Joshua Kagavi
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kagavi.bsky.social
Joshua Kagavi
@kagavi.bsky.social
330 followers 220 following 880 posts
History writer and artist clinging to life in the distant badlands. Jazz Age football, stop motion animation, petroglyphs, pixel games, grumpy terriers. Jack Trice expert. Huffing mold in archives kagavi.com
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kagavi.bsky.social
I've always loved this one too which shows a whale interferring with the HMS Agamemnon cable via the MIT museum. Link is a higher res version of it

assets.mitmuseum.mit.edu/iiifimg3/120...
Black and white, but it has kind of a tan tint, image is labeled "H.M.S. Agamemnon laying the Atlantic Cable in 1858, a Whale crosses the line" MIT museum description: Black and white print depicts a view of the Agamemnon, a second-rate ship of the line, while laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. The paying-out machinery used to lay the cable is visible on a temporary structure that has been added to the ship. A fender encircles the stern to prevent the cable from becoming entangled with the ship's propeller. Smoke can be seen pouring from the ship's funnel. A whale is crossing over the cable, and the ship's crew is gathered on the top deck to watch.
December 24, 2025 at 10:58 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
In completely unrelated news via Reuters from the other day, a railroad biz discovered that giving AI their tiny little 100 page manual turned into a disaster, but sure, let's have AI sum up the National Archives

www.reuters.com/business/bus...
But Cando ran into a surprising stumbling block: the models couldn’t consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly 100-page document that lays out the safety standards for the industry. Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules; other times they invented them from whole cloth. AI researchers say models often struggle to recall what appears in the middle of a long document.
December 21, 2025 at 9:58 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Wrinkle Meat is in bottom left of this 1923 Oorang Indians team photo #nfl #history
1923 Oorang Indians team photo with three rows of indigenous players, 17 in total, wearing uniforms and posing on a grass field. Bottom right has a handwritten inscription: (copyright symbol) 1923 Photo by ADAM BAUER MARION, O. Their matching dark wool jerseys have two oval friction shapes on each side of their chest, meant for holding the football more securely, and in the middle is a small monogram of an O and I on top of each other. They all look pretty burly and have short hair. Many players have their arms crossed or behind their backs. While some look slightly bemused, none are smiling enough to show any teeth. Front row has five players sitting with crossed legs. A bulbous football rests in front of the middle player. Wrinkle Meat is on the far left. His arms are tightly crossed, head tilted, mouth slightly open. He has a hint of a faraway look. Center row has six players kneeling, all with arms crossed. Back row has six players standing. Third player from left is the famous Jim Thorpe with his distinctive face, widows peak, eyes narrow slits, strong chin.
December 19, 2025 at 9:17 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
no idea what to even call this, but apparently this is in the bag of new ISU #bluecy offensive coordinator Tyler Roehl from his NDSU days
Aerial view of a football game between North Dakota State, wearing green and yellow, and a unknown team wearing white. NDSU is on offense. The quarterback is in shotgun with five offensive lineman. Split on his left is a single wide receiver. Split on his right is a quad formation of three people with their hands in the ground and a single wide receiver behind all three. Very unusual to see people in a three point stance by the numbers. From this post: https://xcancel.com/TheLastFullback/status/1983320247148130780
December 10, 2025 at 2:49 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
IMO one of the last ISU freshmen to look this comfortable this quickly on the court was Tyrese Haliburton. Every other freshman listed here was a top 20 recruit #bluecy

www.espn.com/mens-college...
Screenshot from linked ESPN story: 10. Killyan Toure, G, Iowa State Previous rank: NR Biggest performance so far: 19 points, 6 assists, 3 steals vs. Syracuse in Las Vegas on Nov. 26 There might not have been a freshman who boosted his stock more in Las Vegas than Toure, who stepped up following Tamin Lipsey's injury in the Cyclones' Players Era opener against St. John's. Toure went for a season-high 20 points in a win over Creighton the next day, followed immediately by 19 points, 6 assists and 3 steals in a win over Syracuse. He was averaging just 8.6 points entering those two tilts, but growing confidence in his offensive role combined with his physical tools and two-way ability make it clear that T.J. Otzelberger has another emerging star on his hands. -- Borzello
December 3, 2025 at 11:23 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Great respect for this elite leader and incredible family man
The Commission, however, heard about two troubling incidents second- hand. An athletic administrator recalled a conversation he had with a former Maryland assistant coach who had left Maryland. When the high school administrator asked why the coach left Maryland, that coach responded he had to “get out of there because the verbal abuse of players was worse than at any other place he had been.” According to this administrator, a coach at a peer high school told him that the Maryland football program had a culture problem and was abusive to the players. This statement by the high school coach was made prior to the August 10, 2018 ESPN article. Excerpt from report seen here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13335075/maryland_report.0.pdf
December 3, 2025 at 1:58 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
This was good. Looks like Yacht Club fell victim to the dreaded scope creep and oversized ambition w/ two teams, but that's exactly why they did so well with Shovel Knight.

It's one Zelda, what could it cost, $10?
Nintendo was the north star for Yacht Club, whose founders viewed Shovel Knight as their version of Super Mario Bros. Next, they wanted a Zelda. It turned out that Alec Faulkner, a designer at Yacht Club, had been moonlighting on a prototype for such a project, an adventure game starring a cartoon mouse named Mina who could leap into the air and then burrow underground to solve puzzles and attack enemies. Faulkner began to wonder if his hobby project could turn into something bigger. In fall 2019, as the company was wrapping up work on the final Shovel Knight expansion, he proposed that the studio take his prototype and turn it into Yacht Club’s next game. The founders were into it. “Some level of arrogance, I think, is required to do this job,” says Faulkner, who started as an intern in 2016 after impressing the higher-ups with artwork he made of Shovel Knight as a Game Boy game. “That’s the same part of my brain that says, ‘I could do a Zelda.’”
December 2, 2025 at 9:32 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Just saw this circa 1988 promo photo of Iowa State #bluecy All-Big Eight running back Joe Henderson. Need that logo to come back for a game or two
Orange sheen photo of Joe Henderson, a black person sitting on a weight lifting bench and facing the camera with an intense glare. He is extremely sweaty and has massive muscles with bulging biceps, huge neck/shoulders, and looks like he would be absolutely terrifying to tackle. He's holding two dumbbells, wearing a yellow tank top with the '80s Cyclone tornado logo topped by the semi-cursive Iowa State script. Just a little bit of his red shorts are visible. Around his massive tree trunk neck are three thick gold chains. I would quit the football team if I saw him running towards me As seen here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/306632747095
December 1, 2025 at 8:51 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Yep it's a real shame too cuz there have been some incredible scientific and tech advancements in recent years that have been swallowed by relentless slop.

I mean 2005 wasn't THAT long ago, but pics from those days look like this to me now
1928 photo of a department store window showing, I believe, two mannequins in a chic living room surrounded by the latest in electronics including a phonograph, radio, phone, etc. An adult woman sits in a upholstered chair, clasped hands on crossed legs. A large flower arrangement is on a side table. A young girl in a dress is facing a radio or phonograph of some sort and fiddling with the dial. The living room is grand, tall lush wooden walls, large rug, fancy stuff.
November 30, 2025 at 5:56 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
What a great time waster while waiting for the biscuits to bake

www.chronophoto.app/game.html
Chronophoto website home page A large black and white photo of unknown age shows several people shoveling debris including dirt and stone off of small flatbed railcars. The railcars are relatively small compared to typical railroad cars, about the size of an automobile. The railroad is set at the base of a hill, which we can see stretching up and away in the distance. There is a man wearing what appears to be a suit with a conductor hat and pocket watch strolling along the cars. At the top of the photo box there is a SETTINGS button on the left, ROUND 1 OF 5 written in the middle, and a STATISTICS button on the right. Below this photo the caption reads: What year was this photo taken? There is a long bar that looks like a ruler with a year range between 1900 and 2025. There is a small square slider that you can move in either direction to pick the specific year. The default year set is 1960. Below this is a SUBMIT button. While some photos are in color, the website is a very light gray background with a small black navigation bar at top. Pretty minimal and puts the focus on the photo.
November 26, 2025 at 9:32 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
This is dumb and great. The whole thing fits in the shoe tongue
Excerpt from article with a photo at top. Photo shows a pair of hands resting on a table holding a Super Nintendo controller. The Nike shoe sits in the middle of the table. A CRT TV is behind them on the edge of the table. On the blurry screen is Super Mario World and it appears as if Mario is climbing on a grate above a field of fire while surrounded by gray stone and columns. He is facing away from us. Mario is wearing red overalls and white shirt and hat. This means he is specifically Fire Mario and has the ability to shoot fireballs. The whole photo has a vaguely purple sheen. The photo caption reads: The AIR SNES include a small battery good for up to 30 minutes of gameplay. Image: Gustavo Bonzanini The paragraph below reads: But you won’t find the microcomputer hidden away in the sole of the Air Max 90. All of the electronics, including a battery with enough capacity for up to 30 minutes of gameplay, can be found inside the sneaker’s tongue. The Raspberry Pi Zero W includes an integrated Mini HDMI port, but to “make the design feel like it could exist in 1990,” Bonzanini added a small analog converter so the AIR SNES connects to a TV using retro RCA cables.
November 26, 2025 at 9:11 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
No idea how I came across this, but in early 1920 the University of Texas killed and cooked their football mascot Bevo and served it to the Texas A&M athletic director
ONLY LIVING SCORE MADE INTO BARBECUE W. L. Driver, retiring athletic director at A. and M. college, is in receipt of an invitation to attend a barbecue at Texas university on Tuesday evening, January 20, at which time 'Bevo,' the Longhorn mascot of 1916 will be served. The orange colored steer was presented to the Varsity football squad in 1916 as a mascot by the alumni of the university following the victory of the Texas team over A. and M. and was led out on Clark field. The score of 21 to 7 was branded on the steer's side. It was a great day for the Longhorns, but their delight in the mascot was short lived for early in the spring of the following year Merle Mitchell, Hans Rothe, Jim Abe Bull, H. Brauing and O. K. Johnson hied themselves away to Austin and quietly slipped out to the pasturage where "Bevo" peacefully cropped the green grass and branded that memorable score of "13 and 0" on the reverse side of the steer. This was the 1915 score when A. and M. was the victor. The brand was so conspicuous that it became of little use as a mascot. This is the steer that is to be barbecued on next Tuesday and W. L. Driver is going to attend the feast.
November 25, 2025 at 9:46 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
From @CycloneFB over there, finally the 1990s/2000s twister Cy makes an appearance. It's so terrible and good and completely on trend #bluecy
November 21, 2025 at 8:06 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Missed this incredible reaction from Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon from earlier this year re: a terrible play call that almost cost them the game. The eyebrows shooting up are killing me. From this Ringer story yesterday

www.theringer.com/2025/11/19/n...
White female with shaggy black hair wearing a white short sleeve shirt with thin horizontal blue stripes and a chunky silver necklace. She is wearing a headset and holding a notebook and a lanyard. She is looking at the lanyard sheet with a serious expression. Exact same as last photo, except her eyebrows have shot up to a comical angle and her eyes are wide open in surprise looking towards the field. Seriously her eyebrows were horizontal and now they are perfect little pyramids.
November 20, 2025 at 11:49 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
"For instance: In January I flew to Tokyo to spend two weeks watching sumo wrestling. Tokyo, the city where my parents were married — I remember gazing up at their Japanese wedding certificate on the wall and wondering what it meant." by @brianphillips.bsky.social

grantland.com/features/sum...
Header image for THE SEA OF CRISES story by Brian Phillips. The thick red THE SEA OF CRISES title sits on top of an illustration of a sea with rocks, lily pads, four torii structures and a lone Japanese man wearing a white robe standing tall on a small rock surrounded by water. The illustration appears to be most influenced by stone block prints and watercolor paintings. Solid colors, yet a light touch and delicate but with strong black shadows. Title is rendered in chunky all caps red letters with a hint of brushstrokes that mimic Japanese kanji. Below the title in the same font style it reads: BY BRIAN PHILLIPS ILLUSTRATION BY JUN CEN AND THOKA MAER The image is slightly animated with a faint overlay of rain falling straight down.
November 20, 2025 at 9:22 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Reminds me of this story from yesterday about politically motivated changes at the Alamo museum

Flunky: They were settlers, not colonists - a woke term!

Stephen F. Austin literally: I am a colonist doing colonization in my colony 💀
Semantic debates over identity-based terminology has long been a feature of the culture wars, but Sylvester seemed to open at least one new front. “I changed all references to colonies and colonists to settlers and settlements,” Sylvester wrote. “The reason for this is that those who dictate ‘woke narratives’ have declared that all European colonization was evil and oppressive.” This is a strange argument. The Anglos who came to Texas in the 1820s at the invitation of the Mexican government called themselves “colonists.” Stephen F. Austin founded “Austin’s Colony” and his correspondence makes frequent references to “colonization.” (He also used the term “settler.”) Unlike the relatively recent “slave” versus “enslaved person” debate, there is little controversy among historians regarding the term “colonist” in the context of Texas history.
November 20, 2025 at 1:07 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
When I'm deep inside archival caissons, I still think about this passage at least 4 times a week. Discovering some forgotten treasure hiding in an attic or trunk. I'm constantly chasing the dragon from the few times it happened to me. Addictive.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann
The Lost City of Z ... know what happened to PHF and Jack.'") Now Rolette paused for a long time, as if trying to make up her mind about something. Then she said, "You really want to find out what happened to my grandfather?" "Yes. If it's possible." "I want to show you something." She led me into a back room and opened a large wooden trunk. Inside were several leather-bound books. Their covers were worn and tattered, their bindings breaking apart. Some were held together only by strings, tied in bows. "What are they?" I asked. "PHF's diaries and logbooks." She handed them to me. "You can look through them, but you must guard them carefully." I opened one of them, marked 1909. The cover left a black stain on my fingertips - a mixture, I imagined, of Victorian dust and jungle mud. The pages almost fell out when I turned them, and I held them gingerly between my index finger and thumb. Recognizing Fawcett's microscopic handwriting, I felt a strange sensation. Here was something that Fawcett had also held, something that contained his most private thoughts and that few had ever seen. The writer Janet Malcolm once compared a biographer to a "professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away." I sat down on the couch in the living room. There was a book for almost every year from 1906 (his first expedition) to 1921 (his penultimate trip); he had obviously carried a diary on each of his expeditions, jotting down observations. Many of them were replete with maps and surveying calculations. On the inside covers were the poems he had copied down in order to read in the jungle when he was alone and desperate. One seemed meant for Nina:
November 20, 2025 at 12:53 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
Going thru old tabs and forgot to post this last month. Definitely agree that some stop motion stuff is too smooth now. What's the point then? There has to be some tactile feel to it
The animation in this film is very fluid and smooth. I expect fewer people are aware that it’s stop-motion than they are with Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Were you trying to hide the film’s stop-motion nature, or was it more to chart new heights of what you could achieve in stop-motion? It was more to chart new heights. At that time, the Pixar films were the dominant art form as far as feature animation. It was less about creating a funky stop-mo aesthetic – it hadn’t really turned that way yet – it was more about proving that stop-motion could be as smooth and as fluid as computer animation and still be emotive, still have texture. You know, at that point, I considered chattery stop-motion, pops, and things like that as flaws. Of course, since Corpse Bride, it’s come around the other way – Wes Anderson and all these films that embrace the texture of stop-motion to set themselves apart. I can see the value of that now that, like you said, audiences might not know the difference between stop-motion and CG. I think the Laika films now do take it too far, where it really doesn’t matter – if they had made those films in CG instead of stop-motion, no one would know the difference, because it’s such a hybrid. Back then, it was a different world. It was about advancing the techniques but still embracing them. That was the idea behind the fluidity of the animation.
November 18, 2025 at 9:20 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Very cool, very neat. I hate how @greenwell.bsky.social's book keeps appearing in the wild. Need to read it again cuz I don't have enough extreme rage these days. When this country undergoes Reconstruction v.2, PE has to be one of the biggest targets

(reposting with ALT)
As the $40 billion youth sports industry comes under private equity control, corporate-owned facilities and leagues - from hockey rinks to cheerleading arenas - have begun prohibiting parents from recording their own kids' sports games. Instead, parents are forced to subscribe to these companies' exclusive recording and streaming service, which can cost many times more than the streaming costs for professional sporting events. Meanwhile, the firms' exclusive contracts have prohibited alternative video services from being made available.
November 18, 2025 at 9:09 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Regulatory capture for the win!
“It is frustrating that there is less media coverage and investigative reporting on CTE than there was a few years ago,” said Chris Nowinski, CEO and cofounder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. “The NFL has strategically built business relationships with media organizations.” He added that “with shrinking print media, there are few places that can invest in the coverage of CTE. That coverage thus far has resulted in football becoming safer, and more resources being provided to struggling football families. Many of those changes and services were inspired by investigative reporting, and I worry that without the media, progress will slow or even reverse.” Sure enough, a former ESPN journalist told me that the fact that the NFL now owns 10 percent of ESPN could be blunting the network’s zeal to investigate the ugly underbelly of the league. The self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports” matters, because its coverage often determines the focus of other sports networks, all trying to feed in its wake.
November 18, 2025 at 8:56 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Seeing the discussion about racism in certain regions has me thinking again about the dissonance between Boston's abolitionist history ex: Harvard/Amherst had earliest Black cfb players (Lewis and Jackson) vs. how many athletes hate playing in Boston now.

Good piece: web.archive.org/web/20230311...
Black and white photo of 1891 Amherst College football team showing a lone black player, William Henry Lewis, surrounded by his white teammates. He is in the back row mostly covered by other teammates, gazing at the camera with a proud, relaxed expression. He has a thick turtleneck swallowing up his lower jaw. On the end is a coach wearing a Black overcoat. As was typical of that era, only a handful of players are looking at the camera. Others are looking in different directions, all with a serious face. Some of them are sitting on chairs, some on the floor, some standing, they are leaning on each other or draping arms on shoulders or legs. Very casual vibe. Behind them is a (I assume painted or similar) backdrop showing some campus buildings. Some players are wearing turtleneck sweaters with thick horizontal stripes. Others are wearing long sleeve canvas-type shirts with a laced front (instead of buttons), which was a common uniform style in that era. Four players have mustaches. All have short hair. Middle player is holding a melon football, much more round shaped than current oval football.
November 17, 2025 at 11:51 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Just look at this incredible subheader
III. My Sword Guy's Sword Guy's Sword Guy Tokyo and Tokorozawa, Japan, June 25-26, 2022 You deconstruct a sword to reconstruct its story. Each time you take it apart, ideally you get a little closer.
November 16, 2025 at 9:46 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Completely agree with this. The Iowa of my childhood used to be far more progressive. One of the first states to legalize gay marriage, excellent public education system. The 1800s abolitionist movements, etc. The roots are there. Water them.

littlevillagemag.com/bright-radic...
In October 1856, arms and resources depleted and bigger plans on the eastern horizon, Brown’s band fled Kansas for Iowa. Iowa’s progressive politics and high concentration of socialist, utopian and religious communes — the Quakers of Springdale included — made it a bastion of the abolitionist movement. (In an interview with the Iowa State Weekly Register in 1868, presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant called the state a “bright Radical star.”)
November 13, 2025 at 2:50 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
Even with receivers dropping passes, stats make it clear what we're all seeing that Rocco's QBR has fallen off a cliff. Is he still dealing with post concussion symptoms or is it a confidence thing? Just hope his health is being prioritized #bluecy
Screenshot from linked ESPN story showing Rocco Becht's overall ranking: 43. Rocco Becht, Iowa State Last Rank: 24 | Total QBR: 61.2 | Pass Yds: 2,230 | Rush Yds (no sack): 217 | Total TDs: 20 Although ISU's defense has been a big part of the Cyclones' up-and-down season, allowing 14.7 points per game in wins and 31.8 in losses, Becht's own play has prompted a lot of success (or lack thereof) as well. Becht in six wins: 79.5 Total QBR, 48.4% success rate, 7.5 yards per dropback Becht in four losses: 39.3 Total QBR, 39.6% success rate, 5.8 yards per dropback
November 13, 2025 at 2:02 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
can't forget the cottage
Eyvind Earle Disney Sleeping Beauty concept painting showing Aurora's cottage in the forest. The cottage has a tan straw roof and is full of nooks and windows and the walls are charmingly askew. A pink stone chimney sticks out the top. The forest floor is bright green, a small brown bridge over a small creek leads to a brown stone path up to the front door. It rests against and is partially wrapped by the trunk of a massive gray tree. A small mill is partially in the creek. The forest has four massive gray trees with thick trunks that have delicate black lines giving an indication of bark. The individual tree canopy shapes are black rectangles and on top are dots of gray leaves in round clusters that almost look like fireworks. One tree has about two dozen of those round clusters on top of the rectangle. It's a very distinctive look that Earle was known for.
November 12, 2025 at 3:10 AM