Muttroxia

Another repeat passenger. I remembered her because her depressing life. She works long hours at Family Dollar and is so tired she can hardly talk. She is in her late twenties but she is already haggard. She lives right next to a MARTA stop in a dump of an apartment and doesn’t have much hope to improve things.

New Years Eve 2025: Driving on major holidays is different. At least that’s what I had heard. I hadn’t done it because (a) my car was in the shop for a while (unrelated to Uber), and (b) I spend time with my own family on holidays. But New Years Eve is a dumb holiday, we’re not doing anything, let’s see what it’s like and earn some good money!

Notables:

1. The couple that I picked up from the fancy restaurant. They seemed like they had been dating for a year or two. They weren’t happy. There was dead silence the entire ride. They didn’t say a word. Until two minutes from the dropoff. Suddenly he turned to her and yelled, “So what the fuck are you so mad about!?” “Because the dinner was terrible, that’s why!” “The dinner was terrible? The $400 dinner I saved up and bought you was terrible!? That dinner!? Jesus, wah wah!!!” It got worse from there.

2. The newly engaged couple. I give them five years at most. He was obsessed with a 4-carat ring his grandfather had passed down to him to use for an engagement ring. The ring had somehow been taken back by the other family branch. There was a lot of family drama that was hard to follow. At any rate he had spent $9,000 of his own money on a new ring to replace his grandfathers. $9,000 was a huge amount of money to him. Every time I pivoted to how did you meet or something nice he kept going back to it, could not get past it. She sat quietly the whole ride and left a nice tip.

3. I picked her up from a nice restaurant in Roswell. She got in. I asked how her night was going. She didn’t answer at first. Then she sighed and very quietly said, “I tried. I really did.” I liked her, this 38-year-old divorced content-creator. She was a very nice woman and we had a great conversation. She did not like New Years Eve, she did not like the noise, she did not like the whole idea of forced fun. She never does stuff like this. This year she left herself be talked into it. She went out for several hours across multiple restaurants and clubs to be social — and it was terrible. She was very happy to get home.

Happy New Years 2025 (to 2026)!

There’s not much to say about the actual playoffs. The Hawks are a good team. They are not a great team. The Knicks showed them the difference, they were much better. I was (un)fortunate enough to watch the historic Game 6 bludgeoning from the first 10 rows with the most active commenter at www.muttrox.com. Still, there is reason to be optimistic!

Going into this year, Muttrox said:

• If Porzingis is healthy and Trae Young plays defense, this is a very good team.
• If just one of those is true, this is a good team.
• If neither one is true, this is a sub-.500 team.

Well, Porzingis wasn’t healthy. And Trae Young didn’t play defense. But they got rid of Trae Young (finally!). As soon as Trae was gone, the team started improving. We had one of the two criteria. The Hawks were, as I predicted, a pretty good team. “Pretty good” is a huge jump for the Hawks!

The Hawks have not been a good team for a long time. Here are The Hawks wins by season:

• 2017-2018: 24
• 2018: 29
• 2019: 20
• 2020: 41 (shortened season)
• 2021: 43
• 2022: 41
• 2023: 36
• 2024: 40
• 2025: 46

They were over .500 in the weird pandemic year and they were barely above .500 in 2021. That’s it. The 46 wins this year is a significant uptick, the best in a decade. It can be somewhat discounted because every team that wasn’t tanking got more wins off of the tanking teams. But in the second half of the season, after trading Trae Young, they were 20-6, including an 11 game winning streak. That is an elite record and can’t be easily written off. They had reason to feel optimistic going into the playoffs.

Looking ahead to next year:

• Jalen Johnson is a borderline All-star. I expect to him to incrementally improve next year.
• Nickeal-Alexander-Walker justly won the most improved player year. Found money.
• CJ McCollum is occasionally unstoppable. Found money.
• More decent players. Dyson Daniels, Okongwu. Kaminga.
• They have the #7 pick (thank you New Orleans and Chief Chump Joe Dumars), and their own #22 pick in a very rich draft.
• They have cap space. They are currently $36 million below the luxury tax, which is far below the first or second aprons.
• Their new ownership is much smarter, and haven’t made any big unforced errors.

They do need a real center. Who doesn’t? They were not able to replace Porzingis. In the playoffs, KAT and Mitchell both destroyed them, there were no answers.

Unlike The Celtics, The Hawks are not a championship contender. But they did improved significantly last season. They will likely improve more next season. I look for the Hawks to get 50+ wins next year and be in the playoff picture all year.

(This entire post may be motivated reasoning. I have season tickets and they are much more valuable if the team is good.)

It’s been sixteen years since I did this last. I got old, I don’t blatantly break traffic laws as much.

Today was second generation “Muttrox Goes to Court”. My son did an illegal U-turn. No one was around, it was perfectly safe. But a cop was right there and got him.

The logistics of his court appearance were tricky. He is in college. He had to come back home (a five hour drive) for his court date last month. When he went to court they said one of his parents had to be present. He had to reschedule and come back today with me. Why did I need to be there? At least we go Muttrox goes to court, second generation.

Court is less interesting these days. All kinds of cases used to be thrown together, now they bring all the traffic incidents in on the same day. Efficient. Boring. I mostly get diverted to the solicitor these days, and so I don’t sit and watch others as much.

Every other court date I’ve had in Georgia has been at DeKalb Country Municipal Court. This one was in Dunwoody, one mile away from the house. The suburbs. Nice new court space, relaxed citizens and officers, much calmer. When we sat down a nice court officer came over and showed us how to fill out the forms. My son had the same clipboard as last time. He recognized the graffiti.

Like usual, we just wanted to avoid the points on our insurance. AI estimated a 25% increase in our premiums from this illegal U-turn, yikes! We wanted to pay the fine and move on with life. We asked for a pre-trial negotiation with the solicitor. Fortunately, Dunwoody’s goal was the same as ours. They don’t want to hold trials, they don’t want the case (and revenue) moved to the county, they want to take their cut and move on.

Our solicitor was a yapper. I mentioned something about the nice facilities they had here and ended up in a 15-minute conversation about municipal buildings. It was sort of interesting. This building was a converted bank. They had a secured room for prisoners in manacles and belt chains, most courts don’t have that. The generous space meant less stress on people (some with mental issues) in a stressful situation. The discussion kept going. I recently read Talk: The Science of Conversation, I was well-armed to go as long as she wanted. You want small talk, I got small talk. The more we talked, the more likely she’d let us off easy.

An illegal U-turn is an astonishing 3 points. It only takes 4 points in a year to have your license suspended! Dunwoody knew that the penalty in points and insurance was huge, that’s why they mandated a parent be present. Ah I see. She gave us a sob story about someone who made a small traffic violation and killed two people, she looked deep into my son’s soul to make sure he was a good kid, then let us off easy. He takes 4 hours of an online course, we pay the fine afterwards, all done. Nothing even goes on the record. We left under an hour.

Been a while. Random collection of funny or interesting links.

• Guinessun Dorma
• Bad Space comics. Dark, depressing, and memorable.
• Teaching gets Real
• Gen Alpha graduation speech
• Oregon Trail! For real! This was cutting edge technology in my childhood.
• Mr. Big covers Baba O’Riley. Paul Gilbert is amazing.
• On a Plate. I repost this every few years. It is still the best encapsulation of why I’m a liberal.

Let’s calm down a bit about data centers and water and energy. Questions don’t use that much water. The water usage isn’t high compared to many other ordinary activities. Overall AI usage in 2025 was around 0.5% of total worldwide electricity, 0.2% of total energy.

Celtics lose game 7 to Philadelphia 76ers

The Celtics lost to The Philadelphia 76ers yesterday in Game 7 to get knocked out of the playoffs in round 1.

It’s easy to see the bad side. Going into the playoffs, The Celtics were favored by many to win the East. Instead, they didn’t even get out of round one. It was the first time the 76ers have ever come back like that. Beating the Sixers has been a constant during my NBA lifetime. I’m sure many will be panicking.

They shouldn’t. The Celtics lost fair and square. Mazzulla tried every lineup under the sun for Game 7, but there was no answer for Embiid. This healthy Embiid played like an MVP again. And when you add Paul George, Maxey, and Edgecombe… that’s quite a good team. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Knicks, but it’s definitely possible.

The Celtics have some good excuses.

They had five or so wide-open shots in the last couple minutes and missed all of them. Some look at that as a lack of shooting skill. I see it as some bad luck when it was needed most.

Jayson Tatum sat out the game, I suspect that decision will be brutally second-guessed.

And we have to call out the terrible support coaches. One coach deliberately held on to the ball too long and got a technical in the first quarter. Another one told Mazzulla to call for a challenge on an obvious foul call. Real points lost from dumb support coaches.

Excuses only go so far, and Philly would have their share of excuses as well if they had lost. Last night the 76ers were the better team.

The Bigger Picture

Although the Celtics got knocked out earlier than expected, it was a great season. A marvelous season. Why?

Let’s reset the clock. Let’s put on our Brad Stevens GM hat and reset the clock.

The Celtics bought many free agents over the last few years. They built a super team. That stacked team won the 2024 title. But a team built like that isn’t sustainable. We were far over the salary cap(s), and the penalties for repeatedly violating the salary cap are too large. We had to dump salary this year. Even if Tatum hadn’t had a season ending injury this team would have been ripped up this year.

The Celtics started this season without Jason Tatum, Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kornet, and Jrue Holiday. They were left with Jaylen Brown as their star, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard as two more good players, and a bunch of nobodies. They even had to trade away Anfernee Simons (their only good off-season acquisition) for the dried out husk of Nikola Vucevic. They were predicted to win around 41 games and be a play-in team. Instead, they were incredible.

They were supposed to tank. The obvious strategy was to keep Tatum out for the whole year, to stink it up, and come back next year with Tatum and a fantastic new rookie. Everyone knew that except Brad Stevens, Joe Mazzulla, Jaylen Brown, and so on. The rest of the league could call it a gap year, these Celtics said all along they were competing for a title.

Brown took on the burden. He elevated himself from star to superstar and justly made first team. Mazzulla evolved the strategies from the superteam, adapting his analytical approach to the talent he had. The group of nobodies quickly grew up. No one knew their name, but they got results. Queta, Walsh, Scheierman, Garza, Harper, Hugo… easily the cheapest supporting cast in the league with the lowest expectation. None of them had a resume or NBA experience. Yet they got results. In the end, the Celtics delivered a stunning 56 wins, 15 games over expectations. They entered the playoffs as the number two seed. Most teams would salivate over this kind of “gap year”.

They are now well positioned for next year. Although they still need to stay under the second apron, by being so ruthless this year, they have a great deal more financial flexibility next year. I honestly don’t fully understand the rules here… I think they now have a mid-level exception ($15-16 MM) they can use to get a quality rotation player. They now have a large trade exception of $27.7 MM they can use to get another piece. They have several players who overperformed this year and will be even better next year. Tatum looks as good as ever, maybe better with all that rest. They have another full year of Tatum and Brown in the primes of their career. This a team with a huge number of assets and good reason to be optimistic going into next year.

So. It’s a shame The Celtics couldn’t close out the 76ers. But this season was an incredible success. Celtics fans should feel delighted with the season that was. They are well positioned to be dominant again next year. Let’s go Celtics!

Most of the ideas in my first and second iteration of this still hold up. Here’s another batch.

How to Improve the NBA

How to improve the NBA, Part 2

Fouling:

The fouling system gets worse every year. Every sport has penalties to discourage players from breaking the rules. That makes sense. But when players deliberately leverage the calling of penalties to get the other team in trouble — no one want to see that. No one likes it when quarterbacks huck up the long bomb to get a defensive interference call. No one likes soccer players flopping to get a penalty call. No one likes seeing NBA teams and players manipulate the rules to get free throws. It’s awful and contrary to the whole idea of sports. And the actual taking of the free throws slows everything down, ruins the flow of the game, and generally makes the entire game experience worse.

If an offensive player creates contact, it should be an offensive foul – even if the defensive player wasn’t in “guarding position” or didn’t have their feet set outside the circle. I’m sick of offensive players deliberately running into other players and getting a call as if the other person broke a rule.

Is anything worse than stars who pad their stats by playing the refs? Ever seen Giannis run full speed into some defender just standing there and then get the call? Ever seen Luka purposefully take a bad shot to create contact? How about SGA. Or Harden whipping his arms up through a defender to create contact. Or Trae Young. These guys are the worst, but they are rational actors responding to a bad incentive system. Referees – please call an offensive foul even if the defender didn’t fall over. Why do they have to pretend they were just punched by The Juggernaut to get a call. Shaq was right.

Go back to calling flopping. The league made this a rule in 2012 and re-emphasized in 2023. They can review flops during or after the game and give out technical fouls and fines after the game. Do it. There’s not much worse than watching the behemoths act like they just took an uppercut from Tyson twenty times a game.

Technical fouls should be an automatic point. Why waste time having the best shooter take a virtually automatic free throw? Let’s keep things moving! Give them the point and move on.

Call technical fouls on superstars. We all know who the whiners are. The same guys who play for fouls instead of for baskets and try to work the refs. Luka should get technicals almost every game. Kick him out of a few games and he’ll shut up. Maybe the energy he uses for mouthing off and pouting like an infant could be used to play defense occasionally.

Other Improvements:

Calm down with the uniform variants. Teams have four, sometimes five, uniforms. Association (Home), Icon (Away), Statement, City, and sometimes Classic. It’s gone too far.

Call traveling. Every game features many times players take many steps. By rule, the count of steps begins at the “gather”. If a player’s foot is on the floor at the exact moment they gather the ball, that is considered Step 0. It does not count toward the two-step limit. “On moves like the Eurostep or Step-back jumper, elite players time their gather so they are mid-stride. They “gather” while one foot is on the ground (Step 0), then take two full explosive steps (Step 1 and Step 2). To a casual observer, this appears to be three steps, but under the technical definition of the gather, it is legal.” Maybe it’s legal, but it’s awful. When Giannis can take five steps at full speed and breathing on gets him free throws… that’s not fun to watch. When Jaylen Brown takes two steps, comes to a full stop, ducks under another player and takes another step to the basket — that’s traveling. C’mon.

The overall style of play has gotten boring. We need to promote cutting, we need to promote posting up. I don’t know how. I’m bored with seeing the same plays over and over: picks on the perimeter, drive it in, kick it out to some guy standing in the corner. It’s bad for the sport that 40% of the players on any given play are just standing in the corners waiting to take a three pointer. My own Celtics have perfected this style. Each year more and more shots are three-pointers. It’s mathematically correct and bad for the entertainment product. Too many plays look the exact same. Any ideas how? (This is for you Pete!)

Simplify the salary cap and aprons and trade rules. All the rules were created for a good reason. But it’s insane now. A regular person should be able to understand the salary rules. I spent fifteen minutes investigating what was unlocked when the Celtics got under the first apron, and I still don’t know for sure.

Eliminate the broadcast blackout rules. They didn’t make much sense in the first place and they make less sense in the age of streaming. I have NBA pass. I use it to watch almost every Celtics game. I also like to watch the Hawks. I have NBA pass because it’s a benefit of being a Hawks season ticket holder. But unless the Hawks are on network TV I can’t watch them. NBA Pass doesn’t let me see them. I can’t watch them. The absurd FanDuel network isn’t on YouTube TV. Amazon says I have to use NBA League Pass (infinite loop). Getting NBA streams from Reddit is probably putting malware on my phone. Why can’t I watch them from my TV room?  Let me tell you a secret – this blackout isn’t going to make me sign up for FanDuel or go to more live games. I got NBA pass because I’ve already paid to see The Hawks live! Surely there is a solution. Revshare some amount back to the appropriate parties. I am already paying the NBA for League Pass, so I can watch every game, it’s supposed to be a pass for the entire league. The only exception, the only team I can’t actually watch, is my actual home team. This is bewildering and stupid.

Awards (MVP, Most Improved, Rookie of the Year, etc.): These should be voted on after the year is over. Playoff performance should matter. Throw out 65 game limits, and any kind of eligibility threshold. If the voters think someone should get MVP who only played 50 games, then they can vote for that. Everyone has their own version of what “most valuable” means anyhow. Either the league lays out exact criteria (in which case we don’t need to vote), or they should stay out of the way.

Shea. Buckle up.

It was Nov 22, 2025. Shea was out of her fucking mind. She was already ranting as she got in the car.

The police keep putting her in the mental hospital (as she related it). Why? Because she walks outside her apartment in bare feet to touch grass. Then interfering neighbors call the police. The police put her in a mental hospital. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she gets beaten up at these hospitals by the orderlies and other inmates.

This particular stint at the mental hospital was for a few days. When she was released and went home she found her grandmother had broken into her apartment. Grandma then began force feeding her drugs and wouldn’t let Shea sleep or eat. So Shea had to escape, and here we are in an Uber heading for the airport.

In reality: The grandmother was obviously trying to keep her on some kind of psychiatric drug to bring her back to sanity. It wasn’t working.

Shea was batshit crazy. Shea had been repeatedly diagnosed by the mental hospital as bipolar schizophrenic, but she claimed it’s really PTSD. What is the trauma? Shea claimed she had PTSD from the trauma of not being taught her menstrual cycle properly. Sure, that’s a thing that happens in the non-fiction real world, right?

Her grandmother also has PTSD. What is her grandmothers trauma? Her grandmother was PTSD from growing up in Jamaica. Or something — none of it made a lot of sense.

Many psychiatric issues have genetic components. Shea and her grandma are both obviously dominant in every gene.

By the way, Shea’s uncle just died (her grandmother’s son). Stage four pancreatic cancer.

Shea used the word “terrorize” over and over again. She was being terrorized by the police, she was being terrorized by her grandmother, she was being terrorized by her neighbors. Shea said no one in her family believes what she’s saying about her grandmother even though they all know the Grandma is nuts. After all, the grandmother and grandfather both came over to America from Jamaica by pretending to fall in love and marrying Americans and then quickly divorcing them. Currently the grandparents are separated, but they still live together.

Our Uber trip came about because Shea managed to escape the apartment, climbing out a side window while the grandmother thought she was asleep. Shea hasn’t worked for two years and has no money. But she was able to sneak a phone call to her mother. Her mother booked my Uber and a plane ticket to New York to be with her mother. Shea did leave me a $20 tip, which was very generous with her mothers money.

The grandmother will wake up and her granddaughter who she (correctly) thinks is insane has fled the scene, and of course the grandma is also grieving because remember her son has just died…

What do you do with a passenger like this? Make conversation while wondering how much further it is to the airport and ruminating about the power of delusion. If this story doesn’t make sense, it’s because Shea is an unreliable narrator who can’t keep a coherent thought together through two sentences.

I hope Shea is okay.

The 25^th Amendment. Everyone’s favorite escape hatch. Surely this latest behavior will impel the sane and reasonable patriots around our President will see the threat he represents and jointly remove him from power?

It’s a complete and utter fantasy. It will never happen. It will never ever ever ever [add several more evers and nevers] happen. One reason is the cabinet composition: primarily DEI incompetents, personal lickspittles for Trump. But even without that it will never happen.

Here is the process to remove a president who doesn’t want to be removed:

1. The Vice President and a majority of the cabinet officials tell the Senate and House they’re invoking the amendment. JD Vance is large and in charge.
2. The President says I’m fine. Trump is back.
3. Again, the VP and cabinet invoke the amendment. It gets dumped to Congress.
4. Congress votes. Both the House and Senate need a 2/3 majority to remove the President.

Step 4 is the kicker. In the end, 2/3 of both congressional houses are needed. Compare that to the bar for “regular” impeachment. That only requires a majority of the House and 2/3 votes in the Senate.

It is easier to impeach the president than to remove him via the 25^th amendment. And the last two impeachments did not exactly reveal a large faction of constitutional patriots.

The 25th Amendment was designed for medical incapacitation, not as a political alternative to impeachment. It essentially falls apart if the president resists.

Anyone seriously thinking the 25^th amendment is an option is not thinking seriously.

I read Dune back in high school or college. Many years later I have loved the movies. It was time to reread the original. Muttrox’s verdict? It’s bloody great. I whipped through the five hundred pages in two days. It’s an achievement. It deserves every accolade.

Although I love the movies there are too many threads. Love the music, the cinematography, the acting, but… there are too many elements mixed together – the political intrigue, the Bene Gesserit, the weird sister fetus, the Mentat, the spice harvesting, wait Idaho and Gurney are different people, the Fremen legends, the umpteen different names for the prophesied messiah – it’s too much. It’s just too much. My family (normal people who haven’t read every science fiction classic) enjoyed the movie. But they were understandably confused.

The book is even denser. There are more levels to incorporate. The spacer guild, the planetology, the Mentats, the spice life cycle, etc. But Herbert does it. The book is coherent. And like Game of Thrones, the main characters have intelligence, they make plans, they have motivations. Their gambits succeed or fail. In that sense it’s far more adult than most science fiction. The world building is immaculate. My biggest beef is the philosophical sayings that litter the book. They are profound at first and irritating by the end. It’s not they lack insight, it’s the sheer volume of them. Put down the bong Frank.

Oh, why Donald Trump? You don’t get this from the movie, but the key leverage Paul has over the Emperor is control over a natural resource essential to the economy.

Page 409: “[Spice] is the most previous thing in the universe,” Paul said.”… “And we control it, Gurney.” “The Harkonnens control it!” Gurney protested. “The people who can destroy a thing, they control it,” Paul said.

Page 432: “He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it,” Paul said. “We can destroy the spice.”

Paul can’t harvest, store, transport, and sell the spice, but he can keep others from doing that. Sound familiar?

Uber Economics, finance, and strategy is complicated. It’s complicated enough that I don’t know where to start. I deliberately avoided it.

But there is an actual reader question in this wasteland of a blog! I have to try.

Context: My answers are likely wrong for many drivers. I am an unusual Uber driver. Most notably:

• I drive an electric vehicle. Many of the usual costs and downsdies don’t apply to me. I actually make a small profit every mile through the magic of tax deductions!
• I don’t work full time. I pick my own hours. For example, Friday and Saturday nights are very profitable. But I am usually sleeping or doing my own things at night. Drunks are more profitable, but riskier and I usually don’t like dealing with them. I tend pass on the most profitable hours.
• I don’t need the money to pay rent. It’s a sideline.

 On to your questions!

What percentage of riders tip?

 This is heavily dependent on the kind of trip.

My focus is airport trips. Maybe 60% tip. I try to get passengers traveling for business. Everyone is generous with their company expense account. Passengers who are dealing with a big vacation costing thousands of dollars put me in the same mental bucket as valet parking and such, a mandatory tip. Generally prosperous professionals and I always have something to talk about and that conversation drives tips.

Many flyers don’t tip you when the ride ends. They are busy catching their flight. But the next time they open the app they get a prompt. I often get tips a few days after the trip itself. This is nice – to make a few dollars on a day I’m not working! It’s like finding a ten dollar bill in your pants pocket.

But for most regular intown trips, maybe 30% tip. And they are smaller tips.

Worst tippers:

• I often drive kids to or from school. Kids don’t tip. Sometimes the parents come along. These are not generally people with a lot of money, they have to pay someone twice a day, there’s not much tipping. (But always very nice people.)

• Medical passengers / Seniors. Many of them are 3^rd party rides. That means the organization (hospital, nursing home, etc) books the ride on the seniors behalf. The person who booked the ride isn’t in the car, is already busy doing something else for their job, they aren’t paying attention, and of course they never tip. Many drivers categorically refuse these rides. The independent older folks that book for themselves also love to talk and socialize, but rarely tip. When they do tip, the amount is appropriate to the Kennedy administration.

Can you accurately predict tip based on the route requested?

Sometimes. I can put them in one of the categories above (and others). The other big factor is how well we bond during the trip. When I connect with a passenger and we enjoy the ride together tips are very likely. When it’s dead silence throughout the trip (even if they requested the silence) – who knows.

What % of your average hourly take is tip based?

Funny, I never stopped to estimate. It’s so variable! Maybe 20%?

What is the furthest from home you have found yourself after a stint of Uber driving?

 Great question! A driver quickly learns to avoid “dead-heading”. In Uberland, this is slang for driving without a fare. It’s giving away time and miles that could be earning profit. Example: Uber might offer a 90 minute trip to nowhere. The trip fare itself is profitable, but then I have to drive back, almost certainly without a passenger. It’s a bad deal. When I started I would often find myself several towns away from Atlanta (Jonesboro, Douglasville, Peachtree City) wondering what happened. Now I know better and avoid those fares.

The worst I had was from the airport. It was to go to Spring Street in Atlanta and it had a generous fee. I accepted it. I picked up the passenger and we set out and as I looked at the navigation it dawned on me that we weren’t going to Spring Street in Atlanta. It was a Spring Street near Macon – an hour and a half away. Oh geez. Macon!? I wanted to cancel, but we were already on the road. Instead, I mentally shrugged, “Why not? I have nothing better to do today. He’s certain to leave a great tip, sure.” We did have a good drive, I did get him there on time. I listened to a history podcast on the way back. It was a fun morning. But the jerk didn’t tip at all. Some people.

 

When I was but a wee lad, the odds on a bet were presented as a ratio. The ratio was profit:bet.

A bet that paid at 2:1 meant that for every dollar you paid, you would get two dollars of winnings, plus your original dollar. A bet that paid at 1:2 means that for every dollar you bet, you would get 50 cents of winnings, plus your original dollar. You bet the denominator (second number) to win the numerator (first number). You could bet 4:5, meaning you would get $.80 for each dollar bet, besides your original dollar.

To understand this you need to understand one thing only – the ratio of the two numbers compared to your bet.

At some point the way of expressing odds shifted. The current method is bad. It’s bad because it’s two different methods kludged together.

Positive odds (+): The number represents potential profit on a fixed $100 stake. “The Boston Celtics’ odds to win the 2025/26 NBA Finals are +650.” This means that for every $100 you bet, you would get back $650, plus your original $100 bet.

Negative odds (-): The number represents the required stake to achieve a fixed $100 profit. “The Oklahoma City Thunders’ odds to win the 2025/26 NBA Finals are -120.” This means that you need to bet $120 to win $100, plus your original $100 bet.

To understand this method, you need to switch between two different articulations – one is ‘how much a $100 bet gets you’, the other is ‘how much you need to bet to get $100’. This is not a natural cognitive match.

The whole idea of presenting winnings as a negative number is dumb. It is:

1. Psychologically backwards: Negatives should be for losses only.
2. Counter to ordinary reasoning: “I have $100 to bet, what will I get for it?”
3. Fragile: If the odds change from slightly below even to slightly above even, the entire presentation system changes.
4. Inconsistent: Consistency would mean that positive bets are how much I need to bet to get $100, not how much betting $100 gets me.

I propose we get rid of negatives. Instead, all bets should be normed to $100, and they are all positive. The odds for San Antonio winning the championship would not be presented as -120, they would be presented as +83.33. If you bet $100 and win, you will get $83.33 back (besides your original $100). This is self-consistent and removes unneeded mental switches.

Let’s get rid of this nonsense. If you bet $100 on the Pats to win 10 or more games you get $68.97 in winnings. It should be presented as +68.97.

Aug 23 2025: I pick up Juwan from a church at night for a 30-minute trip to his home. We’re both very tired. It’s my last trip of the day. I am playing my standard shuffle of my personal music library. Juwan doesn’t care, he is just being quiet. Five minutes from his house we get Eva Cassidy doing Wade in the Water, and before you know it we’re both singing along at top volume. He’s told me about his childhood in Africa and his time as a missionary. He doesn’t know much American music but he knows this song (not Eva’s version) and it brings him back to his childhood and his home village. I’ve made his day. Great time. (It was also a good tip from someone who can’t afford much.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-hKDYQ6F54

(When a passenger seems religious I sometimes tell them to “have a blessed day”, trying to connect for more of a tip. Is that slimy? Maybe. It’s just different words for a genuine sentiment.)

Aug 25: I get my second repeat passenger, Shaunikawan. (Yes, that’s her name. People have insane names. You don’t even know.) I didn’t recognize her, but she knew me. She knew where I lived, she knew I had three kids. Coincidentally, she was going to the same Walmart as my first repeat customer. She was thinking of taking up Uber herself. I think I talked her out of it. If you don’t have a nice car already, buying or renting one for Uber is a loser. Particularly a gas car. I don’t see how anyone can make profit without an electric car.

September: I’ve been waiting to be matched with a passenger I already know in real life. It’s bound to happen. It still hasn’t happened yet. But I got my first customer from my neighborhood, Diana. She lives just down the road from our house. She was very surprised how quickly I got there! We didn’t know each other but spent the ride introducing ourselves and finding all our common connections. It was fun!

Sept 29^th: How the f did a cigarette butt get on my nice carpeting? No one smokes in my car…

Over the few last months I’ve averaged around $30/hour. That is my baseline now. I usually reject rides under that amount.

(Most drivers optimize on dollars per mile instead of hour. It’s a surprisingly subtle question which way to think about it. In the end dollars per hour is more appropriate for me specifically.)