Ben

@DavisMattek @Saints2death This is why I made my family league super flex TE-premium

@Saints2death why would this be any different than drafting 150 non superflex? If anything, adding another position as draftable in the first 2 rounds creates more combos than are possible in standard

I think Superflex might just be a broken concept for best ball, especially at large scale. I think the lack of diverse strategies at the top of the draft makes drafting more than 20-30 so repetitive.

@beamdriver @HistoryBoomer I think the family drama parts were an intentional bit, it gets really oscar bait checklisty around the same point in the movie that the novel is taking off

@benwhite21 @HistoryBoomer I wasn't that interested in the family drama. It seemed like it was all from a different movie. One I wouldn't have cared to watch. I would have liked more exploration about why so many people, including his girlfriend, liked his book. It can't be that they were all rubes.

Calling "American Fiction" woke slop is peak culture war broken-brain syndrome. I can only hope Russ tweeted his silly take without having seen the movie. Not everything that mentions race is woke! "American Fiction" was delightfully ANTI-woke. This opening scene has a tender woke white girl complaining because a slur is on the blackboard, and her black teacher shoots her down with a joke. That the class laughs at this line shows where the film's sympathies lie. Of course, he gets called on the carpet and has to take a leave of absence, which rings true to us academics. Most students are not the green-haired girl, but the ones who are, especially if they reach a critical mass, can make our lives a pain. (Even if other students find them annoying.) But if woke annoys sane people by exaggerating racial sensitivities, black people in academia can face their own very real problems, like always being expected to talk about "black" issues. "American Fiction" captures this beautifully. And best of all, the heart of the movie is a particular man's specific story, which isn't about race, but rather explores family dynamics and the histories that accumulate yet are never talked about.

@beamdriver @HistoryBoomer Something I haven't seen pointed out that often is that the oscar-bait family drama plotlines also operate as meta level bait for overly-self-serious audiences just like his character's novel does within the film.

@HistoryBoomer I feel like this is a film that was very overrated. There are parts of it that are funny or compelling, but it has no idea what it wants to say and in the end just nopes out with a silly, meta ending. Not woke, though. Obviously.

@JewishMcCaffrey Getting banned from best ball tournaments is +EV, I get more money in my pocket no matter the outcome 😎

You are offered this deal: • If Davis Mattek gets a team to this year’s Best Ball Mania Final, you win $1,000,000. • If he doesn’t get a team to this year’s Best Ball Mania Final, you are banned the rest of your life from all gambling and fantasy sports. Do you take the deal?

@goobaginass @aavenb Must use "Tahmbout dang ol" to avoid appropriation

@aavenb “talmbout sum” Every time a white person types like this I wish I could hear them read it out loud

@arram Claude comes from the @mattyglesias coaching tree

That's the end of Claude's answer. Guys, I'm ready to put Claude in charge.

Asked Claude: 'There's a meme called the "fix everything easily switch". What policies do you think are the best candidates for being a real fix everything switch in the US? Give me your top ten, your confidence, your reasoning, and why a given policy has not been implemented.'

@johnnytuftonFF @JustinHerzig Phone, 20-50 slows at a time, vibes-based portfolio exposure adjustments

@JustinHerzig Phone without ranks. Ranks in head

I want to meet the people who are drafting on their computers without rankings

@rudie_cantfail @jonpolliser @punishedgarage Don't get me wrong Wendys a couple times per week is kind of a lot but $30 per person per week isn't really close to "help me budget this my family is dying" levels

@jonpolliser @punishedgarage No fries no drink just burgers

obsessed w this guy on reddit who was spending $60 a week on burgers for himself and his roommate

@AlexSalvati3 @deanwball I'm fine with calling it the DoW since that's what it was called until they sanitized the name after WW2. The latest reversion is due to dumb macho posturing but I'd argue it's a more accurate name than DoD anyway

@deanwball Fair. Appreciate your insight as always.

I still cannot believe that the leadership of the U.S. department of war decided to pick a fight with the most important industry of the century—thereby earning the distrust of ~everyone who works in that industry—on the eve of a starting a war with Iran. I sometimes go back and forth about whether my reaction was “too angry,” but then I look at the fact pattern, which *at the very least* reveals strategic blindness and stupidity on the part of DoW leadership, and I reach the conclusion that, no, my anger was indeed justified. It is genuinely one of the dumbest things I have seen my government do in my life, and I say this as a guy who has an entire exhibit hall of dumb government decisions in his mind palace. Anyway, the important reality to keep in mind is that most people I know in the administration basically agreed with my criticisms, and there do seem to be efforts underway to repair at least some of the damage done by DoW, though far from all of it. The lack of trust in the government this event has instilled in frontier labs will linger for years to come, of course; not much you can do about that. But frankly that lack of trust is well-founded.

@JasonPetitte @Afinetheorem @Noahpinion Hey it might only be 3 with a cavernous master bedroom

@Afinetheorem @Noahpinion A 2,000 sqft home almost certainly has 4 bedrooms and neither of these people have jobs that would require a home office. Seeing luxury homes on social media doesn’t seem to explain the level of delusion required to think their house is too small for a family.

it's odd that calvinism got any converts whats even the point yk. not like anything you do is going to matter one way or another. just wait to be dead and you can finally scratch off your lottery ticket really takes the personal narrative drama out of religion

@YZR_Fantasy Instead of watching 1 hour 50 minutes of a guy on a phone you could watch a less boring 1 hour 20 minutes of another guy on a phone

Possibly controversial: I don’t understand the people who watch draft day every year. I watched it before the draft a couple of years ago but there’s no part of me that wants to see a GM trade 3 1sts for a middle linebacker every year

@atlanticesque General rule is that if you can get the whole plot of the film from the poster then it's Lowbrow High-Concept

Everyone talking about how they confused "High Concept" with "Highbrow" Is this anything

@gabydvj They specifically skipped mass for brunch

for the record i went to mass today too but in a normal and perhaps even woke way

what does the P in WASP stand for?? quickly.

@SuperSavajin @Stealth40k "The plan? Welsh catgirls"

@Stealth40k Funny how Xenoblade just took the opportunity and ran with it

Richard Honeywood says it was his idea to introduce British voice acting to Dragon Quest to differentiate it from Final Fantasy, but he received pushback from Square and Yuji Horii: "Final Fantasy in the West was basically cyberpunk. You can get away with using American English even in sometimes classical settings, because it's got that cyber element. While Dragon Quest is more traditional fantasy. In fact, the original translations on the NES were sort of done in a faux-Shakespearean feel, even though it was American translators. The development team wanted to change that, but I knew we needed to be careful because sometimes we're going to have references across games, and we need to keep the names consistent. So again, I needed to solve those types of issues. Because it was a comical, lighthearted fantasy, I really wanted to use British humour, which didn't fly with the American office; they couldn't understand it, and they really hated it. Even Yutaka Sano was adamant against it. He says, 'If you let British English in, it's going to change everything, and it's not going to sell in America.' He was adamant about it. So I said, 'I respect that, I'll make it British English lite." So he was like, 'Okay, punctuation, spelling, phrasing, you can have two of the three for an American audience,' which is like the dumbest rule ever; it's either British or it's not. So if you look at some of the later games like Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, for instance, he didn't allow us to use British spelling, but the punctuation and phrasing could be British. So we'd avoid the word colour, because it has a "u" in it, and say 'hue' instead. So they [Level 5] were totally on board when I asked, 'Can we add voices to a game? But Yuji Horii was adamant, 'No, we're not going to add voices to Dragon Quest.' He said, 'Dragon Quest is a traditional old-school game. We don't need voices.' So we had to say, 'Even like Final Fantasy has voices. We've got to keep up with the times.' He basically signed off, just see how it went, with the idea being that if it doesn't work, we won't do it again, but then Dragon Quest 8 went out and sold really well. After that, [Koichi] Sugiyama, Akira Toriyama, and Yuji Horii met, the musicians and Sugiyama-san said, 'Adding voice to the game really makes it feel different. We should do that going forward.' So they totally turned around 180 degrees when they saw the success. And that's why, on Dragon Quest Swords, they added voices to the Japanese version of Dragon Quest for the first time." timeextension.com/news/2026/02/t…

@ruima @hiddenmarkov1 Wonder if they're discouraging art and reading before middle school too

@hiddenmarkov1 A million percent!

Related to the "academics are for inauthentic Asian grinders" conversation happening on X right now ... I got into an interesting parenting exchange yesterday. A parent posted about their 3-year-old who genuinely loves math and wanted to be supportive. I shared that we’re in a similar situation and offered a few ways we’ve encouraged an interest in numbers. Some parents agreed. But others felt it was actually harmful to support a young child’s love of math because, while the child might communicate, explain ideas, and engage with others, that kind of interaction is apparently “purely cognitive,” not social-emotional. And at certain ages (it seems like pre-middle school is a good marker), parents should be focusing exclusively on social-emotional development. What? That reaction assumes that interest in something “academic” must be pressure-driven, that learning can’t be joyful unless it looks like a very specific kind of play, and that academic curiosity somehow competes with or is actually detrimental to emotional development. To me, it’s also a sign of how allergic we’ve become in the U.S. to anything that looks like academic push, even when a child is simply leaning into what they naturally enjoy. But what if a kid genuinely likes math? What if solving problems is play for them? My kid thinks playing on the calculator app is more fun than watching YouTube, is that not OK?! I’ve studied psychology and education, and what’s always struck me is how false the academics-versus-SEL divide is. Learning hard things involves frustration, patience, communication, and self-regulation. Sustaining attention through challenge draws on executive function. These may not look like traditional SEL activities, but they’re very real forms of social-emotional practice. For example, my child navigates frustration, names emotions, and keeps going through difficulty while learning, not to mention actively engages people of all ages in their journey. That's not “purely cognitive." Development doesn’t happen in neat compartments, and different kids practice regulation and emotional skills in different ways. It's pretty sad how narrow our definition of “age-appropriate” and “healthy” has become. When a child’s genuine interests fall outside that narrow band, many are quick to pathologize them instead of questioning their underlying assumptions about child development and, implicitly, which temperaments and achievements they value. Which is how this all relates, at the core, to that viral thread on "the threat" of Asian academic achievement.

@sleepylycanroc @evilvillain1231 @Hound_Dog1956

@evilvillain1231 @Hound_Dog1956 They seem a bit rustled, friend

One of the most politically and culturally revealing phrases a dude could use in 2026 is the seemingly innocuous "my sides are in orbit" and variations of it

@STOCKICANA @___CBK Probably from the slates the week between Wild Card and Divisional (Mitten Returns, Gauntlet Returns)

@___CBK How, a zero from QB round 1 with zeros all around? I mean I just wanna see these drafts lol

Oh, I have a pretty good team here. Let’s check the pod! 1st team I open:

@edzxhub @Variety Invictus

@Variety For what movie?

Matt Damon says Clint Eastwood shut down his request to film more takes during their first day on set together: "Why? You wanna waste everybody’s time?" “So I was playing a South African rugby player, and that’s a really tough accent to do. I spent six months... [the dialect coach] would come in from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. It was a lot of work. I showed up [on set] and I am ready and it’s my chance to work with one of my heroes. The very first take, I did it... But there are a number of ways I’m thinking of doing the scene and he just goes, ‘Cut, print, move on.’ I go, ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on, boss. I want to, you know, I want to do another one. That was the first one!’ He goes, ‘Why? You wanna waste everybody’s time?’ And I went, ‘No, I guess we’re moving on'... His whole mentality was… your crew will go to the ends of the Earth for you if as long as you’re not taxing them on every shot.” (via "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend") Read more here: variety.com/2026/film/news…

@JakeKneega2 @SandyofCthulhu "Ireland wins, but Krum gets the Snitch"

@SandyofCthulhu I do find it funny that the one time we actively see the rest of the team matter is book 4 at the International Quidditch World Cup, where Ireland scored so many points that Bulgaria catching the snitch just DID NOT MATTER

Yeah fiction writers are pretty bad at making game rules. The obvious function of the snitch is for Harry to have an elite job that makes him cool. But the way the snitch would make any sense is if the vast majority of games ended with the snitch never being caught, so the work by the rest of the team is what counts. But then catching the snitch means that 1/20 games or whatever end with some random happenstance causing the victory and all the work from most of the team being flushed. It’s not unique to Rowling. Edgar Rice Burroughs invented the game of Jetan, a sort of martian chess. But if you try to actually play it, it always ends in a draw.