spare. Some fall into categories even beyond the ones I’ve named.

Here is the point of this long setup. It is as hard to define a “good” or “bad” speech as a good or bad song. It all depends—on who the speaker is, what the circumstances are, and what is the register in which the speaker sounds most convincing and authentic. Let’s apply those standards to this speech.

What Biden was trying to do, and how he did it

The questions about a speech like this are: Does it sound natural to the speaker? (A speechwriter’s skill is not so much the ability to “write” as the ear for the way the speaker would like to put things.) Does it make use of the times and circumstances? And does it tell us anything new?

By those standards I thought Biden’s speech was a real success, and one that might have been underappreciated because of the plainness that was in fact its main virtue.

The language. Some speakers sound natural when uttering phrases that seem headed straight for the Famous Quote books. Churchill. FDR. John Kennedy. A handful of others.

But most people seem puffed-up and strained when reaching for a fancy phrase. They can sound like high-school actors, overemoting, “To be, or not to be.” Nearly all of us are better in the mode Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower brought to the presidency, at their best: eloquence through plainness.

Early in his career, Biden favored fancy speechmaking. In his maturity he has embraced, as he should, his simpler and authentic-sounding “listen, folks” style.

In this speech, as I’ll note below, Biden sounded like himself, rather than like a person intent on Speaking for the Ages. Even his cadence showed it. He gave the whole speech at a rapid clip, even when this meant talking over applause lines. Perhaps in part this was to deal with the lifelong stuttering challenge that John Hendrickson has so powerfully and beautifully described. But to me it came across as a person intent on delivering a message, rather than hoping to be admired while delivering it.

Even the fit-and-finish details of the speech suggested a man on a mission. State of the Union addresses are notorious for their unsubtle, groaning-hinges transitions. “Turning now to affairs overseas,” or “We cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home.” The transitions in this speech are notable for not existing. Biden just made a point, then made the next one.

The substance. Joe Biden sat through dozens of State of the Union addresses as a senator, and sat on-camera through eight of them as vice president. Everything about this ritual is familiar to him.

So were the three main topics of his discourse: dealing with the Ukraine emergency, dealing with the economy, and dealing with the pandemic. Coordinating with other countries was part of his experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president, and comes naturally to his dealmaking nature. Ordinary-American economic issues were part of his identity as Scranton Joe. And the pandemic was the emergency he inherited on arrival. His treatment of them sounded like a briefing from a person in the middle of running multiple response teams, conveying which emergencies they were dealing with on which fronts. I’m always thinking of aviation-world analogies, and this reminded me of an experienced controller giving a rundown on where a skyful of airplanes were headed, and what his team needed to focus on next.

The backstage view. Being president is impossible. John Dickerson made the case in this cover story four years ago. I have written about it as well. To “succeed” in the job, a person needs a broader range of skills than any real human being has ever possessed. Public eloquence. Private persuasive power. IQ. EQ. Stamina. Luck. A generous imagination, but also cold-bloodedness. A thousand traits more. The question is not whether any president will “fail.” It is in which particular way, and how the world will judge the over/under.

Joe Biden was not explicitly making the case for himself, in handling the complexities of his role. (Although of course every speech, by every president, is implicitly an advertisement for the incumbent’s fitness.) But having heard nearly as many of these State of the Union speeches as Biden himself has, I thought this one amounted to a look at what a president’s job is. State of the Union speeches have rightly been mocked, including by me, as to-do lists. To me, this speech came across as a realistic view into the to-do urgency that makes up a president’s day.

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What follows is an abbreviated version of an approach I’ve tried before, of annotating the SOTU transcript. You can read the whole official speech from the White House if you prefer. I’ve used the version that was on Biden’s TelePrompter, and I’m leaving out more than half of it, indicated by an ellipsis (…) in interests of space. Comments are in bold, with the words or lines they’re referring to in italics. Here we go.

Madam Speaker, Madam Vice President, our First Lady and Second Gentleman. Members of Congress and the Cabinet. Justices of the Supreme Court. My fellow Americans. Of course, this is the first time that a president has begun with this salutation. As was true throughout the speech, Biden under- rather than oversold the moment. … Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the foundations of the free world, thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways. But he badly miscalculated.

[Read: Vladimir Putin united America]

He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined. An attempted “line,” which Biden sensibly moved right past rather than waiting for a response. He met the Ukrainian people. What I am referring to as plain-style eloquence. From President Zelenskyy to every Ukrainian, their fearlessness, their courage, their determination, inspires the world. Groups of citizens blocking tanks with their bodies. Everyone from students to retirees, teachers turned soldiers, defending their homeland. This will not be studied for rhyme, or emphasis in delivery. But it is very powerful. In this struggle, as President Zelenskyy said in his speech to the European Parliament, “Light will win over darkness.” The Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States is here tonight. Let each of us here tonight in this Chamber send an unmistakable signal to Ukraine and to the world. Please rise if you are able and show that, Yes, we the United States of America stand with the Ukrainian people. One of the performance-art aspects of SOTUs is which part of the chamber will cheer which lines. This was a graceful and appropriate way for Biden to induce a standing ovation from all. Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos. As a matter of sentence rhythm, this is not the way Churchill, Kennedy, et al. would have phrased it. But, once more, powerful in its intent. They keep moving.    … American diplomacy matters. American resolve matters. This could not be plainer. Nor truer, at the moment. … [Putin] thought the West and NATO wouldn’t respond. And he thought he could divide us at home. Putin was wrong. We were ready. Here is what we did. See above.

We prepared extensively and carefully… I spent countless hours unifying our European allies. We shared with the world in advance what we knew Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to falsely justify his aggression. “I am going to tell you about the actual work of being president.”

We countered Russia’s lies with truth.    And now that he has acted, the free world is holding him accountable. Along with twenty-seven members of the European Union including France, Germany, Italy, as well as countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and many others, even Switzerland. Even Switzerland!!!! We are inflicting pain on Russia and supporting the people of Ukraine. Putin is now isolated from the world more than ever. I do not think we have heard these words before in a SOTU … Tonight I say to the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who have bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: No more. Nor this word. The U.S. Department of Justice is assembling a dedicated task force to go after the crimes of Russian oligarchs. I believe the camera panned to Merrick Garland at this point. Many people thinking, with me, Get busy with these task forces! We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains. Nor these words. Nice emphasis on your. … And tonight I am announcing that we will join our allies in closing off American air space to all Russian flights—further isolating Russia—and adding an additional squeeze on their economy.

The Ruble has lost 30% of its value. The Russian stock market has lost 40% of its value and trading remains suspended. Russia’s economy is reeling and Putin alone is to blame. Powerful to keep calling him just “Putin.” And around this time Biden ad libs, “He has no idea what is coming,” emphasized that way.

… And we remain clear-eyed. The Ukrainians are fighting back with pure courage. But the next few days weeks, months, will be hard on them. Preparing for grim news in these coming days …

I know the news about what’s happening can seem alarming. But I want you to know that we are going to be okay. Not fancy, but an important part of the duties of the job. A president’s mission, in a time of crisis, always boils down to recognizing the fear, hardship, and sorrow of today; expressing confidence about tomorrow; and offering a plan to get from now to then. Biden’s whole speech is a demonstration of that formula. This line is the summary version of Step 2.

When the history of this era is written Putin’s war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger. First part undeniably true. Let’s hope the second part is also … … In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security. Notable because so many have assumed the opposite. This is a real test. It’s going to take time. So let us continue to draw inspiration from the iron will of the Ukrainian people. One more time, then I’ll give this theme a rest: This may not count as a Ringing Phrase, but it’s an important concept, and plainly true.

… He will never extinguish their love of freedom. He will never weaken the resolve of the free world. We meet tonight in an America that has lived through two of the hardest years this nation has ever faced. This would have been the start of the speech, if not for the news from Ukraine. Again, note that he’s not even pretending to make a transition. The pandemic has been punishing. And so many families are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep up with the rising cost of food, gas, housing, and so much more. I understand. The essence of Biden’s pitch, in times of economic distress. Skipping past the next few paragraphs, which are the pitch for his economic plan … … And as my Dad used to say, it [economic legislation] gave people a little breathing room. And unlike the $2 Trillion tax cut passed in the previous administration that benefitted the top 1% of Americans, the American Rescue Plan helped working people—and left no one behind. The “partisan” part of Biden’s argument is: We are trying to help you. The other side wants to enrich them. And it worked. It created jobs. Lots of jobs. In fact—our economy created over 6.5 Million new jobs just last year, more jobs created in one year than ever before in the history of America. The New York Times did a pettifogging “fact check” for this claim, saying it was “partially true” because employment figures go back only to 1939. Oh, come on. Our economy grew at a rate of 5.7% last year, the strongest growth in nearly 40 years, the first step in bringing fundamental change to an economy that hasn’t worked for the working people of this nation for too long. A “phrase,” but Biden rolls right through it.The effect, again, is that he is concentrating on the contents, not the packaging. For the past 40 years we were told that if we gave tax breaks to those at the very top, the benefits would trickle down to everyone else. But that trickle-down theory led to weaker economic growth, lower wages, bigger deficits, and the widest gap between those at the top and everyone else in nearly a century. Over the past generation, the Republicans have been careful to use phrases like “death tax” (for “estate tax”) in all of their statements. “Trickle-down” is the one phrase on which Democrats have shown similar consistency and “message discipline.” Vice President Harris and I ran for office with a new economic vision for America. Invest in America. Educate Americans. Grow the workforce. Build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down. We will keep hearing this, too. Because we know that when the middle class grows, the poor have a ladder up and the wealthy do very well … I’m condensing the infrastructure section that follows … This was a bipartisan effort, and I want to thank the members of both parties who worked to make it happen. We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks. We’re going to have an infrastructure decade. Write your own caption. Condensing the next part about competing with China … And we’ll do it all to withstand the devastating effects of the climate crisis and promote environmental justice. We’ll build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, begin to replace poisonous lead pipes—so every child—and every American—has clean water to drink at home and at school, provide affordable high-speed internet for every American—urban, suburban, rural, and tribal communities. Internet access is a huge problem in much of America. Meta-point: Bill Clinton’s 1995 SOTU address, after the Democrats had been nearly wiped out in the midterms, was enormously long, and mostly made of nitty-gritty specifics like this. Pundits made fun of it for its length and boringness. Polls later suggested that the national audience paid attention and cared about these details. I went into this in my book Breaking the News and in this magazine. 4,000 projects have already been announced. And tonight, I’m announcing that this year we will start fixing over 65,000 miles of highway and 1,500 bridges in disrepair. When we use taxpayer dollars to rebuild America—we are going to Buy American: buy American products to support American jobs Condensing the “Buy American” and Intel-investment parts …

— And Intel is not alone. A “transition”! There’s something happening in America. Just look around and you’ll see an amazing story. The rebirth of the pride that comes from stamping products “Made In America.” The revitalization of American manufacturing. I agree. For more, see this. 

[David Frum: This is no time for protectionism]

Companies are choosing to build new factories here, when just a few years ago, they would have built them overseas. That’s what is happening. Ford is investing $11 billion to build electric vehicles, creating 11,000 jobs across the country. GM is making the largest investment in its history—$7 billion to build electric vehicles, creating 4,000 jobs in Michigan. All told, we created 369,000 new manufacturing jobs in America just last year. My proposal: Every story about “our inflation-racked economy” needs to have a counterpart story on “our record-fast job growth.” They’re both part of the same reality. More here. Powered by people I’ve met like JoJo Burgess, from generations of union steelworkers from Pittsburgh, who’s here with us tonight. Ever since Ronald Reagan kicked off this tradition, “guests in the first family’s box” has become the great cliché of SOTU addresses. Biden went lighter on it than usual. As Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown says, “It’s time to bury the label “Rust Belt.” It’s time. Yes. And the line we are waiting for here is “This revived part of America is the Chrome Belt.” Or “It’s America’s Newest Frontier.” “It’s the Freshwater Belt.” “It’s the Real America and the Next America.” Or something to complete the thought. Counterargument: proposing any specific name might start a little argument on whether the new name is silly—see: “Washington Commanders”—and Biden is better off just moving straight ahead. But with all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth and higher wages, too many families are struggling to keep up with the bills. Transition! Inflation is robbing them of the gains they might otherwise feel. I get it. That’s why my top priority is getting prices under control. Going to condense this next part … One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer.   I have a better plan to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages … Instead of relying on foreign supply chains, let’s make it in America … Economists call it “increasing the productive capacity of our economy.” I call it building a better America. Replacing the “Build Back Better” of his currently stalled legislation. My plan to fight inflation will lower your costs and lower the deficit. One person’s opinion (mine): It is politically necessary for him to mention the deficit, but Biden kept the discussion relatively under control. More on this theme below. — First—cut the cost of prescription drugs. Just look at insulin. One in ten Americans has diabetes. In Virginia, I met a 13-year-old boy named Joshua Davis. This young man is the instant national favorite as guest-in-the-first-family’s-box …  

Imagine what it’s like to look at your child who needs insulin and have no idea how you’re going to pay for it.   What it does to your dignity, your ability to look your child in the eye, to be the parent you expect to be. This is the kind of line that would sound fake from many politicians but that Biden has made authentic to him. Joshua is here with us tonight. Yesterday was his birthday. Happy birthday, buddy …Similar point about this different phrase. The one in the previous paragraph sounds Biden-esque because we all know the stories about his father being laid off. This one has an average-person approachability that would seem faux-chummy from, say, Ted Cruz, but fits the impression we already have of Biden..

Drug companies will still do very well. And while we’re at it, let Medicare negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs, like the VA already does. Editorial note: Amen! … Second—cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change.   Let’s provide investments and tax credits to weatherize your homes and businesses to be energy efficient and you get a tax credit; double America’s clean energy production in solar, wind, and so much more; lower the price of electric vehicles, saving you another $80 a month because you’ll never have to pay at the gas pump again. The kind of detail, again, that could be called “boring” on pundit panels but that Bill Clinton built his reelection campaign on. Same for the following few paragraphs. Third—cut the cost of child care. Many families pay up to $14,000 a year for child care per child … My plan doesn’t stop there. It also includes home and long-term care. More affordable housing. And Pre-K for every 3- and 4-year-old …   So that’s my plan. It will grow the economy and lower costs for families. So what are we waiting for? Let’s get this done. And while you’re at it, confirm my nominees to the Federal Reserve, which plays a critical role in fighting inflation.   My plan will not only lower costs to give families a fair shot, it will lower the deficit. The previous Administration not only ballooned the deficit with tax cuts for the very wealthy and corporations, it undermined the watchdogs whose job was to keep pandemic relief funds from being wasted. See previous remarks on mentioning-but-not-belaboring the deficit. But in my administration, the watchdogs have been welcomed back. We’re going after the criminals who stole billions in relief money meant for small businesses and millions of Americans. See FDR on blunt language against well-heeled crooks. And tonight, I’m announcing that the Justice Department will name a chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud. By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half what it was before I took office.   The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year. For decades, Democrats have pointed out that deficit trends have been much lower under their administrations than under the GOP. But they have been abashed about making that argument. Maybe Biden, who has seen it all, is going to try.

Lowering your costs also means demanding more competition. Shorthand introduction follows to “modern anti-trust theory.” In my view this is really important; glad it is getting some airtime in the speech. For more, see Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Wu, Lina Khan, and others. I’m a capitalist, but capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation—and it drives up prices.

[David A. Graham: Biden seizes the center]

When corporations don’t have to compete, their profits go up, your prices go up, and small businesses and family farmers and ranchers go under … And as Wall Street firms take over more nursing homes, quality in those homes has gone down and costs have gone up. The kind of specific that Bill Clinton used to effect. That ends on my watch. Medicare is going to set higher standards for nursing homes and make sure your loved ones get the care they deserve and expect. We’ll also cut costs and keep the economy going strong by giving workers a fair shot, provide more training and apprenticeships, hire them based on their skills not degrees. Shorthand reference to another very important reform and concept. Let’s pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and paid leave.   Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend the Child Tax Credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty. Let’s increase Pell Grants and increase our historic support of HBCUs, and invest in what Jill—our First Lady, who teaches full-time—calls America’s best-kept secret: community colleges. Amen to all of this. See more here. And let’s pass the PRO Act when a majority of workers want to form a union—they shouldn’t be stopped.   When we invest in our workers, when we build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out together, we can do something we haven’t done in a long time: build a better America. For more than two years, COVID-19 has impacted every decision in our lives and the life of the nation. This is what I mean about not even pretending to have a transition. And that’s fine—the organizing theme of this speech is Let’s keep moving. And I know you’re tired, frustrated, and exhausted. But I also know this. Because of the progress we’ve made, because of your resilience and the tools we have, tonight, I can say we are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines. Condensing what follows. We’re all tired, frustrated, and exhausted … Here are four common sense steps as we move forward safely. Condensing this, too, but it has the virtue of specificity. …

And we’re launching the “Test to Treat” initiative so people can get tested at a pharmacy, and if they’re positive, receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost. Leaving this in, because it is specific and will be new to most people …

Even if you already ordered free tests tonight, I am announcing that you can order more from covidtests.gov starting next week. Personal note: We ordered, received, and have used these tests. … We have lost so much to COVID-19. Time with one another. And worst of all, so much loss of life. Let’s use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: A God-awful disease. Doing his best to deflect the culture war on vaccines, masks, disease itself. There’s no point in trying to rebut the opposing views; the best strategy, on the politics and the substance, is to move on like this. Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies, and start seeing each other for who we really are: Fellow Americans.   We can’t change how divided we’ve been. But we can change how we move forward—on COVID-19 and other issues we must face together. Another “transition.” I recently visited the New York City Police Department days after the funerals of Officer Wilbert Mora and his partner, Officer Jason Rivera…. Condensing “fund the police” argument to skip to its conclusion … We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities. I ask Democrats and Republicans alike: Pass my budget and keep our neighborhoods safe. Condensing gun-violence section that follows … Repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued. These laws don’t infringe on the Second Amendment. They save lives. The most fundamental right in America is the right to vote—and to have it counted. And it’s under assault. “Transition.” The sentence that follows is of great democratic importance, and in a way is what Biden is talking about rather than talking about the January 6 attacks. (To which he devoted a whole, powerful speech on January 6 of this year.) In state after state, new laws have been passed, not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert entire elections. We cannot let this happen. Tonight, I call on the Senate to: Pass the Freedom to Vote Act. Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And while you’re at it, pass the Disclose Act so Americans can know who is funding our elections. Tonight, I’d like to honor someone who has dedicated his life to serve this country: Justice Stephen Breyer—an Army veteran, Constitutional scholar, and retiring Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Justice Breyer, thank you for your service. Anyone who saw the speech saw Breyer’s gracious response here. SCOTUS justices are supposed to sit stone-faced during the speech, the one notorious exception being Samuel Alito shaking his head No, no when Barack Obama criticized the Citizens United ruling. Breyer set a more becoming example. One of the most serious constitutional responsibilities a President has is nominating someone to serve on the United States Supreme Court. And I did that 4 days ago, when I nominated Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. One of our nation’s top legal minds, who will continue Justice Breyer’s legacy of excellence. A former top litigator in private practice. A former federal public defender. And from a family of public school educators and police officers. A consensus builder. Since she’s been nominated, she’s received a broad range of support—from the Fraternal Order of Police to former judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans. And if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure the Border and fix the immigration system. Transition? We don’t need no stinking transitions! Condensing what follows, so I don’t need to mention the attempted chant by Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert of “Build the wall” …

That’s why immigration reform is supported by everyone from labor unions to religious leaders to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Let’s get it done once and for all. Advancing liberty and justice also requires protecting the rights of women. Saving time by skipping transitions. And, of course, a powerful statement in the line that follows. The TV we were watching panned to Amy Coney Barrett on the “under attack” line. The constitutional right affirmed in Roe v. Wade—standing precedent for half a century—is under attack as never before. Condensing what follows … While it often appears that we never agree, that isn’t true. I signed 80 bipartisan bills into law last year. From preventing government shutdowns to protecting Asian Americans from still-too-common hate crimes to reforming military justice. Biden’s election-year argument on issues from the economy (jobs versus inflation), controlling the pandemic, managing the alliance (unified against Putin), to managing domestic politics will necessarily be: Actually, we’re doing a good job. This section is part of his presenting that argument. And soon, we’ll strengthen the Violence Against Women Act that I first wrote three decades ago. It is important for us to show the nation that we can come together and do big things. So tonight I’m offering a Unity Agenda for the Nation. Four big things we can do together. They are: opioids, mental-health programs—including attention to social media—care for veterans, and a new campaign to “end cancer as we know it.” The detailed description was full of the kinds of specifics that historically voters have cared about. Condensing …

As Frances Haugen, who is here with us tonight, has shown, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit. A Facebook whistleblower. This is a big callout by Biden. … Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan faced many dangers. Won’t mention the odious Boebert outburst around this part. I know.

One of those soldiers was my son Major Beau Biden. The decent members in the chamber were respectful through this part. We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops. Skipping to anti-cancer program. … To get there, I call on Congress to fund ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. It’s based on DARPA—the Defense Department project that led to the Internet, GPS, and so much more.   ARPA-H will have a singular purpose—to drive breakthroughs in cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and more. So far, none of these diseases is politicized, the way COVID has become. And virtually every family in America is affected by one or more of them. This is the kind of big-tent appeal Biden would like to make. Or, as he put it in the following line: A unity agenda for the nation. We can do this. My fellow Americans—tonight , we have gathered in a sacred space—the citadel of our democracy. Biden briefly paused before starting this paragraph, one of the few such punctuation-points in his delivery. This is clearly the “and now we come to the end of the speech” transition. In this Capitol, generation after generation, Americans have debated great questions amid great strife, and have done great things. Everyone in the chamber knows what else has happened in the Capitol, 14 months ago, and Biden’s pitch is stronger with this audience for not needing to spell that out.

For the record, I’m leaving in the whole rest of the “in conclusion” section: We have fought for freedom, expanded liberty, defeated totalitarianism and terror. And built the strongest, freest, and most prosperous nation the world has ever known. Now is the hour. Our moment of responsibility. Our test of resolve and conscience, of history itself. It is in this moment that our character is formed. Our purpose is found. Our future is forged. Well, I know this nation.   We will meet the test. To protect freedom and liberty, to expand fairness and opportunity. We will save democracy. As hard as these times have been, I am more optimistic about America today than I have been my whole life. Because I see the future that is within our grasp. Because I know there is simply nothing beyond our capacity. We are the only nation on Earth that has always turned every crisis we have faced into an opportunity. The only nation that can be defined by a single word: possibilities. So on this night, in our 245th year as a nation, I have come to report on the State of the Union. And my report is this: The State of the Union is strong—because you, the American people, are strong. There it is! Back in Japan I loved the phrase matte mashita from the audience at kabuki performances. It means “We’ve been waiting for it!” and it greets the appearance of familiar characters or scenes. A State of the Union address traditionally requires a sentence saying “The State of the Union is …” Matte mashita! Biden is one of the few to save the big reveal for the very end of the speech. I think this is a nice touch. We are stronger today than we were a year ago. And we will be stronger a year from now than we are today. Now is our moment to meet and overcome the challenges of our time. And we will, as one people. One America. The United States of America. May God bless you all. May God protect our troops.

This is Biden’s trademark ending for all of his speeches, and it is gracious and heartfelt.

In this speech he told us what his work involves, in his own words. Some people will agree, many others will disagree, and most Americans won’t have registered the speech at all. But I think he used the opportunity as well as he could have.

Wyoming—the first US state to grant a charter to a crypto bank—has approved legal status for a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), the American CryptoFed DAO, according to an announcement on Sunday. The organization, which has a mission to introduce a new monetary system, now becomes the first legally recognized DAO in the U.S.

It comes after Wyoming lawmakers voted in March to pass a bill allowing DAOs to be officially registered in the state. The law affords these entities—which are governed by smart contracts and dispense with the hierarchical control structure seen in traditional companies—the same rights as a limited liability company. The bill came into effect on July 1, 2021.

Just think — limited liability for “a company managed by nobody”!  And:

The DAO law also solidifies Wyoming’s reputation as the most crypto-friendly U.S. state. Last year, it was the first in the US to issue a state charter for crypto banks and has already licensed two: Kraken and Avanti.

Here is the full story, via Shaffin Shariff.

The post Wyoming fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The single biggest new media habit to be formed during the pandemic appears to be gaming. The extra hour per week that people spent gaming last year represented the largest percentage increase of any media category. And unlike other lockdown hobbies, it is showing no sign of falling away as life gets back to normal. It has become “a sticky habit”, says Craig Chapple of Sensor Tower. He finds that last year people installed 56.2bn gaming apps, a third more than in 2019 (and three times the rate of increase the previous year). The easing of lockdowns is not denting the habit: the first quarter of 2021 saw more installations than any quarter of 2020. Roblox, a sprawling platform on which people make and share their own basic games, reported that in the first quarter of this year players spent nearly 10bn hours on the platform, nearly twice as much time as they spent in the same period in 2020.

And:

…whereas all other generations of Americans named television and films as their favourite form of home entertainment, Generation Z ranked them last, after video games, music, web browsing and social media.

Here is more from The Economist.

The post Which media have proven sticky as pandemic has diminished? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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A post shared by Trevor Carmick & Rob Reinders (@beerlabelsinmotion) on Apr 18, 2019 at 4:16pm PDT

Dragon’s Milk White is a bourbon barrel-aged white stout brewed by @newhollandbrew in Michigan. • • • #Beerlabelsinmotion #blim #instabeer #brewstagram #craftbeer #beerlabel #beergeek #ilovebeer #beerporn #aftereffects #dragon #dragonsmilk #stout #michigan #whitestout https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwajj8VFd17/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=jwulm8ugtppt

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A post shared by Trevor Carmick & Rob Reinders (@beerlabelsinmotion) on Mar 8, 2019 at 11:39am PST

It doesn’t get much more Boston than this! Where else can you see a plane over a car over a train over a boat? A quadruple IPA by @trilliumbrewing • • • #Beerlabelsinmotion #blim #instabeer #brewstagram #craftbeer #beerlabel #beergeek #ilovebeer #beerporn #aftereffects #quadrupleipa #ipa #trilliumbrewing #animation

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I always know how long I’ve been away because I get a little backup time machine notification popup on my laptop, this time around is was 140 days! Time flies, wild right? It’s also my Maddie needs a bath notification….road dog finally gets a bath

Share a taco with someone you love day 😊

My mom just called me and was like, “I JUST SAW YOU ON TV!” and I considered that she’d lost her mind or accidentally called me instead of my sister but she insisted that she’d just seen me on a … Continue reading →

14 years ago today I made a person, like some kinda wizard or something.   Victor says it’s not really “magic” as much as “science” and also is accusing me of dumbing down his part in this, as “millions of … Continue reading →

I've used the phrase time is of the essence all my life without realising that it has a quite precise legal meaning. I just thought that it meant something like get your skates on or show a leg or hurry up. But it is much stronger than that. Time is of the essence because it's essential to the contract.Contracts usually have a deadline in them, but it's not that important. If I have a contract to write a book and I hand it in a month late nobody particularly cares. The world remains quite extraordinarily calm.Some contracts, like building ones have a deadline where the supplier is penalised a bit if they're late. But the contract itself still stands (and has usually taken all this into account).But sometimes the whole contract is based on the deadline, and if the deadlines is missed the contract is null and void. If I'm delivering perishable goods, like milk, to you, and it arrives three weeks late and very sour: then the goods are worthless. The deadline is broken and with it the whole contract. You pay me nothing.A wedding cake that arrives too late is no longer a wedding cake. It is mere cake. The essence of the task, the central part of it, has been destroyed.In cases like this the contract stipulates that time is of the essence, which means that failure to meet the deadline renders the contract defunct.The opposite of time is of the essence is the much rarer, but rather beautiful time at large. Time at large, in a contract, means that the task must be done, but it really doesn't matter when. Take your time. Have cup of tea. Go for a stroll. Wander around like a lazy outlaw who is at large.You can find out more from these two articles on construction contracts.A grand tip of the hat to the Antipodean for pointing this out to me. And for those who like a little light swearing: P.S. For anybody interested. My book A Short History of Drunkenness is now out in Polish, Italian, Estonian, Romanian and Portuguese (for the Brazilian market).

I've found something beautiful. The British television regulator, Ofcom, whose job it is to see that we are shocked politely, commissioned a study of exactly how rude rude words were. The poll was carried out by Ipsos Mori who went off and quite earnestly asked a representative sample of the Great British public what they thought about the word tits.This is therefore the official British list of naughty words.The results, in all their muddied glory, are available online here. They're rather fascinating, and very usefully arranged by subject. So if you were trying to mildly insult an old man, but couldn't think of anything to say, you could consult the survey and find:Coffin Dodger: Mild language, generally of little concern. Seen as humorous, including by older participants. Some said that more aggression or specific intent to hurt would heighten impact, but not common enough for this to be based on experience.Some of the words in the survey were previously unknown to me. I had never in my life heard of a bloodclaat or a chi-chi man, which shows that I am an essentially innocent person. I'd also not heard the term Iberian Salute, although a quick check on the Internet shows what it is (bend your right elbow, clench your right fist with the knuckles facing away from you, put your left hand on your right bicep. The French call it the bras d'honneur).Anyhow, it's a fascinating read, and you can measure your opinion of a word's rudeness against that of the general public. My favourite line in it, though, came under Discriminatory Language, subsection Race and Ethnicity.Taff: Medium language, potentially unacceptable. Some uncertainty outside Wales about how offensive it is to Welsh people.It is time to end this uncertainty. I'm off on a research trip to Offa's Dyke with a megaphone and a pair of binoculars.

Donald Trump is in the U.K. at the moment, honoring our mother nation by doing his best impression of its favorite son, international traveler Mr. Bean. But even as he bumbles his way across the country, wandering into unflattering interviews about Theresa May and shoving his head definitively up the uncooked turkey …

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South Park—still Comedy Central’s flagship comedy program, 22 seasons in—has set its next premiere date, with Deadline reporting that the show will be back on the airwaves for new episodes on September 26.

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Sometimes we are not aware when something happens for the last time. Circumstances change without our intervention; we take leave of someone quite casually and we don’t know that we will never see them again;  decisions are made over which we have no power which have  sudden and deep consequences in  our lives. But a few times  only  there is a conscious choice to end something of major importance.  Last night when I was sitting with my sunset cocktail over- looking the mosque, I knew that this daily ritual was happening for the very last time. I was regaled with a blue cloudless sky and a clear  sunset and I hung on to the very last dying ember of light as it descended on the horizon to the right of the Great Mosque. Then I had dinner on the roof alone under a clear bejewelled Malian sky. The night before was the final party: a ‘family affair’ for those that have served at the hotel: a lovely evening complete  with Diao, our faithful Fulani  milkman who arrived  with his son; our griots came and sang mine and Keita’s praises. They  sang of those that have gone, of Beigna and Pudiogou and of Fatou, but also of Papa, Baba and Maman, and of course of the lovely Elisabet, my film-making cousin.   We feasted on the goat that we bought in Madiama market a few days ago, and Papa was respendent in his white hatted chef outfit. For days the contents of the hotel have been quietly leaving.  Mattress by mattress, air conditioner by air conditioner, the hotel has trickled away until it stood quite bare, and only Maman, Baba and Papa were left this morning, dividing the last spoils between themselves. There has been a change of state: this hotel which I created no longer exists. December 12, 2006: “Tomorrow it will be just a week before Hotel Djenné Djenno is officially open. In two weeks time my Christmas guests will already be leaving. But today the site was still just as usual, full of workmen, and full of wheel barrows and mud. But the clearing up has begun. Something major is about to happen- a change of state. In just over a week I will no longer be building a hotel, it will actually exist, and I will be running a hotel. My reality is about to change. Today I looked at all the space of the hotel which is about to be born. I thought of all the unknown things which will happen in this space, and which are now resting here like embryos. It is all about to begin to unfold. I thought of all the people who will one day come here, and laugh, have fun and make love here, although today they don’t even know it. And yet, by some mysterious workings they will come here ... So Maestro, soon soon, let the play begin..” And it did, and the players were many. And last night they all finally left the stage, sweeping the floor with their feathered  hats as they took  their final bow...

The Swedish hostage Johan Gustavsson has been released. He was taken hostage in November 2011 in Timbuktu  together with a Dutch national and a South African National. That event marked the beginning of the end for the happy Mali I had known during the first years of my life here. The Dutchman has been released some time ago: the Barkane forces (the French military contingent still present in the Sahel) stumbled across him by accident when they were "cleaning up" a terrorist encampment in the northern desert. It appears that he had been severely brainwashed, had converted to Islam and his reunion with his wife was not a success. Let us hope that Gustavsson has fared better. The circumstances of Gustavson's release are still unknown. I am about to call Eva to see if she has some news...he has apparently just landed at Arlanda in Stockholm. More later... And apart from this joyful news, there has of course been Eid Al-Fitr. I went with Elisabet and Henri to the place of communal prayer behind the hospital. This is where the Djennenké men pray twice a year- now and at Tabaski- because the place in front of the Great Mosque is too small to hold them all. Yelpha officiated for the first time.  Towards sunset I had a visitor on the terrace: Babou Touré from the library, resplendent  in Grand Boubou wishing me 'Sambe Sambe', the traditional greeting both now and at Tabaski.

everythingthatgoespop:

Breaking News:

George and Amal Clooney are expecting twins!❤👶🏻

2017 taketh away (civil liberties), but 2017 also giveth (celebrity twins).

(Just popping back in to say AAAAAAAAAAAMAL. And BEYONCE.) 

After nine years and 2,810 posts, a blog seeking a sustainable path for humans on a finite planet comes to an end.

Intensifying Indian protests prompted the Obama administration to block a pipeline's path in North Dakota.

Seriously, though. If I go away, who’s going to tell Blue Ivy that she DOESN’T NEED TO HANG OUT WITH APPLE MARTIN JUST TO BE NICE? Because come on. You are better than that.

January 26 2015: The first reported US drone strike of the year killed three people travelling in a vehicle in central-southern Yemen. This was the first attack since Houthi insurgents forced the country’s president Abdu Rabbu al Mansour Hadi, his prime minister and cabinet to resign. #drone #drones #yemen (at Hareeb, Shabwa-Mareb border)

January 19 2015: CIA drones targeted a house in Shawal area of North Waziristan killing five, six or seven people. The identities of the dead was not immediately known however a senior Pakistani official said “non-Pakistani, foreign fighters” were among the dead and Taliban sources said the attack also killed local fighters associated with Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur. This was the third of four strikes to reportedly target Bahadur himself, or men loyal to him. The Pakistani government condemned the strike as a breach of sovereignty – a reiteration of its official position on the drone attacks. #drone #drones #pakistan (at Shahi Khel, Shawal, North Waziristan)