The Tuesday Diversion: Why Are My SBNation Sports Blogs Gone

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Tuesday March 28, 2023 · 8:45 AM PDT

2023/03/28 · 08:45

Another belated The Tuesday Diversion...

A long, long time ago, Markos and friends started SBNation, which was a pioneering network of sports blogs. It grew to be very big, and was sold, at least once, until at some point was owned by the behemoth Vox Media. Vox Media, and SBNation and other Vox properties, continued to grow. But in the past few years, the online media revenue model changed. Vox Media had become too big to be successful. So recently they decided to downsize or eliminate a number of their properties. SBNation was one of those to be downsized.

In particular, and of most interest to me, they decided to get rid of most of their NHL hockey sites. It is unclear what criteria was used to decide which of those sites were to be kept and which to be eliminated. Oddly, engagement was obviously not considered, since the site with which I was most heavily involved was heavily trafficked but was still marked for elimination and many others with way less traffic were allowed to remain.

So my questions are:

have you been affected by the Vox Media downsizing
if so, which of their properties affect you most
if an SBNation property downsizing has affected you, which of their sites have

Thank you

The Tuesday Diversion: The Best Live Concerts You've Seen (redux)

The Centerfielder

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Tuesday September 21, 2021 · 4:00 PM PDT

2021/09/21 · 16:00

It’s been a long while since there’s been a The Tuesday Diversion. So let’s ease into it by returning to a previous question.

What are the best live concerts you’ve seen?

For me, an Earth, Wind & Fire show in the 70s at U-M's Crisler Arena is up there. At least what I remember, but, hey, this was in the 70s. What I do remember is during the finale’s last song a spaceship descended from the rafters behind the band and guys in helmeted spacesuits came out from backstage shining colored lights at the audience. The band members entered the spaceship, which ascended to the rafters and disappeared in a flash. Then the spacesuit guys took off their helmets to reveal themselves to be the band members. Yes, I know.

What else? I saw The Who in their first show after they played Las Vegas after Entwhistle died; Townshend was pissed, which is always good for his music. I saw Segovia a few years before he died; Steve Goodman at the Ark before he died; John Prine, who died last year of covid; my first Neil Young Greendale show, before I knew what Greendale was; Fleetwood Mac. Paul McCartney was good: a six year old Son Centerfielder and I are in the "Back in the USA" DVD. More recently Son Centerfielder and I saw Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa through a huge haze of weed smoke. Saw Chris Thile and/or Nickel Creek a half dozen times in local small venues. In high school I saw Brownsville Station and then Ted Nugent in an all granite auditorium. It was, let’s say, very very loud. Also around that time Iggy. Yes, I was in Detroit.

And many, many more.

But my best concerts? Hmmm.... don't know if I can say. Can you?

The Tuesday Diversion: Smells evoke memories

The Centerfielder

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Tuesday August 06, 2019 · 9:00 PM PDT

2019/08/06 · 21:00

It’s been a few months since a The Tuesday Diversion post, so let’s get back into it.

Years ago I moved from Southern California to a college town in the midwest. I loved it in Ann Arbor, but after 15 years, for a myriad of reasons, I moved back to SoCal.

Things here have changed a lot in a decade and a half. The traffic was bad back then but is terrible now. It’s hotter and it doesn’t rain, so instead of having a brown season and a green season there’s just a brown season. It’s more frenetic. But I smell the ocean every day, and the smell of the ocean is the same. It’s calming. It’s soothing. I feel at home. I guess it’s an olfactory touchstone to a less frenetic time in my life. Plus it just smells really good. The smell of the ocean makes me smile.

Smells evoke memories. Have you ever had a smell suddenly surface a long forgotten happy memory?

Juan Cole Suggests Tsarnaevs Motive: Their Anti-Chechin Rebel Father

The Centerfielder

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Friday April 19, 2013 · 3:48 PM PDT

2013/04/19 · 15:48

In this recent post Professor Juan Cole, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at The University of Michigan, analyzes the video interviews of the Tsarnaev brothers' aunt and uncle -- Maret and Ruslan -- and gleans something I haven't heard before.

He thinks that from what Maret said it is possible that the brothers' father, Anzor,

was a soldier or security policeman for the pro-Russian Chechnyan government of Akhmet Kadyrov, established in 1999 in the course of the Second Chechnya War against the Islamic Peacekeeping Army, which had invaded Daghestan.

Further,
Read More

dKosopedia new account creation turned off

The Centerfielder

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Monday December 19, 2011 · 4:41 PM PST

2011/12/19 · 16:41

Since the link to the dKos FAQ was removed at some point -- I'm guessing sometime between June 11 and July 11 -- the only changes to the dKosopedia have been by spammers and the intrepid work of Jbet777 in removing said spam.

So I've turned off the ability to create new accounts on the dKosopedia, since you need an account to create or edit a page. Unless there's some mediawiki back door posting exploit, there shouldn't be any new spammers spamming.

Even though there hasn't been much in the way of dKos community contribution lately, the dKosopedia is still being used. Just google "Republican Sex Scandals".

The Tuesday Diversion: Best and Worst Movie Sequels

The Centerfielder

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Tuesday May 31, 2011 · 3:43 PM PDT

2011/05/31 · 15:43

So. It's been a while. But it is Tuesday, after all, so why not post another in the not dead yet series we like to call The Tuesday Diversion.

Hot on the heels of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Salon recently published two articles, one on the the ten worst movie sequels of all time, and one on the ten best movie sequels of all time.

I won't spoil any of it for you (click over and see if you agree), and there are some truly terrible clunkers in the list of the worst. But I will say that I was disappointed to see that Godfather 2 was not deemed the best movie sequel. It came close, but still...

So, what do you think are the best and the worst movie sequels of all time?

The dKosopedia license change has been completed.

The Centerfielder

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Friday July 31, 2009 · 1:20 PM PDT

2009/07/31 · 13:20

Last month I announced in this diary that the license under which the dKosopedia operates will change from the Gnu Free Documentation License to the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. This has now been done. To quote from the aforementioned diary:

The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to change the licensing under which Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia Foundation projects operate from the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL) to a flavor of the Creative Commons license. In particular, they are transitioning to the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) version 3.0.
[...]
The upshot is that sites which use the Mediawiki software, like the dKosopedia, must also transition to the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license if they want to be able to freely use Wikipedia content, and that transition must be completed by August 1, 2009.

For all practical purposes, everything's the same. Content from the Wikipedia can be used in the dKosopedia, but should be attributed. We prefer original content, of course, but using a small amount of properly attributed content from a CC-BY-SA licensed site (like Wikipedia) as something to build upon is ok.

Announcing a change in dKosopedia licensing

The Centerfielder

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Thursday June 11, 2009 · 3:14 PM PDT

2009/06/11 · 15:14

The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to change the licensing under which Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia Foundation projects operate from the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL) to a flavor of the Creative Commons license. In particular, they are transitioning to the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) version 3.0.

Like all licensing issues, it's all very arcane and full of pros and cons and fodder for license nits to be real pains in the butt. See this page for more.

The upshot is that sites which use the Mediawiki software, such as the dKosopedia, must also transition to the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license if they want to be able to freely use Wikipedia content, and that transition must be completed by August 1, 2009.

The Centerfielder

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Wednesday December 17, 2008 · 3:13 PM PST

2008/12/17 · 15:13

How addicted to movies are you? Film Addict has a quiz. They've taken IMDB's top 250 movies and posted a simple quiz: check the box if you've seen the movie. Stick in your name and compare your score to others.

I do pretty well: 82 per cent. I seem to be sorely lacking in seeing more recent movies, and no doubt that's due to having young kids take up all my time. I make up for not having seen recent movies by having seen a bunch of real old and/or obscure masterpieces. Having at one time been a film major at the University of Michigan in the 70s helps there.

I'm not exactly sure how the comparison thing works, but you can take the quiz here.

(And yes, I know, it's really Wednesday, but yesterday I didn't have time to post a Tuesday Diversion)

The Tuesday Diversion: Roommates From Hell

The Centerfielder

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Tuesday November 18, 2008 · 11:57 AM PST

2008/11/18 · 11:57

Here's an easy one. We all have had, at some point in the past, one or more Roommates From Hell. I've had more than one in the years after college, and I can't say which was worse.

Was it, as I mentioned in last week's Tuesday Diversion, Trevor from Australia, who took my new puppy for a walk and lost him? Was it Robert, who, after my parents gave me three bottles of fine wine for Christmas, drank two of them when I was away at work? Was it Jim, who, when it was his turn to cook dinner, invariably served braunschweiger? Every time. Seriously.

And these incidents were just examples of their constant asshattery. Now, I'll admit, none of them ever stole money from me, probably because I never had any money. And none of them ever physically harmed me, other than assaulting me with vomit a time or two after a party. So I guess I'm lucky as far as that goes. But still...

So, who were your roommates from hell?

The Tuesday Diversion: Best Pet You Ever Had

The Centerfielder

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Tuesday November 11, 2008 · 11:18 AM PST

2008/11/11 · 11:18

When I first thought about the Best Pet I Ever Had, I considered the dog and the many cats I had growing up. We had cats from the time I was in fifth grade, and got the dog in ninth grade. Oddly, starting in about fifth grade I came down with we all thought was a bad cold that never seemed to go away. So my nose ran constantly and I sneezed my way through childhood, until someone suggested I get allergy tests. Turns out, of course, that I'm very allergic to dogs and, especially, cats. But I still have fond memories of those cats.

Then I considered George, the puppy I picked out on my very own when I lived in a house with a bunch of guys in college in Ann Arbor. George was a great dog, brown and white and cute as all get out. I had George for about three days when Trevor the Australian Roommate took him for a walk in the Arb and lost him.

But I think the winner has to be the two dogs we have now, Calvin and Ruby. First, they're labradoodles, and so, miraculously, I'm not allergic to them. (Really. Yes, I can hardly believe it myself.) Mainly, though, they're great dogs for the kids, just wonderful, gentle, smart, forgiving, and patient. So, in a way, the best pets I've ever had are indeed childhood dogs, it's just not my childhood.

So, what's the best pet you ever had?

The Tuesday Diversion: Cinematic Guilty Pleasures

The Centerfielder

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Tuesday October 21, 2008 · 9:15 AM PDT

2008/10/21 · 09:15

Yesterday NPR's Talk of the Nation talked about B-Movies with David Sterritt, author of B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love. They talked about favorite B-movies: Gun Crazy, I Walked With a Zombie, Kiss Me, Deadly, etc.

That got me thinking about a different but related cinematic topic: Guilty Pleasures. You know, movies that are, you'll admit, not so great, but that you just love to watch, whether it's because of a favorite actor, or because it's "so bad it's good," or because it reminds you of a certain time and place in your life, maybe with a certain person.

For me, Naked Gun is one. I'll admit that Arnold's Predator is pretty terrible, but boy is it fun to watch. Mrs. Centerfielder can't stand Blazing Saddles but the bean scene gets me every time. And of course, Dodgeball.

What are your Cinematic Guilty Pleasures, and why?

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