A weird new schedule, Jeff Luhnow being a slime ball, some questionable merch, student loan relief, large filing cabinets, a city covered by a dome, and a beautiful sunset
True fact: I was looking at the weather here in Northern Virginia (pushing 90 and hella humid, thanks for asking) and on a whim I looked up Burlington weather for today. Anna is VERY wise.
I went to grad school in Boston and my wife was from Minnesota… I honestly don’t mind winter (even hard winter) because you can always add another layer. I grew up here in the NoVA swamp and I’m used to it but I always look longingly at places with cooler, dryer summers. You will still have a hard time convincing me that Anna isn’t smarter than the rest of us.
We recently visited the small town in Wisconsin where I grew up. My wife loved it until a fellow Coffee poster (hi Ghost!) confirmed my statement that it will go weeks without getting above 0 during the winter.
Atlanta’s northern exurbs have pretty good weather. Not San Diego good, but pretty good. We are out of the midtown concrete heat sink, close to a large lake that moderates weather and can see the Appalachian foothills from here so elevation cuts down on the summer heat and humidity.
Woodstock or Canton? Although the idea that Canton could be an exurb is frightening. When I was in Woodstock in the 90s it was the place people from Alpharetta made fun off.
Which town? "Weeks?" I know you're probably exaggerating to prove a point but not even Heyward goes "weeks' without getting above 0. Now, if you'd said "weeks without getting about 20," you'd be on to something.
And both me and Prince agree: we like weeks without getting above 20 - it "keeps a lot of the bad people out."
Yeah, three or four days with a subzero high is nothing out of the ordinary, happens every other year or so when you're living along the 45th or further north between Spokane and... well, the Atlantic.
Not sure about the birkibiner (sic) but I do know that's where Lumberjack Days happens, and one year Bob Uecker was a celebrity judge. He often enough reminisces about it... I think he had a GREAT time! I love it up there. I go to a cabin in Sawyer County at least two or three times a year. I wish it was a four-season cabin...
Haha, I was just on vacation and had that same conversation about how great it was in Toronto, etc but gosh, ask again in January and we might feel a lot different about it.
Albany? I'm from the Albany area too. (Clifton Park)
The big storms you can accept. It's when you get up for the 3rd day in a row to find 2 more inches of snow. "F***! I have to shovel it again?!!"
(I can't really leave it to melt, because my driveway is on the north side of the house, shaded by the house, so it doesn't. And the gutters empty on to the driveway so melt water from the roof soaks the snow and freezes to ice overnight, so soon I have 3 inches of ice on my driveway. Then the melt water backs up into the garage. So by far the easiest path is the shovel it when it happens.)
Honestly, it's not the snow that gets you. It's -10 daytime high with a 25 mph wind whipping off the lake. But even those days don't happen nearly as much.
Watching O’Neal Cruz as a non Pirate fan is fun. It is like what would have happened had we given Shawon Dunston the super soldier serum. Amazing arm. Ridiculously fast swing that is also ridiculously long, a combination that is unheard of. Body by Manute Bol. Atrocious plate discipline. If I rooted for Stargellville, I’d be tearing my hair out but love having oddballs like him around.
My only issue with the eventual realignment of MLB by geography is that the Mets would never, ever get out of the shadow of the Yankees. Otherwise, bring it on.
Addressing student debt is good, but can we address just why college is so expensive? And maybe even ask the big question: why go to college? I think I could have done exactly what I have done in my jobs without college. Maybe we need to rethink the necessity of forcing people to spend four more years being educated if their careers don't need it. And leave college for those who do.
The ease of student debt is a cause of the high cost. “Addressing” debt in this fashion will increase costs. This is basic Econ 101, something I think that about 0.101% of politicians and prognosticators understand.
Inflation generally or inflation of costs of school specifically? Yes to both. For the former, see the tweet stream from Jason Furman who was chairman of President *Obama’s* Council of Economic Advisors.
Solutions for the costs? Too long for this forum but income share agreements which cause ‘skin in the game’ for the school would be a better approach than traditional loans. I’d also look at the increase in overhead from growth of physical plant and administration at schools - number of non faculty employees has grown substantially in the last 4 decades as has the quality/quantity of dorm and other structures. And better options for trade school which can lead to lucrative careers without a classic liberal arts degree.
I'd like to see tuition be publicly funded. If schools want to build extravagant dorms so be it. Market forces should help reign in housing costs as there will always be competition there. Not so much for the actual education part. Ignoring for a moment that some of the most important things I learned in college I learned at my residence...
TLDR: In 1990, the state provided 34% of revenue. In 2020, it provides 10%. This seems not ideal for the flagship institution that's supposed to educate your state's workforce of tomorrow.
Jason Furman is a goofus and, like Larry Summers and other members of that braintrust, defending his own legacy by constantly advocating against anything beyond the underpowered half-measures that made the Obama recovery so slow and such a direct transfer of wealth upwards.
The facts of the matter are that costs have increased (and will continue to increase) for the reasons Craig laid out earlier in the piece, regardless of whether or not a percentage of outstanding student debt is forgiven. Again, this is not a concern for the sage Ivy Leaguers who warn against such irresponsibility because they either have family money or can take advantage of those well-endowed institutions' generous need-based financial aid.
To address the other canard that's being thrown around, any inflationary results are already baked in, as student loan payments have been on pause for two years. If anything, the resumption of payments in January will be *deflationary* as millions of households will once again be paying a pointless tax of several hundred dollars a month.
My wife and I paid off $27k in loans (through, essentially, luck), but I have many friends in their 30s who still carry loans and I'm very excited that they'll have that burden lifted or reduced. Consider it a delayed payment of what the boomers owe from cutting school funding the past 30 years.
Systematic defunding of public education since about 1978 (primary, secondary, and higher) is the root cause and the so-called Greatest Generation is to blame.
As Craig noted, higher education was gutted in the 80s such that anyone who went to college in the 90s paid twice as much those who went as little as four years earlier (*ahem*).
Gingrich-era (aka The Contract ON America) changes to student loans also made two things possible -- 1) the buying and selling of student loan debt 2) for-profit universities, some of which truly were trying to fill the gap, but too many were just exploiting the situation. There's a reason why DeVos gutted any Gainful Employment rules.
Unfortunately you're both right: the relief will be short lived as colleges and universities will do what they always do and raise tuition and fees.
I filled out an online survey from OSU yesterday (where I got my MS) asking about "engagement" with THE university as an alumnus, but really, trying to figure out why I'm not giving money to them. I tend to agree with John Mulaney, that giving money to my alma mater after I graduate is like falling in love with a hooker: Once the transaction is over, I'm not getting anything more out of the relationship.
But they didn't have a question about that, so I told them I give all my philanthropy money to religious institutions instead. Which is true.
I'm sure UMich law school wonders why I have never given money to help educate many more hundreds of greedy little jerks. If they had a fund for public service lawyers I might consider it, but it was considered a joke to have that ambition when I went there. 50% of incoming 1st years said it, about 5% of grads did it.
It'll be the AL Central, because at least the NL Central has the Cardinals (total losing seasons this millennium: 1) around to more or less guarantee at least one team will be over .500.
I made an effort to avoid getting a master's. I did the math and saw that I would not end up with any more money than I had started with, and that it would just barely help my professional skills.
I had the fortune of working for a F500 company out of college with a tuition reimbursement program. The job sucked, but I stuck it out for 5 years as I spent 3+ years getting an MBA one class at a time - on their dime. I've always joked / not joked that people were way more impressed that I was working full time, married, and getting an MBA at night. One I had the degree I was just another schmuck with an MBA. Then the "MBA" job offers all paid less than what I was making in sale, so I'm still in sales 30 years later.
So you missed the threefold train named: "MBAs being paid to artificially inflate stock prices followed by MBAs being paid to fleece bondholders with inflated merger/acquisition values followed by MBAs being paid to stay on to help navigate the bankruptcies they caused"?
And that would be oppressive after a while. And then people would get bored. Also, there is almost no Knicks-Nets rivalry and they have been in the same division for decades.
Several thoughts. First, in theory if not in practice, college keeps people out of the workforce for c. 4 years.
Second, with regard to the costs of attending, it's not just the tuition. All sorts of associated costs have gone up. Some of this is because of amenity creep on campus (fancier dorms, more recreation facilities, more and better food options), and some because of the modern world (IT, etc.). And that's not even taking into account the predatory textbook model (albeit the pushback toward open source instructional materials).
But all that doesn't mean you need to pass the cost onto the students. State funding should be higher. Fundraising should be done more intelligently. (Dear lord, if only we could find a way to convince football boosters to give their money to education, but that seems unlikely.) There could be laws about textbooks.
And do we really need better dorms? I lived for four years in pretty basic quarters, two of them in rooms where the only piece of furniture I could move was my chair. Dorms need to be functional, nothing more (says the person in a fairly tiny two bedroom apartment still using the used furniture my wife got when her grandparents died, so don't trust my judgement).
My son got placed into the oldest dorm on his campus last year. It, like yours, had everything fixed in place with no lofting of the bed or anything like that. The temperatures indoors could fluctuate by 20 degrees F depending on whether the heat was working that day. The elevators broke down at least once a week. It's a dump that the university doesn't want to put money into since they've spent the last 5 years planning to tear it down and replace it. What it also had was a huge common area shared by 8 guys and a reasonable bathroom shared by the same group. By the end of first quarter they had THE place to hang out on their floor and he met a ton of great people.
By contrast, the newest dorms are fully modular and students get a private bathroom. The place is more like a hotel though where everyone keeps their doors closed and locked and you MIGHT pass someone in the hallway once in a while. Especially coming out of COVID with a group of kids whose social skills were rusty, I heard a lot of stories of students who had made essentially zero friends by the midway point of the year.
I came out of college close friends with a woman who is now my wife and two close guy friends. One of the guy friends died a decade later and the other lives 3000 miles away and we've seen each other twice in the past 20 years. So I'm batting .333 I guess.
The bare minimum for dorms has changed, though. Not only does the dorm need to be set up for wifi, students have expectations for spaces for their electronics, and the wiring needs to support this. Besides that, colleges compete on their dorm amenities, rightly or wrongly.
My inner grumpy old man is offended by the idea of dorm amenities being meeting the requirements for a postmodern electronics set-up. But the world clearly changes. (I wonder what my old college did about electricity. We weren't even allowed toasters and hot plates because that would fry the power.)
That was actually an advantage of the older dorm. My son brought his own wifi router since there was only ethernet provided. That meant he could be sure it was locked down and secure (Elec and Computer Engineering student). The newer dorms prohibited personal routers and required you to use the sytem built into the building, warts and all. He also pushed way beyond the recommended limits on power draw with two monitors, a gaming desktop computer a mini-fridge and microwave. Toss in a water kettle and his roommate's rice cooker and a instantpot as well. I'm not sure the newer dorms could have handled it all, now that everything is built to a bare minimum standard and not a dime more.
That said, he's looking forward to moving into a more modern building this year. I'm happy for him but not really enjoying the additional $1,000 month in housing costs.
I hate the schedule. While I agree that 19 division games was too many, watching games between the Mets and every AL Central team is going to be way worse than another Philadelphia series.
Also, just wait until the bitching by players and managers about the much increased travel gets going next year!
Counterpoint (though I don’t disagree with you on the degradation of the regular season): the new schedule means that every home stadium will see every other team in MLB at least once every two years without. Yes, that means lots of underwhelming matchups but it’s also good for teams selling tickets to traveling Yankees, Mets, Cubs, and Dodgers fans, among others.
Also as a Nats fan, it means 3 to 4 fewer games per season where visiting fans from New York and Philadelphia make life unpleasant.
I think Mets fans everywhere like that trade. At least right now, when it seems like the Barves are a dynasty in the making and the Mets are still rebuilding the farm system. (Of course, if the Mets and Barves had played less game this season, I think we would be exactly in the same place.)
Instead you’re going to get visiting fans from NYY and BAL . (With the nature of DC’s population of temporary migrants from all over, you get fans of the visitors no matter who is visiting, but that is a unique Nats issue.)
O's fans hardly even go to games in their own stadium. I'm not sure a lot of them will show up at Nats games. Yankees fans, yeah. Probably in bigger numbers than Mets fans do.
That ATL fans don’t yell out on “home of the brave” while BAL fans do at the beginning (hmm shouldn’t the O be at the - or in the - end?) is just one of those things that makes no sense about fandom.
In my personal experience, traveling Yankee fans are obnoxious frontrunners but otherwise harmless. Traveling Phillies fans are similar and slightly more confrontational but they get quiet when the Phillies are losing. The Mets fans who pack the LF corner at Nats Park when the team is good are drunken louts looking for a fight regardless of the score. I know they are not representative of all Mets fans (because I've been to Citi Field) but the "7 Army" isn't sending its best and brightest to DC.
Well played. I have a good friend who's lived here for 30 years who tells people who complain about the political climate in DC "that's because you send all your assholes here!"
Agreed. The last thing we need is for our teams to play more games in different time zones so the games are either on too late to watch or start before you get out of work, depending on where you live. Given my druthers I'd have games start at 7:10 my local time every day. (Except Sundays)
My formative fandom of The Barves was when Kuhn and Kompany were so geographically challenged that Atlanta was in the West. That was a lot of 10pm start times from California.
Never did understand how Chicago and St Louis were in the East while Atlanta and Cincinnati (which are almost exactly north/south of one another, 300 miles east of Chicago and 350 from St Louis) were in the West.
I initially hated it, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes, if only for fairness. The Yankees have had to face four AL East different teams 18 times each, all of which are (or have been) decent this year, some actually good. Meanwhile the Astros (for example) have only one other team in their division that is not at least 10 games below .500.
To date, the Yankees have played 81 of their 122 games against teams with .500 or better records, compared to just 58 games for Houston. 19 of the Yankees last 40 games are against such teams, plus 6 more against Boston, which would bring their season total up to 99, or even as many as 105, if Boston somehow eeks out a .500 record.
The Astros have only 16 of 37 games left against teams with winning records, so they will have played only 76 out of 162 games against competitive teams, less than half their schedule.
In a system where seeding and first round playoff byes are determined by overall record, how is that fair?
I'd rather have domed cities than flying cars, if we're choosing futuristic ideas. The way people drive like maniacs in only 2 dimensions they definitely don't need to add any more possible directions to ignore stop signals.
I've been to convention centers that were connected to a bunch of other hotels and restaurants and shopping via covered walkways and it was awesome walking around between buildings without getting rained and snowed on. 🙂
Technically. no - but a friend of Mary's described a typical white-collar Twin Cities day thusly: heated house -> heated garage -> heated car (remote started) -> heated parking ramp -> heated elevator -> heated office ... and reverse to home. Lunch and workday errands are all via heated skywalks. You MIGHT have to brave the elements if your grocery/after work errands don't have a ramp ... but basically you can avoid going outside unless you WANT to.
I was in Des Moines for work a couple of years ago in November and I could walk from my hotel about 1.5 miles from the library where my meetings were, only going outdoors to cross the final street and enter the library.
Did Luhnow even have to delete things from his phone? It wasn't a criminal investigation. MLB has no legal authority to insist on seeing his phone. Why couldn't he just tell them no when they asked for it.
Yes, it might have looked suspicious had he done so and he'd still have been suspended, but no more suspicious than deleting its contents. And how many of us would say no if our employer asked to search our phone? It wouldn't be unreasonable to say no even if you had nothing to hide.
I suspect that he had a contractual obligation to cooperate with the commissioner’s investigation. Say no and he is fired for cause forfeiting future income and still gets banned. He can refuse, but there are consequences beyond merely looking suspicious.
Well, they could have eventually sued him for any number of things (damage to the reputation of their product, etc), in which case he wwould be obligated to turn over the evidence. And his intentional deletion of the texts, at a time when he knew there was a very real possibility of litigation in which those texts would be directly relevant to the heart of the matter, could definitely get him in some legal hot water. But that said, no, it wouldn't be the same as a criminal investigation.
Drellich's piece contains the passage below, which, if true, seems to suggest that Luhnow's missing data on his phone were still contained on his laptop's iMessage or whatever - which to me makes this a bit of a nothing burger.
This is one area of Drellich's reporting on this story that has always irritated me. He'll get pieces of interesting information that conflict with or contextualize his narrative and he never chases them down. A good reminder why sportswriters are not investigative journalists.
"Yet, when the league looked at the hex of the SMS database, MLB also found traces of nine messages between Luhnow and Koch-Weser, from March and August of 2019, a person with knowledge of the investigation said. MLB couldn’t recover those texts on either device, however.
'I never deleted any messages between myself and Tom,' Luhnow said. 'I have them all and the Astros and MLB had access to all of them from my work computer.'”
So while you state the talking points (cost of college has gone up, more loans that previous generations), I note that you omit any discussion of what happens next. The cost of college isn’t going down, or should I say didn’t go down as a result of this. People are going to the same schools, and taking out the same — or more! — loans. Are we entering a cycle of perpetual bad decisions followed by forgiveness? Serious question. I’m far more interested in lowering the cost of college than forgiving loans and shrugging at accountability. Now that this election year stunt is performed, I’d like to see progress on reducing the cost of state schools and making trade/community schools as close to free as possible. That’s the future as far as I can tell.
It might be good to demystify the private schools. I do not believe in the least that you get a better and more useful education at Harvard than at Queens College. (My wife started at Barnard and ended at Queens and I feel like the quality of the education was exactly the same.
Though she was a fellow English major, and you can argue we both wasted four years with that.) But it "looks good on your resume."
When I was at Purdue many people back home in VA thought that I was Ivy League. (Purdue, Yale, Harvard...it does sound like it fits in.) I never corrected anybody.
I seems to me that private colleges are as much about accessing their alumni networks as anything else. I have a friend who worked in the Princeton library system while his wife got a masters and PhD there. He told me that the students there largely weren’t any brighter or classes better than a second tier illinois state school. The students generally came from money and had relatives that were alumni. His wife (now a art history/classics prof) just paid off her loans two years ago at the age of 50. Of course that’s just anecdotal. Another high school friend has many degrees across engineering and architecture from several schools: University of Illinois, UT in Austin x 2 and University of Chicago. He’d tell you that UofC by far gave him the better education, so maybe some top tier schools actually do deliver on their reputation.
Trying to tap into my school's alumni network was worthless. I wasn't interested in the business world, or being a lawyer or doctor, so they didn't really know what to do with me.
I’m probably left of you and I think this loan forgiveness was a big mistake. That being said the ‘Brandon’ thing is tired and childish.
If you want to say ‘Fuck Joe Biden’, just do it, no one cares. I voted for Biden because he wasn’t trump, I’d have voted for a ham sandwich, hell, a rotten ham sandwich before trump. That being said, this forgiveness act is terrible policy that solves nothing. Does this happen again in 2 years? 4? 6?
Not sure what "left of you" means in an American context since the sum and total of most people's political engagement is watching TV, reading posts and voting every couple of years. On that score, we're probably similar. (I'm an active union member though).
Brandon is a rich semiotic text that also happens to annoy MAGA chuds because we've stolen their word. I, for one, like that younger people are attempting to shed the image the Dem party has cultivated of being humorless scolds, but YMMV.
I don't think anyone is claiming that loan forgiveness is a perfect instrument, it just happens to be a policy that both a) makes life materially better for millions of Americans and b) is something the president can do unilaterally.
Any arguments against it that don't center that political reality are childish protests not worth considering. I'll take a policy that "solves nothing" but substantially helps many of my friends (and would have helped my wife and I were it not for, essentially, dumb luck) over basically every other policy enacted since I joined this planet 32 years ago.
That’s an excellent response. I have no doubt that we are more alike than different. You are 100% right that this •does• benefit a multitude of people that normally get no help. It does not help me, but I couldn’t care less about that. I guess it’s harder to help Americans even worse off with shitty car loans and the like, but I suppose a victory is a victory even if it’s not a victory for people needing the most help. But you have a point. Cheers.
I will forever be frustrated by the Democrats somehow not realizing that if they're going to get called Socialists no matter what they actually do, they might as well do something big. This is absolutely a swing for the fences moment but they squared up to bunt.
I graduated undergrad in 2010 with a reasonablish amount of student loan debt thanks to getting a lot of scholarships. Then I went to vet school. If you want to talk about a profession teetering on the edge of a very dangerous abyss, it's the one that not only takes care of family pets but also makes sure all the meat in the country is safe to eat. Even if you land instate tuition, you're graduating with at least $150K in debt to become a vet and not making anywhere close to that for at least your first decade in practice. I've been out of school for 6 years and even with the pause on interest going into effect almost three years ago now, the interest accrued on my grad school loans alone is higher than my total undergrad debt.
The profession is rapidly becoming one that can only be afforded if you are born into wealth (I was not), don't mind joining the military to get it paid for (hard fucking pass), or are willing to take on a mortgage's worth of debt for a piece of paper that grants you the right to get verbally shit on by owners and literally shit on by the animals. There's already a shortage of vets in the country and I don't see it getting better anytime soon without some sort of drastic course correction.
My daughter did a couple of days of ride along with out equine vet, then noped right out of any thoughts of being a Vet. She has an undergrad Animal Science degree with an Equine Science minor and a Masters in Ag - and works for the govt.
Personally if I was in charge, anyone going into the medical field (doctor, dentist, nurse, veterinarian for examples) or going into teaching from grade school through high school would get all their student loans forgiven. Without healthy and educated people nothing else happens so that's the basic foundation of a society, imho. Reward the people who build the foundations more than anyone else.
Good luck, a friend just managed to complete the paperwork for that (debt from law school, ugh) and seeing the rest of all that money zeroed out was such a sense of relief. 🤞
Biden ended a 20 year war, BernieBros called him a murderer. Biden completely forgives the student loans of 20 million more loan holders, BernieBros accuse him of bunting. Biden signs the most comprehensive infrastructure and climate change bills in history, BernieBros still call him a piece of shit. And so on and so on. All to avoid admitting they were wrong about Biden in 2020.
Pretty sure Berniebros were the only people who had Joe's back on Afghanistan - it was the MSNBC hawks who were equivocating there. In context, the BIF was a Republican highway bill that killed the BBB (as progressives warned it would).
If anything, an agenda that included things like the Pro Act, BBB, a public option and student loan forgiveness shaking out the way it has seems to indicate that the perfidious Bernard Brothers (people in their 30s trying to start families) were pretty correct in their assessment.
I don't think you understand what you're talking about and perhaps have Berniebros confused with National Review editors.
Biden's current tack of holding Afghanistan's money supply hostage while people starve certainly deserves scorn, but the initial withdrawal was celebrated by progressives and painted as a disaster by the talking heads on every cable news network. You've got things totally backward.
Maybe I'm the exception, but I appreciate people like you who care for the animals I love (and eat). I have been endlessly grateful for all the times vets helped my pets get/feel better - and the one time they helped my old dog sleep when she wasn't going to get better. The next time I'm tempted to roll my eyes or bitch at how much a visit costs I'm going to shut my own muzzle and say thanks.
"I will forever be frustrated by the Democrats somehow not realizing that if they're going to get called Socialists no matter what they actually do, they might as well do something big." Say what you want about Kinsey Boy Buttigieg but he dropped a version of this line in the 2020 primary debates, and I applauded in my car. He's very good at speaking in ways that compute. The Democrats might be wise to consider that their 2024 nominee ought to be somebody with this skill.
To me, the biggest problem with the 2023 "everyone plays everyone" schedule is going to come with make up games. Looking at next season's White Sox schedule, the home opener is with those San Fran Giants. It's a three-game series, with a day off after the opener, which allows for a make up game if the weather is lousy. But this is April in Chicago. It's possible the weather will be really lousy. And what if they have to postpone a game? Or better yet, when the Phillies are in town later in the month, and a last blast of winter snows out two games, making them up will be a real pain in the ass. Of course, I'm now rooting for tons of bad weather in April, to see how MLB handles the chaos.
All the NL teams will be in the area to play the Cubs (plus Reds, Brewers, Cards, etc.), so I’m sure they can work something out. Wonder if they’d ever consider doing a mixed-doubleheader, with something like the Giants playing the Cubs at 1 and the White Sox at 7?
The Twins have SIXTEEN home games scheduled in April. MLB really thought it was a good idea to put the most home games of any month of the season in April. In Minnesota.
Perhaps we will see our first double headers featuring two different away teams.
We went to visit the filing cabinets in 2018. They were still in the original location, which was essentially an abandoned lot. There were residents (squirrels) living in the drawers. It was kind of awesome.
I'm not sure it was a bad send by the Phillies 3B coach. How often are you going to get thrown out from just shy of the warning track? If there had to be a relay, Hoskins might well have beaten it.
With 2 outs, even if the next hitter is a .300 hitter, if you have a better than 30% chance of making it, send him. That looked like the case to me.
Anna is wise.
True fact: I was looking at the weather here in Northern Virginia (pushing 90 and hella humid, thanks for asking) and on a whim I looked up Burlington weather for today. Anna is VERY wise.
Rock on, Calcaterras.
As much as I love Vermont, when you look up those temps again in, say mid November, you may feel differently.
I went to grad school in Boston and my wife was from Minnesota… I honestly don’t mind winter (even hard winter) because you can always add another layer. I grew up here in the NoVA swamp and I’m used to it but I always look longingly at places with cooler, dryer summers. You will still have a hard time convincing me that Anna isn’t smarter than the rest of us.
We recently visited the small town in Wisconsin where I grew up. My wife loved it until a fellow Coffee poster (hi Ghost!) confirmed my statement that it will go weeks without getting above 0 during the winter.
Atlanta’s northern exurbs have pretty good weather. Not San Diego good, but pretty good. We are out of the midtown concrete heat sink, close to a large lake that moderates weather and can see the Appalachian foothills from here so elevation cuts down on the summer heat and humidity.
Woodstock or Canton? Although the idea that Canton could be an exurb is frightening. When I was in Woodstock in the 90s it was the place people from Alpharetta made fun off.
Johns Creek / Cuming. Lake Lanier not Altoona.
I think the Better Half thought you were jiving her until I mentioned it without prompting.
Minor correction: much, much, MUCH better half. But otherwise 💯!
Which town? "Weeks?" I know you're probably exaggerating to prove a point but not even Heyward goes "weeks' without getting above 0. Now, if you'd said "weeks without getting about 20," you'd be on to something.
And both me and Prince agree: we like weeks without getting above 20 - it "keeps a lot of the bad people out."
Yeah, three or four days with a subzero high is nothing out of the ordinary, happens every other year or so when you're living along the 45th or further north between Spokane and... well, the Atlantic.
Heyward, home of the mighty musky! Wasn't that where they used to have the birki every winter with an very 1970s lodge near the start?
I grew up a bit SW of there in River Falls.
Not sure about the birkibiner (sic) but I do know that's where Lumberjack Days happens, and one year Bob Uecker was a celebrity judge. He often enough reminisces about it... I think he had a GREAT time! I love it up there. I go to a cabin in Sawyer County at least two or three times a year. I wish it was a four-season cabin...
I'm Team North of the 40th Parallel 100%. If I can be that 110%, I will be that, too.
Haha, I was just on vacation and had that same conversation about how great it was in Toronto, etc but gosh, ask again in January and we might feel a lot different about it.
Ah, but wait till winter when you are basking in the 50s and VT is under six feet of snow.
Personally, I like snow. Dont like driving while it's falling but otherwise I like it. I even like shoveling to an extent.
Snow is easier to deal with as you get up into where it snows all the time. People really work out how to deal with it.
The problem with winter up there (and here in Albany) is that it lasts way too long.
I love snow too, not that I drive in it (or at all). But most people don't seem to care for it much. We'll miss it when it's gone.
Albany? I'm from the Albany area too. (Clifton Park)
The big storms you can accept. It's when you get up for the 3rd day in a row to find 2 more inches of snow. "F***! I have to shovel it again?!!"
(I can't really leave it to melt, because my driveway is on the north side of the house, shaded by the house, so it doesn't. And the gutters empty on to the driveway so melt water from the roof soaks the snow and freezes to ice overnight, so soon I have 3 inches of ice on my driveway. Then the melt water backs up into the garage. So by far the easiest path is the shovel it when it happens.)
Honestly, it's not the snow that gets you. It's -10 daytime high with a 25 mph wind whipping off the lake. But even those days don't happen nearly as much.
Check in on Valentine's day.
Watching O’Neal Cruz as a non Pirate fan is fun. It is like what would have happened had we given Shawon Dunston the super soldier serum. Amazing arm. Ridiculously fast swing that is also ridiculously long, a combination that is unheard of. Body by Manute Bol. Atrocious plate discipline. If I rooted for Stargellville, I’d be tearing my hair out but love having oddballs like him around.
My only issue with the eventual realignment of MLB by geography is that the Mets would never, ever get out of the shadow of the Yankees. Otherwise, bring it on.
Addressing student debt is good, but can we address just why college is so expensive? And maybe even ask the big question: why go to college? I think I could have done exactly what I have done in my jobs without college. Maybe we need to rethink the necessity of forcing people to spend four more years being educated if their careers don't need it. And leave college for those who do.
The ease of student debt is a cause of the high cost. “Addressing” debt in this fashion will increase costs. This is basic Econ 101, something I think that about 0.101% of politicians and prognosticators understand.
So you are saying it will cause inflation? Or just that we should replace student loans with student grants?
Inflation generally or inflation of costs of school specifically? Yes to both. For the former, see the tweet stream from Jason Furman who was chairman of President *Obama’s* Council of Economic Advisors.
Solutions for the costs? Too long for this forum but income share agreements which cause ‘skin in the game’ for the school would be a better approach than traditional loans. I’d also look at the increase in overhead from growth of physical plant and administration at schools - number of non faculty employees has grown substantially in the last 4 decades as has the quality/quantity of dorm and other structures. And better options for trade school which can lead to lucrative careers without a classic liberal arts degree.
I'd like to see tuition be publicly funded. If schools want to build extravagant dorms so be it. Market forces should help reign in housing costs as there will always be competition there. Not so much for the actual education part. Ignoring for a moment that some of the most important things I learned in college I learned at my residence...
But have costs REALLY gone up that much? Surely exceeding the inflation rate by so much is at least in part "charging what you can get away with."
It's probably too simplistic to just say "the big private colleges should stop hording their endowments." But man, Harvard has a lot of money.
It's largely about funding mechanisms. My alma mater has a very fun steer shaped chart about it: https://onestop.utexas.edu/managing-costs/cost-tuition-rates/learn-more-about-tuition/sources-of-revenue/
TLDR: In 1990, the state provided 34% of revenue. In 2020, it provides 10%. This seems not ideal for the flagship institution that's supposed to educate your state's workforce of tomorrow.
Jason Furman is a goofus and, like Larry Summers and other members of that braintrust, defending his own legacy by constantly advocating against anything beyond the underpowered half-measures that made the Obama recovery so slow and such a direct transfer of wealth upwards.
The facts of the matter are that costs have increased (and will continue to increase) for the reasons Craig laid out earlier in the piece, regardless of whether or not a percentage of outstanding student debt is forgiven. Again, this is not a concern for the sage Ivy Leaguers who warn against such irresponsibility because they either have family money or can take advantage of those well-endowed institutions' generous need-based financial aid.
To address the other canard that's being thrown around, any inflationary results are already baked in, as student loan payments have been on pause for two years. If anything, the resumption of payments in January will be *deflationary* as millions of households will once again be paying a pointless tax of several hundred dollars a month.
My wife and I paid off $27k in loans (through, essentially, luck), but I have many friends in their 30s who still carry loans and I'm very excited that they'll have that burden lifted or reduced. Consider it a delayed payment of what the boomers owe from cutting school funding the past 30 years.
Systematic defunding of public education since about 1978 (primary, secondary, and higher) is the root cause and the so-called Greatest Generation is to blame.
As Craig noted, higher education was gutted in the 80s such that anyone who went to college in the 90s paid twice as much those who went as little as four years earlier (*ahem*).
Gingrich-era (aka The Contract ON America) changes to student loans also made two things possible -- 1) the buying and selling of student loan debt 2) for-profit universities, some of which truly were trying to fill the gap, but too many were just exploiting the situation. There's a reason why DeVos gutted any Gainful Employment rules.
Unfortunately you're both right: the relief will be short lived as colleges and universities will do what they always do and raise tuition and fees.
I filled out an online survey from OSU yesterday (where I got my MS) asking about "engagement" with THE university as an alumnus, but really, trying to figure out why I'm not giving money to them. I tend to agree with John Mulaney, that giving money to my alma mater after I graduate is like falling in love with a hooker: Once the transaction is over, I'm not getting anything more out of the relationship.
But they didn't have a question about that, so I told them I give all my philanthropy money to religious institutions instead. Which is true.
I'm sure UMich law school wonders why I have never given money to help educate many more hundreds of greedy little jerks. If they had a fund for public service lawyers I might consider it, but it was considered a joke to have that ambition when I went there. 50% of incoming 1st years said it, about 5% of grads did it.
I'm not sure the move to geographic conferences is a given - the NFL kept the NFC and AFC, right?
Anyways, I'm looking forward to the balanced schedule if only to see which of the Central divisions crowns a champion with a record under .500 first.
It'll be the AL Central, because at least the NL Central has the Cardinals (total losing seasons this millennium: 1) around to more or less guarantee at least one team will be over .500.
If it were only four - https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-masters-trap-part-two-069?utm_medium=email
(this is pt. 2 so you can get to pt. 1)
I made an effort to avoid getting a master's. I did the math and saw that I would not end up with any more money than I had started with, and that it would just barely help my professional skills.
I had the fortune of working for a F500 company out of college with a tuition reimbursement program. The job sucked, but I stuck it out for 5 years as I spent 3+ years getting an MBA one class at a time - on their dime. I've always joked / not joked that people were way more impressed that I was working full time, married, and getting an MBA at night. One I had the degree I was just another schmuck with an MBA. Then the "MBA" job offers all paid less than what I was making in sale, so I'm still in sales 30 years later.
So you missed the threefold train named: "MBAs being paid to artificially inflate stock prices followed by MBAs being paid to fleece bondholders with inflated merger/acquisition values followed by MBAs being paid to stay on to help navigate the bankruptcies they caused"?
If the Mets and Yankees ended up in the same division, it would instantly become the biggest rivalry in sports.
And that would be oppressive after a while. And then people would get bored. Also, there is almost no Knicks-Nets rivalry and they have been in the same division for decades.
I seem to recall that ratings for the 2000 World Series were not that great outside of the NY area.
Several thoughts. First, in theory if not in practice, college keeps people out of the workforce for c. 4 years.
Second, with regard to the costs of attending, it's not just the tuition. All sorts of associated costs have gone up. Some of this is because of amenity creep on campus (fancier dorms, more recreation facilities, more and better food options), and some because of the modern world (IT, etc.). And that's not even taking into account the predatory textbook model (albeit the pushback toward open source instructional materials).
But all that doesn't mean you need to pass the cost onto the students. State funding should be higher. Fundraising should be done more intelligently. (Dear lord, if only we could find a way to convince football boosters to give their money to education, but that seems unlikely.) There could be laws about textbooks.
And do we really need better dorms? I lived for four years in pretty basic quarters, two of them in rooms where the only piece of furniture I could move was my chair. Dorms need to be functional, nothing more (says the person in a fairly tiny two bedroom apartment still using the used furniture my wife got when her grandparents died, so don't trust my judgement).
My son got placed into the oldest dorm on his campus last year. It, like yours, had everything fixed in place with no lofting of the bed or anything like that. The temperatures indoors could fluctuate by 20 degrees F depending on whether the heat was working that day. The elevators broke down at least once a week. It's a dump that the university doesn't want to put money into since they've spent the last 5 years planning to tear it down and replace it. What it also had was a huge common area shared by 8 guys and a reasonable bathroom shared by the same group. By the end of first quarter they had THE place to hang out on their floor and he met a ton of great people.
By contrast, the newest dorms are fully modular and students get a private bathroom. The place is more like a hotel though where everyone keeps their doors closed and locked and you MIGHT pass someone in the hallway once in a while. Especially coming out of COVID with a group of kids whose social skills were rusty, I heard a lot of stories of students who had made essentially zero friends by the midway point of the year.
The "better" dorms aren't always better.
Wait. You are supposed to make friends in college? (I did to some degree, but it was always utterly superficial. Didn't keep any of them after.)
I came out of college close friends with a woman who is now my wife and two close guy friends. One of the guy friends died a decade later and the other lives 3000 miles away and we've seen each other twice in the past 20 years. So I'm batting .333 I guess.
The bare minimum for dorms has changed, though. Not only does the dorm need to be set up for wifi, students have expectations for spaces for their electronics, and the wiring needs to support this. Besides that, colleges compete on their dorm amenities, rightly or wrongly.
My inner grumpy old man is offended by the idea of dorm amenities being meeting the requirements for a postmodern electronics set-up. But the world clearly changes. (I wonder what my old college did about electricity. We weren't even allowed toasters and hot plates because that would fry the power.)
That was actually an advantage of the older dorm. My son brought his own wifi router since there was only ethernet provided. That meant he could be sure it was locked down and secure (Elec and Computer Engineering student). The newer dorms prohibited personal routers and required you to use the sytem built into the building, warts and all. He also pushed way beyond the recommended limits on power draw with two monitors, a gaming desktop computer a mini-fridge and microwave. Toss in a water kettle and his roommate's rice cooker and a instantpot as well. I'm not sure the newer dorms could have handled it all, now that everything is built to a bare minimum standard and not a dime more.
That said, he's looking forward to moving into a more modern building this year. I'm happy for him but not really enjoying the additional $1,000 month in housing costs.
I hate the schedule. While I agree that 19 division games was too many, watching games between the Mets and every AL Central team is going to be way worse than another Philadelphia series.
Also, just wait until the bitching by players and managers about the much increased travel gets going next year!
The new schedule is step number 73 in making the sport solely about the playoffs and taking away the beauty of 162 with a meaningful pennant race.
Counterpoint (though I don’t disagree with you on the degradation of the regular season): the new schedule means that every home stadium will see every other team in MLB at least once every two years without. Yes, that means lots of underwhelming matchups but it’s also good for teams selling tickets to traveling Yankees, Mets, Cubs, and Dodgers fans, among others.
Also as a Nats fan, it means 3 to 4 fewer games per season where visiting fans from New York and Philadelphia make life unpleasant.
So essentially, you're trading games that are currently against say Atlanta and replacing them with games vs. the A's and Mariners and Royals.
Yes. You could say we're .... Chopping them.
[I'll show myself out, thanks.]
I think Mets fans everywhere like that trade. At least right now, when it seems like the Barves are a dynasty in the making and the Mets are still rebuilding the farm system. (Of course, if the Mets and Barves had played less game this season, I think we would be exactly in the same place.)
Instead you’re going to get visiting fans from NYY and BAL . (With the nature of DC’s population of temporary migrants from all over, you get fans of the visitors no matter who is visiting, but that is a unique Nats issue.)
O's fans hardly even go to games in their own stadium. I'm not sure a lot of them will show up at Nats games. Yankees fans, yeah. Probably in bigger numbers than Mets fans do.
They, like most fans, travel better when the team does well. And since that hasn’t happened since the GWB administration it is easy to forget.
Yes, but the 12 of them will always yell "O!" during the National Anthem.
That ATL fans don’t yell out on “home of the brave” while BAL fans do at the beginning (hmm shouldn’t the O be at the - or in the - end?) is just one of those things that makes no sense about fandom.
In my personal experience, traveling Yankee fans are obnoxious frontrunners but otherwise harmless. Traveling Phillies fans are similar and slightly more confrontational but they get quiet when the Phillies are losing. The Mets fans who pack the LF corner at Nats Park when the team is good are drunken louts looking for a fight regardless of the score. I know they are not representative of all Mets fans (because I've been to Citi Field) but the "7 Army" isn't sending its best and brightest to DC.
The best and brightest not going to DC is an issue that transcends baseball.
Well played. I have a good friend who's lived here for 30 years who tells people who complain about the political climate in DC "that's because you send all your assholes here!"
Agreed. The last thing we need is for our teams to play more games in different time zones so the games are either on too late to watch or start before you get out of work, depending on where you live. Given my druthers I'd have games start at 7:10 my local time every day. (Except Sundays)
My formative fandom of The Barves was when Kuhn and Kompany were so geographically challenged that Atlanta was in the West. That was a lot of 10pm start times from California.
Never did understand how Chicago and St Louis were in the East while Atlanta and Cincinnati (which are almost exactly north/south of one another, 300 miles east of Chicago and 350 from St Louis) were in the West.
With the AL Central playing more games against the East it does improve the odds the AL Central Division Champ next year is 78-84.
I initially hated it, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes, if only for fairness. The Yankees have had to face four AL East different teams 18 times each, all of which are (or have been) decent this year, some actually good. Meanwhile the Astros (for example) have only one other team in their division that is not at least 10 games below .500.
To date, the Yankees have played 81 of their 122 games against teams with .500 or better records, compared to just 58 games for Houston. 19 of the Yankees last 40 games are against such teams, plus 6 more against Boston, which would bring their season total up to 99, or even as many as 105, if Boston somehow eeks out a .500 record.
The Astros have only 16 of 37 games left against teams with winning records, so they will have played only 76 out of 162 games against competitive teams, less than half their schedule.
In a system where seeding and first round playoff byes are determined by overall record, how is that fair?
I'd rather have domed cities than flying cars, if we're choosing futuristic ideas. The way people drive like maniacs in only 2 dimensions they definitely don't need to add any more possible directions to ignore stop signals.
I've been to convention centers that were connected to a bunch of other hotels and restaurants and shopping via covered walkways and it was awesome walking around between buildings without getting rained and snowed on. 🙂
One of my favorite games in downtown Minneapolis is “can I walk from here to there without going outside?“ More often than not, the answer is yes.
That leads to an interesting question: can you actually live there WIHTOUT ever having to step outside?
Technically. no - but a friend of Mary's described a typical white-collar Twin Cities day thusly: heated house -> heated garage -> heated car (remote started) -> heated parking ramp -> heated elevator -> heated office ... and reverse to home. Lunch and workday errands are all via heated skywalks. You MIGHT have to brave the elements if your grocery/after work errands don't have a ramp ... but basically you can avoid going outside unless you WANT to.
For all the issues and problems with shopping malls, this they got right. Lots of things in one place and out of the weather.
I was in Des Moines for work a couple of years ago in November and I could walk from my hotel about 1.5 miles from the library where my meetings were, only going outdoors to cross the final street and enter the library.
That SF merch is so cringe.
Oh, and the answer to “who would buy that shirt?“ Is “tourists who call it ‘San Fran’.”
So what is wrong with San Fran? Seems like a perfectly reasonable abbreviation.
I guess the people in Frisco don’t like it too much….. (:
I get the objection to Frisco, though "It was raining hard in San Francisco" doesn't scan well. (I assume Harry Chapin never played that one in SF.)
I woke up at two thinking it was five, pulled up Cup of Coffee, and then looked at the time.
Weird start to the day.
Did Luhnow even have to delete things from his phone? It wasn't a criminal investigation. MLB has no legal authority to insist on seeing his phone. Why couldn't he just tell them no when they asked for it.
Yes, it might have looked suspicious had he done so and he'd still have been suspended, but no more suspicious than deleting its contents. And how many of us would say no if our employer asked to search our phone? It wouldn't be unreasonable to say no even if you had nothing to hide.
I suspect that he had a contractual obligation to cooperate with the commissioner’s investigation. Say no and he is fired for cause forfeiting future income and still gets banned. He can refuse, but there are consequences beyond merely looking suspicious.
Well, they could have eventually sued him for any number of things (damage to the reputation of their product, etc), in which case he wwould be obligated to turn over the evidence. And his intentional deletion of the texts, at a time when he knew there was a very real possibility of litigation in which those texts would be directly relevant to the heart of the matter, could definitely get him in some legal hot water. But that said, no, it wouldn't be the same as a criminal investigation.
Drellich's piece contains the passage below, which, if true, seems to suggest that Luhnow's missing data on his phone were still contained on his laptop's iMessage or whatever - which to me makes this a bit of a nothing burger.
This is one area of Drellich's reporting on this story that has always irritated me. He'll get pieces of interesting information that conflict with or contextualize his narrative and he never chases them down. A good reminder why sportswriters are not investigative journalists.
"Yet, when the league looked at the hex of the SMS database, MLB also found traces of nine messages between Luhnow and Koch-Weser, from March and August of 2019, a person with knowledge of the investigation said. MLB couldn’t recover those texts on either device, however.
'I never deleted any messages between myself and Tom,' Luhnow said. 'I have them all and the Astros and MLB had access to all of them from my work computer.'”
Quality tune by The National to close things out. I almost thought they got Bryan Cranston to do a cameo in the video...
. I would not let my corpse wear a ‘San Fran’ shirt.
If it's any consolation, Columbus average annual snowfall - 28"
Burlington average annual snowfall - 81"
So while you state the talking points (cost of college has gone up, more loans that previous generations), I note that you omit any discussion of what happens next. The cost of college isn’t going down, or should I say didn’t go down as a result of this. People are going to the same schools, and taking out the same — or more! — loans. Are we entering a cycle of perpetual bad decisions followed by forgiveness? Serious question. I’m far more interested in lowering the cost of college than forgiving loans and shrugging at accountability. Now that this election year stunt is performed, I’d like to see progress on reducing the cost of state schools and making trade/community schools as close to free as possible. That’s the future as far as I can tell.
It might be good to demystify the private schools. I do not believe in the least that you get a better and more useful education at Harvard than at Queens College. (My wife started at Barnard and ended at Queens and I feel like the quality of the education was exactly the same.
Though she was a fellow English major, and you can argue we both wasted four years with that.) But it "looks good on your resume."
As a Princeton grad with a Harvard graduate degree I would like to say this opinion is dangerous, inflammatory and completely correct.
When I was at Purdue many people back home in VA thought that I was Ivy League. (Purdue, Yale, Harvard...it does sound like it fits in.) I never corrected anybody.
I thought Purdue was where you went to learn how process chickens.
You can do that there. I learned how to manage automotive manufacturing lines, a skill I never once used in the real world.
But you can drink a boilermaker in one swallow without blinking. Life skills, man.
I seems to me that private colleges are as much about accessing their alumni networks as anything else. I have a friend who worked in the Princeton library system while his wife got a masters and PhD there. He told me that the students there largely weren’t any brighter or classes better than a second tier illinois state school. The students generally came from money and had relatives that were alumni. His wife (now a art history/classics prof) just paid off her loans two years ago at the age of 50. Of course that’s just anecdotal. Another high school friend has many degrees across engineering and architecture from several schools: University of Illinois, UT in Austin x 2 and University of Chicago. He’d tell you that UofC by far gave him the better education, so maybe some top tier schools actually do deliver on their reputation.
Trying to tap into my school's alumni network was worthless. I wasn't interested in the business world, or being a lawyer or doctor, so they didn't really know what to do with me.
Brandon should have done a less obvious election year stunt like a $2 trillion tax break for the rich.
I’m probably left of you and I think this loan forgiveness was a big mistake. That being said the ‘Brandon’ thing is tired and childish.
If you want to say ‘Fuck Joe Biden’, just do it, no one cares. I voted for Biden because he wasn’t trump, I’d have voted for a ham sandwich, hell, a rotten ham sandwich before trump. That being said, this forgiveness act is terrible policy that solves nothing. Does this happen again in 2 years? 4? 6?
Not sure what "left of you" means in an American context since the sum and total of most people's political engagement is watching TV, reading posts and voting every couple of years. On that score, we're probably similar. (I'm an active union member though).
Brandon is a rich semiotic text that also happens to annoy MAGA chuds because we've stolen their word. I, for one, like that younger people are attempting to shed the image the Dem party has cultivated of being humorless scolds, but YMMV.
I don't think anyone is claiming that loan forgiveness is a perfect instrument, it just happens to be a policy that both a) makes life materially better for millions of Americans and b) is something the president can do unilaterally.
Any arguments against it that don't center that political reality are childish protests not worth considering. I'll take a policy that "solves nothing" but substantially helps many of my friends (and would have helped my wife and I were it not for, essentially, dumb luck) over basically every other policy enacted since I joined this planet 32 years ago.
That’s an excellent response. I have no doubt that we are more alike than different. You are 100% right that this •does• benefit a multitude of people that normally get no help. It does not help me, but I couldn’t care less about that. I guess it’s harder to help Americans even worse off with shitty car loans and the like, but I suppose a victory is a victory even if it’s not a victory for people needing the most help. But you have a point. Cheers.
I will forever be frustrated by the Democrats somehow not realizing that if they're going to get called Socialists no matter what they actually do, they might as well do something big. This is absolutely a swing for the fences moment but they squared up to bunt.
I graduated undergrad in 2010 with a reasonablish amount of student loan debt thanks to getting a lot of scholarships. Then I went to vet school. If you want to talk about a profession teetering on the edge of a very dangerous abyss, it's the one that not only takes care of family pets but also makes sure all the meat in the country is safe to eat. Even if you land instate tuition, you're graduating with at least $150K in debt to become a vet and not making anywhere close to that for at least your first decade in practice. I've been out of school for 6 years and even with the pause on interest going into effect almost three years ago now, the interest accrued on my grad school loans alone is higher than my total undergrad debt.
The profession is rapidly becoming one that can only be afforded if you are born into wealth (I was not), don't mind joining the military to get it paid for (hard fucking pass), or are willing to take on a mortgage's worth of debt for a piece of paper that grants you the right to get verbally shit on by owners and literally shit on by the animals. There's already a shortage of vets in the country and I don't see it getting better anytime soon without some sort of drastic course correction.
My daughter did a couple of days of ride along with out equine vet, then noped right out of any thoughts of being a Vet. She has an undergrad Animal Science degree with an Equine Science minor and a Masters in Ag - and works for the govt.
An Sci squad rise up!
One of my sisters is a vet and yup.
Personally if I was in charge, anyone going into the medical field (doctor, dentist, nurse, veterinarian for examples) or going into teaching from grade school through high school would get all their student loans forgiven. Without healthy and educated people nothing else happens so that's the basic foundation of a society, imho. Reward the people who build the foundations more than anyone else.
I'm over halfway through the PSLF required 120 payments which will grant me forgiveness if the whole system works appropriately which...
Good luck, a friend just managed to complete the paperwork for that (debt from law school, ugh) and seeing the rest of all that money zeroed out was such a sense of relief. 🤞
A fellow shelter vet I know out in Omaha got hers wiped last year, so I'm getting optimistic!
Biden ended a 20 year war, BernieBros called him a murderer. Biden completely forgives the student loans of 20 million more loan holders, BernieBros accuse him of bunting. Biden signs the most comprehensive infrastructure and climate change bills in history, BernieBros still call him a piece of shit. And so on and so on. All to avoid admitting they were wrong about Biden in 2020.
Pretty sure Berniebros were the only people who had Joe's back on Afghanistan - it was the MSNBC hawks who were equivocating there. In context, the BIF was a Republican highway bill that killed the BBB (as progressives warned it would).
If anything, an agenda that included things like the Pro Act, BBB, a public option and student loan forgiveness shaking out the way it has seems to indicate that the perfidious Bernard Brothers (people in their 30s trying to start families) were pretty correct in their assessment.
The day Biden ended the war, the BernieBros flooded social media with accusations of "murderer" and "war criminal" toward Biden.
They have to, of course. Otherwise, they would have to admit they were wrong.
I don't think you understand what you're talking about and perhaps have Berniebros confused with National Review editors.
Biden's current tack of holding Afghanistan's money supply hostage while people starve certainly deserves scorn, but the initial withdrawal was celebrated by progressives and painted as a disaster by the talking heads on every cable news network. You've got things totally backward.
Maybe I'm the exception, but I appreciate people like you who care for the animals I love (and eat). I have been endlessly grateful for all the times vets helped my pets get/feel better - and the one time they helped my old dog sleep when she wasn't going to get better. The next time I'm tempted to roll my eyes or bitch at how much a visit costs I'm going to shut my own muzzle and say thanks.
"I will forever be frustrated by the Democrats somehow not realizing that if they're going to get called Socialists no matter what they actually do, they might as well do something big." Say what you want about Kinsey Boy Buttigieg but he dropped a version of this line in the 2020 primary debates, and I applauded in my car. He's very good at speaking in ways that compute. The Democrats might be wise to consider that their 2024 nominee ought to be somebody with this skill.
To me, the biggest problem with the 2023 "everyone plays everyone" schedule is going to come with make up games. Looking at next season's White Sox schedule, the home opener is with those San Fran Giants. It's a three-game series, with a day off after the opener, which allows for a make up game if the weather is lousy. But this is April in Chicago. It's possible the weather will be really lousy. And what if they have to postpone a game? Or better yet, when the Phillies are in town later in the month, and a last blast of winter snows out two games, making them up will be a real pain in the ass. Of course, I'm now rooting for tons of bad weather in April, to see how MLB handles the chaos.
All the NL teams will be in the area to play the Cubs (plus Reds, Brewers, Cards, etc.), so I’m sure they can work something out. Wonder if they’d ever consider doing a mixed-doubleheader, with something like the Giants playing the Cubs at 1 and the White Sox at 7?
The Twins have SIXTEEN home games scheduled in April. MLB really thought it was a good idea to put the most home games of any month of the season in April. In Minnesota.
Perhaps we will see our first double headers featuring two different away teams.
We went to visit the filing cabinets in 2018. They were still in the original location, which was essentially an abandoned lot. There were residents (squirrels) living in the drawers. It was kind of awesome.
I'm not sure it was a bad send by the Phillies 3B coach. How often are you going to get thrown out from just shy of the warning track? If there had to be a relay, Hoskins might well have beaten it.
With 2 outs, even if the next hitter is a .300 hitter, if you have a better than 30% chance of making it, send him. That looked like the case to me.