Notes

Brewers Win World Series

Bradford Doolitte, writing for ESPN, laid it all out.

After staking their claim at the top of the sport all season long, it culminates here: For the first time, the Milwaukee Brewers are champions of the baseball world, and they deserve it.

There is simply no facet of baseball and of winning games at which the Brewers do not excel. Only one team scored more runs. They ranked fifth in steals, first in walk rate. They led the majors in batting average and on-base percentage. They did not rely on homers but could go deep when needed and ranked seventh in average exit velocity. In run prevention, the Brewers ranked second in team ERA and second in strikeout rate. The team defense was in the top five to 10 in most leading metrics.

Milwaukee had its moments before -- a lone pennant in 1982, led by Hall of Famers Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. National League Championship Series appearances in 2011, 2018 and 2025. But the Brewers had never been able to break the ceiling and win a World Series title. This year, they left no doubt. They took down the San Diego Padres in four games and the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in a sweep. Those same Dodgers had eliminated the Brewers in their previous two NLCS appearances, the greatest recent obstacle between Milwaukee and that long-sought championship.

The Brewers are the standard now. What a great final out. It feels a little like the Cardinals of old.

I like to think Chaim Bloom and William DeWitt Jr. are taking notes.

Recently, Will Leitch and Bernie Miklasz talked to Bloom on their “Seeing Red” podcast. It was a great conversation, and I thought Bloom was pretty candid.

In short, Chaim Bloom called his first season running the Cardinals a success, but he’s clear the team isn’t close to finished. I don’t think anyone really thought otherwise.

His main belief is that building a strong organization never ends. He rejects the idea that the foundation is now in place and the hard part is behind them, and he won’t make “win now” moves that cost the team that foundation. This seems smart and forward-thinking.

I really like that he wants a looser clubhouse where players show emotion and joy. Yes. Let’s cut out the stodgy, buttoned-up, and, dare I say it, conservative Cardinals and start having fun.

Will it be the Cardinals turn soon? I’d like to think so.

Tomorrow

Dan Buffa --

About tomorrow… or today, take it one hour at a time. Don’t let a shitty moment become your entire day. Find the good and inflate it, wherever it exists. Eat something, even an apple or some popcorn. Enjoy that coffee. Hide somewhere for a minute or two, and take the first sip like you found coffee an hour ago. Be great at your job. Don’t take any shit and don’t give any out. Be cool, calm, and collected.

If it all goes to shit, there’s always tomorrow. Like sports teams look to next year, we look to tomorrow. Do it better, or simply do it again.

The No-Screens, No-Brakes Offense

CJ Moore, writing for The Athletic, has an incredible story about Illinois Basketball and how the team will play this upcoming season.

Illinois could be difficult to prepare for because the ball screen has become such a staple of almost every college offense. The early returns are promising, considering the Illini have averaged 98 points and had five runs of at least 8-0 in two games. (Their defense and rebounding are another matter, but those are areas where Mirkovic will help.)

There isn’t a ball screen anywhere happening on the court this year. This team is going to be going a thousand miles an hour every possession. If the other team misses and Illinois rebounds, anyone can bring the ball up the court, even 7-foot-1 center Tomislav Ivisic. They are going to kill opponents with their pace on both ends of the floor.

Against Baylor, Illinois employed an “up the line/on the line” defense that caused a lot of havoc. That’s something I want to see more of as players get healthy and conditioning peaks.

Tons of players aren’t going to play against UIC in the last exhibition, and I’m good with that. We need everyone as healthy and ready for when the games start to count. Texas Tech will be the first real test, and Duke will be difficult, but I like this team’s chances.

Under Story

Sometimes I pick up a book not knowing anything about the author or their other books and dive in headfirst, hoping the buildup is worth it. Under Story by Chloe Benjamin was hyped up online (at least in my feed) and I will admit the blurb sounded amazing.

At the edge of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career and a family.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t escape her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won’t be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?

A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself.

I was really excited for Under Story, but I DNF’d it at a little over halfway. I listened to the audio and was constantly frustrated. I never connected with Laurel, even with the extensive backstory about every single person in her life. Her constant tangents about her past, which meandered with zero payoff, became unbearable. I kept waiting for the story to get back to the main plot.

Before I quit, I did a little research on the book and read plenty of Goodreads posts absolutely loving the story and ones absolutely hating on it. I stopped before I even got to the ridiculous Benjamin Button-esque Duoverse section where time runs backward, and humans emerge from the ground as elderly people before gradually growing younger until they return to infancy.

I think there’s a story here, but only if someone like Blake Crouch or Ray Bradbury were writing it. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time disliking the main character, not enjoying the writing, hating all the scientific exposition, and wading through prose that never really wanted to actually follow the plot.

Interesting concept, but definitely not for me.

Confusing Taste with Creativity

713 Magazine on Instagram:

In a world where cultural knowledge has become its own form of social currency, knowing the right designers, listening to the right music, and recognizing the right references can make someone appear just as creative as the people actually producing the work.

We’ve reached a point where an entire identity can be built around what someone consumes, collects, wears, and shares. And while developing good taste requires curiosity, knowledge, and an understanding of culture, recognizing something exceptional isn’t necessarily the same as creating something exceptional.

This doesn’t mean curation lacks creative value. Some of the most influential figures in fashion, art, and music have shaped culture through their ability to recognize talent, connect ideas, and introduce people to things they otherwise might never have discovered.

But there’s a difference between being influenced by something and simply reproducing its appearance. Creativity requires more than understanding what has already been accepted. It often means taking risks, developing an independent perspective, and making something that people might not immediately understand.

This is sharp.

To me, curation means understanding what’s good. Creativity is bringing ideas to life. You can be creative and still not know what good taste actually is.

You have to have both.

Linky Goodness 10.23

Red Bull took over one of the karting tracks at Silverstone (home of the British Grand Prix), put 100 regular folks in karts, positioned four-time F1 champ Max Verstappen at the back of the pack, and gave him 75 minutes (or 30 laps) to pass everyone. Spoiler alert: he only needed 35 minutes.

Design Fiction is a collection of UI and tech from science fiction. It’s like a mood board of science fiction controls.

Twenty-six seconds into the first trailer for Fox’s Baywatch reboot, a plane crashes into a parasail, dragging two screaming girls into the watery abyss. There’s a lot of abs, slow motion and thigh-high swimsuits as the lifeguards literally jump into action. A few seconds later, Stephen Amell’s character rides the submerged plane like a kneeboard up to the surface. It is glorious. I can’t wait.

An archive of Omni magazine (1978-1995), courtesy of the Internet Archive. I think my Dad has all of these issues, or at least most of them.

Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew is coming soon. Here’s the first trailer. Is this good? I can’t tell.

I have little faith in polls, and I hate prediction markets, but I can't help peeking at PressAudit's 2026 midterm tracker.

Ambient Earth is a 7.5-hour, real-time, 4K, remastered video of the orbital view from the International Space Station. Seán Doran took almost 49,000 images from 27 time-lapse sequences captured from the ISS by astronaut Butch Wilmore, repaired, remastered, and interpolated them into this incredible video.

These lunch ladies are having a great time.

I love watching Gordon Ramsay make scrambled eggs. I first saw this video years ago and, possibly because I am not a great cook, have made these eggs at home in this exact way since. Now, I want some scrambled eggs.

Three Italian ‘hobbits’ flew to Ireland to return this man’s ring — and it was precious.

iPhone Duo

John Gruber has an extensive review of the iPhone Duo that is exactly what I needed to read.

The Duo name is perfect. It truly is like having two devices in one. The outer device is, by far, the worst iPhone Apple has ever made. It’s a miserable fat little thing. The inner device is a splendid, joyful, beautiful tablet, with a UI that out-iPads the iPad. For me, by far, it’s my favorite tablet experience ever. I prefer it to any iPad or Kindle-like reader I’ve ever used.

So I’ll cut to the chase. The decision of whether you might want to buy a Duo is not easy, because only one of its two selves is good. You might be delighted, despite its clear compromises, if what you value most is a pocketable small tablet and are ambivalent about your iPhone. You might be endlessly frustrated if you love your iPhone, and use it extensively, often for quick interactions throughout the day, every day.

What I want is a foldable iPad mini with no outer screen. Apple should make this immediately and add it to the iPad Mini lineup. It would sell like crazy.

An iPad Mini is $800 for 256GB. An iPhone Duo with 256GB is $2,000. Why on Earth would anyone get the Duo?

In the meantime, I still think the iPad Mini is the best tablet form factor.

$20 Million Dollar Club

Twenty million dollars.

That’s the line Isaac Trotter and Matt Norlander drew in their new CBS Sports report on college basketball roster spending, and Illinois sits on the far side of it.

They spoke with more than 100 people in the various programs and around the sport. Then they projected which programs will spend more than $20 million on their 2026-27 rosters. Eleven made the cut. Illinois is one of them.

In the Big Ten, only Michigan is in the same neighborhood. Indiana isn’t far behind. The average Big Ten roster runs $12.7 million, by Trotter and Norlander’s count. So Illinois is spending more than $7 million above what a typical conference opponent spends.

For Illinois, the most important word is retention. Most of that money didn’t go toward new faces. It went toward keeping the ones already in Champaign. David Mirkovic. Andrej Stojakovic. Tomislav and Zvonimir Ivisic, the twin centers.

Illinois and Michigan are the top dawgs in the Big Ten. Retention was not cheap for the Illini, but keeping David Mirkovic, Andrej Stojakovic and the rest of the Balkans was well worth the price of admission. The Illini were prepared to dole out top-of-the-market money for Year 2 of Keaton Wagler, but he went pro (smart decision), so the Illini's Final Four hopes hinge heavily on just how good Providence transfer guard Stefan Vaaks and five-star guard Quentin Coleman can become.

I’m not predicting another Final Four, but that would be an amazing accomplishment. Winning a National Championship? I don’t even want to dare to dream.

The Rebuild Idea

Dan Buffa on the Brewers success and what it might mean for the Cardinals.

Remember, St. Louis Cardinals fans.

Milwaukee triumphing over the mighty Dodgers is a sign that the formula works. The same one that Chaim Bloom is administering at the moment is working its magic elsewhere, built from the same components. As the esteemed Bernie Miklaszrecently wrote, the success of every remaining team speaks to the method of madness currently in motion at Busch Stadium.

Homegrown talent, a well-balanced checkbook of smart moves and less risky moves, player development at a premium, and a non-reliance on home runs or big salaries.

By taking down the limitless spending Los Angeles club that was looking for its fourth World Series ring in the past six years, the Brewers showed that the rebuild idea is fresh and clean instead of tired and outdated. You need to scrape all the shit out from the bottom of the cup before it can be used again after all. Be patient, fans. It’s working. Go Brewers. Having someone win from your division proves the potency that there is a threat to every team in the league. Run long, Milwaukee.

While this is nice. I’m unconvinced the plan will work. It might. At least there’s a real plan, but I’m not sure.

To be fair, it’s the only way to go when your team isn’t named the Dodgers or Yankees. However, there’s an obvious reason why, for example, the Dodgers are winning World Series after World Series and other organizations are not.

Can you figure it out? Can Bloom? Can the DeWitt family?

Basement Alchemy | The Alchemy Sessions VOL. II

Shai Pellad, who is basically Basement Alchemy, has created another awesome video.

Last year I made my first one-man-band studio show. This year I did it again, and apparently we have a tradition now.

So, I’m officially calling these The Alchemy Sessions.

Last year was Vol. I. This is The Alchemy Sessions Vol. II.

This is my way of celebrating the release of the new album introverse with the people who support my music most.

Grab some headphones, hit the link below, and enjoy the show.

So good.