wen kexing's red eyeshadow

-the first baseman had no reason to chase Baéz, if he just stepped on the bag he was automatically out

-theres two outs, so if hes out, the inning is over. even if the runner on second base gets home, the run doesnt count. its not until hes safe at first that the run scores

-theres no specific rule in baseball about running backwards from first, just that you “cannot retreat to home base” meaning so long as if you dont touch the plate, its fine

-Baéz ran backwards to kill enough to get the run to score, and then stole and extra base on the base on the bad throw

-HE TOOK THE TIME TO UMPIRE HIS OWN PLAY AND CALL SAFE

Javier Báez (the batter, a Chicago Cub, wearing blue) has just hit the ball. His job is now to run around the bases - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, back to where he started (“home”), at which point he will have scored a point. In practice, he will probably stop partway, wait for the next batter to get a hit, and try to make it home from there.

The Pittsburgh Pirates (in white) are fielding. Their job is to stop the Cubs from scoring by getting them out, by various combinations of catching the ball and tagging people or bases with it.

The scoreboard (top left) shows that one Cub has already made it to second base, so he will resume running now that Javy has a hit. It also shows that two Cubs are out. If a third Cub gets out, their turn to bat will be over, it will be the Pirates’ turn to bat, and the Cubs can’t score anymore (for now, but that’s not relevant).

The Pirate at first base (the first baseman) has the ball. All he needs to do is step on first base while holding it before Javy gets there, and Javy is out. This is probably the number one most common thing a first baseman has to do.

He does not do it.

For some reason he starts chasing Javy, presumably trying to tag him with the ball directly. This is a perfectly legitimate way of getting him out, but also completely unnecessary.

This has never happened to Javy before. Unsure what else to do, he just kind of… jogs backwards away from him.

Meanwhile, the Cub who was at second base (Contreras) has made it all the way back to home. Because the Pirates’ first baseman has helpfully walked the ball back home, he can easily toss it to the Pirate at home (the catcher) who will tag Contreras out.

The catcher doesn’t tag him in time.

The umpire signals that Contreras is safe (not out).

Javy also signals that Contreras is safe, just for fun. He’s never been nearby when a teammate makes it home before, and he’s enjoying himself.

Notice that the score has not changed, even though Contreras made it home. That’s because Javy is still technically running to first base. If he gets out before he reaches it, the Cubs’ turn to bat is over, and nothing else that’s happened since he hit the ball matters.

Javy remembers this, and heads back to first base. The catcher throws the ball to another Pirates fielder, who is frantically running to do the first baseman’s job.

He doesn’t catch it.

Javy is safe at first. Contreras scores (although the scoreboard won’t change for a second).

Javy notices how far away that ball landed, and decides he can make it to second base before anyone picks it up and tags him out.

An offscreen Pirate throws the ball to second base, where another Pirate is ready and waiting to catch it, tag Javy out, and end the Cubs’ turn to bat.

He doesn’t catch it.

Javy is safe at second. The video doesn’t show it, but he will go on to score as well.

This should have been a very easy out for the Pirates, but through two dropped catches and one truly bizarre decision from the first baseman, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and turned it into two points for the Cubs.

Some Fucking Scam, it seems a little sketchy now, but its lent legitimacy by the number of people they're paying to talk about it. Five years from now there will be a four hour video essay about how its a fucking scam and stole millions of dollars and leaked literally all of your data, but right now? It seems mildly convenient.

This costume was a gift from Satomi Ito to Yuzuru Hanyu. It was first revealed as a sketch in the 2022 book Muse on Ice. In 2024, Yuzuru wore the costume for a skating program released on his YouTube channel. In the 2026 book Couture on Ice, the costume is named as "Moonlight Sonata."

Muse on Ice (2022): I imagined a costume that looks like it belongs in a story like Game of Thrones, something Hanyu-senshu looks like he would wear, but actually hasn't. It has so much embroidery that it would be too heavy to actually wear in competition. The sleeves and the back hem are made of sheer chiffon, allowing them to flutter beautifully. I drew this imagining that if Hanyu-senshu were to appear in Game of Thrones, he'd be cast as something like "the ___ of the East." I think grand, weighty music like that of 2CELLOS would suit it perfectly.

Couture on Ice (2026): Since there are almost no East Asian characters in the American TV series Game of Thrones, which Ito loves, she wondered, "What would Yuzuru Hanyu be like if he existed in that world?" This is where the design concept for the outfit originated.

He is a descendant of the Targaryen family, a dragon-riding clan. However, he is unique in that he was born with black hair, forcing him to conceal his identity and live alone deep in the forest. He is gentle and dislikes fighting, but he will not hesitate to draw his sword to help those in distress, possessing extraordinary courage. He is a crucial figure who holds the key to the entire story, like a "Key Person" in an RPG game. He possesses the power to summon dragons, and sunlight is his only weakness. Therefore, he can only move under the cover of night.

The costume design itself was inspired by musical works such as Moonlight Sonata and Clair de Lune. It was created to embody a character who is mysterious, ethereal, and shrouded in enigma, while also seeming to bear the weight of a sorrowful, inescapable fate.

In 2024, Yuzuru wore this costume for his skate to the Jpop song "Last Ambient" by Taisei Miyakawa.

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"