(Their earlier song featuring Virtute - "Plea From A Cat Named Virtute" - is a banger, for people who like this sort of music) theweakerthans.bandcamp.com/track/plea-f...

John Sampson of the Weakerthans has a song about a runaway cat: "Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure". The refrain is about the cat's name: "The sound you found for me." And at the end, he repeats, "I can't remember the sound that you found for me." 😭 theweakerthans.bandcamp.com/track/virtut...

Wouldn't be the first time World Cross has been like that. After the 2006 edition in Fukuoka, Steven Downes got World Athletics (then the IAAF) to run a whole article grumbling that "[f]lat, anodyne courses" were ruining the sport. worldathletics.org/news/news/cr...

Yes, they have courageously and conclusively solved that imaginary problem while harming no one. Good work! Have a cookie.

Good for you, @statman-jon.bsky.social! sportsmedialgbt.com/jon-mulkeen-...

Meet the current Decathlon world record holder and two-time World Champion, from France, Kevin Mayer: worldathletics.org/athletes/fra...

So it takes some very specific circumstances to get a Frenchman and a Swede on the 10,000m podium, but it is absolutely proof that the non-African countries should keep developing and entering athletes instead of just conceding those medals. Because when that door opens, you want to be ready.

American Olympic medalist Grant Fisher in 8th was just over 2 seconds away from gold, which might as well be a blanket finish in a 25-lap race that lasts 29 minutes.

The Kenyans and Ethiopians (and occasional Eritreans, Tanzanians, or Mo Farah) have gotten so used to the success of their "burn off everyone else and then sort out the medals in the last lap" strategy that apparently in the hot conditions in Tokyo, they neglected the "burn off everyone else" part.

Only the second World Champion not born in Africa. (The first, Alberto Cova of Italy, won the first World Championships in 1983, fourteen years before Gressier was born.) Also the fewest Africans on the podium (one) since 1987.

Chelangat of Uganda is 12th in Alison's post but not in the currently-listed results (approaching 7:45AM JPN time on Sunday)

* A band I love(d) no longer associated with a hateful person
* My teenaged daughter, the rickroll aficionado, suddenly becomes interested in the Smiths
It'd be a win-win!

I feel for those people. Half of what makes the movie work is that Crash is hanging on to baseball by his teeth and fingernails.

There's this popular series of mid-grade light fantasy books (not going to drop the name, but it features elves) which started out VERY WELL, but now there are almost ten books, all with cliffhangers, and it seems possible it will never end. Competent writing, infuriating plotting.

Having this dispute with an AI-pilled running group member proposing workouts he got from ChatGPT. I keep coming back with, "Has ChatGPT ever done that workout? Can it explain how it's going to benefit us, or why that's the right workout, or is it just spitting out workout-shaped words?"

Even if we only got one thing on the list, the $$ for capital improvements to the T would be worth it.

It's cute how everyone sees "Portland" and thinks "PDX", not "PWM"

* Jon Bon Jovi has entered the chat *

It was an eye-opening moment, reading John McPhee's "Annals of the Former World", when he commented that from a geological perspective, asphalt pavement might as well be sand.

North Hadley Sugar Shack FTW

Runners and swimmers will always talk about hitting their personal best even if they don’t finish first in a race.
Infuriating for journalists trying to cover a race, but truly a mindset everybody should have.
(Especially weirdo politicians trying to bully kids instead of improving people’s lives!)

"Since that fateful day on June 24, 2025..." which hasn't happened yet. (Pay your copyeditors, kids.)

This is fantastic. See, back in the early '00s I worked at Sinauer Associates, and as part of my job I was the front-line phone and email support for PAUP. I do *not* know phylogenetic analysis; mostly once I got users to a successful installation, I was done. But that thing was a beast.