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When I saw this it reminded me immediately of the Mets' blacks.

I glad they fixed the numbers. I ****ing hated those italics or whatever they called them. I also like how they are going to have "DETROIT" above the front number on the road whites and "LIONS" on the home blacks. That's a very baseball thing to do. I kind of wish they would add "LIONS" to the home blues.

It was a real choice, too, and not a slip-up. So, never mind.

I very carefully said influencing timing, and pointedly said NOT control. And yet this, in which, conveniently to whatever point it is you want to make, you very specifically cut out the part I said "not control" in your quote. And then you demand what I mean by "controlling timing". I just can't take you seriously when you're like this.

Hold onto your hats! Here we go! WHEEEEEE!

I just watched the movie Civil War at the theater yesterday, and in one scene the one wizened journalist was talking about how dictators like Saddam and Ceaușescu, when you meet them in person, they seem smaller in real life. I wonder if Trump is like that when the cameras are not around? I remember he kind of came off like that the one time he was on Colbert during the 2016 campaign.

City Connects being leaked here?

I'm just talking about the Democrats seeking to influence timing, not control like a Svengali. (Or is that Sven-jolly?)

I don't know, completely—there is some evidence I've seen that people identifying as independent do believe there's something to the idea that the state is using its awesome power to hurt Donald Trump politically in this election, and that this is the main reason he's being prosecuted. I'm definitely not saying that his going to jail for contempt, being convicted and sentenced to prison, etc., would put him over the top in the election, or that it wouldn't lose him any supporters, because it would. But I can see how it would help him gain at least one more supporter he doesn't already have. It might be a case of something like, gain 1,000, lose 10,000, net -9,000.

We do attribute the projection phenomenon to Russia as though they architected it in the first place, and they are one of the all-time champs at it, to be sure. But reading a book on how Germany evolved from WWII to today, it appears to me that the Nazi government also engaged in this kind of projection. So maybe mass projection is a feature of authoritarian power structures in general, and perhaps it is as much natural consequence as it is planned strategy.

In their defense, kind of, it looks as though Google themselves may have fostered an environment in which protest is invited. Also, what Google does not say in its statement is that they "fired 28 (these) employees on Wednesday after sit-ins at the company's offices in protest of its cloud computing contract with the Israeli government." Whether we believe it actually involved screaming and whistles and yelling like street protests depends on whether we take their version of events on its face. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/18/google-israel-cloud-contract-protest-firings?stream=top 1 big thing: Protester firings mar Google's ivory tower Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios Google's firing of 28 protesting employees Wednesday sends the clearest signal yet that the tech giant — whose founders pledged it was "not a conventional company" — has become just that, Scott Rosenberg reports. The big picture: Silicon Valley's leading firms have long told talented employees to think of the office like a campus, "bring their whole selves" to work and change the world for the better — but workers who bought those promises are facing a moment of truth. Driving the news: The 28 firings followed sit-in protests Tuesday at Google offices in Silicon Valley and New York City. The demonstrators opposed a $1.2 billion 2021 Google Cloud contract with the Israeli government, arguing Google's support for the effort — known as Project Nimbus — was harming Palestinians in Gaza. Nine employees were arrested at the sit-ins. What they're saying: In a note to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai wrote, "This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics." Google also says that the Project Nimbus contract is "not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services." Between the lines: Google prided itself from its early days on creating a university-like atmosphere for the elite engineers it hired. Dissent was encouraged in the belief that open discourse fostered innovation. "A lot of Google is organized around the fact that people still think they're in college when they work here," then-CEO Eric Schmidt told "In the Plex" author Steven Levy in the 2000s. Yes, but: What worked for an organization with a few thousand employees is harder to maintain among nearly 200,000 workers. Generational shifts in political and social expectations also mean that Google's leadership and its rank-and-file aren't always aligned. Flashback: Google has already faced several waves of employee protest over its programs. In 2018, thousands of Google workers protested its participation in a Defense Department effort called Project Maven that attempted to apply AI to the Pentagon's image-recognition needs. Some employees quit, arguing that their research should not be used to help target drones. The company has also previously undertaken high-profile firings or quasi-firings, like those of AI researchers Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru. (Google maintains Gebru resigned.) With this week's dismissals, the company made clear that it views the current protests not as a form of intellectual disagreement but as a matter of rules enforcement and security. Social media posts and reports of the debate on internal Google message boards show a deep split in thinking on the firings. One group of observers — often older or more conservative in perspective, and including many business leaders or investors — applauds Google, saying the protesters got what they deserved and were deluded for thinking that the workplace was an appropriate forum for political action. Another group — often younger, more progressive and more friendly to labor — sees the protests as an act of conscience and the firings as a betrayal of Google's founding values. Our thought bubble: If you build a corporation that conditions employees to see themselves as eternal students, you can't be that surprised when some of them decide to hold demonstrations. Conversely, if you work for a fabulously profitable corporation that counts many of the world's governments as its customers, you can't be that surprised when it prioritizes business needs and political expedience over individual expression.

For the umpteenth time, how do you know what the Trump Party is doing or planning to do? They tell you by accusing their enemies of doing the same thing.

Market hasn't needed any help tanking lately.

It's not an issue of zero control versus total control.

Why does the system allow jurors to be identifiable at all? I don't fully understand that.

maybe it is a witch hunt after all!

I think there's something to this.

Not everybody can be Stephen Strasburgesque when they first come up. But then, look what happened to him. The hype machine is always histrionic, although it has seemed to kick up a notch of late. I'm sure there's a promotional/revenue component in there somewhere.

Really? You need to read more. 😉

And the strikeouts. Can't have a Quick Pitch clip show without strikeouts.

Maybe they will just push the quality down until we get used to it. 🤷‍♂️

I’m sorry, there’s no way a10-9 team can be 5-10 in their last 15. 💀 So, 5-9 in their last 14, and 4-8 in their last 12.

I couldn’t locate Matt Nokes’s plaque whe I visited Cooperstown a few years ago.

I’m pretty sure Harris understands that a team can’t build a consistent winner off 13 utility players, so I really doubt that is his long-term smartest-guy-in-the-room plan to win rings. I think we are still in the restructuring phase, and will be for another year or two, in which we are building toward a situation where we will have a team of stars, strong positional players, and versatile bench guys, along with ace, solid rotation, and solid bullpen. The rot was pretty deep when he came aboard, not just in players but in infrastructure, and there has to be equal amounts of investment on both sides to fashion a consistent winner. Based on players he inherited, out of which he has to determine who we can save and who we can dump, we seem to be closer on the pitching side than the positional side. If the hitting part is going to get fixed, it’s going to take another year or two, not another series or two. We simply don’t have all the horses we need to win with, and they will need to be acquired via draft, trade, or free agency. I think it’s becoming clearer, though, that this group of thirteen will not be the group we are going to ride or die with.

I think it’s more likely we are going to see more pitchers coming up (i.e., Next Man Up) then current relievers pitching more.