wood

Chiaka, indoor volleyball.

Yep, and a new factory & wind tunnel, and Cowell, Cardile, Fallows, Bell, Hegedus, and Honda works status (no more Mercedes gearbox limitations), etc.

Yep. They earned it. Great, great match. Best thing I've seen in this Olympics so far.

Autosprint also says Big Stroll is going after Max. Who knows ...

Autosprint says Newey to Aston, to be announced in September due to contractual details. 4 years/$100M. They seem to have a lot of other details about why he's signing with AM, what kept him from signing with Ferrari, etc.

The Qatar men's beach team is legit. They bring it in every phase. Excellent blocking & defense. Benesh/Partain could have their hands full.

Boys indoor club VB is growing by leaps and bounds in Texas. In my boy's 18U season with AJV, there were iirc 5 boys teams. That was 2 years ago. There are 11 now. If the UIL ever makes it a spring sport, like I've heard they're trying to do, Texas will quickly become one of the top talent pools.

Not as many rallies, maybe, but the athleticism is nuts. And boys/men play a very different style from girls/women. It's a wilder, 'go big or go home', 'just rip it' kind of game. Both are amazing, but very different. ETA: But there have been a lot of great rallies today in the men's matches.

It's phenomenal. The matches are wild. I really wish it would take off more in the States.

Yep. It was awesome. Endurance racing should always be a day/night affair, imho.

Yep. Bobby doesn't wanna pay for generators & lights. Got damn POS.

I think it's at 1PM, til 7. Crazy that they aren't using any nighttime hours. Gon' be hot AF. I think it's on Max, but not sure.

Brandie = got damn beast, and easy on the eyes as well. Been watching her for a long time on the AVP. She took that match over. Kloth's bad setting at the end didn't help USA either.

They only have us with 1 Gold. Where does that difference come from? ETA: NM. They just updated slower than you did.

Jesus fuck, Blue. That's a K. Then he walks.

Yep, the qualification process is the biggest problem - as in we don't have any control over who we send. The FIVB changed it years ago to where you have to travel the world for years, trying to rack up points on the FIVB beach tour. A country's two top ranked teams get in, if they have the minimum points needed to qualify. That was done in large part imho to prop up & give credibility to the FIVB tour, which at the time paled in comparison to the AVP. AND some fundamental rules were changed to favor the bigger players present on the FIVB tour (small court, rally scoring, etc, even the ball plays very differently than before). It's no coincidence imho that since then the AVP has been a shadow of its former self. All that international travel costs a lot of money and time. Unlike the way it was in the 90s, most beach players these days, even the pros, don't have tons of money laying around for that kind of thing, and most of them have real jobs. From what I can tell, the Taylors (Crabb & Sander) didn't even really try to qualify. IMHO that's our best team on the men's side. Or one of those guys + Phil if he were interested. tl;dr: Fuck the FIVB. We should be able to pick our own representatives based on our own process. We invented the sport ffs. I suppose USAV could gain some measure of control by helping the top teams with expenses if they have the money (which they should). I have no idea if they do that or not.

Yep, him and Alonso both.

So ... when did playing defense stop being a thing in beach volleyball? Esp on the men's side. JFC. Fucking pathetic. And Budinger/Evans, esp Evans, are fucking embarrassing. ESP pushed their shit in. What an ass-kicking.

She's nothing short of amazing. Enjoyed watching her play, even though it was against the USA and we basically couldn't stop anything she did.

Stole their thunder. I've done it to COTA a few times, announcing shit they were planning to do, a few days ahead of their planned announcements. Fun stuff. Really pisses 'em off & leaves 'em searching for the leak. Re: the OnlyFans thing, it's a match made in heaven. The Alpine fan club is already called LonelyFans, iirc.

So, OnlyFans Alpine F1 team? No link, but that's the rumor. Is Durex next?

Marko hinted at reshuffling the deck of VCARB & RBR drivers next year. If I had to bet on how that would end up, I'd say, based on everyone's current form, Danny will end up in Checo's seat, with Lawson moving into his VCARB seat. Checo could be the odd man out. But as always, wewillsee.

GM ‘interested’ in buying F1 team’s engines to help Andretti secure 2026 entry https://www.f1oversteer.com/news/gm-interested-in-buying-f1-teams-engines-to-help-andretti-secure-2026-entry/

In return for something. Could be all sorts of things. We'll probably never know what.

Liberty Media can fuck right the fuck off.