Thor goes back to L.A., some minor trades and signings went down, a gonzo Hall of Fame ballot dropped, I'm back at war with my suburb, and we have items about Grant Wahl and 1970s soft rock
Seems that this policy would require every student be referred to at their formal, full first name, absent specific parental approval. (Does each individual teacher have to get this approval, or can there be a school wide approval with the school office passing down to each individual teacher that it's OK to call Alexander "Alex" and Abigail "Abby")
Even putting the bigger gender identity issues aside entirely, it's still a ridiculous policy.
I am so stoked for the soft rock doc. This is the stuff I grew up with (and secretly liked) back in the day and I'm glad to see people embracing the genre.
I will probably watch the doc as I find any music doc quite fascinating. However, I despise most of that stuff due to a radio station JOY-108. That station was on my mom's car radio, office radio, and on her kitchen radio 24/7. Easy listening all of the time was total hell. Although I did dig the disco thing and the Muzac in the grocery store gets me singing all the time, especially if the song is Estimated Prophet.
Why do we even have school boards? Educational policy should be decided by educational professionals, not by parents and not by people who don't even have kids in schools. (There are places in the NY area where the school boards are under the control of Orthodox Jews who send their kids to yeshivas and who resent having to pay for public education for everyone else, which disgusts me.) Yes, we could and would still have terrible policies without school board, I am sure, but school boards seem to exist only to make things worse for kids.
Still rooting for Thor to make it. Even if it's with the Dodgers.
Simon, it's too early in the morning to give me flashbacks to covering small-town BOE meetings for the CMass weekly newspaper in the 90s. But can confirm, except I got the pleasure of gentiles effectively doing the same thing, but with the added twist of calling their scheme "charter schools."
We had a school board member who advocated for special education (he had a Down’s child), but once his children were out of the town’s schools, became a ‘taxes are too high’ guy. Self Service doesn’t apply exclusively to gas stations.
I grew up in that school district (East Ramapo). What the Hasidim have done to the school district is reprehensible. They caused all of the people who could afford to move to move, leaving the poorer people who rely upon public education, and then they decimated public education. The worst part is when they scream "ANTISEMITISM" when they're criticized. They are a despicable community.
I usually try to be supportive of all Jews from all backgrounds, from utterly secular to Hasidic, since antisemites hate us all and because the one who are most likely to be attacked are the most obvious ones. Plus I have Hasidic relatives who are decent people. But there are times when I will say "these people do not represent me, or my faith, or my God."
The recent NYT article about yeshiva's disregarding the legal educational requirements, and how Hasidic religious courts compel divorced parents to keep their kids in them, was a real eye-opener for me.
Yeah, that one is terrible. I will note that I don't love the tone of such NYT coverage because it usually has a bit of "oh those wacky ultra-orthodox Jews who are nothing like us secular Jews," but the attitudes of that community are just awful. (And apparently, they all voted Republican because Trumpist Zeldin promised to leave them alone, yeesh).
I applied for a job with an organization called YAFFED, which is the loudest voice against such behavior and in favor of getting Hasidic children a decent education. It didn't work out, but I would have loved to have worked for them.
So did I, howdy (former) neighbor. I'm sad about what happened and so is The New Yorker and New York Times, which have published dozens of articles on it.
understood -- so am I. We were probably neighbors. I bet we know each other, or at least our families. I graduated in '84 so I probably used to beat you up.
The school Board here in Hillsborough County has a budget of over $2 billion. Therefore, It is a highly political machine. When you can sway influence with that type of money, the kids are the last thing they care about.
For a period, LA school board races were the most competitive municipal races in the city. The charter "movement" backed primarily by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, dumped millions into the races to try to get their handpicked cronies on.
The teachers union was able to fend off most of the onslaught and those races have cooled a bit recently, but it seems like a soft target for the reactionary agenda across the country.
Despite being schmaltzy and middle of the road myself, I can’t claim fandom ... but is “the Captain and Tenille” the editorial equivalent of “the MLB?”
I don’t believe in religion or Heaven or hell or any of that. But every so often I hope I’m wrong. Because it would mean assholes like chip fellows would have to explain to Jesus why they claimed to love Him but spent their very short time on earth doing their best to make life miserable for gay and/or trans people.
low-key flex -- I *think* I was first to mention *Mark* on this thread.
his "work" recently has been next-level!!
people end up basically arguing with themselves about the political nature of his posts. self ownership abounds on his threads.
with the faux Buster Olney and Gammons accounts having quieted down (I'm guessing the people who run them just got tired of it but they were pretty good)
He got a follow from me immediately. Immediately. I've considered starting a rival lefty satire account and playing the role of Red Sox Beat Writer for The Atlantic.
SAME! and realized a lib parody account could *never* hit these heights.
it's (is it tho?) unfortunate that the self-owns are SO often liberals on the thread b/c I don't think that's what he's going for. I guess it just proves that we wear our hearts on our sleeves, or something.
"...mostly because the school board members refuse to listen to people with whom they don’t agree. Mostly because the school board members refuse to appreciate basic reason and demonstrate basic humanity."
It would have been shorter to say the school board members are Republicans.
Don’t know why, but the little note by Dr. Gounder (EDITED to fix embarrassing typo) at the end of her Substack post about a pause in subscription payments and eventual refunds made me sad. I’m hoping it’s just because she was being thorough and not because somebody asked… But I bet somebody asked.
PS Someone on Twitter yesterday said that the Nats’ strategy of holding old timers’ games during the regular season was an interesting approach. It’s blatant fan service - and I’m kinda here for it.
It might be as simple as the way dealing with finances works when settling an estate. And it was heartening to see in the few comments I read how many people wanted the their funds to be used as donations rather than refunded.
Dr. Gounder has a friend who is helping her with. a lot of the social media stuff, whom she has thanked on Twitter. Having to mourn someone in public must be hell. It's bad enough to do it in private.
I'm old, episode 3,028: the contracts for Syndergard and Lorenzen. Fungible pitchers with an upside of being perhaps league average for 150 IP getting on the order of $10m each. I'm a fan of capitalism and the free market and I will never complain that a player is getting too much. But these numbers just break my brain.
I was 10 when we saw the first player, Mike Schmidt, reach the $500,000/year threshold and 13 when Nolan Ryan cleared $1m. George Foster went over $2m in 1982, Kirby Puckett over $3m in 1989, Jose Canseco over $4m in 1990 and Roger Clemens $5m in 1991. After that, we started to make bigger jumps. The first $6m salary was actually Ryno who cleared $7m in '92. After Junior got $8m at the begging of '96, we skipped 9 & 10 for Belle's $11m at the end of that very year. After Kevin Brown was at $15m in '98, we went straight to A-Rod's $25m. At which point, my brain went on the fritz.
Just plugged A-Rod's deal into an inflation calculator--about $43M/year in today's dollars. For comparison Schmidt comes in at ~$2.8M, and Clemens at ~$11M. Interesting.
Ben Hoffman of NYT had something about that the other day in which he said A-Rod's deal has NOT been matched when accounting for inflation.
Players have won some incremental positives but overall the killer is that teams are making SO much more that their percent of annual revenues spent on payroll is down (for most part, I believe including the Yankees) and that is pathetic and IMO affected by the fact that there is no team payroll minimum.
Cool, glad someone did some real digging, because it did appear to me on first glance that A-Rod's deal remained the highest in real dollars. And beyond baseball, a lack of intuitive understanding of inflation has been a major driver for the lack of societal concern about workers' salaries more generally.
"So here I am. Wanting to be that good citizen. Wanting to be a part of my community. But it’s not in the cards, I don’t guess. My job is to be the guy who goes after people, so by God I’ll do it. I’ll do it until Hell won’t have it. I’ll outlast every single one of these sons of bitches and punch them until either they or I can’t stand up any longer. I can do it longer than they can."
I have been a long time reader of the free Thursday Cup of Coffee but the paragraph above is the reason I just now became a fully paid subscriber. Your commitment is an inspiration to those of us who often feel helpless to defend against the constant insanity this world throws at us. Please keep doing what you are doing. Never give up the fight. There are more of us than there are of them.
'Left Coast 70s' on somafm.com. somafm (SF based) got its start with ambient music with spaceflight communication in the background. Other stuff includes 'Illinois Street Lounge,' 'Suburbs of Goa,' 'Boot Liquor,' and this time of year their Holiday playlist. An especially fun, if not juvenile, list is called 'Xmas in Frisko.' 'Lush'(mellow vocals by women), and 'Covers.'
Sometimes, you need school boards because the Superintendent isn't always so super. Still, I wish we could let people be who they are. If it's not for you, don't be that way. The people who are afraid of the Taliban are usually just like them.
PSA: if anyone in your family died of an aneurysm, get screened. I lost a half-sister before a cousin got in an auto accident. In the MRI they saw the weak spot in the aorta to her and said "this is genetic--everyone in your family should be screened." Lo & behold, about half my half-siblings have it. They are now monitored annually and have MedAlert bracelets.
The moist season was such a nostalgia hit. (I mean, so was Lillith, but for this day's topic we need moist music.)
Seems that this policy would require every student be referred to at their formal, full first name, absent specific parental approval. (Does each individual teacher have to get this approval, or can there be a school wide approval with the school office passing down to each individual teacher that it's OK to call Alexander "Alex" and Abigail "Abby")
Even putting the bigger gender identity issues aside entirely, it's still a ridiculous policy.
I would have begged my parents to make my teachers call me "Luke the Great" as my preferred name.
I'd have gone with "Cool Hand Luke".
Or Luke Skywalker.
I would have asked to be called Catherine the Great, Tsarina of all the Russias.
But my mom would have said no and my dad would have told the teachers I preferred KitKat or something equally silly. Because dads.
As opposed to the obscure but very funny parody musician The Great Lukeski.
This is a great idea and as a parent I would have given my approval and encouraged my kids to change their names often.
I would beg my kids to have the preferred name "fuckchipfellows"
I am so stoked for the soft rock doc. This is the stuff I grew up with (and secretly liked) back in the day and I'm glad to see people embracing the genre.
I will probably watch the doc as I find any music doc quite fascinating. However, I despise most of that stuff due to a radio station JOY-108. That station was on my mom's car radio, office radio, and on her kitchen radio 24/7. Easy listening all of the time was total hell. Although I did dig the disco thing and the Muzac in the grocery store gets me singing all the time, especially if the song is Estimated Prophet.
I'm a music doc mark, and this makes me feel like I'm seen (or, heard).
Why do we even have school boards? Educational policy should be decided by educational professionals, not by parents and not by people who don't even have kids in schools. (There are places in the NY area where the school boards are under the control of Orthodox Jews who send their kids to yeshivas and who resent having to pay for public education for everyone else, which disgusts me.) Yes, we could and would still have terrible policies without school board, I am sure, but school boards seem to exist only to make things worse for kids.
Still rooting for Thor to make it. Even if it's with the Dodgers.
Simon, it's too early in the morning to give me flashbacks to covering small-town BOE meetings for the CMass weekly newspaper in the 90s. But can confirm, except I got the pleasure of gentiles effectively doing the same thing, but with the added twist of calling their scheme "charter schools."
People who don't want to pay for public schools disgust me.
And in Ontario there are 4 boards. English public, English Catholic, French public, French Catholic. It's nuts.
We had a school board member who advocated for special education (he had a Down’s child), but once his children were out of the town’s schools, became a ‘taxes are too high’ guy. Self Service doesn’t apply exclusively to gas stations.
rinse repeat
I grew up in that school district (East Ramapo). What the Hasidim have done to the school district is reprehensible. They caused all of the people who could afford to move to move, leaving the poorer people who rely upon public education, and then they decimated public education. The worst part is when they scream "ANTISEMITISM" when they're criticized. They are a despicable community.
I usually try to be supportive of all Jews from all backgrounds, from utterly secular to Hasidic, since antisemites hate us all and because the one who are most likely to be attacked are the most obvious ones. Plus I have Hasidic relatives who are decent people. But there are times when I will say "these people do not represent me, or my faith, or my God."
The recent NYT article about yeshiva's disregarding the legal educational requirements, and how Hasidic religious courts compel divorced parents to keep their kids in them, was a real eye-opener for me.
Yeah, that one is terrible. I will note that I don't love the tone of such NYT coverage because it usually has a bit of "oh those wacky ultra-orthodox Jews who are nothing like us secular Jews," but the attitudes of that community are just awful. (And apparently, they all voted Republican because Trumpist Zeldin promised to leave them alone, yeesh).
I applied for a job with an organization called YAFFED, which is the loudest voice against such behavior and in favor of getting Hasidic children a decent education. It didn't work out, but I would have loved to have worked for them.
As a Jew nothing pisses me off more than spurious accusations of anti-semitism
Except maybe actual antisemitism.
But yeah, we use it as an excuse, and that only makes combatting it harder.
So did I, howdy (former) neighbor. I'm sad about what happened and so is The New Yorker and New York Times, which have published dozens of articles on it.
No kidding. When did you graduate? Ramapo or SV?
I'll try to keep my anonymity a little bit here but I'm from the "north side" of the district. Graduated '90.
understood -- so am I. We were probably neighbors. I bet we know each other, or at least our families. I graduated in '84 so I probably used to beat you up.
The school Board here in Hillsborough County has a budget of over $2 billion. Therefore, It is a highly political machine. When you can sway influence with that type of money, the kids are the last thing they care about.
Also school boards are a bureaucratic waste of money. School policy should be centrally decided, not different in every neighbourhood.
For a period, LA school board races were the most competitive municipal races in the city. The charter "movement" backed primarily by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, dumped millions into the races to try to get their handpicked cronies on.
The teachers union was able to fend off most of the onslaught and those races have cooled a bit recently, but it seems like a soft target for the reactionary agenda across the country.
Keep fighting the good fight, Craig!
Despite being schmaltzy and middle of the road myself, I can’t claim fandom ... but is “the Captain and Tenille” the editorial equivalent of “the MLB?”
I've heard with both the "The" and without. All album listings I can find didn't have it, but their TV show did: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073970/
Casey referred to them as "Captain and Tenille". Just like he referred to "Eagles".
Case closed.
Did someone say Yacht Rock?https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRVCK3FQ/
Outstanding, thank you.
I don’t believe in religion or Heaven or hell or any of that. But every so often I hope I’m wrong. Because it would mean assholes like chip fellows would have to explain to Jesus why they claimed to love Him but spent their very short time on earth doing their best to make life miserable for gay and/or trans people.
Easy answer to that question.
I'm not sure what the answer is. Also not sure what the question is.
Question is why does this religious guy feel the need to act like an asshole?
Answer is in the reason neither you or I are religious.
Art Davidson’s ballot is a joke. If only he followed in the footsteps of Pulitzer Prize-winner and ace copyright expert Mark Gooden. https://twitter.com/toogooden17/status/1602830732677812224?s=46&t=RPm52Yo0Z7YNNOF1WXb-9A
"NY Mets Beat Writer for The Federalist"
Parody truly is just real life now.
Just to be clear, that actually is a parody account. He's really good at playing it with a straight face!
A better gag than Father Guido Sarducci being the rock critic for the Vatican newspaper.
Damn, that's well done.
low-key flex -- I *think* I was first to mention *Mark* on this thread.
his "work" recently has been next-level!!
people end up basically arguing with themselves about the political nature of his posts. self ownership abounds on his threads.
with the faux Buster Olney and Gammons accounts having quieted down (I'm guessing the people who run them just got tired of it but they were pretty good)
and Mike Crudale
He got a follow from me immediately. Immediately. I've considered starting a rival lefty satire account and playing the role of Red Sox Beat Writer for The Atlantic.
SAME! and realized a lib parody account could *never* hit these heights.
it's (is it tho?) unfortunate that the self-owns are SO often liberals on the thread b/c I don't think that's what he's going for. I guess it just proves that we wear our hearts on our sleeves, or something.
I'm guessing the final score was something like "Mets 11, Writer for The Federalist 0".
"...mostly because the school board members refuse to listen to people with whom they don’t agree. Mostly because the school board members refuse to appreciate basic reason and demonstrate basic humanity."
It would have been shorter to say the school board members are Republicans.
Don’t know why, but the little note by Dr. Gounder (EDITED to fix embarrassing typo) at the end of her Substack post about a pause in subscription payments and eventual refunds made me sad. I’m hoping it’s just because she was being thorough and not because somebody asked… But I bet somebody asked.
PS Someone on Twitter yesterday said that the Nats’ strategy of holding old timers’ games during the regular season was an interesting approach. It’s blatant fan service - and I’m kinda here for it.
It might be as simple as the way dealing with finances works when settling an estate. And it was heartening to see in the few comments I read how many people wanted the their funds to be used as donations rather than refunded.
I am a firm believer that Livan could still get through the order one time.
Dr. Gounder has a friend who is helping her with. a lot of the social media stuff, whom she has thanked on Twitter. Having to mourn someone in public must be hell. It's bad enough to do it in private.
I'm old, episode 3,028: the contracts for Syndergard and Lorenzen. Fungible pitchers with an upside of being perhaps league average for 150 IP getting on the order of $10m each. I'm a fan of capitalism and the free market and I will never complain that a player is getting too much. But these numbers just break my brain.
I was 10 when we saw the first player, Mike Schmidt, reach the $500,000/year threshold and 13 when Nolan Ryan cleared $1m. George Foster went over $2m in 1982, Kirby Puckett over $3m in 1989, Jose Canseco over $4m in 1990 and Roger Clemens $5m in 1991. After that, we started to make bigger jumps. The first $6m salary was actually Ryno who cleared $7m in '92. After Junior got $8m at the begging of '96, we skipped 9 & 10 for Belle's $11m at the end of that very year. After Kevin Brown was at $15m in '98, we went straight to A-Rod's $25m. At which point, my brain went on the fritz.
Your brain was on the fritz way before, if you recited all that from memory :)
Just plugged A-Rod's deal into an inflation calculator--about $43M/year in today's dollars. For comparison Schmidt comes in at ~$2.8M, and Clemens at ~$11M. Interesting.
Ben Hoffman of NYT had something about that the other day in which he said A-Rod's deal has NOT been matched when accounting for inflation.
Players have won some incremental positives but overall the killer is that teams are making SO much more that their percent of annual revenues spent on payroll is down (for most part, I believe including the Yankees) and that is pathetic and IMO affected by the fact that there is no team payroll minimum.
Cool, glad someone did some real digging, because it did appear to me on first glance that A-Rod's deal remained the highest in real dollars. And beyond baseball, a lack of intuitive understanding of inflation has been a major driver for the lack of societal concern about workers' salaries more generally.
"So here I am. Wanting to be that good citizen. Wanting to be a part of my community. But it’s not in the cards, I don’t guess. My job is to be the guy who goes after people, so by God I’ll do it. I’ll do it until Hell won’t have it. I’ll outlast every single one of these sons of bitches and punch them until either they or I can’t stand up any longer. I can do it longer than they can."
I have been a long time reader of the free Thursday Cup of Coffee but the paragraph above is the reason I just now became a fully paid subscriber. Your commitment is an inspiration to those of us who often feel helpless to defend against the constant insanity this world throws at us. Please keep doing what you are doing. Never give up the fight. There are more of us than there are of them.
Welcome Jason!
'Left Coast 70s' on somafm.com. somafm (SF based) got its start with ambient music with spaceflight communication in the background. Other stuff includes 'Illinois Street Lounge,' 'Suburbs of Goa,' 'Boot Liquor,' and this time of year their Holiday playlist. An especially fun, if not juvenile, list is called 'Xmas in Frisko.' 'Lush'(mellow vocals by women), and 'Covers.'
Sometimes, you need school boards because the Superintendent isn't always so super. Still, I wish we could let people be who they are. If it's not for you, don't be that way. The people who are afraid of the Taliban are usually just like them.
I think they are more envious than afraid of the Taliban and others who wield raw brutal power. DT openly admired many.
Love me some Soma FM.
Hall and Oates leaned so hard into being a duo that they wrote the lines:
I could spend eternity the city
Let the carbon and monoxide choke my hopes away
Keep.up the good fight, Craig
PSA: if anyone in your family died of an aneurysm, get screened. I lost a half-sister before a cousin got in an auto accident. In the MRI they saw the weak spot in the aorta to her and said "this is genetic--everyone in your family should be screened." Lo & behold, about half my half-siblings have it. They are now monitored annually and have MedAlert bracelets.