Tua and concussions (again)

In 2022, Tua (the QB for the Dolphins) suffered a concussion one week and was held out for a time, then came back and suffered a severe concussion, which resulted in him displaying the "fencers pose" (which is NOT a good thing).

He played sparingly for the remainder of the season, and "came back strong" in 2023.  He credited weight training and judo for making his stronger.  And behold! While he was hit several times in way that probably would have caused a concussion, he was never diagnosed with one.  

Aside: I posit that there was also a change in the way concussions were evaluated, at least in part to keep players on the field.

He's a below-average to average QB in the league, but the Dolphins decided he was worth investing in (at least in part because the owner is an idiot, but that's a story for another day) and gave him the equivalent of about 20% of all the salary cap.  Most of the $50 million per year over 5 years, guaranteed.

Week 1, he has an average day and mostly underperforms. 

Week 2, he starts off very slow. Doesn't look "sharp" and throws three interceptions. 

And then in the 3rd quarter, he's diving for yardage - stupidly - and runs into a defender, his head gets bent sideways and he winds up on the ground with a severe concussion and the "fencers pose" once again.  

So now it's a question about health and safety.  Sure, it's been 2 years since his last diagnosed concussion (or at least severe one), but in between he's taken hits, and undoubtedly the trauma has built up.

And longer term, should he continue to play? Will he try and come back? And what of the significant amount of money he is owed? Will that hold the team back for a very long time?

On a more amusing side note, what if the no-name low-paid backup has success?  What does that say about the team and its decisions? 

Tyreek Hill gets (almost) arrested

I hadn't planned on talking about this situation, but it has made an extended news cycle, and has some aspects that are worth noting. 

The story is that Tyreek Hill, who plays for the Dolphins football team, was on his way to the game in his fancy sports car.  He was pulled over for speeding which we later learned was on the Turnpike, before he exited onto the roads around the stadium; we are told he was going 55 in a 40 MPH zone and they pulled him over what seems to be much later. 

The police exerted their authority over him, and pulled him out of the car, handcuffed him, and threw him onto the ground. All while (a) they were aware who he was and (b) he was cooperating reasonably well.  I've attached the body cam from one of the officers below so you can see how this played out.

Here's the thing that gets me: sometimes you'll see a video of someone else getting kind treatment by police, and no force is used. 

What's the difference you may ask?

In my humble opinion, this is often about race.  The pleasant white woman is helped along.  The black man in the expensive car gets roughed up because he wasn't OVERLY nice; he was merely acting just like anyone else might.

And therein is the summary of what the Black Lives Matter movement was/is about: being treated the same as everyone else.  Put away the rhetoric and the dumb politics of it and just think about it as being fair.

We can do better.  Having the authority to pull someone out of his car for speeding (but being decent), vs actually doing it, is something we need to discuss.

Maybe this story is the next chapter in that conversation.  We can hope, anyway.

And that, maybe, would have been the end of the story, except another detail emerged later.  A second player (Calais Campbell)  was on his way into the stadium, when he saw what was happening and pulled over “to help.”  The police took exception to that, and restrained him from getting involved. I have heard conflicting reports about whether he was handcuffed or not, but he was viewed as a threat. 

As the situation escalated because of the police action(!), the police made the decision to arrest both Hill and Campbell, and haul them off to jail. 

And that’s when the Dolphins organization stepped in. Remember that this was at the stadium, which the dolphins own. And the dolphins pay for the police to be there (at nearly every stadium, the police are paid overtime to be there as a kind of perk of the job, so essentially they are private security for the team). 

The dolphins learned about the situation, and asked the police to release the players so they could play in the game. 

This raises a whole bunch of other questions for me, and should concern all of us. The police overreached. But then relented because they were asked to by a sports team? Sigh 

Oh and one last thing:  the guy who first posted video of the incident on social media - the video was the impetus for the national attention - was interviewed.  In short, he was only concerned with his football star being able to play in the game! Which is another part of the problem...how about concern for the guy and how policing works?

Tyreek: https://youtu.be/ba9x9a3EGLI?si=A0SH8z6nYNwiBp04

Other case: https://youtu.be/iCrb01JVHCE

Hill made light of the situation on a touchdown celebration. 

Breaking down plastics

Here's an interesting bit of study into using iron trichloride along with sunlight to break down plastics. 

So far this inorganic and seemingly non toxic compound has shown some great success in achieving the goal. 

Science for the win!

https://interestingengineering.com/science/tough-plastics-sustainably-broken-down

Civilian space walks!

SpaceX continues to do some surprising things.  They are, of course, in the money making business, with an eye on the future. They have starlink satellites that provide service. They launch satellites for companies, nations, and even small groups of people.  And they have contracts with NASA to go beyond that.

And sometimes, they act like their competitors, and launch people into space for civilian space travel.  

This past week, they launched a Polaris mission with a few paying customers, and they gave one of them - and a SpaceX engineer - an opportunity to open the Dragon capsule and step out into space.

On September 12th, they successfully did just that. Each of them was in space for a few minutes.  It was remarkably cool.  But more than that, SpaceX has been working on a lighter weight space suit that allows for more mobility than what NASA has ever had.  And on this space walk, they got to test them out.

In effect, someone was paying to field test all of their R&D work.

This

Eloquently put. 😍

Steve Jobs told Bob Iger to plan for his retirement … back in 2011

This is an interesting tale. Steve Jobs told

Bob Iger to retire and enjoy life. 

And 13 years later, we're still pretty much where we were. Iger is still in charge and there's still no succession plan at Disney. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-bob-iger-not-to-stay-too-long-disney-2024-9

Russian influence

One of the more intriguing stories this election season has to do with Russian influence.  

At the end of the week, the DOJ announced charges against a group of US-based, and fairly prominent bloggers/podcasters/youtubers/influencers.  They are charged with accepting money from Russian agents to produce content that is, essentially, Russian propaganda.  

Of course, there was some content that was specific to the Ukraine war. But there also was a large amount of MAGA-related content.

The influencers all are pleading ignorance.  They didn't know where the money was coming from, and that stories were merely suggested, and it was more about the quantity of stories.  They're innocent!

But as you dig deeper, you see that the money was significant.  They claim its not out of the ordinary for what they take in from advertisers and whatnot, but that is simply not true; it was more than they'd make in several years of doing their work. And it also turns out that the same general stories were told by each of them, effectively nullifying their claim that stories were just suggestions

Of course the orange menace had to chime in on this.  He railed about it being DOJ overreach, and people were falsely accused,  Then added that Putin really wants "Comrade Kamala" elected and not him, so it can't possibly be true! 

Yeah, this is where we are...

Compare and contrast: school shooting responses

Kamala broke down during her speech.  That is Presidential.

Tim Walz says 'there's work to be done' which in the context of his whole talk strikes the right balance. I'll buy that as vice presidential

https://www.the-independent.com/tv/news/georgia-school-shooting-tim-walz-b2607131.html

meanwhile, on the other side....

JD Vance just accepts it as a 'fact of life' which is not very vice-presidential. In fact, its idiotic. Is he even human?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/georgia-school-shooting-trump-vance-harris

And of course, the dumpster fire of an orange person completely missed the mark and has no empathy.  He said: 

"It's a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we're going to make it better. We're going to heal our world. We're going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetence,"

Now which candidates do you think actually care about people?

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate....

....Shake it off. shake it off...

Taylor Swift may very well be the single most popular and influential person in society at present.

The hype machine was in full force late in the last NFL season as she started dating the Chief's Travis Kelce, and attending his games and the Superbowl.  It brought new fans to the sport, though not to the game itself.  Only to catch glimpses of her and speculation about what she would do.

The right went CRAZY about this because she generated more headlines than anything they could muster. There was a ridiculous notion that her relationship with Kelce was fake, and was used for the sole purpose of helping Biden's re-election somehow.

And then came this election cycle.  Her endorsement of a candidate has value due to her influence. In 2020, she simply tweeted a picture of her baking cookies endorsing Biden, and voter registrations surged and Swifties turned out to vote for him.

The orange menace tried to leverage this by first telling everyone that of course she would support his candidacy because he somehow helped her career and she owed him.   Then he used social media to post a fake picture of her endorsing him, and also had some pics of fake Swifties endorsing him.

She sued of course. And herself posted some things that real Swifties saw as endorsing Harris.

Swifties held a fundraiser for Harris that was (to quote the menace) huuuuuuuuge. And while she has not specifically endorsed Kamala, its clear where she stands...

Flash forward to the beginning of the football season. Someone posts a "leaked memo" that Swift is not allowed at Chiefs games this year.  It gets picked up by Fox News, and other conservative outlets, and they run with it.  Only, its a fake.

Then, there's buzz about a "dissolution agreement" between her and Kelce that likewise gets posted to social media.  Surely they are going to break up!  And by extension, the relationship was not real, and was just to help the democrats. And (as you probably guessed) it too, was a fake.

I suppose for both it was some effort to make her seem less genuine or besmirch her  and maybe to somehow make her endorsement for Kamala a little less impactful?

There are pictures of Swift in Kelce in public in various locations.  They sure put a lot of effort into faking it, with no return on that for them, didn't they? 

And naturally, there she was at the opening game for the Chiefs.

The whole thing is just silly.  But worth noting.

Disney wants wrongful death suit thrown out…

Because they signed up for Disney+ and bought tickets through the corporate website and therefore agreed to arbitration in the future.

What has this world come to?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/14/business/disney-plus-wrongful-death-lawsuit/index.html

Guy tries to get into Disney World with 1978 ticket…

This is one of the things that's fun about Disney. Almost always, they'll honor an unused park admission at whatever price you might have paid for it.

I have seen an exception here and there, but in those cases it's about the type of ticket, and they have given some fair market value for it, and you pay the (small) difference. So you're still coming out ahead in a way.

https://www.upworthy.com/man-uses-1978-ticket-at-disney-world-rp3

Club 33 and a Disney obsession

This is a bit of a peculiar story. TL;DR a couple had access to club 33 ("their happy place" revoked) for public intoxication. They sued to get back in, and lost. 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-09-04/disney-obsessed-couple-loses-lawsuit-to-get-back-into-exclusive-club-33

El Presidente

Reading about Venezuela's Maduro and his assertion that Christmas will now be celebrated in October, I am distinctly reminded of this scene from Woody Allen's Bananas where the freedom leader immediately became a dictator...

Cape Cod offers a harbinger of America’s economic future

This is a perspective on where we're headed from a wealth and housing point of view. 

It's long form, but worth the read. And it turns out this is happening in many places, including south Florida. 

Cape Cod offers a harbinger of America's economic future - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/provincetown-most-american-economy/679515/

A lesson in customer service.

It’s all about the U

I think the university of Florida should put a permanent marker to remind them of the beat down they had on Saturday. 

Most points allowed in an opener. Ever. That's 117 years. 

Owned, baby.