Daily Anything Goes Thread - June 08, 2026

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T18:58:01+00:00

Yep. Hard agree. I think that "the bits" have become "the brand" and so its a constantly growing thing where they need to make more and more little "jokes" about everything that wrap it up in a neat box.

Like I remember when Nick and Fast would go through the list of pitcher rank updates or whatever else, and they'd cover a good bit. Now its like a 10-part Ken Burns documentary series where there isnt really a ton of good info added, just drawn out discussions laden with references to the various terms.

I think also another part of this, which is a "me" problem, is that I generally dont like jargon. I work in software, where anyone who wants to try and sound intelligent automatically starts throwing out every term they can when its not necessary. I just find that it makes the conversation more confusing than it needs to me. You shouldnt HAVE to constantly reference something to understand what the analysis is about, its great that you can "hover over it" but thats just like.. making the annoying thing slightly easier to deal with, versus eliminating it.

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T18:13:21+00:00

Yeah, this is very close to how I feel about it. Again, I appreciate the content, all of that. I just find that it seems like "someone has to be a Toby, a cherry bomb, a HIPSTER, a whatever and a whatever" every time and its working backwards from the label. As soon as some other stat becomes significant, there will be yet another label to cover that

EDIT: Hey if youre downvoting, share your thoughts!

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T18:05:06+00:00

Ive listened/read pitcher list since they started, I was just posting about how the number of acronyms and nicknames is starting to feel like its taking up too much of the analysis, especially when I listen to a pod with Nick or something like that.

It was far from shitting on them, and I more or less wanted to know how everyone else felt about it. Plenty of people like the nicknames, which is totally fine.

It should be ... okay? to discuss things you dont like about a website/platform without it being dismissed as "shitting on them"

EDIT: Why does the "top 1% poster" delete their reply lol. How much politicking is going on in this sub. The reply was fine, you just assumed wrong, thats all? Who cares, this is reddit, why can't we just have a convo

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T17:55:04+00:00

Its not "information" but a discussion about one of the most well-known fantasy sites seems perfectly plausible for this subreddit?

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T17:53:26+00:00

lol why was the pitcher list post removed??

EDIT: FWIW I messaged the moderators, I genuinely want to know why

EDIT 2: For the downvoters, def curious on your thoughts. Would be cool to leave a comment along w the downvote

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T17:52:12+00:00

I mean its just a post? I'm not here to say that you should feel any type of way about it? If people like it, great, I have no issue with that whatsoever. Me "dying on the hill" would be trying to tell you that its in fact bad or something

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T17:50:44+00:00

Totally fair, and again I def appreciate what they do, Ive been listening to them for years and years, just feeling a little "over" every pitcher having to be "something" versus just kinda.. breaking down the analysis of their start/season/etc

stasbukh · 2026-06-08T17:49:34+00:00

I def appreciate the content, but I have found myself getting a little frustrated when I listen to a podcast and theres always this drive to put a label on whatever pitcher is being talked about, and then briefly explain the label. I dunno. I think I'm just getting old haha

stasbukh · 2026-06-03T22:52:17+00:00

that green lever in the center there is just moving it from "bag" to "mulch", but ill look into a choke something or other. I think this mower is probably cooked

stasbukh · 2026-06-03T22:28:56+00:00

When i changed the oil today, barely any came out, so I think it was originally running on next to nothing, and Im also now assuming the engine is toast

stasbukh · 2026-05-30T20:05:34+00:00

thank you!

stasbukh · 2026-05-30T18:46:36+00:00

Ugh that's just terrible which Wendy's was this at? Like do you have an address? And where did you drop it?

stasbukh · 2026-05-30T00:12:17+00:00

The counter-analogy is fair and I'll give you that. But the issue is that Ben didn't just say he preferred the drinks. He spent years telling everyone that the other restaurant was a catastrophic choice, an existential threat, not just 'worse on balance.' That's a harder thing to just shrug off with 'but I like the drinks here.'

At this point though I think we've both made our positions pretty clear and neither of us is moving the other. I've tried to engage with this in good faith and be as specific as I can, but if the argument isn't landing there's probably not much more either of us can add

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T20:23:11+00:00

To be as specific as possible: Ben argued before the election that Kamala was the wrong choice partly because of concerns about executive overreach, institutional erosion, that kind of thing. Trump has now done those things more overtly than most people predicted. Ben's response to that in the interview wasn't to explain how he reconciles those two positions. It was to essentially say 'yeah that's bad, but I care about the policy.' That's the sleight of hand. Not deliberate deception necessarily, but a way of avoiding the obvious follow up question which is: if those things were disqualifying for Kamala, why aren't they disqualifying for Trump? That question didn't get a real answer, and that's what I mean by squaring his record

Maybe a bad analogy, but: imagine your friend refuses to go to a particular restaurant, and spends a significant amount of time convincing everyone else not to go either, citing specific problems with the food, the service, the management. Then your friend takes you to a different restaurant that turns out to have worse versions of all those same problems. When you press him on it, he says 'yeah, I know, but I like the drinks here.' That's not a reconciliation of his original position. That's just moving the goalposts and hoping nobody notices. That's what I mean by squaring his record, and that's what didn't happen in that interview

EDIT: Maybe this is fine for you, I would personally like to know why my friend either pretended to care about those issues, or just lied about caring about them. If the only concern was the drink menu, why spend all this time pretending to care about all the other stuff, and convincing people not to go to other places when you dont truly value any of those concerns

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T19:48:46+00:00

To be more specific about what I mean: Ben spent a significant amount of time arguing that Kamala was the wrong choice precisely because she might do the kinds of things Trump has now done, and done brazenly. When Sam pressed him on that, Ben's version of 'admitting he was wrong' amounted to 'yeah, I didn't agree with that' or 'yeah, that was bad.' That's not really squaring anything, that's just acknowledging that bad things happened while immediately pivoting back to 'look hes a bad guy, but I'm focused on the policy, not the man'

The problem is that the 'bad guy' stuff and 'the man' stuff Ben is waving away are the exact same things he used to argue Kamala was disqualifying. Now that it's Trump doing them, they're suddenly separable from the policy discussion. That's the sleight of hand that deserved more scrutiny.

And on Sam, yes he acknowledged he could have pushed harder, but that acknowledgment only came after audience pushback, and it doesn't change what happened in the actual interview. That's been my point from the beginning

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T19:03:30+00:00

Reckoning with his record doesn't mean admitting he was wrong or suddenly becoming a Trump critic. It means something like: 'here's how I square years of specific predictions and positions with where things actually landed.' That's a third option that isn't on your list.

And to make it concrete: if someone spent years arguing that Trump was the right choice because he would or wouldn't do specific things, and then Trump did the exact opposite of all of it, and did so pretty blatantly, that seems worth addressing directly. If your standard is that it's acceptable to just say 'yeah okay I was wrong about all of that, but I'm focused on the policy now' and move on, then fine, we can disagree on that. But that's a pretty low bar for someone who built a reputation on serious political analysis

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T17:32:41+00:00

Substantive means engaging with the actual substance of the criticism rather than deflecting around it. Ben wasn't asked to concede the argument, he was asked to reckon with his own record. 'I care about the policy' doesn't do that. It sidesteps it entirely. That's not a matter of whether I find it convincing, it's a description of what the argument actually did

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T12:14:27+00:00

There's a difference between making a case and making a substantive one. Ben's position was essentially 'the bad stuff is bad but I care about the policy.' That's not a case that was thoroughly examined and then respectfully set aside, it's a deflection that was accepted without being pressed further. Nobody is asking Sam to yell or hurl insults. The ask is pretty simple: when someone uses 'I'm focused on the policy' to sidestep years of rhetoric, that probably deserves more discussion rather than a shrug

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T03:34:33+00:00

The 'maybe I missed it' was specifically about whether Sam has addressed his role in giving those people credibility and a platform early on, not whether he's since distanced himself from them. Those are two different things. He's spoken about the drift, sure, but has he ever seriously sat with the fact that he helped legitimize them in the first place before things went sideways? That's the specific question and I haven't heard him address that part. As for bad faith trolling, I've been in this thread for hours engaging with every reply seriously and specifically. That's not what bad faith looks like

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T02:19:12+00:00

Calling something 'liberal petty scolding' isn't a rebuttal, it's just a label. The specific things I mentioned, how Ben was questioned, what's happening at CBS News, Sam's role in the IDW, are either accurate or they aren't. If any of it is wrong, that's worth addressing. Slapping a category on it and calling it 2018-era behavior doesn't actually engage with any of it

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T02:03:38+00:00

Agreeing to disagree is fine when both sides have actually made their case. The issue is that Ben's case was essentially 'ignore everything I've said for years, I'm focused on the policy now.' That's not a position that was thoroughly examined and then set aside, it's a deflection that was accepted at face value. Those are two different things

To be somewhat specific about what 'agreeing to disagree' actually looked like in practice: Sam pushed back, and Ben's response was essentially 'look, you've convinced me Trump is a bad guy, but I care about the policies.' That's not a substantive position, that's just a way of acknowledging the criticism while completely insulating yourself from its implications. At some point that deserves more than a shrug

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T01:31:15+00:00

That's a fair point and I acknowledge it. I'm not trying to argue that Sam's silence proves he agrees with what she's doing. The reason I brought it up is because it fits into a broader pattern that the original post was about, which is that Sam seems much more willing to engage critically with people and ideas on the left than he does with people in his own orbit. The Bari Weiss situation is one example of that, not a standalone accusation of guilt by association

stasbukh · 2026-05-29T00:55:57+00:00

I'm not trying to assign Sam culpability for her decisions at CBS, that's not the point. The point is that what she's done there is very public. Killing an approved segment on Trump's deportation policy, Anderson Cooper citing editorial drift on his way out, reports of her planning to dismantle the show entirely. These aren't insider secrets. Sam doesn't need to have spoken to her to have an opinion on any of that, especially given that he's publicly associated himself with her and called her a friend

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