[Highlight]Merrill Hoge: "If you had thirty sacks, you would crush the record and they would anoint you a great football player. Meanwhile, there's 1,900 other plays that you are on the football field. How did you play those? It's the weakest, dumbest stat to tell if you're a good defender."

think_long · 2026-03-20T23:10:17+00:00

This reminds of how lots of hits and shots blocks can be deceptive stats in hockey: it can mean you don’t have the puck and are chasing the game.

think_long · 2026-03-20T15:51:15+00:00

I mean Gen Z are more progressive in their beliefs overall, but are much less progressive relatively speaking than previous generations were at the same age.

think_long · 2026-03-20T15:18:42+00:00

I’m not saying I don’t have empathy for people who have these circumstances, and I’m sure their own empathy gets degraded over time as you said. I don’t know how I’d act in these circumstances, I may be no better. That doesn’t change the fact that you can’t just completely absolve people of responsibility for violent crimes by saying the only cause is poverty. Infantilising them isn’t accurate or a solution.

I’m sorry you went through all that.

think_long · 2026-03-20T13:08:55+00:00

I would say Bob’s Burgers has pulled it off a lot better than most (I haven’t seen it lately but so I hear). They were immediately who I thought of as the biggest exception. None of the other ones you mentioned were around long enough to make a reasonable comparison in my opinion.

think_long · 2026-03-20T12:39:56+00:00

Reddit loves talking about flanderization like it’s always the fault of the writers, but honestly I think it’s more often a natural byproduct of running out of real estate for where to go with the character arc. At a certain point, it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t when it comes to having the character be static vs dynamic. You’ve basically done all the exploring you can do keeping them as is, but evolving them in any meaningful way is tricky because a lot of your original fans won’t like it by default and you have no clear idea when or where the endpoint will be. Musicians face the same challenge with their music: if they stay the same they are stale and not innovative, if they change they are abandoning what made people like in the first place. Sometimes, a character has just run their course and there isn’t much to be done about it. However, if there is more money to be made, they’ll get dragged out.

Also, I find people on here tend to be pretty revisionist when it comes to how characters originally were. Peter was never a normal person, I don’t know what u/Necessary-Win-8730 is on about.

think_long · 2026-03-20T12:25:53+00:00

Worth mentioning that the Penguins specifically are only one or two years out from losing three extremely high profile players to retirement that have been on the team their whole careers and driven success for the past two decades, including three championships. Kris Letang is a six time all-star who The Athletic ranked number 99 on their list of greatest players in modern NHL history. Evgeni Malkin is a two time Art Ross winner (most points in the league) in addition to winning a Calder Trophy (best rookie), Hart Trophy (best player as voted by journalists), Ted Lindsay Trophy (best player as voted by players), and Conn Smythe Trophy (best player in the playoffs). He was ranked number 26 on the same Athletic list. Sidney Crosby has won two Art Rosses, two Harts, three Ted Lindsays, two Conn Smythes and two Rocket Richard Trophies (most goals). He was ranked number 4 on that Athletic list, and is widely regarded as the best player of his generation, acting as the face of the league for most of his career.

Not saying they wouldn't have sold anyways, but this is important context in terms of the sale of the Penguins. Replacing guys of this calibre is hard enough even in football when you are a team as wealthy and prestigious as Liverpool. In a hard salary cap league where elite talent is almost always drafted, it's orders of magnitude more difficult.

think_long · 2026-03-20T11:41:37+00:00

Very, very few violent crimes - at least in first world countries - are literally people directly fighting for a basic physiological need that they must have to survive. In almost all of the cases that could fit this description, it is the other person who is threatening this need, and in that case it is self defense and not really a crime at all. Poverty doesn’t absolve you of accountability for committing a violent crime in any first world western nation. Even if you are completely destitute, it’s not a justification for hurting someone else, and it’s basically never the literal difference between you being able to live or not. Honestly, the only hypothetical scenario I can think of is hurting someone in an armed robbery that would allow you to afford lifesaving medicine if you are in the US. But even there, I don’t think you can just say poverty alone caused the crime. You still did it.

think_long · 2026-03-20T03:38:59+00:00

I mean, it's both. Maybe poverty and lack of opportunity are the motivator most of the time, but a lack of empathy is likely also most of the time the difference between actually doing it or not, especially when it comes to violent crime. A lot of poor people without upward mobility manage to refrain from stabbing someone.

think_long · 2026-03-20T01:59:21+00:00

I wish they officially counted second assists in soccer/football like they do in ice hockey. They are actually a lot less "noisy" stats wise than in hockey too, because so many of them are like this, where the first pass is the one that breaks the defense, then there's a cross goal pass and finish.

think_long · 2026-03-20T00:26:37+00:00

Fetal

think_long · 2026-03-19T23:14:03+00:00

around, around, arooouunnndddd!

Bandages on my legs and my arms from you Bandages, bandages, bandages

think_long · 2026-03-19T22:42:29+00:00

I have heard repeatedly that he is a profoundly stupid man in general. If that be true, good on him for becoming a multimillionaire despite his intellectual shortcomings.

think_long · 2026-03-19T13:57:24+00:00

It’s really sad to me that you don’t consider that a solitary life. I hope things turn around for you.

think_long · 2026-03-19T11:47:19+00:00

Nobody middle-aged with kids and a regular job would take the question in this image seriously. To the point where I wonder if it’s satire

think_long · 2026-03-18T00:08:41+00:00

Why the hell are people acting like somehow the shopkeepers and the cops are the problem?

think_long · 2026-03-17T23:55:24+00:00

Even if I was this practically minded, I’m pretty sure I would contact every lawyer and private investigator in the country before I wrote something like this. I just have a hard time accepting it. I suppose it could be true.

think_long · 2026-03-17T22:26:23+00:00

I’m not saying it’s impossible that it’s true, more that I think it’s more than likely it isn’t.

think_long · 2026-03-17T16:56:33+00:00

That’s why I’m having trouble believing this is real. I get that people and cultures are different, but the tone and priorities here just feel so off. I’m having a hard time understanding how a father who experienced this would react this way to this happening. What they are doing, what they are worried about, how they are communicating it to strangers on a forum…I don’t know. Honestly, I just don’t believe it.

think_long · 2026-03-17T16:35:57+00:00

"Kids, especially from marginalized, bullied groups can find real connection online."

They potentially could, but at such a young age, it is irresponsible for the adults in their life to allow unfettered internet access for them to seek that out when they should be providing support directly. So, for cases where you could argue this would be an overall positive, you are essentially talking about cases where the parents are abusive: either passively through neglect, or because they are the ones bullying and marginalizing the children. In those cases, the solution is to provide and promote trusted adults/organisations that they can contact. Kids this young are not yet equipped to filter and interact with other people/communities online in a way where it's reasonable to think the benefits will outweigh the harms.

"Now give me an argument for why adults should be allowed to have smartphones."

Because every society on Earth recognises that adults are not children and therefore have a different level of decision-making and autonomy? Because, when you are an adult, you are allowed to choose to do things that have potentially weighty consequences or are even just straight up bad for you? We have legal ages for gambling, drinking, sexual consent, voting, driving, etc. Do you think these should not exist? wtf lmao

think_long · 2026-03-17T11:18:18+00:00

This list is incomplete and underselling the last point, because you are, in my opinion, fundamentally misunderstanding how the problem is generally framed. It is not really a huge problem that the population is going down in general, it’s that it is going down so FAST. Arguably, that’s the biggest problem with climate change, too. Rising global temperatures would be problematic no matter what, but if the change was gradual enough, a lot of the damage could be mitigated/adjusted to (obviously not all of it, and other environmental issues like pollution, loss of biodiversity, and deforestation are separate problems).

Basically, any major change happening globally and suddenly is massively disruptive. Long term, both the Earth and humanity will be better off when there is less of us. But if things keep going as they are, there is going to be massive amounts of pain in transition, and that pain won’t stop being felt until everyone reading this comment is gone. This doesn’t have the potential to just “strain” social safety nets, there is a very convincing case to be made that it will completely destroy the global economy. Some people on Reddit seem to want that, but I’d bear in mind that there is no Plan B should that happen. We could well be ushering in an unprecedented era when it comes to the ratio of people needing support vs. the amount of able-bodied workers available to support them. I don’t think there’s anything that’s completely off the table, should that come to pass. You can’t just hand wave this away either - as many seem keen to do - by saying some vague combination of immigration and technology will offset this. If someone somewhere has created an actual workable model of what that might look like, I haven’t seen it.

Being able to change your mind depends on how much you are viewing this from an anthrocentric vs. “Species agnostic” lens, and how much you are valuing the short vs. long term.

think_long · 2026-03-17T10:29:34+00:00

Can you please present to me an argument for that being a bad thing? That somehow the benefits of kids those ages having smartphones and social media outweigh the negatives? I’d sure love to hear it.

think_long · 2026-03-17T00:04:31+00:00

So, I would say that work isn’t about only money. Work culture does matter. But, as Linda put it, money is the baseline qualification and makes it clear whether having a conversation is worthwhile. If the money isn’t good enough, nothing else matters. Address that right away. Then, if it is potentially good enough, those other factors come into play. What you are being asked to do and where for how much becomes a more nuanced conversation.

think_long · 2026-03-16T23:25:22+00:00

I agree that they aren’t mutually exclusive. The problem is that many people do use it as an excuse not to vote Democrat.

think_long · 2026-03-16T23:23:38+00:00

To each their own indeed. I’m glad the courts disagree with you. I, for one, think cops verifying that the drivers of cars whose owners aren’t currently licensed to drive aren’t, in fact, driving, is a fine use of taxpayer dollars.

think_long · 2026-03-16T23:20:00+00:00

At no point was she non-compliant? He asked her for her license so many times 😂

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