chasfh

This is a really good point. All the rhetoric about so-called "open borders" is basically just an invitation for more people to come than who might normally have.

Oh, I think she would ...

Oh, I don't know, I could still hang with a 38-year-old ... 😁

I was one of seven. I get that.

This is why Republicans stop showing up on nonpartisan media.

Fine by me. His opponents are loading up on the mere politics of the issue, so I wouldn't want Biden to unilaterally disarm on it. And I think him painting the Republicans into a corner by giving them exactly what they want and making them reject their own words to try to appease Agent Orange and win elections is exactly the right move.

I think it's just the opposite. They're not blind to the politics at all. I think they see the politics of it very clearly, and the politics are all about the value of the issue to them, and not at all about the problem it's creating.

They have no interest in fixing it because they could no longer run on the problem. plus, they would be responsible for the failures of the solution, and who wants that? Also, it won't matter if Republicans run the board this November, because they still won't want the problem fixed because it's more valuable alive because they can blame the Democrat deep state for thwarting their "efforts", than it would be dead and now it's their responsibility for making it succeed.

Probably as unsurprising as learning he has an Epstein island would be.

I think there were some explanations. I saw one saying this way of speaking is native to the west coast and so the spread of Hollywood culture has spread it across the country. I'm not sure I buy that, though, because Hollywood talkies have been the dominant cultural force since at least the 1930s, including when you and I were kids, but I see a clear generational difference in speaking. That's why I mentioned hip hop earlier—all those artists say bu'eh' and ohawn, and hip hop is the dominant music of the world, and kids have wanted to emulate them for at least the last 25 years. I'm just spitballing on this topic, but I can't explain the recency of its spread otherwise.

I wonder whether changing speeds of delivery is something they do in post. I listen to the New York Times podcast The Daily on occasion and I suspect they ramp up the speed to 1.25x or maybe even 1.5x to compress it for listeners, rather than letting listeners make that change themselves on their app. It sounds not unlike disclaimers on radio commercials.

Hey, Google: why do people pronounce “button” weird? https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-young-Americans-pronounce-the-word-button-like-bu-en-without-even-using-a-glottal-stop-They-seem-to-emphasize-the-short-e-sound-rather-than-the-normal-glottal-stop-going-straight-to-the-n-sound-Same-with#:~:text=Because over time pronunciation changes,That's how languages work.&text=Why do so many Americans,in “uh-oh.”

Bu’eh’. Yeah. Same thing. Hillary Cli’eh’, too.

You might be right, although the “impordent” one is fairly a mid-Atlantic thing, and I lived in Baltimore so I heard that one all the time. But there is another issue attached to that word—the way Gen Z says it. Well, and Millennials and a good deal of Gen Xers, too. Over the last couple decades or so, people have been—how do I put this?—“clipping” off the last syllable of that word. It’s kind of hard to describe, but, I and everyone I know grew up saying it with my tongue pushing against the top of my palate on the last syllable, not really stressing either “t”, but enunicating both a bit. Seems like how it’s said today is with the tongue away from the palate, not touching it at all, with neither “t” being expressed at all, something like im-por-‘an’, where the “n” is also mildly expressed, rather than leaned into, and, again, with the tongue off the palate. I started noticing this maybe ten years ago or so, and I also think it comes from black cool culture, because I have noticed also that when I watch TV or movies made 30 or 40 years ago, the white actors are saying “important” (and words like it) the way I still say it, while the black actors are saying it the way young people today say it. Not of this is a pet peeve, or even a peeve, really, but it’s just jarring still to hear people clip the syllables on words like that.

No guarantees.

Sometimes 2024 is pretty swell. Our router took a dump today at 12:30pm. It had been a little wonky the last couple of weeks or so, losing its connection for 30-60 seconds several times a day before restoring. I had been looking at getting a new router probably this week, but the old guy forced the issue by passing on, being no more, ceasing to be, expiring and going to meet its Maker, bereft of life, resting in peace, running down the curtain and joining the choir invisible—in short, becoming an ex-router. So I hopped on Amazon to find a similar router, which I did, and purchased it at about 12:35pm. The delivery was supposed to take place same day between 2pm and 6pm. It arrived, in fact, at 2:40pm. I got it out of the box, followed the quick setup instructions, had it effectively hooked up to the modem by 3:00pm. Fired up the router app, which I already had on my phone, finished the setup sequence there, and by 3:15pm, it was fully, completely, 100% operational. And bonus: because I bought the same brand router and used the same SSID and password, all the other devices in the house that had been hooked up to the old router automatically hooked up to this one. No need to even set those up again, So, in about the time of an average MLB game. at least during the 2023 season, my old router had died and my new router was already operational, and I didn't even have to leave the house to go get it. Pretty swell!

😉

Someone, or ones, are going to swoop in to save his day with big money.

...days until pitchers and catchers report.

Why do you not agree?

Red hats will never hear this.

Fun fact: I am going to have fentanyl tomorrow when I go on the table for a routine procedure. Hope they don't overdose me! 🤪

I think Tork is going to have to come off the field completely before long, which, at age 24, that realization is a stark omen for his career. If he wants to get the big money, he’s going to have to rack up 40+ homers and 900-ish OPS year in and year out. He needs a bat that will win way more games than his glove will lose. And honestly, I think he might be too far along to learn to be much better on the dirt. Marginally better, perhaps. But I think Tork will always profile as among the worst defenders at first base in the game. In that light, I don’t think Tork is going to be a long-term asset for the Tigers. As long as the Harris administration is in control, I don’t see them giving big contracts of high single-digit years and way into the nine figures for a guy of his profile. Perhaps we might try to trade him, but that would be tricky for a team that’s in contention which, perhaps by the time we get to the point when it’s time to determining trade partners for him, we should be well into. And I don’t know what kind of return we get for an underperforming 1/1 pick while the team is contending for pennants. It’s going to look funny if we do that, and we’ll be lowballed for him. Perhaps, though, we’d just take what we can get for him at the time. The other likely approach I can think of is to assume Tork will clock his six years here and then Boras will take him onto the open market, and we don’t bid for him. In the meantime, the Tigers would have to plan for and develop his replacement, which we have until 2029 to do. I think this is probably more likely than just trade, but I also can see us taking what we can get for him sooner than that just so we don’t have to pay him for Arb 3 or even Arb 2. Then Tork plays out his career as a second-division star, still retires a hundred-millionaire, and is enshrined in the Hall of Very Good. Let’s check back in 2040 to see how it all worked out.