Screwball

5 hours ago, IdahoBert said:

So, in the 4th Skubal Ks the side, which is cool and dominant.

But one of the most fascinating interviews with Sandy Koufax that I remember is where he said most enjoyed not so much striking guys out, but giving batters a pitch they simply couldn’t do anything with that resulted in a weak pop-up or an easy grounder.

Given that this is a guy that struck out, I think, 382 guys in a season this is something that really stuck in my memory and the importance of which is not insignificant. 

Yes. It's about pitching to the batters weakness, and how well you execute that. It also helps when you had the kind of stuff Koufax offered up there. 🙂 They know what guys can hit and can't hit. When they put it in the right location, they don't get enough of the ball to bang down the walls. Weak grounders and easy pop-ups is the best they can do. Or you can just make them look silly like he could.

Besides, good hitters fail 7 of 10 times. Sometimes it's all about how ugly it was the last time you got out. 🙂

We have one of those here. Mr. Skubal. This guy is a treat to watch and has some fantastic stuff. Some guys are just that dominate. He is one of them. 

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Didn't they used to just chrome plate them? For a fricking lugnut that's gonna last probably 10yrs and by then the rest of the wheel won't look so hot either. IDK  - I'm out of the loop now - maybe plating is too much enviroment risk overhead anymore.

I don't remember, but I'm guessing the little stamping is cheaper than chrome plating. Whatever is cheaper is always the answer. 

5 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

>. He probably had one bad lugnut
I’m sure they can quote you a ‘spec’ that says they all have to match. 🙄

Yea, that would be on the engineering drawing with a bunch of what they call GD&T (geometric dimensioning and tolerancing) to spec that part. They are all suppose to match withing a particular tolerance.

These things are a bad design to start. You will never crimp a pretty looking thin gauge chromed part (which is why they do this - pretty - marketing) around a lugnut. The thin metal can't go smaller because of the size of the nut, but will eventuality try to revert to the mean, and expand. But we must satisfy marketing; chrome wheels, chrome nuts, look pretty, sell cars.

Their entire function is to keep the wheels from falling off the car.

7 hours ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

They call that the ultimate "upsell". He probably had one bad lugnut. The advisor is paid moslty on commission and said to himself "The worst the customer can say is no." He made $20 and the tech pulled $100 and the dealer gets the rest. COG was probably $10

This is really nothing new as far as problems with the designs, but the one lugnut theory is probably sound. Another way to rip you off, especially those who don't know what the car parts do. Sounds scary - I have bad wheel nuts - fix them. Not really, just how they look. Not as pretty, but they do what they are suppose to do - keep the wheels on. Kind of important.

$322 dollars later... That's just nuts. The dealer (maybe a local decision) is just ripping this guy off.

Wall Street banks start trading derivatives to bet on pain in private credit - FT

What could possibly go wrong?

This fits here.

A buddy of mine told me today he took his car to the dealer for routine maintenance. Oil change, tire rotation, inspection, the normal X you pay for the checkup. They couldn't get his tires off without ruining the lugnuts so they had to replace them. $322 for those fine little puppies - all 20 of them I think - if it has 5 nuts per wheel. That's a quick $16 buck a nut. 

That's ****ing NUTS! Pun intended. 🙂

An automotive lugnut is made by cold forming a round piece of steel by force and spit them out by the hundreds or thousands per hour. Probably cost the car companies pennies each. They ship in bins by truck from satellite suppliers to the automakers. And sometimes they do a secondary operation.

What is happening here; marketing decided they need really nice chrome lugnuts to look pretty, so they stamped a chrome plated cover over the cold formed nut since it's grey and ugly. Over time, the cover expands, and the guy in the dealership can't get a socket and air wrench on the lugnuts to get them off.

Really dumb idea, but they did it anyway.

Another case where marketing overruled sound design and engineering and the customer eats the cost of their greed, stupidity, or both.

****in A!

This is all nuts. Markets at all time high while the world burns and the observers don't know rather to **** or get off the pot.

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

True story - I got a job replacing a guy who had quit to day trade. It was small field and everyone in the biz knew of everyone else at maybe a max of 3 degrees of separation. Anyway, it was maybe 3 years later we heard he was back working for a living in a similar gig for one of our competitors.

Day trading was a thing at one time. Almost like a cult. Probably in the run up to the dot-com crash. Wall Street the movie came out in 87. Giddy-up!!!

In a way, what they do is pretty clever. The software today still has the capability to do what they did. You can watch order flows to a certain extent. They screen up very short term charts and bet huge money on small moves. Many times around support/resistance levels even during the day. Now they call it "high frequency trading" done by HAL 9000 of Wall Street. It actually goes clear back to Jessie Livermore who used to post the stock prices on the wall in the old bucket shop before he became rich and broke 3 times and killed himself. Trends, moves, there is a pattern. You can see them coming.

But very very risky. You need balls of steel, and deep pockets would also be good. One headline at the wrong time and you just got a margin call.

And some of these people play the leveraged ETF where you can lose money 2 or 3 times as fast. How about that? Giggle.

Thanks. I didn't know what they were doing, but it looked kind of funny. People are always funny. 🙂

34 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

I would have thought a few of you old farts would have mentioned when Fidrych beat the Yankees on Monday Night Baseball in ‘76.

One of my favorites, and I'm old.

For me, the final game of 1968.

Other than the game that became the first date with the most wonderful woman on the planet.

ON EDIT: and we almost got a ball.

Wow, what a game! I'm going to ask a dumb question now that it is over. I was somewhat busy so I didn't catch it all (and I usually watch with the sound off), but what I missed was; what was up with the guy in the green shirt sitting by the wall? They kept showing him but I don't know why.

10 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

It will also allow the scumbags on Youtube to sell more day trading courses.  The, "I made $20 million day trading last year, but I'm going to waste time selling you a training course for $300" people.  

Back in the late 2000s era, the Najarian brothers sold stuff teaching you how to play the option trades. Pete was on CNBC at 5 each night for the show "Fast Money" I think it was. They were both good football players too. Wild ****. And of course CNBC, also known as Bubblevison, still has - Jim Cramer.

I won't say you can't make money being a day trader, but you are probably more lucky than good if you do. I played golf with a guy who worked for a cable company and told me how they ran a T1 line to some guys house just so he could day trade. That's nuts. Might have worked, who knows. I'm sure the T1 line did, not sure about the trades. 🙂

3 hours ago, Deleterious said:

The SEC is officially changing the pattern day trader rule.  The minimum will drop from $25K to $2K.  I think I read the rule will go into effect after 45 days.

Interesting. There was (don't know if this changes) also a limit on the amount of trades in a certain period of time. So many trades in so many days.

There is also the agreement between these traders and their brokers and what they will give you for leverage, no matter what they call the account. Typical margin account stuff.

Personally, I think is nuts. The history of day traders going broke is long and wide - and they put up 25k to do so because you needed a margin account with some broker to do the trades. What a deal! This is just suckering in more fish to feed the pigmen of Wall Street and the whores they own.

Neat picture. 5 and 6 were pretty good. 😂

1 minute ago, NorthWoods said:

Name checks out.

Late career Tanana was similar to Kenny.  Age and guile killing them.

 

Yes, forgot about Frank. Same thing.

That stuff matters. If you play everyday and see all these hard throwing farm boys and all of a sudden this dude's serving up grapefruit sized balls - we get great big eyeballs because we are going to hit it over the roof - but we just screwed ourself into the batters box while missing it by about 10 feet. The speed just dicks you up. 

That's why on doubleheader days they would put a junk-baller game one, and a flame thrower game two, as the belief was they were more tired the second game.

As sadists pitchers (established above :-)), I would think the junk ballers get a bigger kick out of making us look stupid because they are throwing junk at us.

OK. That's fine. Think what you want. A good hitter fails 7 of 10 times. It's a humbling game.

And the greatest game ever. But they keep trying to **** it up.

Our enemy is us, and has been since Moby **** was a minnow.

I won't waste time on charts, but WTI crude is, as I type, $104.95 the S&P (emini futures) are down a tad over 50. Back into the trading range from October of 25.

23 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

That's the truest statement you can make about baseball.  

Baseball was my life for many years. I was a pitcher so my bias is there. I love to watch guys like Skubal. The battle between the pitcher, catcher, and batter (and how we are approaching this matchup), and of course the neutral party - the ump. Now maybe an electronic one.

I'm old. I played in the day when they beaned people and didn't think a thing of it. But the game is still the same, they just don't do that anymore. 🙂  I watch the games with the sound off. Skub, with his unhittable stuff is so fun to watch. And he does some incredible stuff working the batters over the course of the game. Sends a guy to the bench a couple of times on low outside change-ups (and a dandy at that), then last at bat, this dude is looking for that pitch again - and he gets a 98 mph 4-seamer inside on the hands. Go sit down big boy.

Someone said somewhere in the baseball stuff that pitchers were sadists. Yes, and we want them that way. Their job is to get you out. Period, end of discussion.

Skub is a treat to watch. I used to love watching Kenny Rogers. He was the absolute master of his craft IMHO. IIRR, he pitched a beauty in one of Detroit's playoff runs. 

ON EDIT: forgot this. Skub and Kenny are two entirely kind of pitchers. Skub is a power pitcher, Kenny was a junk baller. Couldn't bust a window.

Rory got it done. Fun to watch. Incredible golf course. Can you imagine the score us mortals would shoot there?

I would need someone to deliver a box of golf balls about hole 7.

You can never have enough pitching. Ever. That is all.

Screwing with the Windows 11 Co-Pilot AI dude on a Saturday night. I do 3D printing projects and like to see what my Aussie AI buddy has to say. To understand, we create a 3D modes then give them to a 3D printing machine that "slices" it into layers so it can print a bunch of really neat stuff. Slicing being the key word here.

I wanted to know how many parts I could get out of a spool of filament (looks just like weed whacker line), and of course the cost. Just for fun...

WTF?

Quite a day in Augusta. Rory... Dude... Not that I'm a fan or not. Just watching. Pissed away a 6 shot lead. He's going back to the hotel thinking WTF did I just do.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I think there was an old saying about the back 9 on the final day.

I would love to walk around that course. I would never have enough money to play it, and the waiting list for Master's tickets are probably longer than I will be alive. What a beautiful place.

I found this really interesting, and close to home. 

Whirlpool Announces $60M Investment, Up To 150 Jobs For New Ohio Facility - press release from WHR

Up front I will disclose I worked for them, directly, then indirectly.

This is about a new facility and investment in Perrysburg, Ohio. Previously a solar company. (FSLR maybe?). The WHR mothership is in St. Joe/Benton Harbor, but they have a washing machine plant in Clyde, Ohio, a dishwasher plant in Findlay, Ohio, and a clothes dryer plant in Marion, Ohio. Two of which are along I75. Clyde's another hour away.

The news release is new and best I can tell they didn't disclose what they were going to do. But there are a few clues, maybe... FTA:

Quote

"This new facility represents an evolution in American manufacturing," said Kristin Day, Whirlpool Corporation vice president of U.S. manufacturing. "By creating a hybrid environment where cutting-edge automation meets human ingenuity, we are not just building appliances—we are building the future domestic production for our industry. Our people remain the foundation of our success, and these tools will empower them to reach new levels of precision and efficiency."

That's some all-star corporate bull**** right there. But they did give us this, which is the important part trying to figure out what they are doing;

Quote

Whirlpool Corporation acquired an existing building, previously used for solar panel manufacturing, and will invest over $60 million to transform the facility, including new advanced manufacturing technologies and automation, to produce appliance components and subassembly work for washers and dryers. The development of the new plant will take place over the next two years, creating between 100-150 new jobs. This new facility will serve as a vital hub for Whirlpool Corporation’s U.S. operations, providing critical support to nearby Ohio plants.

Bold mine. Remember a few pages ago we were talking about the place around here going belly up that made parts for the car companies. I wonder... Are companies like WHR having the same problems with their supply chains and decide to invest in their own?

There is no reason they can't build their own machines to build some of their parts instead of outsourcing. Within reason of course. Maybe that's what they want to do here. Relying on stable and good suppliers is not easy in my experience. I'm guessing it's not much better today, especially when the bean counters want the cheapest first and always.

If this is their intent, I salute that decision. We can do it better ourselves - if we do it right.

We'll see. 

56 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I honestly don't know how it all works, but it's been pretty clear to me for a long time that the wealthiest people on the planet control everything.  All the money goes to them eventually and they control with their wealth.   I know they don't give a **** about the rest of us, but I also figure that their lives will be a lot less satisfying and safe if the world goes to hell.  They will do what they can to make sure that doesn't happen.  That's not a nice thing to be banking on (pun intended) but it helps keep me sane.  

I was partially kidding. I don't have much faith in any of the useless ****s who run anything. I don't believe 10 percent of what I read from the MSM. Less than that from any political dip**** that holds office. They are all a bunch of lying sacks of **** who only care about themselves, or are getting blackmailed into destroying the entire world for a bunch of sick ****s who want to continue to rape and pillage it. Great theater for those with their head up their ass playing the blame game, while the media covers up for them.

The Big Club is kind of like the banksters, but worse. I think the banksters have a little more credibility than the scum in the Big Club. Not much, but a little. Not a good bunch to count on, but they might be all we have. They have the goods on the Big Club - they banked them, and laundered their money. They know and have the records. 

A global depression benefits nobody. The banksters, even if behind the scenes, may be able to stop or slow down the madness. The criminal CEO of JPM just recently had some things to say.

CEO of nation's largest bank says Iran war raises risk of 'bad economic outcomes'

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

 

Inflation Has Been Above the Fed’s Target for 5 Straight Years

They will get it right - eventually...