I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. - Louisa May Alcott
Author: Munro Stewart
Self Fulfilling Prophecy
Your beliefs and thoughts influence your mind and your life, so any expectations you have about your self, your character, your abilities, your goals, and your dreams can and often will come true if you believe they will.
- A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's belief or expectation that said prediction would come true.
- In the phenomena, people tend to act the way they have been expected to making the expectations come true.
- Self-fulfilling prophecies are an example of the more general phenomenon of positive feedback loops.
- A self-fulfilling prophecy can have either negative or positive outcomes.
- Merely applying a label to someone or something can affect the perception of the person/thing and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Predictions For NBA Standings 2025-26
Here are my predictions for the 2025-2026 NBA standings, ranked by western and eastern conferences. I think the western conference in particular may be as hard to predict as ever this year.
Western Conference
- 1 - Oklahoma City Thunder
- 2 - Denver Nuggets
- 3 - Los Angeles Clippers
- 4 - Memphis Grizzlies
- 5 - Dallas Mavericks
- 6 - Minnesota Timberwolves
- ----
- 7 - Houston Rockets
- 8 - Phoenix Suns
- 9 - San Antonio Spurs
- 10 - Golden State Warriors
- ----
- 11 - New Orleans Pelicans
- 12 - Los Angeles Lakers
- 13 - Sacramento Kings
- 14 - Portland Trail Blazers
- 15 - Utah Jazz
Eastern Conference
- 1 - Cleveland Cavaliers
- 2 - New York Knicks
- 3 - Milwaukee Bucks
- 4 - Toronto Raptors
- 5 - Philadelphia 76ers
- 6 - Boston Celtics
- ----
- 7 - Indiana Pacers
- 8 - Miami Heat
- 9 - Orlando Magic
- 10 - Charlotte Hornets
- ----
- 11 - Atlanta Hawks
- 12 - Detroit Pistons
- 13 - Chicago Bulls
- 14 - Washington Wizards
- 15 - Brooklyn Nets
Raptors Barrett Bench Vision
- Barrett - Bench - 30 MPG 2025 vs 32 MPG 2024
- Gradey - Start - 24 MPG 2025 vs 30 MPG 2024
- Barrett scores as 6th man, Gradey shoots
- Barrett in for Gradey, SF when Ingram out
- Agbaji/Murray/Walter can start some too
- Walter bench PG when Barrett bench
Have Humility For Our Stupidity
Two things are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity...But that just might be me being stupid. - Albert Einstein
Take Hourly Breaks To Refocus
Take a quick break every hour to evaluate what you have done and refocus on what you should do next.
- STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus.
- Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour.
- When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively.
- Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour.
- Manage your day hour by hour.
- Donβt let the hours manage you.
An 18 minute plan for managing your day - Harvard Business Review
Leave MacOS Toolbars At Top
I appreciate the gusto if this is purely experimental, but I think the design, function, and placement of this separate bottom toolbar in the Music app may be the single worst UI change in macOS 26.

Suggested Changes
- Move and merge the full toolbar back to the top
- Stay in same place when queue or lyrics selected
- Make volume popup from toolbar and have mute
- Collapse volume popup when clicked second time
- Don't blur song title and info when mouse over
- Move star icon to the toolbar and always show
- Make all icons including playback the same size
- Move shuffle to right of playback, left of repeat
Make Time To Make Dreams
All great achievements require time. -Β Maya Angelou
Create Static Interface Elements
I still dislike transparent elements, color changing elements, floating elements, and moving elements in UIs. Imagine if light switch on wall was see-through so hard to see, changed colors so hard to recognize, was covering part of TV, and was in a different spot all the time.
Give Sincere Appreciation
Give honest and sincere appreciation. - Dale Carnegie
- Lincoln once began a letter saying: "Everybody likes a compliment."
- William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."
- He didn't speak, mind you, of the "wish" or the "desire" or the "longing" to be appreciated.
- He said the "craving" to be appreciated.
- Let's try to figure out the other person's good points.
- Then forget flattery. Give honest, sincere appreciation.
Alternative Vision To Raptors Success
Because of the importance of shooting in NBA today, I see a potential alternative vision to success for Raptors in the short-term, with Ingram All-Star at 26 PPG, Quickley All-Star at 23 PPG, Dick at 16 PPG, Barnes All-Defense at 16 PPG and 9+ APG, passing to great shooters.
Consider Frauds Might Blame Frauds
Steve Ballmer focusing on the company he invested in and Kawhi received money from being fraudulent seems like a big misstep. When a billionaire invests big money in a company I'm not thinking "poor guy was scammed", I'm thinking he was part of fraud and so it appears much worse.
Conceive And Believe To Achieve
Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve. - Napolean Hill
Top Raptors All-Time 2025
Here are my contrarian Top Raptors lists. I put more emphasis on a player's full career and statistics, their likely contribution to winning if they had been on a good team, but still partly considering winning and having an impact while with Toronto.

Change Your Thoughts
Think positively and change your thoughts or mindset to a new way of thinking about something in order to improve your wellbeing and get things done.
- You are what you think.
- You cannot think negatively and have unlimited success.
- If you think negatively about business and finances [or leisure and relationships, or whatever else you want to change or improve in your life], your subjective experience will be a lack of both, whether or not that is true in reality.
- Discipline your mind towards the goals of what you want your productivity to look like and start putting the effort in right now to get there.
- Keep in mind that suffering over your own suffering doesn't work.
- Know the negative thought patterns you hold which require change and be deliberate in changing them.
8 Ways to radically increase your productivity - The Globe And Mail
Give Praise More Than Punishment
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. -Β Abraham Lincoln
Raptors Prospect Ranking 2025
- Ulrich Chomche
- Gradey Dick
- Ja'Kobe Walter
- Collin Murray
- Alijah Martin
- Jamison Battle
- Jamal Shead
- Jonathan Mogbo
Notes
- I like great 3PT/FT shooters
- Defense great IF can shoot
- Think Chomche will shoot
Teams Are Closer Than They Appear
When people say things like "This NBA team could finish 7th but not 5th", it doesn't make sense to me logically. In 24-25 West 3-8 was 2 games apart, in 23-24 East 2-8 was 4 games apart, in 22-23 West 4-10 was 3 games apart, in 21-22 East 6-10 was 3 games apart, etc.
MacBook Air 12.9" Guess
I wonder if the rumor about a MacBook with a new 12.9" screen size might actually be a new M-Series or M5 MacBook Air size and design, with the rumored budget A-Series MacBook being a separate device coming another time in either the current 13.6" design or former 13.3" design.
Simplify To The Essentials
"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." - Bruce Lee
- If you want to improve your life then itβs tempting to want to add more.
- One problem with this may be that you donβt really have the time or energy to do more though.
- And so your efforts to improve become short-lived.
- Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety.
- Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do.
- And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease.
- This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.
Bruce Leeβs top 7 fundamentals for getting your life in shape - Positivity Blog
