The Minnesota Timberwolves have a couple of former Fighting Illini basketball players on their roster, Terrance Shannon, Jr. and Ayo Dosunmu. Both stepped up in the first round of the NBA playoffs to take down the Denver Nuggets.

Last Saturday, Dosunmu scored 43 points off the bench. Thirteen of seventeen from the field. Five for five from three. Twelve for twelve from the line. Forty-two minutes of work, a 27-foot pull-up to put the game away, and an arena chanting MVP at a guy who joined the team two months ago.

Thursday night, Shannon delivered a breakout performance, helping the Timberwolves close out the series. Just like Ayo, he had to start because the Timberwolves have been bitten by the injury bug. He scored a playoff career-high 24 points while adding six rebounds, one assist, and two steals. He shot 9-of-20 from the field and was perfect from the free-throw line.

Watching their individual highlights from the games and it was just like watching both in an Illini uniform. I keep thinking this is exactly how it looked to anyone who watched them at Illinois. It’s cool to see these two players excelling in the NBA and representing Illinois.

I don’t really watch much NBA, but the highlights (Dosunmu, Shannon Jr.) are fun.

Most weeks, the internet is a place that takes things from you. This week, it gave back. Hank Green pulled together every NASA photo from the Artemis II mission, all the videos posted to Instagram and YouTube, the official mission schedule, and the public API that tracks the Orion spacecraft’s location at any given moment, and he stitched them into an interactive timeline. You scroll through ten days of crewed flight to the moon and back. You see what they saw, when they saw it, where they were when they saw it.

NASA uploads its photos to Flickr with the EXIF data intact. Flickr preserves it. NASA also publishes the spacecraft trajectory through an open API. Three pieces of public infrastructure, free for anyone to use, were sitting there waiting for someone to combine them. Hank Green did.

I think I have Plantar Fasciitis. My foot now aches after walking on it. It’s not painful when sitting, but it really hurts when I walk. I’ve done a bit of research to see what can be done and it looks like a massage ball and stretching it about it. I’ve taken ibuprofen, but I don’t think it really helps.

I’ll do the stretching and the massage and hopefully it will get better.

Will is stuck in a time loop.

At least, that’s what he thinks. His life is mundane enough that it takes him a while to notice the days repeating. So he tells Elise. She doesn’t believe him, but she helps him anyway. With her encouragement, he finds a way out.

That’s the surface.

Watch it again and the loop starts to come apart. I’m not convinced it was ever a loop. Clues are planted early and they aren’t obvious. You’ll finish the second viewing holding a theory you didn’t have after the first. You might not be any more certain.

I love these kinds of videos.

After 18 months of court fights, the deal is done. The Onion has acquired Infowars. Alex Jones can cry all he wants.

Obviously, satire and comedy won’t fix what Jones did. Nothing can. But watching the machinery that tormented the Sandy Hook families get repurposed as a joke against itself, with a judge’s approval and the families' blessing, is maybe the closest thing to real justice we’re going to see this year.

When you watch the official title sequence for 007 First Light, you might be fooled into thinking there’s a new Bond movie coming.

It’s not a movie, but close enough.

The video game features the original song “First Light,” written and composed by Lana Del Rey and David Arnold. It’s got the slow strings and the punchy horns, and it slides a bit of the old Monty Norman theme into the end of the chorus. I think the song is a fantastic addition to the Bond soundscape. Not better than Adele’s “Skyfall,” but way better than “No Time to Die” by Billie Eilish.

Watch the title sequence again. It’s silhouettes and explosions and abstract smoke, the choreography and visuals someone figured out in 1962 and nobody has improved on since. Perfection.

the two dangers of writing:

someone will read it

no one will read it

- Night P. Avenir

Read on Substack

Sean Bonner is on a tear and I’m here for it —

I’ve been amused at the headlines over the last few days that statutory rape defender and Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz has left the Democrats and become Republican. First of all, because who cares? Secondly, because he’s mad that Democrats aren’t pro-Israel enough, which (unfortunately) isn’t true but also who cares? But mostly amusing because he already threw a temper tantrum and quit back in 2024. I guess it’s good for headlines or whatever though so maybe we’ll see him make the same announcement again in a few years? Turns out this is a thing, in a huff Sean Hannity announced that from this moment on he’s no longer Catholic. This of course spawned by the “tough situation” (spoiler: it’s not actually tough) that a lot of MAGA-Catholics are finding themselves in having to pick sides between Trump and The Pope. Again memories seem to be failing because Hannity already announced he’d left the Catholic Church back in 2019. It’s almost like these are just performative labels that can be applied when beneficial and thrown off when it makes a good headline. Speaking of MAGA and changing beliefs, it seems like a growing number of the Trump faithful are suddenly questioning if the Butler assassination attempt was staged. 

Speaking of staged, social media is being flooded by tons of AI-generated influencers who really love Trump. And while this appears to be a concerted effort with a specific purpose, apparently it’s not hard to fool people and randos are realizing that making fake AI Bible loving MAGA devotees can be a very profitable grift. I looked around and seems like this is only really happening in one direction, which is a whole story in and of itself. It gets worse, people are now making fake testimonials from fake abuse victims to push regime change in other countries. Unless you know the person or are seeing it live, pretty hard to trust any video online at this point. To balance that out, somewhat, human influencers are apparently being hired to spread panic about AI bringing about the end of humanity. So that’s fun.

While the doomer narrative is everywhere, I thought this comment from 02UI about the newly released Claude Design was an interesting take: “People are saying designers are cooked, but I think the opposite – now designers can cook!” Design friends, that 12 minute video is worth watching. As new models and new products are shipping almost everyday now I think it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and if are in one of the fields that AI is likely to impact, or has already impacted (which is almost all of them) then trying to think of opportunities rather than sinking into fear is probably advisable. I think “I have an entire design and dev team working for me now” is going to help people sleep better than “this AI can do in 10 minutes the think that takes me a week, so I’m toast.” Taste is still yours and valuable, it’s execution which is losing it’s mystique.

Speaking of toast, the Iranian Lego trolling videos are just insane. I’m sure Lego is not happy about them, and I can’t even imagine what is going on behind closed doors at the White House but it’s relentless and at this point anytime something newsworthy happens theres a Lego parody music video circulating in a few hours. The point here which should be obvious is you can just do things now. Like, for real. The separation between having an idea and delivering it to the world has been reduced to just deciding to make it. Its really exciting and I feel like I should be doing more, what about you?

David Graham in The Atlantic —

In the lead-up to the war, which Trump launched without consulting Congress, making a case to the American people, or assembling allies, many of his aides believed that Trump was not taking seriously the risks and trade-offs involved … Once the war began, Trump received updates that were screened and bowdlerized for him. He has long been inattentive to briefings—early in his first term, aides realized that he liked maps and graphics and would glaze over if given much information in text—but he has reportedly been starting his day off with a sizzle reel of stunning explosions rather than with hard info.

A President who can’t be in the Situation Room, can’t be trusted with information, and can’t handle reality should not be the leader of the free world.

Noah Hawley in The Atlantic —

Any asset can be acquired but nothing can ever be lost, because for soon-to-be trillionaires, no level of loss could significantly change their global standing or personal power. For them, the word failure has ceased to mean anything. This sense of invulnerability has deep psychological ramifications. If everything is free and nothing matters, then the world and other people exist only to be acted upon, if they are acknowledged at all. This is different from classic narcissism, in which a grandiose but fragile self-image can mask deep insecurity. What I’m talking about is a self-definition in which the individual grows to the size of the universe, and the universe vanishes.

Most billionaires probably shouldn’t exist.

“Some people don’t understand that sitting in your own house, alone, in peace, and eating snacks while minding your business is priceless.” — Tom Hardy

Sarah Fitzpatrick in The Atlantic —

On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for ‘breaching equipment’—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.

Can we please rid ourselves of these incompetent buffoons?

What a great day for Illinois basketball on Wednesday. It wasn’t surprising but it was certainly fun.

I fully expect Andrej Stojakovic will be next this week. There are still some other pieces to figure out like where Ty Rogers fits and others lower on the bench, but the core looks like it will be back.

I’d like to also land John Blackwell. The problem is there’s a lot of mouths to feed. Vaaks, Mirkovic, Stojakovic, Coleman, and Morillo are all getting minutes and will have the ball in their hands. If I’m Blackwell, I’d want to be the lead guard handling everything, but Illinois is not a one-dimensional team. Does he want to play for a national champion contender?

If he doesn’t want that, even if the money is decent, then he should never have left Wisky. Reality is it’s probably a pay day and that’s okay too. The fit at Illinois is way better for him, but who knows?

I have every confidence the program will pivot to a different 1 or 2 already in the portal if they don’t get Blackwell. Still, with everyone essentially coming back, a tremendous freshman class, and at least two impact transfers, the train will keep rolling.

And that’s all that matters.

McCartney Rock ‘n Roll in Three Phases

  1. Beatles: “I’m Down” (1965) This is McCartney at his most primal. Recorded the same day as “Yesterday” - the range is staggering - it’s a flat-out rock and roll scream, inspired by Little Richard, and arguably the most ferociously energetic thing the Beatles ever put to tape. “Helter Skelter” is the obvious rival, but “I’m Down” has a raw, almost reckless abandon that even Helter can’t quite match.
  2. Wings: “Jet” (1973) No contest, really. From the opening blast, “Jet” is one of the great rock openings of the 1970s - relentless, euphoric, mysterious (nobody is quite sure what it’s actually about). It showcases McCartney’s gift for momentum: the song never lets up, yet never feels like it’s working hard.
  3. Solo: “Maybe I’m Amazed” (1970) A love letter to Linda wrapped in one of the most powerful rock vocal performances of his career. The guitar solo is ragged and perfect. In its live version (Wings Over America), it became something transcendent. For later-period solo, “Coming Up” deserves a mention: strange, funky, and irresistibly propulsive.

What’s striking is that Paul McCartney’s rock and roll is always joyful, even when it’s ferocious. That’s his particular genius in the genre.

The Playlist has a story on Soderbergh Bond pitches and I kind of shake my head in disbelief –

The first pitch, he said, goes back to 2008, and it was already pretty radical by Bond standards. “I had pitched in 2008 the idea to Barbara Broccoli of a parallel franchise,” Soderbergh said. “Set in the ’60s, R-rated, violent, sexy. Fictional backstory to real historical events, different actor, different universe.” […]

That version was designed to open up a different, more lo-fi, stripped-down, and cost-effective way of making Bond movies, but not a replacement for them. “[It would be] cheaply made, where you get people like me, who are interested in that approach to do one of these things,” Soderbergh explained. “It’s just another lane that exists totally separate from the normal Bond movies.”

Broccoli and company, he said, were at least open enough to hear it out. “They were intrigued,” Soderbergh said. “But didn’t move forward.”

What could have been?

Nicholas Bate –

The question to ask is not will I be replaced by AI but how can I use AI to enhance my career?