Month: May 2026

Another repeat passenger. I remembered her because her depressing life. She works long hours at Family Dollar and is so tired she can hardly talk. She is in her late twenties but she is already haggard. She lives right next to a MARTA stop in a dump of an apartment and doesn’t have much hope to improve things.

New Years Eve 2025: Driving on major holidays is different. At least that’s what I had heard. I hadn’t done it because (a) my car was in the shop for a while (unrelated to Uber), and (b) I spend time with my own family on holidays. But New Years Eve is a dumb holiday, we’re not doing anything, let’s see what it’s like and earn some good money!

Notables:

1. The couple that I picked up from the fancy restaurant. They seemed like they had been dating for a year or two. They weren’t happy. There was dead silence the entire ride. They didn’t say a word. Until two minutes from the dropoff. Suddenly he turned to her and yelled, “So what the fuck are you so mad about!?” “Because the dinner was terrible, that’s why!” “The dinner was terrible? The $400 dinner I saved up and bought you was terrible!? That dinner!? Jesus, wah wah!!!” It got worse from there.

2. The newly engaged couple. I give them five years at most. He was obsessed with a 4-carat ring his grandfather had passed down to him to use for an engagement ring. The ring had somehow been taken back by the other family branch. There was a lot of family drama that was hard to follow. At any rate he had spent $9,000 of his own money on a new ring to replace his grandfathers. $9,000 was a huge amount of money to him. Every time I pivoted to how did you meet or something nice he kept going back to it, could not get past it. She sat quietly the whole ride and left a nice tip.

3. I picked her up from a nice restaurant in Roswell. She got in. I asked how her night was going. She didn’t answer at first. Then she sighed and very quietly said, “I tried. I really did.” I liked her, this 38-year-old divorced content-creator. She was a very nice woman and we had a great conversation. She did not like New Years Eve, she did not like the noise, she did not like the whole idea of forced fun. She never does stuff like this. This year she left herself be talked into it. She went out for several hours across multiple restaurants and clubs to be social — and it was terrible. She was very happy to get home.

Happy New Years 2025 (to 2026)!

There’s not much to say about the actual playoffs. The Hawks are a good team. They are not a great team. The Knicks showed them the difference, they were much better. I was (un)fortunate enough to watch the historic Game 6 bludgeoning from the first 10 rows with the most active commenter at www.muttrox.com. Still, there is reason to be optimistic!

Going into this year, Muttrox said:

• If Porzingis is healthy and Trae Young plays defense, this is a very good team.
• If just one of those is true, this is a good team.
• If neither one is true, this is a sub-.500 team.

Well, Porzingis wasn’t healthy. And Trae Young didn’t play defense. But they got rid of Trae Young (finally!). As soon as Trae was gone, the team started improving. We had one of the two criteria. The Hawks were, as I predicted, a pretty good team. “Pretty good” is a huge jump for the Hawks!

The Hawks have not been a good team for a long time. Here are The Hawks wins by season:

• 2017-2018: 24
• 2018: 29
• 2019: 20
• 2020: 41 (shortened season)
• 2021: 43
• 2022: 41
• 2023: 36
• 2024: 40
• 2025: 46

They were over .500 in the weird pandemic year and they were barely above .500 in 2021. That’s it. The 46 wins this year is a significant uptick, the best in a decade. It can be somewhat discounted because every team that wasn’t tanking got more wins off of the tanking teams. But in the second half of the season, after trading Trae Young, they were 20-6, including an 11 game winning streak. That is an elite record and can’t be easily written off. They had reason to feel optimistic going into the playoffs.

Looking ahead to next year:

• Jalen Johnson is a borderline All-star. I expect to him to incrementally improve next year.
• Nickeal-Alexander-Walker justly won the most improved player year. Found money.
• CJ McCollum is occasionally unstoppable. Found money.
• More decent players. Dyson Daniels, Okongwu. Kaminga.
• They have the #7 pick (thank you New Orleans and Chief Chump Joe Dumars), and their own #22 pick in a very rich draft.
• They have cap space. They are currently $36 million below the luxury tax, which is far below the first or second aprons.
• Their new ownership is much smarter, and haven’t made any big unforced errors.

They do need a real center. Who doesn’t? They were not able to replace Porzingis. In the playoffs, KAT and Mitchell both destroyed them, there were no answers.

Unlike The Celtics, The Hawks are not a championship contender. But they did improved significantly last season. They will likely improve more next season. I look for the Hawks to get 50+ wins next year and be in the playoff picture all year.

(This entire post may be motivated reasoning. I have season tickets and they are much more valuable if the team is good.)

It’s been sixteen years since I did this last. I got old, I don’t blatantly break traffic laws as much.

Today was second generation “Muttrox Goes to Court”. My son did an illegal U-turn. No one was around, it was perfectly safe. But a cop was right there and got him.

The logistics of his court appearance were tricky. He is in college. He had to come back home (a five hour drive) for his court date last month. When he went to court they said one of his parents had to be present. He had to reschedule and come back today with me. Why did I need to be there? At least we go Muttrox goes to court, second generation.

Court is less interesting these days. All kinds of cases used to be thrown together, now they bring all the traffic incidents in on the same day. Efficient. Boring. I mostly get diverted to the solicitor these days, and so I don’t sit and watch others as much.

Every other court date I’ve had in Georgia has been at DeKalb Country Municipal Court. This one was in Dunwoody, one mile away from the house. The suburbs. Nice new court space, relaxed citizens and officers, much calmer. When we sat down a nice court officer came over and showed us how to fill out the forms. My son had the same clipboard as last time. He recognized the graffiti.

Like usual, we just wanted to avoid the points on our insurance. AI estimated a 25% increase in our premiums from this illegal U-turn, yikes! We wanted to pay the fine and move on with life. We asked for a pre-trial negotiation with the solicitor. Fortunately, Dunwoody’s goal was the same as ours. They don’t want to hold trials, they don’t want the case (and revenue) moved to the county, they want to take their cut and move on.

Our solicitor was a yapper. I mentioned something about the nice facilities they had here and ended up in a 15-minute conversation about municipal buildings. It was sort of interesting. This building was a converted bank. They had a secured room for prisoners in manacles and belt chains, most courts don’t have that. The generous space meant less stress on people (some with mental issues) in a stressful situation. The discussion kept going. I recently read Talk: The Science of Conversation, I was well-armed to go as long as she wanted. You want small talk, I got small talk. The more we talked, the more likely she’d let us off easy.

An illegal U-turn is an astonishing 3 points. It only takes 4 points in a year to have your license suspended! Dunwoody knew that the penalty in points and insurance was huge, that’s why they mandated a parent be present. Ah I see. She gave us a sob story about someone who made a small traffic violation and killed two people, she looked deep into my son’s soul to make sure he was a good kid, then let us off easy. He takes 4 hours of an online course, we pay the fine afterwards, all done. Nothing even goes on the record. We left under an hour.

Been a while. Random collection of funny or interesting links.

• Guinessun Dorma
• Bad Space comics. Dark, depressing, and memorable.
• Teaching gets Real
• Gen Alpha graduation speech
• Oregon Trail! For real! This was cutting edge technology in my childhood.
• Mr. Big covers Baba O’Riley. Paul Gilbert is amazing.
• On a Plate. I repost this every few years. It is still the best encapsulation of why I’m a liberal.

Let’s calm down a bit about data centers and water and energy. Questions don’t use that much water. The water usage isn’t high compared to many other ordinary activities. Overall AI usage in 2025 was around 0.5% of total worldwide electricity, 0.2% of total energy.

Celtics lose game 7 to Philadelphia 76ers

The Celtics lost to The Philadelphia 76ers yesterday in Game 7 to get knocked out of the playoffs in round 1.

It’s easy to see the bad side. Going into the playoffs, The Celtics were favored by many to win the East. Instead, they didn’t even get out of round one. It was the first time the 76ers have ever come back like that. Beating the Sixers has been a constant during my NBA lifetime. I’m sure many will be panicking.

They shouldn’t. The Celtics lost fair and square. Mazzulla tried every lineup under the sun for Game 7, but there was no answer for Embiid. This healthy Embiid played like an MVP again. And when you add Paul George, Maxey, and Edgecombe… that’s quite a good team. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Knicks, but it’s definitely possible.

The Celtics have some good excuses.

They had five or so wide-open shots in the last couple minutes and missed all of them. Some look at that as a lack of shooting skill. I see it as some bad luck when it was needed most.

Jayson Tatum sat out the game, I suspect that decision will be brutally second-guessed.

And we have to call out the terrible support coaches. One coach deliberately held on to the ball too long and got a technical in the first quarter. Another one told Mazzulla to call for a challenge on an obvious foul call. Real points lost from dumb support coaches.

Excuses only go so far, and Philly would have their share of excuses as well if they had lost. Last night the 76ers were the better team.

The Bigger Picture

Although the Celtics got knocked out earlier than expected, it was a great season. A marvelous season. Why?

Let’s reset the clock. Let’s put on our Brad Stevens GM hat and reset the clock.

The Celtics bought many free agents over the last few years. They built a super team. That stacked team won the 2024 title. But a team built like that isn’t sustainable. We were far over the salary cap(s), and the penalties for repeatedly violating the salary cap are too large. We had to dump salary this year. Even if Tatum hadn’t had a season ending injury this team would have been ripped up this year.

The Celtics started this season without Jason Tatum, Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kornet, and Jrue Holiday. They were left with Jaylen Brown as their star, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard as two more good players, and a bunch of nobodies. They even had to trade away Anfernee Simons (their only good off-season acquisition) for the dried out husk of Nikola Vucevic. They were predicted to win around 41 games and be a play-in team. Instead, they were incredible.

They were supposed to tank. The obvious strategy was to keep Tatum out for the whole year, to stink it up, and come back next year with Tatum and a fantastic new rookie. Everyone knew that except Brad Stevens, Joe Mazzulla, Jaylen Brown, and so on. The rest of the league could call it a gap year, these Celtics said all along they were competing for a title.

Brown took on the burden. He elevated himself from star to superstar and justly made first team. Mazzulla evolved the strategies from the superteam, adapting his analytical approach to the talent he had. The group of nobodies quickly grew up. No one knew their name, but they got results. Queta, Walsh, Scheierman, Garza, Harper, Hugo… easily the cheapest supporting cast in the league with the lowest expectation. None of them had a resume or NBA experience. Yet they got results. In the end, the Celtics delivered a stunning 56 wins, 15 games over expectations. They entered the playoffs as the number two seed. Most teams would salivate over this kind of “gap year”.

They are now well positioned for next year. Although they still need to stay under the second apron, by being so ruthless this year, they have a great deal more financial flexibility next year. I honestly don’t fully understand the rules here… I think they now have a mid-level exception ($15-16 MM) they can use to get a quality rotation player. They now have a large trade exception of $27.7 MM they can use to get another piece. They have several players who overperformed this year and will be even better next year. Tatum looks as good as ever, maybe better with all that rest. They have another full year of Tatum and Brown in the primes of their career. This a team with a huge number of assets and good reason to be optimistic going into next year.

So. It’s a shame The Celtics couldn’t close out the 76ers. But this season was an incredible success. Celtics fans should feel delighted with the season that was. They are well positioned to be dominant again next year. Let’s go Celtics!