gehringer_2

last thing I saw was the LCS were simply being decom'd. Hopefully they do find some kind of value recovery.

It will be interesting in the end (if it is solved) if this was really a revenge killing based on someone mad at UHC, or a professional job with a more esoteric motive (i.e. likely financial) set up to look just enough like a revenge job to generate that kind of assumption in the media coverage.

but apparently not. Assad reported on the ground in Moscow and granted asylum.

If the laser stuff proves out at scale, it will change the equation for drones - at least wrt ships that can carry the electrical generating capacity to power them - so that will be interesting to watch over the next few years.

There are various factions but being the most murderous, the Jihadis tend to be the favorites to emerge in control.

now who or what do the Syrians get in his place?

Russian S-300 but operated by whom? I can see the logic in the Russians deciding Assad had become unwanted baggage, but killing allies without the distance of at least a formal breakup tend to make the remaining ones rather nervous.

and the difference in the game is a PP goal given up. I'm feeling like we are on a death watch for Lalonde at this point. Wings are a team in a rut.

I'm always willing to give a bat at least more than one year - but the disappointing thing with Jung was his play at 3b. Defensive improvements are almost harder to come by. A lot of guys with batting talent take a while to figure out MLB pitching but do eventually get there after >500 AB. But if a guy doesn't seem to show an aptitude for a position in the field, that's as often due physical constraints that may not have much scope to change. ...Just looked at his logs - I guess he only had 68 games at Toledo at 3b before his call-up - I thought he had gotten in more time there. Between playing some at 2B and being out 3wks I guess not..... Whatever, he needs to play 3rd better if he is going to stay there.

Navy has been a huge offender - constantly trying to build the perfect all purpose ship - instead wasting billions and building close to nothing. They need a procurement rule that say you spec a platform, and you build it. Period. You build what you spec and if in 5 yrs you want to spec something else, spec and build that - you can't keep changing your mind half way through a program and ending up with no capabilities at all because you don't have anything in the water.

If you were designing an anti-Dombrowski you couldn't do much better than Harris. Junior watched DD and Senior send the team into 10yr of purgatory. I see a low probability of that happening again.

what's so funny it that these people are such morons that they don't understand that the people with the MOST MONEY are the most at risk when you remove the umpires like the SEC. It's actually the capital class that benefits the most from having a Sherriff in town. It has ALLWAYS been the current holders of property that benefit the most from the police. Bernie Madoff wasn't swindling poor people. They will be stabbing themselves in the back and not even realizing it. So even if they do it, it won't last long. After a few of the oligarchs get scammed by some clever schemer there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a new regulatory regime. Musk thinks at the level of a pouting 3 yr old who wails his mommy is a meany because she won't let him stick his finger if the electrical outlet.

Costs between Apple, Google and MS are close enough at the 100gb level that it's mostly a matter of what platform you use determining which is most convenient operate in. I hate the way Icloud and increasining OneDrive, try to force you into doing things their way, so bought 100gb on google drive. You can mount a google drive natively in windows, and there is inexpensive SW for Mac and Linux that integrate google drive into Linux or Mac as a mounted drive. $2/mo for 100 gb. If you jump to 1TB they are stil pretty close. I've had no complaints with google drive. I'd already had a big google drive allotment from my employer and when I retired I just bought my own storage and moved things over. That said, I have >250gb of wav files ripped from my vinyl and CD collection so I don't actually use the google drive for music - that's mostly regular data backups. The music lives on my home NAS which serves it to any device around the house. An NAS doesn't do much of anything but serve files so it's pretty bulletproof. The NAS runs a raid array which is fully mirrored and internally CRC checked so you can lose one drive and lose no data. It's also accessible from the internet - easy for Windows. A little trickier but doable for Mac or Linux. But again, I have the music store mirrored to Samsung FIT drive (about the size of a mouse transmitter) that I carry in my computer case. It's in a Linux file system and I've never lost a thing on a Linux file sytem drive, internal/external, USB or otherwise, in 20+ yrs. But I have two rules - don't buy lowest price drives of any kind, and don't use Windows as the primary storage OS for anything important.

NYT with a story about Iran evacuating IRC/Quds personnel from Syria under a resurgence of the rebel forces there, with the Syrian government forces rapidly losing control of geography and Iran deciding it can't make a difference if Assad's forces are unable to stand up. The Ukraine war reducing Russia's ability to project external power, Israel's dismemberment of Hamas and Hezbollah have created space for Syrian rebel forces to gain momentum. That's the one sure thing about the ME, while everybody is watching one thing, the action will emerge somewhere else. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/world/middleeast/iran-syria-evacuation.html

House members know they will get blamed for cuts and they operate on short elections cycles. Traditionally there is a fire bomb throwing caucus in the House that makes a lot of noise (could be on either side at any given time) but in the end the body usually ends up pretty conservative (small 'C') about upsetting the status quo apple cart - as in this last session where all the noise was from the freedom caucus but almost all the important outcomes were middle majority with 'regular' Repubs voting with the Dems. The political reality is that small aggrieved voting blocks can swing mid-term elections and change always aggrieves someone. It's why the midterms are always dangerous to the 'ins'. Who knows, that could change, but unless he really does plan a coup, every day in office Trump losses political leverage as a laming duck.

the system had been uneven for a long time. My BIL is career retired and he swears by his local VA. You can either try to make it better or move people out of it. The original rationale that that vets would present a different cross-section of medical issues (particularly disability rehab, PTSD etc,) that a specialized service would do better in. That probably not a bad idea, but like anything else institutional, the results no doubt vary.

Scarborough has never been a serious person. He's another of the breed that is best named 'political entertainer.' That's been a big growth industry since the rise of cable and sadly the public often seems to take it as an actual credential when that type runs for office.

UM has just upped the family income limit for in state students to receive free tuition to $125K. That has more potential to increase diversity at the U than most of the money spent on additional internal DEI staffing.

Don't tell Buddha, but Warde Manuel's contract has been extended through 2030

Now we're getting somewhere.

that was a pretty poor play, no doubt.

Idk, do you really want everybody to have all your transaction data?Not sure I’d be in for that. Of course that isn’t what your getting with crypto. The block chain may be in a public domain, but the transactions are not transparent in any way, which is what makes it useful for illicit purposes.

fair enough.

just note - this was brought to you by a Democratic dominated board of Regents. The looney left is mostly in the Democratic Party, but is not the Democratic Party. I would guess the Regents will demand more paring, not at all on philosophical grounds, but simply on economic terms. The programs cannot demonstrate their effectiveness at increasing diversity in the student body and they are costing a ton of money. There still a performance ethic at most Universities that trumps most everything else in the end. The important program is the scholarship system, and I don't think that is at risk.

by the eye test, Keith looked OK, definitely makes a good quick accurate DP turn. BR didn't like his fielding at all, Statcast rated him even, pretty large disagreement there. He's a big body and if he gets any bigger third might be the more natural fit range wise, but we don't know the medicals on his arm.