gehringer_2

We call it "Temperate Rain Forest"

I do give her credit for playing the 2024 election well, but I'm on her spamming list - so I get some kind email almost daily, the stuff she is sending recently does not strike me as very useful for building a better winning coalition. Of course IMV, the time she has spent on the NYC mayoralty is a diversion anyway. I can't think of anyone from the NY mayors office from either party in recent decades who has successfully used that as a springboard to becoming a national leader/winning Federal office. Maybe MB should be happy if Mamdani wins in NYC because it probably means he will be politically cul-del-sac'd.

That would be his 10th team. I guess that's one way to get to be "all NBA"

Nowhere but MTF 🧑‍🎓

LOL - I get the resource play but why would you want to let any of that terrible management culture into your room? I'll grant it's been a few years now but I can tell you it wasn't just the headline stories, From first hand experience working in their facilities I'd say that the catastrophes were no accident. BP was the worst operator in the oil field at every level. Strikes me as having a similar potential to turn out like what happened when the M/D people moved into Boeing.

Assuming Perez doesn't fall back in a big way, the similarity is that they were both guys who started as pros very young, had decent bat to ball skill but no power. Paredes found his in a big way, Perez has upped his EV 4 mph and is hitting the ball more in the air this this season. His BaBIP is right where it was last season but he's slugging at a higher rate. The differences are that Isaac's bat actually started coming around at 23, Perez is 25. OTOH, Perez is more athletic, should be a better OF than Isaac an IF. Also my by my personal theory, the younger a guy gets good, the longer he likely to stay good on the other end, so Paredes has that over Perez as well. I remember discussion that some in the org didn't trust Paredes body conformation - thought he was going to run to fat - they were wrong about that- he still looks the same as he ever did.

been living with this crap forever in Ann Arbor, where I can't drive down my block at more than 5 mph without risking the suspension of my car but we have a resolutions on every international issue and send garbage trucks to Ortega. I pretty much vote against every incumbent at every primary (the GOP doesn't bother running in the generals). The odd thing is the mayor wont be happy until every block in town has 18 stores on it, which is a weirdly paradoxical set of philosophies (well it becomes logical enough when you see who pays his way.....).

the problem is you would never know it listening to people like AOC. They haven't learned the art of supporting the team while playing your own game on the side. It's a curious paradox that diversity of person is such a mantra from the the prog left, which is fine, but they love ideological conformity just as much as any other movement.

Wait. I thought attacking competence was what MAGA does?

abandonment of depressed urban areas by food retailers is a real issue. The left likes to blame this on them being evil, it's mostly because they don't make an money. I'd much rather see my city address the issue by trying to make my city a better place to do business than with a band-aid like city operated stores but I wouldn't oppose an idea like that if the admin is doing the other needed things as well. Mostly the problem with doing retail in the urban centers is security. Always has been. That's something the left doesn't much like to talk about.

Just glad they had more patience with him than Paredes.

it goes back the disaster the Democrats are that they can't run a better centrist candidate than the sleazeball. They should be building the coalition to swamp the midterms and instead they still close to 100% in circular firing squad formation.

his affect was down for sure - probably he was ailing again. My pet theory was he went to the Worlds, got a taste of what playing with a team full of talented players was like and just couldn't overcome the depression of being back in the Wings locker room.....

It sort of amazes me that anyone still cares to hear what he says, because it's all soon "inoperative", often within minutes. I suppose for the press it's the entertainment value, which is also a sad commentary.

Of course there can be an art to this. If you have a guy who you don't believe is going to make it but other people still be he might - you need to deal that guy before you ever let him get to the league and prove he has no value.....

I almost got sent to the Tar Sands once, Fort McMurray? We had connections with the National Research Council CA and ended up working with some of the stuff in our lab - but in the end it fell through. No tears shed.

Oil. When the balance of power was in Egypt and Turkey, where culture was deeper and something akin to normal economic development was underway, the Arab world had a chance. But when oil wealth empowered the Wahabi Sheiks and the Persian Shia apocalyptics and shifted the regional leverage, everything started moving backward. Oil wealth has been a curse everywhere it has bubbled up out of the ground. You could probably include Texas in that as well.

while you are at it, the split in the final day make-up double header against the Angels that the league hung on the Tigers that put us out of the WS in 1967 gave the pennant to .... Boston.

LOL, the dreaded 'ret con'. My daughter was/is a big aficionado of 'graphic lit' (don't call me comics). She came of age just before all the ret con-ing started and was not a fan of having her carefully constructed youthful literary worlds torn asunder by barbarian Hollywood profiteers.

I guess the debate has finally been settled whether Jeimer was good hitter having some bad stretches or a bad hitter who had had a couple good stretches. Plus he's 31, which is the leading edge of when the unluckiest genomed hitters start to lose it. He always seemed like a good guy, just wasn't the player it sometimes looked like he might have been.

Sayyid Qutb, born in 1906, was boy just old enough to sense the loss when the empire fell, started writing seriously ~1940s, was a sort of the Karl Marx figure for all the subsequent Jihadi's. Nasser hanged him, which just made him more the martyr.

So years ago when we in the West were just beginning to be jolted by the Islamist fundamentalist movement, Bernard Lewis was one of the leading Middle East scholars and he wrote a few books about it. One of his themes was that when a culture that was once ascendant sort of falls from grace and success, the religious in that society will argue that it was because of loss of piety in the society. So for Islam the final fall of the long decaying Ottoman empire at the end of WWI is what set things off, that led by the 70's and 80's to all kinds of crazies both on the Sunni and Shia sides trying to build pious Islamic fundamentalist states (or non-states) in the hope that Allah's resulting favor would allow them to bring back the Caliphate and vault them into a reprise of the cultural supremacy they had in the 12th century. One can only hope that the serial failures of Al Qaida, Isis, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the 'under performance' of the IROI will finally disabuse the Islamic world of the idea that the turbaned heads are going to bring them power and glory if they'd only grow their beards and suppress their women. Now if can break the same paradigm we are getting from the religious right in the US, we might also get somewhere ourselves.

For me one of the things I liked in Burton's Batman is that the way he created a visual style that looked drawn as much as photographed - i.e. a comic book brought to life. Considering his work in animation I guess that fits.

I guess Trump will be sending the B2s against Norway and Sweden next, because conquering Scandinavia is the only way that's happening. 🙄

It's old news but I still despair over the state of the NYT. There is enough content in all the other areas that I still feel I get my money's worth (of course I have a discounted subscription!) but geez, I try not to even look at any of the political coverage anymore excepting Ezra Klein, and his stuff is usually broader than just partisan politics. Just a wasteland of nonsense.