Muttroxia

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.)

Big news! One of Muttrox’s pet causes is The National Popular Vote. I first wrote about NPV in 2023. At that time we were at 195 votes (out of 270). Two years later it was at 209.

Virginia and Governor Spanberger just signed HB 965. The count is now 222. It’s getting realerer!

The Path Forward

Let’s look at the math. Virginia, get us to 222 and we we need 270 to trigger the activation. The NPVIC is now 82% of the way to eliminating the Electoral College, without passing a Constitutional amendment. But the nature of this effort is that the remaining states are the toughest. We have exhausted the “easy” blue states. Here are the next couple up (likely):

1. Michigan (15 votes): With a Democratic trifecta in charge, it is the primary 2026 target.
2. Nevada (6 votes): Already passed both chambers previously; currently navigating final procedural hurdles.

If Michigan and Nevada fall, the count hits 243. At that point, any combination of Pennsylvania or a few smaller swing states (Arizona, Wisconsin) pulls the trigger.

“Gerrymandering Madness”

Voters understand that geography has become a weapon. Trumps ongoing efforts to rig the election via gerrymandering (amount other tactics) have made it even more visible. If you’ve seen the disgusting gerrymandering of the 2026 cycle— in Texas, California, North Carolina, Ohio, and the “retaliatory redistricting” referendum happening in Virginia —you see the connection. One promotes the other. Visibility is good – the NPVIC is broadly popular so the more people who understand it is an option the more energy it gets.

By ensuring the candidate who wins the most actual human votes across all 50 states becomes the President, the NPVIC effectively “de-gerrymanders” the election. The frenzy in Virginia—where leaders are fighting for fair House maps while signing the NPV—is a unified front against the idea that your zip code should determine your political utility.

The Legal Landscape

The moment the count hits 270, the legal “madness” will eclipse the redistricting fights. Opponents will point to the Compact Clause of the Constitution, which forbids states from entering into agreements without Congressional consent.

But the NPVIC is built on a clever “states’ rights” foundation. The Constitution gives state legislatures the exclusive power to determine how their electors are chosen. If Virginia wants to award its electors to the national popular vote winner, that is Virginia’s business.

Is NPVIC Blue vs Red, or Pre-Democracy Bipartisanship?

The compact is currently driven by the Democrats. Every governor to sign the NPVIC into law has been a Democrat, and the remaining 33 non-member states are largely Republican-controlled. Many GOP leaders view the Electoral College as a necessary “firewall” against urban dominance. But public polling tells a different story. In Virginia, roughly 50% of Republicans and a majority of Independents favored the move. For a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas, the compact is the only way their vote for President actually impacts the final tally.

To reach 270, the NPVIC must break this “Blue Trap.” If it is purely partisan, it faces a lethal “Compact Clause” challenge in the Supreme Court. To survive, it needs to flip Republican governors in a state where voters feel their “winner-take-all” status has rendered them irrelevant.

We are moving toward a world where the candidate who gets the most votes actually wins. Virginia just brought us 13 steps closer to finding out if the American system can handle that much transparency. Let’s go!

(This post was partially written by AI Gemini.)

June 2025: I started earning at $20/hour, it’s now up to $25. Gradually learning this system.

July 2025: I go into a housing complex. I text the passenger for the gate code. (This is an ongoing frustration. I’ll idle at the gate waiting for a response so I can pick them up. The clock isn’t running because I’m outside the gates, Uber just sees I’m not at the pin yet. Wasting time and money.) This fare says to drive in through the exit gate when someone leaves, don’t worry there’s enough time. Right… I’m not doing that. Enter the code or walk your ass out here.

July: Cruising down Peachtree near the hotels, some kid in an SUV in the next lane rolls down their window and throws a bunch of food and soda on my hood. Unbelievable. Control your kids, lady.

August: I am no longer working a real full time job. With more ability to pick my hours, I’m actually at $35/hour. Not bad!

August: I go to a housing complex in the pouring rain, stop right on the pin. (As a driver, I go to wherever the pin is set.) The rider contacts me, the pickup isn’t at the pin, it’s at building 21. Annoying, but fine, whatever I try to be flexible, I start driving to 21. There is no building 21. I’ve been in this complex before. The speedbumps are brutal and frequent. She calls me yelling to come to the front. I was just in the front! I ask her why she isn’t at the pin. She has no coherent answer, and yells to come get her by the pool. I’ve been all over this complex, I haven’t seen any pool. I feel bad for her. It’s raining and she’s stuck in the rain, but nope. If you can’t tell me where you are clearly, I’m not going to ruin my suspension trying to find you. Learn how to set the pin (hint – use “current location”).

August: It’s 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. Normally the calmest of times outside of airport rides. Not today. I pick up two loud women from Waffle House. They are still drunk from the Sunday night birthday celebration. I drop off one of them. On the way to the other’s house, driving in the dark, I run right over a huge construction hole on Piedmont road that wasn’t been covered or marked. Bam, my two right tires go flat — instantly. Well dang. I slowly drive towards her house since we are only a mile away (to get rid of her and deal with this), but after 1/4 mile I have to stop. The tires are 100% flat. I’m not going to drive on rims and wreck the car even more.

The passenger calls for another Uber. She isn’t mad at me. In fact she’s mad for me. Excessively so. She’s yelling that I should sue gdmn Uber, sue the motherfn city, sue the motherfn Waffle House etc. Okay, calm down drunky. I get a tow to Discount Tire and spend $573 for two new tires.

For the first time in my life I initiated legal action. I filed a notice of claim against the city to get my money back. I figured they are negligent because they didn’t cover their work up properly. I hand delivered it to the office of the city council. My main takeaway was – gee the City of Atlanta town hall is really very nice. We’ll see what happens. I’m glad my car is always automatically recording video. I have perfect documented evidence. When I went back to the intersection later, the plates had been moved to a proper location and warning cones had been added.

(What happened in the end? It took five months to resolve. They offered $500. I took it. To fight for more would have meant actually appearing in front of the entire City Council during their monthly meeting. Maybe a fun blog post, but not worth my time.)

I drive part time for Uber. Everyone is fascinated by that. Now that I’m retired it seems to be the most interesting thing about me!

The most interesting things to me are the economics, the product fit, how it results in a driver strategy and such. That’s very hard to write up, to articulate clearly, so for now, I’ll just share interesting fares.

Background: I had my first ride in January, 2025, but didn’t drive much (I still had a real full-time job). My goal was $25 per hour. I didn’t know anything about costs or allowable deductibles (they are considerable). I assumed my costs were close to zero, since I drive an electric car and have solar panels. I started driving more after retirement of course. I do 8-15 hours a week. It’s concentrated on Friday – Monday on airport trips but I’ve done a bit of everything .

Volume I

May 29 2025: My first repeat customer. Antonio was going home from the Walmart nightshift. I also got my 100th 5-star rating. That is out of 104 ratings from 205 rides, most people don’t bother rating.

May: I drive two young guys to Alpharetta. The whole way they are talking poker. Of course I listen in. Finally I’m forced to interject, “Of course you have to call! At worst it’s a coin flip!” We talk cards — one of them is part owner of Showdown Social, a new restaurant with daily poker games. Excellent! I went a couple times. They have high tech sit-and-gos with sophisticated RFID table and cards and a dealer. Fun place.

June 2025: When he walked towards my car at the Uber pickup at the airport, I had to catch my breath. He was striding towards the car looking like an athlete or model, he was just ridiculously handsome. For a few seconds I sincerely thought that 1999 Brad Pitt was my passenger. Of course he wasn’t, but he wasn’t far off either. You forget how the extremely pretty or athletic people emanate an aura until you’re around one and feel it.

His name is Rusty Joiner. Rusty was discovered by a modeling scout in Atlanta and soon found himself “hanging out and working with Julia Roberts and all of those folks, it was unreal!” He then turned to Hollywood. You know him best as Blade, one of the Purple Cobras (bad guys) from Dodgeball. When I picked him up, he had just wrapped most filming for a show he was doing. He plays a gym owner in a mockumentary style show somewhat based on his own, but also playing a character somewhat like The Rock. Rusty was dog tired from filming all day. Besides filming and starring he was doing multi-hour workouts both mornings and nights to keep his physique up. This was his first time back home in weeks.

Rusty was about the nicest guy I’ve met. I suppose part of that is the job, and part of that is why he got the job, but either way a real genuine sweetheart. A man of faith and family first, fame and fortune second. Goddamn that guy was good looking.

Monday we went to see Celtics Hawks. No Jayson Tatum or Neemis Queta, but everyone else played. It was tied up at 54-54 at the half. Then the Hawks destroyed the Celtics in the 3^rd quarter and withstood a 4^th quarter push to win it fairly easily.

The Hawks are for real. Don’t kid yourself. Yes the Celtics were coming off a back-to-back and were missing key players, and yes the Hawks haven’t played many elite teams, but they are the real thing. Believe it. You don’t win that many games on luck. As a Celtics fan, I do not want to face the Hawks in the first round.

It was a house divided. My son was born in Atlanta and has always been a Hawks fan. I like the Hawks, but if they are playing the Celtics I’m a Boston man through and through. It’s a lot of fun to go with him! We both appreciate good basketball and judging the refs. We didn’t appreciate the incredibly loud screecher behind us. Wow, I love the enthusiasm but calm down. You’re a grown woman, not a six-year-old who goes through elation and depression cycles at top volume every play. We couldn’t take her. One of the more fun father-son things… teaching him how to sneak up to better seats aggressively. We went from row 30 to row 12.

Trading Trae Young, which I have pushed for three years, was the best thing they ever did. Shortly after he left, all these players suddenly realized they could play defense. They remembered how to move. They saw they could play as a team. Trae was a cancer, and after resection the patient is doing fantastic. They’ve lost three games since the all star break. (This deserves a very long “I told you so” post.)

I had early access to see the pregame warmups. It’s great to see professional ball players practice moves. When you see them play it looks so smooth and natural. You forget how every step and movement has been practiced thousands of times. There are always more moves to practice more times. Garza particularly was putting in the time. Amari Williams, you have lots of great moves, but all of them add a little half step for no reason to gather your legs together. It gives the defense too much time, take your shot with no hesitation please.

Jaylen Brown

I’ve always been a fan of Jaylen Brown. He’s always been better than the media treated him. The season has been amazing for him. But. But, how to solve The Mystery of Jaylen Brown. He almost had a 30 point triple double last night but looked awful for most of the game (and said it was one of his worst games). Jaylen Brown is a mystery because the eyes and the brain are such different stories.

He has been incredible this year. He is the man. He can score on anyone and does. He makes the right play. He is the dominant alpha that every team needs to account for. Going into this year the Celtics roster was Jaylen Brown, a couple more decent to good players (Derrick White and Payton Pritchard) and a huge group of “Who is this guy? I’ve swear I’ve never seen him in my life” players. Shaq said to the country: “I ain’t never going to let anyone named Baylor or Scheierman score on me… Scheierman? Who he play for?” Yet Brown led the Celtics into one of the elite teams in the league even before Tatum returned. He plays defense hard and wants to shut down other stars. He can drive on anybody in the league. He has a legit claim to be the best 2-way player in the league. He level jumped. He’s not the MVP, but has a strong claim to number five, maybe six or seventh best. I watched almost every play he made this year, he’s an incredible player.

The case against JB as a superstar is also strong. His plus minus is crazy. The Celtics are better when he’s not on the court. That’s not true of any other superstar. And this is a very large sample size (since Jan 1) How can that be?

AI suggests one reason is the bench unit is elite. The Celtics bench murders the other bench. Other stars have worse benches, so their differential looks better. Yeah, okay, I guess? Then a bunch of other arguments that don’t add up.

Maybe he’s just taking more shots. His increase in points is proportional to the increase in his usage rate and free throw rate. He shooting percentage is about the same. His assist to turnover ratio has actually dropped. Some of the drop is because he has to take more bad shots (there’s only so many good ones), so keeping his shooting statistics high is an achievement. Other teams focus on him more so it’s harder.

Honestly, it’s a mystery. I don’t get it. The eyes see one of the best players in the league, the math says he’s about the same as ever.