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Quick thought 25 Mar 2023

A mystery to tax the wisdom of Solomon. Wawa’s removal of hash browns from their menu—and specifically the ability to put one inside a breakfast burrito—is just a bizarre decision. We can’t be the only ones who want this!

Bonus food whine added at 12:30: who’s the genius that decided National Cheesesteak Day should fall on a Friday during lent?!

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Quick thought 24 Mar 2023

Tick, tock. It’s almost baseball season, and it’s 2023, so I thought this morning that we might be coming up on the 30th anniversary of “Homer At The Bat.”

Nope! It actually came out 31 years ago and in February! Time is stupid!

The World Baseball Classic is cool and good and should happen every June

At this blog, we’re going to take it for granted that Shohei Otani is cool as shit (and should be a Met by this time next year). The World Baseball Classic had a ton of highs, and I’m sad that it’s already over and excited for the next one. But the WBC is such a weird baseball event that even though I followed the tournament in gamer and YouTube clip form, I didn’t watch that many of the games themselves.

Part of it is that it happens in March, sure: I spent my sports-watching chits on the NCAA tournament over the weekend (though I seemed to have other things to do Saturday around noon). I’m not opposed to winter baseball, but the rhythm isn’t there yet.

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What I’ve Been Reading (20 March 2023)

  • Larva Pupa Imago by Eric Schwitzgebel at Clarkesworld. I’m always a sucker for an SF story with alien biology, and this one—from a philosophy professor at UC Riverside, no less—delivers the goods. It’s not just looking at the lifecycle of post-Anthropocene butterflies, but a dive into personhood and memory as well. Highly recommend.
  • This Isn’t the Middle Age Millennials Expected by Jessica Grose in the NYT. A wide ranging look at the millennial generation as we start to enter middle age (and on the precipice of yet another damn recession). I’ve got thoughts on this that I’m trying to get sorted into a longer, actual structured essay, but it boils down to our generation making the most out of a bad hand, and that this isn’t too different from what generations other than the Boomers really faced.
  • Two Rivals, One Bedroom by Rory Smith in the NYT. Two footballers in the top flight of Dutch soccer, playing on rival teams—and still sharing their childhood bedroom!

Quote

Today is not pi day. Pi day is 22 July:

  • Support the more efficient date format
  • Support the higher-precision pi approximation