Solemnly Remembering I Needed to Make Picks

There are 9/11 truthers doing a thing in front of the capitol.

Mizzou -5.5  In 2007 this was the biggest game of the college football season.

Auburn -34.5  Auburn is going to lose this game, aren't they?

Arizona St. + 14.5  Maybe Mike Elbow is good. But TAMMY is always reliable for one weird loss.

Michigan +5.5  Not sold on Brent Venables. Michigan realizes how lucky they are and try real hard.

WKU +40.5  This is the game Georgia screws around in and it's weirdly close.

Alabama -10.5  They're back.

Mississippi St +1.5  Jackie Sherrill and the boys have a little something for em.

Delaware +20.5  The world's smallest state.

Tennessee -12.5  No idea.

LSU -36.5  Usually, I would have taken the underdog. But Lane Train, baby.

Ohio St. +1.5  Will never believe Texas is back.

UNC-Charlotte +47.5  That is a lot of points.

Arkansas +12.5  Utah doesn't even have a coach anymore. He went to Michigan. Are the players calling the plays? Is this a Varsity Blues situation?

Week It Like You Two It

Missouri - 5.5 at Kansas: another classic SEC matchup

Southern Miss +34.5 at Auburn: They say the biggest improvement happens between week one and week two. Southern Miss might beat Auburn in that case.  

Arizona State at TAMMY -14.5: TAMMY

Oklahoma -5.5 at Michigan: I assume this line is because the bookies think Oklahoma will score either 5 or 6 points.

Western Kentucky at thUGA -40.5: a team of hand-picked mercenaries, assassins, and special operatives couldn't make me care about this one

Alabama -10.5 at Kentucky: This line and the Oklahoma line were two gigantic surprises. I would have guessed like 17.

Mississississippi State at Minnesoda -1.5: This is a cool game. The first two games of the season should be the bookies setting lines, and then a randomized selection of all the games with a line of 3 or fewer points, one home and one away, and then return game the next year. 

Delaware at Vandy -20.5: I was not delAware that they were playing this week. 

Tennessee -12.5 at Georgia Tech: Already making assumptions which I will not challenge for weeks, months, or years, and one of them this season is Georgia Tech: not that good.

La Tech at LSU -36.5: seems like the kind of game for which Lane Kiffin would run up the score. 

An Ohio State University +1.5 at Texas: I think Tressel and his boys have a little something for the boys from Austin.

Charlotte +47.5 at Old Mist: no

Arkansas +12.5 at Utah: "What's a Ute?" Classic. 

Delaware is 1-A? sure, why not

Missouri - 5.5 at Kansas

Southern Miss at Auburn -34.5

Arizona State at TAMMY -14.5

Oklahoma -5.5 at Michigan

Western Kentucky at thUGA -40.5

Alabama -10.5 at Kentucky

Mississississippi State at Minnesoda -1.5

Delaware at Vandy -20.5

Tennessee -12.5 at Georgia Tech

La Tech at LSU -36.5

An Ohio State University at Texas -1.5

Charlotte at Old Mist -47.5

Arkansas at Utah -12.5

Labor Day Links

1. Our Generation Ships Will Sink

2. AI Is Making Everything Worse

3. The Scratch

Presenting: 3E Preseason Awards

Announcing the 3E College Football Preseason Awards: 

• Offensive Player of the Year: Laterarius Kidwell III 
• Defensive Player of the Year: Jalen "Boogie" Baker
• Special Teams Player of the Year: Max Schlurp
• Coach of the Year: Burt Pickles

Congratulations everyone! 

why are there so many teams

They should go back to ten-team conferences. 

UTEP +41.5 vs Oklahoma: UTEP is cool

East Care of Lina vs Alabama -28.5: Pirates are cool 

Kent St. vs South Care of Lina -35.5: no

Baylor vs Auburn -7.5: I Believe

Texas St. +29.5 vs Texas: This would be a neat upset

Missouri St. vs TAMMY -40.5: TAMMY

Clemson +10 vs LSU: I think Lane whining so much about a backup tight end or whatever coming from the NFL suggests issues with the roster. I can't decide if it's funnier if Old Mist loses a ton of games or if LSU loses a ton of games. 

ULM vs Mississippi St. -28.6: Lamo

FAU +26.5 vs Florida: This would be a neat upset

Louisville +7 vs Old Mist: Of the second rank teams I hate, I think Old Mist going something like 4-8 would be the funniest. The real goal: a combined 17 losses between them. 

Picks. Then I have to drive to walmart to buy dogfood, catfood, cat litter, and a salad.

The salad is for our fish.

UTEP +41.5 that is a lot of points. also i initially typed 41.3 and its funny to imagine a bettor having internal turmoil over whether to take a team at +41.5 or if +41.3 is a better deal.

Alabama -28.5 kalen deboer looks likes if you over-inflated brett venables. Or perhaps Venables is sun-dried Kalen Deboer. 

Kent St +35.5 "lightning strike and thunder quake, they do not make the green grass make" don't know what this means. I think it was something I said about how the sound and fury of a storm doesn't make the grass grow.

Auburn -7.5 Ed made a eagle lego and told me war eagle. It later came out that my mom told him to do that. I do not care. War Damn. It's damning as a sport and society that if you say "the rape school," you have to further clarify yourself.

Texas -29.5 who the fuck is this quarterback

Mizzou St +40.5 ok missouri thinks they're a state now

Clemson +10 The personality cult of Lane Kiffin is amazing and I love him. What game were we talking about here?

Mississippi St -28.5 Croom was a good guy but how can you not put a hat on straight

Florida -26.5 McElwain has a little something for em this year

Louisville +7 I'm taking a city over a whiskey I invented every time.

well well well if it isn't the sec pick off

tough year

UTEP vs Oklahoma -41.5

East Care of Lina vs Alabama -28.5

Kent St. vs South Care of Lina -35.5

Baylor vs Auburn -7.5

Texas St. vs Texas - 29.5

Missouri St. vs TAMMY -40.5

Clemson vs LSU -10

ULM vs Mississippi St. -28.6

FAU vs Florida -26.5

Louisville vs Old Mist -7

Picks whenever.

links

1. "Somebody told you once that Internet sites are sometimes inaccurate. You hope it’s not true. How could you figure out which are the inaccurate ones using BRUTE STRENGTH?"

2. "Instead of writers and intellectuals coming up with ideas that filter into the culture, they are totally dominated by the conditions of discourse of social media."

3. "I'll just have to keep going. I can't disappoint it. I'd be letting the suit down."

4. "Or maybe they’re just performing some Gnawa devotional trance music."

Them there kind of livin' can't hold Chaka for me, no

He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich

Three links

1. Halupedia: "Every article here is fabricated by a language model. Biographies, dates, footnotes, and quotations are invented. Nothing on this site is true. Do not cite Halupedia, do not quote it, and do not believe it."

2. Smush: "It's pretty simple: make words, get points."

3. Date the Globe: "Every day the archive releases a genuine historical map with the dates blacked out. Read the names on it — empires, colonies, countries that no longer exist — and pin down the year of publication in six guesses."

Hey, Vasquez,

lmao

Oh, now there is no sound, for we all live underground

Too low to dig, I might just touch hell -- hot!

What a great video. Every single song and every single video for Outkast makes me think, "If I looked and sounded like that, I would be the coolest man alive."

Big hands, I know you're the one

In the desert, you can remember your name

I always thought it was, "In the desert, you can't remember your name."

Like a nervous magician waiting in the wings

It's cool they got the fake Counting Crows band in this video.

Losing Skills

 

Maybe it’s no big deal! After all, most people don’t like reading and don’t do it voluntarily as adults. Most jobs don’t require in-depth reading, and the availability of good-enough LLM tools promises to reduce the number of those that do. In that context, do we really “need” to spend valuable pedagogical time and energy attempting to give everyone the baseline skills to follow extended narratives and arguments and potentially to develop their own? Arguably we don’t. We can do without that, as a society, or at least with much less of that—because presumably we need at least some core of people who can still read and write and understand on their own, if only to check that the AI is properly calibrated.

But the smaller the circle is, the less the arts of reading and writing will be pushed forward, and the greater the chance of eventually breaking the chain. And in the meantime, millions of people who would have had the chance to develop the difficult but rewarding skills that have been foundational for—indeed, all but synonymous with—intellectual achievement for millenia… won’t. Many, perhaps even most, would have chosen not to develop or even use those skills in any serious way, but at least they would have been free to make that sad choice. In the scenario that seems to be approaching, they’re not even being given the chance. And this is happening without anyone deliberating or voting or even directly deciding that we as a society don’t want mass literacy. 

Spare Capacity | Drinking Buddies

[Dave Matthews voice] I did it

Probably not my favorite Dave Matthews Band song, but it's definitely the one I reference the most.

I've got two tickets in my pocket, now baby, we're gonna disappear

Lithium

En passant: After the war, John Cade was made director of the Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital and moved his family into a house of the asylum grounds. The two hundred patients there included many manic-depressives and John became preoccupied by the “absolute failure” of psychotherapy to cure them. “Psychopathological explanations seemed to me to be singularly unconvincing,” he reflected, “and completely useless when it came to treatment or prevention of attacks.” He wanted to know the “essential nature” of the disease, and like many naturalists and herbalists and folk healers before him, he knew that the malady must come from some imbalance in the harmony of the body, in excesses or deficits or toxins.

In 1969: Forty-nine countries had approved the use of lithium, but the United States was not among them. Many years later, Cade himself would write that his cure was “made by an unknown psychiatrist, working alone in a small chronic hospital with no research training, primitive techniques, and negligible equipment.” Who could expect the Americans to care? In many official histories, American skepticism has been attributed to the lithia craze, to wariness around the substance in the decades after lithium had left so many Americans dead. But those with experience in natural remedies know the truth: the trouble was money. Lithium is found in water, in rocks, in soil, in the sea. It cannot be placed under patent. It has no commercial value. Even today, it can be made by pharmacists in-house, without the trade secrets of pharmaceutical conglomerates, without the true incentives of modern medicine.

Natural Medicine

 

Just like Adam and Eve, said you'd set me free

Top comment: "who is here because of the IG  the Gas Station Reel ?"

But I'm strong, strong enough to carry him

Female Warriors

While some female Norse soldiers had been found before, she was the first high-status female warrior ever identified. Or was she? The second it was suggested Bj 581 was a woman, every conclusion drawn about her when she was thought to be a man was questioned.

Maybe the grave goods were heirlooms or an homage to her family, and not about her. Maybe there had been another, male body in the tomb, and it had been removed while hers and the horses’ were left undisturbed. Maybe the 19th-century excavation had mislabeled samples. Maybe while chromosomally female, the individual had been intersex or had lived as a transgender man. Anything rather than imagine a woman may have led armies.

We've been very wrong about Stone Age women

Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?