gehringer_2

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.

always fun to go into a season with 3 of 4 IFs having no track record and the 4th having one you'd rather he didn't.

and the convenient thing about hanging is that all you really need is the rope - the gallows is quite optional. I doubt many lynchings failed for lack of being able to find something to throw a rope over.

no 1B glove at least until he hits his 1st MLB HR.

Interesting approach. Gets away from trying to definne 'gender' and specific genetic categorization. We'll see if it flies.

One thing I haven't heard (is it out there anywhere?) is how much of a haircut, if any, the Tigers took on their TV deal in the Diamond bankruptcy. Hard to believe that it could have been anything but a cut. Was it or more or less than the Tigers had already anticipated? Enough to crimp spending plans or not?

Cade is one of the guys for whom "a legend in his own mind" is the perfect description.

Oil isn't going away - that's simplistic thinking, which both sides engage in because both are mostly economically and/or technically ignorant. The question is how much oil is needed. Sure, the whole world stops without lubricants but you can make all the lubricants the world needs with a tiny % of current oil consumption. We didn't kill all the horses because we started driving cars. There will be be things that still need oil, but most cars won't and cars are about 70% of today's oil market.

I tend to see it the opposite way. And I think he just shot himself in the foot. IMHO this is because he knows the party is going to fall in line behind Benson so he has no shot there anyway. If he does mount any kind of independent campaign the end result will be a repub getting elected. (EDIT just saw you said the this in another thread) f*** him indeed.

Maybe, maybe not, but pitchers also want to stay in rhythm. It was hitters that were responsible for slowing the game down and forcing the 'pitch clock' -- which is a misdirection name because it's been the requirement that hitters get in the box that has made the change. There were always a few pitchers that worked slow - Benoit for instance, but most ended up waiting for the batter most of the time.