Author: alec

The NFL has purposely transformed itself into the NBA over the last couple decades; ideally they want every game, esp every big game between contenders, to come down to the final possession. And that means you must keep scoring. The Ravens did not.

Love this quote from Jim’s latest article. One reason I wrote my piece on John is because I don’t think he recognizes this change in how the NFL operates. Check it out!

Please consider donating to my 2025 St. Jude campaign. This year I’m offering photography tips, a bag of roasted coffee, and mini family photography sessions if you’re in the Baltimore / DC area. https://tiltify.com/@apulianas/amps-st-jude-fundraiser-2025

If you’re looking for something neat today, look no further than Caleb Denison’s return to YouTube after his legal dispute with his former employer and my appearance on Derek Likes Sports where we discuss the very sad loss the Ravens had with a Bills fan along with other NFL Week 1 happenings. I come in at 48:30 but watch it all!

To follow up on the fire John Harbaugh thing – I find it fascinating that many other Harbaugh supporters flipped after that game, many of which I really respect. To clarify, I’m not expecting or wishing he gets fired this year – I just need to see signs of him improving in game logistics for me to support him again. I worry maybe he’s not progressing with the times of where the league is going. He seemed to be doing so in 19-21 but a regression has occurred in the last few years. Jake Loque has been calling for a common sense czar and I’m here for that as well and mentioned very similar in the discourse that transpire on Bluesky.

I don’t say this lightly, but I have seen enough. He is too conservative in games, no wonder he rubs elbows with Donald Trump. So many inexcusable mistakes, including not going for two to make it a potential 3 possession game and the horrid 2nd down call in the final offensive possession. And to make it worse, they elect not to go for it on 4th down. They so desperately want to not lose rather than win. I trust Lamar and Henry read option and it was not used in the highest of leverage.

I’ve got a lot of stuff I wanna write about that have nothing to do with this but in the meantime, something to munch on.

After complaining about the Blue app (what Meta calls Facebook internally), I decided for the first time in my mobile phone history to remove it from my homescreen. With my new found slot, I finally set up Tapestry and boy oh boy am I loving it. RSS, Bluesky, and Mastodon all under one roof! Should have done this months ago when it launched in February. Reminds me of UberSocial back in the Blackberry days over a decade ago.

And no, I couldn’t remember the name, but ChatGPT did. It also moved up to my first homepage from the second today since Ice Cubes felt redundant with Tapestry. Locket backfilled the ChatGPT spot so that maybe I remember to use it more, but I could see that changing.

Man, the last month has felt like a bit of a whirlwind and I’ve got a few things I want to post about so let’s jump right on in.

Last Monday Rachel and I were able to go on a date night which included hot pot and pinball machines. Rachel would like folks to know that she got the best score of the night. I’d like you to know the real winner was me, since it was the first time I got to play the Rush pinball machine at Peabody Heights Brewery.

On Wednesday I went down to Reston to meet the folks based there on my new team and to also see some old friends. I skipped the evening traffic by getting Ethiopian with Clay Sharon and Poppy which was a total treat.

After getting home from Reston, I took a little nap before working a long call with colleagues from India from 1:30am-7:30am. This knocked me out, I even caught a nasty 24 hour bug that wiped out Friday. I did some podcast listening that day and one thing Ben Thompson said that stuck with me is “Facebook is Dead; Long Live Meta.” The Blue app and Instagram are shells of their old selves, just like Twitter. Constantly serving random reels and posts with phantom notifications about stuff you could care less about (Facebook is particularly bad about this). Meta is now an entertainment company trying to capture our time and attention and really I don’t want to give them any of it. I just wanna catch up with my friends. Start a blog man, I’ll sub to your RSS feed lol.

Luckily I felt much better Friday evening and Saturday wasn’t totally foiled. Because Rush > Cooper Rush, I watched 0% of the Ravens preseason matchup to see AF2K with Alice and Peter. What a delight. The drummer was an absolute animal and it reminded me just how good those darn Canadians were. I’ve been listening to Rush in the car ever since. Katherine seems to like Power Windows as much as her dad, which surprises absolutely no one.

Today Rachel’s extended family had a potluck so I smoked some chicken thighs following this recipe. I think it was fine but if I were to do it again, and I probably will, I’d sub this glaze with a gochujang based one. Or honestly skip smoking entirely as it doesn’t get too much smoke flavor in the time it takes to cook them.

Anyways, thats a bit of my last week. Welcome to The Show Dylan Beavers and Samuel Basallo! Keen to see what you and the rest of the young core can do with these last 40 or so games. Maybe I’ll even be able to see you both at your first game at OPACY.