So if you're not following the NBA, here's a brie recap of how our old friends the sixers are doing.

Joel Embiid is still here. Young all-star Tyrese Maxey is also here. They traded for Paul George, at one point a bona fide star in the NBA, in the offseason. They were projected to land somewhere north of 40 wins this season. In preseason betting they were ranked eighth in championship odds. Which is to say: they went into the season as a respectable playoff team. Not necessarily title contenders, but in the upper echelon of the league.

Instead as I write this they are 2-11. They are tied with Washington for the worst record in the league. Those two wins they have? Both in overtime. They have not won a game in regulation.

Injuries play a major role, of course; Joel has barely suited up for the sixers. But that's not the whole story. Their team just seems discombobulated, disorganized, slow, unfocused. Naturally, fans are asking questions about their coach, Nick Nurse.

Nurse won a championship with the Raptors, of course. Sixers fans remember that season with a wince.

So how could it be that a guy who a few years ago was an NBA champion is now suddenly such a bad coach? Was Nurse a fraud all along? Were the Sixers duped into hiring this guy?

I don't really think that's the case. I think the tale of Nick Nurse illustrates just how much context is a powerful determinant in human performance.

You see, Nurse is a genius, especially when it comes to defense. You give him the right tools and he will build you a Rube Goldberg machine to break any basketball offense. He'll snap the game in half if he has to. The 2019 playoffs were a tour de force of defensive game planning in which half the superstars in the league were successively put in jail.

But even in his later Raptor years, when Nurse had profoundly lopsided and inadequate rosters, he was still eking out an unrealistic number of wins by pushing the game's math to the breaking point. In 2021-22 he had a team that simply could not shoot, could not create decent offense. Most coaches in that situation would simply have tried to 'get their guys going', spun their wheels trying to squeeze shooting from a team that couldn't shoot. They might have tried to develop non-shooters into shooters. They might have tried to lean harder into other forms of offense.

Nurse didn't give a shit about that. Nurse simply decided to turn the ball over way less than other teams, get way more steals than other teams, and rebound way more than other teams. His team still shot the ball atrociously but they simply had so many more possessions, and thus shot attempts, to work with. That was enough to make the playoffs with a team that had no business making it that far.

But the thing is, Nurse also seems to have the emotional intelligence of a traffic cone. He's a weird little midwestern preacher man with no real rapport with anyone. Those 2019 Raptors were perfect for him: a team with a lot of continuity, that knew how to play together. A team that really just needed a new game plan. A team that had the maturity and emotional security to see past the man and imagine the vision.

Yes, he's going to make you play harsh minutes. Yes, he's going to play guys who can contribute and will relentlessly bench players who can't keep up.Yes, he's going to ask you to do things that you've not done before, and he's going to give you instructions that make little sense. But you'll win. And winning fixes everything.

The Sixers are... not that. The Sixers are a team that's broken and cursed. Their superstar has grown up in a basket case of intrigue and ego, constantly being fried by the harsh limelight of Philly sports disappointment. There's no well-oiled machine for Nurse to pull the levers on. There's no perfectly polished army of chess men. There's just people, and Nurse's no good at people.

Philly fired Doc and hired Nurse, but they don't need a physician. They need an exorcist. They needed someone who could banish the malignant spirits hanging around Wells Fargo center. Nurse just isn't that guy.

She says "Do a crime"

Barley, a dog, pants in the sunlight beside a sign reading, “THANK YOU ESSENTIAL WORKERS” that has stood unmoved in a particular yard for over four years.

As we approach the American Time Of Thanking, I find myself reflecting on this sign that I pass from time to time, which has stood since the early months of 2020. On the one hand, obviously we as members of society owe gratitude to those whose work ensures the smooth operations of the systems we depend on to survive and thrive. On the other hand, though, the term never sat well with me, because it is always worth asking: Essential to whom? With the benefit of hindsight, the rhetoric of the pandemic years clearly insisted that many such workers put themselves at risk to keep the nation’s economic engines running. This particular slogan felt, almost immediately, like a way for people who were not putting themselves at risk to feel better about those who were not afforded that opportunity. It doesn’t ring true to me that the supermarket employee driving past this sign on their way to work a then-much-riskier-job for years felt like this was an adequate way to thank them.

Alyaza Birze (November 9)

where have you been?

busy with the election. obviously, things did not go well. i now have more free time, so blogs should be more routine. there's much to talk about.

my thoughts

my honest opinion is this is basically a worst-case scenario. you can’t even say Harris ran a bad campaign–the Trump ground game was nonexistent and he has had maybe the worst week in recent history. Elon Musk’s stupid ass made a voting software that doesn’t work and has shit data; he probably trafficked canvassers to work on it. but it’s like it didn’t matter. calling Puerto Ricans subhuman garbage and being identified as a fascist by the very people who worked with him clearly didn’t matter either. the results are just a consistent meltdown with no obvious analogue in recent election history. if you bet on NJ being within about 5 or IL within about 10 you would be diagnosed criminally insane. pretty much nothing implied this would happen.

i don’t know what is to be done about this, but: you will probably not ever see a liberal Supreme Court in your life. write it off, the best case is now 6-3 with a hard-right swing vote. you will probably not see a female president any time soon (if in your lifetime). write that off. the Senate is gone for Democrats for the next decade–with the number of Republican seats in the Senate there is basically no chance of Democratic control again before 2028. and while the jury is still out, don’t count on Democrats pulling it out in the House either–Trump is probably 50/50 to get a trifecta right now.

the Democratic Party? i’m sure you can infer this but it’s about to take a hard shift to the right. “woke” politics are almost certainly going to take the fall here because Kamala Harris is a liberal-coded Black woman from California and comes off as scary to the electorate; Elon Musk’s $200m in anti-trans fearmongering ads also “worked.” Dems are probably going to run a white man in 2028–in the best case scenario expect Pete Buttigieg, or Josh Shapiro, or some other default character with positions you’re going to fucking hate more than you hate Harris running to the center on things. the Democratic Party is in the wilderness again, but worse this time, because somehow Donald Trump appears to have been perceived as the moderate candidate of the two.

on that note, the media–the fourth estate? they’re also cooked. charitably they’re a helpful institution that has been tasked with impossibly trying to clean a poisoned information well. less charitably they are a literally useless institution who has done the poisoning, with the result that Kamala Harris could ever be seen as more extremist than Donald Trump. i can’t tell you what the future holds with certainty but, given the anger of liberals at WaPo/LAT for abdicating their endorsements this seems like a death blow to what’s left of media credibility. the coming years will be unkind. but if you think this election was fucking nightmarish, it’s probably not going to get better.

with RFK potentially in the driver’s seat for health-related measures, you also might as well forget the COVID-19 pandemic. the damage done by this guy having his hands anywhere near public health will be generational. COVID is the least of it.

we are so fucked on climate change–Trump is a climate arsonist at the best of times. you are literally counting on market forces to save us here, because the government sure as fuck won’t.

the prognosis for labor unions and antitrust is real bad. the NLRB will be gutted, and probably it and/or the National Labor Relations Act will be found unconstitutional and put our labor laws literally back in the 1930s. the FTC and CFPB are the same way–don’t expect them to do anything useful anymore, expect them primarily to be used to hurt people. people literally waited until Biden took power to file union elections and push for reforms that fall under the FTC’s purview because of how shit things were under Trump. expect unionization rates to decline further, and current union momentum to be severely stunted.

and–this was the issue with the least delta between candidates, but–i’m now absolutely confident Palestine is fucked, and we are now locked into watching literally millions of Palestinians get actively killed by a Trump-supported Israel and Gaza annexed and settled. (as a reminder, Trump already signed off on annexing the Golan Heights illegally.)

all in all: it is going to be bad. it is going to be really bad. it is not doomer to say that, and sugarcoating it is unhelpful. it is kind of gutting to say, but: if you live in a red state and have any ability whatsoever to leave (even if that would require couch surfing and lacking a stable place to live), i would exercise that opportunity at this point. federalism might blunt the worst excesses of the federal government working in tandem with the 20+ Hitlerite state governments.

finally, and depressingly, the left is not in a serious position to do anything here. in lot of ways, what’s happened tonight is as devastating for left-wing politics as liberal politics–many of the demographics swinging to the right are ones that groups like DSA have seen success with (in unions, tenant organizing, and elections). but that all looks reverted now, badly. and non-electoral power like large-scale union organizing is going to be much harder without a sympathetic NLRB (under Biden unionizations are up massively and so are wins–it’s like double the number of unionizations and 30% more wins or thereabouts).

in short: the barbarism is here, and there’s almost nothing we can do about it besides hope Trump is actually too stupid and incompetent to do anything in the next 4 years. if he does literally anything, it will be worse. we will backslide. people will die. harm reduction by vote is over. we’re now doing harm triage for the next four years. it’s going to be bleak fucking work, and that’s the best i can say of it.

how did the left do in 2024's elections?

despite the above dourness, it was actually a pretty good cycle for the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization i am a member of and the primary organization i consider serious within the contemporary American left. by my count, 75 DSA members won their elections on November 5th, 21 lost them, and 15 races are still to be determined--this is a win rate of 67.5%, and in terms of net wins it's a gain of 18.

all of this is remarkable compared to the win rate of other left-wing third parties/groups, which is an abysmal 17% across 218 races i've tracked so far (in other words: 37 wins, and 181 losses). of those, 20 are Green Party wins, 13 of them are Vermont Progressive Party wins (mostly electoral fusion, where they also ran on the Democratic ballot line), 3 are Richmond Progressive Alliance wins (all on the Democratic Party line), and one American Communist Party (MAGA Communist) win. the MAGA Communist win was a write-in campaign by Christopher Helali for Orange County, Vermont high bailiff (which is basically a cop position but also does nothing).

that is, for the record, no wins for the California National Party; the Green Mountain Peace and Justice Party; the Oregon Progressive Party; the South Carolina Workers Party; Socialist Party USA; the Socialist Workers Party; people running only on the Working Families Party line (almost all of their candidates run Democratic first, Working Families second); the Working Class Party; or the Workers Party of Massachusetts.

and as near as i can tell this is, despite their wins, the worst ever presidential cycle for the Greens, who have won an abysmal 15% or so of their races across 129 candidates. their previous worst was in 2016, when just 16.25% of their candidates won--but that year they ran over 300. to have their win rate this low despite running one-third the number of candidates (and only one-half the number from 2020, when they ran 239) is embarrassing at best and catastrophic at worst.

in my mind this is yet another affirmation that third-partyism without a base (and/or electoral reform) is a total dead end. if you want my advice: join DSA. but if you won't do that at least join an actual organization (the Working Families Party, the Socialist Rifle Association, your local Food Not Bombs, really anything that isn't just vibes) instead of letting yourself and your activism be steered by the moment. the next four years are probably going to be quite bad, and being in an organization will provide you the best opportunities to do meaningful things.

My Family by David Baddiel (listened 2024-11-05)

I listened to this one while playing—and getting a new high score in—Radirgy De Gojaru! (I don’t play it often but I have an odd fondness for it. I think it’s a really good podcast game), as well as on the train back home from Racial Rendezvous 4. Am I sneaking diary entries into my book log? Yes, but maybe that isn’t all too bad.
Anyway, I decided to borrow this audiobook because I wanted to know more about the author’s experience as a Jewish person in London. Well, the book did have stuff about that, but a lot of it was about his very odd parents (of course, we all have odd parents but they are odd in different ways, to paraphrase that well-known quote) and about caring for them in their old age. I also found out that the author is related to one of my teachers from school—a staunchly orthodox and highly opinionated individual with a strong anti-zionist streak. I think I may have heard rumours about them being relatives when I was in school, but it sounded too far-fetched to truly believe, and I never thought to look it up before.

It was both funny and frank, and I did enjoy it for the most part, but I got itchy to have it finished when I was close to the end. I found myself playing it at 2.5x speed to get it over with quickly, but it started to feel pointless, so I ended up just skipping the last 45 minutes.

イギリス生まれのユダヤ教徒コメディアンによる回想録。子供の時のトラウマから親の介護のことまで、半生の中の様々なエピソードをユーモラスに紹介している。

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray (read 2024-11-11)

A story about controlling the narrative. This is made clear at the very start, with the introduction by the author saying that they are making a generally faithful reproduction of a book that they happened to find, except for changing the chapter titles to make them easier to read, and putting a message from the original author’s wife at the end, because putting that message at the start would make readers of this reproduction doubt the veracity of what is being told, as the author/reproducer steadfastly believes it to be true. There are multiple layers of ascribing false premises to other people, and I would have got a lot more out of it if I spent a bit more time poring over it and taking notes to get a good grip on each character’s perspective and how they are trying to control the narrative. I didn’t really have the energy to do so, though, and I felt a bit anxious to return it early as other people were waiting for it.

『哀れなものたち』の英語原作小説、よかった。映画版はどのような構成にしたんだろう。気になる。

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (listened 2024-11-17)

Really compelling read. Each character is holding onto an impossible dream to help endure the present, but they all end up succumbing to the grim reality of their situation. The only exception is a single grim wish which was not made in earnest, but ends up being fulfilled by the hands of the wisher himself.

There are layers of depersonification going on here—this is a core aspect of the story, and is present all the way to the climax.

One interesting linguistic/translation theory thing I noticed was a common turn of phrase that went something like this: “She stared at him, as though to value his worth”. I’ve seen a lot of remarks from translators and editors about how the construction 「〜するかのように〜した」 shouldn’t be translated literally, but here we have an example of an equivalent construction in English written by a Nobel winner.

叶わない夢にすがる登場人物の中で、一人だけ叶ってはいけない願いが叶ってしまう。
「働かざる者食うべからず」の世界。余裕のない世界。
話としてさすがに非常によくできている。伏線がなんとなくわかっていても、結末が衝撃的だった。話の中で、一人の登場人物が繰り返して同じ言葉を使ってもう一人の登場人物に向かって苦言を呈しているけど、最後で、怒られる方の人がその繰り返しの「日常性」に安定感を覚えるようになる描写が興味深かった。

Although I never posted as frequently as I wanted, the death of Cohost has pushed me to finally revive my website. Welcome to the new espiox.net! It's very much a work in progress.

If we haven't met, hi! I'm Espiox (they/them). I'm a graphic designer based in the UK. Most of my actual graphic design work is for my day job these days, but I'll use this site as a home for all my other side projects like drawing, photos and other tinkering. So far I've ported over old posts from Tumblr and Cohost but I'll have new things to post soon.

I have a few projects in progress for the Analogue Pocket, which I've migrated to this site where possible:

• FPGA-Optimised Game & Watch Collection: A pack of Game & Watch and other LCD games for MiSTer and Analogue Pocket.
• Sega System 16 Complete Core: A core that merges Jotego's System 16A and 16B cores into a single core for your Analogue Pocket.
• Pocket Beta Status: A list of work-in-progress beta cores for Analogue Pocket and where to find them. Follow the GitHub page for notifications when new cores are out.

For my latest photos, please follow me on Glass, or via this RSS feed! I'll also cross-post those photos to Bluesky and Mastodon if you'd rather follow me there. There's a bunch of older photos on Flickr too, that may make their way to Glass someday.

Me and my partner also love hamsters! We've had several over the years - our current is Smudge - and I post those photos to Instagram as @espiox.hams.

I'm trying out the new version of Reeder for iOS, which lets you generate a feed of posts and articles you've liked. Check that out here to see a rolling list of 50 things I've liked on the internet recently.

Finally, for regular social media posts, you can find me on Bluesky (RSS) and Mastodon (RSS). I'm also on Twitter but frankly I'd like to not be there for much longer.

Bear Blog doesn't have comments, but feel free to reach out to me at any of the platforms above!