gehringer_2

1 hour ago, pfife said:

I think the sane side does themselves a disservice by adhering to old unwritten rules that the insane side just ignores.   The not criticizing the successor is one of them.   Obama does the same thing.

To me, when you refuse to act civilly, you forfeit the right to be treated civilly. On an individual level, there may always be an ethical imperative to "turn the other cheek" but for society as whole, the first obligation is to re-establish justice, equity and protection of the powerless, and if accomplishing that requires that those who turned their back on civility be treated uncivilly, so be it.

The 'ends' doesn't justify the 'means' is wonderful social theory, but at a societal level it only works when there is a consensus to stay in the system. By definition, the approved rules of constraint in the system may be powerless on those that have taken themselves out of it, while the moral imperative to stop them remains.

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

This country is a ****ed up mess right now, but let's not lose the football.

A good way to start fixing it is the 800 pound gorilla in the room - The Epstein files. There was a poll asking who should be the first two people arrested. Easy; the first, the last and ever other sick **** in between. Nothing else is acceptable.

They are the big club. 

well, we've got one guy preventing that from happening. Can this stuff be the one thing that sticks to him with his supporters when nothing else has? Who knows, but judging by how long he's kept the lid on it so far, I'm not holding my breath.

9 minutes ago, romad1 said:

W is doing not enough. 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/george-w-bush-torches-trump-204806360.html

He's still clueless. I'm sure he thinks he's being both noble and clever but all he's really doing is keeping himself irrelevant - which given his ineptitude is probably for the best. I still sort of have sympathy for him having gotten in so far over his head. He clearly didn't have the intellect to manage his own admin and so in multiple areas he became the tool of people he should have thrown out of the oval office. Plus he completely poisoned the well for his brother, who was one of the people that might have been able to help shepherd the GOP back to sanity - had he ever gotten the chance.

9 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Article in today's Free Press says Riley worked all winter on his swing. He says he want to be more of a situational hitter with men in scoring position. And shorten up his swing with 2 strikes. Sacrificing a bit of power to cut back on his 201 strikeouts last season? 

https://detroitsportsnation.com/riley-greene-strikeouts-new-approach-2026/ddrysdale/detroit-tigers/02/14/2026/483816/

pretty shocking really that he was wasting his time in BP just swinging in his happy zone and not trying to increase his plate coverage. What is  'control the zone' about for a hitter other than being able judge and defend more strikes that would otherwise be called against him?

This is not the 1st time when I have sensed a disconnect between what Scott Harris says he is building a team to be (controlling the zone) and what Hinch and his coaches seem to be curating on the field (be selective and mash). The second strategy may get you the HRs, but it also gets you behind in the count and too often back to the bench with a K.

On 2/15/2026 at 5:13 PM, Sports_Freak said:

Even more OT. Speaking of building your own rig, my brother is STILL using his Heathkit he built in 1967! I dont know how many watts it is but it really get floor rattling loud.

Heathkit stuff was rock solid. Probably go another 20yrs. My first rig used a pair of these preamps my dad had built along with a completely home-brew vacuum tube diode power supply he had cooked up to go with them. 

34 minutes ago, oblong said:

Is Marco still considered Cuban?

I dunno. I think he would be considered a Putz.

1 hour ago, Motown Bombers said:

I think the odds are much higher. She is the front runner right now. 

only because no-one else has a candidate in mind.

Question for the history buffs. Has a candidate ever won the Presidency after losing in the general election as a challenger 4 yrs earlier? (IOW excluding Trump who was running for re-election and lost. Nixon did it 8 years 8 yrs later.)

31 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Meanwhile

 

Marco said it was a new era for world now with Trump and Orban leading the way.

34 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

 

 

I'd put the odds of Harris getting the nomination at about 15%. That is, within the realm of possibility but not particularly likely.

24 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The best thing Bezos could do is to sell the Post to someone who would care about and for it, like Bloomberg. The worst thing he could do is hang onto it and let it disappear into the mist. Which do you think is more likely?

I know a lot of people here dno’t like the New York Times, but if we were to lose that too somehow, that would be a debilitating body blow to the independent press in America.

 

the thing is, what he he doing there now can't work for any length of time anyway - you can be half in with Trump. A quick survey of the Post Ed Board offerings for the last few days show them almost exactly split down the middle between old style GOP pro free market pieces and velvet glove anti-Admin critiques. That's nowhere good enough for Trump, who just barely tolerates Fox even with their 24/7 sycophancy. So at the end of the day, I'm sure he's not buying himself any useful favor anyway while he continues to drive off his potential reader base, because the Post isn't near MAGA enough for MAGA, and even if it were, MAGA don't do newspapers.

But he's probably too vain to let it close and be seen as a failure. So there is that.

12 minutes ago, chasfh said:

That is exquisitely 1972.

who knew you could spike the ball short of the end zone in curling?

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

I do know that Julie Brown, who probably knows more than any reporter about this issue, thinks he was murdered.

Granted, every person is uinque, but still - I have a hard time seeing a guy who already worked his way through and clear of the justice system once being that despondent over getting busted.

4 minutes ago, romad1 said:

I remember Delmon.  

And he was supposedly a great NCAA athlete. Hard to understand how fast he lost it all.

25 minutes ago, romad1 said:

had a firefighter neighbor who was on the every 3 year colonoscopy plan because he had some very weird chemical inhalations that his doctor was concerned about...

In the Oil/Chem industry if you have a benzene inhalation exposure they are supposed to monitor you regularly for the rest of your life - though it not for colon risk rather for hematopoietic system risks. Not sure how that works if you leave the responsible employer but that was still the rule when I left the biz.

I think one or both of two things is going to happen. One - computational HW is going to keep improving (Moore's Law and all that) which is going to leave a big utility overhang as data centers evolve to use less power, and/or two: if the power demands don't come down, and the Googles and Microsofts of the world have to start charging people more to cover the utility expense of getting results like 'you should walk to the car wash"  they will find demand drops precipitously.

The third related possibility is that in the constant ebb and flow between the popularity of  centralized vs distributed IT that we've seen in computer science since the beginning, the continuing increase in locally available computational power and model optimization is going to allow a lot of business AI consumers to take their LLMs back in-house - both for cost and data integrity reasons.

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

It's Northern Kentucky, I'm doubtful a Democrat can win there.

every bad candidate takes it closer.

Just now, CMRivdogs said:

I have a feeling he's going to get primaried this fall and is just saying "the hell with it"  

Of course he will be. And hopefully that leads to another GOP seat lost as the GOP puts up another wacko for election that can't win.

16 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

 

and billions of watts being generated to accomplish this.

to me, the objective evidence is that tanking has only gotten worse with the lottery because you are increasing the number of teams willing to take a gamble on the #1.  With a straight inverse order draft, you only had one or maybe two teams that vied for absolute worst, and since the difference in the value of a pick drops off pretty fast once you get past the 2nd or 3rd pick, I just don't see that many teams other than the very worst teams trying to move down. I think the evidence is the lottery has encouraged non-playoff teams to try to get worse because they might have a shot at a #1. Leave them facing the difference between a #5 and #8 and I think they keep playing, because before the lottery that is pretty much what happened. I would go back to no lottery, simple inverse order, and maybe a limit that you can't pick in the top three more than 2 years out of 5 or something similar.

A league can tolerate one team being a joke each season.

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

It's the Netherlands, so doesn't apply to us.  But I imagine our politicians are watching.

Taxing unrealized gains is so wild.  

Dutch Lawmakers Advance 36% Capital Gains Tax on Crypto

 

I don't know if I would go for that, but one dodge I think does need to be closed is basis reset on a spouse's inherited capital gains. 

6 hours ago, Deleterious said:

 

nice to see someone in a high position decide not to deny the obvious.

12 hours ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

PLEASE run for president.

"One of the connections that is underdiscussed — particularly in the security space — is that we are seeing, around the world and in the United States, extreme levels of income inequality leads to social instability and drives authoritarianism, populism, and very dangerous domestic, internal politics.

"That is a direct outcome of not just income inequality, but the failures of democracies, over decades, to deliver: the failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations.

"In the United States, antitrust is such a foundational bedrock value not just because the ascent of monopolies creates the abuse of power by corporations in market power, but there is a level of market concentration and corporate consolidation where a massive company can get so big that its consolidated power can rival that of nation states.

"In democracies, we have elected leaders. In massive corporations that then begin to consume the public sector, they start to call the shots.

"We’re starting to see this with some of the billionaire class throwing their weight around in domestic politics, and in global politics as well.

"It is of utmost, urgent priority that we get our economic houses in order and deliver material gains for the working-class, or else we will fall to a more isolated world governed by authoritarians — that also do not deliver to working people."

I'll let you guess who wrote that. Be careful what you wish for.

48 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Before you dance on its grave, I would consider buying low on it while it's down, given how this government is (putatively) all in on crypto.

Oh - I gave up dancing on the grave of Bitcoin some time ago - pretty much after it recovered after '22. But that's one party I'm not interested in joining either way.

On 2/13/2026 at 9:00 AM, Tigeraholic1 said:

Looky there, nice

"This week, there was yet another warning that many homeowners might be headed for trouble.

The mortgage delinquency rates for lower-income households are surging, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data, which recently released its Household Debt and Credit report for the fourth quarter of 2025.

According to New York Fed data, the 90-plus-day mortgage delinquency rate for families in the lowest-income bracket jumped from 0.5 percent in 2021 to nearly 3 percent by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, folks in the highest-income areas are doing just fine, maintaining “historically lower delinquency rates.”

It’s another reminder that the U.S. economy is largely benefiting people with means, while financial storm clouds are gathering over those who can least afford a rainy day. As the New York Fed points out, “financial distress appears to be deepening for households in lower-income areas.”

When the Fed examined what might account for the disparities in mortgage performance, it concluded the job market could be a major contributor.

Although the latest jobs report from the Labor Department shows some gains in January, the rebound was limited to just a few sectors, such as health care.

Nationwide, unemployment is relatively low, but “worsening” regional labor markets are making it hard for people to keep up with their mortgage payments.

“Two-thirds of counties have seen their local unemployment rates rise, and 5 percent of the population lives in counties where unemployment rates have risen by more than 1.6 percentage points,” according to the New York Fed."

this is from WaPo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/14/mortgage-problems-delinquencies/

48 minutes ago, casimir said:

Yes.

OT, but I've been looking at audio amps recently. I still have a class B rig (110 W/ch RMS) I built years ago and all the new stuff is class D, and it's actually not always easy to get an answer to that question. In large part because the Class D people feel it's irrelevant for class D amps.