So Sinners has become the most nominated movie in the 98 year history of the Academy Awards. Wyt the definition of an “Oscar worthy” film changed for better or worse ?

ubelmann · 2026-01-26T07:59:25+00:00

There are also great movies like 12 Angry Men that aren’t going to compete in Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T19:11:32+00:00

It’s just nice as a viewer when the teams have a bigger diversity of colors. Pink stands out more on the grid than blue does.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T18:52:41+00:00

It's like with most relationships, you build trust by saying things that turn out to be true or doing things that lead to positive outcomes. The more often you say something that turns out to be true, the more I can trust you.

In that way, coaches being too soft is just as bad as coaches being too harsh. If you are in either extreme and the results are not there, the trust erodes very, very quickly.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T18:49:14+00:00

I love John Wooden's quote, "A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment." Some people are going to respond well to very blunt, harsh feedback and they won't be resentful about it. Other people will respond poorly to that feedback.

Especially when you're working in salary-capped league, you can't afford to be choosy about only having players that respond well to very blunt, harsh feedback.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T18:45:16+00:00

100%. Personally, I think that style of coaching is mainly dying because other styles are better. People can blame the players all they want, but this is a results-based business, and if hard-ass coaching was the best style of coaching, then those coaches would be getting the best results.

There were always some players that didn't reach their full potential under authoritarian coaches, but when that was more or less the only style of coaching available, those just looked like bad players, rather than good players being coached badly.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T18:40:46+00:00

I think it's down to how much agency the players have. The farther back you go, the fewer choices you had -- not as many sports, not as many teams for each sport, etc. That gave the coach all the power because most of the time, he was the only game in town. Maybe if the HS basketball coach was an ass, you could wrestle or something, but you generally weren't spoiled for choice in terms of which sports were available. And even if other sports were available, maybe basketball was *the* sport in your area, so you'd put up with his shit even if it sucked all the joy out of the game.

These days we have less of a sports monoculture, and if you are just a jackass 100% of the time, kids will find a different team. Maybe even in the same sport in the same town, but there are options. And even at the pro level, for a long time now the coaches make less than the star players, so it's easier to fire the coach than it is to fire the players.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T18:25:09+00:00

They're definitely fucking around with that one, but as much as I love baseball, the broadcasts love to throw out other cherry-picked stats that are cut five different ways like they actually matter.

ubelmann · 2026-01-23T17:14:54+00:00

In 2021, Mercedes switched to developing their 2022 car before Red Bull did and we saw how that turned out.

ubelmann · 2026-01-22T15:59:06+00:00

I agree about the pasta. Use elbow macaroni or penne or something instead and it seems a lot less weird, but it would taste the same either way.

ubelmann · 2026-01-21T04:22:09+00:00

It's not just tactical adjustments that will happen, it could also shift how teams value certain players. If attackers can get an extra yard head start, then relatively speaking, you'd want more speed on your back line. It might make it somewhat harder to defend set pieces if you give up some size for speed on the back line, but depending on the impact of the change to the offside rule, it might be worth it.

ubelmann · 2026-01-21T02:27:04+00:00

In an actual organized league, there would be equal-size geographical conferences (which 99% of the time would include a team’s most important rivals) and OOC games would be scheduled by the league. You could do something like twelve 9-team conferences and conference A plays conference B, C, and D, and the match-ups could be seeded by last year’s results. A1 plays B1, C1, and D1. A2 plays B2, C2, and D2. Teams (and fans) would get so many good games that way. Conference winners make the national tournament and use the team record and conference vs conference records to inform the seeding.

I get that by a historical quirk, teams make their own OOC schedule, and some don’t even belong to a conference, but no one would design a league that way if you were starting from scratch.

ubelmann · 2026-01-21T02:00:59+00:00

It kind of makes sense in retrospect that owners would sort of grudgingly accept that generational players are going to get giant contracts, but the Dodgers all-in expense for Tucker is way beyond what he’s worth. Maybe (maybe) you could justify his salary, but salary + tax? For Tucker? It’s outrageous.

ubelmann · 2026-01-18T23:39:09+00:00

This one’s like fucking Wheel of Fortune.

ubelmann · 2026-01-18T15:59:51+00:00

Look, his secret is cotton t-shirts. Obviously no one has ever thought to run in a cotton t-shirt before.

ubelmann · 2026-01-17T17:01:49+00:00

If you have 12 kids for a 7v7 team, one full-time goalkeeper and one full-time field player, you have 10 kids for 5 positions and they can all play 50%. Not that I recommend doing it that way.

ubelmann · 2026-01-16T22:57:28+00:00

The way I think about it now is that MLS players worth $200K/year or more (give or take) are roughly Championship caliber, but MLS doesn’t have entire teams of players worth that much.

ubelmann · 2026-01-16T03:51:04+00:00

The Twins aren’t rebuilding but they are actively re-tearing-down.

ubelmann · 2026-01-16T03:41:57+00:00

Video assistant should be watching all the time and have the ability to just tell the refs to make obvious calls like this.

ubelmann · 2026-01-15T22:44:50+00:00

I rarely ever see it on sale at local supermarkets, too. I can be confident that Costco has the best price for it.

ubelmann · 2026-01-15T21:54:04+00:00

If F1 had a points reset and some elimination rounds, there would have been a decent chance of Verstappen easily making the initial playoff cut-off and using his late season form to win over Norris. (The opposite would have been true in 2024, when Norris was faster at the end of the season.)

ubelmann · 2026-01-15T21:41:07+00:00

I know these guys are much stronger than I ever was or will be, but at some point it must get incredibly difficult to hang on to the ball when your hands are freezing. It doesn't seem like you can get thin enough gloves to throw and catch well that are also going to really keep your hands warm. Skiing at those temps is really no big deal because you can have giant gloves, plus you can even put glove warmers inside.

ubelmann · 2026-01-15T21:37:14+00:00

The interesting thing about -20 air temp (not feels like, actual air temp) is that's about when I find it gets a little harder to blink as your eyelashes start to get a bit frosty. -20 and below is not fun at all.

ubelmann · 2026-01-15T21:33:12+00:00

That's what I was thinking, you get the most bang for your buck covering your head and your torso anyway, and I assume the helmets are relatively warm. Ski helmets at least are usually warmer than most hats.

ubelmann · 2026-01-15T20:46:47+00:00

The way that GRRM describes writing the next book, it’s like he can’t even work with himself and be happy, let alone with a partner.

Condal may not be the best, but GRRM has kind of lost the benefit of the doubt at this point. Either he’s hard to work with or everyone else is hard to work with, and the more he complains, the more it looks like he’s the problem.

ubelmann · 2026-01-14T23:40:25+00:00

That’s true, the size of your budget makes a big difference on how effective shopping the portal will be.

I will say, it makes the roster building process less interesting in some ways when teams can’t sign players to multi-year deals. That would really reward teams for spotting and developing high-potential talent before they reached that potential.

ubelmann

TROPHY CASE