Ghost of LL

A few additional points (and maybe one very minor disagreement): Potsdam is definitely worth a day. You can get there either by train from the Hauptbahnhof or by the S-Bahn. And for what is a suburb, there is an amazing density of sights within a short distance. From the Potsdam Hauptbahnhof, you can take the tram to the Glienicke Bridge, which was the "Bridge of Spies" during the Cold War. It was part of the border between West Berlin and East Germany, and the only one manned by Soviet troops rather than East German border police. And so it was the one place where the United States and the Soviet Union could exchange prisoners without dealing with the East Germans and their fuckery. About a mile north along a nice walking path on the shore of the Wannsee is the Cecilienhof, which is where the Potsdam Conference was held between Truman, Attlee, and Stalin. There's a little museum inside about the conference. But the main draw is the nice walk through the park to get there, tbh. Back in town is Frederick the Great's palace at Sans Souci. It's honestly pretty quick to do a tour of the palace, as there are only a handful of rooms. The surrounding gardens and buildings can take a lot more time if you want. Heading back to Berlin, the next stop on the S-Bahn is at Wannsee. And from the Wannsee station it is a short walk to the Wannsee Villa, where the Wannsee Conference that worked out the particulars of the Final Solution was worked out in January 1942. There is a good little museum inside. Back in the Center of Berlin, you can go on a pretty short little walking tour that will take you through the entire history of Berlin in a very short distance. Start at Pariser Platz just to the east of the Brandenburg Gate. As you face west toward the Brandenburg Gate, the American embassy is on your left; the French embassy is to the right. The entirety of Pariser Platz was in no-man's land during the Cold War, and so all of the buildings around the Platz are reasonably new. If you walk west and go through the Brandenburg Gate, you're following the parade route followed by the Nazis on their various torchlight parades, most notably on January 30, 1933 when Hitler was appointed chancellor. But it's also the parade route followed by the Soviets in 1944 and Napeleon's troops in 1806. And in the street to the west of the Gate, you'll see a line in the cobblestones marking the route of the Berlin Wall. In this part of town, the Berlin Wall followed the route of the original city wall. The Berlin city was wasn't a medieval fortification like what you see in Rothenberg; Berlin is too new for that. It was a city wall built to regulate commerce with the gates acting as toll gates. The Brandenburg Gate was one of those gates, as was the Potsdam Gate a few blocks south. So turn in that direction (i.e., left) and head south along Ebertstrasse. This will take you through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. On the south side of that Memorial you'll see an interesting kind of constitutional thing about Germany--there are the embassies of three of the German states: Saarland, Niedersachsen, and Rheinland-Pfalz. "Embassy" probably isn't the right word (it's "Vertratung" in German). But that's essentially what it is. Germany's federal system reserves for the states a lot more power than the modern American system. And consistent with that, each of the states has its own embassy in the national capital. Anyhoo, that interesting little bit of comparative government behind us, continue another couple blocks south along Ebertstrasse. And again--here you're following the route of the Berlin Wall, which was itself following the route of the original city wall. And you get to Potsdammer Platz and, just to the east, Leipziger Platz. Leipziger Platz was inside the city wall, and it was home to the first market that merchants could sell their wares at inside the city walls. It is laid out with Prussian precision. It's an octagonal square surrounded on all sides by 12-story buildings. It is, and always has been, boring, unpersonal, and unfriendly. But just on the other side of the former city wall is Potsdammer Platz. It grew up outside of city regulation. So the streets go through it in a haphazard way. This is where the merchants would set up when they didn't want to pay the duty to cross inside the city wall. And so this has always been the fun spot. It was completely leveled in the War. And during the Cold War, the area was in no-man's land. So everything along Potsdammer Platz has been built within the last 20 years. And now, once again, it's a place with a bunch of restaurants and bars and hotels and shopping and stuff. Go east through Leipziger Platz on Leipziger Strasse one block to Wilhelmstrasse. Wilhelmstrasse was, before WWII, the metonym for the German government (akin to how "Whitehall" means the British government or "Foggy Bottom" means the U.S. State Department). And on the southwest corner is the old Luftwaffeministerium--the headquarters of the Luftwaffe (the Washington Generals of the History Channel). Ironically, it was the only governmental building in the center of Berlin that survived the aerial bombing of Berlin. It is now the Finance Ministry. It is one of the few surviving pieces of Nazi-era stripped neoclassicism that you'll find in Berlin (another being Berlin Templehof Airport, which is worth a stop particularly if you're a fan of Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade). And in the north portico facing onto Leipziger Strasse is the 1950's-era Max Linger mural, which is an excellent (albeit hideous) example of East German socialist realism. Anyway--turn left on Wilhelmstrasse, and then at the next block a left on Vosstrasse. This is the street that Hitler's chancellery faced out on. The the next block, take a right on Gertrud-Kolmar-Strasse, which is a street that didn't exist during the War--you'd be going right into the chancellery building. In a block and a half, you come to the street "In der Ministergarten," and on the right side is a very nondescript surface parking lot of an apartment building. Underneath that parking lot is the Fuhrerbunker. The site where Hitler's body was burned is right where the tree is on the southeast corner of that parking lot. There's now a small sign along the street pointing out the spot. Go back down to Vosstrasse and turn left (i.e., east) on Mohrenstrasse (to the west, it's Vosstrasse; to the east, it's called Mohrenstrasse. But it's the same street). Go five blocks to Friedrichstrasse. Now look--my friends above say you don't need to turn right (i.e., south) to go see Checkpoint Charlie. I say my friends are dead wrong. As a Gen Xer and child of the Cold War, you want to at least walk the three blocks down to see the little shack and take a photo beneath the sign. I wouldn't go into the little museum--that's a waste of time. But you're right there; why wouldn't you go see the damned sign? But you don't care? Ok--continue on Mohrenstrasse to Markgrafenstrasse and turn left (i.e., north) and go up until it dead ends into the Bebelplatz. I mean--kind of dead-ends. You have to take a little jog over to the right to go into the Bebelplatz. This is where the Nazis held the book burnings. Now, in the center of the square is a small window/skylight that looks down into the library of Humboldt University. I think that's pretty cool. And now you're back on Under der Linden. Across the street is Humboldt University, and just to the right of that is the Neue Wache, which was originally a guardhouse for the royal palace and was later the East German memorial to the victims of fascism and militarism. It is now the German Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny. There's still a changing of the guard, as when I originally saw it when it was in East Berlin. But they don't goosestep anymore. From there, you can head west back to the Brandenburg Gate or east to the Museum Island and Alexander Platz. A few other spots I generally like: Hackesacher Markt is one stop on the S-Bahn from Alexanderplatz. There are a lot of restaurants and bars built in underneath the train viaduct with a lot of outdoor seating for a nice day. It's been a while, but there was a Spanish place that Mrs.LL and I liked. But regardless--it's a fun area to spend an afternoon drinking a beer and watching the people. Speaking of sitting outside and drinking a beer and watching the people, there's a little snack/beer pavilion on the south side of Platz der Republik, which is the green space that faces onto the Reichstag building to the west. That's a nice spot to stop and ponder the wild history that has taken place right there in front of you. And if you walk behind that pavilion along the path through the Tiergarten you wind up on Strasse des 17. Juni right next to the Soviet War Memorial. There are a couple T-34 tanks out front, which is cool. And if you go through it, there are some displays of the history of the memorial, including photos of when it was built amidst the rubble of postwar Berlin. The stone for the memorial was taken from the destroyed Reich Chancellery. I mean, I think it's worth a stop. One last outdoor drinking spot--and I think you're starting to get a feel for what I like to do on vacation--is at the Jannowitzbrucke (one stop on the S-Bahn from Alexanderplatz in the opposite direction from Hackesacher Markt). Berlin has a pretty river running through it, and I just don't think it does as much with the Spree and Havel as it should. But right next to the train station is a nice little beer stand where you can grab a beer and a table and sit overlooking the river.

Harris and Walz are starting to do local-affiliate interviews, which is really smart. For one thing, you get generally softer questions from interviewers who are less experienced and maybe a bit intimidated by interviewing a VPOTUS. Second, there's an implied message in there that "this candidate cares enough about me and my community that she/he is taking time to talk to us on our local television station." Third, it's more targeted--you can talk about how important it is to you to do the local thing for the local project that is going to benefit a bunch of these local people. CNN and CNBC is a fucking waste of time. People who watch those stations are doing so for entertainment; they've already made up their minds whom they're voting for. The one national platform that I still think it's worthwhile to do an interview on is 60 Minutes. The ratings for that show is still bonkers. That post-football timeslot on Sunday evening is the closest thing we still have to a national television appointment.

Well that’ll bring Thanksgiving dinner to a screeching halt right away, won’t it? Thank you in advance for getting me back in front of the television in a timely fashion.

Mobile site works great. Any thoughts on an auto-refresh?

Jesus Christ--that first guy is 65? Really? And Laura Loomer is . . . 31? Tha fuck? Did everyone just contract Benjamin Button Disease or something?

I don't want to record the fucking game. I want to watch the fucking games as they are happening like a normal fucking human. And I want to be able to flip between games easily. And, most importantly, I want to watch these fucking games with no pop-up commercials in the middle of a play and with no weird beeping in the background. Yeah--that experience last night trying to watch the Texas State/Arizona State game and the NFL game at the same time was absolutely infuriating. It has both me and Mrs.LL (who was very YTTV-curious) ready to get rid of it the second ESPN comes back on DTV.

I was on the phone with my father-in-law earlier this week, and I was absolutely flabbergasted by how he spoke of Trump and his supporters. His comment in summation was, "I just don't understand how people can be that stupid." And that's shocking for two reasons: 1) his brother (whom he very much loves) is a huge MAGAt, and 2) I'm reasonably certain he voted for Trump in 2016. I'm not exactly sure what happened along the way. Maybe it was the disparagement of the military--my FIL was a Ranger in Vietnam. Maybe it was the mishandling of COVID; he and my MIL did everything right during the pandemic. But whatever it was, I'm happy for it. Even happier for the fact that he lives in North motherfucking Carolina.

Note to my fellow lawyers: this is how you do rebuttal.

That was exactly my experience, too. There was plenty of horns down, but it was never particularly confrontational. And the guys we were in line with to get into the stadium asked (after doing the requisite horns down) whether it pissed us off. For my part, I answered with a shrug; the Longhorn fan next to me indicated that it was more annoying to him. I relayed how we were in Omaha a few years ago with Mobilehoma, aggy, and the Domers and all three teams were doing horns down even when playing each other. And that's dumb. But it also reflects that Sark is right that some people hate us more than they love themselves. And that observation put a quick end to any horns down nonsense. Really, it just seems like it's something they see other teams' fans doing that's kind of fun and you might as well get in on it when you have the opportunity. Another guy I was chatting with while in line for a beer . . . and at this point you might get the correct impression that standing in lines is a central part of the gameday experience at Michigan Stadium . . . noted that they were going to Norman next year and they were "trying to decide who was the Michigan and who was the Ohio State in that rivalry." I just laughed. My dude--I'm going to poison that particular well. You'll find out in due course. Anyway--I had far more good chats with far more people than I ever have had at any away game.

Huh. Interesting. Like maybe with ten schools? Maybe just eight. Or maybe even with 12. I could see that working.

No, but the PA announcer helpfully told us to drive safely and remind us that State Street would run one way all the way to the interstate after the game. I somehow refrained from asking the Michigan fans around me whether it was customary to make that announcement with 8:30 left in the fourth quarter.

For some reason, that didn't stand out to me at the game. But thinking on it now, I don't know why it didn't. It just seemed so natural that there shouldn't be any billboards. A few other observations on Michigan Stadium and the atmosphere: Michigan fans are unfailingly cool: Around both Detroit and Ann Arbor all weekend, we didn't have a single interaction with anybody that wasn't positive. Yeah--they're very proud of their school. I mean, people think we're arrogant; they've never met the Michigan fanbase. But even so, they were uniformly pleasant, gracious, and informed. Michigan Stadium isn't quiet: I had the expectation that it would be a pretty sedate atmosphere, both because of the fanbase and because of the stadium architecture. But at least through the first quarter, the crowd was really very loud. I'm not saying it was the loudest place I've ever been, but it was definitely louder than most. And the addition of the giant suite complexes on both sides really keeps the sound in. The Eyes of Texas was really loud after the game as the sound bounced between the suites. The hype video is great: I mean, you know it's going to be great when it starts with James Earl Jones (RIP) putting on his headphones. But it also includes a fair amount of academic hype. And that's something we ought to have a little more of. We have nine Nobel laureates and a couple Turing recipients on faculty and a bunch more as alumni. That's shit we ought to have on the jumbotron. On the game: Fuck deferring to the second half: We won the toss and elected to receive. That's really out of fashion these days, because it eliminates the chance of getting a late score in the first half and then getting the ball back in the second. And it puts you in a bad spot if you come out and go three-and-out to start the game, which frequently happens in a tough game on the road. It set a tone and conveyed a message, and we went out and marched right down the field and should have had a TD. There was real "it don't make a shit" energy about that. Our OL is huge: Television doesn't really convey how big and fast these guys are. But when you see it in person against another top team, it's kind of astonishing. Arch is a man: You just see him in warm-ups, and it's clear that he's a pro. Even the Michigan fans were noting it. And by halftime, the Michigan fans around me were hoping Arch would go in just so they could see the show. I told them that we don't put Arch in just to hand off; if he goes in, he's running the offense. But that's what they were hoping for--they wanted to see Arch sling some passes.

I don't think there have ever been as many Stetsons at DTW at one time as there were this morning.

Yesterday—I’m up here in Michigan with everyone else this weekend.

Jesus—SMU’s offensive line is terrible.

Holy shit—I’m in a swing state. So many Kamala ads. Actually some good positive ads.

Windsor Ballet, my man.

Yeah--I get ESPN+. But that doesn't give me actual ESPN. So I could watch two D3 teams on ESPN+, but couldn't watch Florida State because it was on ESPN.

Well, it brings one vote in Wyoming. Which I believe is something like 2% of the electorate in that state.

WTF has happened in Wisconsin? I have thought over the last eight years that it was the least secure of the Blue Wall states. But polling over the past six weeks has consistently had it as the most secure (occasionally showing it outside the MOE, as is the case here). What's up with that? Pennsylvania is always close, but it almost always comes home for the Dems. I suspect it'll be the same here--five points feels high. If Harris wins it by more than three points, I'd be surprised. Pennsylvania is not more Dem than Michigan. It's just not. And I don't want to hear any bullshit about Dearborn; Harris is not going to run three points in Pennsylvania ahead of where she is in Michigan.

We’re all focusing on DJ, but that’s unfair. This entire team is awful. The WRs can’t catch for shit. The offensive line is opening no holes and getting absolutely no push for their mediocre running backs. The DL is getting blown off the ball; they’re giving up 8 ypc or so (by my guess). They’re just terrible in every phase.

Let’s not sleep in the fact that DJU’s receivers aren’t doing him any favors. They’re every bit as bad as he is.