Monthly Archives: May 2025

The Eric Meeker

Posted on by

Dr. Robert Cade at the University of Florida developed Gatorade in 1966. His laboratory potion had the right electrolytes & salts from the start, but it didn’t taste good, so the football players who needed it often wouldn’t drink it. Dr. Cade took home an early batch of Gatorade to his wife, who recommended cutting it with lemon, and thus sports science was changed forever. Sometimes a brilliant doctor just needs a good woman to help him out. Gatorade won QB Steve Spurrier the Heisman Trophy in 1966, and “The Sweat Solution” is one of the best ESPN 30-for-30 shorts.

Arnold Palmer popularized professional golf and invented his own drink, now commonly referred to as an Arnold Palmer– which is ice tea with lemon. There are arguments about how to proportion an Arnold Palmer, but Arnie says it is mostly ice tea with the lemon garnishing the drink. Some people prefer an Arnold Palmer with half lemonade or more, so it allows that flexibility and there are various acceptable preferences.

The most delightful moment in this ESPN 30-for-30 short is when Arnold Palmer reveals the moment he finally gave up and started referring to his favorite drink as an Arnold Palmer. His attributed concoction became so accepted & widespread that every waiter/waitress now knows what an Arnold Palmer is, so he gave up and started ordering it as an Arnold Palmer– laughingly hoping that no one will recognize him. It’s a great lesson in how to handle fame and giving up false humility from one of the most beloved athletes of the 20th century.

With that introduction, I am now sharing a drink I invented, which I have named after myself. An ‘Eric Meeker’ is half apple cider & half high-pulp orange juice. Individually orange juice and apple cider are very acidy, which limits  consumability, but surprisingly when these two are combined the acids mellow each other out and you are left with a fruity burst of natural sugar rich in vitamins & minerals your body needs. In this sense it is much better than Gatorade because it is organic. It’s superior to an Arnold Palmer in that it is much healthier, while being comparably delicious.

The Eric Meeker is a 50/50 mixture, and leans no more that 60/40 in either direction. The drink’s inventor says it’s better to have more apple cider than orange juice in an Eric Meeker, and you definitely need high-pulp OJ. Also, apple juice doesn’t work like apple cider. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about an Eric Meeker is its economy & easy mixing, with ingredients that are always available in any decent Midwest food market. The nutrient burst you receive from a cool Eric Meeker will replenish your body with what it needs– and fast.

For years Arnold Palmer didn’t self-reference his favorite drink when ordering it, but I’m skipping past all that. As I’ve learned, it’s a hoot to have invented your own drink, and this blog allows publication of the recipe with all the nuances, so enjoy!

…………….<><><><><>……………..

Classic comedy & crypto-fascism

Posted on by

Mind if I show you a little something? I’ve been watching you, to see what the hell you’re up to, and this is what I see…

Caddyshack (1980) is the funniest movie ever. Beyond that, it was the first movie with a modern soundtrack, featuring the music of Johnny Mandel and also containing two hit songs from Kenny Loggins: “I’m Alright” the film’s classic theme song, and “Mr. Night” the caddy pool-party song. This christened a new movie soundtrack style for the decade, which showed-up in features across all genres including: Flashdance (1983), Ghostbusters (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985) & Dirty Dancing (1987) to name just a few.

Caddyshack is about class lines & the differences between country club members and the caddies who serve them. The class bite gets hidden somewhat underneath all the laughs. Danny Noonan represents the young, unmotivated everyman who see little reason to work hard because there is little-to-no reward for him.

Bill Murray delivers the best scenes, often by himself, and they live in golf lore– as every golfer loves Caddyshack. If you don’t laugh with the Caddyshack audience, then that audience is laughing at you. Few comedies can twist you up like that, and Caddyshack sets the standard.

And to clarify a Caddyshack point regarding Donald Trump, he is a real-life amalgamation of Judge Smails & his grandson Spaulding– meaning they are cheaters at golf, not golfers. This is why you have to be careful when someone asks you to kill every golfer on the course.

Rodney Dangerfield & Ted Knight represent the battle of new money vs old money in Caddyshack. Ted Knight never had a better or more memorable role. Rodney Dangerfield was in one other classic comedy, Back to School (1986), which is relevant to this discussion. Back to School is an underrated movie, with a stellar cast including: Sally Kellerman, Ned Beatty & Robert Downey Jr.

Sam Kinison helps students of history appreciate what happens when you give a good answer to a difficult question, but it isn’t the answer the teacher is looking for…

Robert Downey Jr. as Derek Lutz intervenes at his college homecoming rally to “point out that football is a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.” Somewhere very recently, that line got me thinking and helped me theorize Trump-Musk crypto-fascism. This proves the arts & laughter are food for thought & meditation, so take a hike all you elitist fraternity scumbags…

The latest on crypto-fascism: Stablecoins are seen as “low hanging fruit,” so that’s the current top priority for the crypto industry. Congressional legislation in May has multiple crypto bills being circulated, as the financial media is finally beginning to see the priority of crypto in the Trump-Musk administration. Increasingly it is apparent that crypto is a primary economic & foreign policy driver for the Trump White House.

Stablecoins are a way of connecting worthless crypto to tangible assets such as the US dollar, Treasury notes, etc. In short: stablecoins are a gateway to a crypto-fascist billionaire heist of the US Treasury. Not one “stablecoin” has ever held its 1:1 peg to whatever it’s tied to. STABLE & GENIUS are the crypto bills currently being “debated.” Political blowback has already started as the ‘crypto PAC money Democrats’ are starting to sway due to increasing public concerns. Crypto is a political fight where an educated public can really benefit the cause of revolutionary socialism.

April 2 was “Liberation Day” when the Trump tariffs were announced. The tariff plan was to declare economic war on the nation of China, along with a cost-of-living & jobs war on the international working class. A side benefit for Trump was the chaos it provoked in the news cycles, which deflected attention away from his hidden crypto agenda. The crypto-fascist plan was for the STABLE & GENIUS bills to already be passed, or at least well on their way by now. But these bills have been “paused” instead. Crypto works best in secret, and the timelines on these events (tariffs & crypto legislation) suggest they were part of a coordinated fascist plan. Any public disclosures & analysis of crypto-fascist criminality damages Trump immeasurably.

Lou, dressing down his troops in Caddyshack: I’m gonna lay it right on the line. There have been a lot of complaints already– horsing around on the course, bad language, smoking grass, poor caddying! You wanna get fired, be replaced by golf carts– just keep it up.

…………<><><><><><>………….

The 2025 Colorado Rockies & franchise mismanagement

Posted on by

Preface: The 2024 Chicago White Sox finished 41-121, which ranks among the worst MLB seasons ever. Projections all indicate the White Sox will lose at least 110 games in 2025. Currently they are 9-24, worst record in the AL. Their Pythagorean W-L: 14-19, -25 run differential, indicates they have been quite unlucky early on, which may or may not turn itself around. When you are as bad as the White Sox, you can’t just expect luck to turn itself around. You have to play better to create more of your own luck, so Pythagorean W-L is not as reliable an indicator when a team is this extremely bad.

The 2025 White Sox still have a bunch of guys who can’t hit, including CF Luis Robert, Jr (.182/.300/.345) who is now officially untradable after being shopped for years Their pitching staff is a bunch of young arms with plenty of veteran flotsam mixed in. It’s going to be another long season for the South-siders, but it won’t approach the historical badness of 2024. This team is younger and will finish stronger than in 2024, where the White Sox had three major losing streaks, a 14-game streak (May 22-June 6); an AL-record-tying 21-game streak (July 10-August 5); and a 12-game streak (August 23-September 3). That’s hard to replicate in baseball, no matter how bad you are. The 2024 White Sox were really bad, and they had awful leadership on top of that, which turned them into a historical disaster.

The 2024 White Sox were completely demoralized by management & ownership, starting in Spring Training when they dealt their ace RHP Dylan Cease to the San Diego Padres. This unexpected trade (March 13, 2024) challenged everyone on the White Sox pitching staff to step up and fill a slot, and when they couldn’t it quickly collapsed. The key pitching prospect in the Dylan Cease deal, LHP Drew Thorpe, made nine starts for the Pale Hose until he came up Tommy John surgery. That’s how things started death-spiraling for the 2024 White Sox.

After unloading anything they could at the Trade deadline, the front office was unable to deal their most-coveted asset– young LHP Garrett Crochet, so the team had to ride out the rest of the season with their best pitcher on an innings-limit, so he would remain a valuable trade commodity in the winter. Garrett Crochet was dealt to the Red Sox for four prospects in December. The White Sox now have a top-10 farm system, so they will get better, which isn’t saying much but it is somewhat of a relief.

Setting the mark for most losses in a MLB season and putting your team in the discussion for ‘worst MLB team ever’ doesn’t happen every year, which makes the 2025 Colorado Rockies all the more remarkable. The 2025 Colorado Rockies are already a contender for worst MLB ever. The modern list starts with the 1962 New York Mets, managed by the great Casey Stengel, who were 40-120, with a .250 winning percentage. The 2024 White Sox lost one more game, but also won one more game and had a better winning percentage at .253. Mathematically speaking, as bad as the White Sox were last year, the 1962 Mets were a fraction worse. Futile teams from the dead-ball & pre-integration MLB eras include: 1916 Philadelphia Athletics 36-117, .235; 1935 Boston Braves 38-115 .248: 1904 Washington Senators 38-113 .252; so there are historical teams with a lower winning percentage than the 1962 Mets but they are of a completely different era.

Currently the Colorado Rockies are 6-27, with a Pythagorean W-L: 8-25, and a -83 run differential, by far the worst in MLB. This basically means the Rockies are who they are at this point. Their 8-25 expected winning percentage (Pythagorean) is .242, which over a season projects to 39-123 for the Colorado Rockies. But the Rockies are 6-27, which is a .182 winning percentage, which means they have to start playing a lot better just to get to 40 wins in 2025.

Looking deeper into this futility only reveals more bad news for Colorado Rockies fans. The White Sox have the good fortune to be in one of the two Central divisions in MLB, which are qualitatively less completive than the East & West behemoths in both leagues. By contrast, the 2025 Colorado Rockies are in the toughest division in MLB.

Furthermore, it is impossible to discuss Colorado Rockies baseball without understanding what high altitude does to the game, particularly pitchers. Coors Field fastballs don’t ride as much, sinkers don’t sink, and sweepers don’t sweep. The thin air doesn’t allow spin to work as effectively. It’s about survival, so Rockies pitchers have to pitch differently in their home park, and they all look forward to starting on the road. How can a baseball team win with that?

The altitude also affects conditioning, meaning shorter outings, more fatigue buildup during games and over the course of a season in Denver. With advanced metrics normalized across MLB, they now prove beyond any doubt that it is impossible to build a winning team in Denver, Colorado due to these conditions. The Rockies need to move their franchise (Oakland?) to ever have any hope of competing. They haven’t made the post-season since being ousted in the 2018 Divisional series, and have only fallen further from contention since. The last Rockies free agency splash was Ian Desmond in 2017, signed to play SS but had to move to 1B/DH, he produced -2.8 WAR in three seasons before retiring. Their 2007 World Series appearance is a distant memory.

Can you name one current Colorado Rockies player? Most MLB fans outside of Colorado can’t, and they aren’t intersted in learning, which is the problem. This is a boring, homegrown team that never makes a free agency splash anymore, because (outside of OF Larry Walker) none have worked. Since Bret Saberhagen, Denny Neagle & Darryl Kile, top free agent pitchers never list Colorado as a desired destination during hot stove season, and the same goes for position players who need to waive their no-trade clauses to be dealt– they NEVER authorize a trade to Colorado. How can a GM build an organization up against all this? It’s tough enough to beat the Dodgers at sea level, just ask the Padres, Giants & Diamondbacks, who are trying.

The Rockies have a beautiful ballpark, top-5 by MLB standards, and they fill it up with fans every year, so this comes down to a discussion about what is best for the game. Is it okay for a team that sells-out and has a beautiful modern ballpark to play where the game really isn’t baseball? Baseball in Denver is arena baseball, a distorted pinball version of the game. How long will Colorado Rockies fans put up with the inevitable futility on the field? These questions will grow louder & louder if the Rockies continue to play as they have.

We should not see two consecutive seasons of historic futility in MLB anymore, which is troubling for fans. This can only mean that in an era where sports is more competitive & lucrative than ever, it is now becoming commonplace for teams to completely give up before the season starts. The White Sox did it in 2024, and now it’s the Rockies in 2025 and possibly beyond. The Colorado Rockies are #18 in the latest MLB farm system rankings, but what does that mean when NONE of their pitching prospects can develop into real MLB pitchers?

Baseball is the most unique game, the only game where the defense has the ball, and that’s why you can’t play baseball at high altitude. You can play football, basketball & hockey in Denver, and it affects the game for sure, but it doesn’t handicap a NFL, NBA or NHL franchise from winning a title– which the Broncos, Nuggets & Avalanche have done. The Colorado Rockies aren’t anywhere close to that class of winning and never will be. It’s completely unfair to pitching prospects to be drafted by the Colorado Rockies, which is the worst place in the world to go as a young pitcher. That should have been recognized long ago, but MLB is run by owners & front-office executives who don’t understand the game because they can’t see past their ticket sales.

NBA mismanagement 101: This situation isn’t as extreme as the Colorado Rockies or Chicago White Sox, but it deserves attention from sports fans nonetheless. The Milwaukee Bucks have mismanaged themselves into a situation where they are about to lose their superstar, Giannis Antetokounmpo. It really began after the Bucks were defeated in the playoffs by the Celtics in 2022. Instead of getting younger around their two studs, Giannis Antetokounmpo & Jrue Holiday, the Bucks front office kept their aging, diminishing-returns roster together.

Most disastrous was the Damian Lillard trade in 2023, as Jrue Holiday is one of the most valuable players in the NBA as far as winning a championship goes. Steve Kerr knows that, and that’s why Jrue Holiday was on the 2024 gold medal US Olympic team, while Damian Lillard wasn’t. Lillard is now out for the next season-and-a-half, with a torn ACL, while ace defensive stopper Jrue Holiday (pic above) is trying to help the Boston Celtics to another championship. Plus, the Bucks gave up a first-round pick (and two potential swaps– more below) to acquire Damian Lillard, the inferior player in the deal.

The Milwaukee Bucks with all their fruitless wheeling & dealing since 2021, do not have a first-round pick in the 2025 draft. Their 2026, 2028 & 2030 first-round picks are subject to potential swaps with the New Orleans Pelicans & Portland Trail Blazers, meaning if the Bucks hit the lottery in those drafts, the Pelicans (in 2026) or Trail Blazers (2028, 2030) will get their pick. The Bucks do not have first-round picks in 2027 or 2029, which means their next available first-round pick is in 2031. When the Bucks trade Giannis Antetokounmpo this summer (as they now have to) they will be a lottery team for several seasons, in which their top picks will be going to other teams. That’s about about badly as a GM can mismanage a championship roster in four years.

The 2025 NBA draft lottery is Monday, May 12. The Houston Rockets & San Antonio Spurs have been rumored to be the teams most interested & able to acquire Giannis Antetokounmpo from the Bucks. It’s the ‘Cooper Flagg draft’ in the NBA this year, so the Bucks can shift directly into a rebuild with the young stud from Duke by dealing Giannis for the top 2025 pick, but it depends on how the draft lottery goes, so everyone in basketball will be watching.

Any of the teams involved can win the draft lottery, no matter what the “odds” say. There are years where it may have been rigged, going back to the first draft lottery in 1985, and there are too many instances where the team with the lowest odds has won the draft lottery for it not to have been rigged. In 2025: Utah, Washington, Charlotte and New Orleans are the top-4 favorites with the best “odds,” but none of them are thrilling options for the NBA in the Cooper Flagg draft. After that it’s Philadelphia, Brooklyn & Toronto which isn’t any better for media conscious NBA executives.

After that, San Antonio has a 6.7% chance of winning over two picks– 6.0% from their own, and 0.7% from the Atlanta Hawks. Houston has a 3.8% chance of winning, with rights to a Phoenix pick via Brooklyn. The Spurs or Rockets winning would be the most exciting draft lottery outcome for the NBA on May 12, but also among the least likely statistically– a 10.5% composite likelihood. Look for it anyways, since this isn’t fair play, it’s a ruthless business.

……………………….<><><><><><><><><>…………………….

Crypto-fascist history & propaganda

Posted on by

The financial press is buzzing over bitcoin’s performance as compared to the bond & stock markets since Trump again took office. Banks and other corporate institutions are looking to cash-in on the new crypto gold rush. What a story, blah, blah, blah…

Meanwhile, there is virtually no mention or analysis of crypto-fascism in the fake media. Any sensationalist crypto tidbit is fine to report in the corporate media, but the dangers of Trump-Musk crypto fascism must be kept quiet. Crypto-fascism is an issue that could topple the entire economic & political house-of-cards, it is that murky-murky. Crypto is probably tied into ICE disappearances of visa students & even US citizens to Central American prison hellholes. Constitutional rights and due process have been thrown out the window by the crypto-fascists, while traditional finance & the CIA Democrats sit on their hands and do nothing.

There is massive popular resistance to fascism in any form, but it is being marginalized & politically suppressed by the corporate-union apparatus. Polling data can’t be relied upon, as all their numbers are clearly faked upwards to boost whomever is US President. As a rule, I cut all “in favor” or “support” poll numbers in half– at least. Corporate polling has class bias favoring the upper-middle-class & ultra-wealthy, meaning it doesn’t accurately reflect popular sentiment because it excludes working class & the poor, ie- the great majority. There are plenty of non-voters who are disgusted with Trump & the Democrats, but their voices are silenced by the two-party straitjacket.

Corporate America installed Trump in 2024 and therefore they must bow to his wishes, unless he goes too far as he did with his steep tariffs, then Trump zig-zags somewhat. To illustrate who is in charge, just two days ago Amazon threatened to post the cost of Trump tariffs online, provoking a tantrum from the führer who immediately called Jeff Bezos to demand a retraction, which happened. In this vein, favorable reporting of crypto is primary for Trump. Crypto connections to murky fascist third-world prison camps is NOT on the White House agenda for the corporate press. Legitimizing bitcoin and playing up its “benefits” as a ‘reserve currency’ is the crypto-fascist propaganda line.

Crypto exchanges recommended by Google/Investopedia (as of this publication) are: Kraken for lowest fees; Gemini for best experienced traders [!]; Coinbase for beginners [!!]; Crypto.com for bitcoin; and Bitmart for altcoins. These listed exchanges are proven frauds, most were given wrist-slap punishments for their malfeasance during the Biden administration. But even that limited government oversight is now deemed too harsh for Trump-Musk and his crypto fascist cohorts.

To correct myself on a bitcoin anecdote I shared yesterday, according to crypto folklore in 2010 a bitcoin owner offered 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas, which is the first claimed transaction in crypto. Of course, there are no receipts or proof-of-purchase documents, just online hearsay, but Kool-Aid drinkers are very sensitive & particular about bitcoin history so to avoid hysterics I wanted to set the record straight on that. It wasn’t just a “few bitcoins” as I wrote, it was ten thousand– supposedly.

I read now that January 3, 2009 is considered the bitcoin launch date. Color me skeptical there too, as bitcoin price data first became available only in July 2010. Kool-Aid drinkers keep trying to push bitcoin development & historical dates backwards in time (18 months) to give it more longevity. This supposedly helps in selling crypto’s legitimacy. As a side note, I suspect many pro-crypto online comments are now being generated by Elon Musk AI bots.

In terms of crypto history, 2017 was the year bitcoin exploded into popular consciousness, especially on social media. Bitcoin started at ~$1,000 and went crazy from there, maxing-out at over $19,000 by December. But bitcoin crashed (again) in 2018, ending the year at ~$3,700. If there is any single repeating trend in bitcoin history, it’s its boom-bust cycle. That keeps getting overlooked by crypto proponents, as does the FTX/SBF crypto fraud of 2022, etc.

Satoshi Nakamoto conceived a maximum of 21 million bitcoins ever being created or “mined,” which is crypto gospel. This fixed supply creates an ever-increasing demand among Kool-Aid drinkers (who don’t understand where money comes from or how it is a store of value), which perpetually inflates the crypto bubble. Libertarians all believe in supply-and-demand as a store of value, while entirely ignoring commodity use value, which means bitcoin goes to zero when the crypto bubble bursts.

As of this publication, the total number of bitcoins created is 19,857,590.625. This means there are over 1.1 million bitcoins remaining to be mined. Crypto whales own all the bitcoin, and here are the numbers to prove it. The top 8% of crypto wallets own ~99% of all bitcoin in circulation. The top 1% of crypto wallets control over 90% of the bitcoin.

Currently, it costs ~$137,000 in electricity for a small-scale operation to mine a bitcoin. Gizmodo estimates the most optimal cost for whales mining a bitcoin to be ~$82,000, up from ~$56,000 last September. Rising interest rates and/or energy costs put all bitcoin mining operations into the red, no matter how large their scale. Then you have to store bitcoin on a slow & bulky blockchain which is another energy hog in terms of computer use. The costs of crypto never end.

The only way bitcoin can remain viable is for its price to keep rising. That is the definition of a pyramid scheme. The pressures on bitcoin are immense, as it is requiring huge flows of billionaire capital just to keep the crypto Ponzi scheme from collapsing. There are plenty of fascists with nine zeros in the bank accounts, so lack of capital won’t be the direct cause of the final bitcoin collapse. It will more likely be a mass public awareness of the dangers of crypto-fascism that eventually brings down bitcoin. In any case, the big crypto crash is inevitable and it is coming soon.

Investigating basics & tips: When following & investigating crypto, you have to do an initial deep dive into the subject, then pull yourself out of the muck while learning to see macro-trends over time. Don’t take your eye off the ball, which is bitcoin. I’ve posted all the crypto shortcuts you need (and you need them), so start here, here & here. For the record, my first article on crypto was in December 2017, so I’ve been following long enough to know what goes on.

A seminal event in the Trump-Musk administration was the White House crypto summit on March 7, previewed the week of here & here, then reported here.  One can’t understand crypto-fascism without understanding the importance this recent political event, which most of the media ignored or at best only took lightly. Now they are rushing to catch up.

By mid-2023 US crypto banks Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank & Signature had collapsed (reported here & here) and as a consequence, Coindesk cut their staffing dramatically. Since then their crypto reporting has turned into headlines only or bland AI-generated content. They even limit the number of free articles per month now, something they never did in their prime. For years before that, Coindesk was the best place to go for anything news in crypto. Now it’s probably Cointelegraph. What I learned at Coindesk is that you definitely need to be young to survive in crypto, as I believe the speed of it all is part of the addiction. When crypto was dead-in-the-water by mid-2023, every Kool-Aid drinker looked towards Donald Trump as the white knight who would ride in and save crypto, when he is actually the conman who rides away with all the loot.

Things happen at such dizzying speed in crypto, and everything is mutable, especially its history. For instance, I typically use Coindesk’s bitcoin tracker, but sometimes I’ll use bitcoin data from another source, as I did above. Often when I compare historical tracker data, there is a significant difference in bitcoin price. Kool-Aid drinkers always rattle on about ‘secure blockchains’ and their ‘immutability’ yet I’ve seen & reported bitcoin tracker data manipulated. Bitcoin falling to $26 on Coindesk’s tracker on July 2, 2019 was proof positive that crypto is entirely a scam. Coindesk covered up their own blockchain tracker data meltdown with generic garbage and pretended that no one noticed– and most didn’t. That’s how crypto has gotten so far.

Understand you don’t see that level of blatant manipulation & fraud with any fiat currency or exchange-traded commodities– these exchanges all list the same prices, always. There are ‘reputable’ trackers for different crypto, and it’s been boiled down to a few (Blockchain Explorer & Coindesk) since Fed interest rates were lifted, but now they mostly share their data to maintain “industry continuity” which (in their mind’s eye) burnishes their public veneer of legitimacy. In other words, crypto Kool-Aid drinkers assume you are too stupid to ask questions and brazenly go ahead from there. Once confronted with facts & rational understanding crypto fascist Kool-Aid drinkers can be neutralized by their own poison.

……………..<><><><><>………………