Hey, gang. What's up on your clearing out plans? Anyone Marie Kondoing this?
48 thoughts on “March 21, 2022: Spring Cleaning”
Got a bunch of mulching done, grubbing out some of the stuff behind the retaining wall, Miracid on the blueberries, and the deck power washed. Still have pre-emergent to put down and more mulching to do before allergy season all but shuts me down.
Wow, Wolves are now the sixth seed. Tonight's game is fairly huge.
Couple games against Dallas this week. 😳
Any way to watch them that doesn't involve Bally Sports?
Not that I am aware of. I'm sure there are some legal-adjacent options but I don't know what they are these days.
I was looking to see if I could do NBA League Pass for the 7 days free to watch these next 4 games but it looks like home teams are blacked out even with that. Bally Sports has a free streaming app, if you could somehow log in under like Orlando's zip code I wonder if you could then watch? Beyond my expertise.
Bally doesn't black out as far as I know.
I log in to Bally under a Stillwater zip code to get MN sports. You'll have to suffer the Magic if you use Orlando.
Correa took #4 from Royce Lewis, who is going to wear #23 instead. I’m surprised — Nick Gordon is about as fungible as a guy on the 25-man gets, and Lewis seems like the kind of guy a team wants wearing a single-digit uni number.
That's awfully bullish on Lewis. I hope you're right.
The only number that will fit on Nick Gordon's body is 1.
#mnwild have traded for Marc-Andre Fleury. It’s going to be a conditional pick. Waiting on specifics.
Kahkonen to San Jose for Jacob Middleton (solid defenseman who is very large).
Guerin has acquired like 5 guys whose primary attribute is "good at killing penalties" this week. Middleton is more than just that, but it fits the pattern.
MIddleton and Merrill will be formidable if a game comes down to a mustache-off.
It seems like BG saw the way the Wild played v. Calgary and others coming out the All-Star break and decided The Wild needed to get heavier and tougher for the playoffs.
For Fleury, the Wild give up a 2nd round pick that becomes a 1st if they make the Western Conference Finals AND Fleury gets 4 wins in the first two playoff rounds.
This seems like a pretty good analysis of the trade.
A year or so ago, MN sports was at a pretty low point. Maybe even historically low. Now the Wild are good, fun, and making things interesting. The Timberwolves are apparently fun. The Vikings are interesting with changes. And the Twins are blowing everyone's minds with Correa.
I'm well aware of how this all ends, but at least the ride is fun before the crash.
The Twins getting swept in the World Series at least means they not only won a postseason game but two postseason series.
Three, unless they have the best record in the AL. Congratulations to MLB for finding a way to completely devalue winning two of the three divisions per league.
I started following gocleanco on IG a while back and now I'm a little bit obsessed. The benefit is that I've discovered some different cleaning tools that help me do a better job cleaning without necessarily spending more time on it. (This mop, for instance, is amazing. You use hot water and a teaspoon of powdered Tide and don't need to do a second mopping to rinse off any soap.)
Ex-Twins Daniel Palka and Travis Blankenhorn have apparently made their way to the Mets for this year's spring training.
Choosing the fifty best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. Though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author.
Case in point: they place Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at 40. Which means no spot for Stranger in a Strange Land. Which is absurd.
Similarly, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is at 23. So, no Handmaid's Tale.
It's just a weird approach.
I actually prefer Mistress to Stranger, but I'd have probably chosen other.
I've seen similar methods done with albums, and while I appreciate seeing a list not heavily monopolized by a few, they're not usually done well.
Oh, I get that these pieces are all about clicks. I mean, they are hard to resist.
The author tried very hard to come up with a "diverse" list of authors. Which means a lot of notables are missing.
Why is diverse in quotes here?
No particular reason. I don't know enough about many of the authors to judge whether there was an agenda beyond "excellence" in the representation of African authors. Seemed like a shortage of European authors, but I couldn't point to specific snubs.
One representative for all of Eastern Europe seemed insufficient; “robot,” after all, is a word of Slavic origin (Czech, specifically, as it came from Karel Čapek‘s play R.U.R.). The absences of the Strugatskys and Zamyatin specifically stuck out to me.
Jack London’s The Iron Heel seems important (particularly if you consider it predicted reactionary political backlashes to the rise of popular leftist political movements.) Maybe Verne, if you consider Verne to be sci fi.
How could you not consider Verne to be science fiction? He's certainly more so than Stephen King, for crying out loud.
If anything, I find the list leans way too heavily on newer authors. Not saying they're not good (I've read several), but that's like including a half-dozen active players (and DFJeter) in the top 50 all-time baseball players.
I like that the list reflects that sci-fi has gotten better as time has gone on.
Here's my hot takes
1. I'd put The Fifth Season higher, #4 is too low.
2. Oryx and Crake is better than The Handmaid's Tale.
3. There's too many Heinlein books on this list.
4. I enjoyed that the list was 75% white male authors from 30-50, and then the ratio flipped for the top 30. It reflects the growth of the genre and what sci-fi is now in comparison to what it was (and, like I said above, how that is better).
That said, any top list without Ender's/Speaker is just going through the motions
I would absolutely swap in Speaker for the Dead somewhere in the 20-30 range.
I've seen Čapek‘s gravesite at Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague.
The rest of the group did not quite understand why I was excited
True story: I was reading R.U.R. and my then middle schooler asked what it was about. I said, men created these robots to help them and then the robots turn around and start controlling the world. My middle schooler mockingly says "well I've heard that story about a hundred times."
Sounds like the list might turn you on to some awesome new authors/books.
True that.
I've resisted it twice now, fwiw
That’s a poor methodology. If the concern is that the genre is too highly serialized, it’s perfectly easy to set a limit of one book from any series while allowing multiple standalone novels by the same author. It seems like they might as well have set themselves the goal of naming the fifty most significant sci-of authors, since that’s ultimately the effect of this rule. That would be a more honest, and probably more interesting, list.
Authors have developmental arcs, just like musicians and visual artists. Authors who have more interesting things to say tend to be ones who find new ways to say those things, new characters to explore them, rather than go back to the same well for five, eight, fourteen or whatever books. That’s not to say that there isn’t value in a a period of intense focus on one subject or idea, but an entire career build on that shouldn’t be a reason to limit others whose range grew and was supported by top-notch writing chops.
This seems as good a place as any to put this... I finished The Three Body Problem not too long ago. How exactly are they going to make a show from that book? I assume they'll be adding a plot?
That makes it sound like I didn't like it, but I thought it was fine and I can definitely recognize some specific strengths in the book too. It just seemed like a perfectly cromulent book to me, nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah, some great books just don't translate well to the screen. That's why there hasn't been a Rendezvous with Rama adaptation (thankfully - it's just primed for someone to throw a lot of action-packed bleck into it). That said, all three of Liu's books in the series hit a slew of interesting ideas.
I'm going to be curious how they work with the 3BP miniseries.
I have zero desire to read the next 2 books. There are simply no characters to care about.
Got a bunch of mulching done, grubbing out some of the stuff behind the retaining wall, Miracid on the blueberries, and the deck power washed. Still have pre-emergent to put down and more mulching to do before allergy season all but shuts me down.
Wow, Wolves are now the sixth seed. Tonight's game is fairly huge.
Couple games against Dallas this week. 😳
Any way to watch them that doesn't involve Bally Sports?
Not that I am aware of. I'm sure there are some legal-adjacent options but I don't know what they are these days.
I was looking to see if I could do NBA League Pass for the 7 days free to watch these next 4 games but it looks like home teams are blacked out even with that. Bally Sports has a free streaming app, if you could somehow log in under like Orlando's zip code I wonder if you could then watch? Beyond my expertise.
Bally doesn't black out as far as I know.
I log in to Bally under a Stillwater zip code to get MN sports. You'll have to suffer the Magic if you use Orlando.
Correa took #4 from Royce Lewis, who is going to wear #23 instead. I’m surprised — Nick Gordon is about as fungible as a guy on the 25-man gets, and Lewis seems like the kind of guy a team wants wearing a single-digit uni number.
That's awfully bullish on Lewis. I hope you're right.
The only number that will fit on Nick Gordon's body is 1.
Oh, jeez.
Kahkonen to San Jose for Jacob Middleton (solid defenseman who is very large).
Guerin has acquired like 5 guys whose primary attribute is "good at killing penalties" this week. Middleton is more than just that, but it fits the pattern.
MIddleton and Merrill will be formidable if a game comes down to a mustache-off.
That man is a cop
It seems like BG saw the way the Wild played v. Calgary and others coming out the All-Star break and decided The Wild needed to get heavier and tougher for the playoffs.
For Fleury, the Wild give up a 2nd round pick that becomes a 1st if they make the Western Conference Finals AND Fleury gets 4 wins in the first two playoff rounds.
This seems like a pretty good analysis of the trade.
https://nhl.nbcsports.com/2022/03/21/with-fleury-trade-wild-boldly-aim-to-fix-biggest-weakness/
Can't beat him, get him?
A Fleury of deals at the deadline.
I'll show myself out.
A year or so ago, MN sports was at a pretty low point. Maybe even historically low. Now the Wild are good, fun, and making things interesting. The Timberwolves are apparently fun. The Vikings are interesting with changes. And the Twins are blowing everyone's minds with Correa.
I'm well aware of how this all ends, but at least the ride is fun before the crash.
The Twins getting swept in the World Series at least means they not only won a postseason game but two postseason series.
Three, unless they have the best record in the AL. Congratulations to MLB for finding a way to completely devalue winning two of the three divisions per league.
I started following gocleanco on IG a while back and now I'm a little bit obsessed. The benefit is that I've discovered some different cleaning tools that help me do a better job cleaning without necessarily spending more time on it. (This mop, for instance, is amazing. You use hot water and a teaspoon of powdered Tide and don't need to do a second mopping to rinse off any soap.)
Ex-Twins Daniel Palka and Travis Blankenhorn have apparently made their way to the Mets for this year's spring training.
"young" catcher
I mean, yes, young compared to me.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this acquisition may make somewhat less of an impact than the Carlos Correa deal.
Wut.
Esquire top 50 sci-fi books
Case in point: they place Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at 40. Which means no spot for Stranger in a Strange Land. Which is absurd.
Similarly, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is at 23. So, no Handmaid's Tale.
It's just a weird approach.
I actually prefer Mistress to Stranger, but I'd have probably chosen other.
I've seen similar methods done with albums, and while I appreciate seeing a list not heavily monopolized by a few, they're not usually done well.
Oh, I get that these pieces are all about clicks. I mean, they are hard to resist.
The author tried very hard to come up with a "diverse" list of authors. Which means a lot of notables are missing.
Why is diverse in quotes here?
No particular reason. I don't know enough about many of the authors to judge whether there was an agenda beyond "excellence" in the representation of African authors. Seemed like a shortage of European authors, but I couldn't point to specific snubs.
One representative for all of Eastern Europe seemed insufficient; “robot,” after all, is a word of Slavic origin (Czech, specifically, as it came from Karel Čapek‘s play R.U.R.). The absences of the Strugatskys and Zamyatin specifically stuck out to me.
Jack London’s The Iron Heel seems important (particularly if you consider it predicted reactionary political backlashes to the rise of popular leftist political movements.) Maybe Verne, if you consider Verne to be sci fi.
How could you not consider Verne to be science fiction? He's certainly more so than Stephen King, for crying out loud.
If anything, I find the list leans way too heavily on newer authors. Not saying they're not good (I've read several), but that's like including a half-dozen active players (and DFJeter) in the top 50 all-time baseball players.
I like that the list reflects that sci-fi has gotten better as time has gone on.
Here's my hot takes
1. I'd put The Fifth Season higher, #4 is too low.
2. Oryx and Crake is better than The Handmaid's Tale.
3. There's too many Heinlein books on this list.
4. I enjoyed that the list was 75% white male authors from 30-50, and then the ratio flipped for the top 30. It reflects the growth of the genre and what sci-fi is now in comparison to what it was (and, like I said above, how that is better).
That said, any top list without Ender's/Speaker is just going through the motions
I would absolutely swap in Speaker for the Dead somewhere in the 20-30 range.
I've seen Čapek‘s gravesite at Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague.
The rest of the group did not quite understand why I was excited
True story: I was reading R.U.R. and my then middle schooler asked what it was about. I said, men created these robots to help them and then the robots turn around and start controlling the world. My middle schooler mockingly says "well I've heard that story about a hundred times."
Sounds like the list might turn you on to some awesome new authors/books.
True that.
I've resisted it twice now, fwiw
That’s a poor methodology. If the concern is that the genre is too highly serialized, it’s perfectly easy to set a limit of one book from any series while allowing multiple standalone novels by the same author. It seems like they might as well have set themselves the goal of naming the fifty most significant sci-of authors, since that’s ultimately the effect of this rule. That would be a more honest, and probably more interesting, list.
Authors have developmental arcs, just like musicians and visual artists. Authors who have more interesting things to say tend to be ones who find new ways to say those things, new characters to explore them, rather than go back to the same well for five, eight, fourteen or whatever books. That’s not to say that there isn’t value in a a period of intense focus on one subject or idea, but an entire career build on that shouldn’t be a reason to limit others whose range grew and was supported by top-notch writing chops.
This seems as good a place as any to put this... I finished The Three Body Problem not too long ago. How exactly are they going to make a show from that book? I assume they'll be adding a plot?
That makes it sound like I didn't like it, but I thought it was fine and I can definitely recognize some specific strengths in the book too. It just seemed like a perfectly cromulent book to me, nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah, some great books just don't translate well to the screen. That's why there hasn't been a Rendezvous with Rama adaptation (thankfully - it's just primed for someone to throw a lot of action-packed bleck into it). That said, all three of Liu's books in the series hit a slew of interesting ideas.
I'm going to be curious how they work with the 3BP miniseries.
I have zero desire to read the next 2 books. There are simply no characters to care about.