Ryan Daut

Anger be now your song, immortal one

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

I hate cleaning day. What a privileged and ungrateful thing to say, and the women who come every other week are wonderful and do a fantastic job, but it’s difficult to corral two senior dogs in and out of different areas, to entertain an 18 month old with boundless energy, and then to manage his nap while a vacuum cleaner and the general cacophony of cleaning do their best to disrupt it. But along with dogs and a toddler come mess, and a respite from filth is a welcome benefit for the minor life disruption.

Yesterday was cleaning day, but unlike usual until 9pm the day went smoothly. Our family of 5 went to the farmer’s market, my wife and i took our son to the park, and then to an indoor playcenter.

Boo, a 13 year 9 month old, 9 pound yorkie has healthy organs, but poor external health — 80% hearing loss, arthritic knees that occasionally pop out, few remaining teeth, and intermittent incontinence. She just needs to quickly go out and empty the tank to prevent wetting the bed before we return home. Riley, a 14 year 6 month old mixed breed, has heart and kidney issues, but has excellent joint health and is still spry for his age. His night walk is longer and at a faster pace, so it’s quicker to take them one at a time for the night walk.

Last night I opted to take Boo first. We left our house, located in a gated community in an idyllic nearly crime free town, walked approximately 75 feet towards the cul-de-sac which has a 5 foot gate blocking a path behind, crossed the street, walked approximately 100 feet back up the street, crossed back to our side, and headed home. 10 feet from my front door, just after I took the first step up our walkway I heard a yelp from Boo who was 2-3 feet behind me. My instinct was to drop the leash — if her knee popped out of the socket again I didn’t want to exacerbate the injury by tugging, so i planned to turn around and pick her up and carry her inside.

But upon turning around I saw a coyote had her in his mouth and was backpedaling away. I started screaming and cursing and chased after them down two streets, until finally the coyote dropped her 15-20 seconds and 300-400 feet later. I scooped her up and started running back to the house, my arms covered in her blood, her small body convulsing in my arms. The coyote stalked me the entire way back while a second slightly smaller coyote looked on from further away. Every few steps I had to turn and throw a kick to keep it at bay, then resumed running until It finally gave up the chase near our house. I wasn’t carrying my phone, wallet, or key, so I had to run inside, tell my wife, grab my stuff, and rush to the car.

I frantically typed into my phone searching for 24 hour vet locations, leaving bloodied fingerprints all over the touchscreen. The vet down the road that I once visited after hours was no longer open 24 hours a day but I found a backup 5 minutes away. She was breathing lightly in my arms, I floored it down roads, ran red lights when no cars were coming, and got there as quick as I could but I felt her body exhale and become motionless just before pulling into the parking lot, the vets soon confirming there was no heartbeat.

I have a tendency to be hard on myself and look for self blame. Could I have been more vigilant? I wasn’t distracted, not even having my phone on me. The street light two houses down is dimmer than it should be, combined with some trees and cars and neither of us saw danger coming when crossing the street. Perhaps I should have insisted on her donning an anti coyote spike vest for every walk, but in 13 years of living here I have seen exactly 1 coyote while walking the dogs at night. On each side of the street, from the entrance all the way to the 5 foot fence at the cul-de-sac is a combination of house and 5-6 foot high cement wall, behind which is another house with the same. The only potential entrances for a coyote would be hopping the 5 foot fence (possible) or the entrance to the street, which has the same setup leading to a gated entry for cars. I looked both ways for cars when crossing the street, but neither me nor Boo saw anything suspicious.

I attribute her death to extreme bad luck and a confluence of physical problems from age related decline. Her hearing loss meant she didn’t sense the danger coming until he grabbed her. Her arthritic knees meant she walked along slowly enough for the coyote to catch us before we made it home. Her slow speed and reticence to walk more than necessary means I generally took the lead on walks while she followed along just behind. Logically I know this could have happened to anyone.

But none of those facts remove my feelings of culpability. There were numerous incidences in the past where I was distracted, further from home, in more dangerous areas, in a sleepwalking state in the middle of the night where nothing happened. Was I simply lucky before this and the EV of a coyote attack heretofore was higher than I thought?

The crashing wave of feelings and thoughts is unending and suffocating. Feeling like I’m no longer safe in my own community, that I need to worry about taking my son to the park for fear of him being dragged away in the same manner. If a coyote is so brazen and desperate for food to grab a dog that was 2 feet behind a human and 10 feet from a house, it could be so brazen and desperate to attack a toddler in a park during day time. Feeling like I’ve lived a sheltered, naive, and lucky existence to have avoided trauma for my first 40 years while the world is continually bathed in blood. Wondering why, despite Clotho measuring the thread of her life a reasonable length, Atropos would design such a cruel and vicious end for my best friend. Feeling from a utilitarian perspective that this was a most unnecessary incident — my goal is to protect my dog, the coyote’s goal is to procure food, my dog’s goal is to remain alive. We all lost.

It’s tempting to wax philosophical about the fragility of life and how we are brittle beings that can withstand such little amounts of punishment before our life force is extinguished, and how we never know when our end can come. Deep down everyone knows all this, but most of us forget it while living in our safe bubbles, many layers removed from danger we or anyone we know first hand rarely experience. I’m also too numb and broken from the ordeal for any novel thoughts here, and I don’t know how to disentangle myself from the images that sporadically flash back to me.

Well after midnight, hours spent shuttling between home and the vet to finish up paperwork, say goodbye to her remains, and figuring out a way to safely walk our other dog, I finally tried to sleep. But it was then I realized the sheets, pillow cases, and covers were all freshly washed. The bed no longer held her distinctive scent and I broke some more. I really fucking hate cleaning day.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@smokrokflock @_Dave__White_ The first book is good, but second and third are incredible. I still have a couple hundred pages left in book four, but I suspect when I finish I’ll rank it absurdly high on my all time list. Will watch show after books.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@Doug_Lemov Haven’t read Brothers K yet. Only The Idiot (loved, but not for everyone), Crime and Punishment (loved), and Notes from Underground (found it difficult, but v good).

But worthy of being on the list for all the rest of his work, and expect Brothers K to be my favorite of his.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@Doug_Lemov I havent read it yet, only Blood Meridian, The Road, No Country, and first in border series. Enjoyed All The Pretty Horses tho

But other than Homer (read both), I picked authors I loved with extensive oeuvres that I’ve yet to exhaust. eg, love Dostoyevsky, but only read 3.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@JeremyWingert79 The Wind In The Willows is incredible. The language is a bit anachronistic at times, but it’s worth the challenge.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@TennisPublisher I think it depends how we classify the 1963-68 slams without “pros”, no Laver or Rosewall.

If we delegitimize, then Tony Roche’s RG doesnt count and it’s him. If we treat them as legitimate slams, Tom Okker has 34 titles, SF all 4 and a slam final.

Ferrer easy answer though.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@JJatFSU @highvibrationss @OleTimeHardball Yea, Chipper’s 99 was bonkers. Matt Williams was a great hitter, but his plate approach didnt age well. Simply did not walk enough, while Chipper’s OBP for the decade must have been around .400.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@CTennisNation Brett Masi should probably be outside top 100, not inside the top 10.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@mldiffley Cute, but fake. I came up with a rough formula by making 5 different lineups to estimate the weights of each variable (points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks). That formula says these players are either 81-1 or 82-0. Hence why first image is incomplete team, second no score.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

Ok, so imagine we watched various highlights from top players in 1980, 1995, 2010, and 2025, 15 years apart.

Watching Borg and Vilas play points on clay in 1980 would look like an entirely different sport from today and in modern terms are closer to club level players today than top pros.

1995 looks significantly more modernized, and they are legitimate players at that point even by today's, but you would intuitively know Agassi and Sampras playing at that level would struggle to win games against Sinner and Alcaraz, especially on clay when Sampras can't hit a few unreturnables and hold sometimes.

2010 you would probably watch some points between Nadal and Djokovic, and then 2025 you could watch some highlights of Novak vs Sinner or Carlos, and it's hard to see exactly why the level is that much better. It's the same guy from 2010 and he's 38 years old in the latter video. And although Rafa retired, you can see that he won Roland Garros in 2005 and again in 2022, even beating Novak on the way to the title.

Now let's take a step back and talk about what "peak Nadal" means. There's no moment in time that we can take Nadal's peak physicality from 2008 and his tennis iq/knowledge/experience from 2022 and combine them to form this theoretical player we'd like to see face Carlos and Jannik. You either need to go back to 2008 and take that version or the slower more tactical version in 2022.

So to finally get to your question, the biggest changes from 15 years ago to now are better movement by all players (especially on hard court), much bigger serving (especially second serve), more RPMs from the field, and more pace on groundstrokes.

I went back and watched some highlights of 2008 wimbledon final, universally considered in the mix of potential best matches of all time. I saw Rafa at one point hit an 82mph second serve. Most top players hit their second serves 100+ mph now. I've seen graphics of average serve speeds from various slams and that the average second serve speed now is similar to the average first serve speed in the early 2000s. That seems inconceivable given we saw Pete Sampras hitting 125mph aces in the 90s, but it's actually true for the field.

I've seen other graphics (which I unfortunately cant find) that show Arthur Fils on average hitting his forehand with as many RPMs as Rafa but also 10mph faster. Players today detonate the ball.

And then there is random anecdotal evidence. Casper Ruud recently said he thinks he has improved since 2022 when he was a top 5 player that made two slam finals, yet the field has improved even more and now he's outside the top 15.

And then a quick note about the depth of tennis. It's very easy to look at the inconsistency from players ranked outside the top 5 and call it a weak era compared to the past, but I think it's more an indication of the strength of the top 50-100 rather than the weakness of the players ranked 4-15. We think players like David Ferrer are models of consistency because of infrequent early losses, but shit on Zverev or Medvedev for their seemingly inexplicable bad losses. I don't think it's a fair take and has too many other factors. So I think Sinner and Carlos lapping the field and each winning ~90% of matches overall while playing each other 5x a year as a sign of just how dominant they are.

Now given the charitable, what if Rafa was born in 2002 and was at his peak right now, I think Rafa personifies all that is perfect for clay courts: elite mover, few errors, very hard to attack, has a very repeatable game but still has variety and is elite at net and has good hands, and has one of the best forehands of all time to end points too. I'd favor that player vs Carlos and Sinner still. But that player doesnt exist, and these guys are just far beyond anything we saw in 2008-2010.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@AdamLoebSmall @abarber1 I’ll make a long post under this in a bit, a little swamped with kids, but also twitter doesnt seem to notify when some >280 character replies come in. But will explain it a bit better because it’s hard to see with the naked eye.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@AdamLoebSmall @abarber1 I think most fail to understand how much tennis has evolved in even the last 5 years, let alone 15-20 because of the extended dominance of the big 3. There's a temptation to equate Novak as a top 5 player in 2026 to Novak in 2008, but Novak continually added and adapted.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@abarber1 @AdamLoebSmall If the claim is "2026 Sinner/Alcaraz are favored vs 2008-10 Nadal on clay", I agree, tennis has evolved.

The more charitable "imagine if Rafa were born in 2002 and was 24 years old right now and at the peak of his abilities, would he be the best on clay?" I think also yes.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@Revolution86583 @FlanUpdates @scott_seiver But yeah i didnt even realize Malek was that old because the first time I saw him was Mr. Robot, while I’ve known Gosling since Remember the Titans so I knew he was older than me.

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@Revolution86583 @FlanUpdates @scott_seiver I don’t mind a smaller CV. I just look for at least two exceptional performances of very different roles. And i dont discount for bad ones, for instance I think Pitt was a mediocre actor until Fight Club and has had a number of incredible performances since (and some flat)

[Ryan Daut @rcdaut]

@AnnaK_4ever Verdasco celebrating winning a point level dominance on Sinner’s worst surface. This guy is something else.
https://t.co/YLESKM5TFl