As per the title, I passed my Yellow belt grading today with a Distinction. I'm really proud as I'm mid 40s.

When I was a late teen I made it to black stripe but a new job, kids and moving home stopped me from continuing. When I was early 30s I started again, made it to Yellow and quit due to burn out.

Thanks to COVID and a way better work life balance, plus the kids being older (except the toddler), I've managed to get back to it and plan to stick at it through to black belt.

That's it really. I'm hoping other martial artists on Tildes will chime in with any feel good stories they have.

Good afternoon, I hope all of my fellow baseball enjoyers are having the best days you can. I am a new account holder here on Tildes but I've been lurking for a bit, and would like to hear from folks on how and why you first started to get into baseball.

To get things started, my story may be a little different than some. Today baseball is the only sport I follow, but I didn't really grow up with it like many people do when they first become fans. I think I played one season of little league and my only real memories of that experience as a young person were sitting out in right field during practice and hoping no balls got hit my way, and sitting on a hot metal bench and chewing gum. I'm not sure that I ever got a hit.

Somewhat later on in life, when I was in grad school, I wanted to get back into following a sport solely for the reason of having something to talk about with folks in the mindless office jobs I was working in at the time to pay the bills. I settled on baseball because there were games every day for much of the year, and it seemed pretty intuitive to me to read a box score and get a sense of what happened in a game even if I didn't have time to watch.

But what team to follow, where I had no real allegiance to any growing up? I didn't want to be a fan of the Yankees or Mets, which would have been the logical choice given where my school and work were, because it felt like people who had been fans of those teams their whole lives would run circles around me, a baseball novice. So I essentially ran the 30 teams through a random number generator and ended up settling on the Texas Rangers by chance. Fortunately for me this was just prior to the Rangers' two world series teams in 2010 and 2011, and I've been hooked ever since (even if I might have some misgivings about franchise ownership... and the leadership of the state of Texas as a whole).

I would love to hear other folks' stories, and look forwards to the rest of the season. Thanks for your time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_FIFA_Women's_World_Cup

starts this Thursday, July 20th, and runs for the next month.

here is a schedule that will automatically convert match times to your local timezone:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/schedule/_/date/20230720/league/fifa.wwc

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who lives in Australia or NZ. what have the preparations been like? are you planning on attending any matches?

or, anyone who is travelling from other countries to attend - what has your experience been like?

I'll be watching on YouTube TV. it's one of the more expensive streaming options (currently 73 USD/mo) but I've used it for men's and women's world cups since 2018 (as well as several years of live & time-shifted American football). they've had one glitch in all that time, during a 2018 semi-final match, but otherwise it's been damn near perfect. I'd definitely recommend it if you can afford it.

please limit discussion of other streaming options to legal ones only - linking to pirate streams could get Tildes and Deimos into copyright trouble.

like probably a lot of people, I'll be time-shifting matches because I'm on the US west coast and many will be inconveniently timed (but you better believe I'll be awake at 3am on Sunday Aug 20th for the final)

to avoid spoiling matches for people who haven't seen them yet, please use <details> tags:

<details>
<summary>spoilers for Foo vs Bar match</summary>

wow I can't believe so-and-so scored 15 goals

</details>

turns into:

I know one of the things I'm going to miss the most at /r/baseball is the trade deadline discussions/trackers, so I figured I'd start one here. I probably won't be able to keep this up-to-date all the time, especially on deadline day, but I'll do my best. Please throw new rumors, discussion articles or transactions I've missed into the comments and I'll update the main post as I can.

July 31

August 1

Rumors and Discussions

July 31

So, Liga MX and MLS have all their clubs participating in a mid-season tourney called the Leagues Cup. The reigning champions from each league get a bye to the round of 32 leaving 15 groups of three teams to compete across three matchdays for the remaining 30 KO round spots.

This does an interesting thing. The winner and runner-up from each group move on. That means the final matchday of the group stages determines second place in each group. It doesn't matter how poor the clubs in question are (and there are some stinkers in the mix), everyone playing on matchday three is playing for something meaningful.

Is the Leagues Cup title a serious thing in the big picture of global football? I have no clue. I'm really American. I'm pretty proud of myself for understanding the offside rule and knowing the difference between a 433 and 4231. What I do know is that from a spectator's perspective, elimination games are exciting. In home/away round robins like UEFA club tourney group stages, the fourth and first place teams might not have anything to play for on matchday six. In the Leagues Cup group stage, matchday three is already a knockout round.

Now, I'm not saying Leagues Cup is on par with CL/EL/ECL. It's definitely not. That's what makes its structure so important. The game theory baked into the way different competitions are organized can decide whether they are interesting enough to watch.

Say what you will about CONCACAF, but they understand and welcome chaos the way all North American sports do. I think the Leagues Cup structure will give fans a reason to tune in even if the results of the tourney mean almost nothing to 44 of the 47 clubs participating. I'm interested to see how TV ratings and ticket sales perform for this tourney compared to league matches.

Anyone watch Formula E? The 2022/2023 season, or Season 9, just ended in London.

Full Race Results

2022/2023 Season 9 Final Standings

Full, Final Standings

I missed most of the second half of the season, but at least caught the last race!

I was really hoping rookie Jake Hughes (Neom McLaren Formula E) would do well, but he turned out to be more of a quali driver; could never keep race pace. But he did finished 12th in the standings, ahead of his teammate, Rene Rast. I suppose that could be viewed as a solid first season.

Overall I've only been watching Formula E since about 2021, but it seemed like this year was less bumper cars than the last two. The poor racecraft definitely turned me off from the series at times.

Looking forward to Season 10!