Firings watch (plus, bonus legal news!)

October 23rd, 2025

I know I’ve been quiet the past few days. There just hasn’t been much going on. But today is shaping up to be interesting.

ESPN is reporting the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. Also arrested: Terry Rozier, guard for the Miami Heat.

According to the NYPost:

Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, has been charged with partaking in an alleged illegal poker ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo crime families, sources told The Post.
A total of 31 people across the country are charged with running rigged games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, sources said.
The players involved were being paid by mobsters to play in card games fixed with technology and card shuffling machines to give the house the advantage, sources familiar with the case said.
The athletes were told to take a dive when they had to and win when they were told. It didn’t appear as if they were attempting to pay off any debts, sources said.

Rozier’s arrest is tied to another case.

Sportsbooks in multiple states flagged suspicious betting interest on Rozier’s statistics ahead of a Charlotte Hornets-New Orleans Pelicans game on March 23, 2023. An unexpected surge of bets — including 30 wagers in 46 minutes from a professional bettor totaling $13,759 — came in on the under on Rozier’s points, rebounds and assists, causing sportsbooks to halt betting on the veteran guard. Rozier, then with the Hornets, played just 10 minutes before leaving the game, citing a foot injury.

ESPN is suggesting this might also be tied to the Jontay Porter case.

Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted in court to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season. He is awaiting sentencing in December.
Four men, including Porter, have pleaded guilty in the case. Two other men have been named as conspirators and have been in plea negotiations, according to court filings.

And I did promise a firing, didn’t I? This is a sports firing, but it’s an odd one: Ken Williamson has been “permanently suspended” as a SEC referee.

…following eleven complaints against the seasoned official and his crew during the Auburn-Georgia game on Oct. 11, sources told Yellowhammer News on Wednesday.
“According to sources, nine of those complaints were validated by conference officials,” the outlet wrote.
The game’s biggest controversy came late in the second quarter, when Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold lost the ball near the one-yard line during a QB sneak and was recovered by Georgia cornerback Kyron Jones.
Though multiple angles from ABC’s broadcast appear to show Jackson crossing the goal line before the ball was punched out, officials ruled it a fumble — awarding the Bulldogs possession after the recovery.

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | 4 Comments »

Your NFL loser update: week 7, 2025. (Plus: firings!)

October 19th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

NY Jets

And the Sharks are 0-5 in the NHL.

Next week: the Bengals in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is 3-4, and a slight favorite at the moment.

The worthless Bills had a bye this week. The game with the worthless Chargers is in progress at the moment, and what is up with that alternate uniform?

In other news: Billy Napier out as head coach of the University of Florida. 22-23 overall in “three plus” seasons, and the team is 3-4 this season. ESPN.

Jay Norvell out as head coach at Colorado State. 18-26 overall, the team is 2-5 this season, and lost to Hawai’i yesterday. ESPN.

And a non-firing, non-loser update that I don’t have room for anywhere else: Curry College is a D-III school. They beat Nichols 71-27 yesterday, and rushed for 522 yards.

Oh, wait: did I say the team rushed for 522 yards? I mean one guy, running back Montie Quinn, rushed for 522 yards by himself. 20 carries, seven touchdowns, and a NCAA record.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL, Sports, Urine | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 17, 2025.

October 17th, 2025

The archiving service I use has been having issues all day, so I’m going to put this up without some links. If they fix the problems in the next day or two, I’ll go back and add them.

Kanchha Sherpa has passed away at the age of 92. (Paywalled link. Sorry.) He was the last surviving member of the Hillary-Norgay team that climbed Mount Everest.

Mr. Kanchha carried 60 pounds of gear, fixed ropes and scouted the trail for the team. Despite injury, cold, illness and hardship, “I got good work,” he told Climate Wire in 2011. “I got good clothing. It was good for me.”

…

More recently, he expressed concern about the large numbers of people climbing Everest and the environmental damage they caused.Still, as a mountain guide, he told Climate Wire: “If we stop the tourists to save the mountains, we don’t have anything to do. Just grow potatoes and eat and sit.”

Ace Frehley, of KISS. NYT (share link, should be free).

I don’t have much to say about Mr. Frehley, and I feel a little bad. But I was never a fan of Knights In Satan’s Service.

Susan Stamberg, NPR host famous for her “cranberry relish” recipe. Recipe here. NYT (non-archived, paywalled link. Sorry.)

American Handgunner, the print edition. The brand is going to continue in the form of online “newsletters”, and I think Guns is still going to be around.

But to me, this is awful news. AH is one of the few gun magazines I subscribed to, and I’m not sure if signing up for all the newsletters will get me the content I want. Sure, Dr. Dabbs will still be around, but what about the “Ayoob Files” and Ayoob’s monthly column? Will the “Guncrank Diaries” still exist? If not, who’s going to tell me stories, like the one about Elon Musk’s dad killing three cannibals with two bullets? And what if I want to go back and refer to something? The website is a little skirty about pulling up older articles, even if you are a paid subscriber.

I think I understand the reasons, and I still support the AH staff. But the older I get, the more change stinks.

Posted in Guns, History, Media, Music, Obits, Radio | 2 Comments »

Your NHL loser update: week 2, 2025.

October 17th, 2025

NHL teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:

San Jose Sharks

So we’re down to the Sharks in the NHL, and the Jets in the NFL.

It’s like “West Side Story” up in here.

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 16, 2025.

October 16th, 2025

Ed Williams, actor. He was 98.

Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “Hooperman”, and apparently there was a remake of “I Want to Live“?

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Oh my God, it’s (NOT!) a mirage…

October 16th, 2025

This is a story that’s mostly local, but it pushes enough of my buttons to document here.

The Brooklyn Mirage, a 32,000-square-foot open-air concert hall in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is slated to be razed following ongoing financial distress and a failed return this summer, according to demolition permits.

“Razed”.

The seasonal music venue is part of the 80,000-square-foot Avant Gardner complex, which also hosts The Great Hall and Kings Hall – both indoor venues which have shows scheduled through Dec. 6.

I can’t tell if the two halls are connected to the Mirage, or if they are stand-alone entities.

The Department of Buildings revoked the venue’s temporary occupancy certificate just days before its anticipated opening, which was set to feature headliners like Sara Landry, Alesso and Peggy Gou.

Who?

The agency had numerous objections “both safety-related and technical in nature,” the DOB wrote at the time, according to Brooklyn Paper. Some of those issues included inadequate accessibility requirements, toilets and automatic fire sprinklers.

This is the part that got me.

“From [the venue’s] questionable footing to the large truss at its zenith, from its cantilevered mezzanines to its exterior walls, it was potentially unsteady, combustible, illegal, and no place to put 6,000 people,” Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo said in a statement.

“unsteady, combustible, illegal, and no place to put 6,000 people”. Sounds like somebody messed up badly. Or else they didn’t bribe the right people.

The parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August, calling the Mirage closure “catastrophic” for company finances in court documents.

Yes, I would imagine that not being able to open would be “catastrophic”.

Bankruptcy records show that the venue owes various vendors more than $10 million, including a cool $1.8 million to the DJ Black Coffee Entertainment from South Africa.

…

The parent company is now selling off its assets to an “affiliate” of the company’s lender, according to The Real Deal (the company has up to $500 million in liabilities and only at most $100 million in assets).

All of these problems make me think there’s one thing going on…

Posted in Music | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 14, 2025.

October 14th, 2025

John Searle, philosopher. He was best known (at least to me) as a critic of artificial intelligence: not what passes for AI today, but the entire idea that computers could become conscious.

Professor Searle sought to solve the long-running debate over the division between the mind and the body by dispensing with the duality altogether. He argued that mental experiences like pain, ecstasy and drunkenness were all neurobiological phenomena, caused by firing neurons. Consciousness is not, he said, a separate substance of its own: It is a state the brain is in, like liquidity is the state of the molecules in a glass of water.
That view underpinned his thought experiment about what he called “the Chinese room,” which he made the centerpiece of provocative articles in the early 1980s that interpreted nascent research into artificial intelligence.
Suppose, Professor Searle wrote, that he, who did not know a word of Chinese, was locked in a room with boxes full of documents in Chinese script as well as a rulebook, in English, explaining how to match the various Chinese symbols together. It does not teach Chinese; it just says, in effect, “squiggle-squiggle” goes with “squoggle-squoggle.”
People outside the room pass more Chinese documents inside, and Professor Searle sends other documents back, following the rulebook’s instructions. The people passing him documents call them “questions.” The symbols he gives back they call “answers.” The rulebook they call “the program.” And Professor Searle they call “the computer.”
That situation is equivalent to the workings of A.I., he said. Both involve manipulating formal symbols to simulate understanding.
“No one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down,” Professor Searle wrote in his first paper on the subject, published in 1980. “Why on earth would anyone suppose that a computer simulation of understanding actually understood anything?”

Personally, I think that Dr. Searle’s argument that computers can’t think, but at best can do a clever simulation of thinking, somewhat interesting. And if I had ever met the good doctor, I would have told him that I would take this argument more seriously if he could convince me he was actually thinking, as opposed to just engaged in a clever simulation of thinking.

Clark Olofsson, Swedish criminal. I would have skipped this for notability, if it wasn’t for the fact that Mr. Olofsson was one of the two robbers in the “Stockholm syndrome” case. The obit is worth reading, as it casts a somewhat skeptical light on the whole idea of “Stockholm syndrome”.

The term was coined by a Swedish police psychologist, Nils Bejerot, after he was asked to assess the hostages’ curious behavior during the robbery. But Stockholm syndrome has never been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook of mental illness in the United States.
Some psychologists have explained the behavior as a coping mechanism, seen in victims of kidnappings and among hostages seized by Middle East terrorists, and in victims of domestic abuse. The captives, psychologists say, find a way to self-preservation by siding with their all-powerful captors.

…

Ms. Enmark, the Stockholm hostage, spent years denying that she had ever empathized with Mr. Olsson and Mr. Olofsson. She accused the police who laid siege to the bank of incompetency. She called Stockholm syndrome a myth, saying she had done what was necessary to stay alive.“It’s a way of blaming the victim,” she told a BBC podcast in 2021. “I did what I could to survive.”

…

Although mental health experts have theorized about Stockholm syndrome for half a century, almost none thought to speak to Ms. Enmark, the bank employee central to the drama and the diagnosis.
One psychologist who did was Allan Wade, a Canadian therapist specializing in interpersonal violence, who, after meeting Ms. Enmark, called Stockholm syndrome a made-up concept meant to shift focus from the stumbles of the Swedish police.
“The whole notion was an accusation,” he told the BBC in 2021. “It was a way to dismiss what an incredibly heroic woman had been doing for six and a half days to resist, preserve her dignity and look after the other hostages.”

Posted in Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Battleship update.

October 13th, 2025

A while back, I observed:

But can you get Battleship New Jersey 1911 grips? As far as I can tell, no.

You still can’t, as far as I can tell. (I did check the Battleship New Jersey store.)

But, weirdly, you can get Battleship New Jersey grips for your P365-XMACRO. Or at least, you’ll be able to “soon”: it sounds like this has been announced in conjunction with today’s 250th birthday of the US Navy, but the “grip module” is not actually in stock yet.

I don’t have a P365-XMACRO, but this does remind me that I owe everyone a photo: I did finally manage to get some Battleship Texas 1911 grips, and had them put on this old gun. I think they look pretty nice together, and I’ll try to get a photo up later this week if I can.

Posted in 1911, Guns, History | 1 Comment »

Callahan!

October 13th, 2025

Brian Callahan out as head coach of the Tennessee Titans.

Under his leadership, the Titans finished 4-19 and ranked among the league’s worst offenses in most meaningful statistical categories.

He was coach for roughly a season and a half. The Titans are currently 1-5. Additional coverage from ESPN.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

October 13th, 2025

Trent Dilfer out as head coach of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

(Sorry this link is so mangled. ESPN, if you prefer.)

2-4 this season, 9-21 in “two plus” seasons.

UAB actually tried to shut down their football program a while back, but there were mass protests, etc. and they went back on that decision. Maybe it is time to reconsider.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 12, 2025.

October 12th, 2025

Diane Keaton. THR. IMDB.

I think her death has been very well covered everywhere, but fun fact by way of Lawrence: yes, she was a “Mannix” alumna. (“The Color of Murder”, season 4, episode 22. She was “Cindy Conrad”.) She also appeared on “The F.B.I.”.

Posted in Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Your NFL loser update: week 6, 2025. (Plus: firings!)

October 12th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

NY Jets

Denver 13, NY Jest 11. It was closer than I (kind of) expected, but I did say these foreign games are unpredictable.

Next week: Carolina. At the moment, the Jets are a slight favorite.

And, in an attempt to put all the norts spews in one place for everyone:

James Franklin out after 12 years at Penn State. 104-45 overall, “the second winningest coach” in PSU history, but they lost to Northwestern 22-21 yesterday. PSU was a heavy favorite in that game.

Under Franklin this year, the Nittany Lions sit 15th in the Big Ten with the 70th-ranked total offense in the country and 27th in total defense.

They are 3-3 this season, and it looks like they lost their starting quarterback for the season. More from ESPN.

Trent Bray out as coach of Oregon State, which is 0-7 this season. 5-14 over “less than two seasons”, lost 13 of his final 14 games, and OSU was defeated 39-14 by Wake Forest yesterday. ESPN.

Edited to add: Lawrence pointed out that the Jest finished with…-10 yards passing. That’s not a typo: negative 10 passing yards. 45 yards passing, 55 yards lost to sacks.

It was also the fewest in any NFL game since the Chargers had minus-19 against the Kansas City Chiefs in Ryan Leaf’s third career start in 1998.

Wow. Ryan Leaf.

Posted in Firings, Locks, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

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