mtutiger

And now we see why....

Of course, to quote Marge Gunderson, it's all for a little bit a' money...

What happened in East Palestine, with the big towering fireball that resulted, was also bound to draw headlines.... train derailments generally get little to no publicity, with the exception of accidents at grade crossings or those involving passenger lines. Like CMR, not trying to downplay what happened at East Palestine, it's terrible for everyone involved.... but the fact that people are paying attention to this one is the result of a unique set of circumstances that ended up causing it to break through to the American consciousness; unfortunately, this stuff happens more than gets noticed in realty tho. One hopes that some good can come of this from the policy end, but I fear that this is being turned into the usual cudgel that one side uses against Politician X and the other against Politician Y... like frankly most things turn into these days.

CMR's later post provides the numbers, but while individual derailments can involve more individual cars, rail as the mode of transport overall is safer than trucking. Fatalities is a big difference as well... generally derailments don't result in big numbers of fatalities in general unless it involves interaction with roadways (ie. grade crossings). Incidences of trucks accidents involving interaction with other vehicles, OTOH, is quite high.... I don't have the numbers, but I assume most accidents involving trucks involve other vehicles, and that fatality rates are relatively high when you get a smaller vehicle and larger truck together.

Some of those reasons were provided in the clipped out portions of the post you quoted. I agree that it is way too many

I get where you are coming from, I just don't think Adams is the right example to highlight for a variety of reasons.

I think it's his wife.... "25 year" refers to her tenure, not her age

Yeah, I don't understand it either..... it's particularly weird (and seems like cognitive dissonance) when people profess to believing that COVID is no big deal then turn around and get worked up over the origins of the virus.

Just to elaborate a bit, as someone who works professionally in the railroad space, it's been very amusing on a couple of levels to see how the GP / media has reacted. One point of amusement has been how hung up people have gotten on individual details of this particular derailment and how, doing so, kind of overlooks how often trains derail in the United States (we average around 2.5.-3.0 PER DAY in any given year) and the different ways that trains derail. Like, in East Palestine, it's a wheel bearing, but the ways in which derailments happen are voluminous; it can be weather related, it can be related to subgrade conditions / drainage / poor maintenance in a given area, it can be operator error, it can be due to impacts at grade crossings. And along with that it's been amusing (more in a frustrating way) to see people try to jam what happened here into their own personal, political views. Again, I don't think any of the policy makers that I've seen fingers pointed at since East Palestine happened (ie. Pete Buttigieg, Mike DeWine, Donald Trump, etc.) bear any individual blame for what happened here... the issue is we have a railroad system in this country that transports a significant amount of goods (including chemicals like vinyl chloride) daily through many areas of this country. The society we have and standard of living we enjoy rely heavily on this infrastructure. And on many levels, transporting these goods present challenges and do not come without risks.... some of that falls onto the railroads, some onto the chummy nature between government and business, and frankly (particularly when weather gets involved) some of it is just "Act of God" stuff. And these issues all predated Pete Buttigieg and Donald Trump, they just did. That kind of nuance or "how sausage is made" isn't what a lot of commentators are after though.... it's all about using the pain and suffering of the people of East Palestine as a cudgel until it moves out of the public consciousness and we're off to the next outrage.

Dan and Jim had a talk about this during the game yesterday, based on some comments the team made to some of the individual players leaving, in some cases, 30 to 40 walks on the table when getting into 3-ball counts. That kinda stuff adds up, both in terms of run scoring but also statistically for individual players. Though some of the pickups this offseason weren't sexy, one would hope that a little better place discipline from those coming back from 2022 + replacing some guys with poor plate discipline (ie. the Castro Bros) with guys who exhibit better plate discipline (ie. Nick Maton, Cesar Hernandez) may lead to some better results.

I wonder how much his year last year was influenced by his hand injury as well. Overall, the 2022 team, built around a lot of undisciplined hitters (some of whom are now gone and replaced) accentuated some of his weaknesses, and because he was arguably the biggest name on the team outside of Miguel, he bore the brunt of the criticism. He wasn't my first choice in last years free agency period, but they are a better team with him than without him, even with his flaws... and the Tiger fans who hope he opts out are off-base imo, good shortstops are hard to find in this league

That makes three Santos's in Congress lol

Next, we go to a panel of Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and Stephen "RedSteeze" Miller for comment...

This much is definitely true... sensibilities of the general public are much different now. Whereas 20 years ago it was the Dixie Chick's getting "canceled" (to much less controversy, I might add), today you have a general public who values different things. I think you are overly complicating this: newspapers are owned by large companies who are in the business of selling newspapers or online subscriptions. A high-profile cartoonist that you publish popped off a highly racist rant in a high profile way. The business sees that and, worried about their brand and ability to sell newspapers and online subscriptions, decides to go a different direction. This isn't rocket science nor is it a new phenomena. Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek, Michael Richards are all cases of people who lost jobs or future jobs/income in the past for similar such things said o that largely predated social media. And again, if any of us said the same thing, we'd be risking the same thing. Scott Adams gets no sympathy from me. He knew exactly what he was doing when he was doing it.

Setting aside that Scott Adams is not indicative of someone having transitional issues and clearly knows what he's doing on SM, I guess I don't necessarily buy your view that people were never fired or services weren't retained at times in the past for their views or even lifestyles, particularly when they infringed on people's business. I'll leave it at that. Social media is another thread for sure, but this isn't novel either. And I'm not sure why Scott Adams deserves my sympathy in this case.

This will sound arrogant, but in general, East Palestine has exposed a real lack of understanding on a number of subjects surrounding the derailment among the general public. Environmental policy among them. I dont blame people for that, not everyone is a civil engineer or works in the railroad or environmental spaces, but if someone's only attachment to the subject is to pin it all on Politician X or Politician Y, it's kinda pointless to engage... the problems here predate Politician X and Y and are more common than people realize

I mean, the guy has acted like a jerk for years and has largely remained present in all of these publications. So apparently not much. When he decided to go on a racist rant, unsurprisingly, the relationship appears to have been reevaluated for a number of them. I honestly don't know where the line is or should be, but it's not like what he said wouldn't be firable or stick with anyone else for the rest of their careers as they seek employment, so I'm not sure why his case is the one that deserves deep thoughts or sympathy other than he's a high profile figure with a microphone and the rest of us aren't

Scott Adams has been doing this stuff for years. He's not an idiot, he knows better.

Social media being used as a tool for companies to vet potential and even current employees isn't exactly a novel thing... they taught me that during my undergrad 10 years ago. But it is also apples and oranges as well... Adams is a very high profile person, and clients of Adams (which, frankly, the newspapers are) may find it bad for business to avail themselves of his services when he goes on unhinged rants about culture war issues. My overall point is that Adams isn't entitled to space in any newspaper, just as Doonesbury or Garfield or whatever aren't... its business. Maybe he should take that into consideration going forward and accept responsibility for how his words may impact his brand and how his clients (ie. newspapers and readers) subsequently view said brand.

Regarding Scott Adams' transgressions, if any of us rolled into work on Monday and started popping off like he did, most (if not all) of us would be looking for work on Tuesday. I am unclear why he deserves preferential treatment or doesn't deserve to experience the consequences of his actions. Nor do I understand why newspapers should be compelled to use space in their publication for his cartoon if they prefer to go in a different direction

The biggest tell for me as to Waters true import to the band is that, essentially, there are three albums under the Pink Floyd name that were more or less domineered by Waters or Gilmour: The Final Cut, Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. The latter two are both flawed albums, but the music overall fine... Gilmour's guitar sounds great and you get to hear more of Wright's organ in Division Bell in particular. The former was utter trash and contained some of the most over the top, navel gazing lyrics you'll find. The last song (Two Suns in the Sunset) was about the literal nuclear holocaust, ffs. Just self-important tripe, most of that album. Maybe it's because I'm more an instrumentation guy than a lyrics guy, but I just don't see it with a lot of Waters' solo and solo-esque stuff

I love Floyd, but I mostly celebrate the rest of the band + Syd. They never get enough credit. Particularly from Roger, who still to this day thinks he's the only talent from the band. The dynamic reminds me a lot of David Byrne + Talking Heads, except Byrne is both orders of magnitude more talented and better as a human being overall, despite his flaws

Vierling! Today's offense provided by Dave Dombrowski lol

Layne Henderson, Minor League Rule 5 guy from camp....