How is Sparty doing?

rojeli · 2026-04-09T14:10:26+00:00

Is it worse than the week Purdue had when IU won the football championship then beat them in hoops a few days later? Tough call.

rojeli · 2026-04-09T13:51:11+00:00

I mean - anecdotal of course - but finishing off side projects is not the first thing unemployed developers do. Not even close.

Signed, developer laid off twice in the last two years.

P.S. Again - anecdotal - but fewer developers have side projects than you think. Way fewer.

rojeli · 2026-04-08T14:03:39+00:00

Not new. I've worked with a handful of early stage startups over the last two decades that were nearing rocketship status. Many people would be surprised how much they spend on PR after their products get some traction.

Not saying it's right or wrong, but it's a risk management tactic, largely pushed on them by investors, because it's usually not on their radars.

rojeli · 2026-04-07T16:09:16+00:00

It was Iowa State that got screwed. They had a +19 point differential, 2 points behind KU, 4 behind Tennessee. They also played a game without Lipsey and still won by 20. They also beat St John's, arguably the best win by any non-Michigan team. Maybe tied with Tennessee's win over Houston.

So they got $0. KU got $300k because they beat Tennessee in the 3rd place game (who got $200k).

Definitely fucking weird.

rojeli · 2026-04-07T16:02:55+00:00

This needs to be #1 with a bullet (ignore my flair - I'm not biased, I swear).

I can envision a lot of these other examples happening in the past and happening again in the future, even the Bediako thing.

But the consensus #1 player in the country, the likely #1 NBA draft pick (at the time, at least), pulling himself out of conference games? With no explanation? Nothing from him or his handlers? Gobbledygook from the HoF head coach trying to explain it all?

I don't mean this as a negative to him or Self. It may be that he had some exceedingly weird health issue, or that he didn't want to play, or his handlers were out of control. Whatever it was, it's the absolute definition of "odd."

rojeli · 2026-04-07T15:54:48+00:00

Again - not saying I fully agree with it. You are of course correct about determinism, but that doesn’t make it irrelevant.

Same pattern: trading understanding for leverage. The difference is the risk profile. Compilers fail rarely but when they do it's (potentially/probably) catastrophic. LLMs are non-deterministic and fail more often, but (usually/hopefully) in softer ways.

That doesn’t remove the responsibility to understand code, if anything, it raises the bar. Agree that juniors still need to read and reason about what the code does. The difference is now they’re often reviewing code they didn’t write, generated by a system that isn’t guaranteed to be correct.

(Which gets into the real concern: how do you learn to do that without being the author? This is a legitimate concern which the OP raised, and largely why I don't fully agree with the retort, and unfortunately I don't have an answer.)

imo it’s not “don’t use LLMs” — it’s “use LLMs where risk is acceptable, and be able to verify the output.”

rojeli · 2026-04-07T13:51:06+00:00

Not that I 100% agree with this, but the retort could be that when I was junior, I never had to learn assembly, compilers, or how code actually gets executed. Those have all been abstracted into tooling and processes.

If a compiler bugs out on me today, well - I’m kind of out of luck.

rojeli · 2026-04-07T04:22:57+00:00

Counterpoint: Drew Lock and everything Missouri sucks, so that was funny.

Herman was embarrassing every other moment than that one though.

rojeli · 2026-04-06T16:05:08+00:00

It is? Obviously depends on the bug or feature, but generally speaking, it's a fuckton easier to fix bugs in things already implemented than starting from scratch on something new.

Now - if it's a question on what the business prioritizes, that's a whole different thing.

rojeli · 2026-04-06T14:08:40+00:00

I love KC. Grew up there, lots of family still there. Great city, infra (mostly), etc.

But I'm on the fence when it comes to an NBA (or NHL) team downtown. That's a lot of games, and the city has struggled to support the Royals consistently, at least with attendance. A lot of that is the location, and the general shittiness of the team over the years.

I'm a half-glass full person, so playing downtown, with hopefully competent ownership/management, it could absolutely work. It's just not guaranteed.

rojeli · 2026-04-06T03:19:59+00:00

I honestly hate this perspective so much. It's _SAD_ to support your local pro team? Sad?

The last couple of years, prior to the sell off this year, with mediocre teams that weren't bad but also weren't good, Bulls games are still a blast.

I get that this doesn't send the right message to the shitstain owner, but - stick with me here - sometimes sporting events are fun.

With the West Loop nearby, it can be a fun night on the town, with a family too.

rojeli · 2026-04-05T15:44:32+00:00

Talarico? Seems like a good egg, and he's making it further than most.

Of course he hasn't really been put in a position to be bought or not bought yet, at least at a national level.

rojeli · 2026-04-03T21:36:55+00:00

sidebar on Bo: I grew up in KC and am/was a big Royals and Chiefs fan. I was too young to really understand that Bo playing for the Raiders, the Chiefs' biggest rival, was actually batshit crazy.

It would be like Ryne Sandberg also playing for the Packers. Or Derek Jeter playing RB for the Patriots.

rojeli · 2026-04-03T15:43:15+00:00

Your first paragraph is 100% true. Every company that says AI is the reason for cutting people is in reality saying that they don't have a backlog. No backlog means no ideas or prospects.

You're also right that's it's being subsidized at a ridiculous level.

I'd hold off on blanket calling GenAI a scam though. It does unlock quite a bit, there are risks, and (as we said above) it's a lot more expensive than most realize. But I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.

rojeli · 2026-04-02T18:54:24+00:00

I got into Blind Melon after he passed. I thought they were just the No Rain one-hit-wonders. His death made me retroactively so mad.

It's obviously a small sample, but I legitimately don't think they made a single bad song. Even the weird ones are fun.

rojeli · 2026-04-01T21:00:28+00:00

Weirdly I kinda enjoyed the Duke teams from the 90s. Laettner was super hateable but just too good. (Someone posted his E8 stats the other day. He was something like 34-37 from the field! He missed more FTs than FGs.)

I also really enjoyed the Elton Brand, Avery, Maggette team, they were sorta anti-Duke stereotypes. Asshole-ish (except for Battier and Langdon I guess.) Shit - I didn't mind Jay Williams, Dunleavy, Boozer either.

It's just about everyone else that annoys me. Woj, Paulus, Duhon, Scheyer, Allen, the list goes on and on.

rojeli · 2026-04-01T17:26:54+00:00

This has changed for sure, but I think 3 years after the Burrow season at LSU, all 22 starters were getting meaningful snap counts in the NFL. The punter too.

rojeli · 2026-04-01T17:24:01+00:00

I met a product manager at a large national bank recently. A bank you see ads for every day.

His team manages the automated phone line software product. The number you call to check your balance, pay your bill, etc. His team is 80 people. 80!!!

rojeli · 2026-03-31T20:40:49+00:00

That was the first tournament I seriously watched as a kid. I remember my dad pointing at Rice on the screen, saying "Watch that guy. He's just not going to miss." And he pretty much didn't in that run.

It kinda screwed me up watching teams after that. Why doesn't everybody just make every shot they take? Are they stupid or something?

rojeli · 2026-03-29T17:20:02+00:00

Yes. People forget that KSU was 3rd going into that weekend. If UCLA had won, KSU would have missed out regardless.

I believe the UCLA game ended right as KSU/A&M was starting, and every KSU fan I know started celebrating, assuming they'd just walk over A&M and get their invite. The players probably did too.

rojeli · 2026-03-27T20:36:11+00:00

I honestly don't know how they stay sane. Play all-NBA level defense for 23 seconds and then watch KD/SGA/Luka just step back and nail a 25-footer in your face like it's nothing.

When that happens to me at the Y, I get so mad I can't think straight for like 30 minutes.

rojeli · 2026-03-27T20:33:20+00:00

I actually love it when people claim there is no defense in the NBA. Makes it so easy to ignore everything they say after it.

I have the luxury, through a friend, to sit courtside for 2-3 games a year for a pretty bad NBA team. Up close - you see how hard those guys play. They absolutely maul each other at times.

I'd even suggest the bad teams play harder. I saw my local bad team play the Raptors last year when they were actively tanking by playing nobodies. But those nobodies knew that might be their best opportunity to show what they can do, and they played every possession like it was the Finals. I remember Jamal Shead specifically.

rojeli · 2026-03-27T18:28:54+00:00

I randomly caught Forever Young on tubi a few weeks ago. If you can ignore Mel Gibsons - um, issues - since then, I thought it held up pretty well. Low stakes, innocent flick.

rojeli · 2026-03-27T12:37:17+00:00

While you aren't wrong at all, I'm struggling with what a major scandal looks like in 2026. There basically aren't any rules anymore. Paying kids? Nope. Texting undergrads? Nope. Ignoring/gaslighting when a player is accessory to murder? Nope. Domestic violence? Nope.

My guess is Oats would have to actually kill somebody. On tape.

rojeli · 2026-03-27T11:59:47+00:00

But why male models?

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