More visuals of Titanic wreck

Continuing with my high level of interest (obsession?) with the wreck of the Titanic (for whatever reason, I just can’t take in enough detail about the topic), some very high detail digital scans of the wreck site were released yesterday, showing it in amazing detail. It is so detailed in fact that you can see the serial number on one of the ship’s propeller blades. From the article:

The Titanic has been extensively explored since the wreck was discovered in 1985. But it’s so huge that in the gloom of the deep, cameras can only ever show us tantalizing snapshots of the decaying ship – never the whole thing.

The new scan captures the wreck in its entirety, revealing a complete view of the Titanic. It lies in two parts, with the bow and the stern separated by about 800m (2,600ft). A huge debris field surrounds the broken vessel.

The scan was carried out in summer 2022 by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, who are making a documentary about the project.

Submersibles, remotely controlled by a team on board a specialist ship, spent more than 200 hours surveying the length and breadth of the wreck.

They took more than 700,000 images from every angle, creating an exact 3D reconstruction.

Rebecca Morelle from the BBC

Notts County Deliver A Stunning Victory

Notts County vs. Boreham Wood

The 2022-23 season in the English National League (England’s 5th tier football league) has been defined by the phenomenal race at the top of the table between Wrexham AFC and Notts County. As good as Wrexham was this season, Notts County was equal to the task, keeping everyone in suspence all the way to the critical match at the Racecourse on April 10. It was a battle for the ages with (essentially) automatic promotion to League 2 (England’s Fourth Tier) to the winner, while the 2nd place team likely had to reckon with the playoff round for the final promotion spot. And as we all know, just about anything can happen in a playoff round, as Wrexham found out last year.

Yesterday, Notts County took on Boreham Wood with the winner going to Wembley for the National League Playoff final. Boreham Wood has the best defense in the National League. Notts County accumulated a record 107 points this season, a clear 25 points better than Boreham and only bested by Wrexham’s 111. All those facts didn’t matter yesterday, as Boreham took a 2-0 lead in the first half. And from there, Notts County staged a comeback for the ages – scoring the tying goal in the 97th minute of regulation – literally the last minute of the game (And you must remember, the April 10 game against Wrexham was decided in the last minute as well) – and then scored the winning goal 30 minutes into extra time. Just watch the highlight reel above. It is an amazing summary of the game – especially because each team had ample opportunities to score throughout the entire game.

The quality of football in the English Premier League is world class – there is no argument there. However, the energy, passion and enthusiasm that we have witnessed through this year’s National League season has been every bit as spectacular.

Dune: Part 2 – The First Trailer

Dune: Part 2

The movie drops in November. I am sure there will be a few other trailers that will drop between now and then. I really enjoyed the first movie – I honestly think that as time continues to hurtle forward, it will be looked back on in the same light as the original Star Wars. Villeneuve did an amazing job of creating a world in the first movies and clearly defining the key players. I am confident that Part 2 will continue the build on the strength of the first movie.

Wrexham FTW

I admit it. I jumped onto the Wrexham AFC bandwagon as soon as I heard about Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchasing the club, and then went head first all in after watching the wonderful 1st season of their documentary “Welcome to Wrexham”. I started following Wrexham on ESPN – tracking their every game and checking the standings religiously. I carved out a Wrexham section in Apple News, salivating for any tid bit of news or information about the team and its upcoming matches, since the English National League (England’s 5th level soccer division – something similar to single A baseball here in the US) does not get much attention. I have been trying to purchase the Wrexham baseball cap that has their crest on the front. And as this season has progressed and it became apparent that Wrexham was in a record setting steel cage death match with Notts County (both teams have surpassed 100 points this season, an unheard of level of success for one team, much less two in the same season!) for promotion from the English National League to the EFL League 2 division (the English Football League’s 4th division) and that the April 10 match vs Notts County at Wrexham’s Racecourse Grounds was going to be an important match. And oh, did it deliver. Wrexham won 3-2 but that does not begin to tell the whole story. Take a few minutes to watch this short highlight video from the match – because it had literally everything, from Wrexham coming from behind to win, to the 40 year old goalkeeper who used to play for Manchester United (English football royalty), who came out of retirement a month ago to join Wrexham because their lead goalie was injured, making the game winning save on a Penalty Kick in the 96th and last minute of extra time. Yes, even Hollywood could not have written this.

Highlight reel – Wrexham AFC vs. Notts County – April 10, 2023

What is most appealing to me about this whole story is how ‘all in’ both Reynolds and McElhenney are with their responsibility to the club and the city of Wrexham. There was a lot of conjecture early on that they both were doing this as a publicity stunt, but it is obvious from the documentary, from the way they have engaged with the Wrexham community, and from the level of investment that both have made to the club and the north Wales region, that they are fully 1000% committed for the long haul. Hell, Reynolds just bought a home outside of Wrexham. League 2 is just the first step in their quest. They have their sights set on the English Premier League. And the scary thing is – they may just get there. Earlier this year, Wrexham participated in the FA Cup – an elimination tournament that all English teams from the EPL to the National League participate – and went to the round of 16 by beating 3nd Division Coventry City at their home field, and then came thisclose to beating 2nd division Sheffield United. (Had they won that Sheffield United match, they would have hosted Harry Kane and Totteham Hotspur on Wrexham’s home field, The Racecourse Ground, which would have be an off the charts event). This team is legit and can hang with many of the top teams in English soccer.

I sincerely hope that Wrexham succeeds in their goal to achive automatic promotion to League 2. And I sincerely hope that Notts County wins the playoff to secure their promtion to League 2 as well, because they are just as deserving. I am, and will always be, a Newcastle United fan first – who themselves are having a spectacular season in the EPL – however I am unapologetic about joining the many newly minted Wrexham fans out there and look forward to riding this as long as they will let me.

Also, in honor of both teams, here are their Desktop Wallpapers that I created reflecting the kits they wore for yesterday’s match: Wrexham (Red) and Notts County (White)

A Deep Analysis of How to Eat Oreos

A bucket full of Oreos.

File this under information and analysis you didn’t know you needed, via Yahoo and The Independent:

Crystal Owens, a PhD candidate in MIT’s mechanical engineering department, spoke about her and her team’s study, in which they examine the fan-favourite snack, during a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. In their work, which was published in the Physics of Fluids journal last year, these scientists studied the equal distribution of an Oreo’s creme, in which it ends up on both side of the wafer when the cookie is broken apart.

Speaking to WSJ, Owens went on to explain her team’s method: putting the cookie between two counter-rotating plates, through a device called a rheometer. She said also said that when they glued different Oreo flavours to the rheometer, it would twist the cookie open at different speeds.

However, after placing over 1,000 Oreos on to that device, these MIT scientists still found that nearly 80 per cent of the creme stuck to only one side of the wafer. Owens went on to note that regardless of how fast or slow the rheometers opened the Oreo, the results didn’t change.

“We also tested the cookies by hand—twisting, peeling, pressing, sliding and doing other basic motions to get an Oreo apart,” she said. “There was no combination of anything that we could do by hand or in the rheometer that changed anything in our result.”

The Independent

And at the very bottom of the cited article is a great YouTube video demonstrating an amazing Oreo hack. Take some milk from a straw and ‘blow’ it into the creme filling of your Oreo and doing that creates a ‘creme infused filling’ in your cookie! Wow!! Must try this next time!!

h/t: Dave Pell and Next Draft

The Fosbury Flop

Dick Fosbury, the man who literally transformed the sport of high jumping with his unique ‘flop’ method, died today. The above video details how the method of high jumping that he introduced in the 1968 Mexico Olympics transformed the sport and quickly became the ‘de facto’ method and style of high jumping to this day.

The technique has been compared to a corpse being pushed out of a window. Like Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, Fosbury’s flopping struck many onlookers as residing somewhere between a physical feat and a joke. At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the crowd oohed, aahed and laughed watching Fosbury compete.

But the last laugh was his: The high-jump bar kept being raised, and Fosbury kept clearing it. He finally executed a Fosbury Flop at 7 feet 4¼ inches — earning him not just the gold medal, but an Olympic record at the time.

NY Times

What is most interesting is that Fosbury was an engineering student and took a mathematical, problem solving approach to his sport, with the end result being his innovative flop method. What is most bizarre in this video – primarily because the “Fosbury Flop” is so common today – is the footage of how high jumpers used to do high jumping. They would go feet first – which makes zero sense when looking at that method in the year 2023.

Updated Ted Lasso Wallpapers For Season 3

Couldn’t help but notice that a new season of Ted Lasso is right around the corner, premiering next Wednesday March 15. While I am looking forward to the new season, my ‘jump the shark‘ spidey senses are tingling ever so slightly. Hoping I’m wrong and it sustains the ‘believe’ vibe of the first two seasons.

One of the main reasons for concern is that now Nike is manufacturer of the AFC Richmond kits/uniforms (vs. the previously fictional company Verani Sports). And with this change also comes new home and away kit designs for AFC Richmond, which I have in turn created as desktop wallpapers. You can find them below and in the Random > TV Tab gallery here on my site. Believe!!

Ted Lasso - AFC Richmond [Season 3]
Ted Lasso – AFC Richmond [Season 3]
Ted Lasso - AFC Richmond (Away) [Season 3]
Ted Lasso – AFC Richmond (Away) [Season 3]
Ted Lasso – AFC Richmond (Third) [Season 3]
Ted Lasso – AFC Richmond (Third) [Season 3]

Update: You can see previous Ted Lasso wallpapers here or in the TV tab on the Miscellaneous page.

Footage from first discovery of Titanic in 1986

I am just a sucker for these types of stories – where footage of a seminal event is unearthed. As long as I can remember, the story of the Titanic checked all the boxes for me, way before James Cameron’s movie of the same name was released. So when the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute this week released previously unseen footage from their very first exploration of the wreckage site in 1986, I was all in. Yes, I sat and watched the whole video. Imagine being the scientists in 1986 and being the first humans to see the wreckage since it hit the ocean floor on that fateful night in 1912?

In a milestone that will definitely make you feel old, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Titanic’s (the movie) theatrical release and to celebrate, the studios re-released it in select theaters! So last weekend, I went to see it with my son – primarily because he had never seen the movie before! The movie has been made fun of, has been meme-ed to death, and has received its fair share of criticism, yet watching it again on the big screen was spectacular (!!!), I have to say. I picked up things I had not remembered or noticed the first few times I’d seen it. Seeing Leo and Kate 25 years younger was pretty awesome. And the scenes at the end when (spoiler alert) the ship is sinking and the stern of the vessel starts to raise out of the water were just stunning on the big screen! You can try all you want, but you won’t get that same experience watching it on your TV in a living room. Yes, the movie could have been shorter. Yeah, the water that breached the ship was ice cold in real life, yet the actors in the on-ship scenes made it feel like they were wading in the town pool on a 75 degree day. Yeah, Jack could have fit on the piece of wood with Rose. For all it’s flaws, seeing Titanic in the theater was an outstanding experience and I would recommend you take advantage of this opportunity to see it on the big screen!

John Waters Tours ‘Dreamland Studios’

This is – ‘chef’s kiss’ – perfect. John Waters touring his apartment back in 1986.

“I collect paintings of murderesses. This is one of the Manson Girls – Susan Atkins – who is a Jesus freak now”

“I collect fake meat. I have fake meat all over the house. It makes people very nervous when they are walking around. Also candy. Everything is fake in the house. I like the idea of fake food everywhere.”

“Here is an electric chair. It is not real, but it is an exact replica of one that was used in “Female Trouble”. It makes the telephone repairman very nervous when the come in the house and all workmen do their job very well because I just spy it out of the corner of my eye when explaining what needs to be done.”

John Waters

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs That Were Not Built

Frank Lloyd Wright is widely considered one of the greatest architects to have ever lived. His designs are legendary – from Fallingwater to the Robie House to the Guggenheim. His houses and designs had a distinctive look that came to be known as the “Prairie Style“. In fact, several of his homes have hit the market recently and the prospect of living in one of his homes has been a secret dream of mine.

With all the distinctive homes and designs of his that did get made, there were even more that never got made. So architect David Romero decided to do something about that by using computer generated models to create visuals of some of distinctive designs of his that never became reality. Many of the renderings can be found at his site Hooked On The Past and his Flickr gallery. My personal favorite is the rendering of the National Life Insurance Building in Chicago, which is the last of the examples below.

The Gordon Strong Automobile Objective by David Romero
A rendering of the Arizona State Capitol interior by David Romero
A rendering of the National Life Insurance Building by David Romero

Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay on Self Respect

Was reading through a recent edition of MG Siegler’s newsletter where he shared what appears to be (i.e. I’ve never read it or heard of it before, not that my ignorance should be any marker of its importance) a seminal 1961 article in Vogue Magazine from Joan Didion titled ‘On Self Respect’, which I found to be as seminal as advertised.

There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation. Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samarra and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbable candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than in men, Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: “I hate careless people,” she told Nick Carraway. “It takes two to make an accident.”

Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named corespondent. If they choose to forego their work—say it is screenwriting—in favor of sitting around the Algonquin bar, they do not then wonder bitterly why the Hacketts, and not they, did Anne Frank.

Joan Didion, 1961

It is a short essay that packs a punch. Worth the read.

AI Is Freaking People Out

The release of Chat GPT by Open AI has struck a nerve with just about everyone. Even Google is freaking out, going so far as bringing in their founders to review all of Google’s AI projects

Last month, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, held several meetings with company executives. The topic: a rival’s new chatbot, a clever A.I. product that looked as if it could be the first notable threat in decades to Google’s $149 billion search business.

Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who had not spent much time at Google since they left their daily roles with the company in 2019, reviewed Google’s artificial intelligence product strategy, according to two people with knowledge of the meetings who were not allowed to discuss them. They approved plans and pitched ideas to put more chatbot features into Google’s search engine. And they offered advice to company leaders, who have put A.I. front and center in their plans.

The re-engagement of Google’s founders, at the invitation of the company’s current chief executive, Sundar Pichai, emphasized the urgency felt among many Google executives about artificial intelligence and that chatbot, ChatGPT.

NY Times

It is not just Google who are realizing how transformative and ‘cage rattling’ tools like Chat GPT. Universities and colleges all around the world are freaking out about how Chat GPT can spit out a well written dissertation about just about anything, raising alarm bells of how students could rely on such technology to help them get their homework done.

Even beyond text, AI is creating art, visuals and virtual worlds that just don’t exist. Check out this Instagram called The Visual Dome. None of it is real.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CnjNnnYvSeg/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

The irony is that people have been interacting with AI technology for years – think about how you have interacted with most big banks or other companies when you call their Customer Service systems. They have been using AI generated capabilities to handle a wide range of inquiries from people before ever reaching a human representative.

I’ve seen several articles cite technology and business leaders cite the time they first saw and interacted with distinctive and game changing technologies that have fundamentally altered the world – Netscape Navigator, and the iPhone being two of them – and they have all said that Chat GPT is another one of those game changers. The future is the present, folks.

Long Live Vinyl

Via Statista

In an all digital world, vinyl records continue to make quite the comeback since the trend started to take hold in 2006. As a percentage of albums purchased, vinyl records share of sales continues to grow. Yet when you put it in the broader context of all digital consumption and downloads of single tracks, vinyl represents less than 5% of all sales. From Statista:

So how big is vinyl’s comeback really? Should we all dust off our old record players to prepare for the analog future of music? According to Luminate’s 2022 Year-End Music Report, LPs accounted for 43 percent of album sales in the United States last year, which is quite substantial. Factoring in streaming and downloads of single tracks, however, that number drops to less than 5 percent of album equivalent music consumption, which puts things in perspective.

Statista

Just Give Us Your First Born

Sometimes you come across an article or story that just generates a visceral reaction. And this seemingly innocuous article on Vox titled ‘Job interviews are a nightmare — and only getting worse’ was one of those articles. I have some thoughts and opinions.

The article is talking about the sheer absurdity that job interviewing has turned into. And honestly, this is not a trend or a situation that has just materialized recently – it has been a slow burn that has gotten impossibly worse over the past 10-20 years.

Job-seeking can be a real exercise in immersive futility. It often feels like you’re tossing your resume into the abyss and praying to the recruitment gods for a response. If and when you get that response, the landscape doesn’t always get easier. Companies are seemingly coming up with new, higher, and harder hoops to jump through at every turn. That translates to endless rounds of interviews, various arbitrary tests, and complex exercises and presentations that entail hours of work and prep. There can be good reasons for firms to do this — they really want to make sure they get the right person, and they’re trying to reduce biases — but it’s hard not to feel like it can just be too much.

Emily Stewart, Vox Media

As illustrated in the article, the pervading trend from companies big and small includes meeting 10-20 people over the course of several weeks, having marathon all day interview sessions where you sit in a room and deal with a cattle call of different ‘team members’ and ‘stakeholders’ from across the organization you’re interviewing with. And logic just tells you that there has to be an inverse relationship with the liklihood of being hired relative to the amount of people you meet during the process. In every organization, each individual has their own agenda and priorities that is in part dictated by the role they hold. So when those people are meeting candidates – for their direct team or for teams adjacent to their own – those folks evaluate the candidate relative to what their goals and priorities are. So it makes logical sense that with so many competing agendas, with so many individual personalities, the chances that a candidate satisfies every single one of those people gets lower and lower with each interview. And add on top of this, the absurdity of some of the questions, requests and ‘assignments’ that some comapnies ask candidates to partake in, and you are left with an impossible labyrinth to navigate. From the article:

Reporting for this story, I heard anecdotes about hiring processes that ranged from irksome to hellish. One recent graduate described having to take a series of intelligence tests, go through two interviews, and provide five references — all of whom were asked to complete a 15-minute questionnaire — for an entry-level position at a nonprofit he was told he didn’t get two months later. One woman’s job offer was contingent on her getting a reference from her current manager, who wasn’t aware she was on the hunt for a job.

Another man was told to start looking for apartments across the country after being flown out for a final interview, only to follow up a couple of weeks later and learn that the recruiter simply forget to tell him he hadn’t gotten the job. “My interviewing experiences have been worse than dating, with the ghosting and non-responses,” he said.

Among friends and colleagues, swapping interview horror stories can turn into a sort of sport. One of my former coworkers was asked to build out an entire content strategy for a popular financial newsletter and work with the team in the office. She was unemployed and scared, so she felt like she had no choice but to sign a waiver agreeing for her work to be used for free — work that was apparently good enough to be sent out to their readers but not to land her a position with the company. Looking at the company’s Glassdoor reviews, it’s obvious she’s not the only one who’s been subject to this sort of treatment.

“There’s a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate,” said Sondra Levitt, a leadership and career coach with Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm. For example, it might make perfect sense for a company to ask a candidate, especially at the executive level, to do some sort of presentation about their vision and what they want to accomplish. Where it gets hairy is when the company asks a candidate to create, produce, and submit a full-blown marketing campaign, which happened to one of Levitt’s clients recently. “The candidate felt like they were just trying to get free information and free work through the interview process,” Levitt said.

Emily Stewart, Vox Media

I’ve been out of work a couple of times in my career and reading this article just made me shudder as I recalled similar nightmares – from being ghosted after several interviews, to organizations failing to inform you they have gone in a different direction, to being asked to pull together strategies and presentations to illustrate how you would tackle a problem. Probably the most frustrating aspect of the way interviewing is handled today is the fact that the organizations will just not tell you why you didn’t get the role – mostly because they are afraid of violating laws (which, to be fair, does have some merit). They deliver some generic bs line or a 3 line auto generated email from Workday saying ‘Thanks for visiting but you didn’t get the job’ that leave you questioning your sanity when you know you were qualified or even over-qualified for the role. You almost have to be a unicorn to survive the process and actually get hired. Many times, after the fact, I would call the recruiter and/or the hiring manager and ask them directly why I didn’t win the job or ask them to explain to me where my experience fell short or which of my responses to interview questions didn’t hit the mark, all in an effort to self-improve and get better at how I approached the interview process. It was rare when I got an honest answer.

As a company, you clearly want to ensure that you make the right hiring decisions and develop a strong and positive working environment. What is clear from reading the article, and from personal experience, is that companies have taken this to an extreme that results in everyone losing. We’re all adults here – we all have our own jobs and lives. I’d much rather be told early on that it is not a fit, so we can all move on. Dragging the process out by having useless additional meetings, or ghosting candidates with no explaination or update is just unprofessional and in poor form.

New Year’s Resolution: More Posts In 2023

I’m going to try to do more writing and contribute more posts here this year. I’ve been circling around this notion for the past several months, buoyed in part by all the turmoil at Twitter. My motivation was given an additional boost by this article on The Verge that reminisced for the Internet days of old when folks had their personal homepages on Tripod or Geocities, where you could control your own voice and, most importantly, your own content. Where people were sharing thoughts and quirky stories that were longer than 140 characters, and where these communities were actually communities and not the hell-scapes that many social media networks have since become.

The biggest reason personal blogs need to make a comeback is a simple one: we should all be in control of our own platforms. 

If what is happening on Twitter hasn’t demonstrated it, our relationship with these social media platforms is tenuous at best. The thing we are using to build our popularity today could very well be destroyed and disappear from the internet tomorrow, and then what? 

What happens to all the content you have created? Where will the archive of all your funny memes and jokes be? What is going to happen to all those selfies you felt cute in but didn’t delete later? 

The answer is we don’t know because we don’t control Twitter (or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok). If one of these companies decided to shut down their service permanently, there would be nothing we could do about it. 

Owning your content and controlling your platform is essential, and having a personal blog is a great way to do that. 

The Verge

The Verge article hit home for me because in the early 2000’s, I felt such a sense of engagement and discovery as the web was maturing, as “new” technologies and capabilities such as CSS, and RSS were enabling such neat things to develop online, and new communities like Flickr (remember them! Wow, did they miss the mobile boat!) were transforming how we interacted online.

For me and this site, it has actually been going since 2003 although it has never had a huge following, probably in part because I need to do a better job of being consistent in the frequency and volume of my posts. I aspire to compete with Jason Kottke, Andy Baio, John Gruber and others, to name a few. And I know I have a long way to go to get there. I’m going to try to find quirky stories, unique items, and do my best to share my ‘mildly opinionated’ thoughts on some of the things that are shaping our society these days. And we’ll see where it takes us.

What I have thoroughly enjoyed these past few years has been how a small community of fans and enthusiasts has developed as a result of all the Desktop Wallpapers that I have created and shared on this site over the years. I started that journey 6 or 7 years ago when I became frustrated with all the terrible looking wallpapers that were out there for the sports teams that I follow. In addition, I fell in love with all the wonderfully quirky and simple wallpapers on the site Simple Desktops and thought, I could take that aesthetic and apply it to my favorite sports teams. I then noticed that the teams in the English Premier League had really interesting uniforms/kits and thought it would be cool to mimic them but on computer wallpapers. And from there, it exploded. So if you are new to my site and community, check out some of the galleries of wallpapers that I have created and download whichever ones you find compelling.

And with that, I’m calling it a night and going to watch some TV and/or movies.

Disgruntled Soccer Mom

Image via Sports Illustrated

If you thought the politics of a disgruntled suburban soccer mom’s vitriol against the town’s soccer coach was bad, you clearly did not play soccer in suburban NJ, because those moms will take on the US Men’s National team coach (paywall) without blinking an eye, as Danielle Reyna did to Craig Berhalter:

To set the record straight, I [Danielle Reyna] did call (U.S. Soccer sporting director) Earnie Stewart on December 11, just after the news broke that Gregg had made negative statements about my son Gio at a leadership conference, I have known Earnie for years and consider him to be a close friend. I wanted to let him know that I was absolutely outraged and devasted that Gio had been put in such a terrible position, and that I felt very personally betrayed by the actions of someone my family had considered a friend for decades. As part of that conversation, I told Earnie that I thought it was especially unfair that Gio, who had apologized for acting immaturely about his playing time, was still being dragged through the mud when Gregg had asked for and received forgiveness for doing something so much worse at the same age. Without going into detail, the statements from yesterday significantly minimize the abuse on the night in question. Rosalind Berhalter was my roommate, teammate and best friend, and I supported her through the trauma that followed. It took a long time for me to forgive and accept Gregg afterward, but I worked hard to give him grace, and ultimately made both of them and their kids a huge part of my family’s life. I would have wanted and expected him to give the same grace to Gio. This is why the current situation is so very hurtful and hard. At the time I called Earnie, many people were trashing Gio on social media due to Gregg’s comments, and I didn’t know when or if this would stop. I just wanted Earnie to help make sure that there would be no further unwarranted attacks on my son. I thought our conversation would remain in confidence, and it didn’t occur to me at the time that anything I said could lead to an investigation. I’m not criticizing Earnie here. “I very much commend the recent efforts by U.S. Soccer to address abuse of women players, and I understand now he had an obligation to investigate what I shared. But I want to be very clear that I did not ask for Gregg to be fired, I did not make any threats, and I don’t know anything about any blackmail attempts, nor have I ever had any discussions about anyone else on Gregg’s staff — I don’t know any of the other coaches. I did not communicate with anyone in U.S. Soccer about this matter before December 11, and no one else in my family has made any statements to U.S. Soccer regarding Gregg’s past at all.  I’m sorry that this information became public, and I regret that I played a role in something that could reopen wounds from the past.

The Athletic (paywall)

Now, the USMNT did not have any chance of seriously competing for this year’s World Cup in Qatar. It was a ‘we’re happy to be here’ appearance and anything beyond making the knockout stage was playing with house money (being that the USMNT didn’t even qualify in 2018). Would playing Gio Reyna have changed the USMNT’s outcome? I’m guessing probably not. The Netherlands team the US lost to was an exceptionally well coached team that was playing chess compared to Berhalter’s checkers strategy. Playing Gio may have made the matches in the knockout stage a little easier however I’m not convinced he would have been a difference maker vs the Netherlands, much less the next round opponent Argentina should we have advanced.

The way Berhalter handled the Gio Reyna situation was a failure of leadership to not clearly and truthfully communicate the reasons for his decisions to the player, the press and by proxy, the fans of the USMNT team. I can also relate to Mrs. Reyna’s perception on how Coach Berhalter’s negative statements about Gio in the conference she noted above were unfair, damaging, and, frankly, an immature way of handling the situation. Reading between the lines, it seems that the long and deep relationship that the Reyna and Berhalter families had probably gave Gio and his parents the perception that he was going to get ample playing time in the World Cup and when things didn’t go exactly to Gio’s liking, there was likely a sense of disappointment that clearly went south quickly. The way Gio reacted was immature, yet even though he has been playing soccer at some of the highest levels in the world, let’s remember that he’s still all of 20 years old. Suburban soccer mom’s can be a nasty bunch sometimes, and even when you’re the Head Coach of the freaking US Men’s National Team, you can be taken to the woodshed by a mom who’s pissed her son did not play as much as they would have liked.

Bell Works

The main space at Bell Works.
Holiday trimmings further down the main space.
The exterior of Bell Works.

Photos from a recent trip to the old Bell Labs building – now called Bell Works – here in New Jersey. This building was originally build for Bell Labs, the innovative division of what is now AT&T. It was a research and development office that created such (ahem) minor innovations as the transistor, the laser, the concept of cellular communications, and the solar cell . The building and campus was put on the list of 10 most endangered historic sites in 2007 and was under threat of being razed in favor of houses and residential units. In 2013, the 500+ acre campus was purchased by Somerset Development Corporation and the facility was re-purposed into a multi-purpose living and working space.

The renovated interior space is just spectacular. It has restaurants, office space, recreational areas including simulated Golf courses and an indoor full size basketball court. It is really cool and a place I plan on going back to soon.

And for you Severance fans, yes, this is the same place that they used for some exterior and interior shots of Lumen Industries.

Photos From World Cup Finals

The first World Cup in Uruguay – 1930. Image: BBC

On the eve of the 2022 World Cup, thought I would share an amazing gallery the BBC published detailing photos from World Cup finals of the past, dating all the way back to the first World Cup final that took place in 1930 in Uruguay.

Over the past 92 years photographers have been in attendance at 21 finals to record what they witness – the colour, the excitement, the goals and the glamour. BBC Sport has partnered with Getty Images to bring you the best photos.

The 1930 showdown was between the hosts and Argentina in a rematch of the gold-medal game at the 1928 Olympics, which was won by Uruguay.

Thirteen teams took part in the inaugural tournament. Four arrived from Europe on the same boat, training on the top deck as they travelled.

BBC
England’s only World Cup victory – 1960. Image: BBC

A Generous Gift

Yesterday, I was working from home and my wife texted me that a fairly large package had been delivered (I was on a Zoom call). I pondered this for a second and wondered if I was expecting anything of any significance and thought nothing much of it at the time. Later, when I was free, she brought the box down to the basement where my office/den/”man-cave” is. And again, I was still befuddled as to what this could be.

Now, as visitors to this site may know, I have a hobby of creating device/computer Desktop Wallpapers – something that started several years ago when I thought it would be cool to design backgrounds for English Premier League teams that matched their kit/jersey designs. Since then, I regularly get ‘special requests’ from people all across the internet that I do my best to fulfill. And on each of the Wallpaper pages on my site, I include some links to give people the opportunity to donate to me as a recognition of the time and effort it takes to make these items. One of the links I include is to my Amazon Wish List. And on my Wishlist, one of the items that I had innocently added was the Webaround Big Shot, a large green screen background that you can attach to the back of your desk chair in order to have a cleaner display of the background when on a Zoom call. So instead of having my basement showing behind me when on said Zoom call, I could have something like Coruscant (Star Wars) or hipster lofts or the skyline of NYC.

Of all the items on my Wishlist, this was the item that some anonymous person took the time, money and effort to order for me as a gift. I am assuming it is a gift from one of the many ‘regulars’ that solicit Wallpapers from me however I am not at all sure to be honest, as Amazon does not reveal who purchases things from your Wishlist. What I do know is that this person could easily have chosen from a long list of other items on my Wishlist that were far cheaper than what this item cost. I’m somewhat fascinated and intrigued as to why they chose this item compared to the others on my list. No matter, the generosity is noted!

So, whoever the individual is out there on the Internet who purchased this wonderful Webaround Big Shot green screen background that mounts on the back of my desk chair – I would like to send to you a hearty THANK YOU and a note that your gift is recognized and appreciated!!