See videos below for what to do and what NOT to do when a home run ball is loose in the stands. This is how it's done pic.twitter.com/DV3fL41DnW — Boom? (@WeriBomb) September 6, 2025 Here is the full video of the situation in the outfield after Harrison Bader’s Home Run. ? @NBCSPhilly https://t.co/W5thuO6nhg pic.twitter.com/h9yJaPbcmX — Phillies Tailgate (@PhilsTailgate) September 6, 2025 Unless it’s some kind of record-setter like the Shohei Ohtani 50/50 record ball that sold for millions of dollars. Then it’s every mf-er for themselves. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Moms Miss Work to Care for Kids!
It’s amazing that anyone alive still believes in work-life balance. I thought boomers already proved conclusively that it doesn’t exist. You can have days focused on work or you can have days focused on family. You can’t have both. My opinion is that parents should prioritize family. Kids like to grow up with a parent and moms like to spend time with their children. Of course everyone else can do what they want to, but please stop pretending to be shocked that work-life balance is not a real thing. Read more →
The Principle of Unequal Distribution
I’ve always thought that wealth inequality should be called “wealth diversity” because then it sounds like a good thing. But seriously, folks, you’ve probably heard of the Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80-20 rule. Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) noticed that in Italy in the early 20th century, about 20% of the population owned roughly 80% of the land, a skewed distribution that appears to be true for every society ever studied, regardless of governmental form. Pareto distributions arise naturally from systems where positive feedback loops exist—for instance, wealth begets more wealth. Or as Jesus said in Matthew 25:29: “To those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.” The Principle of Unequal Distribution also applies, for example, to the population of cities (a very small number have almost all the people), the mass of heavenly bodies (a very small number hoard all… Read more →
Some Things Can’t Be Improved Upon
Just for fun, I clicked the “Rewrite with AI” button on one of my LinkedIn posts. I wasn’t planning to use the AI version. I just wanted to see what it would do. It came back exactly the same. Some things can’t be improved upon. Read more →
Choosy Maters
Most men do not meet human female standards. According to stats from OKCupid, women rate 85 percent of men on dating sites below average in attractiveness. That’s a frost-brewed, cold, harsh dose of reality right there! But then they date them anyway, right? If not, there’d be a much higher percentage of people, male and female both, without partners. For example, I myself am not a top 15 percenter in attractiveness but I have managed to consensually propagate my genetic material to future generations. Of course, my intelligence and wit are off the charts so that helps, I think. Female humans are unlike female chimps, their closest animal counterpart, in this regard. Female chimps are not choosy maters. Read more →
I Love a Good Insult
I love a good insult . . . Tolstoy to Chekhov: “You know I can’t stand Shakespeare’s plays, but yours are worse.” Unfortunately, most of the insults I see directed at me and others online are just lowbrow name-calling. Can we all try to raise our insult game? Thank you for your attention to this matter. Read more →
It’s Hard to Tell the Intolerant Fascists Without a Scorecard
Global Warming Killing Public Education?
You’ve Got to Fight For Your Right to Party
You've got to fight for your right to party.https://t.co/Z2APKYq8iJ — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 10, 2025 Read more →
Newest Fruit Smoothie: Ketchup
Yes, you could have had a V8 but it wouldn’t have been quite this nauseating. Read more →
Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. — Maggie Smith, “Good Bones” Read more →
How Do You Fix Schools?
Given that 40 percent of American fourth graders have less than basic reading skills, and only 26 percent of 12th graders are considered proficient in math, you’d think that there wasn’t much on the mind of teachers other than the best ways to teach reading and math. WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT! WE’VE GOT TO FIGHT TRUMP! Among the initiatives approved at the latest annual gathering of the NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union: $3,500 to “defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism by using the term facism [sic] in NEA materials to correctly characterize Donald Trump’s program and actions.” Even the teachers can’t spell. What a horror show. Read more →
Can Your Brain Run Out of Memory?
Yes! I can remember things I learned as a kid — addresses, phone numbers, musical pieces — but I can’t remember things I learned last week. I would think that things I learned, or tried to learn, recently would be easier to recall than things I learned a long time ago but that’s not the case for me. My brain is full. Read more →
Squirrelly Behavior
I was watching these two squirrels from the community fitness center . . . In the first photo below, you can see them on either side of the palm tree on the right. They had been chasing each other across the wooden beams to the left of the tree when one of the squirrels made a leap for the palm tree and the other one followed. One chased the other to the point they’re at in the photo and that’s where they stopped. The palm tree, in my opinion, was a bad move, because 1) It’s a very tall tree. From their current position, they’re less than halfway to the top. And 2) Even if they got to the top, there’s nothing to do up there. Look at the palm tree on the left. They’d just have to turn around and come back down. The coniferous trees, like the one… Read more →
I Suppose It’s a Rhetorical Question
There's never a shortage of people to tell you that pit bulls are not an inherently dangerous breed of dog. Only when pit bulls end up in the hands of a "bad" owner do they turn violent. So who do we blame when pit bulls with no owner kill people?https://t.co/1w7ov1nUO4 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 4, 2025 Read more →
Are We Lowering Our Standards Fast Enough?
Sometimes I worry that things are getting worse faster than we can lower our standards. I’m teaching a couple of ACT prep classes this summer. Part of the process of getting ready to do that is to learn what, if anything, has changed since I taught the classes last summer. Here’s what I found: Reduced the number of questions overall (44 fewer) Reduced the test length. Students can receive their college-reportable Composite score after 125 minutes of testing, rather than up to 195. More time per question. Reduced the number of answer choices in math questions from five to four. Students can now choose to take the ACT National test with or without the science section. State and district customers will choose whether to include the science section with the ACT test for their students. Read more →
Brian Wilson, 1942-2025
Brian Wilson was a California boy like me. Beach Boys music is part of the fabric of the world. Even my son, years ago at age 10, could sing Beach Boys songs by heart, almost. “And she’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the TV away!” I had to straighten him out on that. “It’s T-Bird . . . not TV.” “What’s a T-Bird?” RIP Brian Wilson Read more →
In the Bookstore
I went down to the bookstore this evening and found myself in the poetry section. But for every thin book of poems there was a thick biography of the poet and an even thicker book by someone who’s supposed to know explaining what the poet is supposed to’ve said and why he didn’t. So you don’t have to waste your time on the best the writer could do, the words he fought the darkness and himself for, the unequal battle with beauty. Instead you can read comfortably about the worst the writer could do: the mess he made of his life, how he fought with his family, cheated on his lovers, didn’t pay his debts and not only drank too much but all the stupid things he ever said to the bartender just before getting 86’d will be printed for you and they’re just as stupid as the things everyone… Read more →
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. — Ephesians 5:11
A Trip to the Supermarket
As I was walking up to the local supermarket, one of the cart wranglers was near the entrance saying — loudly — “Number one! Eyewitness News!” Now this is a grown man, of what looked like Middle Eastern extraction, although that’s not really relevant. As I got closer, he asked me, “Have you heard that?” “I don’t watch the news,” I said. “It’s depressing, It’s dishonest. It’s the same things happening every day: A car chase on the freeway, someone got killed, someone got robbed, someone got stabbed on the Metro, a boy wearing makeup won a girls’ track meet.” “I love the news,” he said. “I’d like to be a reporter.” If anyone reading this is looking to hire a challenged but enthusiastic reporter, message me. I exited the store through the other door, where two young people had a table set up, selling stuffed animals to benefit… Read more →