"The age of AI will disrupt the workplace in all sorts of ways. But the work will continue..."

"... as other kinds of work have continued through technological disruptions. People still run the 100-meter dash, even though a car or a cheetah could do it faster. We still cook elaborate dinners, even though the frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes. We still have dinner parties, even though we could stream wittier banter from Netflix — because we are humans, and we want to seek excellence, not just consume it. AI may make it harder for us to get paid for our work. But if so, it will also make it easier for us to focus on the reasons that work is worth doing."

So says Megan McArdle, in "Every novel might have to pass an AI test soon/Artificial intelligence threatens writers’ livelihoods. It may also remind them why they write" (WaPo)(gift link).

The frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes? I don't believe that for one minute. Strike the "highly" and maybe you've got the beginning of a good enough analogy.

Also: "a car or a cheetah could do it faster" — there's no antecedent for "it." Do what faster? Anyway, it's not that people run the 100-meter dash, it's that other people care about and watch them running. Speed is interesting to us because of whatever it is that is going fast. We also care about and watch cars and cheetahs going fast, but it's not the speed per se that matters. It's the thing that's managing to go that fast. I've been impressed by a fast-moving tortoise.

As for reading, there are different kinds of readers. I don't think I'm the kind of reader who reads the novels that AI is going to get away with writing — conventional, fast-moving narratives with heroes and villains. Does it bother me if readers of hackwork are not getting human hacks? Maybe it does!

"Like many of the earliest competitive eaters, Mr. Janus stumbled into the sport. He was working as a day trader in Manhattan..."

"... hating the stress of his job. One day he went looking for a way to relieve the pressure and found it in a St. Patrick’s Day eating contest — corned beef and cabbage.... 'He brought this unique level of thoughtfulness and earnestness to competitive eating,' Jason Fagone, the author of 'Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream' (2006), said in an interview. 'He took this thing that a lot of people just throw off as a joke, and he took it seriously.'... After he took up competitive eating, he began working nights at a pizza parlor, and eventually quit day trading to make pies full time. He never earned enough money in the sport to live off it exclusively — at the time, no one did — but he also insisted that money didn’t interest him. 'It’s never been about the cash; it’s always about the adventure.... One of these contests recharges me more than a week at the beach ever would.'"

From "Tim Janus, One of the World’s Greatest Competitive Eaters, Has Died/He brought rigor and strategy to the sport, rising to No. 2 in the world and eating 141 pieces of nigiri in six minutes in the process" (NYT).

He died at age 49 — and not of overeating. Of lung cancer.

(If that makes you think about the Pope, here's a BBC article about the Pope's lung cancer. He seems to be doing well after the removal of the lower lobe of his right lung. There are photos of him celebrating mass at the hospital, after the surgery.)

I'm giving this post my "sports" tag, but is this a sport? I want to say that it is. Grok agreed with me, here.

"It’s the least they could do... We’re already paying money to suffer. We’re not going to Hyrox and then going, 'That was great.'"

"To add additional contamination to that suffering is not something that we are paying for.... Everyone could physically see that there was feces on her leg, but no one said anything.... It was just, like, business as normal."

Said Joe Ho, one of the athletes who competed in the Beijing Hyrox, quoted in "Hyrox Athletes Are Refunded After Competitor Soiled Herself/The athlete, who went on to win, kept going after the incident at a global fitness event in Beijing, leading to an uproar" (NYT gift link).

[Joanna] Wietrzyk, an elite Hyrox athlete from Australia, had visible feces running down her legs as she did burpee broad jumps and weighted lunges at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, alongside more than 100 fellow competitors — many of whom would need to pass through the same stations and use the same weights....

"Is that a fake fight? I find it hard to believe Tom Brady would just hit a guy."

I say, reacting to this, which X pushed at me this morning:

TOM BRADY AND LOGAN PAUL ALMOST THREW HANDS AT FANATICS FEST

👀🍿 pic.twitter.com/mks597nXn0

— FADE (@FadeAwayMedia) July 17, 2026

I was using the Grok fact check. I was told, "It's a genuine onstage slap" that might be "real emotion mixed with promotional flair, not a fully scripted WWE-style fake fight."

My next 3 prompts were: 1. "Arrest Brady," and 2. "If that doesn't deserve arrest then it's bullshit theater and we shouldn't be duped into paying attention," 3. "It was put in my X sidebar, like it's supposed to matter to me. I don't want to be used like that."

Grok told me: "X's algorithm surfaces high-engagement viral clips like this Brady-Paul moment to boost time-on-site, as fights, celebs, and drama reliably drive views, likes, and comments regardless of personal relevance." It advised me to mute keywords like "Fanatics Fest," which opened up a window on how awful entertainment is these days. "Fanatics" doesn't refer to the fans, but to a sports licensing company that stages events "to monetize collector hype and direct-to-consumer sales."

Why would X's algorithm prompt me to look at that, and more importantly, why does entertainment suck these days?

"I can call anyone about anything."

He CALLED FIFA 🤣 pic.twitter.com/hp1DObdnFv

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) July 6, 2026

"Democrats stopped talking about trans politics long before the court’s ruling this week."

"In June, which is L.G.B.T.Q. Pride month, no Democratic candidate mentioned the word 'transgender' in their TV ads, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Their silence may be an attempt to deprive Republicans of campaign-trail ammunition.... A New York Times/Ipsos poll conducted in January 2025 showed that nearly 80 percent of Americans opposed allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports.... May Mailman, director of the conservative legal organization Independent Women’s Law Center, said the ruling was less animating than it might have been a few years ago, because transgender advocacy feels 'less in your face' now, particularly in red states. Ms. Mailman recalled walking into retail stores across the country back when gender was one of the party’s most galvanizing topics and seeing mannequins of transgender people. That sort of display has become less prevalent, she said, as the opinion of most Americans has become clearer. By winning in the court of public opinion, Republicans in some ways lost ground on a potent political issue, she said.... 'It’s kind of like D.E.I.,' Ms. Mailman said.... 'Is D.E.I. gone, or is it hibernating?'"

From "Ruling on Trans Athletes Gave the G.O.P. a Win. Most Democrats Looked the Other Way. While Republicans celebrated the ruling, many Democrats stayed quiet on an issue that had proved divisive in the last election" (NYT).

Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who has long coached girls' basketball teams — channels the emotions of female athletes.

From his opinion for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J.,  allowing states to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex:

Some might ask: What is the harm in allowing an additional athlete to compete in women’s or girls’ sports? That sentiment, though understandable, misunderstands the nature and reality of sports. 

Sports are highly competitive and generally zero sum. At almost every turn, someone wins and someone loses. Every athlete who makes a team takes a roster spot from another athlete. Every player who earns playing time reduces the playing time of a teammate. Every player who makes the starting lineup sidelines another who remains on the bench. Every competitor who wins a race or competition deprives another athlete of that victory, or medal, or prize. Every team that wins because of an added player means that another team has lost because of that added player. Every player who makes all-conference beats out another player who does not. Every student who earns an athletic scholarship takes that opportunity away from another student. And so on. 

Women and girls who play sports care deeply about all of those things. They obsess about them.

"Justin Franklin and Kevin Akoto do not know exactly how long they have been in the glass box in the middle of Times Square..."

"... surrounded by enormous LED billboards, flashing lights, hotdog stands and flags — and hundreds of faces looking in at them. 'I have no idea what day it is,' says Franklin, 29. 'I stopped counting after ten,' adds Akoto, 26. 'It’s no use trying.' After beating thousands of applicants, Franklin and Akoto were appointed as the television network Fox One’s 'chief World Cup watchers,' each paid $50,000 to watch every single one of the tournament’s 104 matches over 39 days and post social media content about it.... 'It’s a little weird,' says Akoto, turning around on the sofa to look at the crowd of 100 or so people looking back at him. 'But you get used to it. You wave at the crowd, they’ll wave back sometimes. Or they might tell you to sit down because they can’t see the screen. I definitely have more appreciation for zoo and aquarium animals now — why they don’t want to be out all the time.'"

The London Times reports.

"You don't have to tip. You wanna tip."

An Aussie discovers Texas Road House for the first time. Epic!

The World Cup needs to be permanently held in the US. It offers the most for the teams and the fans. 🤣🇺🇸🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/5AFbUVWrFZ

— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) June 19, 2026

AND: Costco has your beans:

Culture shock… Europeans in America pic.twitter.com/fxxgdHqKng

— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) June 19, 2026

"So I decided to ask them: Can you tell me what, exactly, you like about ultimate fighting?..."

"I couldn’t get my 18-year-old to talk about it, but my 15-year-old — a thoughtful kid who last week told me, 'U.F.C. literally takes up 99 percent of my brain space' — was happy to oblige. He explained in excruciating detail the various weight classes and fighting techniques.... 'I know it’s marketing, I really do, but their characters are so entertaining and their work ethic really impresses me.' Another thing he finds compelling about U.F.C., he said, is how 'real' it is. Most professional sports are 'fictional' made-up games in which people throw or kick or hit round rubber things in order to amuse themselves and a bunch of strangers. Fighting, he pointed out, is primal, 'in our blood'...."

Writes Hope Reeves, in "My Teenage Sons Love U.F.C. Here’s What We Saw at the White House Cage Match" (NYT).

"Everything about 'the Claw' feels tawdry, especially when they turn on the lights, which send bolts of blue and white illumination down the 154-foot interlocking steel arches...."

I'm reading "Joe Rogan called the White House UFC event ‘so America.’ He’s right. The 'Claw' bursting out of the White House grounds is the perfect metaphor for the moment, injecting bloody spectacle into the country’s birthday celebration" in the Washington Post

I'm reading that because it's by the Post's architecture critic, Philip Kennicott. He writes:

[T]he UFC match isn’t about celebrating the foundational myths of American democracy. It inhabits a landscape of darker myths, like the perpetual struggle of the frontier, the faux chivalry and resentments of the Lost Cause, the Darwinian drama of survival in a world of hostile forces, enemies, chaos....

Trump takes pleasure in presiding over conflict. The world comes to him, where he, the perpetual winner, lords over contests, over victories and defeats. You’re fired. You don’t hold any winning cards. You’ve lost the match. For many Americans, there is nothing surreal about this delight in domination. It simply reflects the world they live in, where people are losing all the time, at the gas pump, at dead-end jobs, in marriages that founder on the shoals of stress and poverty....

"Once the domain of mellow Gen X-ers in the ’80s and ’90s, the hacky sack is experiencing a renaissance at the hands — well, the feet — of Gen Z."

"High school students around the country are freshly enthusiastic about the toys, crocheted bean bags that once hung in the air like the scent of marijuana. Parents and teachers mostly seem glad to watch young people be entranced by something other than their phones...."

From "Hacky Sack Mounts a Comeback With Gen Z/Teenagers are booting the game out of the 1990s. 'It’s kind of bringing everybody together,' one said" (NYT).

"The American Cornhole League said in 2023 that Webber was a 'shining example of our slogan — anyone can play, anyone can win.'"

That's the last line of a Fox10 article with the headline "Quadruple-amputee cornhole player accused of shooting man to death during argument."

Dayton James Webber, 27, is a professional cornhole player. He was 10 months old when he had a blood infection that cost him his limbs.

It's hard to picture a quadruple amputee shooting a gun, but we are told that he was also driving a car, he shot the front-seat passenger, and there were also backseat passengers, and when they got out of the car and declined to pull the victim out of the car for him, Webber drove off with the victim still in the front seat.

And so it goes for the shining example of the notion that anyone can do anything.

By the way, who knew there was a professional cornhole league?

An exciting finish to the L.A. Marathon yesterday. That's the American Nathan Martin, catching up to the Kenyan Michael Kamari.

Holy smokes….incredible finish at LA Marathon today by American Nathan Martin coming from behind to catch and beat Kenyan Michael Kamari at the finish line pic.twitter.com/hYk1jxsqBk

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) March 9, 2026

Nice winning by Martin, brilliant performance of defeat by Kamari, and terrible work by the announcers, who need to sharpen our perception in the moment, not fail to see the potential and then collapse into their own inarticulate emotion. "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" — it's like overhearing a random lady in the crowd. At least say "Oh! The humanity!" or something memorable.

"Newsom was profoundly dyslexic.... By the third grade, he had worked himself into a panic over his trouble with reading and math."

"'I’m faking being sick, because I hate school and I’m stressed, and they’re always having to pick me up early,' he recalled.... He was a scrawny, shy boy with a bowl cut. 'He always called himself stupid,' his sister said, and other kids apparently agreed. 'The guys kept saying, "If you’re looking for your brother, he’s hanging from his underwear on a lamppost."'  In middle school, Newsom took steps to reinvent himself as an athlete. 'Rocky' had recently come out, and he emulated the main character—running up and down hills, drinking raw eggs, learning to box. His sister remembers falling asleep night after night listening to the sound of him relentlessly practicing basketball: shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. Learning to read was a similar feat."

Writes Nathan Heller, in "Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Long Game/California’s governor has been touted as the Democrats’ best shot in 2028. But first he’ll need to convince voters that he’s not just a slick establishment politician" (The New Yorker).

"When I asked Newsom about his dyslexia in his office one afternoon, he showed me an overstuffed folder of printed material, his reading from the previous evening. Almost every word of text was underlined. He flipped through a galley proof of his memoir, in which the underlining covered whole pages—the only way, he said, that he could read any book, even his own. He produced another folder filled with lined paper and covered with his handwriting: he copies all the text he underlines onto writing pads...."

"We can do it!"

Link to Reddit: here. (The embedded video stopped working.)

"What if all of sports is ruined by this gambling thing?"

I said, revealing my level of engagement in sports, gambling, and the attendant legal issues. 

"He had thought about hiking the Appalachian Trail since a seventh-grade teacher discussed it in class — it had opened in full in 1937 — and he started planning it..."

"... in quiet moments at his first job, in sales training for a hardware company, which he didn’t like. He bought a used backpack from an Army surplus store, hiking shoes from L.L. Bean, a canvas tent and a rain poncho. He carried a Boy Scout knife, cooking utensils, a miner’s carbide lamp and two canteens, one for water and the other for gasoline to fuel his tiny stove. His meals included dehydrated mashed potatoes and boiled cornmeal with sugar, raisins and powdered milk.... Food and supplies for his hike cost Mr. Espy about $300. When his trek ended, he hitchhiked to Boston, where he spent $100 on new clothes and a bus ticket back to Georgia...."

From "Gene Espy, Pioneering Hiker of the Appalachian Trail, Dies at 98/In 1951, always an adventurer, he was the second person to walk the trail in a 'thru-hike,' from Georgia to Maine, in an arduous 123 days. He later met the first to do so" (NYT).

"I’ve done everything openly, nothing in secret. If it makes some people happy to question it, it has made a lot of other people happier who believe it."

Said Fauja Singh, in 2016, quoted in "Fauja Singh, Marathon Runner at an Advanced Age, Is Dead/Competing in London in 2011, he claimed to be 100, though his exact age remained a mystery. 'I run while talking to God,' he said in explaining his endurance" (NYT).

Singh’s case became emblematic of the difficulties race officials faced in determining the ages of elderly runners, especially when the athletes were born in places where birth certificates were unavailable or lost during tumultuous times.

“People in the third world are at a disadvantage for being taken seriously,” Harmander Singh told The New York Times in 2016. 

Still, Fauja Singh had his supporters among fans and officials. Mr. Smith, the Ontario Masters official, said, “As far as I’m concerned, he was legit.” But, he added: “They just can’t start allowing world records when there is no birth certificate. It opens a whole can of worms.”

"Five Catholic saints are on the list, including Elizabeth Ann Seton.... However, there is not a single female athlete, unless you count sharpshooter Annie Oakley."

From "Who’ll be in Trump’s hero garden? There are a few surprises. The list of nearly 250 includes the famous, the obscure and, in some cases, the intentionally controversial" (WaPo)(free-access link).