“That’s him. He just plays. He just hoops. There’s nothing that fazes him. He just wants to make the right basketball play. Tonight it happened to be scoring it. It’s just his personality. He’s so stoic. He’s very non-emotional. He’s excited, yes. His teammates were thrilled. That’s the beauty of Keaton. The most impressive thing is he takes the emotion out of it. In a venue with 15,000 people all against him and he just plays. He took what the game gave him.” – Illinois head coach Brad Underwood on Keaton Wagler’s 46-point performance against Purdue
“I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.” — Corey Doctorow
I watched The Rip last night and thought it was an entertaining couple of hours.
It’s a good heist movie. I love a good heist movie. It’s not exceptional, but it’s entertaining as hell and, frankly, rips. You could not ask for a better cast for a bottled up, tense whodunnit of an action movie. You couldn’t. It’s absurd, and that’s not even factoring in Damon and Affleck — Yeun, Taylor, Sandino Moreno, Chandler. C’mon.
It’s not Heat good because nothing can ever touch that movie, but it’s not even trying to do anything close to Heat.
I didn’t see many of the twists coming; maybe they were obvious, but not to me, or maybe I was too caught up in the action, the tension, and the pace to care. I did catch the various numbers given to the team about how much money they might actually find, and I knew that would come back into the story. The phone books were a good touch.
Andrej Stojakovic, in his previous stops, was the primary everything. At Illinois, he doesn’t have to do that. However, with Kylan Boswell out with a broken hand, he will have to step up and carry the load. The good thing is this Illinois team can score. A lot.
They have the best offense in all of college basketball, but the most encouraging thing about them over the last month has been the improvements they’ve made on defense since the Nebraska game. That’s why they’ve won eight in a row, and that’s why I’m getting excited. That’s why I want to believe. This team might be special.
It’s the next ten games that are the true gauntlet. In those games, we will learn if this team is special or not quite. It culminates in a February 27 Friday night home game against Michigan. In a month, we will know just how special this team will be. I cannot wait to find out.
For a lot of my life, I had a very strong attachment to being right. I didn’t realize it, but it aggravated friends and family. I couldn’t see it, because I was so focused on being right.
Have you noticed this need to be right in yourself? If so, you might reflect on what it feels like when you notice it in others.
Along the same lines, I often feel the need to act like I know what I’m doing or what I’m talking about. This gets in the way of learning from other people, or letting myself be a beginner who doesn’t know what I’m doing. It also … tends to be aggravating to people around me!
Do you notice your need to look like you know what you’re doing or what you’re talking about?
I don’t have the answers to these things … but I find myself practicing letting go. The need to be right or know things feels like tightness in my body. Letting go feels like relaxing that and not needing to appear any way to anyone.
What I’m left with is a more vulnerable place of not knowing. I don’t know if I’m right, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know much at all. But I’m open.
Let me admit I’m not always in this place of not knowing. I still have my attachments. That said, I find it much more interesting to be in the not knowing.
Would you be willing to be in that too?
I like this very much and need to incorporate it into my life.
There is a cannabis dispensary opening soon in my neighborhood and they recently installed the sign for the business. The name… Wait for it…
Really Dope
Tickles me to no end every time I pass by.
Perfection.
This person relates the most unhinged bus story I’ve ever read. It starts with, “I just woke up from a nap and somehow while I was asleep, everyone on the bus has figured out we are not going to the right place.” It just gets crazier from there.
What do you do regularly?
Where do you show up, what do you publish? Who do you ask, and what do you answer to? What gets better because you persist?
Are there systems you support or work to change?
What do you do when you don’t feel like it? Especially then.
The ocean is made of drops. And our practice turns those drops into something of significance.
It’s a practice if we show up even if it’s not working (yet). And it’s a practice if we understand how to make it better.
Our actions become our habits, and our habits attract others. That becomes our community, and our community builds systems. Those systems feel awkward until they become normal, and then, once normal, they become the status quo.
Bolts of lightning rarely change the world, but erosion does. Streams turn into rivers, and rivers persist.
I finished Wake Up Dead Man, the third movie in this series, last night. It was delightful. Smart. The cast was great. The mystery was sophisticated.
I hope Rian Johnson makes 20 more of these.
“I am so bored by A.I. One of the things I love about the theater is: A.I. can’t do it. I couldn’t be less interested in computers and fake things. I like people. I like the way they smell, I like the way they talk, and I like the way they think. I think of A.I. as a plagiarizing mechanism. That’s all it is. And I know it’s going to change the world, it’s screwing everybody up, and I’m not in denial about any of that. But I’m in open rebellion.” — Ethan Hawke
Drew Magary is on fire.
“What does he actually stand for, besides anything that Trump or his sugar daddies in the tech sector tell him to say? And how exactly did Americans benefit from the unprovoked killing of a woman literally named Good? Do you feel any safer thanks to Ross’ open cowardice? Do you feel grateful that he left Good’s children devastated, forever? Are your groceries suddenly cheaper now thanks to Ross’ heroic act of randomly shooting a woman? Did you study all of the camera angles like an NFL ref and decide that actually, Good completed the process of attempted murder? No, no, no, no, no, and no. Vance can lie, slander and spin this killing all he likes, but, thanks to the raw footage, none of it will mask the giant, neon sign blinking over his head that says THIS MAN IS AN AMORAL SACK OF S—T. A fascist. A liar. A champion of genocide.”
Here’s some advice: Live your life in such a way that when you die, your obituaries don’t open with how you were such a massive racist asshole.
Illinois, Daktronics Install Largest Video Display in College Football –
“The new south end zone display will measure approximately 69 feet high by 250 feet wide and will feature a 10-millimeter pixel spacing for high-resolution imagery and improved contrast. The size of the display will allow for larger-than-life content, including live video, instant replays, graphics, animations, game statistics and sponsorship messages.”
I can’t wait to see this thing in action.
The Madness of Living in 2026 –
Will Leitch has had a hard week. Haven’t we all?
“I have regularly told myself, truly believed even, that this ghastly period will eventually end, that we will get through it, that we will someday tell stories of how we lived through it. I didn’t know how it would end. I just believed it would. May we be so lucky. May we make it long enough to find out.”
The simple rule: Nine shortcuts take longer and are less productive than simply doing the work the right way the first time.
When we look for one-quick-tip and the lazy hack, we’re wasting time we could have spent on the direct path instead.
When a shortcut becomes the best way to do something, it ceases to be a shortcut. It’s simply the direct path. It’s easy to find satisfaction in finding the unexplored shortcut that gives us a temporary advantage. However, it won’t last long, and the time spent looking for it is a distraction.
Sit down and type. Stand up and lead. Simply begin.
It was a good B10 road win the other night, but what I noticed is that Illinois athletics is having fun right now. Robert Rosenthal sees it too:
Think back to the water guns in the locker room in Boston after beating Iowa State in the Sweet 16. Think about the chair thing during the tournament with the players pushing in their chairs at press conferences. Think about Luke Altmyer and his shirts praising his offensive linemen. Then think of the football team having a snowball fight on top of the giant snow pile after beating Northwestern.
Think of Brad Underwood purchasing the orange sweatsuit and recreating the AI photo. Think of Tomi smashing the guitar after beating Tennessee the other night.
Think about Krush showing up tonight and drowning out the Ohio State postgame tradition of signing “Carmen Ohio” by signing Alma Mater at the same time. And think about these guys going to this length to support the team from behind the bench referencing the above picture.
Think about all of the Illini fans in Orlando making the T-Bar gesture towards the South Carolina fans. Think about the spring practice where the moms participated, not the players. Think about the Illini fan invasions at Duke in September and in Nashville just the other night.
Could this be any more fun right now?
Winning cures all, of course.
This morning’s moment in Waking Up was wonderfully simple.
You have one job, and it consists of two parts. Be a good person, and pay attention.
Two things.
It was murder. Dave Pell of Nextdraft made this Atlantic piece a gift article and it should be read by everyone. Others should listen to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s message: “Get the f-ck out of Minneapolis. It was murder. The New York Times has a frame-by-frame analysis, from three angles, of the murder. She was a poet. It was murder.
Scott Galloway answered my question on his video.
It starts at 11:56. Pretty cool.
Last night, Montana State won the FCS national championship in overtime on an extra point. Insane game. Being an Illinois State fan for the duration of the game was utterly exhausting.
So much happened at the end, I’m probably forgetting something:
• Illinois State came back to tie the game from down 14
• Illinois State QB wanted to go for it on 4th and 1, but the coach elected to kick the FG
• Illinois State had that go-ahead FG blocked
• Montana State QB took a sack with 1 TO left in FG range to win it
• Montana State’s center snapped the ball before the QB was ready forcing them to punt on 4th and 28 (!!)
• Illinois State in OT promptly went down and scored, but got the extra point blocked
• Illinois State had an INT off the fingertips that would have won the game
• Montana State was down to 4th and 11
• Illinois State brought the house instead of playing prevent and Montana State had a wideout open in the endzone to tie it
• Montana State kicked the extra point to win it
Illinois State went 8-4 in regulation, became the first team to win four road playoff games, a 14-point comeback late vs. No. NDSU and again vs. No. 2 Montana State. They had criss-crossed the country to get to the championship.
They were one defensive stop away from winning it all. Heartbreaking.