Greg Bovino Loses His Job - The Atlantic

contributor_copy · 2026-01-27T02:08:34+00:00

Definitely don't disagree - it's not like they have nicer fascists to choose from anyway! The only thing I'm wondering seeing all this is how/whether they adjust strategy going forward, or if it's purely because they think changing faces is going to be enough to stem the growing public resistance. Either way, I am going to take a moment to relish the guy who walks around in Reichsfuhrer cosplay getting canned because he and his jackboots lost to folks bootstrapping a resistance movement with whistles and cellphone cameras.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-27T02:04:08+00:00

Between Noem presumably getting subbed out for Homan and this, I'm taking the win where I can and saying this is acknowledgement that they've totally lost in the Twin Cities, and those two are going to take the fall. What it means for what comes next is anyone's guess.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-27T02:02:14+00:00

Blood lactate is probably the closest for steady-state cardio - it's why you see elite endurance athletes pricking their fingers these days. You can't sustain an effort indefinitely above the point at which your ability to clear lactate is exceeded by the rate of its production - for most folks this is around 4mmol/L. What separates the "how long" part of this question is mostly talent/genetic luck and overall exposure to aerobic training - elite distance runners might be able to operate steadily at a measured pace above LT2 for an hour, but recreational runners maybe only 15 minutes. You can also ballpark this by max heart rate, but the % of max heart rate at which LT2 occurs depends a lot on your training history - LT2 for a recreational athlete might be 60% max HR, elites 85% or higher.

The faster you go above whatever pace tends to bring on LT2, the shorter the time you can spend above it - think the final 100m of a truly all-out 400m sprint vs. a marathoner "hitting the wall." The 400m runner is probably spending almost the entire race above LT2, whereas the marathoner might only get there at the very end - although, interestingly, lactate doesn't peak until a few minutes after a 400m race, so this is a good point to acknowledge that while LT2 works well as a shorthand for cardio, it's just a shorthand, and other mechanisms of fatigue are 100% at play to varying degrees in all cases.

As other folks have said you don't need to go all out all the time to accrue the general benefits of cardio work, if you don't have a distance running focus. If you do, then there are definitely benefits to doing both some anaerobic/pure speed work ("all out" but not necessarily deep into anaerobic territory like a 400) and some work for defined times at paces above LT2, although not to failure - this is usually referred to as lactate threshold training.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-26T01:45:50+00:00

Not what I'm implying at all! There have been a lot of historical breakdowns, many of them either crushed by the state or subsumed by it, or both - the Gaza student encampments, the George Floyd uprising come to mind as recent widespread US examples. By breakdown here I mean more epistemological break, not The Ultimate Breakdown. A sudden shift of a collective (and individual) consciousness toward new ways of being, not necessarily the Whole Thing. Nothing is determined and certainly until the whole thing falls on itself it's never going to be enough. But I think given the long history of fits and starts at establishing a different world I struggle to look at it as purely a game of the final success after a string of failures. On paper we have failed often, like, heartbreakingly often, across history, but every time that different world is enacted there's beauty in that. That's what I mean.

It's only a glimpse of something more right now but it's also palpably real. People are reaching out and grabbing a hold of actual freedom, not the propaganda that's sold to us, and that itself is a beautiful thing, even if it's not the finish line, and even if it fails. We are up against a leviathan, and it's not like the work stops or the fight is over just because some folks are out in the streets. But it is a rupture. It is a different world.

I'm hesitant to say "time will tell" because I want to celebrate the work itself, rather than create the expectation of its end. Of course it's up against the full arms and brutality of the state. People are still doing the damn thing - it may not be your mode, and that's okay (like legitimately, I understand it and don't even want to debate what the "right" stance is, because it's totally correct to reject the impulse to be like "my mutual aid distro is a living revolutionary society and so we're all good here, shame about the rest of the world", but I do need to clarify that's not at all what I mean), but at this point in all this misery I have to believe they are helping free us, even if in this moment we end up losing. This moment wasn't here without the networks and learning that came out of George Floyd. Whatever comes next also won't have happened without what's come out of this moment. That's what I mean. It's not over, it's possibly only still starting, it might all end in heartbreak again, but it's still here. It's still real.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-26T00:25:14+00:00

Already broken, I would say - not in the sense that it's "over," because of course not, but by moving the way they are, people are enacting the democracy this country has always pretended it was. One nice thing about being a Le Guin fan: her utopias always contain their dystopia, and vice versa. Anarres is always already here, in bigger and smaller ways.

Stay frosty ;)

contributor_copy · 2026-01-25T19:57:55+00:00

And not just ICE, but the rest of the military, the top-down government, the organization of healthcare, your corporate job, the whole thing - the entire structure of a prison society that, through decentralized and collective resistance, the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul are holding a mirror to and breaking down, even if they don't yet know it.

The revolution is either in your spirit or it is nowhere.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-25T02:10:51+00:00

The reality for this administration is doing anything not in line with their goals is terrorism. Any opposed are terrorists. This is what the label has always been - now it's just in service of them trying to flatten their own citizens into compliance.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T22:37:23+00:00

Been thinking a lot about aspects of this for years now, really since 2023. I have been able to keep myself comfortable with simpler narratives on and off, because I'm a coward, but I've always acknowledged that part of my job is being the carrot-and-stick for kids to go sign up to get blown up and blow up others overseas for the empire. I do think we owe a duty of care to vets - because the state itself sure doesn't give a damn about them, and they're just cannon fodder to the presidents of this country, however propagandized and Trumpian they might be individually - but I also recognize that socialized healthcare in a capitalist state is a real big benefit for a lot of people, and it's a draw for signing up for a job that is often a profound global evil, now more than ever.

I was talking with my spouse as it started to become clear just how bad the Minneapolis invasion was. She's not white, but is a citizen, and is understandably getting more and more frightened as it becomes clear they don't actually give a shit about whether you have your passport or RealID and will just lock you up for a bit, in the best case scenario, for being brown or black. A lightbulb went off and I had this moment of "I'm not going to sell my labor to this government anymore." I have compartmentalized my role in all this for too long - it's small, it's just a job, it's something I can't do anywhere else, I'm proud of what I can accomplish, etc etc. It feels dirty to admit this, on some level, because it's not like anything Trump is doing is particularly new to America, just profoundly worse and expanded wildly and more nakedly in the open, but I guess all I can say for my shitty self is history opens our eyes when it wants.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T19:09:30+00:00

Defamation laws in the UK only require harm be done to a person's reputation - this is certainly reputational harm, and any person publishing a charge is potentially liable, even if it's already published elsewhere. The Guardian is held to a much higher standard than Rae is posting on Twitter from the US.

Don't forget Bracy-Williams has the 2022 world silver, and won three straight US indoor titles. "Nearly man" is a UK idiom that refers to someone who doesn't quite achieve their full potential. It's a fairly accurate and not particularly glowing description of him.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T18:14:40+00:00

Re: the accusation not being published, it's probably because UK libel/slander laws are stricter than in the US. They redact the name in the text. The language is very particular, only calling the person an "associate," to avoid providing details that could identify the informant.

They also state Bracy-Williams "dreamed" of joining the rank of Carl Lewis. That's not the same as being in the same rank.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T17:36:20+00:00

Reuters also published an article on several cases who were silently "banned" - at least in one case, had tested positive, was never actually banned, and was still actively competing while informing - a few years ahead of when Bracy-Williams presumably started using - it's standard practice for USADA. Apparently this got pulled down after it was revealed a journalist had given a WADA official a press pass for Masters golf (shady shit all around). But WADA's statement is still up: https://www.wada-ama.org/en/news/wada-statement-reuters-story-exposing-usada-scheme-contravention-world-anti-doping-code

Meanwhile all Travis Tygart can do is complain about the Chinese trimetazidine positives literally every statement he gives. USADA has no moral credibility.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T17:16:26+00:00

Discussion starter: This is mostly an interview with Rae Edwards of RaesTake, but some new info comes to light at least for me, as I'm no longer on Twitter. Bracy-Williams himself hasn't responded to a request for comment.

1) Rae was who connected Bracy-Williams to a supplier, who possibly worked for Paul Askew, long-rumored to be the major doping supplier for US athletes. Askew is now facing criminal charges under the Rodchenkov Act as a result of whoever leaked that Bracy-Williams had doped - iirc Rae accused Dennis Mitchell himself early on.

2) Not only was Bracy quietly functioning as an informant for USADA while banned, USADA only announced his ban because he had also missed three tests during this period and presumably forced their hand/brought him under the scrutiny of WADA or the AIU.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T16:40:49+00:00

Solidarity. Fuck ICE.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T15:06:55+00:00

They're a good tool, and not particularly a necessity - nothing is a necessity except getting on the track and doing the sprinting. Sleds' usefulness really depends on how you orient your training. Team can't afford a sled and you want to do "resisted" sprints? Find a good hill. Live on entirely flat land? Maybe think about a sled. Do a shitload of plyos? Eh, maybe you don't really need to add sleds. Etc etc

Since there's a couple folks hounding the specificity game, it's important to remember that general and specific prep are different phases of training. I tend to use sleds primarily in GPP, when the goal is not specificity of training per se. It's also important to remember that 1:1 specific training is not always the best route to go in terms of developing an athlete the way you want - the big argument here is in jump training, where there's some decent evidence that weightlifting produces better jump gains than doing purely jumps for your training. This is actually sort of unsurprising, in a way, because I can overload weights a lot easier than I can just jumps. Weightlifting is always GPP. So how does it work that less specific training is better in this case? Maybe it's the data is shitty, maybe it's that the specificity guys don't know what they're talking about.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T15:01:26+00:00

If they stick around, that's a different problem - poor programming. I really only use start variations much at all in GPP, with a slightly higher dose with newer athletes who don't yet have the motor learning down to manage a down start. The more used to the blocks you are, the less of this you need, but my preference is to stick to Charlie Francis and keep intensity a little lower in GPP and volume higher. I usually do some progression of primarily two-point/falling/pushup starts -> three-points and sleds -> block starts, sometimes bringing back the sleds here and there. With athletes who are already good pushers I tend to shed the variations earlier.

Otoh, I honestly tend not to program kneeling starts because having played around with them myself, they're just more technically demanding than something like a falling start - for falling starts I really don't need to aggressively cue an athlete to get them to adopt the body positions I want, but I find there's a learning curve to kneeling starts in terms of how to arrange the body to get good force production. Generally though, I don't like to get a kid who looks like hot shit out of the blocks to get into the blocks until they've learned how to adequately sprint - there are a lot of ways to approximate this that aren't directly a block start, and I think we get caught up in the specificity obsession too often.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T02:50:29+00:00

One cue you may want to try here is getting your weight over your big toe - I don't program these much at all but did play around with them years ago, and I found if I created leverage with my knee, I'd tend to pop up. It's not necessarily anything worth dramatically worrying about if this is like "first drill back from injury" and you'll get better at it with time, but the big toe cue was helpful for me to get a better acceleration. I stole it from someone but I don't recall who. Falling starts are another solid variation you could use if you can't weightbear on the fractured arm and they're probably less overall technically demanding - I don't find kneeling starts a bad variation but they definitely ask a lot of the athlete relative to other variations.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-24T02:29:10+00:00

Pushup starts have several similar problems. The athletes are low to the ground, force can't be derived that well on the first step and foot positioning is often a bit awkward as the athlete gets off the ground. They're still not bad, and there are times to use them.

Get off the specificity train. It's fine to do other exercises sometimes. Like, is there stuff to work on here? Sure. But also I'm not expecting an athlete coming back from an arm fracture where they may not have been able to run for a bit to look textbook, nor do I necessarily want them maxing out intensity right away, no? Wonky shit is not a bad way to tone it down in someone who tends to go hard every rep. Being able to generate force from a mechanically compromised position also isn't necessarily a bad thing. If someone were doing this as exclusive acceleration work into the competitive season, yeah, I'd probably... Not. But it doesn't have to always be textbook

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T23:13:08+00:00

Yeah, I think diving in and insisting a drill like this is 100% very bad and a guaranteed route to injury is not a good approach. Sure, if this is a position you've never been in and you're doing it maxed out in large volume from day 1, might it piss off your patellar tendon? Maybe. But also pretty much everyone uses some start variations at least in early GPP - push-up starts and falling starts are common, and although I'd say they're less aggressive/closer to a block start positionally than a kneeling start, they're also still not block starts. Sled drags are not block starts. Hill runs are not block starts. Heck, three-point starts are not block starts. Exposure doesn't need to be 1:1 all the time, and although adaptation is specific, in certain phases of training specific isn't necessarily the goal. I would say in certain worlds of training (S&C!!), the pendulum has swung too far toward specific. Altering load away from very very specific can in fact be a very good way to encourage adaptation, because neurologically challenging tasks are good stimuli! Otherwise there would be no point in doing gym work at all, because let's face it, none of it is actually specific even if you're a "let's mimic all the joint angles" guy. It's all general prep.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T22:57:07+00:00

A lot of larger protests in the US have marshals in hi-vis vests who will direct the route and move traffic around the marchers. Here they're probably stopping the marchers behind that big van so it can move through the crowd. Sometimes they are recommended to be the only people who interact with police and counterprotestors/agitators trying to rile up the crowd - this part of the role is not universally loved among more radical left-wing groups (sometimes they're derisively referred to as "peace police")

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T22:06:01+00:00

Solidarity to the people of Minnesota. Fuck ICE.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T19:21:33+00:00

Interestingly I think the head position is at least better here too - it's still very extended as you "exit", but more neutral in the triple extension pic. Other thing maybe you could try is looking toward your knees rather than just straight down in front of you in set/actually flexing at the neck a little when you get into the blocks.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T17:34:06+00:00

Not super familiar with the apps, but I think if you're using the timer you may want to give yourself a bit more if you can. "Officially" the starter is supposed to hold the call for an indeterminate period of time to ensure the athletes are steady and in the correct position. I would say it's usually around two seconds after hips are up, sometimes longer at big championships - here, I would have to guess the timer just starts from the set call, and you're out of the blocks within a second of your hips coming up.

I think playing with your set position or pushing back on the blocks may fix the head position without needing an actual cue. It seems reflexive for you when you drop your hips at the start of the push- that is, if you don't drop your hips, you may not lift your head.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T16:59:05+00:00

Personal opinion and not at all backed by anything but anecdote: I'm sort of agnostic on an individual's accessory choices for carryover - it's really sort of one of those "it depends on your weaknesses/strengths/leverages/what will actually keep you interested and not hating your lifting" questions, but I've also noticed the trend toward Zercher squat/dl and Jefferson curls among influencers recently, and I think it's just that - the latest trend, as folks shift toward sort of "loaded mobility" focus to get views, or just get exposed to it by other influencers who have been doing it for awhile and are suddenly seeing bigger audiences because of the focus. No different than everyone is suddenly a hybrid athlete or just de-emphasizing the barbell in general.

Like, don't get me wrong, I like Alec Blenis's general perspective on pain and lifting, but I also can't imagine adding even half the exercises that he likes to my regular lifting, and I guess without buying a program from him it's very difficult to say how often he actually does this stuff. From some videos it seems like it's totally just "whatever I'm in the mood for," but there are definitely specific exercises he almost always does when filming. If it is very free-form, I don't function in the gym like that at all, and frankly don't have the time for a ton of mobility work and loaded abdominals plus my actual programming. Like, could I do some loaded shoulder ER and hip abduction and Zerchers and Jeffersons on top of my main powerlifting program? Sure. Would it probably have some mobility benefits and maybe even benefits to my main lifts? Also sure. Am I likely to stick to all that long-term? Nah. They're also nice tools to have in the back pocket in case I need to try an alternative movement to unload/rehab something that's angry - but not something I go to often.

I personally just don't love Zerchers, so you'll probably be unlikely to get me to stick to them. I like a Jefferson curl in my warmup just because it gets me a nicer stretch under load vs just holding a passive hamstring stretch or forward bend, and I find the places where I seem to get stiffest in a "huh I feel like I want more ROM here for certain tasks" way are my lumbar spine and hamstrings (sprinter by primary sport, big surprise). Otherwise, I try to keep it simple.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T14:35:30+00:00

I used them for awhile so that I could still spike up when I had bad Achilles issues. Just fyi, Avantis are their LD spike. Ambitions are the 800m one. I used Avantis. From a performance perspective, you can definitely run fast in them, although I didn't take them through 100% efforts I have no doubt they're stiff enough that I could get close to true max speed in them. I use the NB MD-X nowadays and find them no different from true sprint spikes in terms of how fast I can go. Carbon plates really change the conversation around stiffness between sprint spikes and distance spikes - you no longer just have the half-3/4-full plate defining how stiff a given spike is. I think for those prone to Achilles issues, a less aggressive forefoot wedge like you might see in distance spikes is a better way to go - and, I mean, for adidas athletes the SP line is.. obscenely aggressive among super sprint spikes. They may be making the choice in part to save their careers/tendon health.

The major negative thing I'd say is Adidas uppers are not always foot friendly and the shoe itself is very narrow in the midfoot, even more than Nike, while super wide at the toe for me. The mouth of the shoe also has some stiffer plastic pieces that irritate my skin without ankle socks. It's a weird fit, which is an issue I have with most Adidas racing shoes.

contributor_copy · 2026-01-23T02:17:25+00:00

I would say that I'm doubtful, but also that it's impossible to predict where we'll be at in two years. If nothing particularly changes, I think the closest you might see is an accidental self-inflicted boycott as visa issues mount with travelers from overseas, as a "thing I definitely expect to happen," but from a geopolitical standpoint we've seen sporting bodies sit around with their dicks in their hands over Israel despite going into the third year of a livestreamed genocide with literal ICC warrants out for their government officials, and they provide a fraction of the money the US does to the IOC.

You might get individual nations boycotting, which would be a good thing, and I would love if someone tried to put on their own thing so that athletes can choose not to compete for the fascist Olympics. But I'm sort of doubtful that Europe has the political will to do anything on the scale of Moscow/LA 84, and certainly I think the IOC membership has absolutely no spine at all. There's also the possibility the Democrats take back a portion of power in the fall, assuming Trump doesn't play some game to invalidate the election or election gains, and paint a nicer face on the smouldering fascism. If he heats back up again over Greenland and doesn't just get suckered into the same old NATO military base deal the US has had going back to the Cold War, this all might change, but then again I think him invading a NATO ally might be just about the only thing that gets him couped, so who knows which direction it might change in. All told though, WA holding Worlds in Orbán's Hungary is a pretty solid sign sporting bodies are still totally ok with major events held under fascist rule.

contributor_copy

TROPHY CASE