Pitt19802
2mo ago
Yeah, I think you're mostly right, I don't think it resulted in any particularly massive shift, I think maybe it explains why some sort fandoms are stickier than others, maybe?
I grew up on the normal American big 3 sports, football, baseball, basketball, I still follow the results of each (I go on the internet and look up who won, generally have a sense of who the stat leaders are, etc), in terms of actually watching full games, I rarely ever watch a baseball game anymore (sometimes I flip over to the 8th or 9th innings of playoff games), I occasionally watch a basketball game, more frequently I flip over the last 3 or 4 minutes of the game, and will watch if it's still close, I regularly watch full football games.
(Obviously sample size of 1 doesn't say much about anything, but from my perspective, football watching has seemed more sticky in a marketing sense than the other sports, idk).
Pitt19802
2mo ago
American football is well adapted to modern attention spans.
I think the key feature of this is the structure of first downs make for a very effective dopamine drip, every third play (2-3 minutes in real time) your team is either going to convert a first down, or fail to convert a first down, unless the game is already out of hand, you its a moment to either be happy or frustrated, there's some emotional payoff to the moment.
I have no doubt that various midfield actions in soccer and hockey (getting possession in the zone?) are similarly as important in terms of changing a team's win percentage, but those moments a less legible to the untrained eye (maybe that's what being able to appreciate a sport actually is?), for someone not all that familiar with the sport, it's easy to miss that a unit of win probability has been gained, or to not actually be able to distinguish whether what has just happened actually amounts to gaining a unit of win probability (as someone who doesn't watch that much soccer, my naive reaction to it is to think they should take more shots on goal, I think I've read enough about it know that's wrong though, what teams actually want to do is to work the possession more so that the shots they do take are higher probability).
Somewhat separately, American football is well suited to modern cell phone usage, there are games I put down the phone and actually pay attention, there are lots of game where I don't though (Sunday Night game between teams I don't have any special interest in). Football is the easiest game to follow while playing on your phone, the action happens in 5 minutes spurts, every play is replayed several times if you missed something, its easy to quickly check down and distance, if the team is in the red zone. In contrast, watching the US game Friday night, only two of the goals was I actually looking at the TV when they happened, replays are pretty quick because once the action starts up again you can't stop to show a replay. Great midfield actions that are like football first downs never get shown again because the action keeps going. So if you didn't appreciate it in real time, the TV isn't going to explain to you why you should appreciate it. The only non-scoring plays that get replayed are things that cause penalties or corners or free kicks.
No particular value judgement either way, I just think it's less adaptive to modern attention spans.
Pitt19802
4mo ago
I'm not sure you're accurately accounting for goals here
Its hard work for a guy to sleep with a girl,
That's easy for a girl,
Once that's happened,
Relatively,
Its hard work for a girl to turn it into a long term relationship,
Relatively,
Its easy for a guy to turn that into a long term relationship.
(I mean, it might not be easy, but the ratio differences are different than for getting a girl to sleep with you).
Pitt19802
4mo ago
That's pretty nuts, I can't imagine buying a house without having a pretty solid idea of which schools I was buying into.
What are the schools for each of these neighborhoods?
Its obviously all Pittsburgh Public Schools, but how do they break out by neighborhood? Is a kid that grows up in Friendship going to the same school as a kid that grows up in Shadyside, which is the same school that grows up in the Hill District? (I assume they don't) Are there Pittsburgh Public Schools that Pitt and CMU professors feel good about their kids attending?
I see that despite the name, the high school campus for Shadyside Academy is out in Fox Chapel (google maps is telling me that its a 20 minute drive from Walnut St? In rush hour too? idk, seems far, but maybe I'm overestimating it, that's less than I was thinking before I looked it up).
I guess maybe one of Central Catholic's draw is being a reasonable academic option within the city limits?
Pitt19802
6mo ago
Thoughts, ok, let me try to do this stream of consciousness style.
Not sure if you’re familiar with the Pixar movie Monsters University? But the nominal university setting is a basic mishmash of elements from large land grant public universities. Of the college campuses that I’m pretty familiar with (Ohio State, Penn State, UNC, Michigan, Georgia, University of Alabama, Cal) if you walk around them, you can see the elements that make up the Monsters University campus, such that Monsters University is sort of a fictionalized platonic ideal of what a big public school campus should look like.
Anyway, University of Pittsburgh’s campus is the least evocative of the Monsters University campus of any large campus I’ve been on.
I think the probable explanation is that those are all land grant universities, and Pitt isn’t. The basic feature of this is that Pitt is split in half by 2 fairly large throughfares, Forbes and Fifth. The typical land grant setup is that there is a large throughfare on one side of the campus, and then the campus is a fairly self-contained universe off to one side of that throughfare.
Ohio State’s campus fits this model. High St is a fairly similar road to Forbes, you can take it all the way to downtown Columbus, it has fairly heavy traffic, and Ohio State’s campus is a fairly self-contained university off to one side of it, so you get spaces like the Oval, and student life basically centers around that space. (CMU's campus sort of fits that model as well.)
Pitt’s campus doesn’t really have an outdoor square space that student life centers around in the same sense.
There was some effort to do stuff in the greenspace between the Cathedral and Heinz Chapel, and that was a nice green space. Sometimes they would shut down Bigelow between the Student Union and the Cathedral and do events there (I remember seeing the band Fuel perform there for free as a freshman).
When I went to school there, the space between Hillman and the Carnegie Library was a parking lot. They’ve since turned it into a fairly pleasant green space, which strikes me as a nice upgrade. I don’t really have a sense for how effective it is as community space. In general, I think the layout doesn’t really lend itself to student community life all that well.
--
Anyway, on to some other stuff:
South Oakland – When I went to school there, there would be ads in the Pitt News advertising that you could rent a room in South Oakland for $200-300 a month. My general sense was not that it was a slum or anything, but that the general behavior of college-age people made it such that it made no sense to live there if you were older than 23 or so. I had several classmates who rented places there and would throw parties on the weekend. The general model was that you would pay $5, they would give you a red cup, there was a keg in the kitchen, and you would fit about, idk, maybe 100-150 people, into a 2 bedroom row house. The music blared and you couldn’t hold a conversation, then the neighbors, quite reasonably, would call the police. The police would show up and everyone would scamper away through a back alley.
I think I might have been to 4 or 5 parties that fit that description before deciding it wasn’t my scene and spending my weekend evenings doing other things. My general sense from walking around is that there were several parties like that per block in South Oakland on your typical Friday and Saturday evenings. The idea of actually living there as a college-age student didn’t appeal to me at all; the idea of some poor adult living amongst that, idk, it struck me as insane back then, and it still does.
--
Schenley Farms – I had an economics professor who would invite students over to his house to discuss class presentations; he lived there. I was really taken aback by how nice his house was and how close it was to campus. I looked it up on Zillow just now and it estimates it’s worth $790k, which honestly seems a couple hundred grand too low to me.
--
Carnegie Library – Yeah, absolutely, 1000% agree, it really is a great library. When my daughters were young I would take them there and they named it the ‘Castle Library,’ which, yeah, that’s about right. One of my favorite parts is that back in the stacks there are some windows that overlook some of the most impressive dinosaur fossils in the natural history museum.
For a couple of years we had Carnegie Museum annual passes, and that was a good standby outing when we wanted to get the girls together with my parents. That whole complex is great. Tip of the cap, Andrew, well done, appreciate it.
--
Pitt Stadium and logistics – So yeah, Pitt Stadium’s last year was my freshman year. My dad and I had been to several games there even before then, and I have a significant amount of nostalgia for the place. The last 10 or so years of Pitt Stadium, Pitt football was not good. They’ve been much better in the 25 years since. The general rule of Pitt football attendance is that if they play Penn State, WVU, or Notre Dame, they’ll get a good crowd (and half the stadium will be rooting for the away team). If they play anyone else, you can wander around and find somewhere to stretch out and put your feet up on the seat in front of you because no one’s sitting there. There are generally lots of empty seats. That’s been true at Acrisure, and it was definitely true at Pitt Stadium.
My parents live in Monroeville. It really doesn’t take that many cars to bottleneck the Bates St exit off the parkway, and it’s generally a pain to get in and out of campus that way, I usually take the Greenfield exit and come in through Schenley Park. Where Pitt Stadium was, and where the Petersen Event Center is now, is even more of a pain to get to. We went to a basketball game over winter break when there were no students on campus; the arena was probably not even half full, we parked in the lots above the arena, and it was still a giant pain to get out at the end. That area just has a ton of bottlenecks, it takes forever. Putting a stadium in Panther Hollow sounds cool, but it would probably require a new highway exit off the parkway to make it work, and that’s not happening.
At some point when I’m a very old man, possibly after I'm gone and when my kids are very old, the consensus will be that the Pete is old and decrepit and needs to be replaced. If football is still popular then, replacing the Pete with a new football stadium might be a thing that happens. I think that’s the only real logical spot, and that’s sort of the only timeline that makes any sense.
Pitt19802
6mo ago
I went to Pitt from 1999-2003, I was in the stadium when Pitt played Notre Dame for the last game at Pitt Stadium.
Have a number of thoughts about a number of places you mentioned.
But mostly just wanted to say thanks, that was a ton of interesting history that I didn't know about places I've spent a fair amount of time.
Appreciate it.
Pitt19802
8mo ago
Honestly, I wouldn't list any of those 4.
Here's a few real questions women have to answer,
If my husband gets a job where he needs to relocate, should I move with him?
If my husband get a job that requires long hours such that he's not able to handle a 50/50 split of familial duties (child care/chores), should I put up with that?
The answers to those questions don't revolve around physical strength, they revolve around 'can I trust him long term?'
'Can I trust him not to use up my fertility and then have a midlife crises and leave me for someone younger?'
That's what I would consider to be male responsibility, can I be trusted to put the welfare of my family ahead of my base impulses.
Pitt19802
9mo ago
A thing I don't think the 'manosphere' (loosely defined) has really grappled with, is men's role dismantling the 'patriarchy' (loosely defined).
" the patriarchy is [in a broad and very simplified sense] a system where men are responsible for women and women are accountable to men. (More accurately, it’s a system where women are accountable to their fathers/husbands and men are responsible for their daughters/wives.*) "
That works as a definition well enough.
For that system to hold, its a 2 way street.
A real question, culturally, do men want the responsibilities, or just the perks?
Its relevant that concurrent with Promise Keepers, we had elected Bill Clinton twice to the highest office in the land, JFK was considered the coolest possible politician, Joe Namath had been famous for going on 30 years at that point for being good with the ladies.
Culturally, men, held up that ideal as something to be aspired to.
If men are going to aspire to be cads, a feminism that decides that men aren't worth trusting the patriarchy to is a reasonable response.
My mental model of Promise Keepers, their main message was "hey men, be worthy of the patriarchy"
Promise Keepers as a phenomenon, it was always fighting massive cultural headwinds, it was founded with that express purpose.
Is it a failure that it's not still going strong 30 years later? idk, what's that half-life of these things? I mean Lilith Fair isn't still selling out shows, whatever Louis Farrakhan is up to, a million people aren't showing up in DC on the regular to hear him. These things peter out.
If some men took it to heart and actually lived better lives, I would say that counts as success, even if in 2025 the movement is a minor footnote in history.
Pitt19802
9mo ago
How old are you?
I sort of object to your framing honestly, if you think you have an effort post in you about this, have at it.
As a child of the 90s, who grew up in a house where we attended church weekly, this isn't a thing I would have heard about by accident, it's a thing I would have needed to be pretty oblivious to have not heard about. (I'm trying to think if my dad ever attended an event, I'm not sure if he did or not, I'll put it at about 30% probability that he did).
For those that haven't heard of it, it was an evangelical men's movement in the 90s that was started by University of Colorado's football coach.
There was a stretch there where they drew large audiences at football stadiums.
If you're familiar with Tim Tebow's place in our culture, I perceive it being a pre-Tebow Tebowesque phenomenon (I'd actually be sort of surprised if Tebow's father had no interaction with Promise Keepers).
I find it sort of an interesting window into our culture's soul why people would seem to prefer it if Tebow didn't live up to his values.
Pitt19802
11mo ago
Not quite sure how to parse "don't believe in God",
Prosperity gospel churches tend to be very light on the 'these sins are going to damn you to hell' stuff.
There is a Joel Osteen XM radio station if you're interested in checking it out, your milage may very, but I often find listening to it improves my mood considerably.
One more thing about the phones (and the social nature of it), the pace of it is such that group chats can happen concurrently with the game. I'm in a group chat that starts pinging every time the Steelers play. It's easier to check a group chat(and contribute to it) during a football game and not miss important action than it is a soccer game.
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