gehringer_2

Look - you engaged me in this thread - I was responding to @ewsieg. You asked me a question - I gave you an answer and you've got your panties all in a bunch. If you don't want an answer, don't ask a question.

2 minutes ago, pfife said:

But I didn't vote to kill my spouse.  That you would seemingly conclude someone do that is really something

And, your logic fails again because you again just waived your hand like a wizard and supplanted MY reasoning (not voting to kill my spouse) for MY vote with YOUR reasoning (keeping spouse alive) for MY vote.  

That was the second time.  The first time you did it was when I said the reasoning for the vote was b/c the pol supported policies that hurt someone I care about, and you just ignored that and supplanted it with "what's best for the country" in response.

 

No hand waving at all. Your vote did no good, it made no difference. That sucks when you want to believe voting is a chance to stand for what you want, but it's the reality of it. The reality of who may win an election and who can not is not a matter of my hand waving or yours it just is what it is. Not all change is in play in any given election, it may have to be worked at by other means. Which is why if there is no choice you can make that you can realistically believe is both useful and morally supportable, don't vote -- go work on the issue by other means.

30 minutes ago, pfife said:

candidate a:  has chance to win, supports policy that voter thinks would result in death of spouse within 2 years.

candidate b:  has chance to win, supports policy that voter thinks would result in death of spouse within 2 years, but country would be better.

candidate c :   has no chance to win, but explicitly does not support policy that voter things would result in death of spouse within 2 years. 

 

your reasoning:  everyone owes their vote to candidate b.  and if you had the audacity to NOT vote for candidate B, you, not everyone who voted for Candiate A, are responsible for everything candidate A does.

 

Me: I'm not voting to kill my spouse.   

The weakness in your logic is that your vote still did nothing to help keep your spouse stay alive and if it helped elect candidate A instead of candidate B maybe you helped kill someone else's spouse.

In this hypothetical, your vote is going to make no difference to the policy that may kill your spouse regardless. You simply have to find other ways to work against that policy than your vote.

10 minutes ago, pfife said:

What if you dont want to vote for a politician because they will maintain policies you think make things worse for people you care about?

Or is that trumped by some self appointed decider of others' votes decided differently?

If a person seriously can't decide which of the candidates that has a chance to win is overall better for the country, my advice would be for them to stay home.

5 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

I drink one or two 12-16 oz. servings of coffee a day. I grind Ethiopian beans and usually brew a rounded 1/4 cup in a French press. And if it allegedly helps me not have dementia I’m all for it.

Every morning, I wake up, and I smoke a cigarette. And then I eat five strips of bacon. And for lunch, I eat a bacon sandwich. And for a midday snack?  Bacon!  A whole damn plate!

And I usually drink my dinner. 

4 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

100% correct. No one should argue with this.  Spot On ...... but, go with me on this.  Let's just imagine a time where you weren't happy with the top two candidates so you said 'screw it' and voted for Gary Johnson.  Let's just say I understand what MB is saying.

Why does a person vote? Is it an exercise in ego gratification to make himself feel good, or is the purpose to try and make his country a better place for he and his fellow citizens?

The fact that a person 'made a statement' with their vote does exactly who besides his own ego any good?

25 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

 

Easy enough to understand if Miller assumed Dunn had touched the ball  - and since Dunn was  signalling to Miller to pick up the ball why would Miller think anything else? 

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

WTF is the Pentagon going to do with coal? Sit off shore of the South China Sea and chuck chunks of it at the Chinese PLA?

I take it back, I have just the answer, they can fill up all those warehouses that DHS is buying that have no other good purpose.

1 minute ago, pfife said:

Socialism

 

WTF is the Pentagon going to do with coal? Sit off shore of the South China Sea and chuck chunks of it at the Chinese PLA?

7 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

could this benefit Joseph?

 

here's a link to a more complete story

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/11/joint-cartilage-aging.html

 I would guess the trick here is getting it to grow where you want but not where you don't want.

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

I agree, but it wasn't looking good for Olson even before we learned about the surgery today.  

Labrum used to be Sayonara for a pitcher but the surgical techniques get better every day so we can hope.

43 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

Olson had labrum surgery on Feb 02 Done for the year and possibly forever 

yeah, nice to see JV in the old English D again but I'd rather have a healthy Olson.

3 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Right, the one on one batter/pitcher match-up is what makes baseball unique and that is where the tv cameras are usually focused. Pace of action had been a problem in baseball more than lack of action. I think the pitch clock (which is really just enforcing rules which were already in place) has made games significantly more enjoyable to watch.  I do would like to see more balls in play, but that doesn't mean pitchers pitching and batters batting is inaction.  

but that wasn't the actually the point I was trying to make, which was about the raw visual stimuli value of watching something. If you are a baseball aficionado like us, watching  a pitcher delivery a high leverage pitch has suspense and drama value and maybe we even appreciate the movement on the ball, but there still isn't much visual stimuli value there compared to a ball in play, where people are moving around on the field, possibly athletically, and compares still less to the kaleidoscope chaos of a snap in football with 22 guys in day-glow unis going every which way at high speed. All to say that to love baseball, you have to know baseball. The entertainment value is less in what you are seeing than in your understanding of what you are seeing means at higher levels of abstraction.

6 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

I get that. Maybe we shouldn't be electing representatives who do not receive 50.1 percent of the total vote. And maybe that's where ranked choice voting comes in, and possibly move to multi member districts.

That said the whole system needs to be reformed. Expand the House, add states like Puerto Rico and DC if you want. I really don't know. 

expanding the House would be a good step toward getting actual democratic balance back. And an anti-gerrymander rule that says re-districting must drive toward minimum boundary length. It's a simple rule and would cut down on maybe 80% of the abuse. The bigger problem  is the Senate. I think a good system would be to have a 100 member Senate reapportioned by population but all the Senators in each state continue to be elected at large state wide and each state guaranteed only one. Or maintain two per state minimum but raise the total to 200. That would still be unbalanced but less than now. Of course to get there requires major Constitutional surgery, expanding the House does not.

23 minutes ago, Shelton said:

Yes, that is what I was saying was nice. Over the course of the year for 20 bucks per month you would get all three teams. Seems like you won’t be able to manage that now that the tigers will likely be offered directly for that same rate.
 

If they can manage to provide the wings and pistons in the winter months for a total of 20 dollars, then whatever April overlap occurs won’t be all that noticeable. But I bet both wings and pistons packages, however they are provided, will cost more than 20 total when you combine them. 

any announcement from the Pistons on what they are doing?

15 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

maybe ranked choice is the way out,

but the GOP pours huge money into Jill Stein and others every POTUS election, hoping to peel of 1-2% here or there; that is money well spent by them on their useful idiots 

this is a good point. Third parties here do get coopted for the purposes of the other main parties too often.

5 minutes ago, lordstanley said:

 

Snoop was a UM Dad at one point.

11 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

At times I wish there were more than two parties in the US. I'm not sure given our DNA whether it would work, but would go a longer (than now) way to stop the Party Purity B-S we're seeing now. 

But that would go along with things like ranked voting and multi member districts. 

third parties have their primary value in parliamentary systems where they can be the swing votes to form a majority coalition if no party wins a majority. We don't have one of those. One party is going to win the presidency on its own in almost every possible election scenario. Doesn't leave national 3rd parties much potential leverage. In the US third parties can have a working presence in local Govs where seats on city councils can have swing leverage. We had a functioning third party locally in A^2 through a few election cycles in the 70's. Collapsed when they tried to go state wide. Democratic Socialists of America are alive and well in NYC.

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

Pot is not addictive, period

Yeah.  I think people are guilty of a lot of sloppy semantics. Human beings can and do become habituated to any behavior. Those issues can and are addressed successfully by people all the time. The dividing line between that and addiction may sometimes be somewhat hazy, but it exists.

53 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

I think CTE/Brain dAmage is kinda like Climate Change these days... Most people acknowledge that it exists, but there's big questions with many different views about how big of a deal it is, how much the NFL is responsible, and what we should do about it.

I don't think there's any question that the NFL knew about the brain damage dangers earlier and covered it up. I don't know how much they are or aren't trying to cover up information these days, but at the very least I think more people, including players, are aware of it.

I also don't know how much what the NFL (and NCAA) are doing to try to minimize or prevent damage actually does prevent damage, or if it's just window dressing. At least they're trying I guess?

At the very least I think players are going in more aware of the dangers here, which is a positive step.

The big change is that higher awareness has led to getting guys off the field when they are concussed and keeping them off till they are symptom free.  The clinical question is how much difference does that actually make to whether continued high impact activity still causes long term damage. Maybe a lot, maybe not much. The assumption is that it does,  I don't think the epidemiology exists to adequately resolve that question yet.

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

There will never not be political parties. There will always be a move to organize and fund, if for no other reason than to centralize the donor class into a cohesive unit to achieve their governmental aims. There must anlso be a basis for caucuses to form, and membership in a party-like structure is the easiest and cleanest way to form those.

Unless the alternative view you’re describing implies that political parties will devolve into a corporatized trust structure? That, I could see, at least in some dystopian short-term. But the idea that politicians could all be solitary free agents flitting back and forth between caucuses seems fancifully naive.

I agree some structure seems to be an organic necessity, but the idea that structure will continue to be based on the free association of a significant proportion of the ordinary citizenry certainly does seem to be in danger of extinction. If you look at PAC money - which already dwarfs party funding power,  you can guess where the future is going.

1 hour ago, Shinzaki said:

Been watching wings hilights from the 90's and 2000's to get my hockey fix.

 

That Federov kid could really skate...as could Klima.  Shame Klima had...issues,,,that forced him out of town

you almost wonder if the game isn't played so fast on average now that you see less bursts of all out speed because players don't have enough left in the tank by half-way through a shift, or they worry more they'll end up out of gas when the play reverses before they can get off.

18 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

That is a sobering and not particularly edifying projection. 

The CF projection for Javy is interesting. I think the probability he get 35PA out there is almost zero - I think he is either going to get put out there for an extended run or not at all, so I guess I take I'd that number as the average of a dumbbell distribution.

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

I was skeptical.  But it appears they already have these in China.

Your unwanted gold may be recycled into cash at a gold ATM

 

so the downside could be the typical American vandalism imperative to try to sabotage the device by feeding it some material deliberately compounded to screw it up.

3 minutes ago, Shelton said:

I will never understand the idea that a ball in play is required to qualify as action. Who doesn’t love the art of pitching?

Thank-you Jimmy P from where ever you are.