Saturday, May 09, 2026
Ice shooting ice cold. 105-111, :30.8. Just about over.
Reid, McDaniels, Dosunmu and Edwards all missed threes in the last couple mins.
Friday, May 08, 2026
Alamo has led 84% of this game--in Ice--and there have been only 6 lead changes.
Poor Philadelphia
I mean the franchise and the fans, hell, the entire city.
Associated Press writeup:
"...With 2016 and 2018 Villanova national championship banners hanging in the rafters, the so-called Nova Knicks all took turns taking the fight out of the Sixers in the fourth quarter...The familiar faces in Philly -- Brunson, Hart and Bridges all played for Villanova -- seized control of the game.
The Sixers tried to pull off the win in front of A-list Knicks fans and thousands from the five boroughs and beyond who circumvented Philadelphia's ticket-buying tricks and filled the arena with "Let's go Knicks!" chants...Celebrity Row regulars at Madison Square Garden, Spike Lee, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Morgan and Ben Stiller all made the trip to Philadelphia -- along with thousands of less famous Knicks fans -- and the split crowd erupted in cheers, boos and the occasional middle finger on just about every basket.
I lived in Philly for four years, coming immediately after one year in Boston. The contrast was shocking. I won't get into it all here, but "Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia" is a 1980 book that tries to explain how these two most important cities in colonial America took such divergent life paths after independence. Philly people have an exquisitely sensitive inferior complex to Boston, New York, and D.C. It infects every individual Philadelphian and the city as a collective. It's a shame, really. I hated Philadelphia, but it's a real shame.
51-51 in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and no "Lakers"
Ant
Rudy Gobert
Jaden McDaniels
Julius Randle
Naz Reid and Ayo Dosunmu off the BENCH. Are you fucking kidding me! You move Minnehaha to the Least (as is predicted when Seattle and Vegas are added) right now and they'd be Least leaders. In the West, how they gonna beat 1) OKC 2) Wemby and the Hotspurs 3) Denver when Jokic is healthy 4) La-La Lake-Lake when Luka is healthy? You put Naz Reid and Dosunmu on the "Heat" and they'd be starters, part of the "core", and Pat Riley would make them untouchable in trades.
The NBA has listed heavily westward for 20 years. It is a shame that OKC and San Antone, the two most fearsome teams in the Association have to play an elimination series for the right to meet Zollner or Mamdani City in the Finals. It is rank injustice that Denver, the "Lakers", and Minnesota have NO SHOT realistically of reaching the Finals. smh.
Man, if you told me a cigar-shaped UFO was seen above treetops in September 2023...
Man, you lose a G3 at home by 2 TDs when you're down 2-0 and you start Paul George John Ringo...
...Joel, ⌁Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, you gotta examine your life.
Ew Esse Em Elle Ee Generallee
Standardized tests, USMLE's included, are formatted by time and number of questions. Take enough tests and you learn not to waste time. The questions, again USMLE's included, follow a structured template: a paragraph fact pattern and multiple choice answers. For all test-takers, infinitely moreso for the uneducated like me, the test questions are word puzzles. It's not just substantive knowledge. Successful USMLE students cannot spend more than 90 secs reading the fact pattern and answering. The test is not the time to study. All test-takers have to look for word clues and then jump to the answer choices. Having no substantive knowledge, I look for those clues assiduously. For example, if a term in the fact pattern is repeated in the answer choices, that's my clue. My presumptive choice contains the repeated term unless when I tell Ana she tells me no. We had one question yesterday where the same term was repeated three times in the fact pattern and then in one of the answer choices. That was my answer (and I think we got it wrong. lol). The word clues are nested. You have to know what's wheat and what's chaff. Sometimes UWorld will intentionally NOT use a term that they know med students will be familiar with, just to be little Eichmanns for awhile.
Almost every USMLE question has five answer choices, and they're all medically plausible. No photo id lineups with four refrigerators and a Black man like in criminal law. I try to game the test with test-taking strategies--because what choice do I have?--but you have to know your shit.
Sometimes, like on one question today, I have to take a global approach, or an indirect route. The question today called for something like the mechanism of action of the medication to prescribe. Ana and I both had no effing idea. Time to throw darts? Maybe on the actual test, but in this learning phase, n-o, no. So I said, "Okay, Ana, this person comes to your office with these symptoms," they were common, easily understandable even to me as a layman, "Now what would you prescribe, and then we can try to tease out the mechanism of action." I think we got that one wrong, too.😂 But our thought process was mahvelous!
If I were to take the actual test, i would get 25%-30% right (you need 60%). That's a one in five chance if I'm throwing darts plus a tiny bit more from what I've learned. So all my test-taking experience and strategies would flunk me with alacrity.😂
It's Friday night...
AND PUBLIX WAS OUT OF KEY LIME PIE!
What. Would. Eleven. Do.?
Tentative start, the coconut on top threw her off, a few licks, but no cigar. :(
USMLE Yesterday
When trying to help Dr. Ana choose the correct answer on the UWorld questions I rely, of course, on the little bit of medical knowledge that I have picked up in the last two years, but also, and mainly, on my test-taking skill as developed over the course of an American professional lifetime. Sometimes, maybe most times, I do help Ana. Other times, of course, I am wrong. Yesterday, I hurt Ana's performance on three straight questions, the last of which she got wrong when 87% of her colleagues got it right. My notes in my Moleskine after that last catastrophe: "For 3rd [triple underlined] time today I steered Ana wrong". I was distraught. I wanted to run away, I put my head down on my hands on the desk, and got a little close to weeping. So that is why USMLE yesterday was my worst day. I felt bad the whole rest of the day, too.
But the sunshine of that horrible day was Ana, and that is the real story of yesterday. She saw me with my head on my hands and remonstrated me, pointing on the screen: "David, do not feel bad. YOU cannot get discouraged. You have to keep ME from getting discouraged." It was the most generous-spirited response; it was also accurate. This test is an absolute bitch and ANA has to take it, not me. All that she asks is that someone "sit with me." Of course, I cannot just sit there like a potted plant, I could not do that, I would not have been able to sit there dumb and mute for the last two years. I have to TRY, to try to learn, even a completely new professional discipline. I couldn't do it without trying, Ana would have to get someone else.
I also couldn't do it, coming back to the main point, I couldn't not try that is, if Ana told me to shut up, that I was hurting not helping. Imagine any professional not getting impatient or short or harsh with a neophyte student.
I have never met a superior person to Ana: kind-hearted, generous-spirited, even-tempered, forgiving, in a word, loving.
