Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - June 3, 2025 [scampydog]

Good evening busy brains, insomniacs, overthinkers, trivia champions, armchair experts, confidently confused, and those just trying to remember which day it is. Thank you for checking in on the Tuesday, ONT.

Repeat of the wise words from AoS commenter, mikeski. Scrolling? Sure. Read the content? Just an appetizer. The commenting is the main course.

Quickest way to the touch of a woman? Dude has a lifelong story.

Searching for safety... pic.twitter.com/i9InErHAtJ

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) June 3, 2025

Sound up for this one.

Bro LMAO 💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/hGrwL5l3Ka

— Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy) June 3, 2025

Nirvana. They changed the face of rock - ended the Hair Metal era. Credited with bringing Grunge out of Seattle and to the masses. They were a pretty stripped down, raw sound - very different from what came before them. Their music ushered in a stretch of bands and music that left a generation wondering what the hell to do next.

Here is a link to a letter from Steve Albini to the band. Albini produced the last Nirvana album, In Utero.

Dough. I explained this to Kurt but I thought I'd better reiterate it here. I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. No points. Period. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It's the band's fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it's a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band.

I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There's no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn't be able to sleep.

***

In a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Mike Reno, of Loverboy had this to say about Nirvana: "As I once said on MTV, Nirvana killed our career."

Rambling Thoughts of a MWTF

NPR: What's Not to Love? Well, Plenty.

Let's open with what we know: NPR's tone and delivery of viewpoints are condescending. There is no riffing - it is all curated browbeating and lacks ideological diversity. Insular perspective on both simple and complex issues. Out of touch with a large swath of the population-especially rural and conservative listeners.

Identity politics, Identity politics, rah, rah, rah (let's do some old school cheer down thread). NPR claims to serve all but caters to a narrow, shrinking audience. They have a credibility problem - the larger group that no longer listens to them are tired of being sidelined and beaten on - and then handed a bill. It's reductive. And arrogant.

How the NPR money flows. Gotta love a link that pulls the research together.

NPR may receive little direct federal funding, but a good deal of its budget comprises federal funds that flow to it indirectly by federal law. Here's how it works: Under the terms of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, funds are allocated annually to a non-governmental agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, overseen by a board of presidential appointees. That corporation, in turn, can choose to support original programming produced by public television or public radio - but, by law, must direct much of its $445 million funding (scheduled to top $500 million next fiscal year) to local public television and public radio stations across the country, via so-called "community service grants."

Here's where things get tricky. Local stations, if they want to broadcast "All Things Considered," "Fresh Air" and other programming produced by NPR or competitors such as American Public Radio, must pay for it. Indeed, in its consolidated financial statement for 2021, NPR reported $90 million in revenue from "contracts from customers," a significant portion of its $279 million and much more than 1 percent. Such revenue was exceeded only by corporate sponsorships, which totaled $121 million. One can think of these funds as federal grants that have been sent from Washington - but returned to it.

By their own metrics (see links below), they are boutique broadcasting. Buh-bye, it's just a matter of time.

Here is a link to Link to the NPR - 2011 numbers.

NPR's own research shows that of its 26.8 million listeners 23 percent self-identify as 'middle of the road'. Roughly 37 percent identify as liberal or somewhat liberal, and 26 percent as conservative or somewhat conservative. This roughly tracks Rosenstiel's data that NPR's audience skews more independent (14 percent) and Democratic (14 percent) than Republican (6 percent.)

Here is a link to Link to the NPR - 2023 numbers. And other info.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren't just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.

Sportball in the ONT?

Fastpitch softball. WCWS is down to two teams. Texas Tech and Texas. Games tomorrow night and Wednesday evening. Thursday if necessary.

High energy postseason college event. Pace of play. If any ball is bobbled, the runner is safe (precision). Moves quickly, hustle is important.

Here is the bracket for the WCWS.

Anyone taken in the Oklahoma City event? Bucket list trip for scampydog. Flame away in the comments.

The Mike Candrea years with the University of Arizona are the current gold standard. Sustained success. Impressive body of work. A lot of his drills and fundamental concepts transfer well from softball to baseball. He studied, taught, implemented, and won. A lot.

- NCAA softball leader in wins (1,674)

- On April 19, 2019, became the fastest coach in NCAA history, any division, any sport, to accumulate 1,600 wins.

- Fourth-most Division I victories of any coach in any sport.

- Led Arizona to eight national championships, more than any coach in NCAA Softball history.

- Arizona has made 24 trips to the Women's College World Series in his tenure, missing just eight times in the last 33 years.

- Under Candrea, Arizona has a spectacular postseason record of 178-65. The Wildcats have played in an NCAA-record 34 consecutive postseasons.

- Fifty-three All-Americans with a staggering 108 total citations have played in the program since Candrea took over.

More recently, Patty Gasso and her Oklahoma teams have had a helluva a run. Oklahoma has won 6 of the last 8 WCWS and 7 of the last 11. Texas Tech knocked them out of the tournament this year.

***

Dugout cheers - ehh.. not the best part of the softball experience. Preference for some crowd energy and old school cheers from the fans.

Beer, beer, beer, makes you want to cheer. Gin, gin, gin, makes you want to win. Ice cold Duck, makes you want to... SCORE!

Strawberry shortcake, banana split, we think your team plays like... shift to the left, shift to the right.

Share some in the comments.

PINCH HIT CLUTCH METER OFF THE CHARTS 📈@OleMissSoftball x #WCWS /ESPN pic.twitter.com/S0Zx6c1Gmx

— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) May 31, 2025

Dude ran after the subway like The Six Million Dollar Man. Minus the bionics, shoes, and red polyester track suit of badassery.

The things you see on the subway! pic.twitter.com/EkAPnVzsiL

— LD Basler (@ArmaLite15OU812) May 31, 2025

Intersection of hunger and opportunity. Clever bird of prey.

The hawk has learned that after a certain large family eats outdoors, the leftovers in their yard attract plenty of sparrows, pigeons, and other yummy birds. It then waits for a long line of cars to build at the traffic light situated on the street next to the family's home.

Once the pedestrian crossing signal sounds, the hawk knows the line of cars is long enough to hide its approach. It swoops toward its prey, concealing itself behind the waiting vehicles, and strikes.

Four-wheeled picture safari. Both images below sent along by an Eastern Washington Moron who wishes to remain anonymous.

Clicks Song Randomizer

OK, maybe I went looking for this one. Because:
Tatjana Patitz
Naomi Campbell
Christy Turlington
Cindy Crawford
Linda Evangelista

This ONT is brought to you by reading the comments. AoS commenter extraordinaire, miklos dropped this ONT masterpiece in the comments last week.

This is hilarious and so accurate 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/H5BkVgrlbT

— Positive Side of 𝕏 (@positivesideofx) May 12, 2025

Top 10 commenters:
1 [383 comments] 'TheJamesMadison, reflecting on change and permanence with Ozu' [54.37 posts/day]
2 [329 comments] 'Sponge - F*ck Cancer'
3 [315 comments] 'Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ '
4 [303 comments] 'Oldcat'
5 [283 comments] 'Christopher R Taylor'
6 [283 comments] 'polynikes'
7 [279 comments] 'rickb223 '
8 [278 comments] 'Bulg'
9 [273 comments] 'Disinterested FDA Director'
10 [242 comments] 'Alberta Oil Peon'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [204 names] 'Miklos will be banned again' [28.96 unique names/day]
2 [171 names] 'Ciampino - another tricky one'
3 [123 names] 'Quarter Twenty '
4 [109 names] 'Vulgar Boatman'
5 [106 names] 'Six Sigma Black Belt muthafucka'
6 [47 names] 'Moron Analyst'
7 [45 names] 'Count de Monet'
8 [41 names] 'Lindsey Graham, Closeted Homosexual'
9 [34 names] 'Duncanthrax'
10 [28 names] 'I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper'

Please send short and long form versions for explaining ways to get out of going to a wedding to: scampydog at proton dot me

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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