I’ve watched a lot of the Lock Picking Lawyer over the years, but I can’t recall the last time he didn’t instantaneously get into a lock through conventional means. This ridiculously thick lock required him to custom build a tool to pick it. He also mentions that the “Strong as Fuck” lock is unlikely to be cut through because of it’s construction, weighs over 13 lbs., and cost $300.
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Deli Boys
I recently caught co-star of Deli Boys, Asif Ali, on an episode of Comedy Bang Bang. A very entertaining guest that convinced me to give the show a shot. It was great, started slow, but I watched all ten episodes on a quiet week night and had a good time with it.
The two male leads are great, but Poorna Jagannathan as Lucky Auntie really steals the show. She is the bridge between smart and dumb humor and the sparks of violence and caring moments.
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F1 Rising
I saw a survey recently that showed half of new US F1 fans came to it via the Netflix series. That tracks for me of course. It takes what seems like a very clinical, yet simplistic sport on its surface and unpacks it. There is way more to a race than the cars you see on track. Driver skill and mental fortitude, team engineering and strategy, and course design and conditions. That plus the amped up real housewives of energy of the show and you have a winning formula^.
2025 Race Season
Only one race in to my second season and I am at peak excitement for what it might hold. Top team parity between Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes. Six rookie drivers in team seats. More competition in the mid-tier teams that carried over from 2024. And of course Lando and Max picking up where they left off. But maybe Lewis? Maybe someone new?
Series 7 (2024) Drive to Survive
This was the first series of the show that I watched having followed the race season from the start. I knew all the outcomes, but now got to see everything behind the scenes with those results in mind.
- Turns out Norris probably had car to win the drivers’ championship, but folded under the pressure.
- Red Bull keep chewing through 2nd drivers and Lawson this season might be a brat that is fun to root against. Bring back Danny Ric!
- Piastri could be the better driver on McLaren, but their team orders early in the season may have cost Lando the win?
- Christian Horner is a nob and Zak Brown is an annoying little brother, it is easy to root against them, but not their drivers.
- Way less Stroll and Stroll Sr. this season, even though they had another comical run in 2024.
- Albon seems like a good dude, I hope he and Sainz pull out something special with Williams this year.
^ A good friend let me know a year back that the “formula” in Formula 1, refers to the rules and regulations that set a level playing field for the teams. Car rules, race rules, and spending rules. That formula is constantly undergoing minor tweaks, but every 4-8 years gets a major overhaul. In 2026 the cars are getting smaller/lighter, active aero, and 50/50 electric vs. fuel. It should shake the box on the current pecking order.
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Website & Social Media Slop
I built my first website in a high school technology class in 1997. It was equal parts enticing to create something from nothing and have that something act as vehicle for even more creativity. Unrelated, it was the beginning of me never fully understanding how code works. It was just HTML, but it still felt like magic, like I couldn’t really hold it in my hands without it slipping away.
Not until 2005 did I really dig in and start a blog that I regularly posted at. Consistency was king and I fell in love with the process of writing, something school never imprinted on me. It turned out being thoughtful about the things I found interesting, inspiring, and frustrating scratched an itch I didn’t know I had.
On the topic of frustration. The two most viewed post on that now dead blog, were: 1. A “how to” on making cycling knickerbockers from army cargo pants; and 2. Sharing an infuriating week of shitty customer service with Comcast, my then TV and internet provider. Both got picked up by web crawlers and run on other sites by real humans. A thing I don’t think happens anymore.
In the early 2010s the rise of social media stole my attention and time. It was convenient, low effort, and all your people were there too. The blog slowly died and my low calorie images and words went out to the world through someone else’s pipes and tubes.
Like many, I became jaded with the enshittification of those same platforms almost a decade later. The “you are the product” sentiment really started to come into it’s own. Habitual line stepping in a way that stopped being subtle and became the norm.
I’d like to see what my friends are posting. Are they even posting? No, I don’t want your recommended post, and also not your ad. Wow, that is a lot of ads per post, I tracked it for a week and the ratio is sometimes 6:1. Yes, I looked at one post on about marble racing, but that doesn’t mean that is all I want to look at now.
In 2018 I stood up a new blog, 180Lunches.com. A return to form, where that form was a creative outlet that I could invest more in and by extent have greater ownership of. Square Space advertised on nearly every medium I consumed, so they got me too. Incredibly easy to use, but expensive and cookie cutter. It worked, but over 8 years I was frustrated by weird quarks and performance issues.
Top 4 things that made me leave…
- Price, $16 a month for a play thing no one really visits is stupid
- Search never worked, I had a hell of a time digging up old post
- Mobile browsers just stopped working at some point
- Lack of customization, for the price I expect to be able to drop some code in, nope
So now I’m here, it is 2025. I am done posting on social media, maybe for good. I’ll still scroll a reel from time to time, but if I write anything or have a thought worth sharing. It will be here. Enjoy.
180 Lunches 