Soil Compilation

Music
Interview: KRUI With The Plain White T’s

At When We Were Young 2025, fellow Chicago area natives Plain White T’s sat down with me as we discussed how the local scene has changed, their tour with We The Kings, and how Las Vegas scares us all the slightest bit. We started the conversation out by sharing a mutual love of Death Cab for Cutie:

Mistake Levels There are mistakes – misguided or wrong judgement. Writing this piece at night was not the problem. Drinking coffee that keeps one up past 3 AM? That was misguided judgement. Then there are dumb mistakes. An example here is when NASA burned a $125 Million Mars orbiter vehicle thanks to not converting thrust calculations from English units to the metric system. True story, that happened. We’ve come a long way as a species. That was a dumb mistake for the world’s brightest minds to make. Finally, there are dumb, avoidable mistakes. These are when we not only had … Continued

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By Miles Klotz Unless you’re an absolute die-hard fan of baseball, you probably haven’t heard the name Matt Chapman. After all, it would seem unlikely that a third baseman with a .762 OPS and .231 batting average on the last place Oakland Athletics would deserve any serious recognition. But Chapman is already establishing himself as one of baseball brightest young defensive players, and a cornerstone for a rebuilding A’s franchise to build around. Before I dive into the statistical reasons for why Chapman is already a better defensive third baseman than show-stoppers like Nolan Arenado, Manny Machado and Anthony Rendon, here … Continued

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When it comes to college life, it seems that everyone has some sort of pearl of wisdom to offer about what things are going to be like. When you’re a freshman you hear things like “you meet the best friends of your life” or “college is the best years of your life”. I don’t know about anyone else, but no one told me this stuff takes time. So I gathered a few of the things that I think these people left out about growing up, moving out, and what it’s like being in college. One thing that everyone looks forward … Continued

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When facing a team as offensively talented as the Seton Hall Pirates, defenses must bring their A-game. Iowa did not in their 91-83 loss at Carver Hawkeye Arena on Thursday night, giving up too many easy buckets, especially in the second half. “I would like to have seen us play better defense, collectively,” head coach Fran McCaffery said of his team’s performance. “For the duration, but certainly in the second half, you can’t give them 66 percent (shooting)… and the truth of the matter is we had a pretty experienced team out there. Everyone wants to talk about youth. That was … Continued

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