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Of all the stupid MAGA things, what's most likely to destroy our country quickest is not end of democracy, bigotry and the other bad stuff we worry about. It is anti-science/ anti-education/ lack of interest in the truth. I don't think we can last very long as a strong country if we continue down that road.

This just can not be stressed enough. A democracy depends on the public making decisions to the public good. If they either don't understand, mis-understand, or are allowed to be lied to without challenge about what is actually the public good, game over - everything collapses.

And so many are eager to board that train. I know I’ve shared this Edith Sitwell quote before: I am patient with stupidity but not with those that are proud of it.

Kettle, meet Pot(us)

I share your characterization, but the fact that it was often unpleasant didn't mean I didn't learn a lot of things I needed to!

Our radio station broadcasted outside in the cold last Tuesday - Saturday in front of Kroger in Ann Arbor to raise money for Food Gatherers in Washtenaw. The effort raised the equivalent of 1.076 million meals (and counting). Passed our goal of 1 million. And it was really really cold this year, and it was worth the effort.

https://bsky.app/profile/jefftiedrich.bsky.social/post/3ld7sow22v22z

I would recommend that anyone who can go to school where they will meet a lot of different kind of people should do it. Monotone suburbia on one side, monotone black urban on the other, and FTM monotone rural are all bad for everyone. I had the good fortune to be a middle class kid at a high school with classmates that ran the spectrum from Palmer Woods to Highland Park. Looking back now I wouldn't have traded it for the world. At 15 yrs old that exposure actually is life changing.

I lived in a boring white suburban middle class town, so I wasn't exposed to much. Just boring white middle class kids being shallow and treating each other badly. A far as learning how to think, I got a lot out of my education. I got that at home too. I was just commenting on the importance of socialization from schools.

the sixers should just tank the rest of the season.

Marshall is pulling out if its bowl game against Army. They said they lost too many players to the transfer portal. Louisiana Tech will replace them.

I feel like Bergman’s offensive numbers would crater in Comerica vs playing in that Mickey Mouse ballpark he’s been in. I have more faith in Vierling as a regular 3B

I’ll be honest, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want Bregman in part because of the trash cans. I may be wrong, but from my understanding of what is publicly known, Bregman was one of the ring leaders and ignored Hinch’s attempts (the degree of which can be debated) to stop it. What actually happened probably isn’t completely publicly known and I’m sure my singular sentence synopsis is quite incomplete. When Hinch signed with Detroit, I understood the apprehension from those that were against it. Hinch was the only on field personnel that was sentenced for the activities. No players were officially punished. Was Hinch sufficiently charged? There’s discussion to be had. But none of the players were, that cannot be denied. And so that’s always been a sticking point to me with that saga.

Slightly related to the anti education part, if one wants to home school, have at it. But don’t bombard a professional and degreed educator for instruction on how to home school. It’s quite insulting to imply someone isn’t worthy of a task that their expertise is then asked for.

And the Central teams that feast on them have an edge for the wild card spots.

no argument. With the new TB rule, you need even less time for only 35 yds

That game is a good example of why Campbell was right to go for it on 4th down at the end of the Green Bay game. The Lions were down 3 late and had a 4th and short and opted to kick. Buffalo went down the field in like 30 seconds and kicked the field goal to win.

I can see that. We saw it here with Justin and Max. And probably more so now with Judge having not performed well in the playoffs and Soto tearing it up.

I practically got a boner reading this part of the story, especially the second paragraph: “I think every team pitches you on that idea,” Cobb said of improvement through adjustments. “I think what separates Detroit is the fact that I know Scott [Harris], his background, and I have talked to other free agents, people that have gone through the process with them that said it was different here. “I haven't gotten into it with them yet; I’m excited too. But [others] suggest that it is not the same as the pitch that other teams give you, that their data’s a little bit different and they have the staff that knows how to take that and translate it into an athlete’s terms of understanding.” This is exactly the kind of thing I have wanted for my franchise for 25 years!

In marketability terms, he doesn’t need the numbers because he’s guaranteed employment until he’s 40. In self-esteem terms, this will probably be a big problem for him. I’m coming around to believing that it came down to “I’m the Man”, which he never could be under Aaron Judge’s thumb.

It gives the student athletes a week off to concentrate on finals. Almost said it with a straight face.

Putin's Russia. Everybody votes but it's strictly for show. Only Vladdy gets to count the votes.

Right. Speaking of MS, they have some up with another new one that also really frosts me. At some point since the release of W11 they made Bitlocker the standard install. That's not that hard to turn off but bitlocker uses the little 16M hidden partition that MS used to install on any windows system drive. But now that bitlocker is standard, the windows disk manager will write the 16M hidden partition to every drive it thinks is empty - again, on start up of the disk manager and without ever asking. The problem is DM is too stupid to recognize some linux disk arrays and so corrupts them willy-nilly. So the work around is you can never start DM if you have a dual boot box, if you need to change the drive letter on a disk you have to use Diskpart from the command line. Unacceptable.

1,172,941 meals is the final count.

Wasn't there a 'progress toward degree' requirement to maintain eligibility? I know - silly question.

That's pretty brutal, but apart from supply and heavy demand another way to look at is that I'd rather pay to watch 4 or 5 games of the 2024 Lions than 8 games of the 2021 Lions. They're not equivalent products. An elite Lions team is a vastly improved product enhancement, like the difference between the latest iPhone and a flip phone.

I agree with your post, but one point of clarification. My understanding is that the Wings are only paying 37% of Petry's $6.25mm contract, or $2.3mm/yr. Habs and Penguins are picking up the rest.

Jeez. I hate all them all trying to tell me how to manage my files. I have my files, I have my filespaces in various places, I have sync software that puts what I want where I want it. It anybody messes with that it's the end of the business relationship. The other day I started up Windows backup just to see if anything was different in 24H2 and it started writing files to one-drive before it ever gave me a chance to configure what I might have wanted (end the end - zero). They can all go pound sand.

Proto-red hats escaping the liberal hellhole that is Missouri? 😉😁

Hoping the Mets and Soto will disappoint at Citi Field I asked Google if Citi was a home run ballpark and this is what its AI summary disclosed: “No, Citi Field is not considered a home run ballpark. In fact, it's known for being pitcher-friendly: Citi Field has a homer park factor of 91, which is in the bottom third of all parks. It also has the lowest park factors for singles, doubles, and triples in baseball. In May 2024, only 26.5% of fly balls with exit speeds between 100–105 mph at Citi Field were home runs, compared to 32.7% of MLB fly balls in that category.” it doesn’t reflect well upon me to be churlish about the good fortune of other teams, but I take some comfort in the fact that Soto may deliver less for the Mets then they would like.

LOL - took me way too long to get it and I was trained to be a chemist who does plumbing (i.e. Chemical Engineer, )

Interesting that the Cubs need to dump Bellinger still. And Suzuki's agent came out and said he does not want to be full time DH, but Tucker is a GG winner in RF. 3b could be be Matt Shaw.

I agree about your draft night reaction and I had Ivey #2 on my board. I recall making the Jalen Brown comps as well, but in practice I'm seeing that his lack of height and defense will always keep him from hitting that type of ceiling. Malik Monk may be his actual outcome and Monk is getting about 20M/yr at 12% of the cap as their 4th best guy. Seeing how he fits with a team that is already inconsistent, poor defensively, and turnover prone doesn't make me feel good about this team's odds with him as the #2 or even #3 guy. At this stage of the rebuild, I'm not interested in paying 30+M/yr for the #4 guy. Also, investing that much in him sets up a situation where you almost have to treat him like the #2 guy whether you should or not. Like I've said before, I'd start Beasley over him today, but no way the org would do something like that if they just signed him to a 30+M dollar extension. Coming at it from the other direction, the team really doesn't have many tradeable assets yet at some point you have to find a way to get a second star. That means packaging some good players and Ivey is a player I'd consider in that mix. I'm not going to name specific target players, because it's so easy to make up and shoot down trades. We've all been around long enough to see the crazy deals that seem totally lopsided, so our opinions on "what's fair" don't matter to NBA GMs anyway. And as far as trading for draft picks, I wouldn't be doing that so we could draft the player ourselves 4 years from now. It'd be about collecting assets in the war-chest to bring in a star when the opportunity arises. As you said initially, I'm not selling low. However, I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for a deal if I'm Trajan.

Good questions. BB% usually stays consistent. It's not a skill that someone suddenly loses unless they change their approach. His swing rate was way up which suggests he may have been adjusting to the line-up around him. Since it didn't make him a better hitter, it seems like he'd be better off going back to his old approach.

One of the many reasons why "live and local" is still important in the broadcasting industry. Despite of what the suits say

They want you to get used to the worsening because that means you'll give up on wanting better, you'll be easier to manage, and they can pocket the money they might normally invest in the product to make things better for you. It's a core capitalist value.