Anti-Bullshit Missile

We missed this on Friday, but it's big to gentlemen of a certain age. Social Distortion released their first studio album in 15 years, entitled "Born to Kill". And the boys sound pretty, pretty good.

Make It Run on Bullshit

Among the seemingly endless and relentless litany of fuckery our bodily politic is infected with in the current time, one of the most egregious is the constant and blatant lying emanating from Administration officials. One case (of dozens, just this week) in point comes to us from Secretary of Transportation and perpetual reality show performer Sean Duffy.

While being interviewed by FOX News, Duffy claimed that "we're in a good place" with respect to fuel prices, and that Americans should take road trips this summer.

With gas at $4.55 a gallon, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says "we're in a good place" for fuel prices, and urges Americans to drive this summer, saying "we encourage all Americans to take a road trip"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 7, 2026 at 10:49 AM

For the record, USAA reports that the current average price per gallon for regular unleaded is $4.558. A year ago, the average was $3.154. That's an increase of 44.5%. If you have a 20-gallon gas tank, you're paying $28.08 more per trip to the gas station. I paid $65 to fill up the 13-gallon tank in my goddamn MINI last week.

Duffy's obvious nonsense reminded me of a song by one of William & Mary's own. Scott Miller and the Commonwealth released "8 Miles a Gallon" in 2006 as part of the terrific "Citation" album. Among the lyrics: Invent a big engine/Make it run on bullshit/Put it on the highway/Buddy, it'll never quit.

There's certainly no shortage of that bullshit flowing freely in the Nation's Capital these days.

Further We Meander, Musically

Harry Styles and I have a history, as readers of this blog know. And every time the dude does something, it hits. I'm a fan of that young fella. 

Check out this terrific cover of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World":

And then watch these two professional musicians react to it:

@twerkethicshow This cover with the Horns is something else! @HSHQ join us on Patreon for more reactions! Link in bio! #twerkethic #reaction #harrystyles #bbcradio1 #tearsforfears @CooleyOnDrums ♬ original sound - The Twerk Ethic Show

A Meandering Post that Almost Comes Together at the End

I started reading Tim Lawrence's book Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 despite my general apathy towards non-fiction, because The Atlantic included it in their list of "Five Books About Going Out That Are Worth Staying In For."  They said:

Versions of this story have been told before, but what distinguishes Love Saves the Day are the more than 300 interviews Lawrence conducted with promoters, partiers, and legendary DJs such as Frankie Knuckles. It’s full of wisdom from the elders of American club culture: how to stagger straight and gay crowds on a Friday night, how to find the next great floor-filling single, how to build a DJ set like a furnace that can burn all night. Lawrence also folds in a number of select club “discographies” so you can reproduce Jimmy Stuard’s set from 12 West, circa 1976, at home (on nice speakers, perhaps, or an iPhone placed in a cereal bowl). 

so I said "Why not?"  I'm about halfway through and I'm not sure that I'll finish, I'm so bored by non-fiction that I haven't taken a history class since high school.  And my main motivation to finish the book--compiling a playlist of all the mentioned songs--was obviated when I learned that someone already did it.

I am not, however, bored by podcasts about non-fiction and I recently stumbled across the One Song Podcast, a show where DJs Diallo Riddle and Luxxury break down the backstory to a song or album.  This isn't just stories about the first time they heard the song or why it's one of their top ten songs, there's some serious music theory.  Here's Luxxury explaining why the bass line to Nas's N.Y. State of Mind sounds so menacing:

The whole episode is great but many of you aren't into Nas and probably don't care who DJ Premier sampled and how he looped it.  Here's an episode I suspect most of you will enjoy.

But the real reason I'm posting all this drivel is their interview with Fab 5 Freddy.  It's two parts and only the first one is out yet, but they talk about some of the clubs and records from Love Saves the Day, so if you don't want to read 400-plus pages of non-fiction just listen to Fab 5 Freddy talk about the good old days of the NYC disco scene, how DJing was invented, the making of Wildstyle, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Deceased Nag and Cudgel Alert: NCAA Edition

Demonstrating once again that nothing will be left alone if privileged people think they benefit from change, the NCAA is in the process of finalizing one of the worst ideas in sports: expansion of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. 

According to reports, the field in both events will increase to 76 teams next season, up from the current 68. Details must be worked out and rubber stamps inked and thumped, but the meat of it is that there will be eight play-in games rather than four, and the winners will advance to the regular Goldilocks field of 64 for the tournaments’ opening weekend. 

Understand that this isn’t about increased opportunities or more of a good thing, it’s power conferences exerting control over as many areas as they see fit, and a mostly neutered NCAA attempting to remain relevant, or at least not be further kneecapped by said conferences. Longtime ESPN snoop Pete Thamel wrote that tournament expansion is driven by the power conferences wanting more at-large bids for their teams. Because clearly, eight or ten or twelve teams from a league aren’t enough. Certainly, an extra low- or mid-major team with an exceptional record will make the expanded field, but it’s a safe bet for anyone but Brendan Sorsby (too soon? [ED: Never!]) that six or seven of the new eight at-larges will be from the Bigfoot conferences. 

Thamel also wrote that expanded tournaments aren’t expected to provide a financial windfall for the NCAA and member schools, but sources said there would be profits. No, he wasn’t talking about Fan Duel and Draft Kings. Decide for yourself if it’s mere coincidence that NCAA officials and media partners are negotiating a new deal, whose current terms pre-dated the present bloat and conference demands for even more elbow room at the trough. 

I’ve written previously about tournament expansion and the notion that it’s football, not basketball, that moved the needle. The Big Ten and SEC became 18- and 16-team mega-conferences, respectively, and capitalized on massive financial deals for football, forcing the ACC and Big 12 to follow suit or get left behind (raise a glass for the late, lamented Pac-12). In turn, that meant five or six teams from a league getting into the basketball tournament went from reasonable representation, percentage-wise, to underserved in their estimation. 

Advocates for tournament expansion cite examples such as Texas advancing from the play-in rounds to the regional semifinal this past March as proof that power conference schools deserve greater representation. I’d argue the opposite. Where was that Longhorns’ team the previous three months? They finished tenth in the SEC. I maintain that no team that doesn’t finish in the top half of its league merits an invitation to play for a natty. Alas, that’s not the way it flies today, when P4 leagues, particularly the Big Ten and SEC, understandably equate resources with clout. 

No small number of power conference coaches favor expansion, as well, reasoning that NCAA berths help with job security. I might argue that an expanded, diluted NCAA field may not provide the shield they think (see: Davis, Hubert, turfed by North Carolina despite four NCAA appearances in his five seasons; and Barnes, Rick, canned at Texas in 2015 despite 16 NCAA trips in 17 seasons). In the present landscape, administrators and Big Checkbooks may not be satisfied with mere invitations to the party; they will want results in the form of deep runs and hardware. But those will be campus taffy pulls. In the grand scheme, we will get a format that few people want with several more undeserving entrants packaged as an upgrade, all because those with their hands on the levers will never let a potential advantage go to waste. Way of the world.

How Not to Spend This Weekend... But Maybe

Have we already written about this? Goodness gracious.

This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people.

Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects.

 --Rick Aschmann

If you’ve ever wondered why someone from Squeaky’s Massachusetts neighborhood sounds like they’re permanently auditioning for a role in The Town while someone from North Dakota sounds like they’re politely asking a casserole for permission, then welcome—truly welcome—to the delightfully insane universe of the North American English Dialects. This is not a sleek, minimalist, “click here for three fun facts” kind of website. No, this is a commitment. It’s the internet equivalent of opening a drawer and discovering it leads to a fully cataloged museum of vowels. And honestly? Respect.

The main event is a sprawling, gloriously overwhelming dialect map of North America, which divides the continent into eight major dialect regions and an alarming number of subdialects that seem to multiply the longer you stare at them. The boundaries aren’t random—they follow historical migration patterns, especially the westward spread of English from the East Coast, which is both fascinating and slightly humbling if you thought your accent was just “normal.” Spoiler: it is not. None of ours are. We are all linguistic snowflakes, except instead of snowflakes, we are vowels doing interpretive dance.

And speaking of vowels—this site is obsessed with them. Not in a creepy way (but yeah), but in a deeply earnest, linguist-with-a-hobby-that-got-out-of-hand way. The focus here is pronunciation: how people actually say things, rather than what they say. You’ll encounter concepts like the “pin–pen merger,” which sounds like a Zman review post but is actually about whether those two words sound the same in your mouth. The site makes it clear that these tiny differences are not tiny at all—they’re basically geographic fingerprints, revealing where you’re from whether you like it or not. It’s like linguistic CSI, but instead of fingerprints, it’s how you say “bag.”

Now, here’s where things get fun: the audio samples. Hundreds of them. Possibly more than you emotionally prepared for. The map is linked to a massive collection of recordings—many pulled from YouTube—so you can click around and hear these dialects in action. This transforms the experience from “huh, interesting map” into “oh no, I’ve been clicking on accents for 45 minutes and now I’m judging strangers based on how they pronounce ‘roof.’” It’s immersive. It’s educational. It’s a mild personality shift.

The site itself feels like it was built in an era when the internet was powered primarily by enthusiasm and possibly Colombian "coffee." It is dense. It is text-heavy. It occasionally looks like it might have been formatted during a long weekend in 1998. But that’s part of its charm. Rick openly discusses updates, corrections, and the avalanche of emails from equally fascinated visitors, which gives the whole thing a slightly chaotic, very human energy. This isn’t a corporate product—it’s one person saying, essentially, “I collect dialects,” and then proceeding to absolutely go to town.

What sneaks up on you, though, is how thoughtful the whole thing is beneath the visual clutter. The site quietly dismantles the idea of a single “correct” English, showing instead that language is shaped by history, migration, and community. It even highlights differences between American and Canadian English—like the fact that Canadians generally merge “cot” and “caught,” while many Americans stubbornly refuse to. Suddenly, accents stop being quirks and start being stories. This is gheorghiness.

By the end of your visit, you’ll likely emerge slightly dazed, mildly more informed, and deeply suspicious of how you pronounce everyday words. You may start testing friends. You may say “orange” out loud several times in a row. You may question everything. And that, I suspect, is exactly what this site wants. It’s not just a map—it’s a gentle, vowel-filled reminder that language is messy, regional, and wonderfully human… even if it occasionally makes you realize you’ve been saying “milk” wrong your entire life.

Enjoy. 

Footy Chaos

On Tuesday, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint Germain took a look at the forthcoming chaos in the British football landscape and paid homage. The two titans turned footy into basketball on the Parc de Princes turf in Paris, scoring a combined nine goals in the first leg of their EUFA Champions League semifinal. Observers needed cigarettes after the match. It's possible that's just because they're French.

Over in the Isles, the drama is extended as seasons draw to a close. Across England, Scotland, and Wales, there's action this weekend and over the next several that'll have fingers gnawed and knuckles white(r).

From least to most well-known, then, we'll dive in.

Since Sir Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen side lifted the trophy in 1985, no club other than Glasgow Rangers or Glasgow Celtic have finished atop Scotland's top division. With four matches to play in the season, Heart of Midlothian (commonly known as Hearts) lead Celtic by three points, with Rangers one point behind their hated rivals. 

If Hearts are going to break the Old Firm stranglehold on the Scottish Prem, they'll have earned it. In their final four matches, they play Rangers at home in Edinburgh and Celtic away, in addition to hosting Falkirk and traveling to Motherwell. Up the Jam Tarts!

There's only one matchday left in the English League Championship, one division below the Premier League, and we've already got a storybook ending and a bitter pill for a side close to home, G:TB speaking. And there's a ton still to play for.

At the top of the table, Coventry has clinched first place and promotion to the Premier League. The Sky Blues last played in the top division in 2000-01, having fallen all the way to League Two (the fourth division) in 2017. Chelsea legend Frank Lampard manages Coventry, finding his footing as a manager after a few missteps in his first few appointments.

There's a giant scrum below first place, as Ipswich Town, Millwall, and Middlesborough all have a chance to finish second and secure automatic promotion and Wrexham, Hull City, and Derby County can all grab sixth place and the final spot in the four-team playoff for the third Premier League promotion spot. Wrexham going up would make it a first-ever four promotions in as many seasons, and cap the absolute Hollywood story Rob McIlhenny and Ryan Reynolds have been cooking up.

Here are the matches to follow on Saturday:

Hull v Norwich (ninth place, no chance to advance)

Wrexham v Middlesborough

Millwall v Oxford United (already relegated)

Derby County v Sheffield United (15th, nothing to play for)

Ipswich Town v Queens Park Rangers (14th, nothing to play for)

At the other end of the table, sad news for Lester's Leicester. Ten years on from winning the Premier League title, the Foxes are already assured of suffering a second consecutive relegation. They'll be playing their football in League One next season.

Finally, to the wealthiest (but arguably not the most interesting, at least football-wise) league in the world. There are battles all over the table with four matches to play. 

Arsenal have led the way nearly all season, but they've stumbled a bit of late, allowing Manchester City back into the picture. City trail by three points, but they have a game in hand. Arsenal have arguably the easier run in, but only just. Could very easily come down to the final matchday.

England's top five teams qualify for the 2026-27 Champions League. That number rises to six if Aston Villa finishes fifth and wins this seasons Europa League - neither of those would be a shock. There are seven teams within four points of sixth at the time of this writing (including Fulham! and Dave's Bees). Look at this madness:

And down below, the possibility of an unthinkable outcome is very much alive. Tottenham Hotspur won last year's Europa League and participated in this season's Champions League, advancing to the knockouts. Back home, though, they've been moribund. Their dismal 1-0 win last weekend against relegation-bound Wolverhampton was Spurs' first victory in 2026.

Spurs are currently in 18th place, which is in the drop zone. They're two points behind West Ham United and five points in arrears of Nottingham United. Seeing one of the richest clubs in Europe drop to the second division would be utterly shocking, and their run in is no picnic.

Grab your seat and buckle your popcorn. Lots of footy fun right around the corner.