Screwball

The sprint car guys do a good job of that. They allow the fans in the pits after the races and encourage the traveling teams to interact with them. They do a really good job with this and their fan base is growing. Partially, maybe, because NASCAR seems to becoming less popular. Each circuit now has streaming. Flo Sports covers the one series and the other has their own streaming. Some local tracks have also went to streaming. This has helped the sport too. But the costs are nuts. 74 grand for an engine when most shows pay less that 10k is nuts, but that's what they do. They are good for maybe a dozen shows then need to be freshened up at a cost of over 10 grand, but I don't know the exact costs. There are some crown jewel events during the year that pay around 200k to win, but only a half dozen. The top guy made 800k but many others are nowhere near that. They lose their ass, but most racing teams do. Kind of a funny story about where the drivers come from. Years ago I was in southern Ohio at a dirt race. I was working on a car. Bobby Rahal was there since he lived in nearby Columbus. He was wandering around so I saw him in the pits, but once the show started he went to the press box. They interviewed him and asked what he thought of these cars. Yea, their pretty neat, all the power (over 900 hp and a 1425 lb car with driver) with so little weight they put on quite a show. How would you like to strap into one of them? No way says Bobby.

That's probably not enough money. I follow dirt track sprint car racing. There are two main touring circuits of cars. The cars are pretty much the same. Some costs I am aware of; Engines (some teams with maybe two, and others with half a dozen or more ) = $74,000 each Complete rolling car with engine = $100,000+ and they all have at least one backup. Haulers are commonly sold for several hundred dollars given they are full blown semi-trucks now. Two years ago one team disclosed they spent $1.3 million in travel expenses for the year. These costs don't include a shop to work out of. Even in this crude form of racing top teams need millions of dollars to run one of the circuits between the car, travel, and shop costs. This year, with 4 races left, the top winner made a little over $800,000 (World of Outlaw circuit, one of the two big ones). Not near enough to cover all the costs. Indy car, NASCAR, and F1 budgets would put these guys to shame when it comes to cost. Like the old saying goes "want to make a pile of money racing? Start out with a bigger pile." So true.

And we could go back to one or two Tiger games, but let's not... 😞

The difference between a double play and a line drive hit to the outfield and drive in a run, is a small fraction of an in inch, or a millisecond, at the point of contact. Kinda like golf. We all know how that goes. One itty bitty little thing could have changed the entire outcome. That's the beauty of baseball.

As one who shut this stuff off years ago, and then got hooked again; I thought the entire playoffs were a really good show. As much as I didn't like how it all ended, it was highly entertaining. Drama, long games, a little bit of everything sit on the end of your seat type stuff. I'm glad I watched. Bravo to baseball for this one.

I know most here follow F1, so this is off topic, but racing. Kyle Larson became a 2 time NASCAR champ today. I think that is really cool. He came from the dirt, like many others in the past who were great racers - see Foyt, Andretti, Unser, the list goes on. Those dirt guys can race. I know nothing about F1, but the Indy are people are really missing the boat, there are some really good dirt guys, and that type of racing on asphalt as well, who are really really good. It's all about money and connections. I think it was Johnny Ruthoford of Indy fame who said one year "there are more car salesmen here than race car drivers." That was a long time ago and it hasn't changed much. That said, Larson is a generational talent. I think he will get another crack at Indy this year. I think the last dirt guy to win Indy was Al Unser Jr. in 1994.

What a crazy game and it's only the 4th.

OK, that makes sense. So we have a kind of semi-electonic strike zone. Or a semi-umpire strike zone. Not sure which. This is too complicated. 🙂

Why would a catcher worry about framing with an electronic strike zone? He's not fooling the batter, he can't see what he does.

If it wasn't for Joe Rogan, Kyle, and is wife Krystal Ball and her shows on The Hill and now Breaking Points would have never gotten off the ground. He helped them, had them on his show. They kissed his ass. Funny how this **** works.

It was probably harder to hit a home run in the lower deck in right field that the upper deck or out of the park. That overhang was quite significant. We had seats out there one game and I got a ball during batting practice (Steve Kemp). It was a shot. Hit around row 4 or 5. On edit; it wasn't that far. Right field was a left handed batters dream.

That's only part of the window. When you open the Co-Pilot app the first screen is not full screen, but most of it. That disclaimer is way at the bottom and very small. If you are not looking, you could miss it. I only captured part of the screen - my mistake - which makes it look bigger than it is.

A little on the AI computer thing... Had an issue with text messages on my phone. I could send and get back if it was to one person. Once there were more than one, they could get mine, but I did not get a response. Oh, goody, here we go. I used the Microsoft Co-Pilot that comes with Windows 11. I spent an hour trying to fix this with no luck. I then logged into my phone carrier account and tried get help there. That might have been worse than Co-pilot. Truly awful. Probably another AI bot, just worse... I ended up fixing it myself by accident. The lack of support all started out with those damn phone tree systems. But I also noticed this. When you open Co-Pilot this is the screen. WAY at the bottom, in letters so small you need to be a piss ant to read...(I had to crop the picture because it was so close to the bottom). Too funny But a link to opt out. That's funny too.

It is no secret on Wall Street cutting jobs make stock prices go up. I was a victim quite a few times over the years myself. As long as there is a bottom line, the next 8K, and bean counters - cutting costs will always be the plan - and people are the easiest way to do so. And in a way it should be, but usually the wrong ones. The waste in large multi-nationals is off the charts. A lot of fat could be cut, or used in a more productive way (what a concept). It don't work that way. It is a giant cluster ****, like Office Space the movie only worse. So let's **** it up even more with AI and get rid of the people who actually helped make the trains on time. That's all these greedy assholes running these companies wanted anyway, a bunch of ass kissing robots. Be careful what you wish for dickheads.

AAPL is up about 2 1/2% and AMZN up around 13 after hours. The NASDAQ futures are up a percent. Both are trading at a 30 to 40 times earnings. Not a bubble.

It's all about credit. I know people who are broke, live paycheck to paycheck. They don't have $1 grand in savings to fall back on. When their credit card gets full and they can't buy stuff, they try to get another card. They are late on their bills so the interest keeps going up and they can't get out. Some consolidate debt into a loan to pay off debts, but still have to pay off the loan - at higher interest many times. They can't get out and become debt slaves. Debt is money - money people don't have. And speaking of cars, one of the debt slave vehicles (pun intended). From Bubblevision; K-shaped cars: New vehicle prices top $50,000 while auto loan delinquencies keep rising Some clips from the article;

That guy has covered Chicago's problems, and another economic site I follow has done the same for California and CALPERS who isn't in the best shape either. The numbers are not good. Those are two of the worse. A quick search and from early this year; Public pension debt rankings for state and local governments

From July of this year. This guy lived close to Chicago but bailed a few years ago due to various reasons. He has covered their fiscal problems for years. Chicago Pension Sweetener Would Add $11.1 Billion in Liabilities

Ted Kaczynski was considered a Luddite too. Kinda wild when you think about it. I'm not a big fan of AI either. Actually, not a fan at all. And I consider myself a big tech guy.

I found this interesting on the Fed thing today. A guy I've read for a long time, but not about him. Huge Recent Layoffs: Amazon 30,000 GM 3,300 Target 1,800 UPS 48,000 FTA and via the WSJ; I'll bet they are. But I really got a kick out of one of the comments; Interesting. We live in a dog eat dog world and are wearing dogbone underwear.

It is really in our face. They just cut rates by 25 bps when all three major indexes of the stock market are at all time highs. Even with the shutdown, the data they have is all they would have at this point anyway (Wall Street knows anyway) - and they know inflation is not in our favor - cutting rates will not help. TDGAF. News at 11. Cheaper money, cheaper credit, giddy up. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The penalty for this, when it all goes to ****, is one none of them want on their watch. So the money printing and cheap money will continue. Until it don't. That's why we are 38 trillion in debt. Debt is money. The more the better. The Fed can't monetize debt unless Congress spends the money. Future market debt sales released by the Treasury monthly. Cha-ching! When this prick blows up there will be a bunch more people in graveyards.

The WAR thing caught my eye. Heard of it here over the years but never really understood it. Love the stats, and the stat guys. Would take any advantage I could from that if I was running a baseball organization. Every little bit helps. But I'm old, simple, and stupid. WAR is what my old eyes tell me. I think we are on the same page.

Fed cuts 25 bps - partial statement above. I was watching the tape and it barely moved. It has now dropped a little. Next will be after the bell when some of the MAG7 report earnings; GOOG, META, MSFT and AMZN, AAPL tomorrow.

They are already training robot to kill people.

There are several AI models one can use. I wonder what the difference is between them. You have the Google AI, the Mircorsoft AI (Co-Pilot), the Twitter AI in Grok, and I'm not sure how many more. It would be fun to test them against each other to see how their answers compare, but I'm too lazy. It seems like with some things, it is really kind of stupid. There are hundreds of articles out there about people testing and playing with AI and it doesn't live up to the hype. One guy I read is an economic guy asking one of them this question; divide millions by what to get billions. AI's answer was wrong. Even a simple question like that, it was wrong. But a couple of days later, it corrected itself when he went back and did it again? Is is learning? I don't know. I've been playing with it quite a bit using a range of things to try. Sometimes it seems dumber than a brick, while other times it does a really good job. I have found, it seems, when you give it more information up front, it does a better job. I was looking for a backup/copy type program to back up files from ssd drive to another. I gave it a bunch of information that I wanted to do, how I wanted the interface to look - it found a free piece of software that exactly met my needs. I was impressed with that. With other stuff, not so much. The issues are still the same. Data centers are not popular, they use massive amounts of energy and water. Where will it come from, at what cost, and who pays for it. This doesn't include the fact if it works or not, or what it will eventually be able to do. The real danger IMO, is the bean counters who think this will replace X amount of jobs and that's what they will do, because it benefits the bottom line. So jobs get slashed (already happening big time) because they think they don't need humans to do the work. Then when the whole thing crashes and burns and they are SOL and all the humans who could do the work are gone. Now what? Ask AI? Sure, why not;