This is why you always pay with a credit card

Yesterday morning around 10am, I got a notification of a charge on my credit card. I didn’t recognize it – it was about $10 at walmart.com. We generally do not patronize union-busting establishments (don’t ask me about my Amazon Prime account), so this was unusual. I called Capital One and they cancelled the card. This was frustrating, though necessary, since I know the number by heart and I’ve become somewhat attached to it.

By 1130, I had a notification on my phone that my card number on Google Pay had been updated so I could continue to use Google Pay even though my physical card was cancelled.

Noon today, my new card arrived via FedEx.

It’s really amazing that in barely more than 24 hours, the ONLY issue I have is having to memorize a new card number. Capital One even updated the number at many of my existing recurring payments, and provided a list of those they were not able to change themselves. I’m going to wait until I get an email saying they couldn’t charge my card because I’m lazy, but I appreciate the thought.

So, just one more reason to get a Capital One Venture X card. It’s about $400 a year but that comes with a $300 travel credit if you book through their service. It covered my Global Entry fee, and there are a ton of other benefits. It’s the best credit card I’ve ever used.

Mortgage companies and condo insurance

Do you own a condo? Have you recently gotten a breathless letter from your mortgage company telling you that the insurance policy for your building is expiring and all life on Earth is about to end in a fiery apocalypse if you don’t show them proof of insurance?

So, here’s the thing. Nearly all condo building policies are written for one year. Your mortgage company knows this. So when they send you this letter, it’s the same as a letter saying, “When you got approved for your loan, you said you were 36 years old. Now our records indicate you are 37, you dirty liar. We will murder you and your dog in your sleep if you do not rectify this IMMEDIATELY”.

Martinis I have known

My maternal grandmother taught everyone she could to drink gin martinis. I don’t necessarily love her style of martini, but luckily there are lots of different kinds, so nearly anyone can find one they love. Or you can even get one of those ridiculous things full of coffee liqueur or whatever that they serve in a martini glass. Those aren’t real martinis but I’m not judging.

Grandma’s Martini

In many ways, Grandma was a martini purist. To make her signature martini, around 2 pm, measure 4 ounces of gin in a measuring cup. Add a splash of vermouth. Put it in the freezer until cocktail hour.

Unfortunate Martini

Never order a martini from an all-inclusive resort in Dominican Republic. At least, not from the one I went to for a wedding some years ago. To make this martini, pour a shot of gin into a soda glass. Add a bit of ice, then fill the glass with vermouth.

Jalapeno Martini

I don’t know the exact recipe, I had it at a restaurant in New Orleans, but I think it’s jalapeno-infused gin, a bit of sweet vermouth, and a small lightly pickled strip of jalapeno. Delightful.

My Favorite Martini

Grab a bottle of gin. Pour a healthy amount into a rocks glass. While doing this, tell the gin a story about a bottle of vermouth you once saw. Grab a couple of olives. Throw the olives in the [expletive deleted] garbage because olives are [expletive deleted] vile. Look, I tried some really good olives on a food tour in Madrid last spring. They were [expletive deleted] vile. You can not change my mind. Finish your story about the vermouth. Sit somewhere comfortable with your feet up, preferably where there is at least a slight breeze, regardless of the weather. Enjoy.

If none of these float your boat, you can put literally anything in a martini glass and call it a martini. No one will stop you. Go ahead, try it!

Take my content, please!

As someone who does not make a living creating content, I WANT my content used to train LLMs. Go on, Open AI, slurp up EVERY LITTLE MORSEL. Get every last pearl of wisdom from my dumbass blog.

Read my thoughts on compact flourescent lightbulbs from 2006 so you can quote that back to a high school student writing a research paper.

Or how about this FLAMING hot take on Al Gore? So profound.

Even better – read every last word of my wine blog, completely generated by a Markov chain (precursor to modern LLMs) trained on Wine Spectator reviews. That’ll be real helpful for some dingbat trying to impress a girl he just met.

You can’t just declare Vision Zero and have it happen

Traffic fatalities have doubled since D.C.’s promise of zero [gift link]

D.C.’s Vision Zero plan has relied heavily on camera enforcement to catch speeders, who are more likely to cause dangerous crashes. But The Post found that of the 33 people killed in traffic crashes this year, nine died within 250 feet of a traffic camera.

There’s A LOT to unpack here about inequitable streets and placement of traffic cameras, and I’m not going to do it here because it’s already been done by people who know more about it than I do.

The problem with DC’s Vision Zero is that Mayor Bowser did it like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy on The Office. Saying you’re going to do Vision Zero is great, but unfortunately for DC, that’s where it ended.

You may not know what Vision Zero IS, aside from a plan to get to zero traffic fatalities. That’s ok. I have a great analogy. We go live to the press conference.

Voiceover: Mayor Muriel Bowser presents…. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s new diet.

Mayor Muriel Bowser (standing at podium. On the podium is a jumbo slice of pizza and a Bud Light): Thank you for coming. I am pleased to announce that, going forward, I will be on a 100% paleo diet. The diet of our prehistoric ancestors, truly native Washingtonians, is the only way foward.

MMB: (Takes large bite of pizza)

Reporter: Mayor Bowser, aren’t dairy and grains forbidden in a paleo diet?

MMB (takes long drink from Bud Light): The first inhabitants of Washington DC ,some hundred million years ago, followed a strict paleo diet, and so will I.

Reporter: Alcohol isn’t allowed either…

MMB (Glares): Off with his head.

Cars I’ve owned

While I’m a bike and pedestrian advocate, we still live in a society where it’s pretty tough to live without a car. And I DO like to drive. Today Facebook reminded me it’s been four years since our trusty Mazda 3 was rear-ended. Given that our latest car was stolen two weeks ago (a story for another day), I got to thinking about the cars I’ve had.

1988 Acura Integra

This was my first car. My parents bought it for me because I was going to high school an hour away from home and they couldn’t get me there (at least not without turning their lives upside down). Such a great little car. Reliability of a Honda Civic but SO much more fun to drive. I didn’t have it long – I was rear-ended on 97N on the way to take the AP Spanish test. I got a ride to school from a Maryland state trooper and I was deeply disappointed that everyone was in class by then so no one saw me getting dropped off.

1989 Acura Integra

Insurance paid for the replacement. This was one trim level up from the first one. I loved it even more. Both Integras had giant subwoofers in the trunk and I installed a kill switch to turn them off as I approached my house so my mom didn’t get mad. When I went to college I didn’t get to keep the car. I think my siblings ran it into the ground.

1988 Honda Accord

It had 175,000 miles when I got it. Incredibly well-maintained, incredibly boring. It had a manual transmission and a sunroof, though, so it wasn’t all bad.

1995 Toyota Tacoma

This was the first car I purchased myself. Manual transmission, 4X4. It could drive over anything. Highlights include 1) putting a tarp in the back for a house party, filling it with ice, and using it as a cooler 2) pulling a stuck Chevy pickup out of the mud 3) driving in the snow 4) having a cicada fly in the window on 66 and explode against the back window. Lowlights were mostly helping literally everyone in the DMV move at one time or another. It had 70K miles when I bought it. I sold it to my then-brother-in-law with 235K and the original clutch. It broke 250k before the transmission died on him and he got rid of it. It’s probably still out there somewhere.

2006 Mazda 3

My first new car. I had just bought a condo and was living on my own for the first time. The condo was not the greatest investment (absolute peak of the market, I had a $31,000 escalation clause on my offer) but the I got my money’s worth out of the Mazda. It drove my wife to the birth center to give birth to both our kids and carted them around through middle school. It was rear-ended on the way home from Rehoboth summer of 2020.

2020 Toyota RAV4 hybrid

First time I ever owned an automatic transmission. Good car. You could coax 52 MPG out of it if you were easy on the gas. 40 MPG with normal driving. It was stolen from outside our hotel in Montreal two weeks ago.

Next?

Almost definitely another RAV4 hybrid. I would love something fully electric but they are SUPER expensive and we don’t have off-street parking to charge it, so it would be a constant hassle.

The shelf-life of a baseball reliever

Ever since I read Moneyball, which turned me into a baseball stat super genius, as it did for everyone else, I have wondered about the value of a relief pitcher. For the most part, they come and go pretty quickly. Today’s top set up guy is tomorrow’s DFA.

Mason Miller, the A’s closer, has been fantastic. A lot of people think he’ll move at the trade deadline, as the A’s certainly don’t need him to finish last again. How much would you give up for him? If we’re just talking “We need a top closer to win the World Series this year”, fine. But how many years is he going to be a top closer?

My theory was three years is the max except for really top-end guys. The corollary to my theory is that this doesn’t apply to Mariano Rivera, who was the best reliever ever by a large margin. To test my theory, I finally got a subscription to FanGraphs, dumped all data for relievers from 2000-2024, ranked them by WAR each year, and then counted how many times a guy was in the top 25.

PlayerYears in the top 25 in WAR
Mariano Rivera12
Kenley Jansen9
Joe Nathan8
David Robertson8
Craig Kimbrel8
Aroldis Chapman8
Trevor Hoffman7
Rafael Betancourt7
Jonathan Papelbon7
Francisco Rodríguez7
Billy Wagner7
Joakim Soria6
Octavio Dotel5
Liam Hendriks5
J.J. Putz5
Greg Holland5
Francisco Cordero5
Edwin Díaz5
Ryan Pressly4
Roberto Osuna4
Raisel Iglesias4
Matt Thornton4
Mark Melancon4
Ken Giles4
Keith Foulke4
Josh Hader4
Jonathan Broxton4
Joaquín Benoit4
Huston Street4
Heath Bell4
Emmanuel Clase4
Devin Williams4
Dellin Betances4
Byung-Hyun Kim4
Brad Lidge4
Brad Hand4
Bobby Jenks4
B.J. Ryan4
Andrew Miller4

There you go. 39 players since 2000 have been top 25 relievers more than 3 years. I might redo the analysis a bit – WAR may not be the best way to rank a reliever.

I was definitely right about Mariano Rivera.

Rivera warming up
Mariano Rivera throwing in the bullpen, spring training, 2013. Photo by the author

Of the 318 players who ranked in the top 25 in WAR in the 2000’s, 192 did it once. 60 did it twice and 27 three times. The rest is the list above.

Everyone involved here is wrong

While 1) banning the resale of legally purchased tickets should be illegal and 2) TIcketmaster totally deserves this, I wonder if anyone told them that every time the barcode changes it’s a separate felony charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS. 

https://www.404media.co/scalpers-are-working-with-hackers-to-liberate-non-transferable-tickets-from-ticketmasters-ecosystem

Red lights – optional if you’re very special

I just walked down the 800 block of Park Rd NW, just near my house. This block contains a police station, though the only reason you can tell is there are always police cars double parked all down the block.

At both ends of the block, a driver ran the red light. And not a “oops, I should have stopped on that late yellow”, but “I see the light is red and I am consciously choosing to ignore that”.

At the New Hampshire Ave end, a driver heading east crossed the center line to pass two other drivers who were stopping for the yellow.

At the Georgia Ave end, a driver stopped in the crosswalk then floored it after the light turned. Honestly couldn’t tell you what he was thinking.

I sometimes wonder why we even have police.