Internet ads Apr 4, 2024
It feels completely absurd to be writing this at this point in the history of the internet, but internet ads have gotten completely insane in the past couple years.  I've used a browser with an ad-blocker for quite some time now, so I'm mostly immune to whatever nonsense is going on in gen-pop.  But on the off chance I inadvertently click a link on some app on my phone that opens an unmodified website full of shit-ass pop-ups and pop-unders and scroll-locks and full-volume auto-play videos and impossible-to-click x-buttons, it feels like my eyes and my brain and my soul are being raped by the worthless, meaningless, functionless products and elixirs and scams peddled by the blood-sucking sociopathic bottom-feeders who gorge on the trickle-down shit that runs our modern economy.  I can't even understand how regular people use the internet.  I remember a time when pop-up ads were a scourge that everyone agreed should be eliminated.  And browsers and plugins and companies were created to address this issue to make a better experience for users.  And this was a success!  Now we've gone so far back down the sewer hole, the modern web is unusable.  And that's not to mention YouTube ads.  If I happen to click a link that takes me to "regular YouTube" and it makes me watch two 15-second unskippable ads, I just go back to whatever I was doing before.  Whatever I clicked on isn't worth it.  No content on YouTube, or really anywhere on the internet, is worth wasting precious seconds of my life with arbitrary, non-contextual ads for fibromyalgia medicine and colorful LED lights.  The one thing the internet has undoubtedly achieved is destroying any semblance we once had of attention span.  Now you want me to look at an ad, a VIDEO ad, and it's multiple seconds long?  Fuck that. #technology
Defense in sports Apr 4, 2024
As a sports fan, I'm supposed to appreciate defense.  And I do sometimes.  A 3rd down stop in football.  A blocked shot in basketball.  A strikeout in baseball.  These are all objectively good things which demonstrate skill and competitiveness. 

But sports are about scoring points.  Defense is about preventing you from scoring points.  Yes I've heard the adage that "offense wins games; defense wins championships."  That's probably mostly true.  But here's the thing:  It's boring.  It's boring to watch a football game that's a series of punts.  It's boring to watch a basketball game where nobody makes their shots.  A famous college football game between LSU and Alabama in 2011 ended in a score of 9 to 6, with all points being scored by field goal.  It was hailed as a "game of the century."  It sucked. 

But actually I don't think that adage is entirely true.  Defense will get you most of the way, but you need to score points to win.  Put another way, a good offense will beat a good defense.  I think most sports franchises are moving away from a defense-first mentality because they realize you still need to score points to actually win games.  I think this is the general concept behind the air raid offense in football and the increased popularity of three-point shooting in basketball.  For two teams whose defenses are fairly evenly matched -- heck, even if one is significantly better than the other -- a fast accumulation of lots of points will typically work out well.  To quote John Madden, "at the end of the game the team with the most points on the board is going to win," which is both stupid and profound. #sports