2026-2027 NFL Week 2

Lions@Bills

The Bills have a good offense, possibly one of the best NFL offenses, but they made it look a little too easy too often. If the Lions defense doesn’t improve significantly, I don’t think they have a defense good enough to win the Super Bowl.

I have similar feelings about the Bills defense.

Two other observations:

  1. The Lions OL seems a little shaky. Against the pass rush, they looked a little overwhelmed at times. (The LG stood out a bit in this regard.)
  2. Josh Allen is an incredible talent. His arm strength, size and running ability are on par with Cam Newton in my view. But there are still times where he’ll do something questionable that can get him in trouble, or out of sorts. With regard to the latter, I’m thinking of the few possessions at the end, where he and the offense just seemed a little sloppy.

2026-2027 NFL week 1

Patriots@Seahawks

Darnold getting hurt on the first series and not coming back in was sickening. I have zero faith in Drew Lock, although he made enough plays to give them a chance. Still, if the Maye didn’t have 3 INTS, the Hawks probably lose this game. (The last two INTs were really bad.)

The Seahawks penalties were frustrating, especially since their offense seemed pretty vanilla. Also, they had trouble getting in the play. My feeling is that this is on Brian Fleury, the new OC. Last year, the offense did a good job of playing clean and getting to the line of scrimmage quickly. I’m hoping it’s just growing pains for Fleury.

I feel very fortunate that the Hawks came away with the win.

The Most Entertaining Movies I Saw from 2016-2026

After watching Weapons, I thought it was one of the most entertaining films I’d seen in a long, long time. But to see if this was really the case, I went back and scanned all the films I’d seen in the last ten years–not just current releases, but older films as well. In this thread, I’m going to list those films, and talk about a few of them.

Here’s the list, starting with the films I saw in 2016

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“It’s all a Lie:” Republicans Don’t Care About Waste, Fraud and Abuse

“It’s All a Life” is the title of Stuart Stevens’s book on the GOP. Stevens managed Republican campaigns, and while I haven’t read his book, I believe the basic point is that the Republicans never believed in conservative principles or values. I tend to agree, and I guess we can thank Trump for exposing this. The list of these principles and values is long, but in this thread I’m focusing on the claim that the GOP values cutting government waste, fraud, and abuse. I believe this was one of the primary rationale for the cuts by Elon Musk and DOGE, but I want to highlight one story that indicates that Republicans don’t really care about waste, fraud, and abuse. The story is about the DOJ dropping the case against a man accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. I’ll put a gifted link below, and I’ll try to explain why I think it proves my point later.

How the Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case Fell Apart

Revisiting Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Atlantic recently featured two articles about this book. One of the article mentions that pop culture has “flattened” Holden Caufield into an “irritatingly male, misanthropic whiner.” The author thinks this is unfair, and I agree, but I wondered if I would feel this way if I read the book now. This has been one of my favorite novels, and I’ve read it once or twice since the first time I read it in my twenties. It’s always held up well. I thought it was a good time to re-read the novel to see if I would feel the same.

After finishing the novel again, here are some random thoughts:

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Things You Wish Were in Hawai’i And The Reasons We Can’t Have Them

“Man, I wish we had a good Armenians restaurant in Hawai’i.” That’s the type of thing I’ve been saying recently. And I’ve been saying things like this because I’ve been researching restaurants and activities in NYC. Inevitably, I’ll come across something cool and wish we could have something similar in Hawai’i. And the examples don’t always involve restaurants. For example, NYC has a lot of great walkable neighorhoods, with appealing destinations and lively streets populated with people. Why can’t we have a non-touristy place like that in Hawai’i?

I want to use this thread to keep a list of these things as well as discuss the challenges for having them in Hawai’i. Here are two general reasons Hawai’i doesn’t have some of the cool things a cool city like NYC has:

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Countries of Origin for Far East Asian Foods

While driving with my family, we had a conversation about Far East Asian (i.e., China, Korea, Japan) foods, and where those foods originated from. (We didn’t include Taiwan, but we could for this discussion. Same with Mongolia.) After the discussion, I thought of looking up some of these, particularly the ones I wasn’t sure about. For example, I would guess yakiniku actually originated in Korea and then Japan just adopted it. In general, assuming that most foods originated from China is a safe bet, but I don’t know of any Chinese restaurants that feature customers grilling food. (Actually, come to thing of it, I can’t think of a lot of grilled food in Chinese cuisine. I’m sure Chinese cuisine does have grilled foods. Indeed, I believe they do grilled skewered proteins.) And for some reason, I assume that Japan adopted Korean bbq–primarily because Japan usually is the adopter, not the “adoptee,” if you get my drift. But is this correct? I could search online for the answer, but I thought it would be interesting to discuss this with you all–maybe some of you already known the answer. (Question: What foods, indigenous to Japan has China and Korea adopted? Are there any foods? Did Taiwan adopt kakigori (shave ice)? Or did shave ice originate in China? Korea?)

Now, I’m going to list below some of foods and their countries of origin–at least based on what I believed to be true. If I’m wrong, please let me know.

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Films of Kenji Mizoguchi

In terms of the greatest Japanese directors, my sense is that films critics tend to mention three: Ozu, Kurosawa, and Mizoguchi. Of the three, I never really understood the reason Mizoguchi made the list. I should say that I’ve seen far less of his films than the other two, but I did see Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho Daiyu, perhaps two of his most famous internationally. I liked those films, but they didn’t seem to warrant putting him as one of the best Japanese filmmakers (at least after the first viewing).

So I’ve been trying to watch more of his films recently. I re-watched the films above, and I did appreciate the visual aspects of the films a lot more, and I thought both were good-to-very good. After those two, I watched Osaka Legacy and Sisters of Gion. Both were good, especially the second one. Isuzu Yamada’s feistiness stood out, reminding me of Stanwyck’s and Magnani’s feminine spunk. The fact that Mizoguchi made what can be categorized as feminist films, in 1936 Japan, also surprised me.