Ruff Shenanigans

In memory of Ruffian, dark bay thoroughbred filly

[Ruff Shenanigans @RuffShenanigans]

@Wilson__Valdez I love sports but for the life of me I do not understand why a single person is an NFL fan. Fans are just meaningless in this league.

[Ruff Shenanigans @RuffShenanigans]

@SenatorBanks @NormOrnstein Good lord you are a big dummy

[𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖_𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 @SundaeDivine]

Happy Pride Month to the First Lady.

[FanDuel @FanDuel]

Caitlin Clark is truly a generational talent 😤

[Sports Patriot @SportsPatriotUS]

I’m going to say this as calmly as possible:

Watching Caitlin Clark in the WNBA has become genuinely hard to stomach.

Not because she struggles sometimes. Not because she makes mistakes. Not because she gets criticized. That comes with being great.

It’s hard to stomach because it has become obvious that the league, the officials, the media, the players, and even her own organization have all decided that the most important thing is not letting Caitlin Clark become too big.

And that is insane.

This league was handed the most marketable, electric, revenue-generating player women’s basketball has ever seen, and instead of building around the moment, too many people seem obsessed with humbling her.

She gets fouled. Held. Hit. Cheap-shotted. Mocked. Targeted. Then when she reacts like a normal competitor, suddenly everyone wants to analyze her attitude.

No.

Her attitude is not the story.

The story is that a generational player is being treated like a problem by the very league she helped drag into mainstream relevance.

This reminds me of the worst kind of youth coach... the one who sees a special player, feels threatened by her talent, and slowly drains the joy out of her in the name of “teaching humility.”

That is what this looks like.

The freedom she played with at Iowa is disappearing. The fire is still there, but the joy looks damaged. The confidence looks weighed down. She looks like someone constantly fighting the refs, opponents, narratives, coaching decisions, jealousy, and a league culture that should be protecting its golden opportunity instead of resenting it.

And let’s be honest: Stephanie White has not helped.

Benching Caitlin Clark randomly when she is controlling the game tempo, or having your best shooter off the floor in critical game ending minutes when a victory is within reach is basketball malpractice. Limiting her rhythm, downplaying her greatness, benching momentum, and treating her like just another piece instead of the engine is absurd.

You do not take a player who changed the economics of your sport and manage her like you’re afraid her greatness might offend the room.

Nike deserves criticism too. Other players get signature shoes rolled out with urgency, while the biggest draw in women’s basketball is somehow still waiting on that signature shoe. That is not confusing. That is revealing.

Fans are not stupid.

They see the fouls.
They see the double standards.
They see the jealousy.
They see the media resentment.
They see the league benefiting from her popularity while refusing to fully embrace her.
And here is the part the WNBA better understand quickly:
People are not tuning in to watch Caitlin Clark be humbled.
They are tuning in to watch Caitlin Clark be great.
If she walked away tomorrow, the fans would follow her. The sponsors would follow her. The energy would follow her. The high salaries and the charter jets would follow her. And the league would be forced to confront the uncomfortable truth it keeps trying to avoid:

Caitlin Clark did not need the WNBA nearly as much as the WNBA needed Caitlin Clark.

At some point, her family, her agent, and her team need to ask a hard question:

How much longer do you let a league profit from her while allowing the culture around her to beat the spirit out of her?

Because from the outside looking in, this does not look like normal adversity anymore. It looks like abuse.

It looks like a league trying to break the very player who made millions of people care.

https://t.co/AAxFrO46Z4

[Sports Patriot @SportsPatriotUS]

The WNBA needs to create a new stat category: The Caitlin Clark Assist.

That’s when a player delivers a perfectly thrown pass to a teammate in scoring position… and it bounces off their face.

[m!ch | luv u cc ☁️ @clarkmode_]

this was so beautiful caitlin 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

[correlation @nosyone4]

Caitlin nutmegged Rhyne 🤭

[Comrade Misty is Putin’s Buddy @SarcasmStardust]

Bro. I didn’t even realize this pass went in between Rhyne’s legs. Holy fuck that is toughhhhhhhhh.

[EU says Elon should not lie abt my blue check @emptywheel]

The central accuser against Platner is ideologically aligned with @EWErickson and at the time Platner was too.

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

Just came across this gem. Instant classic.

[Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney]

JUDGE MILLETT: If the govt decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors — that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the govt moved too fast — nothing can be done?

DOJ: I think that’s right, yes.

[FLAVOR FLAV @FlavorFlav]

Someone hook this superstar up with a job interview

[Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker⚔️ @Nomads4Pritzker]

So, I've worked in the beef industry. I have a fairly detailed knowledge of beef markets, the supply chain, parasites and parasiticides, etc. Suffice it to say, this is a nightmare scenario, but one we've known was coming since at least 2022.

New World Screwworm was eradicated from North and Central America in the mid-90's. The US gov't (APHIS) funded a program of screwworm drops, where they bred sterile males so that extant populations couldn't reproduce and move northwards. But in 2022 NWS jumped the Darien gap and started moving northwards once again. It's most likely that they came undetected on livestock brought alongside migrants fleeing political instability in South and Central America. Elon Musk/DOGE, of course, cut several monitoring programs that would have detected this exact scenario. The screwworm drops are still funded, but the monitoring programs are what have been cut - a stupid move if there ever was one.

A serious Central/South America policy would have worked hand-in-hand with CA/SA governments to help contain this, but we've never had a serious policy towards South America, not during the Biden years, and especially not under Trump. The USDA broke ground on a sterile screwworm facility in Texas... last month. I worry it's too little, too late.

Screwworm is so dangerous because, unlike other fly larvae, they lay eggs and feed on living flesh. So something like a small scratch (or even bug bite) can quickly becomes infested, and the larvae will burrow into the flesh, growing the wound and attracting more screwworm. They don't only parasitize cattle, but will also feed on wildlife, domestic pets, even humans. Since they have detected screwworms in domesticated cattle right now, it's likely that there is a wild reservoir as well. We can quarantine herds and pets, but we can't quarantine deer and armadillos. They will move, and so will the NWS.

Under normal circumstances, cattle are moved around - a lot. Calves will be sent to stockers through their adolescence, then shipped to feedlots for finishing. A lot of calving operations (like 70%) are small, and small-time producers don't always catch parasite infestations. Cattle moved in-state don't require a certificate of veterinary inspection, so it's easy for an infested animal to be moved without being noticed. Animals crossing state lines do need a CVI, but Texas has such an enormous cattle population (something like 13 million head) that as goes Texas, so goes the nation.

Fortunately, we have a lot of drugs that treat NWS. The FDA has issued several emergency use authorizations in the last year or so. But every input raises the price of beef, and treatment only makes a difference if producers catch an infestation early. If an infestation spreads unnoticed on a large feedlot, it can hit hard, both in terms of cattle that have to be killed, and treatments that then have to be deployed. Producers will spend days at a time running cattle through the chute, inspecting them and applying parasiticides. It costs a lot of money, which is then passed on to the consumer.

What does that mean for you? Beef is a commodity, and just because there's no NWS up here in Illinois doesn't mean that prices won't skyrocket - and they will skyrocket. US herd size is already at record lows, and this will result in culls. Consumer prices also run 18-24 months behind, which means that shocks to the supply chain now are still going to be felt by consumers in 2028.

It's hard to say if our government will be able to muster an effective response - though I don't trust our current administration, which can't even throw a 250th anniversary party, to be able to deal with an ecological issue of this magnitude. It doesn't help that our current USDA secretary is a lawyer and think-tank creature. I don't much trust the state government of Texas either. The industry has also taken the workforce of large animal veterinarians for granted - a monopoly/market power issue that I just can't get in to here.

For me, it comes back to our federal government having an incoherent policy on Central and South America. We knew what was coming, we know what's going to happen, but we cut the program meant to prevent this scenario. Instead of taking those countries seriously as partners, the government has been stupid and domineering.

Here's the kicker: this is what the industry voted for. They might scream, they might get bailed out, but all that means is that you, the consumer, are going to be paying more for beef, plus whatever bailout gets shoveled their way. Until the industry accepts that they are part of a larger system; that they cannot eternally privatize the gains and publicize the losses of beef production; that they need to consider sustainability and stewardship in the management of their operations, this is only going to keep happening. Eventually, they may find that there is very little goodwill for them among the public, and people will decide that a Brazilian ribeye tastes just as good as one from Texas.

[Ruff Shenanigans @RuffShenanigans]

@Cardinals Love !! Happy Birthday Ray!!!!

[Ruff Shenanigans @RuffShenanigans]

@ande56495 @TheRickWilson Worse his MIND is filthy. A filthy human inside and out

[Ruff Shenanigans @RuffShenanigans]

@gatewaygrinders And they still prevailed. PC-Triple A

[Jake Offenhartz @jangelooff]

On Saturday, while covering a protest at Delaney Hall for the AP, Angelina Katsanis' camera bag went missing.

Inside was $10K worth of gear, her biz cards and an Airtag -- which soon began to ping from home of a NJ sergeant. He's now facing charges.

https://t.co/fCHmWnJETI

[Jack Hopkins @thejackhopkins]

According to Andrew Weissmann, Blanche using sleight of hand; they’re not killing the deal. Trump still gets $1.776 billion. He still gets a sweeping civil liability shield. They only removed the J6 slush fund piece. Same jackpot. Less scrutiny. Worse than before.