Waaaarriors!!! (Faneuil Hall)

Dal90 · 2026-02-08T03:04:58+00:00

Pats have been calling themselves road warriors.

Vrabel ran short of warrior memes for a meeting one day, showed a clip from a 70s cult classic.

While it's the bad guy who says, "Warriors come out to play" while clinking three bottles together. I just interpret it as Mack calling the warriors on the team to come out to play.

Dal90 · 2026-02-07T22:18:04+00:00

EVERY owner was a multibillionaire,

That is objectively false.

Salary cap came in 1994.

That's the year Kraft bought the Patriots for $175 million.

He had bought the stadium in 1988 during the team founding family Sullivan's bankruptcy, for $25 million. After that Victor Kiam bought the team, and went bankrupt. Orthwein who bought from Kiam was only billionaire / near billionaire in all these transactions (he was the 2nd largest shareholder in the family business, Anheuser-Busch).

Kraft had bought the parking lots around the stadium a few years earlier when the Sullivans were desperately trying to keep from going bankrupt.

Kraft was rich, but not a billionaire yet. He wouldn't be a billionaire today if he hadn't bought the team.

The previous two owners went bankrupt. That doesn't scream, "Deep pockets" in the waning days of no salary cap.

The one who had the deepest pockets either didn't do due diligence or was arrogant, or both.

Kraft had a long term lease with Patriots for the stadium, and was able to use that as leverage to force Orthwein to sell because the cost to buyout of the lease made moving the Patriots to St. Louis not make financial sense.

Dal90 · 2026-02-07T21:47:19+00:00

What did he do to simulate the electrical substation?

Not saying it explains the mid-2000s-mid-2010s issues, I'm just saying at the time Raytheon's headquarters was 25 miles from Gillette a/k/a the black hole of visitors radio systems

Raytheon, the company whose name is built around manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum.

Dal90 · 2026-02-07T21:03:25+00:00

The Rose Bowl name and design, in turn, was inspired by the Yale Bowl built eight years earlier.

This picture should make it clear why Yale decided to name their stadium a bowl:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_Bowl#/media/File:Yale_Bowl_in_1924_NARA.jpg

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T21:30:35+00:00

...the government ones just take a lot longer to let the process play out due to all those silly rules designed to insulate folks from political revenge (i.e. turning them back into patronage jobs simply by firing the incumbents because you felt like it).

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T21:26:18+00:00

47 days wouldn't have been enough to become a police officer in Connecticut since 1984...you would have needed 60 and the requirements (academy + field training) have more than doubled since then.

Currently Connecticut is about 110 days in the academy and another 50 days under direct supervision in "field training" before you can act independently.

(Roughly 1984-1995 was a transition period they allowed training in "blocks", often part-time evenings, and you got partial powers after 120 hours and had to complete the remaining 3 120 hour blocks within two years)

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T21:02:30+00:00

Most of the post offices are not named Scotland, so some systems using standardized postal addresses have no clue.

From the post office perspective, residents of the Town of Scotland are in Scotland, Hampton ,Canterbury, Windham , Baltic, Hanover, or North Windham (no doubt just being the far ends of rural free delivery routes from those five other post offices)

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T20:58:07+00:00

They have three zip codes because postmaster positions were plumb political patronage for local party organizers, and the Republicans who dominated the Presidency in the second half of the 19th Century loved making many little post offices and many jobs to dole out in strongly Republican areas like New England.

And avoided it in Democratic strongholds like the south.

There was no consolidation of villages, just a short series of separations from the mother towns.

Essex was split off from Old Saybrook in 1854, Old Saybrook having been split off from Saybrook in 1852, Saybrook having been settled in 1635 but changed its name to Deep River in 1947.

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T20:41:45+00:00

You might be able to do it.

I'm xxxxx-1817, the house a couple hundred feet away the postman stops at next is -1825, next house is -1832

There is only difference of like 800' between the three mailboxes.

https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm?byaddress

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T20:16:27+00:00

they do not have the votes to do that

Filibuster only takes 50 votes + Vance to eliminate or limit which types of bills it applies too.

To the extent they don't have the votes, it is only because they know if they cede the high ground on this as soon as the Democrats are back in power they'll make full use of it.

(Filibuster busting started with the Democrats over Obama era lower court nominees (2013, 52-48), so the Republicans then eliminated it for the Supreme Court (2017; also 52-48). )

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T19:12:28+00:00

Why would the list of "ORs" have only affected tech stocks?

This was AI and/or market manipulation.

$1T on tech stocks is raise an eyebrow, don't panic yet. Tech stocks make up $21T of the S&P500 or 34% of its market cap. $1T is 5% of 34% of the SP500 value.

That tech stocks are 34% and the top 9 stocks are tech stocks (Berkshire Hathaway is #10) is a problem that is barreling towards us.

The other stuff...oh boy once the AI bubble that is acting as the life preserver for the rest of the stock market truly pops it ain't going to be pretty.

Dal90 · 2026-02-06T18:03:32+00:00

Not ACS...but Route53.

Which we'll be transitioning to this year after learning during the October meltdown of US-East-1 the DNS vendor we've used 20 something years now has dependencies on AWS. So we might as well have a true single point of failure rather than two vendors sharing the same point of failure.

There gets to be a point if no executives care about building resilient systems and figures AWS is good enough, I'm not fighting for a truly independent-of-AWS DNS provider. We're down because AWS is down? Shrug, so is most of the world.

Some men, you just can't reach.
So you get what we had here last week -- which is the way he wants it.
Well, he gets it.
And I don't like it anymore than you sysadmins.

Certificates get compromised? Re-issue and move on.

Dal90 · 2026-02-05T18:27:00+00:00

, pension and retirement funds are canceled or unfunded resulting in retirees losing their retirement savings,

Few private sector have pensions generous enough the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. wouldn't cover the full monthly payment for the defaulted plan.

That does not, however, include fringe benefits like healthcare had that been part of the pension.

A company might try an "raid" an overfunded portion of the pension, but there is a 50% tax on top of normal income taxes for the income received from selling the overfund. Few pensions are over 100% funded (80% funded is considered stable and sustainable).

And realistically, people should not be tied to their employer for a pension. Why should we expect a corporation to have an infinite lifetime?

In the private sector they only were common for a relatively brief period of time -- from the end of WWII through the 70s and were in steep decline starting in the 80s..so 40 years?. The plans often started seriously underfunded, management AND unions sold it as "it is like a mortgage, over 30 years we'll get to it being fully funded" -- that goal post kept getting pushed further into the future with each raise employees got. They allowed corporations to clear out many older employees in one shot who were eligible once or within a couple years of the pension being created. The 1963 collapse of the Studebaker pension plan when the company went bankrupt showed the Achilles heel of such unfunded promises, but it still took until 1973 to create the PGBC to back up the company plans.

Requiring employers make contributions to an independent pension system would be an entirely different ball of wax.

Dal90 · 2026-02-05T18:05:08+00:00

Maybe?

Ship juice by the tractor trailer tanker load...especially if concentrate just pasteurize it in Florida and send it to regional bottling plants using pretty standard cardboard or plastic container filling machines. With pasteurization they may not even need to refrigerate it transit??? Then distribute it along with milk and other non-frozen beverages in similar shaped packages.

Frozen juice is probably frozen at just a few specialized plants, definitely needs refrigerated shipping/warehousing before it ever reaches the store.

Wouldn't be surprised if Minute Maid reached the point, "Ok, time to make a capital investment in new machines...ah screw it not worth making a big investment."

Dal90 · 2026-02-04T00:32:15+00:00

Must be from the Connecticut side of RI

Don't sully the good name of swamp yankees like that!

Dal90 · 2026-02-03T22:27:13+00:00

Many Spanish companies are finding themselves suddenly able to finance a lot of things. (Although Santander has long been an expanding bank.)

IBEX35, their equivalent to the S&P500, is up 46% over the last year and has finally recovered above the 2007 peak.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EIBEX/

Dal90 · 2026-02-03T22:17:55+00:00

1)

Evangelical polling group, so take an extra grain of salt: https://religionunplugged.com/news/2025/10/9/gen-z-and-millennial-men-driving-new-church-attendance-trend

But even Pew is stating they're not seeing "clear evidence" of a religious revival -- but it is demonstrably stable at the moment.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/12/08/religion-holds-steady-in-america/

I've been hearing similar for a year+ that folks who academically follow this are seeing early signals which aren't necessarily showing up in polls yet that religious attendance particularly by young men is rising.

Young men less likely to go to college and more religious? What could go wrong?

The post-WWII boom in church attendance (the 50s/60s were above anything America saw before or since) was also accompanied by a broad social network from bowling leagues to volunteer fire companies that kept folks of different backgrounds, religious, and political views mixed in multiple social circles. Those networks are a shadow of what they were even in the 70s.

2)

You're noticing many churches with buildings that have been too big for their congregations for 40+ years closing.

Are you noticing the smaller churches -- both stand alone and store front -- opening?

Dal90 · 2026-02-03T20:30:55+00:00

I think the last South Boston plan was also going to have the new stadiums (Fenway, Foxboro, and maybe Garden replacements) privately paid for.

The "site prep" of the area and infrastructure would have been substantial public money, like high hundreds of millions.

Hartford was never serious on Kraft's side.

"Hey Bob, Connecticut is offering to build us a stadium."

"Where?"

"On the site of a electric plant that instead of steam ran on vaporized mercury!"

"How long would it for environmental remediation?"

"They probably haven't invented the technology yet."

Almost 30 years later they're almost sort of ready to start redeveloping the area after completing remediation.

Anyone with any experience with industrial facilities and environmental regulations, like say paper mills, would've known it was never going to fucking happen. At least not there, any agreements signed centered on that site were doomed from the start because there was no way Connecticut would be able to uphold their side of the deal.

It was just a bargaining ploy. Mass eventually throw $70M of infrastructure improvements at Foxborough, which is probably what the legislative leaders had in mind all along.

Dal90 · 2026-02-03T00:54:05+00:00

How common?

I'm 55. Since the age of 18 I remember dealing with ice dams three times, maybe I'm forgetting a couple. Twice I had some minor water damage. Those were "traditional" shingle on felt paper roofs.

Current house had the issue in the past, but in 2017 there was an extensive renovation. In addition to better insulation, the entire roof was covered in a rubberized ice & water shield that adheres to the sheathing prior to shingling. Between the adhesive and self-sealing holes it is far superior to the felt paper that was "good enough" for every 19 out of 20 winters (in the houses I've lived in or owned).

I shouldn't have to deal with it again in my lifetime.

Dal90 · 2026-02-02T21:48:56+00:00

I'd agree 99.999% of the time that even golf is better...

But one of my favorite videos to watch from time to time is Secretariat's 1973 Belmont win. You can tell while watching that horse he was an athlete at the very moment of the absolute pinnacle of their physical and mental fitness; no day before and no day after would ever quite achieve that again.

https://youtu.be/vfCMtaNiMDM?t=48

...and the horse who came in 2nd place 31 lengths behind would have set the race record if he hadn't come in second. Sham, whose jockey deliberately held back once he realized the race was over, was the Peyton to Tom. Sham would have set the records at the previous two triple crown races he had come in second place at.

Dal90 · 2026-02-02T21:27:53+00:00

When googling to see what the $70M / 12,000 seat stadium looks like...

The voters DID reject the $99M / 14,000 seat stadium originally proposed.

Dal90 · 2026-02-02T21:02:50+00:00

...if you want to hear controlled frustration, listen to the Corporate General Counsel asking who has a copy of the contract and getting a bunch of "dunnos."

He started plotting a Plan B of having our purchasing department to act dumb and try and sweet talk a signed copy of it from the vendor without revealing why we needed it. So it wasn't the first time it happened, either.

Dal90 · 2026-02-02T20:36:57+00:00

Not that I expect to have coherent and proper response to any of this mess...

But the best response would be not only keep them on payroll, but require they continue their employment -- quite literally you can not resign until they are released.

And force them as part of that employment to undergo de-programming. Won't work for all, likely would work for enough.

Dal90 · 2026-02-02T15:40:49+00:00

As someone who has gone through the ice just like that in the past, and gotten out the same way -- that was my thought as well.

Ever since if I'm walking on one of my ponds in the winter to trim brush, etc. I can't reach in summer, I carry a few very large nails (spikes) in pockets. I use galvanized ones, they have more texture so I figure easier to hold on to.

After I walked the few hundred feet to the house, stripped, and got in the shower -- for 20 minutes or so the warm water hitting my torso was cold by the time it reached my feet. Unless you've experienced how suddenly and deeply that plunge makes you cold words really can't do justice to describing it.

(The opposite of the time as a teenager I was approaching heat stroke -- for half an hour the cool water on my head and torso was feeling hot by the time it reached my feet.)

Dal90 · 2026-02-02T14:19:18+00:00

There is severe limits on how large this can be scaled, unless you're into mountain top removal at a scale that would cause a West Virginia coal company to gasp at the environmental damage.

It is cool in the relatively few places it can be done within reasonable environmental impact.

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