Where there's fire there's smoke, the Minnesota meetup, a dumb account you shouldn't follow, third-string explorers, Jimmy Pesto, Lionel Messi, Martha Stewart, and The Iron Sheik
Within five minutes of waking up, and despite my brand new air purifier, I felt the bad air seeping in. but at least the sky doesn't like like sunrise on Mars yet. Not setting foot outside till tonight, when we hopefully fly to Rochester, NY to visit family. (No guarantees about the smoke monster not eating our flight, of course.) If you don't see me post tomorrow, it's because I am not in a mood to fight with my phone.
So weird that SNY showed a rerun of the previous night's Mets game. Why not show a good episode instead?
I don't think that Messi choose Miami over Saudi Arabia for ethical reasons, but at least someone said no to their money this week. Though I am pretty sure that he really wanted to go back to Barca, only Barca couldn't afford him anymore. Still, it's a pretty big deal for him to play in the US. Reminds me of when Pele came to the Cosmos, only MLS is in much better shape than NASL ever was.
Yep, that's it. As is typical for these things, it involves a lot of complicated explanation:
Luis Cessa told Jake Fraley he "looked like a Viking" and everyone thought that was hilarious.
That's the whole story, more or less - they keep adding stuff into the mix but for the most part it was a one-off comment from one teammate to another that everyone ran with.
It’s looking grim in DC and not just because of the smoke… Patrick Qorbin somehow earned a “quality start“ despite surrendering three runs in the first inning and 11 hits over six innings overall. The bullpen – including new cannon fodder Jordan Weems, who replaced old cannon fodder, Andres Machado – surrendered 3 more runs. The offense has ghosted us almost as fast as Zach Davies did his wife in 2022. The timing is not good, given that the Nats head off to Houston and Atlanta after tomorrow and then have to host the Marlins, who own them. I said to a friend last night that the next game on the schedule I would not be surprised that they won is Juneteenth at home versus the Cardinals. Woof.
PS We will never know, but I wonder if Jacob deGrom would’ve had this many problems if he had always had to pitch with the pitch clock… He feels like one of those max-effort guys who probably wore his ligaments to a nub by going all out.
PPS I have a friend who has suffered through this horrible Reds rebuilding era - so it’s fun to see them winning. It’s probably best I don’t think about why the Nats don’t have a pipeline of star prospects of their own.
1. Angry that I rooted for him when he was a Padre.
2. Super angry that he even has a job.
3. Fairly certain he is the only guy I think I’ve ever rooted for injury for. (Probably not true because I was a vindictive kid and I’m sure I wished many bad things on Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, et al.
4. Reminded of what a lovely human being his now former wife seems to be.
I put him third behind Gore and Gray, in that order. He doesn't walk as many as the younger guys, but he gives up a lot (A LOT) of hard contact. As painful as it is for me to admit, the other pitchers could learn from him on cleaning up their own messes - how he managed to escape the brutal first inning (2 runs in his first six pitches!), surrender 11 hits and still leave only down 3-2 is mystifying. Just don't let them talk politics with him.
In theory, shouldn't all outdoor laborers not had to work yesterday in the smoke for the same reason they baseball players didn't? That would be highly disruptive, but the idea is the same.
Walking out of work yesterday one co-worker mentioned his upcoming Cali trip and one (of our many) MAGA colleagues chimed in hoping California was raking their forests sufficiently. She was either serious(ly moronic) or trolling fairly well. I can't decide if I want to ask her today or not.
At one point, when California was burning, The Former Guy opined that if California had raked their forests like they do in, I think Finland, the fires wouldn’t have spread so much.
The really hysterical part is that the State of CA owns less than half of the actual forests here. Between the Park Service, the Forest Service, and DoD the Feds own about the same amount. And a paltry 7% is private. So TFG in his usual way was spouting "do as I say, not as I do" nonsense, especially as CA total land mass is over 100M acres.
There’s been some bad takes about the deGrom injury. It’s one thing to say “the Mets dodged a bullet” and leave it there. As a Yankees fan one of my immediate takeaways was “this helps the Yankees out.” So I’m good with that level of selfishness. But Craig Carton says deGrom is a turncoat (???), Super 70s has to bring up old pitchers. DeGrom at his peak was maybe the most dominant right-handed pitcher since Maddux or Pedro. I saw something that said he’d have gone like 22-3 had he pitched for the Yankees in 2018 instead of 10-9 with that 1.70 ERA. At least he and Stras got generational wealth for their families.
Speaking of the Yankees, the fan base turning on Volpe is so ridiculous, as is their obsession with Florial. Florial can’t hit major league pitching. He’s a quad-a player at best and Yankees fans still think he’s the next superstar. I understood the loyalty to Andujar because of how reliable he was in 2018. I don’t get it to Florial.
deGrom is particular is polarizing and the anonymity of the internet makes it worse.
A couple years ago there was a poll on the odds deGrom makes it to the Hall of Fame. The consensus was 80%, and I was one of the few in the <25% camp. Three seasons later and with 2024 likely a non-factor as well, I'm certainly (more) right and I'm working hard to supress the "told ya, idiots" urge toward people who were SO sure and SO arrogant (or maybe so naive) that he would coast in. But I recognize him missing most of 4 seasons isn't something to celebrate.
I feel like there are more run-scoring squeeze bunts this year than in previous years. If true, I wonder why - just a copycat trend? I can't see how it would be tied to the new rules. Someone somewhere must track such things.
Pitch clock and step off rules for pitchers? Maybe that’s the reason? Pitchers are only allowed 2 step offs before throwing over, runners on 3rd maybe taking bigger leads. Pitch clock means pitchers can’t hold the ball longer to throw off the runners/hitters timing on bunts. In games I’ve watched seems like most pitchers are throwing 4-6 second remaining on the pitch clock.
I didn’t think the disengagement rule would mean much bc there were rarely multiple pick off attempts to third. But you’re right about pitchers’ inability to hold the ball forever. That helps. Anyway, squeeze bunts are cool.
A close play at the plate might be my favorite moment in baseball. You've got the ball and the runner arriving at the same time and that split second before the ump makes a call. Love it.
One of the best games I’ve ever attended was a Double-A game over in Hagerstown, back in the 1990s. Bottom of ninth rally was ended, along with the game itself, when potential tying run was thrown out at the plate while trying to score from first on a double. Home crowd was screaming, then went dead silent. What an ending!
Leaving work yesterday, the smoke was so bad i could smell it in the building lobby. Driving home was like podracing on Tattooine. (no Sebulba on the nj turnpike, unfortunately) My eyes were bugging out from how weird the color hues were, orange/sepia everywhere. The camera in my phone could not properly capture it as it kept auto adjusting. But i'll never forget yesterday and hope it was mostly a one-off.
Does anyone here watch mls with any regularity? Soccer/Futball confuses me greatly in determining levels of competition amongst so many leagues here and in Europe. I can really only use baseball as my baseline. So if Premiere League is MLB, is mls... comparable to AAA, or lower? I wonder if bringing Messi over will encourage other teams to chase after more european players? I remember going to a Cosmos game at Giants Stadium as a kid - the place was packed. A few years later they were out of business. In '94 I was convinced that soccer would become bigger in the US. It kinda got a little bigger but didn't quite get there. I think between this move and the next WC - it has its best chance. Go Miami!
If the Mets get swepped today, I am praying that Uncle Stevie wakes up and hammers his underlings. This can't continue. Why is Vogie continually out there? Why can't the bullpen hold anything?
NHL is the best hockey league in the world and Vegas was instantly a Stanley Cup contender as an expansion team. The Seattle Kraken are also already a contender.
Look, I get that Messi joining the MLS is the equivalent of 9/11 for all the soccer elitists out there who have crapped on the MLS for years and refused to accept the fact it has overtaken the Premier League as the best soccer league on Earth. But as I just proved, an expansion team enjoying early success is nothing new, even for established professional sports leagues.
It is time for you to just take the L, my friend, and accept the glory of MLS. Now Messi is here to make it even more superior to the Premier League, so let's just sit back and enjoy the show. Soccer at its absolute best.
The denial is strong here. There is a clear pattern of the world's best players joining MLS. Messi is literally the best player in the world. The MLS All-Stars smoked the World Cup champion German national team (Bayern Munich) 2-1 in 2014. The gap between MLS and the Premier League is indeed huge as you say, with the Premier League now far behind MLS. And you say MLS is not even the best soccer league in North America? What kind of mincemeat were you eating when you typed that?
Someone who actually knows soccer better than Coach Lasso can correct me, but as a rough comparison, I think MLS might be most similar to KBO, with Liga MX as the NPB in this thought experiment.
My dude, this is going to sound snarky, but I don't want it too. "Swepped" is a way more reasonable way to spell that word than what us teachers expect. I do want to pronounce it 14th century style, though, two syllablles, no silent letters: SWEP-PED!
oh man you're right, my spelling was egregious, but i kinda like how the word looks and now i want Brian Cox saying it with his british accent and telling me to F off. my english teacher-father would be aghast (aghassed?) at my spelling LOL
I was late getting to my Coffee yesterday due to - shock! - having to work. But I did want to briefly note the discussion of new Phillies part owner Stan Middleman.
I know Stan, having worked at Freedom Mortgage for two years a decade or so back. For one of those years, I reported directly to him meeting with him one on one at least once monthly. Random note: his office was in a building formerly used by NFL Films and the Sabol family.
Stan is a huge Philadelphia sports fan. His office was packed with memorabilia from the 76ers, Eagles, Flyers and local colleges. Baseball was 3rd or 4th on his list. And he tried buying into the 76ers at some point.
He is as close to a self made billionaire as is possible. No family money. He started as an insurance salesman and ended up building a mortgage brokerage. When I was there, the company wrote over $2.5 billion in new loans each month.
Highly impatient and not fond of rules. His risk / reward calculation tilts far towards acceptance of risk. He has a small number of highly loyal employees who have been with him for years, but there is also a lot of churn of folks who don’t fit. He would pay lavishly but made high demand for output.
Spends a lot on some things. Corporate parties, bottles of wine, cars, vacation homes. But can be really cheap on others like the offices themselves. Gruff personality.
I don’t like him at all and my departure was acrimonious but respect his intelligence, creativity and drive.
But the entire time you worked there, did he ever take off his trench coat? Did he not get out of his chair when you entered the office? 3 kids in a trench coat!
I’m so tired of wealthy people trying to tell me what it’s like for me to work at home. An awful lot of us actually get more done because we aren’t bogged down in interruptions from the random pop-ins of those who are so insecure they think we need to return to our veal pens.
Introvert vs extrovert. I suspect I know where people who spend time on online bulletin boards fit into that spectrum. Not better vs worse, just different personalities.
Working from dining room reminds me of another often overlooked aspect of the WFH/WFO debate though not sure if this applies to you.
In larger cities (SF, NYC), the cost of housing means employees tend to live farther from the office and/or have smaller places, often renting an apartment despite making mid six figures. And thus people work from the kitchen, dining room, or bedroom which often isn't good and they also have lengthy commutes which means WFO isn't good either.
My home ‘office’ was a 2 foot square section of the dining room table we hardly ever use. The walk-out basement is way too useful as a storage area. And who wants to walk up and down stairs that many more times a day.
Sometimes it depends entirely on who someone works with. I would love if my job was something I could do from home because I'd be quite happy with minimal coworker contact, but in other places I've enjoyed the interaction during the day. Just because I happen to be paid to be in the same place at the same time as a group of other people doesn't mean I have to like them.
If people want to go back to the office I think that's great, but I don't think they should be forced to if they don't want to. Their commute might be awful, they might have better focus at their home office, they might avoid a lot of harassment at work (I've read that many minority employees have found it easier to work without the stress of dealing with others in the office). Or they might have a short commute and not have a nice place at home to set up to work so can focus better in the office. Just let people work and don't make them socialize with jerks they work with if they don't want to.
So much this! One of my best friends is extremely frustrated that, despite everyone being very productive during shutdown for more than a year, her employer demands everyone be in the office at least three days a week. So they have to pay for her child's thrice-weekly afterschool program, the dog has to be schlepped to doggy day care three days a week, she loses two hours per day between driving to the train, taking the train, and walking to the office on in-person days, etc. And so she and most of her coworkers are looking for new jobs with employers that aren't trying to justify their downtown real estate costs.
Meanwhile, I've been WFH for 18 years and haven't even had an in-person client meeting since before the pandemic. And that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it....
If so many of them weren't counting on sneaky dealings involving their leased offices to make more money, they wouldn't worry so much about if employees were in offices or at home.
It's not only the job of the workers to work and make money for corporate, but also their job to work where corporate wants to indirectly make even more money. 😠
One of the things I have learned is that everyone needs to decide what playing field they are on and the rules for the game. If you want to do your work, be left alone, & get a paycheck, WFH is fine. If you want to be promoted, earn more, grow your responsibilities, maybe it is wise to listen to what those owner’s & managers say they want vis a vis return to office. Being right in some objective sense about your productivity means little to future rewards if the person you report to or her boss’s boss’s boss disagrees about WFH.
Kind of. I was thinking of a local company that's so big that the managers don't know who works for them, so they don't even know who the ass-kissers are. They kind of get around that by not really promoting anyone although they do rearrange titles to make up for never giving raises.
Although it's not very well run in that sense, some departments are, but some aren't. The company as a whole is a mess.
Man, I did everything in my power to avoid being promoted to a managerial position. It eventually happened that I became a so-called topped out Government worker, but it took years. When I retired I was a maxed-out non-supervisory GS-15, and I gotta tell you it doesn’t get better than that.
Same. I'm approaching the top step of my salary scale and have been asked to apply for management positions, but I see no reason to give up my union contract and have to spend more time with clueless upper management for a negligible pay increase.
Not all rules apply to all business of course. Or to all jobs in a particular business. But as a general matter, out of sight out of mind holds a whole lot of grains of truth.
Hmm... in the past three years, I’ve grown my responsibilities, received a raise, joined a lead team, and many other “advancement” things all while working from home, for while they would like us back maybe sometimes, they also respect work (wherever it happens) and aren’t a bunch of d-bag tools who think we’re their servants.
I haven’t written a full biography but it took a lot of resistance on our part to get them to understand the new reality and value of not sitting in our holding pens.
Some people enjoy going to the office and working.
Be part of the culture. Going out after work for happy hour or dinner. Playing on a company softball team. The opportunity to know what is happening in the company outside of your home office. Having some company during the day. Getting to know other people from other cultures and races instead of being insulated every day. Possibly meeting someone to date if you're looking.
How many people working from home are doing any of the above?
If people like going in, have at it. But the working world is heavily biased toward those people and the issue at hand is the bias against the rest of us.
Interestingly here in the 21st century, technology has kept me connected to my colleagues quite nicely. And after having been in offices for many, many years, the idyllic description you’ve given is far from reality of what it means to go into the office, at least in my varied experiences over 25 years.
You can be social with your coworkers without being in an office. I adore my colleagues, with whom I am in constant contact despite being scattered across the country, and who are as diverse a group as you can possibly be. [I'm not looking to meet anyone - and if I were I wouldn't be dating a coworker.]
If you like working at the office, you do you. I'm OK here, too.
I admit that I sorely need to meet more people who are not like me. But the rest barely appeals to me, and i cannot for the life of me imagine dating a coworker since if it goes badly, you now working with an ex.
I'm with you. At the height of the pandemic, my previous employer gave me the option of working from home. I declined (it was also an hour...hour and fifteen minute commute). We ultimately had a handful of us in management who chose to report to work.
When I was in sales for a large architectural aluminum manufacturer, I couldn't stand the two weeks a month I worked from home. I have to have human interaction. Emailing, skyping, zooming, texting, etc... as your sole form of communication drives me insane. I thoroughly enjoy everything about reporting to the office. Of course, where I live traffic is never at a standstill and I take the country route to work 20 minutes from the house. That plays a huge role.
Given that (before I retired) I worked from home in Virginia, got assignments from London and the Channel Islands* and worked with folks on three continents and a whole bunch of islands (Sao Tome e Principe, Tonga, and Barbados among them) I can definitely raise my hand on the "got to know people from other cultures and races." No dating, though--although probably good since I'm already married.
*PS no, I wasn't selling tax shelters, although the list might look like it!
Everyone’s experience is different, but I am curious why many people seem to assume that working from home means 1) isolation from other people all day, and 2) that same job performed in the office would magically become social?
I talk to everyone on my team every day I work and usually multiple people outside of my team. Just because that discussion takes place virtually doesn’t negate it. (And, BTW, before anyone brings up the difference between face to face contact and Teams calls/meetings, note that my employer deemed it wise to create a team spread out geographically across multiple states, meaning that I wouldn’t see some of my coworkers face to face even if we were all required to report to an office every day).
During the pandemic, we were told to work from home. Period. But there were things I couldn’t do from home due to not having the same digital tools as I had in the office. So I broke the rules whenever I needed to. And, as I’d thought, it turned out that nobody cared. The place was so deserted during the heart of the pandemic that I doubt very many people even noticed.
Doesn't it feel great? I've been freelance since 2005, and haven't had an in-person client meeting in at least three years. I have clients all over the US as well as internationally, and my not being there sharing air with any of them has literally never been an issue.
Obviously not every job can be done remotely, but I feel fortunate that my vocation is one that allows me to do so.
It's sort of amazing that my largest client (and former employer) has shrunk their headquarters from six floors to one over the years despite increasing headcount. Having that much real estate in the first place was a waste, as they're a professional services firm where the norm is to be at client sites Monday through Thursday, but everyone used to have a desk. Now, it's all hoteling over there.
I will be 60 in August, I have 36 years of experience as a software developer, and I have zero interest in being promoted or growing my responsibilities. When I met the big boss before accepting my current job after working for only seven months at the previous one, he asked if he could trust that I wouldn't be looking to leave soon. I told him that the job I was leaving paid less than I had made for the last 20 years and was an hour commute and I only took it as an emergency stop-gap after being laid off. I asked if he knew how old I was and he said he couldn't ask but I could tell. I said I'm 55 and that I planned to work for another 10-12 years and I would like for this job to be my last job. I'm now earning more than ever and have been working from home since the pandemic. We have an optional in-office day once a month to chat and have catered lunch.
Congrats on both the current job and even landing a stop gap job. It's a brutal market out there for tech workers.
FWIW, if you plan to be at this job for 10-12 years, you might clarify with your boss whether you are 55 or 59 (or made a typo ahead). As someone in the 50+ group, I wouldn't hold it against someone on my team that they lied about their age but I'd hate to see it bite you.
I worked for only 4 employers in my 48 year career. The first for a year and a half, the second for 5 years, the third for 8, and the fourth for 33 and a half. Kind of an exponential progression. If I ever decide to take on a new career, I think I’d need to live to about 150 to stay on that curve.
I'm in an industry where people regularly send emails like "this is the best job I've ever had, but I've made the difficult decision that after 2.5 years it's time to move on". I want to slap every one of them.
I read an article recently that it's people (in general) don't mind going to the office. But they hate commuting. My last office job before I went full time WFH around 8 years ago was fine. I liked the people I worked with, I thought the cultural was good. But the commute was a beating. I've had a couple job offers in the last year that were back to the office and had they been in my part of town I might have taken one of them. But they would have involved commuting and that's a hard pass for me.
Pre-covid, my commute was a 20 minute bike ride, so I didn't mind it at all. However, the ability to do chores and such during the day with WFH is such a huge QoL improvement.
One VERY important thing to note about "working from home" - NOT EVERYONE HAS A JOB THAT ALLOWS THEM TO. And I'm not just talking about health care and retail jobs.
I work in an office for my county gov't. Much of my job involves processing payments and handling legal documents. I have access to people's Social Security numbers. Not a chance in hell I can do that "at home".
Yep. I could work from home if offered but I wouldn't be nearly as productive as I need access to full size architecturals and I don't have a plotter.
I returned to my previous employer just over a year ago. I wasn't looking. My old boss called me about a project we were doing with him and he asked if I would consider returning. The benefits aren't nearly as good, but I received a raise, another week of vacation and a company vehicle with the fuel and maintenance provided.
The stress at my current job is far less as well. Plus, it's a 20 minute easy rural commute as opposed to 1-1:15 racing around 465 at 85 MPH. Ahh...Indy. Where the brickyard has cars traveling 230MPH, the interstate speed limit signs circling it are 55MPH and if you aren't going a minimum of 80MPH you are holding everyone up.
While I agree that working from home is as productive as in an office in a vacuum, I am still pro office.
First off, I don't like paying for the boss' internet, electricity, and sundries. I also don't like subsidizing their rent.
I also find the random pop ins annoying on the micro level, but beneficial on the macro level for the esprit de corps and actual projects.
On a purely urbanist note, a second place to go is important for building community. We desperately need third places like parks, plazas, or promenades and just taking away second places is destructive.
If all this is built on the necks of relatively powerless workers than it’s only as strong as this very weak infrastructure. If workers are the keystone to holding the whole ancillary structure together, then a lot more respect, dignity, money, and autonomy should be headed their way.
I actually agree with most of that even though I disagree with your conclusion.
I don't like that my boss gets 2.5 hours of my time for free and I have no privacy, either to avoid disruptions or have a private conversation. While I do miss the personal connections, it's great that we can hire people from anywhere in the country and we don't have to fight every company for the small number of tech workers who live in this metro area (or are willing to move).
But for sure, some is the nature of the company. If everyone lives 15-20 minutes from the office but chooses to WFH regularly, that may not be ideal. It's a bit different when people's commute is half a day and involves a plane :).
Access to talent is one of the biggest factors for offering remote and hybrid work. Why rely solely on the subset of locals who have the skills and experience you need who also want to commute to a workplace on the regs when there are literally millions of other potential employees out there?
I'm more upset about Martha Stewart shitting on France and saying that it's not a "thriving country". France has been around for a while. Survived some serious shit. America doesn't feel like it's especially "thriving" these days.
Good luck with whatever you're marketing, Martha and tell Snoop that I said "hello", but otherwise maybe shut the fuck up.
Yeah, the smoke is really bad here too... on top of the insanely high pollen counts we've had for weeks, just taking a normal breath feels like a luxury these days.
I've also been working from home for a few years, and working from home twice a week for a few years before that. I've never been more productive.
Finally, I'm glad to see there will be a good group in Minneapolis on the 17th. I wanted to make the trip but couldn't stomach the cost of the flights. Hope everyone has a super weekend.
I’ll never forget Iron Sheik putting Hulk Hogan in the ‘Camel Clutch’, Hulk shaking and standing up to get out of it (the first escape ever from the clutch’) giving the sheik the atomic leg drop and then pinning him for the title to win the belt ! HULKAMANIA IS RUNNING WILD !!!
There are some who have always doubted me here, even told me to “smoke another fat J”, when I have stated the obvious that MLS is, without question, the top soccer league on the planet. I imagine there are several hot, steaming plates of crow being eaten for breakfast this morning.
As the great Tim the Enchanter once said, “I warned you! I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little upstart soccer league, isn't it? Well, it's always the same. I always tell them.”
We all know the story by now. The MLS All-Stars rocked Bayern Munich 2-1 in 2014 in Portland - a Bayern Munich team that was both the reigning FIFA Club World Cup champs and basically the entire German national team fresh off a World Cup title. And Landon Donovan ran circles around their helpless asses. You can’t say Bayern was treating it as an exhibition match - their coach Sep Guardiola was super pissed after the match, indicating competitiveness and a desire to win, but they simply lacked the talent of the MLS All-Stars. The MLS had resoundingly staked its claim at the top of the world soccer league mountain.
Then, the influx of the world’s best superstars from the Euro Leagues to MLS began to flow like wine. Wayne Rooney. Thierry Henry. Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Didier Drogba. David Villa. Bastien Schweinsteiger. Robbie Keane. Frank Lampard. Gareth Wales. I could do this all day, but as you can see - it’s a clear, undeniable pattern.
And now, the crown of them all. The undisputed greatest player in the world and perhaps history, Lionel Messi, has followed in their footsteps, leaving the inferior Euro Leagues behind to sharpen his skills against the best in the world in the MLS. He even turned down Saudi bonesaw cash to do it, proving his desire to play against the best rather than take the money from a crown prince who is turning golf into gulf. Lionel isn’t Messi-ng around like the pathetic PGA - he wants to compete.
Thank you. It is surprising how some here are treating it as heresy. Wayne Rooney agrees with me. David Villa agrees with me. Thierry Henry agrees with me. David Beckham agrees with me. Bastien Schweinsteiger agrees with me. Gareth Wales agrees with me. Freaking Lionel Messi agrees with me.
It's not some outlandish hot take, it's the truth that has been accepted and reinforced by the greatest superstars in the world. My only explanation is that yesterday's Messi news was an excessively hard, bitter pill to swallow for these folks who were somehow still holding out on admitting the MLS's superiority despite all those superstars streaming into the league over the years, and reality is really sinking in for them now. You simply can't deny Messi, and they know that.
And now they must cope with the reality that their worldview of soccer has been wrong all these years, and are lashing out in frustration. It's ok though, with time they will see the light.
It's certainly similar to those you mentioned and comparing eras is almost impossible. Perhaps a better way to put it would be Pele was the greatest of his era, Ruth in his, Bonds, etc...
The Twins' inability to score runs except for when they explode with 8+ is nuts. A local scribe pointed out that they lead the league with 625 strikeouts, a little over 10 a game and 10% more than the next team. Rod Carew struck out 55 times in 694 appearances in his MVP season.
Pretty sure he's been the biggest football attraction on an entire continent for a while
Within five minutes of waking up, and despite my brand new air purifier, I felt the bad air seeping in. but at least the sky doesn't like like sunrise on Mars yet. Not setting foot outside till tonight, when we hopefully fly to Rochester, NY to visit family. (No guarantees about the smoke monster not eating our flight, of course.) If you don't see me post tomorrow, it's because I am not in a mood to fight with my phone.
So weird that SNY showed a rerun of the previous night's Mets game. Why not show a good episode instead?
I don't think that Messi choose Miami over Saudi Arabia for ethical reasons, but at least someone said no to their money this week. Though I am pretty sure that he really wanted to go back to Barca, only Barca couldn't afford him anymore. Still, it's a pretty big deal for him to play in the US. Reminds me of when Pele came to the Cosmos, only MLS is in much better shape than NASL ever was.
"Oh goodness!! That ball had a family!" That call was awesome.
Are there any Reds fans here? I get the Viking HR cape and helmet… But what is that thing the guy is holding up at the end of the dugout? A horn?
Yep, that's it. As is typical for these things, it involves a lot of complicated explanation:
Luis Cessa told Jake Fraley he "looked like a Viking" and everyone thought that was hilarious.
That's the whole story, more or less - they keep adding stuff into the mix but for the most part it was a one-off comment from one teammate to another that everyone ran with.
Fun times at GABP recently!
I am mostly happy but about 6% insanely jealous.
And of course - like the thriving industry that is shirtbarns in Ohio - it’s already on a tee: cincyshirts.com
It’s looking grim in DC and not just because of the smoke… Patrick Qorbin somehow earned a “quality start“ despite surrendering three runs in the first inning and 11 hits over six innings overall. The bullpen – including new cannon fodder Jordan Weems, who replaced old cannon fodder, Andres Machado – surrendered 3 more runs. The offense has ghosted us almost as fast as Zach Davies did his wife in 2022. The timing is not good, given that the Nats head off to Houston and Atlanta after tomorrow and then have to host the Marlins, who own them. I said to a friend last night that the next game on the schedule I would not be surprised that they won is Juneteenth at home versus the Cardinals. Woof.
PS We will never know, but I wonder if Jacob deGrom would’ve had this many problems if he had always had to pitch with the pitch clock… He feels like one of those max-effort guys who probably wore his ligaments to a nub by going all out.
PPS I have a friend who has suffered through this horrible Reds rebuilding era - so it’s fun to see them winning. It’s probably best I don’t think about why the Nats don’t have a pipeline of star prospects of their own.
Every time I see Davies’s name, I am:
1. Angry that I rooted for him when he was a Padre.
2. Super angry that he even has a job.
3. Fairly certain he is the only guy I think I’ve ever rooted for injury for. (Probably not true because I was a vindictive kid and I’m sure I wished many bad things on Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, et al.
4. Reminded of what a lovely human being his now former wife seems to be.
In short - fuck Zach Davies.
Let’s just say it: Corbin is one of the best pitchers the Nats have. At the moment, anyway. An inconvenient truth, but there it is.
I put him third behind Gore and Gray, in that order. He doesn't walk as many as the younger guys, but he gives up a lot (A LOT) of hard contact. As painful as it is for me to admit, the other pitchers could learn from him on cleaning up their own messes - how he managed to escape the brutal first inning (2 runs in his first six pitches!), surrender 11 hits and still leave only down 3-2 is mystifying. Just don't let them talk politics with him.
In theory, shouldn't all outdoor laborers not had to work yesterday in the smoke for the same reason they baseball players didn't? That would be highly disruptive, but the idea is the same.
If this were a blizzard, we would have accepted that many people can't work.
Of course, but they're essential workers so their health is irrelevant.
If Canada only raked their forests...
Walking out of work yesterday one co-worker mentioned his upcoming Cali trip and one (of our many) MAGA colleagues chimed in hoping California was raking their forests sufficiently. She was either serious(ly moronic) or trolling fairly well. I can't decide if I want to ask her today or not.
Pretend I'm not online enough to understand that "raking the forest" reference. [I'm not Googling it.] Is there a short version of an explanation?
At one point, when California was burning, The Former Guy opined that if California had raked their forests like they do in, I think Finland, the fires wouldn’t have spread so much.
Ah. Even dumber than I would have guessed. Thanks ;)
If TFG is involved, I've found it's always even dumber than you would have guessed.
Quite impressive, actually.
Its really a sad commentary on the state of well, everything, that no matter how dumb you guess something might be, the truth is dumber.
Short version. The US elected an idiot as President. In response to the wild fires in California, said idiot suggested they should rake the forests.
Not even close to being the stupidest thing he’s ever said.
The really hysterical part is that the State of CA owns less than half of the actual forests here. Between the Park Service, the Forest Service, and DoD the Feds own about the same amount. And a paltry 7% is private. So TFG in his usual way was spouting "do as I say, not as I do" nonsense, especially as CA total land mass is over 100M acres.
There’s been some bad takes about the deGrom injury. It’s one thing to say “the Mets dodged a bullet” and leave it there. As a Yankees fan one of my immediate takeaways was “this helps the Yankees out.” So I’m good with that level of selfishness. But Craig Carton says deGrom is a turncoat (???), Super 70s has to bring up old pitchers. DeGrom at his peak was maybe the most dominant right-handed pitcher since Maddux or Pedro. I saw something that said he’d have gone like 22-3 had he pitched for the Yankees in 2018 instead of 10-9 with that 1.70 ERA. At least he and Stras got generational wealth for their families.
Speaking of the Yankees, the fan base turning on Volpe is so ridiculous, as is their obsession with Florial. Florial can’t hit major league pitching. He’s a quad-a player at best and Yankees fans still think he’s the next superstar. I understood the loyalty to Andujar because of how reliable he was in 2018. I don’t get it to Florial.
deGrom is particular is polarizing and the anonymity of the internet makes it worse.
A couple years ago there was a poll on the odds deGrom makes it to the Hall of Fame. The consensus was 80%, and I was one of the few in the <25% camp. Three seasons later and with 2024 likely a non-factor as well, I'm certainly (more) right and I'm working hard to supress the "told ya, idiots" urge toward people who were SO sure and SO arrogant (or maybe so naive) that he would coast in. But I recognize him missing most of 4 seasons isn't something to celebrate.
I feel like there are more run-scoring squeeze bunts this year than in previous years. If true, I wonder why - just a copycat trend? I can't see how it would be tied to the new rules. Someone somewhere must track such things.
Pitch clock and step off rules for pitchers? Maybe that’s the reason? Pitchers are only allowed 2 step offs before throwing over, runners on 3rd maybe taking bigger leads. Pitch clock means pitchers can’t hold the ball longer to throw off the runners/hitters timing on bunts. In games I’ve watched seems like most pitchers are throwing 4-6 second remaining on the pitch clock.
I didn’t think the disengagement rule would mean much bc there were rarely multiple pick off attempts to third. But you’re right about pitchers’ inability to hold the ball forever. That helps. Anyway, squeeze bunts are cool.
Baserunning and outfield assists are the best parts of baseball.
A close play at the plate might be my favorite moment in baseball. You've got the ball and the runner arriving at the same time and that split second before the ump makes a call. Love it.
One of the best games I’ve ever attended was a Double-A game over in Hagerstown, back in the 1990s. Bottom of ninth rally was ended, along with the game itself, when potential tying run was thrown out at the plate while trying to score from first on a double. Home crowd was screaming, then went dead silent. What an ending!
We lost the state championship game my freshman year of HS on a blown call at the plate.
The Academy of Bunting Sciences is pleased
Leaving work yesterday, the smoke was so bad i could smell it in the building lobby. Driving home was like podracing on Tattooine. (no Sebulba on the nj turnpike, unfortunately) My eyes were bugging out from how weird the color hues were, orange/sepia everywhere. The camera in my phone could not properly capture it as it kept auto adjusting. But i'll never forget yesterday and hope it was mostly a one-off.
Does anyone here watch mls with any regularity? Soccer/Futball confuses me greatly in determining levels of competition amongst so many leagues here and in Europe. I can really only use baseball as my baseline. So if Premiere League is MLB, is mls... comparable to AAA, or lower? I wonder if bringing Messi over will encourage other teams to chase after more european players? I remember going to a Cosmos game at Giants Stadium as a kid - the place was packed. A few years later they were out of business. In '94 I was convinced that soccer would become bigger in the US. It kinda got a little bigger but didn't quite get there. I think between this move and the next WC - it has its best chance. Go Miami!
If the Mets get swepped today, I am praying that Uncle Stevie wakes up and hammers his underlings. This can't continue. Why is Vogie continually out there? Why can't the bullpen hold anything?
NHL is the best hockey league in the world and Vegas was instantly a Stanley Cup contender as an expansion team. The Seattle Kraken are also already a contender.
Look, I get that Messi joining the MLS is the equivalent of 9/11 for all the soccer elitists out there who have crapped on the MLS for years and refused to accept the fact it has overtaken the Premier League as the best soccer league on Earth. But as I just proved, an expansion team enjoying early success is nothing new, even for established professional sports leagues.
It is time for you to just take the L, my friend, and accept the glory of MLS. Now Messi is here to make it even more superior to the Premier League, so let's just sit back and enjoy the show. Soccer at its absolute best.
The Marlins won a World Series just a few years after being an MLB expansion team as well.
Chris Archer also owned the St. Louis Cardinals in his first year as a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates on August 3, 2018.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the NHL.
Probably second to Liga MX although the gap is pretty narrow now if it exists at all.
Fair.
The denial is strong here. There is a clear pattern of the world's best players joining MLS. Messi is literally the best player in the world. The MLS All-Stars smoked the World Cup champion German national team (Bayern Munich) 2-1 in 2014. The gap between MLS and the Premier League is indeed huge as you say, with the Premier League now far behind MLS. And you say MLS is not even the best soccer league in North America? What kind of mincemeat were you eating when you typed that?
Indeed. It's been about a decade of the MLS on top of the world soccer league pyramid, which is a hard pill to swallow for the traditionalists.
1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
2. Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
3. Never try to dissuade someone who's committed to a bit.
Someone who actually knows soccer better than Coach Lasso can correct me, but as a rough comparison, I think MLS might be most similar to KBO, with Liga MX as the NPB in this thought experiment.
Do I need to watch Ted Lasso to understand any of that?
No (but you should anyway).
My dude, this is going to sound snarky, but I don't want it too. "Swepped" is a way more reasonable way to spell that word than what us teachers expect. I do want to pronounce it 14th century style, though, two syllablles, no silent letters: SWEP-PED!
(argghhhh! I comment on YOUR spelling, and then spell TO wrong. I suckkkkkkk......)
oh man you're right, my spelling was egregious, but i kinda like how the word looks and now i want Brian Cox saying it with his british accent and telling me to F off. my english teacher-father would be aghast (aghassed?) at my spelling LOL
I was late getting to my Coffee yesterday due to - shock! - having to work. But I did want to briefly note the discussion of new Phillies part owner Stan Middleman.
I know Stan, having worked at Freedom Mortgage for two years a decade or so back. For one of those years, I reported directly to him meeting with him one on one at least once monthly. Random note: his office was in a building formerly used by NFL Films and the Sabol family.
Stan is a huge Philadelphia sports fan. His office was packed with memorabilia from the 76ers, Eagles, Flyers and local colleges. Baseball was 3rd or 4th on his list. And he tried buying into the 76ers at some point.
He is as close to a self made billionaire as is possible. No family money. He started as an insurance salesman and ended up building a mortgage brokerage. When I was there, the company wrote over $2.5 billion in new loans each month.
Highly impatient and not fond of rules. His risk / reward calculation tilts far towards acceptance of risk. He has a small number of highly loyal employees who have been with him for years, but there is also a lot of churn of folks who don’t fit. He would pay lavishly but made high demand for output.
Spends a lot on some things. Corporate parties, bottles of wine, cars, vacation homes. But can be really cheap on others like the offices themselves. Gruff personality.
I don’t like him at all and my departure was acrimonious but respect his intelligence, creativity and drive.
But the entire time you worked there, did he ever take off his trench coat? Did he not get out of his chair when you entered the office? 3 kids in a trench coat!
I’m so tired of wealthy people trying to tell me what it’s like for me to work at home. An awful lot of us actually get more done because we aren’t bogged down in interruptions from the random pop-ins of those who are so insecure they think we need to return to our veal pens.
Introvert vs extrovert. I suspect I know where people who spend time on online bulletin boards fit into that spectrum. Not better vs worse, just different personalities.
So how many of you have fixed up your basements as a home office?
Working from dining room reminds me of another often overlooked aspect of the WFH/WFO debate though not sure if this applies to you.
In larger cities (SF, NYC), the cost of housing means employees tend to live farther from the office and/or have smaller places, often renting an apartment despite making mid six figures. And thus people work from the kitchen, dining room, or bedroom which often isn't good and they also have lengthy commutes which means WFO isn't good either.
What's a basement? Apartment dwellers have basements not in NYC.
This is why the so-called fly-over country is so much better than the wastelands of the coastal regions.
No basements in Florida, but my office is in the Florida room looking out at the back yard and pool.
My home ‘office’ was a 2 foot square section of the dining room table we hardly ever use. The walk-out basement is way too useful as a storage area. And who wants to walk up and down stairs that many more times a day.
Sometimes it depends entirely on who someone works with. I would love if my job was something I could do from home because I'd be quite happy with minimal coworker contact, but in other places I've enjoyed the interaction during the day. Just because I happen to be paid to be in the same place at the same time as a group of other people doesn't mean I have to like them.
If people want to go back to the office I think that's great, but I don't think they should be forced to if they don't want to. Their commute might be awful, they might have better focus at their home office, they might avoid a lot of harassment at work (I've read that many minority employees have found it easier to work without the stress of dealing with others in the office). Or they might have a short commute and not have a nice place at home to set up to work so can focus better in the office. Just let people work and don't make them socialize with jerks they work with if they don't want to.
So much this! One of my best friends is extremely frustrated that, despite everyone being very productive during shutdown for more than a year, her employer demands everyone be in the office at least three days a week. So they have to pay for her child's thrice-weekly afterschool program, the dog has to be schlepped to doggy day care three days a week, she loses two hours per day between driving to the train, taking the train, and walking to the office on in-person days, etc. And so she and most of her coworkers are looking for new jobs with employers that aren't trying to justify their downtown real estate costs.
Meanwhile, I've been WFH for 18 years and haven't even had an in-person client meeting since before the pandemic. And that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it....
If so many of them weren't counting on sneaky dealings involving their leased offices to make more money, they wouldn't worry so much about if employees were in offices or at home.
It's not only the job of the workers to work and make money for corporate, but also their job to work where corporate wants to indirectly make even more money. 😠
I love not having to deal with office gossip.
I always kept my door closed. Worked like a charm.
One of the things I have learned is that everyone needs to decide what playing field they are on and the rules for the game. If you want to do your work, be left alone, & get a paycheck, WFH is fine. If you want to be promoted, earn more, grow your responsibilities, maybe it is wise to listen to what those owner’s & managers say they want vis a vis return to office. Being right in some objective sense about your productivity means little to future rewards if the person you report to or her boss’s boss’s boss disagrees about WFH.
That assumes the managers even have any clue who the peons are or what they do. Definitely not true in some of my workplaces.
Kind of. I was thinking of a local company that's so big that the managers don't know who works for them, so they don't even know who the ass-kissers are. They kind of get around that by not really promoting anyone although they do rearrange titles to make up for never giving raises.
Although it's not very well run in that sense, some departments are, but some aren't. The company as a whole is a mess.
Man, I did everything in my power to avoid being promoted to a managerial position. It eventually happened that I became a so-called topped out Government worker, but it took years. When I retired I was a maxed-out non-supervisory GS-15, and I gotta tell you it doesn’t get better than that.
Same. I'm approaching the top step of my salary scale and have been asked to apply for management positions, but I see no reason to give up my union contract and have to spend more time with clueless upper management for a negligible pay increase.
I got a surprise promotion last year just doing WFH, but the office culture has been so anti-return to office that the bosses basically gave up on it.
Not all rules apply to all business of course. Or to all jobs in a particular business. But as a general matter, out of sight out of mind holds a whole lot of grains of truth.
Hmm... in the past three years, I’ve grown my responsibilities, received a raise, joined a lead team, and many other “advancement” things all while working from home, for while they would like us back maybe sometimes, they also respect work (wherever it happens) and aren’t a bunch of d-bag tools who think we’re their servants.
Then it sounds like you are complaining about something that is not happening in your workplace or relevant to your job. Or am I missing something?
I haven’t written a full biography but it took a lot of resistance on our part to get them to understand the new reality and value of not sitting in our holding pens.
Some people enjoy going to the office and working.
Be part of the culture. Going out after work for happy hour or dinner. Playing on a company softball team. The opportunity to know what is happening in the company outside of your home office. Having some company during the day. Getting to know other people from other cultures and races instead of being insulated every day. Possibly meeting someone to date if you're looking.
How many people working from home are doing any of the above?
If people like going in, have at it. But the working world is heavily biased toward those people and the issue at hand is the bias against the rest of us.
Interestingly here in the 21st century, technology has kept me connected to my colleagues quite nicely. And after having been in offices for many, many years, the idyllic description you’ve given is far from reality of what it means to go into the office, at least in my varied experiences over 25 years.
::raises hand::
You can be social with your coworkers without being in an office. I adore my colleagues, with whom I am in constant contact despite being scattered across the country, and who are as diverse a group as you can possibly be. [I'm not looking to meet anyone - and if I were I wouldn't be dating a coworker.]
If you like working at the office, you do you. I'm OK here, too.
I admit that I sorely need to meet more people who are not like me. But the rest barely appeals to me, and i cannot for the life of me imagine dating a coworker since if it goes badly, you now working with an ex.
I'm with you. At the height of the pandemic, my previous employer gave me the option of working from home. I declined (it was also an hour...hour and fifteen minute commute). We ultimately had a handful of us in management who chose to report to work.
When I was in sales for a large architectural aluminum manufacturer, I couldn't stand the two weeks a month I worked from home. I have to have human interaction. Emailing, skyping, zooming, texting, etc... as your sole form of communication drives me insane. I thoroughly enjoy everything about reporting to the office. Of course, where I live traffic is never at a standstill and I take the country route to work 20 minutes from the house. That plays a huge role.
Given that (before I retired) I worked from home in Virginia, got assignments from London and the Channel Islands* and worked with folks on three continents and a whole bunch of islands (Sao Tome e Principe, Tonga, and Barbados among them) I can definitely raise my hand on the "got to know people from other cultures and races." No dating, though--although probably good since I'm already married.
*PS no, I wasn't selling tax shelters, although the list might look like it!
Everyone’s experience is different, but I am curious why many people seem to assume that working from home means 1) isolation from other people all day, and 2) that same job performed in the office would magically become social?
I talk to everyone on my team every day I work and usually multiple people outside of my team. Just because that discussion takes place virtually doesn’t negate it. (And, BTW, before anyone brings up the difference between face to face contact and Teams calls/meetings, note that my employer deemed it wise to create a team spread out geographically across multiple states, meaning that I wouldn’t see some of my coworkers face to face even if we were all required to report to an office every day).
During the pandemic, we were told to work from home. Period. But there were things I couldn’t do from home due to not having the same digital tools as I had in the office. So I broke the rules whenever I needed to. And, as I’d thought, it turned out that nobody cared. The place was so deserted during the heart of the pandemic that I doubt very many people even noticed.
I've worked for companies without office space since 2016. It's glorious, and I will never, ever go back to commuting to an office.
Doesn't it feel great? I've been freelance since 2005, and haven't had an in-person client meeting in at least three years. I have clients all over the US as well as internationally, and my not being there sharing air with any of them has literally never been an issue.
Obviously not every job can be done remotely, but I feel fortunate that my vocation is one that allows me to do so.
It's sort of amazing that my largest client (and former employer) has shrunk their headquarters from six floors to one over the years despite increasing headcount. Having that much real estate in the first place was a waste, as they're a professional services firm where the norm is to be at client sites Monday through Thursday, but everyone used to have a desk. Now, it's all hoteling over there.
I will be 60 in August, I have 36 years of experience as a software developer, and I have zero interest in being promoted or growing my responsibilities. When I met the big boss before accepting my current job after working for only seven months at the previous one, he asked if he could trust that I wouldn't be looking to leave soon. I told him that the job I was leaving paid less than I had made for the last 20 years and was an hour commute and I only took it as an emergency stop-gap after being laid off. I asked if he knew how old I was and he said he couldn't ask but I could tell. I said I'm 55 and that I planned to work for another 10-12 years and I would like for this job to be my last job. I'm now earning more than ever and have been working from home since the pandemic. We have an optional in-office day once a month to chat and have catered lunch.
Congrats on landing on this spot. Sounds pretty great.
Congrats on both the current job and even landing a stop gap job. It's a brutal market out there for tech workers.
FWIW, if you plan to be at this job for 10-12 years, you might clarify with your boss whether you are 55 or 59 (or made a typo ahead). As someone in the 50+ group, I wouldn't hold it against someone on my team that they lied about their age but I'd hate to see it bite you.
I've been working here for 5 years.
I worked for only 4 employers in my 48 year career. The first for a year and a half, the second for 5 years, the third for 8, and the fourth for 33 and a half. Kind of an exponential progression. If I ever decide to take on a new career, I think I’d need to live to about 150 to stay on that curve.
I love this.
I'm in an industry where people regularly send emails like "this is the best job I've ever had, but I've made the difficult decision that after 2.5 years it's time to move on". I want to slap every one of them.
Hah on me. With all the tech layoffs and everyone around me starting a new job, I assumed your adventure was recent.
Nice Al. Congratulations on landing squarely on your feet. That in and of itself is huge enough. To do it at 55? Even more so.
I read an article recently that it's people (in general) don't mind going to the office. But they hate commuting. My last office job before I went full time WFH around 8 years ago was fine. I liked the people I worked with, I thought the cultural was good. But the commute was a beating. I've had a couple job offers in the last year that were back to the office and had they been in my part of town I might have taken one of them. But they would have involved commuting and that's a hard pass for me.
Pre-covid, my commute was a 20 minute bike ride, so I didn't mind it at all. However, the ability to do chores and such during the day with WFH is such a huge QoL improvement.
One VERY important thing to note about "working from home" - NOT EVERYONE HAS A JOB THAT ALLOWS THEM TO. And I'm not just talking about health care and retail jobs.
I work in an office for my county gov't. Much of my job involves processing payments and handling legal documents. I have access to people's Social Security numbers. Not a chance in hell I can do that "at home".
This is true. And what’s that have to do with the general thesis?
Yep. I could work from home if offered but I wouldn't be nearly as productive as I need access to full size architecturals and I don't have a plotter.
I returned to my previous employer just over a year ago. I wasn't looking. My old boss called me about a project we were doing with him and he asked if I would consider returning. The benefits aren't nearly as good, but I received a raise, another week of vacation and a company vehicle with the fuel and maintenance provided.
The stress at my current job is far less as well. Plus, it's a 20 minute easy rural commute as opposed to 1-1:15 racing around 465 at 85 MPH. Ahh...Indy. Where the brickyard has cars traveling 230MPH, the interstate speed limit signs circling it are 55MPH and if you aren't going a minimum of 80MPH you are holding everyone up.
While I agree that working from home is as productive as in an office in a vacuum, I am still pro office.
First off, I don't like paying for the boss' internet, electricity, and sundries. I also don't like subsidizing their rent.
I also find the random pop ins annoying on the micro level, but beneficial on the macro level for the esprit de corps and actual projects.
On a purely urbanist note, a second place to go is important for building community. We desperately need third places like parks, plazas, or promenades and just taking away second places is destructive.
If all this is built on the necks of relatively powerless workers than it’s only as strong as this very weak infrastructure. If workers are the keystone to holding the whole ancillary structure together, then a lot more respect, dignity, money, and autonomy should be headed their way.
I actually agree with most of that even though I disagree with your conclusion.
I don't like that my boss gets 2.5 hours of my time for free and I have no privacy, either to avoid disruptions or have a private conversation. While I do miss the personal connections, it's great that we can hire people from anywhere in the country and we don't have to fight every company for the small number of tech workers who live in this metro area (or are willing to move).
But for sure, some is the nature of the company. If everyone lives 15-20 minutes from the office but chooses to WFH regularly, that may not be ideal. It's a bit different when people's commute is half a day and involves a plane :).
Access to talent is one of the biggest factors for offering remote and hybrid work. Why rely solely on the subset of locals who have the skills and experience you need who also want to commute to a workplace on the regs when there are literally millions of other potential employees out there?
I'm more upset about Martha Stewart shitting on France and saying that it's not a "thriving country". France has been around for a while. Survived some serious shit. America doesn't feel like it's especially "thriving" these days.
Good luck with whatever you're marketing, Martha and tell Snoop that I said "hello", but otherwise maybe shut the fuck up.
When I left my workplace yesterday the outside air smelled of the fires.
Welcome to the new global warming future, everyone. 😠
Us here on the west coast should be welcoming you.
Yeah, the entire flammable west has a head start. But give the rest of the country time and it will catch up.
Also, my comment wasn't a complaint about eAsT cOaSt BiAs!!!11!!
Yeah, the smoke is really bad here too... on top of the insanely high pollen counts we've had for weeks, just taking a normal breath feels like a luxury these days.
I've also been working from home for a few years, and working from home twice a week for a few years before that. I've never been more productive.
Finally, I'm glad to see there will be a good group in Minneapolis on the 17th. I wanted to make the trip but couldn't stomach the cost of the flights. Hope everyone has a super weekend.
I’ll never forget Iron Sheik putting Hulk Hogan in the ‘Camel Clutch’, Hulk shaking and standing up to get out of it (the first escape ever from the clutch’) giving the sheik the atomic leg drop and then pinning him for the title to win the belt ! HULKAMANIA IS RUNNING WILD !!!
There are some who have always doubted me here, even told me to “smoke another fat J”, when I have stated the obvious that MLS is, without question, the top soccer league on the planet. I imagine there are several hot, steaming plates of crow being eaten for breakfast this morning.
As the great Tim the Enchanter once said, “I warned you! I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little upstart soccer league, isn't it? Well, it's always the same. I always tell them.”
We all know the story by now. The MLS All-Stars rocked Bayern Munich 2-1 in 2014 in Portland - a Bayern Munich team that was both the reigning FIFA Club World Cup champs and basically the entire German national team fresh off a World Cup title. And Landon Donovan ran circles around their helpless asses. You can’t say Bayern was treating it as an exhibition match - their coach Sep Guardiola was super pissed after the match, indicating competitiveness and a desire to win, but they simply lacked the talent of the MLS All-Stars. The MLS had resoundingly staked its claim at the top of the world soccer league mountain.
Then, the influx of the world’s best superstars from the Euro Leagues to MLS began to flow like wine. Wayne Rooney. Thierry Henry. Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Didier Drogba. David Villa. Bastien Schweinsteiger. Robbie Keane. Frank Lampard. Gareth Wales. I could do this all day, but as you can see - it’s a clear, undeniable pattern.
And now, the crown of them all. The undisputed greatest player in the world and perhaps history, Lionel Messi, has followed in their footsteps, leaving the inferior Euro Leagues behind to sharpen his skills against the best in the world in the MLS. He even turned down Saudi bonesaw cash to do it, proving his desire to play against the best rather than take the money from a crown prince who is turning golf into gulf. Lionel isn’t Messi-ng around like the pathetic PGA - he wants to compete.
WAT
"The undisputed greatest player in the world and perhaps history, Lionel Messi...."
The ghost of Pele enters the chat.....
I mean, the saudi tourism ambassador isn't really turing down all saudi cash.
That is the only flaw in this well presented, researched and completely hinged comment (series of comments).
Incredible take, thank you.
Thank you. It is surprising how some here are treating it as heresy. Wayne Rooney agrees with me. David Villa agrees with me. Thierry Henry agrees with me. David Beckham agrees with me. Bastien Schweinsteiger agrees with me. Gareth Wales agrees with me. Freaking Lionel Messi agrees with me.
It's not some outlandish hot take, it's the truth that has been accepted and reinforced by the greatest superstars in the world. My only explanation is that yesterday's Messi news was an excessively hard, bitter pill to swallow for these folks who were somehow still holding out on admitting the MLS's superiority despite all those superstars streaming into the league over the years, and reality is really sinking in for them now. You simply can't deny Messi, and they know that.
And now they must cope with the reality that their worldview of soccer has been wrong all these years, and are lashing out in frustration. It's ok though, with time they will see the light.
Umm...Pele?
Isn't this GOAT argument the same as Ruth v trout or bonds or whatever and Chamberlin v jordan/James?
Different eras were different. It's fun to compare and I think *in general* I am bias towards the more modern athlete.
My hottest take is that there can be more than one greatest of all time.
It's certainly similar to those you mentioned and comparing eras is almost impossible. Perhaps a better way to put it would be Pele was the greatest of his era, Ruth in his, Bonds, etc...
Lol…still a big no. Yet another has been mid thirty player taking care of his (and his kids) old age
The Twins' inability to score runs except for when they explode with 8+ is nuts. A local scribe pointed out that they lead the league with 625 strikeouts, a little over 10 a game and 10% more than the next team. Rod Carew struck out 55 times in 694 appearances in his MVP season.
Are you going Super 70s Sports on us with that Carew anecdote?
He hit .388, once stole 2nd, 3rd and then home, and did 6 years in the Marine Corps Reserves. That was the bestest of times.
Don't take my Kodachrome away.