Dane Dunning, Packy Naughton, All-Star balloting, our mass hysteria when it comes to crime, calling Republican's mental health bluff, and smokin' a bit of the dilly weed
Have you tried a hair ring? They're not perfect (mind you, this was almost 30 years ago for us - the technology may have improved) but they usually let us get most of the shampoo out before the fussing started ... then we could usually mop up the straggler shampoo during the rest of the bath. Godspeed, Cur.
I am okay with some stuff around the house. I will never even try to do any plumbing beyond replacing the flapper. It's worth it to me to pay a professional to avoid a flood. So you are a braver man than I am. OTOH, you are dealing with a recalcitrant child, so your valor is clearly beyond mine in the first place. (I was like that as a kid too. Don't let the bottle fool you. There are tears in Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo.)
Some days I don't agree with our esteemed host. Today is not one of them. His thoughts on crime and perception are pretty much entirely my own. There isn't much I can add other than how two years after "defund the police" was a rallying cry and something that people were debating (though I don't think the debate was ever very serious or extensive), we're now seeing people trip over themselves to see who can fund the police the most. And that as a New Yorker, I am old enough to remember a truly high crime city. We aren't even close. Or at least I don't think so, since I am also barely outside my neighborhood and can't tell you if the subways are actually unsafe or not. (ETA: Craig, I shared this part of your newsletter with my wife since we were talking about this yesterday. Hope you don't mind, it being Free Thursday. Deleted the baseball stuff, though. She doesn't know Mike Trout from a Miami Marlin.)
There was an article on ESPN about Nestor Cortes and his mustache. In all seriousness, it suggested that his growing the 'stache is when he started to be great. Ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary folks, I present the worldwide leader in sports news!
Thought of the day: MLB might be out of touch, racist, homophobic, sexist. But at least it wasn't complicit in something as tawdry as the Deshaun Watson scandal. It continues to make me grit my teeth that the NFL can be as slimy as ever about how women are treated and no one cares. Or at least not enough people care to turn off their TVs on Sunday. Which makes me think, of course, that far too many people really don't care about women, either. Especially women of color.
They should defend the cops, give 20% of the money to that lady who ran in to rescue her own kids, and split the remaining among all the other families who had kids enrolled at the school.
Those uniformed cowards deserve NOTHING for that chicken-shit behavior.
It's wild that Deshaun Watson, who at least is being credibly accused as a rampant sexual predator, is just kind of on a roster and ready to start the season with a new club, but the NFL has long since kind of tolerated this.
Slowly, slowly, there has started to be actual investigative reporting of the case. The NYTimes article this week, the Real Sports interviews, and some stuff on ESPN's site, for instance, and I think the Houston Chronicle has been on top of it. But the near-conspiracy between the NFL and its media partners is in full force.
Not only did he sign a huge contract, they structured it as mostly a signing bonus with a microscopic base, protecting the vast majority of his pay from any suspension.
Variation on my usual rule: I turned off the Nats-Marlins game after the Nats went ahead in the top of the 10th – it had been a very long day and I was really tired, and I decided that not seeing them win was a price I was willing to pay to not having to see them lose.
Getting their hands mangled in a hydrostroke gear-shaper would be no excuse for them not running for Williams Astudillo. Perhaps they got their legs mangled in a hydrostroke gear-shaper.
Astudillo entered the game in the bottom of the 10th as a pinch hitter, hitting for Luke Williams, who had himself entered the game as a pinch-runner/defensive replacement for Jorge Soler, so the Marlins may not have had many left on the bench. He also appeared to be fairly fleet for his lack of aerodynamics, but that's not the story here.
No, the story is that during his at-bat, Astudillo looked like Bartolo Colon on his worst day at the plate in flailing at two sliders, and so naturally with the count 0-2, Tanner Rainey decided to announce his presence with authority and blow a fastball by him. That didn't work, as Astudillo flared a single to right, scoring Jazz Chisholm, the Manfred Man, on a play that required a review to settle (Chisholm slid wide of the plate and was eventually tagged out, but was ruled safe after it was determined that Keibert Ruiz didn't give him a lane to get to the plate). Astudillo took second on the play, and then scored when a grounder up the middle hit second base and took a high hop, leaving him all the time needed to chug home.
Hard to justify putting Alonso above Goldschmidt, but I understand ppl who do. Pete's not listed as a DH but you can write him in there but Yordan Alvarez is also there.
Lindor, Nimmo and McNeil are all fair votes, beyond that you're just homer-ing.
I am homering because this doesn't matter one iota. But if someone is stinking up the joint, my fandom has its limits.
And I will do other ballots that are based entirely on stats. I can vote like 100 times. Obviously Goldschmidt should start. And Alonso should take over. (Though I wonder if he is more interested in defending his even more meaningless and somewhat more fun Home Run Derby title again.)
Oh, homer away! I didn't want to demean homerism on the all star ballot. The system is set up for homer-ing and that practice is encouraged by every team, so homer-away, there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm just arguing merits, which as you say is meaningless in terms of who wins the spots.
You say we have no delusions about the All-Star roster being a measure of greatness, but when it comes to listing the accomplishments of a player you constantly hear things like "he's a 3 time All-Star" making it sound like it does have meaning. Either we should stop taking All-Star status as meaning something, or have a better way of selecting the roster based on merit.
Re: crime and Chesa, there was a good podcast episode on just that yesterday by Citations Needed.
They examine mostly the media angle and looked specifically at an NYT article that used a local "liberal" real estate lobbyist as the primary source against Chesa. They even acknowledged 7 'graphs in that there's no data to support the stance, but then proceeded to surround that 'graph with 2000 words supporting the stance.
Just to put this comment somewhere, Joe eskenazi is spot on. He has been spot on this entire time.* Which is why i pay money to have him text me everyday and contribute to Mission Local monthly. I encourage everyone to do the same in their neck of the woods.
I am not sure if it is covered in his piece as I read it early when he texted it to his list, but SF has ranked choice voting. meaning, for city offices, voters list their top three picks for any position. You for each candidate, you color in the bubble for #1, or #2, or #3, or you leave all of them blank. the #1 votes are counted first. If no one gets 50%+1, they drop the last place person, and use the last place #2 as #1 votes andf do the math again. And so on till someone gets 50% +1.
Here, Boudin got 38% of #1 votes. and ultimately wone after the 3rd and 4th pace finisher were eliminated. Meaning his majority was made on second and third choices.
In this election, it was a binary choice. Boudin out or Boudin stays. Shockingly, he got about 38% of the vote.
So, he basically didn't lose support, he just never had it. The story is the fever to undo elections before the next election (in this case is 2023, which I am to understand is next year.
"Culturally speaking we have moved past the thing in which we reflexively say “Nickelback sucks!” because we realized a few years ago that that sort of judgment is a personal one not a valid authoritative and overarching assessment of objective quality. The Angels, on the other hand, suck. That’s OK to say." The thing is that this is true in general but every rule has its own particular exemptions and Nickelback is absolutely one of them. I don't think we should shame people for liking Nickelback at all but I think all reasonable people can agree they suck. Like for instance: I love the Styx album "Kilroy Was Here" but that is also an objectively bad album.
Nickelback is perfectly fine and I'll die on that hill. My son recently discovered that he loves "Hero" from Tobey's first Spider Man movie. I suffer no shame.
I led a successful campaign to let us change the radio station at Subway as a teenager because of "Nickelback to back" on Star 98.7, which was too goddamn much "How you remind me" to get through day after day. But they seem like all right enough guys living their dream, and I have no qualms with them. One of the things I'm trying to be better about as I age.
Craig: A great essay on the San Francisco recall election that should be repeated everywhere. I find it particularly disturbing here in the boondocks, 1/2 hour from the city, that the “rurals” abhor the thought of travel to the lawless “urban” center of culture available to them. At the center of all this is the “feeling” that the city is secular, godless, and dangerous because the “simple” country folks have a monopoly on “Christian” family values and prayer. God, help us.
As for the Detroit-Pittsburgh baseball rivalry, we took in the sun-drenched afternoon matinee yesterday. The Detroit fans were pleasant guests, treated to 2 wins, instead of home loses. They were enthusiastic, but it was a snooze fest; in addition to 13 Bucco strikeouts, the home 9 only made contact safely 3 times for hits.
I guess Nutting is selling sunshine, at a premium, as PNC is a completely cashless business. If even youngsters are having trouble with the strange touchscreen menu paired with a credit-card machine, no one will actually have the feeling that they are drinking pop for $6.50 or eating a $10 hot dog.
I lived in a smallish Texas city when I first moved here and did a lot of work in rural areas. Nice people. But they were shocked when I said I was moving to Dallas. To them, moving to someplace like Dallas or Houston might as well be moving to Mars.
I get people like what they like and big city living isn't for everyone. Plenty of people enjoy the suburban or rural lifestyle. But the underlying thing for many of these people was the fear of the big city which was really the fear of the "other."
As a city slicker I have a healthy respect of nature because there is plenty of it that would like to kill or maim me.
Many rural Texans are scared of the city because Fox News has convinced them they minute they cross into the city limits they will either be robbed and murdered by rampaging hoards of dark-skinned people or be forced into a gay abortion ceremony by godless liberals.
I live in a small town of 12,000. The older I get, the more I like it. I grew up there. It’s flat. It’s empty. I truly love that dull little place. I’m currently sitting in a hotel room 40 floors above Michigan avenue in Chicago and it’s as different as could be. I’ve been up in this area of Chicago 75 times in 25 years and have never felt anything but safe. You are right, it’s mainly ignorant fear that drives this crime shit (I know the viagra triangle IS NOT the same place as Chicago 20 blocks west of the United Center). People just don’t know and don’t care to find out.
I get it. I often think about selling my house and taking all the money I'd make and go buying a fixer-upper somewhere close to a lake. Usually I think about these things when I'm stuck in traffic at 2:00 pm on Saturday for no good reason. All places have their pros and cons. I like living in a big city so I have to accept the good and the bad.
I get that too. I wish I weren’t so car-dependent. Otoh, I couldn’t imagine raising 4 teenagers in a large city, I don’t think I’d know how. Chicago is close enough for me to visit when I need to. I live closer to St. Louis, but StL isn’t a city in the way I envision one (Chi, NYC, Toronto, SF).
Ugh, traffic. I could never live in a big city but I've lived on the outskirts and worked in them before, and enjoy visiting museums and such. I just know that in a large city there are more people, which means more bad people (mostly pickpockets and the like) than in a smaller place just because crowds of visitors mean targets.
Years ago I saw a stand-up routine by a young man who went to law school, and he did a bit on the difficulty of being a criminal in a small town. A man was robbed and the police asked him if he could describe the suspect, and he said "sure, it looked just like Bob. I know, I couldn't believe it either, I said Bob, what's wrong, this isn't like you! When did you decide to be a criminal? This never came up before!"
Not directly on crime and SF, but the Texas Monthly piece on mass shootings. “Patrick, seated next to Abbott, laid blame elsewhere, pointing the finger at the “dechristianization” of America.” This I’ve heard from a number of people who oppose gun control legislation. They either do or don’t get that POV plays right into the hands of people like Abbott and Patrick, who’d want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. To Abbott, Patrick, Scalise, MTG et al “freedom” is only for white Christians. They “otherize” everyone else; and the others will get oppression, not freedom. The Abbotts, Boeberts, and MTGs scream oppression and “cancel culture” when someone they agree with gets criticized, but you can guarantee they won’t be anywhere to be heard protecting the rights of Muslims or anyone protesting police violence to be allowed to freely be armed to the teeth and open carrying an AK to the Safeway. Their dream country is separate and unequal until it’s cleansed and then no more separation is needed.
Having played Fantasy Baseball for most of the past 40ish years, I've always looked at the All Star Break as a vacation from daily lineup changes and the constant watch of the waiver wire. 4 days where I didn't have to worry about teams switching their closer or promoting the next phenom.
Having 'retired' from fantasy baseball, I took the time to fill out an All Star ballot this morning!
It was actually kind of fun! The last time I did this was the old Yankee Stadium with those computer punch cards (watch those hanging chads, kids!).
When they were still using the punch cards, it was kind of understandable that they had to decide what names to print on the cards a long time before they were released, and as such, it was kind of forgivable that the nominees were more based on star power than actual merit..
Nowadays, they don't need to do that, they can just edit the webpage just before voting start.
That being the case, why is Fernando Tatis Jr. on my ballot? He hasn't played a game yet!
There are guys on the ballot batting under .200! Its ridiculous and they should address this before next season.
Anyway, here it is, my first All Star Ballot in over 30 years! (I will vote only once, btw)
AL; France, Giminez, JRamirez, Bogaerts, Judge, Trout, Tucker and Alvarez
The word "boon" was actually derived from this phenomenon. People started noticing that having a Boone on their respective team was usually helpful and beneficial, and that was the implied thought when a GM added a Boone to their team. It eventually became an informal baseball saying when talking about one of them, Bret Boone for example - "The GM added a Boone to the Seattle Mariners." That could mean Bret, but it also means the GM added a helpful player to the team.
Then the word kind of naturally seeped into the regular English language outside of baseball and the "e" was eventually dropped (it's unclear why or when), and it eventually became adopted into the official vocabulary of Merriam-Webster, defined as "a timely benefit". Pretty interesting how baseball can influence our society at large, including our own language.
I think that's the lone example. David Bell never made an All-Star team, even though his grampa Gus did, and Dick Schofield Sr. never did either, even though Jayson Werth did.
It solves the problem of having to give Black men paying jobs. I don't entirely buy the "acts were criminalized specifically to enslave Black men all over again" idea (nor do I reject it) but certainly if Black men are locked up, you don't have to worry about getting them decent wages or decent working conditions.
And conversely, it employs lots of violent white men who are otherwise ill suited for many jobs. I don't think anyone has ever said this out loud, but I imagine it's part of the reasoning.
Good paying jobs are really the key. Every city seems to have the remnants of factories, etc. which used to provide those jobs, but all the corporations exported those jobs decades ago. These corporations didn't actually save any of this payroll money, now it just goes to stockholders and executives who live in mansions many miles from those shuddered plants.
Don't you love capitalism? (Though some of those executives and stockholders live in huge Upper East Side apartments just a mile or two from lower income neighborhoods, and that also informs the whole "Fear of Crime" thing.)
Mental Illness needs massive funding and attention. My family has long suffered with it. My mother is schizophrenic and a ward of the state. My son suffers massive anxiety, and I'm probably undiagnosed with something or another. If Repubtards want to lay the blame for AR-15's having their own table at Denny's on everyone being nuts, that's fine, please do fund everything you can so that each school classroom has its own mental health aide, etc. And continue to ignore real problems so that Cletus and Co. can continue to fire 60 rounds a minute into the soda can 10 feet away.
Agreed - this can be a silver lining in the dark cloud. Call the bluff and aim for bipartisan flooding of money into mental health solutions. I do, however, see that the next mass shooting will cause GOP to push back on this blaming the Democrats for not addressing the problem.
I think "tax the bullets" might be a much better strategy. Let the guns proliferate, but if bullets are $100 each people will reconsider investing in school shootings.
kind of like cigarettes were taxed until basically people gave them up (although vape pods aren't cheap either). Now i don't know a single kid smoking that smokes cigarettes. i'm not sure if any of this is ultimately good, but it did spell the death of cigarettes for youth.
From The Athletic: Umpire Angel Hernandez alleges MLB manipulated reviews to make minorities look bad
Once again, we have an accusation that is likely to be true, and an accuser with very little credibility since he's universally regarded as a bad ump. Makes my head hurt.
His lawyer is trying to make it out like he's got data to back it up but it's under wraps:
“I wish I wasn’t under a protective order because baseball has the statistical analysis on balls and strikes and replay,” he said. “Take this year for instance. Angel missed his first call the other day in two months..."
The thing is, we have data too, most of it publicly available, and it all says Hernandez is pretty terrible, at least as compared with the rest of the crop of MLB umpires. Ump Scorecards lists his 2022 performance among 87 active umpires as:
* 10th lowest in overall accuracy (last year he was 16th worst out of the 90 who called at least 10 games)
* 15th in Average Favor and 22nd in Avg. Run Impact (last year he was 5th highest in both among the 90 umps with 10 games called)
* 5th lowest in average consistency (last year he was middle of the pack)
Overall, since the start of 2015 when we have such data available, Hernandez is in the bottom ~15-35 or so among about 115 umpires.
Interestingly enough, one of the things this suit supposedly spurred MLB to do was promote more minority umpires, and they cite their first black crew chief, Kerwin Danley, who is worse than Angel Hernandez on all of these marks.
This of course only accounts for how they call balls and strikes, not safe/out, fair/foul, etc., nor how they handle conflict with players, managers, etc. which maybe Danley does much better than Hernandez, despite his apparent inability to call a consistent or accurate strike zone.
The Angles 1-0 loss last night is an example of MLK's moral arc of the universe taking a hard turn towards justice. Historian will look back on last night as the day things started to get better.
Have you tried a hair ring? They're not perfect (mind you, this was almost 30 years ago for us - the technology may have improved) but they usually let us get most of the shampoo out before the fussing started ... then we could usually mop up the straggler shampoo during the rest of the bath. Godspeed, Cur.
I am okay with some stuff around the house. I will never even try to do any plumbing beyond replacing the flapper. It's worth it to me to pay a professional to avoid a flood. So you are a braver man than I am. OTOH, you are dealing with a recalcitrant child, so your valor is clearly beyond mine in the first place. (I was like that as a kid too. Don't let the bottle fool you. There are tears in Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo.)
Some days I don't agree with our esteemed host. Today is not one of them. His thoughts on crime and perception are pretty much entirely my own. There isn't much I can add other than how two years after "defund the police" was a rallying cry and something that people were debating (though I don't think the debate was ever very serious or extensive), we're now seeing people trip over themselves to see who can fund the police the most. And that as a New Yorker, I am old enough to remember a truly high crime city. We aren't even close. Or at least I don't think so, since I am also barely outside my neighborhood and can't tell you if the subways are actually unsafe or not. (ETA: Craig, I shared this part of your newsletter with my wife since we were talking about this yesterday. Hope you don't mind, it being Free Thursday. Deleted the baseball stuff, though. She doesn't know Mike Trout from a Miami Marlin.)
There was an article on ESPN about Nestor Cortes and his mustache. In all seriousness, it suggested that his growing the 'stache is when he started to be great. Ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary folks, I present the worldwide leader in sports news!
Thought of the day: MLB might be out of touch, racist, homophobic, sexist. But at least it wasn't complicit in something as tawdry as the Deshaun Watson scandal. It continues to make me grit my teeth that the NFL can be as slimy as ever about how women are treated and no one cares. Or at least not enough people care to turn off their TVs on Sunday. Which makes me think, of course, that far too many people really don't care about women, either. Especially women of color.
They should defend the cops, give 20% of the money to that lady who ran in to rescue her own kids, and split the remaining among all the other families who had kids enrolled at the school.
Those uniformed cowards deserve NOTHING for that chicken-shit behavior.
It's wild that Deshaun Watson, who at least is being credibly accused as a rampant sexual predator, is just kind of on a roster and ready to start the season with a new club, but the NFL has long since kind of tolerated this.
What sticks in my craw is that he was traded and signed to a huge contract. It's as if he was rewarded for his behavior.
And no one seems interested in really addressing it. We all know sports is icky and gross, but it doesn't have to be this dang bad.
Slowly, slowly, there has started to be actual investigative reporting of the case. The NYTimes article this week, the Real Sports interviews, and some stuff on ESPN's site, for instance, and I think the Houston Chronicle has been on top of it. But the near-conspiracy between the NFL and its media partners is in full force.
Not only did he sign a huge contract, they structured it as mostly a signing bonus with a microscopic base, protecting the vast majority of his pay from any suspension.
Variation on my usual rule: I turned off the Nats-Marlins game after the Nats went ahead in the top of the 10th – it had been a very long day and I was really tired, and I decided that not seeing them win was a price I was willing to pay to not having to see them lose.
No regrets.
Getting their hands mangled in a hydrostroke gear-shaper would be no excuse for them not running for Williams Astudillo. Perhaps they got their legs mangled in a hydrostroke gear-shaper.
Astudillo entered the game in the bottom of the 10th as a pinch hitter, hitting for Luke Williams, who had himself entered the game as a pinch-runner/defensive replacement for Jorge Soler, so the Marlins may not have had many left on the bench. He also appeared to be fairly fleet for his lack of aerodynamics, but that's not the story here.
No, the story is that during his at-bat, Astudillo looked like Bartolo Colon on his worst day at the plate in flailing at two sliders, and so naturally with the count 0-2, Tanner Rainey decided to announce his presence with authority and blow a fastball by him. That didn't work, as Astudillo flared a single to right, scoring Jazz Chisholm, the Manfred Man, on a play that required a review to settle (Chisholm slid wide of the plate and was eventually tagged out, but was ruled safe after it was determined that Keibert Ruiz didn't give him a lane to get to the plate). Astudillo took second on the play, and then scored when a grounder up the middle hit second base and took a high hop, leaving him all the time needed to chug home.
See “regrets, no” supra.
Astudillo is a gem. I'm glad you've now been introduced.
I had no idea Astudillo was on the Marlins roster. Happy for him...was a favorite with the Twins during his time in MN.
Cup of Coffee: come for the spot-on socio-political commentary on crime and the like, stay for the spot-on Sport magazine reference. Well f'ing done.
Haven't finished reading yet but here to throw some love for The The lyrics, a criminally underrated band.
Sinead to boot on that track…
Gravitate to Me? <chef’s kiss>
Much like HoF voting, but even worse, selection of All-Star players is a subject best not to think of to avoid severe frustration.
But at least we have no delusions about the All Star roster being a measure of greatness. It's a fan vote based on three months of a season.
It is more fun for me this year, though, since I can legit vote for most Mets without holding my nose. (Sorry, McCann, not voting for you.)
Hard to justify putting Alonso above Goldschmidt, but I understand ppl who do. Pete's not listed as a DH but you can write him in there but Yordan Alvarez is also there.
Lindor, Nimmo and McNeil are all fair votes, beyond that you're just homer-ing.
I am homering because this doesn't matter one iota. But if someone is stinking up the joint, my fandom has its limits.
And I will do other ballots that are based entirely on stats. I can vote like 100 times. Obviously Goldschmidt should start. And Alonso should take over. (Though I wonder if he is more interested in defending his even more meaningless and somewhat more fun Home Run Derby title again.)
Oh, homer away! I didn't want to demean homerism on the all star ballot. The system is set up for homer-ing and that practice is encouraged by every team, so homer-away, there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm just arguing merits, which as you say is meaningless in terms of who wins the spots.
You say we have no delusions about the All-Star roster being a measure of greatness, but when it comes to listing the accomplishments of a player you constantly hear things like "he's a 3 time All-Star" making it sound like it does have meaning. Either we should stop taking All-Star status as meaning something, or have a better way of selecting the roster based on merit.
Maybe the arrival of an official all-MLB team will change things?
Nah.
I think it's only a matter of time till the All-Star games in all sports go away. But not for a while yet.
Re: crime and Chesa, there was a good podcast episode on just that yesterday by Citations Needed.
They examine mostly the media angle and looked specifically at an NYT article that used a local "liberal" real estate lobbyist as the primary source against Chesa. They even acknowledged 7 'graphs in that there's no data to support the stance, but then proceeded to surround that 'graph with 2000 words supporting the stance.
Great podcast and great episode.
Just to put this comment somewhere, Joe eskenazi is spot on. He has been spot on this entire time.* Which is why i pay money to have him text me everyday and contribute to Mission Local monthly. I encourage everyone to do the same in their neck of the woods.
I am not sure if it is covered in his piece as I read it early when he texted it to his list, but SF has ranked choice voting. meaning, for city offices, voters list their top three picks for any position. You for each candidate, you color in the bubble for #1, or #2, or #3, or you leave all of them blank. the #1 votes are counted first. If no one gets 50%+1, they drop the last place person, and use the last place #2 as #1 votes andf do the math again. And so on till someone gets 50% +1.
Here, Boudin got 38% of #1 votes. and ultimately wone after the 3rd and 4th pace finisher were eliminated. Meaning his majority was made on second and third choices.
In this election, it was a binary choice. Boudin out or Boudin stays. Shockingly, he got about 38% of the vote.
So, he basically didn't lose support, he just never had it. The story is the fever to undo elections before the next election (in this case is 2023, which I am to understand is next year.
*He is a fine outfielder too.
I’d be pumped to walk up to Nickelback any day of the week, “Feed the Machine” goes hard af.
Hoping someone snuck “Leader of Men” into the playlist
No one in the starting lineup, which, come on guys, it's the best song!
Maybe it was too good a song to play ironically
"Culturally speaking we have moved past the thing in which we reflexively say “Nickelback sucks!” because we realized a few years ago that that sort of judgment is a personal one not a valid authoritative and overarching assessment of objective quality. The Angels, on the other hand, suck. That’s OK to say." The thing is that this is true in general but every rule has its own particular exemptions and Nickelback is absolutely one of them. I don't think we should shame people for liking Nickelback at all but I think all reasonable people can agree they suck. Like for instance: I love the Styx album "Kilroy Was Here" but that is also an objectively bad album.
Nickelback is perfectly fine and I'll die on that hill. My son recently discovered that he loves "Hero" from Tobey's first Spider Man movie. I suffer no shame.
I led a successful campaign to let us change the radio station at Subway as a teenager because of "Nickelback to back" on Star 98.7, which was too goddamn much "How you remind me" to get through day after day. But they seem like all right enough guys living their dream, and I have no qualms with them. One of the things I'm trying to be better about as I age.
i mean it could be worse, right? they could be coldplay.
Or Creed.
Craig: A great essay on the San Francisco recall election that should be repeated everywhere. I find it particularly disturbing here in the boondocks, 1/2 hour from the city, that the “rurals” abhor the thought of travel to the lawless “urban” center of culture available to them. At the center of all this is the “feeling” that the city is secular, godless, and dangerous because the “simple” country folks have a monopoly on “Christian” family values and prayer. God, help us.
As for the Detroit-Pittsburgh baseball rivalry, we took in the sun-drenched afternoon matinee yesterday. The Detroit fans were pleasant guests, treated to 2 wins, instead of home loses. They were enthusiastic, but it was a snooze fest; in addition to 13 Bucco strikeouts, the home 9 only made contact safely 3 times for hits.
I guess Nutting is selling sunshine, at a premium, as PNC is a completely cashless business. If even youngsters are having trouble with the strange touchscreen menu paired with a credit-card machine, no one will actually have the feeling that they are drinking pop for $6.50 or eating a $10 hot dog.
I lived in a smallish Texas city when I first moved here and did a lot of work in rural areas. Nice people. But they were shocked when I said I was moving to Dallas. To them, moving to someplace like Dallas or Houston might as well be moving to Mars.
I get people like what they like and big city living isn't for everyone. Plenty of people enjoy the suburban or rural lifestyle. But the underlying thing for many of these people was the fear of the big city which was really the fear of the "other."
As a city slicker I have a healthy respect of nature because there is plenty of it that would like to kill or maim me.
Many rural Texans are scared of the city because Fox News has convinced them they minute they cross into the city limits they will either be robbed and murdered by rampaging hoards of dark-skinned people or be forced into a gay abortion ceremony by godless liberals.
I live in a small town of 12,000. The older I get, the more I like it. I grew up there. It’s flat. It’s empty. I truly love that dull little place. I’m currently sitting in a hotel room 40 floors above Michigan avenue in Chicago and it’s as different as could be. I’ve been up in this area of Chicago 75 times in 25 years and have never felt anything but safe. You are right, it’s mainly ignorant fear that drives this crime shit (I know the viagra triangle IS NOT the same place as Chicago 20 blocks west of the United Center). People just don’t know and don’t care to find out.
I saw Viagra Triangle at a pop-up show outside Wembley during the Industrial Shithouse tour. It was disappointingly short-lived for what it cost.
About 8-10 years ago I saw one of these parked in front of Gibson’s on Rush, even though none were allocated to the USA:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Sesto_Elemento
I get it. I often think about selling my house and taking all the money I'd make and go buying a fixer-upper somewhere close to a lake. Usually I think about these things when I'm stuck in traffic at 2:00 pm on Saturday for no good reason. All places have their pros and cons. I like living in a big city so I have to accept the good and the bad.
I get that too. I wish I weren’t so car-dependent. Otoh, I couldn’t imagine raising 4 teenagers in a large city, I don’t think I’d know how. Chicago is close enough for me to visit when I need to. I live closer to St. Louis, but StL isn’t a city in the way I envision one (Chi, NYC, Toronto, SF).
Ugh, traffic. I could never live in a big city but I've lived on the outskirts and worked in them before, and enjoy visiting museums and such. I just know that in a large city there are more people, which means more bad people (mostly pickpockets and the like) than in a smaller place just because crowds of visitors mean targets.
Years ago I saw a stand-up routine by a young man who went to law school, and he did a bit on the difficulty of being a criminal in a small town. A man was robbed and the police asked him if he could describe the suspect, and he said "sure, it looked just like Bob. I know, I couldn't believe it either, I said Bob, what's wrong, this isn't like you! When did you decide to be a criminal? This never came up before!"
Not directly on crime and SF, but the Texas Monthly piece on mass shootings. “Patrick, seated next to Abbott, laid blame elsewhere, pointing the finger at the “dechristianization” of America.” This I’ve heard from a number of people who oppose gun control legislation. They either do or don’t get that POV plays right into the hands of people like Abbott and Patrick, who’d want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. To Abbott, Patrick, Scalise, MTG et al “freedom” is only for white Christians. They “otherize” everyone else; and the others will get oppression, not freedom. The Abbotts, Boeberts, and MTGs scream oppression and “cancel culture” when someone they agree with gets criticized, but you can guarantee they won’t be anywhere to be heard protecting the rights of Muslims or anyone protesting police violence to be allowed to freely be armed to the teeth and open carrying an AK to the Safeway. Their dream country is separate and unequal until it’s cleansed and then no more separation is needed.
Having played Fantasy Baseball for most of the past 40ish years, I've always looked at the All Star Break as a vacation from daily lineup changes and the constant watch of the waiver wire. 4 days where I didn't have to worry about teams switching their closer or promoting the next phenom.
Having 'retired' from fantasy baseball, I took the time to fill out an All Star ballot this morning!
It was actually kind of fun! The last time I did this was the old Yankee Stadium with those computer punch cards (watch those hanging chads, kids!).
When they were still using the punch cards, it was kind of understandable that they had to decide what names to print on the cards a long time before they were released, and as such, it was kind of forgivable that the nominees were more based on star power than actual merit..
Nowadays, they don't need to do that, they can just edit the webpage just before voting start.
That being the case, why is Fernando Tatis Jr. on my ballot? He hasn't played a game yet!
There are guys on the ballot batting under .200! Its ridiculous and they should address this before next season.
Anyway, here it is, my first All Star Ballot in over 30 years! (I will vote only once, btw)
AL; France, Giminez, JRamirez, Bogaerts, Judge, Trout, Tucker and Alvarez
NL; Goldy, Chisolm, Manny, Lindor, Betts, Yastrzemski, Contreras, Harper.
Note: I didn't have to look up how to spell Yastrzemski because back in '68 I was in the 'Yaz club' and ate lots of 'Yaz bread'!
I think Mike Yaz would be the first grandson of an All-Star to appear in a All-Star game.
Aaron and Brett Boone were both all-stars. Sons of all-star Robert Boone, and grandsons of all-star Ray Boone
Had no idea about the Boone family being that "good." I remember Bob Boone being pretty good, though. But not him being an All-Star.
The word "boon" was actually derived from this phenomenon. People started noticing that having a Boone on their respective team was usually helpful and beneficial, and that was the implied thought when a GM added a Boone to their team. It eventually became an informal baseball saying when talking about one of them, Bret Boone for example - "The GM added a Boone to the Seattle Mariners." That could mean Bret, but it also means the GM added a helpful player to the team.
Then the word kind of naturally seeped into the regular English language outside of baseball and the "e" was eventually dropped (it's unclear why or when), and it eventually became adopted into the official vocabulary of Merriam-Webster, defined as "a timely benefit". Pretty interesting how baseball can influence our society at large, including our own language.
I think that's the lone example. David Bell never made an All-Star team, even though his grampa Gus did, and Dick Schofield Sr. never did either, even though Jayson Werth did.
Brett Boone (3 times) and his father Bob Boone (4 times) and his grandfather Ray Boone (two-times) were all All Stars.
Don't forget Aaron! He made the ASG back in 2003 for the Reds.
More cops and more cages solves nothing.
It solves the problem of having to give Black men paying jobs. I don't entirely buy the "acts were criminalized specifically to enslave Black men all over again" idea (nor do I reject it) but certainly if Black men are locked up, you don't have to worry about getting them decent wages or decent working conditions.
And conversely, it employs lots of violent white men who are otherwise ill suited for many jobs. I don't think anyone has ever said this out loud, but I imagine it's part of the reasoning.
Good paying jobs are really the key. Every city seems to have the remnants of factories, etc. which used to provide those jobs, but all the corporations exported those jobs decades ago. These corporations didn't actually save any of this payroll money, now it just goes to stockholders and executives who live in mansions many miles from those shuddered plants.
Don't you love capitalism? (Though some of those executives and stockholders live in huge Upper East Side apartments just a mile or two from lower income neighborhoods, and that also informs the whole "Fear of Crime" thing.)
Less guns and more mental health care helps solve many things.
Mental Illness needs massive funding and attention. My family has long suffered with it. My mother is schizophrenic and a ward of the state. My son suffers massive anxiety, and I'm probably undiagnosed with something or another. If Repubtards want to lay the blame for AR-15's having their own table at Denny's on everyone being nuts, that's fine, please do fund everything you can so that each school classroom has its own mental health aide, etc. And continue to ignore real problems so that Cletus and Co. can continue to fire 60 rounds a minute into the soda can 10 feet away.
Agreed - this can be a silver lining in the dark cloud. Call the bluff and aim for bipartisan flooding of money into mental health solutions. I do, however, see that the next mass shooting will cause GOP to push back on this blaming the Democrats for not addressing the problem.
I think "tax the bullets" might be a much better strategy. Let the guns proliferate, but if bullets are $100 each people will reconsider investing in school shootings.
kind of like cigarettes were taxed until basically people gave them up (although vape pods aren't cheap either). Now i don't know a single kid smoking that smokes cigarettes. i'm not sure if any of this is ultimately good, but it did spell the death of cigarettes for youth.
From The Athletic: Umpire Angel Hernandez alleges MLB manipulated reviews to make minorities look bad
Once again, we have an accusation that is likely to be true, and an accuser with very little credibility since he's universally regarded as a bad ump. Makes my head hurt.
Angel Hernandez is probably right about manipulated reviews. But he's still and incompetent umpire who shouldn't be calling major league games.
"likely to be true" doubt it
His lawyer is trying to make it out like he's got data to back it up but it's under wraps:
“I wish I wasn’t under a protective order because baseball has the statistical analysis on balls and strikes and replay,” he said. “Take this year for instance. Angel missed his first call the other day in two months..."
The thing is, we have data too, most of it publicly available, and it all says Hernandez is pretty terrible, at least as compared with the rest of the crop of MLB umpires. Ump Scorecards lists his 2022 performance among 87 active umpires as:
* 10th lowest in overall accuracy (last year he was 16th worst out of the 90 who called at least 10 games)
* 15th in Average Favor and 22nd in Avg. Run Impact (last year he was 5th highest in both among the 90 umps with 10 games called)
* 5th lowest in average consistency (last year he was middle of the pack)
Overall, since the start of 2015 when we have such data available, Hernandez is in the bottom ~15-35 or so among about 115 umpires.
Interestingly enough, one of the things this suit supposedly spurred MLB to do was promote more minority umpires, and they cite their first black crew chief, Kerwin Danley, who is worse than Angel Hernandez on all of these marks.
This of course only accounts for how they call balls and strikes, not safe/out, fair/foul, etc., nor how they handle conflict with players, managers, etc. which maybe Danley does much better than Hernandez, despite his apparent inability to call a consistent or accurate strike zone.
The Angles 1-0 loss last night is an example of MLK's moral arc of the universe taking a hard turn towards justice. Historian will look back on last night as the day things started to get better.