Author: Muttrox

1. I’ve watched Trae Young play for the Atlanta Hawks his whole career. And for most of it, I’ve been saying this guy needs to be traded. The front office wasted 3-4 years while his value dceclined, but they finally dumped him to Washington.
2. Trae Young is a net negative and has been for years.
3. Yes, he has many offensive gifts. His pick and roll is deadly. He lobs the ball to a big man better than anyone out there. He has a great attitude. But…
4. He’s not a great shooter (never has been). For all those assists, he somehow makes the team worse. Like my other most-hated players Luka Doncic and James Harden, everyone else stands around and watches Trae be Trae.
5. He’s a defensive liability. A huge defensive liability. Yes he is small, yes he is weak, but it’s mostly he doesn’t try. He hangs out on the perimeter, sometimes makes a half-hearted double-hand downswipe attempt at a steal. That’s it. Otherwise he stands around at watches. His whole career, the rest of the Hawks have had to play 4-on-5 defense.
6. He’s the kind of player I hate the most, someone who plays the refs. I can’t stand watching players endlessly jump into other players and manipulate the rules to get fouls called. Just the worse.
7. Going into this year, Mr. Kid and I agreed that if the Hawks had a Trae Young who committed to team ball and a healthy Krystaps Porzingis, they’d be great. If they had one of those, they’d be pretty good. If they had neither, they’d be mediocre. That analysis was perfect – they had neither and they’ve been mediocre. But now with Trae they have a chance to be pretty good. And who knows, maybe Porzingis will be healthy for the end of the season.
8. They should have traded him two years ago. Anyone could see he was hurting the team, and he was steadily getting worse. But management decided to stick it out. One amazing playoff run in 2021 (and it was amazing… some fluky circumstances, but that happens) was enough to delude management. If Danny Ainge was in charge, they would have sold on him when the market was high. Instead, they are getting basically nothing back after blowing more years of .500 ball.
9. Jalen Johnson is an all-star. He’s fantastic. He works hard on both sides of the floor. His court vision is great, his assists are pretty. Everything works better when he’s out there. They have several other quality players. They have a great draft pick next year. Their goal should be: Don’t mess it up.
10. Anthony Davis? C’mon. That’s just absurd. I don’t know if this is real or just the media eating itself. You can’t buy a healthy young Anthony Davis, only an aging and fragile Anthony Davis. You already have one of those in Krystaps Porzingis why would you need another one? Both Davis and Porzingis are always injured, why think one is better than the other. A healthy KP is maybe not as good as AD, but not so far away. The gap doesn’t justify the price difference. The price tag is crazy high for Davis, you’d be crazy to make this trade. Update: Ha ha, Davis is injured again, out “indefinitely”.
11. Atlanta does have one thing now. Cap space. Options. Those are worth a lot. I don’t like a move for Anthony Davis, but there are others. And there will be more next year.

To summarize, good riddance. Don’t let the door hit on your way out.

I’ve written about the terrible Hastert rule before, and a notable exception that put Speaker Mike Johnson in power..

It’s still a normal part of politics. Not all politics. Only Republican politics. Here’s the latest on extending Obamacare subsidies:

And Speaker Mike Johnson, who has called them “a boondoggle,” has shown little enthusiasm for bringing up such a measure in the House, where Republicans typically refuse to consider any legislation that does not have the backing of the majority of their members.

The Democrats shut down the government over this (at least nominally), there are enough GOP supporters to pass it, but it won’t come to a vote because of this ridiculous rule (which isn’t a rule). Great way to run a country.

Federal Court Blocks Texas’ Republican-Friendly Congressional Map

Try to follow the background: Trump asks Texas to skip ahead five years and do re-districting now, to pick up five additional seats for the GOP. Blatantly corrupt. He does the same for some other states. Democrats freak out. California passes a referendum to do their own redistricting to match Texas.

As of today, the Texas redistricting is illegal. Because the Trump people screwed up and used race as their rationale, and Texas followed that guidance. Not much is still disallowed in redistricting, but race is. Meanwhile, California has passed it’s bill, so the net impact would be +5 seats to Democrats. Oops. As usual, Trump and MAGA are an bewildering mixture of rank corruption and pathetic incompetence.

“Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”

Democracy didn’t win. The Democrats did. Democracy took yet another kick in the nethers.

I mean, c’mon. This insanity is normal:

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement that “the Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal,” using Mr. Trump’s nickname for the Texas redistricting. Mr. Paxton said he expected the Supreme Court “to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

He’s right. Aside from the racial component, Texas can do what it wants. It can blatantly rig the districts so one party gets an advantage. This is the core problem. That seems so obviously unconstitutional, yet there is no bar to it and Paxton has no shame in saying Texas should be allowed to rig it’s elections however it wants to.

All is as I said last year. Same thing. Just disgusting.

The Atlanta Hawks were widely picked to have had the best off-season in the NBA. They are presumed to be among the elite of the Eastern Conference. Just yesterday I picked the “over” on their win total.

I went to see them against the Houston Rockets last week in pre-season. I was hoping to see Durant, Amen Thompson, and Sengun. I didn’t, because the Rockets rested their entire starting lineup – and still beat the Hawks. That was a bit worrying.

Muttrox went to the Atlanta Hawks season opener last night against the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors are your basic .500 team. Several good players, no one who is great (Mrs. Muttrox hadn’t heard of any of them). Certainly the Atlanta Hawks have the roster to beat them easily. They didn’tt. We left when the Hawks were down by 30 in the 4^th quarter.

It looked similar to every other year, and every other game I see the Hawks play. When they play as a team with effort, they’re very good. But they don’t do that very often. Lots of one on one ball, lots of slowing the pace down, and an incredible lack of defense from their alleged leader Trae Young.

The good ones:
Jalen Johnson. Wow. He was amazing. He tied for the lead in points, tied for the lead in rebounds, and led the team in assists. He made it look easy – always in the right place at the right time. He worked hard on defense and offense. He was easily the best player on the floor. I have my eye on him.

Zaccharie Risacher: Like Johnson, always seemed to be doing the right thing. He worked hard on both ends of the floor, and played good team-oriented ball.

Krystaps Porzingis: I am biased. He played for two years with my beloved Celtics. He’s a great player, but also a great personality, and my favorite Celtics interview subject (except Luke Kornet). Last night he looked good. Moved well, got his 20 points, 7 rebounds, and a couple blocks. There was a distinct lack of chemistry – he wasn’t being set up, and he wasn’t setting up folks. He looks like he is still waiting for the team to form.

The meh ones:

Trae Young. He is so frustrating! He had a bad shooting night (5 for 14), only five assists, and his 22 points were much worse than they seemed. That’s fine, it’s only game one, he will get better. But still. This is a contract year, and geez, there is still no attention to defense. Year after year he kills the team with a complete lack of effort. And still loves to take the long bomb, for no good reason. A couple times a game he’ll launch a shot from long distance when better shots are available — dude, it’s not a shootout with Steph Curry. Try to win the game.

Luke Kennard: Just fine. Solid.

Dyson Daniels: I have no memory of him at all.

The bad ones:

Both Alexander-Walker and Okongwu played lots of minutes and looked lost. Both made a few good plays here and there, particularly on offense. But both of them blew offensive possessions with dumb plays. Both seemed to have no idea where to stand or what to do on defense. It’s bad enough when Trae Young does it, but it’s appalling to see a lack of effort from these two.

 

It’s only one game. There are many new players who need to get used to each other. But it was a pretty terrible way to start the season. They’d better get their act together.

Tonight is NBA tipoff! Following Bill Simmons format, I am predicting which teams will be over or under their projected win total.

• Denver Nuggets: 54 or over. Jokic with better players around him… of course.
• Minnesota Timberwolves: 50 or over
• OKC Thunder: 63 or over
• San Antonio Spurs: 44 or over (and if they don’t hit this, it’s because Wemby was out for many games.)
• Atlanta Hawks: 42 or over. They’ve been hovering around mediocrity for years. This team will easily win 50% of their games now.
• Cleveland Cavaliers: 67 or over. Why wouldn’t they, with key injuries to three rival teams?
• Bucks: 43 or over. Giannis is still Giannis.

I didn’t take any unders. I don’t follow the bad teams enough to know who is truly terrible.

Of note: Bill Simmons and two others made predictions. There were 19 times were they all agreed. Of those, I took four. My other three picks were not unanimous from that group. Muttrox still makes up his one mind.

And of course, I predict the NBA MVP will once again be Nikola Jokic. He should have won it last year. With better players around him, his dominance will be absolute.

We (Mr. and Dr. Muttrox) took to the streets yesterday for the No Kings Rally/March in Atlanta. What did we think?

We arrived right at the opening bell (10:00 am). People were pumped; the attendance and atmosphere were excellent. They had just gotten permits approved, so we were going to march to the State Capitol at 1:00 pm.

The organizers and staff did a great job making sure everyone had water, access to bathrooms, first aid, and so on.  They were careful to instruct everyone on how to respond to any provocateurs, and lawyers from several groups were also present, just in case. This preparation was smart. There was an obvious helicopter from Homeland Security, and an unidentified drone hovering over the crowds. I assume footage of us is now living somewhere in Palantir (I waved to every camera I could see), and ICE probably took pictures of everyones license plate.

The speeches for the first hour were… well, frankly, terrible. For every speaker who focused on the core theme of the rally (lawlessness, executive overreach), there were two who went on about trans rights, Palestine, billionaires, or something that had nothing to do with anything. I don’t know why the leader of the NEA was speaking; if I were a conservative teacher, I’d be angry at the obvious politicization.

After about an hour, we decided we were tired and hungry. We grabbed a quick bite, then headed to meet the marchers. Our timing wasn’t great though. We missed Abrams, Warnock, all the interesting speakers. And by the time we made it to the Capitol , most people had already left and they were just about to open the roads up again. Ah well.

This post is mostly just an excuse to share pictures of the interesting, “Yes, exactly!”, or funny signs. Mostly funny signs. Let’s get on with it!

Some of the signs I thought were so clever turned out to be less original than I thought. The first “Faux-king” pun is great. The sixth is not. Many of these signs were duplicated in marches across the country.

Frogs were a theme. Why frogs? I gather that it’s a response to the Administration painting the Portland protests as terrorists. It’s hard to pretend that someone wearing a big inflatable costume is a terrorist.

Not shown are several signs about Epstein. I also spotted three separate signs referencing The Lord of the Rings. Two were about Saurman and Wormtongue, one was a Palantir reference.

This was my favorite sign of the whole march. It’s so beside the point, so ridiculous, and all the funnier because of it. Classic. I laugh every time I look at it.

I am reading that attendance was well over five million people. That’s amazing. It was a great day. Despite the light tone of this post, this is important work. As this administration accelerates it’s anti-democratic goals and tactics with control of almost all government functions, one of the only ways to push back is popular support.

Today I finished The Dark Tower, Steven Kings epic answer to The Lord of the Rings. With 7 1/2 books totalling 4,300 pages, that took some time.

What does Muttrox think? Muttrox thinks it was pretty dang good! King said he always want to write a large epic, but at age 19 didn’t know how do it in his own voice. I’m glad he waited, because in a world filled with endless LotR knockoffs, he created something genuinely unique. King is a great writer, and the length of the books matches the length of the hero’s long journey.

Steven King is also a character within the story. That could have been done very badly. Fortunately it wasn’t, and the integration of real world events and the fiction of the story is woven together in a satisfying way if you accept the basic premise.

Was it perfect? No.

In the early books, Roland has soda for the first time and can’t believe how good it is. He gets 300 bullets, more valuable to him than gold. He gets basic aspirin to help with his illness. But by book four, his ammo is infinite, he drinks soda and eats candy with no reaction. Despite going back to earth multiple times, the characters never try to get more bullets, better guns, better medicines, or really anything from Earth that might be useful. It’s a switcheroo away from a bit of nice realism and back to the cliches of fantasy journeys. This bothered me more than anything else!

Then there are three main opponents – Walter, Mordred, and The Red King. Each is built up over hundreds of pages. Their removal from the board is unsatisfying in each case. It feels similar to Game of Thrones, where characters need to be removed so the author can get to the end of the story already.

Many people disliked the ending. Like the removal of the nemeses, it feels anti-climactic as if all the work before didn’t much of anything. That is, there’s not a sense of payoff. Meh. Whatever, it’s hard to know what ending could have satisfied.

Nevertheless, I am a fan. 11/22/63 is one of my favorites, I’m glad I read this saga (is the movie any good?), and I’m looking forward to my next non-horror Steven King book.

Gerrymandering is terrible. “Voters should choose candidates, not the other way around.” It’s fundamentally undemocratic, removing the ability of citizens to choose their represantatives.

As usual, it is the Trump and the GOP who decide to take the next step to degrade American Democracy. At Trumps direction, Texas is stepping away from the every ten years rule in the Constitution (Article I, Section II) to redistrict. The timing, which seems obviously unconstitutional to me, is so the changes will favor Trump. The redistricting is obvious and nakedly partisan, the whole point is to get another five GOP seats. There is no mystery of what’s going on, no one is trying to hide the motives and goals.

The Democrats have had enough. When the other team cheats, you start cheating too. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Now New York and California are looking at doing identical disgusting tactics in retaliation. Meanwhile the GOP looks to extend the same strategy in their other states.

This quote is dead-on: “The Texas Republicans are taking us on a race to the bottom,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who lamented in an interview that his party must reluctantly participate in “this rotten system.”

Just awful.

I last did a batch of funny links in 2018, seven years ago. Let’s go.

84-year old handwritten letter

IT Helpdesk sends salespeople to hell

Spidey

Why Draco went bad

Beautiful setup

S.O.S.

Energy saving light, not voice-activated light

Trump losing at rock-paper-scissors

So darkly true

Shopping cart aggression

This is business

I’m going to hell

Who goes in a bank in the first place?

Last laugh

Global warming theological impact

Gaslighting

There’s a million of these and they are all hilarious

See you in seven years!

It’s a great movie. It’s Top Gun: Maverick, but with cars instead of planes. I mean that in a good way.

Question 1: Who is the best racer?
a) Sonny Hayes (F1)
b) Cole Trickle (Days of Thunder)
c) Lightning McQueen (Cars)
d) Ricky Bobby (Talledega Nights)
e) Dom Toretto (Fast and Furious)
f) Speed Racer

The movie spent serious money on licensing music. As a classic rock guy, Whole Lotta Love and We Will Rock You stood out, with a bit of Billy Squier in the background. But that made me wonder:

Question 2: As long as you’re hitting up Queen songs, why not drop I’m in Love with My Car? And then there’s I Can’t Drive 55 or Going Mobile… actually those would be quite cheesy in the film. Question 2 is retracted!

Question 3: Who would be best at running the race strategy for an F1 team – Sonny Hayes (the Brad Pitt character in F1), or Billy Beane (the Brad Pitt true character from Moneyball)?

Urban Deli in Stockholm, Sweden, is the worst hotel I’ve ever encountered. (I’m excluding discount motels and last second we-have-a-coupon-somewhere hotels. This is a “regular” hotel, right in the city center.)

First the good: Urban Deli has good ratings (4.5 on Trip.com and Google, 4.3 on Trip Advisor). And credit where credit’s due: the staff were professional and helpful, everything was clean. The operations ran without a hitch. My issue isn’t with the people or the upkeep. It’s the design of the rooms and the hotel itself that was so bad.

Let’s start at the beginning. The hotel name is not Urban Deli. Urban Deli is a chain of delis in city centers. The hotel is called “Hotel Urban Deli”, or the Hotel at Urban Deli, or similar. It’s a distinction that is lost on me. Why pair a hotel with a deli — who wants to live in a deli?

Urban Deli aggressively aims for a “super cool, hip, and youthful” vibe. Because I like to feel young and cool when I’m purchasing meat. It’s confusing. This theme, or lack thereof, extends throughout. There’s pop art liberally splashed on the walls, and the hallway carpeting leading to my room had color offsets that showed, and I can’t unsee this, people’s clothes coming off. As if guests can’t wait to make it to their room before starting the disrobing and getting it on. What the hell is in that deli meat.

Location, location, location!

All the rooms are underground. You’d think a hotel housed in a beautiful building in a beautiful city would make that visible. Instead, you descend to the basement to reach your room. They should have put the deli downstairs and kept the hotel rooms above street level.

To get to the hallway you “badge in”. Unfortunately, the reader and button were hidden behind a plant. A little hotel scavenger hunt before you even get to your room. This kind of thoughtless design is the core problem. All their design decisions make life harder for guests.

The room itself feels less like a hotel room and more like a bunker. In Europe the rooms are very small. Two feet of floor space on either side of the bed is fairly normal. But, there are no windows. Someone chose to put this hotel underground, so no windows. The lights are not very bright, adding to the oppressive feel. It has a “solitary confinement” aesthetic, where one contemplates their mistakes while awaiting sentencing.

There was no desk. There was no chair. No wastebasket.There was nowhere to work. Instead, there were two small shelves surrounded by piping art (because why not, pipes are cool I guess). I did my work leaning over a 6-inch deep shelf, hoping my laptop wouldn’t fall off.

(I was told by a colleague that you weren’t supposed to stay in your room, the rooftop was the cool hangout spot. Unfortunately, it was closed.)

Of course the WiFi is unprotected. Urban Deli, where everyone can see your passwords.

The room lighting was a brain teaser. There were three banks of switches, two of which can only be reached by lying down on the bed. These three different banks have three different arrangements of switches, and most of the switches are unlabeled. Marilyn Vos Savant would have been stumped.  And just to add another layer, the bathroom light controls weren’t actually in the bathroom. They were controlled from underneath the bed or by the door in the other room, literally the farthest point away from the bathroom. What the bleepty Mcbleep?

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The Bathroom

Ah, the bathroom. With the main room small enough to high-five both walls while lying in bed, the bathroom was twice as big as it needs to be. It’s an interesting allocation of square footage. One imagines the design meeting: “Should we give them more space to sleep, or more space to wee wee?”

For those unfamiliar with European travel, partially enclosed shower areas with small glass panels are quite common. Urban Deli went one better by using curtains with barely enough room to turn around to really scratch that claustrophobic itch.

It is also common to have the shower water spill directly on the main bathroom floor. The floor was slightly tilted towards a drain. But the drainage couldn’t keep up with the water flow. Five minutes into my shower water had spread across half the floor and I had to cut it short.

They did provide a small towel, presumably intended as a bathmat. It was nicely folded on the shower rod, which seemed helpful until I realized I had to move it to close the curtain. But where to move it, there was nowhere to put the towel. Putting it on the now-flooding floor made no sense. There wasn’t a hook or any other logical spot. Let’s repeat that, there wasn’t a hook for towels small or large. A simple hook, a universal symbol of towel-holding, apparently didn’t make the cut of these architectural engineers.

Toilet Trouble

Let’s talk about the toilet. It looks normal enough at first glance, what could possibly be wrong?

Well, the flushing mechanism isn’t on the side, or anywhere easily reachable. It’s positioned directly behind the lid. This meant you literally can’t flush the toilet without putting the lid down first.  Look we’ve already mastered toilet design. This is a solved problem. Urban Deli is sticking with chopsticks.

In Contrast

I moved to the Hotel Birger Jarl. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever left one hotel for another. Can you spot the differences?

Is it really so hard to design a hotel? Urban Deli started over from first principles and failed.

Postscript: Colleagues took me to the Urban Deli rooftop later in the week. It was pretty awesome.

But not awesome enough. I look forward to never stepping foot in Urban Deli Hotel again.

Muttroxia 2025 Predictions

At the mid-point I have 6 correct and 2 incorrect. The rest are yet to be decided.

Sports

All NBA predictions refer to the 2024/2025 season that ends June 2025.

• The NBA MVP will once again be Nikola Jokic.
  • No. It should have been though!
• The Thunder win the Western Conference.
  • Yes.
• The Cavaliers or Celtics win the Eastern Conference.
  • No. Wow, bad luck here. Both teams had huge injury issues.
• The Oklahoma City Thunder will be in the NBA finals three of the next five years.
• The Atlanta Hawks will continue to be mediocre or worse. The prediction is that they will finish the 2024/2025 season at 60% or less.
  • Yes. The Atlanta Hawks ended the season at 40-42, for a winning percentage of 48.8%
• The NBA All Star game will continue to suck.
  • Yes.
• Payton Pritchard will win the sixth man award.
  • Yes.
• The New England Patriots win 8 games in 2025/2026.
• Bijan Robinson will have over 1,500 yards in 2025/26:
• Saquon Barkley will have less than 2,000 yards in 2025/26.

The Economy

My hypothesis is the economy under Trump won’t change much. Trump will change his mind, can’t execute his policies, or they won’t matter that much.

• Inflation does not increase much in 2025. Prediction is that the average for 2025 will be between 2.3% and 3.5%. Source.
  • Average so far is 2.6%.
• The Misery Index will stay below 7 in 2025.
  • The Misery Index is at 6.5.
• Electric car sales finish above 10% in 2025 Q4.
• Not looking good. Q1 was 7.5%. All liberals hate Tesla now, and Republicans haven’t changed their tune.

Politics

• The election interference case against Trump in Georgia will not be decided against him in 2025.
  • Very confusing. Six charges were removed, Fani Willis was dismissed from the cast, not sure if a sitting president can be indicted, but the case is still alive.
• Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration.
  • Why bother? Congress is sitting back and letting Trump do whatever he wants. Law, schmaw.
• There is at least one real threat of government shutdown in 2025.
  • Nothing so far with Trump in power, though there was one while he was still taking power. This was a bad prediction… shutdowns are a technique by Republicans to exert leverage when the Democrats are in power. Democrats just don’t do this when Republicans are in power.
• No major Democrats are indicted for crimes related to their political activities.
  • So far so good.
• At least two of these four get confirmed (Pete Hesgeth for Defense, RFK Jr for Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard for Director National Intelligence, and Kash Patel at the FBI):
  • Every single one confirmed. Every single one terrible… amazingly enough Gabbard might be the best of the lot.

Randoms

• One of these three people will die in 2025: Clint Eastwood, Alan Greenspan, Mel Brooks.
  • So far they are all doing good.
• Muttroxia will have a month with four or more posts after January.
  • Yes, I did four in April, mostly to win this prediction.