BagOfNothing.com

• If I understand the NFL landscape correctly, Thursday night football will only be available on Amazon, a streaming service. If I were them, I’d sign Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, and Sean Payton to announce all the games. The Manning brothers already proved thoughtful and entertaining with their Monday night hosting gigs this year. Amazon may feel the need to hire a play-by-play person, but I say do something different, and just have no play-by-play person, just have those two former quarterbacks and coach. They would not only be entertaining, but insightful. And, it would be delivering the same product like all the other networks, just in a different way. Now is the time to dare to be different.
• I say instead of a coin flip for NFL overtime, possession should go to the team with the least amount of penalties.
• Something I learned from Peter King’s latest column – Terry Bradshaw was tackled for a safety in his first career game against Houston, in his second career game against Denver, and in his third career game against Cleveland.
• I just finished watching the latest season of Ozark on Netflix. I loved watching it with my wife. That Wendy Byrde is one evil woman, but unlike my ex, she fights to keep her family together.
• I’m not a fan of the NY Times buying Wordle. I’m on a seven day streak.
• Arose – This is the best word to start Wordle with, according to science
  • Personally, I like starting with “adieu”.
  • If we want a word that is most likely to get letters in their correct positions, the best option is “samey” (monotonous, repetitive, unvaried). But let’s not stop there. If we put these approaches together into one final score, we get a word that looks eyrie-ly familiar: “soare” (a young hawk) – “arose” but in a more strategic order.
• Pope blesses tax collectors, says paying taxes is sign of ‘legality and justice’
• Homeowner using flamethrower to melt snow sets house ablaze, Connecticut officials say
• That’s about right.
  

• I have great memories of watching football with my father. Last week I was fortunate enough to watch some great NFL playoff football with my son and make some lasting memories. Because of the stupid divorce, I’m robbed of watching football and making memories with my son with the NFC and AFC championship games yesterday. When it came to the divorce decree, I wasn’t able to negotiate much, but I do get the kids for every Super Bowl Sunday.
• The NFL playoffs have been fantastic, and is testimony to why I prefer it over the college game. People used to be able to argue to the like the college game because players played for the purity of the sport, but the way the landscape has changed, that’s no longer a valid argument. Some folks are upset about the difference in pass interference penalties, but one rule will not sway me one way or another. If you like bands and school pride, then go for it. But I like how the NFL unites an entire city and community rather than a select group of people who chose to attend an institution. Also, games in the pros are more competitive and you don’t have those crazy blowouts when Oklahoma decides to play North Texas.
• Some days/weekends, the divorce hurts more than others. I’d deal with it better if the marriage gradually fell apart, but her darting off and alienating the kids from me was totally unexpected and such a shock to the system.
• My date on Friday night was pretty meh. I have a feeling a lot of them are going to be like this. You like each other on an app, and messages back and forth for a while. Then, you decide to meet only to realize you don’t click and never message or meet one another again. I guess meeting up is better than staying home by myself on a Friday night.
• I used to tell people how thankful I was marrying when I did, as I just avoided the start of dating apps and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to use those things. Now, I’m eating humble pie.
• ‘I’m really just high on life and beauty’: the woman who can see 100 million colours
  • Antico is a tetrachromat, which means she has a fourth colour receptor in her retina compared with the standard three which most people have. While those of us with three of these receptors – called cone cells – have the ability to distinguish around one million different colours, tetrachromats see an estimated 100 million.
• China says United States plans to pay athletes to ‘sabotage’ Beijing Olympics
• Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas invested in electric cars after bashing Democrats for being ‘obsessed’ with them – Rep. Dan Crenshaw recently invested in Tesla and Rivian Automotive stock. He’s on a key committee that regulates EVs but has voted against expanding access to the vehicles. Crenshaw’s office says the congressman supports banning stock trades in Congress.
• Suicide hotline shares data with for-profit spinoff, raising ethical questions –
  The Crisis Text Line’s AI-driven chat service has gathered troves of data from its conversations with people suffering life’s toughest situations.
• Xylyl – You’re not a true ‘Wordle’ connoisseur until you start with the scientifically proven worst word
• He Spent 25 Years Infiltrating Nazis, the Klan, and Biker Gangs – Scott was a top undercover agent for the FBI, putting himself in harm’s way dozens of times. Now, he’s telling his story for the first time to sound the alarm about the threat of far-right extremists in America
• Oddly specific.
• 

This angle of Yu Darvish’s slider is another example that shows hitting a baseball is the most difficult thing to do in sports pic.twitter.com/sk8dJA4qo1

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) January 28, 2022

https://twitter.com/ladbible/status/1487009720657403909

• Yup, I play Wordle every day, usually around lunch time.
• Yesterday, for the first time in over a year, I walked into my house from running an errand and yelled, “I’m home,” and someone responded. DaughterGeeding has been staying with me as she completes her COVID isolation. It’s the little things you miss when you’re divorced, like someone greeting you when you come home.
• It turns out that image I posted yesterday of a haunted Baker Hotel is now an album cover.
• I have a date tonight. That feels weird to type and to admit. It will be my fourth or fifth since we separated, each with a different woman. Tonight will be the first time I meet this woman in person after chatting for over a month. One issue when I date is that I often think of my ex-wife, which is wrong, because my date deserves my full attention. One thing I’ve learned getting back into the dating pool is to set my expectations to be low. Dating in your forties is nothing like it was in your twenties, especially when both of you have children. At a minimum, just look forward to meeting someone new and learning a little something about them.
• There are two types of women on dating apps. One prefers to message a lot to get to know one another before meeting in person, and the other would rather meet in person sooner than later and do away with all the messaging.
• I had a date two weeks ago. Even though she was a doppelgänger for my ex’s sister, she was really nice, but we just didn’t click. And, the date ended rather early. I tried to be a gentleman and walk her to her vehicle, but she declined the offer. C’est la vie.
• Seems like a lot – SpaceX planning to launch up to 52 missions in 2022
• FlowingData.com – Here’s a more detailed view of how much Americans make per year.
• Remember Octomom? Her kids are now 13.
• An Air Stewardess Fell 33,000 Feet And Lived To Tell The Tale 50 Years Ago Today – The story of Vesna Vulovic’s survival after a DC-9 airliner exploded in mid-air is a miraculous one.
• Former Nazi speaks in new BBC documentary
  • Hans Werk grew up in Nazi Germany. His primary school teacher was active in the local Nazi Party. At school, he was taught Nazi doctrine. At ten years old, he joined the Hitler Youth, and later the SS.His story features in a new documentary, filmed over 10 years, about the last living generation of Germans in Hitler’s Third Reich.
• Iceland preserves last Big Mac meal as a historical artifact – The last Icelandic locations of the chain closed in 2009.
• Google Has a New Plan to Kill Cookies. People Are Still Mad – Google has scrapped FLoC, its controversial cookie replacement. Now it’s back with Topics—but rivals and privacy experts are still nervous.
• The Texas Tribune has a feature which will let you see how your voting district was gerrymandered has changed. Here’s mine.
  

• I found that image of the Baker Hotel from this Twitter account.
• Here’s a great article for those who are fond of Texas Country Reporter.
• Meat Loaf Was My Softball Coach –  I remember seeing a movie about himself which he starred in and him coaching softball.
• I’m reminded of the movie Contact. Let’s just hope we don’t end up seeing a swastika. – Unknown space object beaming out radio signals every 18 minutes remains a mystery
• This made me laugh.

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1486356927894495232

• Since there’s Supreme Court justice news, here’s a little history of LBJ and Thurgood Marshall from Michael Beschloss’s Twitter account.
  • LBJ deliberately created a Supreme Court vacancy so he could appoint Thurgood Marshall as first Black Justice, 1967. Did so by asking Ramsey Clark to be his AG and telling Ramsey that his father, Tom, would have to thus quit SCOTUS in order to avoid conflicts of interest:
  • LBJ no doubt also enjoyed manipulating Ramsey Clark to reveal an aspect of his character by forcing his own father, Tom, to resign from SCOTUS, a job Tom loved, in order for Ramsey to achieve his ambition of becoming Attorney General.
  • Once Ramsey Clark became LBJ’s Attorney General in 1967, the President grew disenchanted with Clark and largely stopped speaking to him. He thenceforth communicated with Ramsey through Clark’s embarrassed deputy, Warren Christopher, so I was told by the latter.
  • Long after his adventures with Ramsey Clark and LBJ, Warren Christopher would become Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State.
• Yesterday I read about racist Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds. He was so disliked by the other justices that none of them attended his funeral and he died alone in the hospital in 1946. In contrast, as the clerk noted, when McReynolds’s aged African-American messenger, Harry Parker, died in 1953, his funeral was attended by five or six Justices, including the Chief Justice. He is also one of five justices who never married.
• The baseball Twitter accounts I follow seem to mention Tony Gwynn quite a bit as of late, and I don’t mind it one bit. The man was greatness. A few of the things I’ve read:
  • Tony Gwynn faced 885 different pitchers over the course of his career. Five of them struck him out more than 5 times and none of them struck him out more than 10 times.
  • Tony Gwynn averaged 21 K’s per year for his career. Last year, 152 players struck out at least 21 times before April was over. Legend among legends.
  • Tony Gwynn struck out just 19 times in 110 games in 1994, the year he hit .394 and led the league with a .454 OBP. Next year, in 135 games, he struck out 15 times.
  • 148 major league batters struck out 100+ times this year. Tony Gwynn struck out 434 times in 20 years.
  • Tony Gwynn batted .338 for his career. No other Padre has hit .338 during any one single season.
  • In a 731-game span of regular season games, Tony Gwynn had 1,002 hits and 99 strikeouts.
  • Tony Gwynn hit .302 with two strikes on him. In the 30-plus years that stat has been tracked, the next-best batting average with two strikes is .260 by Wade Boggs, more than 40 points below Gwynn’s mark.
  • Tony Gwynn hit .400 for a stretch as long as a season… from July 3, 1993 to May 9, 1995, he batted .403 over a 179-game stretch.
  • Tony Gwynn faced Hall of Famers Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez a combined total of 143 times during his career. He batted .388 against the pair and never struck out.
    
  • Tony Gwynn was a freak athlete. This man got drafted by the Padres and the Clippers on the same day.
    

Babe Ruth demonstrates how to throw a fastball, curveball and knuckleball. You’ll want to watch this pic.twitter.com/toNYe2Th2F

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) January 27, 2022

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