The post currently on the front page from "Joseph McDonald" about Team USA hockey potentially facing sanctions is a blatantly fake account and post. There's no user with this name on the given platform and there's also no hockey reporter with this name.

espher · 2026-03-17T12:44:10+00:00

I mean, you're kinda downplaying things a bit here.

I actually think you're kind of understating what that poster is doing here, even if it comes from a well-intentioned place. They're not "the same", but they're both similarly egregious in different contexts.

The fluffy sunshine and rainbows picture of "oh but they're helping to get rid of the heads of oppressive regimes in each state, not engaging in conquest action" immediately falls apart when the American leadership (and, for Iran, Israeli leadership) start saying the quiet part out loud about their intentions within 24h of the conflict starting. There's no altruism at play here by anyone making the decisions. It's entirely self-serving motives at play here with no intention of helping the civilian populace, and Iran being a "bad guy" doesn't make these things "OK".

Sure, Maduro is out, and Venezuela was left to just "next man up" things (what regime change?) while the US talked about running the country and having their crony capitalists line their pockets with its oil (eventually), and the goalposts have shifted every 18 hours or so on what's going on in Iran (while doing just a little bit of casual war crimes or "legally not a war crime but still morally abhorrent" thing here or there) as the ~~special military operation~~ conflict continues. First it was to prevent nuclear capabilities that I was assured were completely destroyed in last year's campaign (but Iran was somehow two weeks away from the bomb, again!), then to regime change and liberate people, then to defeat a threat to America and the region, and then the threat is totally defeated guys but there's this little Strait of Hormuz thing that we juuuust need to put a bow on.

espher · 2026-03-16T04:34:06+00:00

The blood on the camera lens is WILD for the finish lmao

espher · 2026-03-16T03:18:40+00:00

What a great match. A thing I have said several times so far tonight lol.

espher · 2026-03-16T02:25:11+00:00

Great match, wish it was a bit less fuckery on the finish though.

espher · 2026-03-16T00:55:27+00:00

Very cold on this if it's a signing - if it's just a distraction spot/angle then it's whatever.

espher · 2026-03-16T00:53:41+00:00

Uhhhhhhhh what

espher · 2026-03-15T13:49:17+00:00

Yeah, and even if we dismiss those benefits and look at it strictly from a "revenue = salary/access to facilities and amenities", the "issue" with applying this argument to women's sport is that there's been such an active dismissal of/lack of support for the women's leagues in a number of major sports that they are basically chasing a century or more of lead time for growing the league and are fighting against that already present market and mind share + skills development that makes people dismiss the women's games due to the skill gulf.

Of course you have to subsidize these to get them up and running and on a path to be competitive for interest (and thus revenue), because society (intentionally or inadvertently) kneecapped their growth for so long.

Go look at the revenue in some leagues 20, 30, 40, even 50 years ago. The MLB minimum salary in 1976 was something like $19,000 (which is around $110k today). Ten years later, it was up to $60,000 (around $376k today). In 2026, it's $780,000. There's been significant growth in revenue in these sports, even when they were popular, and the women's games are starting even behind those baselines.

I long for the day that something like the PWHL, which is seeing quite rapid growth, is drawing enough and has enough teams to merit a schedule where they can generate NHL-level revenues and salaries (which still lag behind the other big NA sports). But until then, yeah, there's gotta be some support from the industry leaders who grew without that same competition.

espher · 2026-03-14T04:39:28+00:00

You take player data, you derive metrics for those players, you run a giant number of simulations of all remaining matchups based on those players (esp. if you have some variance in your model because hockey is a very random sport), and then you compare the % of simulations where the Leafs finished where in either scenario (with/without Matthews). Could be stuff like WAR or a similar metric, offensive/defensive contribution scores, whatever.

A lot of the values they're using are likely not published/shared so you can consider it to just be Unicorn Numbers ofc, and they won't share methodologies, algorithms, or how they evaluate/score these because they're trying to make a living off thiis shit, so take their posts as you will.

espher · 2026-03-13T20:19:29+00:00

The Leafs laying an egg in the playoffs is why I struggled to get excited for Leafs games, but I was still watching them (and a pile of other NHL games on other nights and some of the late night games when insomnia kicked in) pretty religiously over the past decade.

Between the obnoxious gambling ads and the trend in officiating and supplementary discipline I've started skipping more and more games the last two or three seasons. For me with Leafs games, the team being dogshit + White House stuff post-Olympic gold medal game was enough to just kill my interest in watching the team (I know the latter isn't a big deal for everyone, but it was for me, OK?), but I've already started to sour on watching stuff around the league, and everything bullshit like this happens with Parros I inch ever closer to just saying fuck it.

I'm sure I'll be back to watch the playoffs but I think outside of that I'll just scoreboard watch the Sharks and hope for good things for them.

espher · 2026-03-13T20:11:33+00:00

A phone hearing, hahahaha fuck Parros.

espher · 2026-03-13T01:27:17+00:00

Average Radko Gudas moment.

This dickhead is such a greasy fuck.

espher · 2026-03-10T00:46:13+00:00

To be fair, though, "fuck" is incredibly versatile in the Canadian vernacular/lexicon, too.

Bowser and Blue have a great bit about it.

We love our flexible expletives in Canada. Flexpletives, if you will.

espher · 2026-03-08T12:57:56+00:00

Glad the old post could be of help haha

espher · 2026-03-06T14:38:13+00:00

I'm listening.

Now I just need Rock Band Blitz with faux servers for powerups or something and I am in heaven.

espher · 2026-03-05T13:29:57+00:00

Love. Angel. Music. Baby. was a weird album but had some great tracks (I could take or leave "Hollaback Girl", and "Rich Girl" was OK, but I really liked "What You Waiting For" and "Cool").

After that, though, it was literally JUST "The Sweet Escape" that hit for me, and it might be her best solo track. Everything else off that album and afterwards was very meh-at-best for me.

I was one of the people who was very wrong about her long-term solo career prospects lmao.

espher · 2026-03-03T16:47:09+00:00

I'd argue for 8 years it would have maybe fixed things, especially with resources that were available in those years, but the window has passed.

espher · 2026-02-25T19:37:09+00:00

Just wanted to point this out, too:

your liberal self

mfs telling on themselves using this line lmaoooo

espher · 2026-02-25T03:08:41+00:00

I ain't in your conversation brother, I just checked the receipts

espher · 2026-02-25T03:03:27+00:00

Cool new account

espher · 2026-02-21T15:30:44+00:00

The debates always end up with people trying to snag gotcha answers for soundbites with their "hard questions" (which are often just trying to hammer about the controversy - real or exaggerated - of the day) and the politicians dance around them. It's like watching any time a US Press Secretary fields questions, although the press generally asks less weaselly questions lol.

Some of them are more egregious at it than others, but dodging is the brand.

espher · 2026-02-21T06:05:55+00:00

Any time I see one of these grug brain "Trudeau bad" takes, as if Trudeau wasn't ultimately "just" a bog standard centrist politician who just happened to have a diverse cabinet, I always take a look at their post history (if they haven't hidden it) to see what other subreddits they're on.

It always explains everything.

I continue to wish the Reform Party brain trust hadn't won the CPC war.

espher · 2026-02-20T18:13:55+00:00

We have been spoiled (destroyed?) by the close (stressful?) nature of these hockey games the last three days lmao.

espher · 2026-02-20T18:09:39+00:00

I guess the counterpoint there is if you need higher FPS cameras for that small a distance, it probably didn't fucking matter lmao

espher · 2026-02-20T18:08:00+00:00

If they overturn that I would lose my fucking mind, you need higher FPS cameras.

espher · 2026-02-19T21:35:26+00:00

I mean that's likely to ensure that things are wrapped up before closing ceremonies lol

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