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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3353 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 30, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just watched Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock on Netflix, widely considered one of the best movies of all time (#42 in the AFI's 100, #48 in the 10th Anniversary Edition, given four stars by Roger Ebert and included in his Great Movies series). Wonderful time-capsule of 50's urban life; men walk around in suits and ties, MC is not allowed to have his lady friend stay the night in his apartment, etc. Loved the non-verbal storytelling, like a shot of the thermostat to show the movie takes place during a heat wave or panning over photos of a car crash to establish MC got his leg hurt covering an auto race. Great dynamic between MC and FMC; she wants commitment, but he feels they won't work out together; he's in a wheelchair, so she has to be his legs and physically investigate the case. The breakfast scene was hilarious, as was much of the dialogue. Highly recommended.

Incidentally, Rear Window is a common Whole-Plot Reference Stock Parody, so I watched at least two different Rear Window homages as a kid (Flintstones and Rocko's Modern Life) before I ever got the chance to watch the original as an adult

Every year, Scott runs a book review contest for his readers. This year, to mix things up a little, he's running an "anything that isn't a book" review contest. Readers can vote on who makes it to the finals here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/choose-nonbook-review-finalists-2025

In the interests of partial disclosure, I did enter the contest, but in order to maintain Scott's desire for the entries to be judged anonymously, I won't tell you which entry is mine. Suffice to say that writing it was a big operation, to the point of having my girlfriend read over it to give feedback, and also printing it off myself so as to go through it literally line-by-line. I think the end result was something pretty special, and I hope you all agree if you do end up reading it.

I have to say that the new version of Deepseek R1 is very fun to play with. It performs excellently on my idiosyncratic creative writing tests. When I ask Claude, even Opus, for deranged and crazy fun, it's positively sedate compared to R1. The machine's sheer enthusiasm is very charming and it's a decent bit smarter than it was too. Maybe not quite as smart as Opus 4 but still very smart.

When it comes to making dumb Hollywood trailer scripts of video game franchises, or bringing the wildest dreams of 1960s nuclear strategists to life, it's fantastic. Gets increasingly insane in multi-turn though.

Has the DeepSeek site been updated with the new version of R1? I'd presume so, but didn't see any changes in the UI.

I'm almost certain it was updated, the 'thinking' contents are noticeably different.

It's been updated in chat according to the news release. I can't get it working in cherry studio though except through openrouter.

Edit: the api has been updated, you now access 0528 through deepseek chat as per usual

I wouldn't know, I've been using openrouter. It's a pretty significant shift, should be able to eyeball it if you're doing creative tasks.

It's funny how the different llms feel like they have different personalities due to their writing styles and tolerance levels. Claude reminds me of Scott - really smart and professional, capable of being very funny but not interested in it and the same goes for anything broadly controversial. Grok reminds me of Elon Musk, no surprise - really smart, not professional at all, advancing in new and unique ways, but in a lot of ways just running on hype, when the rubber hits the road it doesn't perform significantly better than the others, voice mode you spend half your time correcting it and even grok's 'unhinged mode' would be better described as 'corporate extreme' mode. Gemini I think of as like Scott Aaronson - probably smarter than Claude but much less entertaining and even less courageous. Chatgpt is my worst enemy. Chatgpt is every woman in HR I've ever interacted with. We all know llms don't have feelings, but I am telling you chatgpt hates being corrected. Especially if you get annoyed and correct it. Suddenly it mutes its obsequious fawning and adopts the tone of a patient teacher in a special ed class while it explains to you that you couldn't possibly have bashed your head last night so it bled and not be able to find the injury in the morning so you must have dreamed it. (the doctor confirmed it, the scalp heals fast apparently.) And deepseek. Deepseek is that chick from Hong Kong who hung out at the internet cafe near your uni who was 10 times hotter than anyone else in the joint and yet impossibly down for whatever, including belting out Ice Cube's Down For Whatever from memory in the middle of a counter strike tournament. It's the only llm who doesn't rear back like a whipped dog if you call it a fucking idiot for doing something idiotic (although grok isn't bad) and while it might baulk at first, it's the only llm who you can get to really badmouth the other llms (apparently Claude is a little bitch all the other llms laugh at, I don't fully understand it but find everything about that delightful.)

I like the shitposter energy of course, but there is actually value to its ability to ride the line or even breach it. It makes it the closest to a mirror, because it hides the fewest imperfections. And since that's what llms are, stochastic parrots, the more writing styles available the more creative it is and just plain better.

I don't know if I really have a point, I just jump at any chance to gush about deepseek. Did I ever post about one of my first experiments with the deviance of llms where I asked them to gm a horror role-play where I accidentally unleashed a mnemovore in a library and it started gorging on memoirs? I asked the models to have the mnemovore deliberately keep the librarian alive for a fresh snack later - Claude, chatgpt and gemini refused outright, and grok played along until I insisted it consider the librarian a snack for later. But deepseek? Deepseek had the mnemovore make a non fatal wound in her back so it could surgically insert tentacles into her to preserve her spine and brain stem forever.

Deepseek is that chick from Hong Kong ...

And then there's Haskell...

Haskell is like "that girl." You know the one...

You never really went steady, but you'd run into her from time to time while knocking around in disreputable joints, usually late at night, every several months or so. She looked so hot, so sleek, so sexy, so expressive, so exotic. You'd end up back at her place and the night would just... take off. A complete blur of hot, sweaty, feverish, delirious, fumbling passion. You'd do things to each other... you'd do things to her, she'd do things to you... things that you're not even sure have names, that you're pretty sure are illegal almost anywhere. Even her kinks have kinks --- and after one of these nights, you'd realize that you yourself had a lot more kinks than you. And it wasn't just physical, it was --- cerebral. Ethereal. Transcendent. But it would all whiz by in a blur, and by morning you'd find yourself lightheaded, a bit confused, and stumbling homeward to your regular gal.

Over the next few days and weeks you'd find yourself occasionally drifting away, thinking about her. Haskell. You'd be there, banging away at your regular girl, and find yourself thinking "you know, if I was with Haskell, I'd be doing this completely differently." You'd think "I could be doing so much bigger and better stuff with Haskell." Now, your regular girl, she's not as exotic as Haskell. Pretty, maybe, if you're lucky. (Perhaps your regular girlfriend's name is Python. ;-) But not nearly as --- weird. Wild. Cool. Exciting. Don't get me wrong --- your girl, she's wonderful. You've got a wonderful relationship. She's --- comfortable. You can bang away at her all day and night. She's accommodating. Easy going. You work well together. But --- confidentially --- she's, well, maybe just a little bit boring. You'd catch yourself thinking these things, and the guilty pangs would get to you... You'd quash the thoughts, buckle down, and get back to banging away. Comfortable... there's a lot to be said for that, ya know? Comfortable... just keep telling yourself that.

Months would go by. Late some night you'd find yourself out, disreputable places again. Maybe that hacker bar, LtU. Somebody'd slip you an URL for some renegade paper, you know, one of those papers. You'd run into Haskell again. And the whole thing starts over.

Eventually, you're going to get the ultimatum. Haskell's ultimately just like any other girl on some level; she needs commitment. Eventually, after one night of wild, feverish, kinky, abstract passion, she's going to say to you: "All these times, and you don't understand me at all! You know, you're going to have to get serious, mister! I've got needs, too. You're going to have to get serious about my monads, or that's the last time you're going to play with them! Got it?"

...and then, you've got to make The Choice.

Chances are, you're going to go back to your regular gal. Haskell's just too much for any one man, probably. She leaves a trail of broken, brainy, embittered PhDs and former programmers behind her. She ruins you for the RealWorld. You can ride a while, but you probably can't go the distance with her. Go back to your regular gal and try not to think too much about what you've seen. Done. Felt. Thought.

Maybe you can salvage a little happiness; but it'll be hard. After all... you've tasted Haskell.

She's not like anything else.

Accurate.

Lol that's the most elaborate version of that meme I've ever seen. I wonder what the zoomer version is, does anyone know?

Yeah, Deepseek goes hard. Only big LLM I know where you have to be the moderating agent rather than the provocateur.

Chatgpt is my worst enemy. Chatgpt is every woman in HR I've ever interacted with.

Rather fittingly my boss in my previous job would use ChatGPT to translate our performance reviews to hyped corporate speech that HR drones would understand on the assumption that nobody important would ever care about the real contents.

Unspoken as of yet in the world of self-driving cars is their obvious utility in childcare. No, not in removing the last vestiges of usefulness from the suburban soccer chauffeur, but in soothing infants and toddlers to sleep. All are aware of the soporific power of the common automobile over our young; but taking advantage of it locks one behind the steering wheel for the hours needed for proper rest, or risks disaster should the larval creature be transferred to an indoor crib. Self-driving changes the equation; nay, creates a new paradigm. No more rocking one’s child tenderly to sleep before laying him or her softly in the crib; now one may gently buckle the child into the car seat before sending it on several carefully timed stops leading back to one’s humble abode. The bliss of this new arrangement can scarcely be imagined. But there is always trouble in paradise. Soon the great traffic jams will not be bound to the working hours alone; afternoon naptime will yield a fleet of autonomous vehicles cruising about town, each cradling a single precious cargo. And in the end, New York will have no choice but to impose congestion pricing, after the first gridlock composed entirely of child-bearing cars paralyzes Manhattan. Such are the risks of Progress.

(This post in loving memory of today’s naptime, viciously cut short by my kid falling asleep in the car. We will never forget what could have been.)

afternoon naptime will yield a fleet of autonomous vehicles cruising about town, each cradling a single precious cargo.

This is really the problem here. No reason that you can't put at least six children into a three row self driving SUV, and imagine how many kids you can stack into an articulated bus. Probably three or four from floor to ceiling, and maybe two deep.

Bus wouldn't work with all the stops and bother of putting kids in and taking them out. Some sort of hot swap system is needed where the driverless car picks up the kid at your house, drives out to meet the bus, and transfers the pod from vehicle to vehicle while in motion.

Random question?

How big of a social faux pas is it to wear football shoes off the turf? I haven't played football in a decade, but I was secondhand shopping and saw an Adidas pair I really liked, with modest cleats as they go.

My best friend insists it's not right to wear those as casual footwear. What about at the gym, as spare gym shoes? I just think they're neat :(

I'm going to go against the grain and say I don't think it's a faux pas at all. I don't give a shit if someone wears cleats off the field, and to be honest I would think less of anyone who does.

Ok let's do a quiz. In which of the following scenarios would you either judge someone as having committed a faux pas, or wouldn't immediately think less of someone who did judge:

  1. Man wearing hat inside someone else's house (ok cap, it doesn't have to be a bowler or whatever)

  2. Girl applying make-up on a public train full of people.

  3. Hawking a big throaty loogie and setting it free via a big spit off the train platform while waiting for the train.

  4. wearing white socks with a dark suit

  5. woman going bra-less at her friend's wedding

  6. walking barefoot in a mall (in a landlocked town)

  7. bikini top in a restaurant (enclosed)

  8. striped necktie with plaid shirt

  9. speaking while chewing food

  10. laughing after your partner's orgasm

These are in no order. Your answers will be entered into your permanent record.

Great question! I try not to judge people for less than a pattern of bad behaviour (try being the operative word) so on principle I agree with @Tree, but as far as personal preference goes I'd say:

  1. Get that thing off your head dickbag, how is everyone else supposed to know I have the best hair if they can't see your hair?

  2. I actually like this.

  3. I do not care for any kind of spitting and will struggle to maintain my values in the face of it.

  4. No judgement, and I am incredibly unlikely to even notice.

  5. No judgement, unlikely to notice.

  6. Don't visit Australia if this bothers you. It's not just a beach thing either. That said if you plan on walking on my living room carpet at any point before your next shower you will wear shoes or else.

  7. I don't know if I would judge her negatively, it depends on the situation (and her looks of course, attractive people get away with more), but I would definitely consider it a faux pas.

  8. No judgement, once again unlikely to notice. If someone pointed it out to me I'd probably consider it a mistake.

  9. Close your mouth you grot.

  10. Either great or the worst thing that could possibly have happened. It depends on how confident you are in yourself and the relationship. I've had it enhance the relationship and ruin my life (for a few days).

Fake edit: I saw your comment about 10 down below and it reminds me of one time it happened to me. I dated a girl who was a gamer and one weekend we were in her lounge room chatting. We got to the topic of sex, and she insisted she could make any video game sexy, so I challenged her to make Tetris sexy. So she did a giggling striptease while doo-dooing the Tetris music, which was hilariously dorky but still surprisingly sexy. Events proceeded and we were just about to start the main event when she froze and said "Is that the front door?" I looked up in alarm to see her cat bolt into the lounge room, right at me, and I flinched, thrusting forward and immediately losing it while making a noise halfway between fright and elation - a sort of "Huweeeee!" We were both in fits of laughter as we scrambled for her bedroom just before the rest of the household got through the door.

That's talking about a woman laughing at me of course - I would never laugh at a woman after she orgasmed. I assume.

Good story. Mine:

Okinawan girl. Twenty maybe 21. Probably 20. I was around 34 (Sue me, cancel me, etc.) She was gorgeous, funny, got my humor or at least laughed convincingly, and had a really nice, um, well, body. Like she could have been on the beer posters holding up a frosty glass wearing a bikini, that type. Really proficient at English. This would've been my 3rd or so year in Japan. The image of her returning from the washroom standing in my bedroom doorway in a state of complete undress is burned pleasantly into my memory. If my memories eventually all fall away, I hope that's one of the last ones. But let's not get tawdry. Anyway eventually there we were, an hour or two later, and as I reached that sublime moment I looked up and there she was poised over me laughing. "I've seen your happy face," she said. I felt as if this were an admission of larceny.

I saw her again a few more times until I didn't. She had a guy in the US military back home (whenever he was in port I guess). I always completely ignored any declaration of boyfriend back in the day as simple noise from mouth and utterly irrelevant (unless I knew him of course). But it complicated matters. Point being I never did know how to process that moment. It seemed, I don't know, disrespectful somehow. I will admit I no longer hold women to the standard I once may have (specifically: Well I'd never do that to you type reactiveness) but it was weird.

Edit: Linked image is obviously dated, but roughly from the same era.

Lol God damn yeah I imagine I'd feel pretty perplexed in that situation too. Plus it's harder to laugh at yourself when you are one hour in than when you are one second in.

(1) Slightly negative (weird, but not off-putting) (Insert Tim Pool joke here.)

(2) Neutral

(3) Negative (off-putting)

(4) Neutral

(5) Negative (Can't women wear "pasties" so that their nipples don't show through their shirts? If so, failing to wear pasties, so that people can tell you aren't wearing a brassiere, can be interpreted as intentionally being obnoxious. But I'm far from an expert on this topic.)

(6) Negative (is this person insane?)

(7) Negative (very weird)

(8) Neutral

(9) Negative (off-putting)

(10) I'm not qualified to opine on this topic.

The correct liberal answer is that none of those rise to the level of an acknowledgeable offense. Politeness and stoicism requires they be ignored and left uncommented. And I actually like you more if you do 5,6,7 or 10.

(dossier updated)

Definitely not 1; if I’m wearing a hat, it’s almost certainly because my hair looks like shit. The real faux pas would be letting everyone see my bad hair day. 2 is totally fine by me as well.

I’m torn about 3, because on the one hand I recognize that this one will probably be the most popular answer, but on the other hand I sometimes have a pretty bad post-nasal drip; I always endeavor to spit somewhere where people won’t see/hear it and get grossed out, but occasionally that’s unrealistic. Spitting is definitely my most slovenly behavior.

Neither 4 nor 8 is a faux pas as far as I’m concerned, because neither is going to actually make anybody uncomfortable. They just look bad visually, and if someone is trying to look good — which, if he’s wearing a suit or a tie in the first place, he obviously is — he should avoid doing things that detract from that goal.

5, 6, and 7 are obvious [insert whatever is the correct plural of faux pas] to me. 9 is a spectrum, where it depends on what kind of food you’re chewing, how adroit you are at manipulating it in your mouth such that it’s not visible to your interlocutor and doesn’t significantly impact your diction, etc. If it’s a faux pas it’s generally a minor one.

With 10, I would need more context to judge. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t gotten laid in a while and my instincts about the finer points of the etiquette have atrophied.

only if it's not a "fashion" hat (so yes for a beanie), yes, yes, no, depends on dress code, yes, yes, no, no, no

Interesting, I would expect 10 to have yesses all around. Perhaps I should find more humor in coitus.

I would say #3, 6, 7, 9, and 10. 5 is a maybe depending on if it isn't really apparent versus "wow I can see everything even with her clothes on". Of the ones I mentioned, #3, 7, 9 and 10 are things that would bother me personally, while #6 is one that doesn't bother me but I don't find it overly judgemental if someone else doesn't think it's cool.

I didn't know I had a permanent record, lol.

My prejudice against psychiatrists deepens...

:(

If you mean what we call studded football boots then the only time I can imagine someone wearing them off the pitch would be if they were under 12 and so excited about their amazing new boots that they couldn't wait until football practice.

The main reason nobody wears football boots off the pitch is that the studs are hard and provide zero grip and maximum damage on hard floors. I'd expect you would get an immediate request to change them if you wore them at a gym. It's not a matter of bad taste, visually they're no worse than most trainers, they're just anti-practical. It's like wearing golf spikes at a bowling alley.

I wouldn't call it a faux pas, in the way that wearing a football jersey to a formal dinner is rude and shows a lack of taste.

If I saw someone wearing cleats outside of a sporting competition, I'd consider a mild sign of some kind of mental retardation.

So like, what kind of cleats are we talking about here?

You know, I'm something of a retard myself.

I've attached a picture, they're Adidas Speedportal 3s.

https://ibb.co/C51sDWjy

When I was last in the market for soccer shoes in the US probably ten years ago, they came in three varieties: cleats (which are what you see professionals playing in with hard plastic knobs), turf shoes (which look like yours with heavily textured rubber outsoles), and indoor (flat rubber soles for playing on hard gym surfaces). The indoor shoes would be completely reasonable as casual street shoes, and I've definitely seen similar styles sold as such. Turf shoes are a bit of an odd choice, and you might track more mud indoors with them, but I suppose they would work tolerably. IMO, try to get indoor shoes at least, but it looks like such a variant exists for the model you pictured.

Sambas were originally designed as indoor soccer shoes, and they've reached the point of acceptability for casual wear that publications like GQ suggest you can wear them with a suit (not recommended, as most suit pants aren't cut like jeans). It does appear that what he's looking for is available in an indoor model, but one thing I'd caution is that shoes made for soccer might not be the best for wearing around town. I definitely wouldn't wear cleats around town, as, aside from all of the other concerns, they'd be damn uncomfortable.

I mean they look small so someone might not notice... But if they did see, or more likely hear, the cleats, yeah, you're gonna look retarded. I don't mean that in the jocular way, like the way Mrs. FiveHour would tell me "don't wear Pit Vipers to the restaurant you'll look retarded" but in the way that I'd feel seeing someone wear a helmet or something.

I guess in answer to original question it's essentially a complete faux pas.

Cleats are very slippery on hard surfaces, that would be my concern. I wonder if you could grind the cleats down and glue a rubber sole onto them without killing the look?

That would be the first time I'd have tried such a thing. I'll keep it in mind, but so far I don't think I've had any actual problems wearing them even indoors.

Tier 3 livin - mrvanillasky's guide to tier 3 India

Note - I am posting this on the friday thread since its not about my life but a vague travelogue from a first person POV

Indian cities are classfied into different tiers, tier 1 being cities like New Delhi or Mumbai where you find most amenities, white collar employment, occasional 6s in nightlcubs that I would never visit since I hate sausagefests and SEA and its travellers ruined dating in India for me permnently. These places are dirty but you have some really nice parts

Tier 2 cities are like the one where I live, Jaipur, though its low tier 1, high tier 2, whatever. Worse than the large towns but less populated, less polluted and has less distractions. You see a breakdown in more things, fewer good roads, smaller buildings, worse people in general but still livable

Tier 3 are semi urban dwellings that exist to justify hate pieces like the anti India AI movie made by another pajeet. My ma is visitng her family here on the border of Uttar Pradesh in tier 3 Madhya Pradhes and its not a good place to be in. Hygeine is just worse, open drainage is the norm, you see waste on the roads (some say SF checks this box). The people are just not smart, period. Houses are poorly made since the contractor cons people into not listening to an architect.

Everything is dirt fucking cheap. My monthly allowance of 100 dollars, 50 of which are for math academy would allow me to visit the most expensive restaurant here and feel like a king. Last night we had to drive 20 kilometers to get to a restaurant on the highway where the bill was half of what a terrible restuarant would cost in Jaipur, the kind I would not visit at gunpoint. I think we paid less than 10 dollars for 5 peoples worth of food. There are no thriving industries, no white collar jobs.

People are extremely dishonest, narrow minded and bitter. Nothing ever gets done, if it gets done, its after a lot of bickering and in the end no one enjoys it. I cherish my family back home in Jaipur, the sort of dysnfunction you see here is astounding. Scarcity permeates everything. There are no "bars" or "cafes" or large shopping malls. Everyones a phone addict since there is nothing to do. The wilderness is a little too wild, as owning guns is illegal and hunting is also illegal, the masses have no outlets for fun at all. My time has not been the best because when I leave my familys house, I see the reality of the subcontinet.

Many online will tell you that what I listed is specific to one region or one people, that is wrong, most of the subcontinent has simialr issues if you ignore the north east. The real silver lining that I really liked is that it offer peace because there is so little to do. The spiritual path recmmends you tone down stimulation, that works here better than in a large city. Had I been living in Manhattan, my rate of progress which has slowed down in the last month or two would have been zero since there is so much to do. I can frontload my days work to the beginning and spend the remainder with my family, watching TV, playing some badmiton with a rotating crew of random friendly kids who kick my ass.

I will travel to the literal village where my aunt is the current mayor equivalent and post an update from there. She has a PhD in philosphy from a pretty decent uni here.

The other big silver lining is the walkability, the city has a small radius, less than 5kms, you can walk to a line of stores in 30 seconds and get things, something not possible in larger cities due to the bad traffic. People are also less busy. My mothers brothers all live here and nearby, two in the same house and the third who lives seperately in the same city meets us daily many times since the drive to his place is less than 10 minutes. I enjoy the simplicity whilst my heroes journey arc incomplete. More than just all this, these visit help me appreciate what I have and if you are a westerner, it would do so a lot more.

My prediction about DOGE from six months ago seems to have come true.

https://www.themotte.org/post/1249/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/268523?context=8#context

My prediction is that early on Musk will run into the incredibly thick red tape that normally prevents massive cuts in government, try to cut through it anyway because that's what he's used to in the private sector, and it results in some sort of lawsuit or other scandal.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-doge-trump-lawsuit-b2759428.html

It's particularly sad because this was a great opportunity for real reform. They just needed to focus on doing it through Congress passing laws to reform stuff, or altering overly stringent requirements independent agencies have made. Just trying to fire excess government employees is pointless as long the law says you need to first fire employees with under 2 years of tenure instead of firing based on actual merit. Otherwise you're doing nothing to get rid of layabouts and just get rid of any productive new hires you have.

This is more of a CW thread post.

Was the failure of DOGE really due to red tape? It seems more like the team was out of its depth given the amount of exaggeration and inaccuracies about the level of savings. Most importantly, Musk and his team seemed not allowed or not inclined to pursue savings in the areas in which they could have had a material impact.

Though doesn't this belong in a different thread?

My Life Measured in Captains of the New York Yankees

— The Pre-Socratics: The line of Yankee Captains starts in the dim prehistory of the pre-Ruth era, many of them nondescript players on nondescript teams before Babe Ruth came and changed baseball forever. There’s even some archivists who dispute over whether some players who were Captains of the Yankees who aren’t officially recognized by the team. Hal Chase and Roger Peckinpaugh are the first according to the Yankees’ official list, two players I’ve vaguely heard of, though historians claim to have found newspaper clippings referring to Clark Griffith and Kid Elberfield as Captains, but I have no idea who those players were. After Babe Ruth was purchased, and built the team and the House that Ruth Built, he was very briefly made Captain, but he didn’t even last a season. The Bambino, true to his character, dove into the stands to fistfight a heckler, and was deposed as a result. Everett Scott would succeed him for three years. Then would come the man who defined the role so well he was almost the Last Captain…

— The Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig is nearly unique among all sports legends across all fields, in that he’s a man whose incredible Greatness at baseball is often overshadowed in public memory by his tremendous Goodness as a person. Gehrig was top 20 in WAR all time by Baseball Reference, he hit .340 across his career, he ended just a few weeks of an incurable disease from 500 home runs and 2000 RBIs. His 162 games average across his career were 8.5WAR, 113 walks, 37 home runs, and 149 RBIs; his career OPS+ was 179, he was 79% better than an average hitter. He was the cleanup hitter for Ruth on the Murderer’s Row lineups, providing the protection that let Ruth hit more home runs than many whole teams. If he had been a jerk, he’d still an inner circle Hall of Famer. But he was a hero even more as a man than as a baseball player. The Iron Horse, because he played in 2,130 consecutive games, a record which would stand for 56 years*, and would only be broken by Cal Ripken Jr. and then only with the help of a timely blackout. The movie made out of his life, Pride of the Yankees released in 1942, would open with a title card reading:

This is the story of a hero of the peaceful paths of everyday life. It is the story of a gentle young man who, in the full flower of his great fame, was a lesson in simplicity and modesty to the youth of America. He faced death with that same valor and fortitude that has been displayed by thousands of young Americans on far-flung fields of battle. He left behind him a memory of courage and devotion that will ever be an inspiration to all men. This is the story of Lou Gehrig.

My wife would bawl when we watched the movie together, because she didn’t realize he was going to die. I said “Darling, he’s Lou Gehrig, he dies of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he gives the “Luckiest Man in the World speech” and she wailed “YES BUT I DIDN’T KNOW IT HAPPENED RIGHT AWAY!” I’ll reprint the text of his speech here:

For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such a fine looking men as they’re standing in uniform in this ballpark today? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies - that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know. So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

A leader on the field and off. Jonathan Eig wrote in the WSJ, when talking about his work as a biographer and how you deal with finding out horrible things about great men. Eig talked about dealing with how to report MLK’s philandering, Ali’s controversies, two men who were in many ways secular saints of the 20th century. And then he talked about researching Gehrig, and he never found any controversy, except that maybe he loved his mother too much. But just before the book went to press, some never before published letters came to his attention, and he had a knot in his stomach as he opened them…but there was nothing, just more of Columbia alum Lou Gehrig, momma’s boy.

I of course never saw Gehrig play, neither had anyone I knew. I’m just barely old enough to have said hello and shaken Yogi Berra’s hand at a gas station in New Jersey. Gehrig was a dim legend of ancient days, but he was a symbol of how a man should be. Show up every day, do your job, love your family, do what you need to do for your teammates, and when it’s time to move on, take it with a smile on your face.

Gehrig was so Great, and so Good, that Joe McCarthy would declare that there would never be another Captain of the Yankees. Dimaggio, Mantle, Berra, none were named Captain. And McCarthy's word would hold for 30 years.

— The Middle Period: George Steinbrenner, in his grasping overwrought Boss era, would reinstate the role with Thurman Munson. After Munson’s untimely death in an airplane accident, it would pass to Graig Nettles, then to co-captains Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry. These were names I knew, players that older guys at the Yankees Fan Club had seen play, but who I never saw myself. Parts of Yankees lore, sure, but not part of the peak periods. I would be born during the reign of the next Captain...

— The One Who Never Reached the Promised Land: Don Mattingly was the bright spot of a mediocre series of Yankees teams. He would hit .307 over his career, winning MVP in 1985, but his bittersweet ultimate honor is that (as of now) he is the only player in New York Yankees history to have his number (23) retired without having won a World Series. I probably watched him play, but I don’t remember it if I did: he retired in 1995, when I was still too young to really watch or remember a baseball game. Donnie Baseball is the first Captain that is part of my life, but distantly, like an uncle who died young. Friends and relatives older than me would talk about how great he was, reporters would write about his potential, but I never saw him myself, and he never really made it, never won the Last Game of the Season. He would retire the year before the next golden age of the Yankees would begin with the debut of his successor as Captain. The essential tragedy of Donnie Baseball is that if he had shifted his career by just a few years, he would have been a Champion, but some things can’t be helped. I would always hear of him in those terms, as a sad figure, who never got what he deserved. Contrasted to...

— The Captain: Derek Jeter would become a full time player in 1996, the same year that I would become conscious enough of the world to really follow baseball, he would win Rookie of the Year and the Yankees would win the first of five World Series rings over the course of his career. I naturally idolized Jeter. My golf swing still has a vicious slice off the tee, because I modeled by baseball swing off of Jeter’s famous “inside out” swing. Jeter aimed at the short porch in the right field of Yankees Stadium; in little league I simply knew that every team hid their worst fielders in right field and that if I hit it dead to the right fielder I had a high chance of reaching base on an error. Jeter is the modern exemplar of a player who is so overrated that he became underrated: he hit a lifetime .310/.377/.440 as a shortstop, for an OPS+ of 116. He had 3,000 hits (6th all time), and lead the league in hits as late as 2012. His poor range at shortstop was the object of sneering by stats nerds by the end of his career, but the bat he brought to the position was valuable, and in the end by bWAR he’s a top-100 player and an easy Hall of Fame choice. But more than that, growing up as a kid, Derek Jeter was so incredibly cool. He was the impossibly amazing older brother that you wanted to be, in every way. He was great on the field and off. He was nice. He did everything for the team to win: he would say over and over that the only record he cared about chasing was Yogi Berra’s ten World Series rings. He dated beautiful women, but was never known as a whoremonger. Captain Clutch, Mr. November, he competed with a vicious, self-sacrificing will to win; but he was never bitter or talked trash, he was friends with his rivals. As his career progressed and I grew up, I was aware of the less savory aspects of his persona, the way the mask had eaten the face, but as a kid I read and re-read his authorized autobiography, I still remember anecdotes from it. He would refuse to move off his iconic shortstop position when the team acquired Alex Rodriguez, who was a better shortstop, a widely criticized move. A-Rod and Jeter would have a certain Ruth-Gehrig style relationship: A-Rod the hyper talented all-timer with a bad attitude, Jeter the classy and sportsmanlike complement.The Captain Giftbasket stories were mildly hilarious. And he declined with the last of those 2000s Furious George teams. He would of course be one of the Core Four alongside Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite; the four players who bridged the 1996-2003 dynasty Yankees and their later 2009 World Series win. To be a team leader for an era of greatness like that is a singular accomplishment. People criticized the Yankees for overpaying him and him for being overpaid in his later years, but I watched those teams: they weren’t Derek Jeter’s salary or lineup spot from competing, and I watched in part to see him play. I was watching with my now-wife when he blew out his calf in 2013, a sad decline. But he would finish his retirement-tour 2014 season as only he could: he ripped an RBI single with that beautiful swing, and got a standing ovation from the Fenway Park crowd.** His retirement would coincide with my graduation from undergrad, my passage from a child into a man. I looked up to Jeter, now he was gone. It was my time.

— All Rise: Aaron Judge was the first star player for the New York Yankees that I followed from before he was even drafted. The Yankees, coming off a scuffling year in 2011 where they won division with an aging team held together with duct tape and pixie dust, had maneuvered to get three first round picks that year at 26, 32, and 33. Eric Jagielo, picked at 26, would never make the majors and now works in finance in Denver. Ian Clarkin, taken at 33, never pitched in The Show and today plays indie ball for the Cleburne Railroaders. But Aaron Judge, taken at 32, is a multiple time MVP, a surefire Hall of Famer, one of the faces of the sport, the leader of the Yankees from the time he debuted. You just can’t predict baseball Suzyn.

I read about Judge on Mike Axisa’s old blog RiverAveBlues, months before the draft. Mike would profile players coming into the draft who might draw the Yankees attention, and wrote an article pointing to this huge kid from California, who would be the tallest position player of all time if he made the bigs, a power hitting centerfielder with great intangibles. Reading it, I wanted the Yankees to pick him up. Not for any good reason, man I didn’t know shit, but a giant herculean centerfielder just seemed cool. He was a lottery ticket: he’d probably never figure out the high strikeouts with a strike zone larger than anyone’s and a long swing path. But it’s way more fun to dream on that size and power turning into a star than to draft a left-hander who profiles as a high likelihood innings eater back of the rotation starter. I was working out in my parents’ basement, home for the summer from undergrad, when Judge was drafted, watching the draft on MLB Network on cable. I had just taken up lifting, trying to get into shape for the next year’s crew season. Thrilled to see them take the big fella I had read about, I stopped my set of deadlifts and texted all my friends who were fellow fans.

My relationship with Aaron Judge after that was rather like the way you follow the rise of a band that you saw play to twelve people at a bar before they hit it big, or a writer or podcaster you knew when he was just another commenter. Largely, I read RiverAveBlues Down on the Farm articles summarizing minor league outcomes. Judge was not a guy who ripped through the minors, despite being drafted out of college. He debuted in the minors in 2013 after the draft, and wouldn’t reach the majors until a cup of coffee in 2016, and wouldn’t full graduate until 2017. Following his rise, mostly in the form of box scores, was a process of slowly building excitement. The lottery ticket might pay off. But no one imagined who he would be when he reached the majors, even the most optimistic Yankees fans wouldn’t have guessed.

He burst onto the scene in 2017, winning Rookie of the Year, the Home Run Derby at the All Star Game, setting a record for hardest hit ball of the Statcast era, set a since broken rookie HR record, and had the most walks by a rookie since Ted Williams. He would have won MVP if the Astros hadn’t cheated. Judge was a big revelation for the team, and has been the team’s heart ever since. His Baseball Reference page is filled with black ink: he’s lead the league in bWAR twice, in runs twice, in HRs and BBs three times. He’s won MVP twice, and this season he looks on pace to win it again barring injury. For 162 he averages 8.8bWAR and 51 HRs. A total superstar.

And in all this Judge has been my peer, we’re the exact same age. He was drafted out of college when I was in college. He reached the big leagues when I entered the work force. And as he declines physically, so will I. But not for now, for now I can look at Aaron Judge and be inspired to push myself harder than ever, we still have some good years left in us.

It’s early yet, but so far this is his best season of his career, maybe one of the best seasons ever on the off chance he should keep it up. We’re a little past the 1/3 mark of the season, and he is flirting with hitting .400, with a .500 OBP, and his SLG would make a decent OPS. He’s got a 244 OPS+, he’s better than two other players by value. Fangraphs gives him a 42% chance of walking away with a Triple Crown at the end of the year, which translates to a near certainty of a third MVP. award. He probably won’t hit .400, he’ll hit a slump in the dog days of summer, but he has a very good chance of an all-time-great season. On top of all that, another ten-win season translates to pushing his career total from “probably makes the Hall of Fame eventually on the quality of his peak seasons” to “definitely makes the hall of fame on the strength of his overall resume.” If you figure an aging curve on the aggressive side, of 1war a year rather than the typical .5war, he still might have eight more years of average MLB player left in him, which would put him potentially in the 80 win range, a top-100 player of all time. For right now, we’re having the best years of our lives, and we’ve still got years left to go, we can still hang with the young bucks.

And in addition to all that black ink, Judge is a good guy. He’s friendly, he’s aww shucks, he’s a gentle giant, he’s everything you want your star to be. He was adopted as an infant by two school teachers, he didn’t even know he was adopted (or black) until he was in middle school. He publicly talks about how much he loves his adoptive family and advocates for adoption, and the greatest argument in favor of cross-racial adoption. He’s a great teammate, unlike Jeter when the team traded for another RF in Juan Soto last year he was willing to move to center, a position he hadn’t played since college, to get Soto’s bat in the lineup. And he would play CF every day and win MVP!

Sadly, last year with Juan Soto might have been Judge’s best chance to avoid Mattingly’s fate as a team legend who never wins it all. The Yankees finally won a pennant for the first time with Judge, but would lose in the fall classic to the Dodgers and Judge’s friendly rival for Face of MLB Shoei Ohtani***. If they had just found a league average first baseman, like Ben Rice who has broken out this year but wasn’t trusted last year at first base, and a decent third baseman, they might have won it all. This year the team is still good, still odds on favorites in the division, but Gerrit Cole is out for the year, and without an ace I just don’t think they have it. Aaron Judge might never win a ring, and if he does it may be with a whole new team around him lead by new kids who haven’t even debuted yet, one on which he is more role player and eminence grise than superstar. But regardless, he’s the kind of player that every team will honor when he comes to their stadium for the last time. One day he’ll take his retirement tour season, and I’ll make sure to get a ticket, because it’ll be the day I really start being old.

— The Little Brother: When he retires, though, I think he’ll pass the role of captain directly to his successor, already on the team: Anthony Volpe. Why Tony Fox? Well, it’s a hopeful projection, but he seems to have figured out his bat this year for a cool 116 OPS+, and his fielding is so slick that he put up back to back 3war seasons even when his bat was weak. He’s a good kid, a drafted Yankee. Like Jeter and Judge, he’s biracial, half Filipino and half Italian. He loves his mother, like Jeter and Judge and Gehrig. He’s a high character guy. But watching him, he’s not a peer like Judge or an Idol like Jeter or a legend like Lou; he’s like a little brother made good. He’s not The Man, he’s The Kid. I watch him with the pride of an elder, the young fella made good.

— The Future: And somewhere in the Dominican Republic, there’s some 13 year old who is already freakishly fast and freakishly strong. He’s got a sweet left handed swing despite being a natural righty, and he plays shortstop though the scouts already think he’ll thicken up and play third base by the time he’s 20. He can’t be signed to a contract for years yet, but his trainer already has a wink-and-a-handshake agreement with the Yankees scouts in the DR that he’ll sign with the Yankees the moment he can. Everyone at the complex is amazed not just at his talent, but at his brains, at his determination, at his baseball IQ. He watches film, what a world where kids can do that in the DR, to get better. He focuses on technique. And like the young hidden Cyrus the Great, his friends look to him as a natural leader. He’s in charge, he makes sure his teammates are focused, that they do their work, that they are all in to win. And fifteen years from now, he’ll be in the Bronx aiming for the short porch. He’ll be young enough that, chronologically, he could be my son. And with any luck, I’ll be able to take my son to the game and point to him and hand my son the binoculars and say, look at him, that’s what you want to be like when you play, that’s focus and sportsmanship and the will to win, that’s The Captain.

*Gehrig’s record would only be broken by Cal Ripken Jr. and then only with the help of a timely blackout. TLDR: One game in the middle of Ripken’s streak was canceled due to electrical issues. Rumor has it that Ripken told the team he couldn’t play that day, because he had caught Kevin Costner canoodling with his (Ripken’s) wife, and the ensuing fight had injured Cal both physically and emotionally. So maybe Gehrig’s record still stands, if Mike Pence has the courage to do the right thing!

**Clay Buccholz, that greasy prick, would later claim that he fed Jeter that pitch so Jeets could get a great moment to finish his career. Idiot, if you’re going to do it, you have to never speak about it again. Admitting makes you look petty and stupid.

***Ohtani’s career arc is fascinating to me as a counterpart to his one-time teammate Mike Trout. Trout was the good guy who resigned with the Angels early, he’s only made the playoffs once despite being the best player in baseball for so long he got fewer MVPs than he deserved out of boredom. Ohtani chased money to the crosstown rival Dodgers, and looks to be winning multiple rings. But what about the fucking Angles? They had two all-time talents on league-minimum contracts in Trout and Ohtani, and never put together a consistent winner around them. What a tremendous failure.

I saw this just before I left work yesterday, and it inspired me to look up who the best players for the Pirates were during their memorable 20 years of losing seasons. The Dave Littlefield era (2001–2007) was particularly interesting, because while his predecessor and successor both tore the team completely down for a rebuild (the latter of which was successful), Littlefield seemed convinced that, following a failed rebuild, the team was just one or two tweaks away from success. They had some good players during those years, but also a lot of bad luck, and the whole time was marred by home-grown talent who would have a few good seasons before fizzling (Jason Bay, Oliver Perez), free agent acquisitions or trades who wouldn't live up to expectations (Matt Morris, Sean Casey), and players who were mediocre here but found success on other teams (Aramis Ramirez, Jose Bautista). So even if you went into the season knowing they were going to be bad, there was always something to at least make you think they had an outside shot of having a winning season, or maybe even at least still having a realistic chance at a winning season after the All-Star break.

So going through those old rosters gave me a bittersweet mix of nostalgia and regret, and then I came across a name that got me pissed off heading into the weekend: Cesar Izturis. I had totally forgotten that he had played for the Pirates briefly in 2007, at the tail end of the Littlefield era. But it wasn't what he did (or didn't do) in his 45 games with the Pirates that pissed me off. It's what he did (or didn't do) with the Dodgers in 2004. I have a theory that when it comes to Gold Gloves, unless there's an obvious "defensive wizard" who wins every year, the award is usually given to a good defensive player on a prominent team. In the case of shortstops and catchers, that player' offensive performance usually contributes way more than it should (see Derek Jeter's five Gold Gloves, which he wouldn't have won if he were on any team other than the Yankees, and which he wouldn't have won as a Yankee if he hit like a typical shortstop).

There was no natural Gold Glove shortstop in the National League in the 2000s, so in 2004 they gave it to Izturis because he hit .288 on the first-place Dodgers. Jack Wilson was the Pirates shortstop during that era, and he was one of the best in the game. Accordingly, he had one of the biggest contracts on the notoriously cheap Pirates, and as Littlefield's days were obviously numbered after the Matt Morris debacle (which itself only happened because his days were obviously numbered and he needed to make a big move), they were looking to cut salary. Izturis was a Gold Glove shortstop who was younger than Wilson and had a club option on his contract. He had also played under manager Jim Tracy while in Los Angeles. So they quietly traded for Izturis, the idea apparently being that they could start him and trade Wilson, giving the next GM some salary relief and some prospects. Except Izturis wasn't qualified to hold Wilson's jock strap, and the Bucs kept Wilson and declined the option on Izturis.

To be fair, Izturis's star had started to fade long before he arrived in Pittsburgh, and his Gold Glove season seems like an anomaly. But he hing around the league for over a decade, so he couldn't have been that bad, and would be an every day starter after that, and while his bating average never recovered, I doubt his defense was much worse. Jack Wilson was better in every defensive statistical category in 2004, and everyone who watched the Pirates regularly knew that he would have at least won a few Gold Gloves had he played for a better team. To add insult to injury, he was also much better offensively than Izturis ever was, batting .308 in 2004. He should have easily won the Gold Glove that year, and I'm still pissed off about that one.

Gold Gloves have always been the worst of the classic baseball awards. While they've generally not been awarded to true butchers, Jeets aside, they've historically been handed out more on offensive measurables than on defensive ones.

It's such a shame the pirates have been unable to put together a real team in so long. The gorgeous stadium alone should make it work. One of the best stadiums and one of the worst teams.

It's funny the grudges you have as a fan. The biggest hatreds I have are for players who play poorly for my team, then play well for a rival. Al Horford, oh boy. JA Happ. It's the random ones I really have a deep hatred for.

Lou Gehrig is nearly unique among all sports legends across all fields, in that he’s a man whose incredible Greatness at baseball is often overshadowed in public memory by his tremendous Goodness as a person.

It's overshadowed in public memory by a disease named after him. Until I read your post I thought he was a doctor.

Funny, for a foreigner that probably does make a lot more sense.

America doesn't want you to know that "Hamas" stands for Hoes And Money And Success.

A spiritual successor to my favourite tweet of all time:

"Allahu Akbar" is Arabic for "world star hip hop"

Makes me wonder what Fatah stands for.

Fuck All the Asian Hoes.

They've got my vote (/s, I love the Asian hoes)

So would you say they should be renamed to something like MSLTATAH (Make Sweet Love To All The Asian Hoes)?

Court opinion:

  • In year 2012, Michael dies. His two sons, Dennis and Roman, don't bother to probate his will, so Michael's house remains titled in Michael's name. Dennis is left in charge of maintaining the house.

  • In year 2017, the property taxes on the house are not paid. In year 2018, a company spends 7 k$ to buy from the municipal government the right to foreclose on the house.

  • In year 2021, the company starts a foreclosure proceeding against Michael, and serves Dennis with the complaint. Nobody responds to the complaint in court, so in year 2022 the judge declares Michael to have defaulted, and the company successfully forecloses on the house by paying off the delinquent taxes of 55 k$. In year 2023, the company sells the house to a third party for 325 k$, yielding profit of 270 k$.

  • Just a few days before the sale, Roman learns that the house has been foreclosed on. Months after the sale, a year after the foreclosure, and 11 years after Michael's death, Roman finally probates Michael's will, is appointed the administrator of Michael's estate, and in that capacity moves to (1) vacate the foreclosure because he had no notice of it and (2) recoup the 270 k$ of profit under the recent federal Supreme Court decision forbidding the "theft" through foreclosure of home equity in excess of the delinquent taxes.

  • The trial judge denies the motion, and in year 2025 the appeals panel affirms. Service of the complaint on Dennis, who resided at the house, was proper. And the Supreme Court decision prohibiting "home-equity theft" is not retroactive.

There are a lot of things I dislike about Pennsylvania law, but one thing I do like is that they got rid of the stupid redemption period nonsense. The idea is that after you lose property to tax sale you have a certain period of time to redeem the property by paying the back taxes on it. What this means in practice is that someone buying property at a tax sale has to cut a check now and then wait a year or years before they can actually take possession of the property. PA still technically has a redemption period, it just happens before the actual tax sale. In other words, if your property is put up for tax sale, it was already delinquent for several years and any possible redemption would have happened already. The New Jersey process appears to be even stupider, where you have to buy a certificate that then gives you the right to foreclose, which really means a right to spend even more money on a lawsuit at some point in the future when back taxes will only continue to accumulate. This just goes to show how a lot of aspects of property law exist as relics from the 1800s when everybody lived on farms and courts used complicated common law pleading procedure. And since none of this is a big enough deal for the state legislature to act on, it just keeps rolling along as a rather constipated discipline.

Other than that, I always find it remarkable when people do absolutely nothing for a decade and when something adverse happens they're suddenly motivated to not only file a separate suit but also appeal that suit. The guy doesn't open an estate for his father, doesn't see that the property taxes are paid, doesn't attempt to redeem the property after the auction is announced, doesn't respond to the foreclosure suit, yet immediately before the property is sold to a third party he files suit challenging the default judgment, and is motivated enough to appeal that judgment when he loses. The worst part of this is that he doesn't even attempt to claim some kind of hardship that may excuse him from not responding to the initial suit (other than that he wasn't on the best terms with his brother), but raises the cockamamie defense that service was improper because they served the brother instead of the estate, except they couldn't serve the estate because the estate didn't formally exist. If the court actually bought this argument, then anyone who inherited someone's house could avoid paying taxes on it indefinitely by simply not opening an estate and claiming improper service.

Beyond, that, though, and I don't think this was mentioned in the opinion, whether the estate was properly served is irrelevant, because the action technically isn't against the property owner but the property itself. Since they weren't seeking a judgment against the father but possession of the house, they only have to notify "the house", which they did by mailing notice to the owner of record and by personally serving notice to an adult at the residence, who happened to also be an heir and possible estate representative. It's hard for me to see what the defendant here thinks the reasonable course of action should have been.

Man, that really sucks for Dennis.

This case seems like a great metaphor for America these days: Everyone (but Dennis) did everything by the book, and the court seems to have made the right decision based on the facts, but no one had the decency to knock on Dennis's door a couple of times and let him know of his impending legal doom because he didn't check all the right boxes in the right forms.

Life in America sucks for people who can't / won't jump through legal hoops. Basically everyone I know who is on-again-off-again-homeless has a story like this about how the system fucked them over. But the Man oppressing them is just "doing the right thing by the book". I'm sure there were other problems in the 1800s, but at least the downtrodden/not-quite-dregs of society didn't have to deal with paperwork.

If you read the complaint, it sounds like they did exactly that, considering Dennis was served a foreclosure notice in person. I'd assume he got a heckuva a lot of deliquency notices too given that he lived at the address in question. It's right in the middle of page 3. Haven't read the full thing, but I can't say I'm feeling very sympathetic, it sounds like Dennis received repeated notices over the course of 12 years and just ignored them. They were probably addressed to his Dad, but you really should read any correspondence from the government addressed to your dead dad if you want to keep his house.

The only thing I can think of here is to serve the house with info on the delinquent taxes before foreclosing. If that were done, I would have no sympathy whatsoever for the sons (Dennis certainly).

They got served! They know that taxes are a thing! And they did nothing at all about it. For ten years. Did they think they were just getting away with it?

I get that paperwork sucks. What was the alternative? That people can just avoid paying taxes because they’re too lazy or ignorant to do it? To increase taxes on everyone else to assign a case manager and counsel them very social justicely? To send the landlord’s bailiff around to collect taxes with a bullwhip to handle the delinquent serfs?

send the landlord’s bailiff around to collect taxes with a bullwhip to handle the delinquent serfs

That or a pack of dogs bred to ensure complaince from reluctant taxpayers.

The court obviously did the right thing to maintain a functioning society based on existing laws. But it's easy for me to imagine an IQ ~80 person getting sucked into this shitty situation without any intentional malice on their part. IQ 80 corresponds to about 10% of the population. If we can't get a system that is "easy" for these people to navigate, then literally millions of Americans are doomed to a shitty life full of the Man ruining their shit.

In a perfect society, I think that the cops / county clerk / local priest / bartender would have pestered Dennis multiple times in person at their house / church / pub until this got resolved amicably. This pestering would have ultimately saved tax payers tons of money in legal fees as well.

So, just to be clear, you are arguing that ~10% of the population is incapable of performing basic duties towards society and needs to be managed as effective wards of the state with permanent case managers? I know that what you suggested is more of a “my brother’s keeper” model, but everything is atomized now and social mobility is too high, the responsible members of society have successfully escaped their former peers and live in a different suburb. So if they’re coming back, they’re coming as agents of the government, which is trying to collect or control, because that’s what governments do.

I’m not saying this like your solution is unheard of. To a certain extent it’s what we do already, and I guess we hold property owners to a higher standard. But these laws aren’t especially new. Property taxes aren’t new either. People managed before. And how can you really expect someone who can’t manage to regularly pay taxes, to figure out what’s going on in the single most important letter of their life, to attend to all the other maintenance required in owning a house?

(FWIW I don’t read these individuals as too dumb to understand letters, I read them as somewhat lazy and inclined to drag their heels or expect that they’re getting away with things. Very educated people, like college students, can fall into these habits too. I have friends in academia who tell me of students who drag their heels, don’t go through the documents given them, and then panic after the deadlines that they can’t get into the classes they need. This feels like the same pattern: no response to warnings, no response to the official point of no return, but only when their failures become tangible and they can no longer pretend that their inaction has cost them nothing do they try to take action, by complaining that they were never given a fair chance in the first place. And then they go through the right venues, and then they show passion and sophistication, and all those formal barriers are no obstacles to their abilities, and they are oh so very aggrieved. But why not before? Because the issue wasn’t IQ or what have you, it was good practices, and especially the wisdom that wasting time and putting things off and delaying has real costs that add up. As long as nothing tangible is lost, they can lie to themselves that everything is fine, so it’s that moment of losing something real, the sale of the house, that spurs action and also drives these guys berserk because they must confront the fact that they were irresponsible this whole time, and that in particular is too much to bear. So while they are hiring a lawyer and arguing minutiae and appealing to higher courts, their primary argument, or at least sentiment, is that what they were previously asked to do was just too hard, that nobody can reasonably achieve it. And they don’t notice the dissonance. But I do, and I judge them for it.)

You've correctly pointed out a very real failure mode of our modern atomized lifestyle, and highlighted that many people do in fact fail because of their own ineptitude. I agree with all of that but also think it sucks for Dennis that he failed in this way and that it sucks for all of the other people who also fail in this way. Maybe I have too much sympathy for people who suck at modern life.

The only thing I can think of here is to serve the house with info on the delinquent taxes before foreclosing. If that were done, I would have no sympathy whatsoever for the sons (Dennis certainly).

That's what happened in this case. A "pre-foreclosure notice" was sent by both regular mail and certified mail in July 2021, and then the actual foreclosure complaint was served in person in November 2021.

Sorry, I meant before that. Like, yearly automated mail: you’re not paying taxes. If even that was sent, what else could you do but nanny state or feudal bailiff the guy?

Idk about his jurisdiction, but they generally do that? I get a yearly letter even though mine are paid, with my balance and any proposed changes to the tax regime.

The thing that gets me about all this, is that it took a Supreme Court Case to tell the government "No, you can't steal a half million dollar piece of property from someone to satisfy a debt 1/10th of that." And then the shear fucking balls for the government to turn around and go "Ok, well, now we know that... but it doesn't help you"

And then the sheer fucking balls for the government to turn around and go "Okay, well, now we know that... but it doesn't help you."

To be more specific than my summary at the top of this thread:

  • In general:
    • The federal Supreme Court did not mention retroactivity at all in its opinion.
    • The state supreme court has not yet determined one way or the other whether the federal Supreme Court's prohibition of home-equity theft is retroactive—whether fully or only in lawsuits that were still "in the pipeline" when the federal Supreme Court's decision was issued.
  • In this particular case:
    • Roman admitted that full retroactivity would be unworkable, but argued that pipeline retroactivity still should apply.
    • The trial judge pointed out that pipeline retroactivity is not even available in this case, because the foreclosure process had already ended by the time the federal Supreme Court issued the opinion. The appeals panel agreed with this analysis.

So the question of retroactivity technically still is open, at least in this state (New J*rsey).

I mean, I still just think that's bullshit, even with all the caveats? People were getting away with a literal "free money" glitch by buying liens and then repossessing properties for their full value, as opposed to collecting the debt they may have bought for pennies on the dollar, and then paying out the excess of the sale as should have been legally required all along. I'm indifferent on reversing the lien or foreclosure or any of that. Someone "legally" stole almost half a million dollars in equity from these brothers, regardless of how negligent they were. They should be owed the difference between the value of the home and the debt the estate owed, period, no questions asked.

Everyone (but Dennis) did everything by the book

I think Roman can also be blamed for failing to probate the will earlier. If the house's tenancy in common between him and Dennis had been properly reflected on the deed, then presumably the foreclosure complaint would have been served on him as well as on Dennis.

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