Serious question: Is there any meaningful discussion of the Pats tampering? I ask because [1] the timing seems suspicious, even to an outsider like me, and [2] I heard one experienced reporter who covers the Bills say flat out that there’s no way the Pats got this deal done this quickly without negotiating in advance.

I detest this analogy, especially when I resort to it. (And when I lived it several fucking times in college and in the first few years of my post-college life. My friends referred to me as a “psychobitch magnet”.) Which I have repeatedly in recent days as this flaming, toxic, train has headed for a hairpin turn at…

“...how much worse could it really get?”

Depends on if the person is from the “Pennsyltucky” region, essentially the T-shaped region that's the state minus Pittsburgh and Philly.  I have relatives in the T, and lived there for about 7 years.  It's a... special place.

Fuck you for being right.

Why does it feel like we're seeing a rerun of the Sabres/O'Reilly/Stanley Cup debacle?

From roughly the age of 10 until I was 12, I saw my father die from cancer. Four operations, 37 blood transfusions, countless doctor visits and doses of medication to ease the pain. The last time I saw him he had lapsed into a coma and doctors told my mother he would likely not make it through the night. They were…

It took me a solid 30 seconds to get this.  I am so, so ashamed...

Stop it.  You're trying to apply logic to Pats fans, which is about as successful as trying to teach your dog to speak Latin.

Almost never. I’ve been around numerous people in academia and business who had tremendous success in the conventional ways — patents, job titles, influence in their field, etc. — and almost to a person they get to A Certain Age (which varies wildly for different people) and wish they could go back and relive their…

Zima is a hell of a gateway drug.

Those are definitely bad, but I know for a fact that some parts of publishing have quite a history of letting major advertisers literally buy a whole section of a magazine which will be filled with articles written by the magazine staff on topics dictated by the advertiser. Happened to me when I was writing for a…

I strongly second the point the some reds change a LOT with decanting, while others only change a little.

Also, look for piano compositions by Ludovico Einaudi.  Can't believe I overlooked his work in my original post.

Lots of good recommendations here, especially Philip Glass.

Your tl;dr summary should be on the front page of every sports site on the 'tubes.

The best single argument in favor of further expansion of the NFL Borg Complex is that it will bring additional WYTS entries every season.

As absurd as these limitations sound to most of us, to the hard core Apple Fanbois it's actually a plus.

This whole non-event is simply Reason #359 Why We Should Pay Less (or No) Attention to the NFL.

“An apartment within walking distance of a bus stop costs $1500 and large areas of the city are completely uninhabitable because they’ve been transformed into company housing for 22 year old dickbags who think getting paged to fix a bug in Amazon’s dildo recommendation algorithm at 2 AM is a status symbol.”