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I would think that if you’re going to accept getting no help for your problem, then you might as well just accept the problem in the first place and of nothing. Maybe that’s what you were saying here.

Ha, I definitely do not see it this way! The way I see it, whether CSRs work for the company or as a contractor, whether they work at home or in an office, they are a representative of the company whose product I am seeking help with, and I do not believe they should get the same pass on not knowing something, or being dismissive of my inquiry, the same as some rando I ask in a bar. I don't blame only the CSRs, of course—I also blame the company that is putting such woefully insufficient resources into customer service that they hire a functionary who's go-to is googling the same websites I already googled and whiffed at before I call them. I have a reasonable expectation that CSRs will be well-trained enough in the product to either answer my question or problem, or to get me to someone who can. If one were to say I'm being naive for that expectation, then I would say they are being cynical for expecting nothing and then shruggingly accepting the nothing they get. When cynics do that, that's how the companies win.

I went to Catholic school for nine years, from fourth grade to HS graduation, and at no point was the theory of evolution ever rejected in any class I ever had. I do remember hearing more than once from teachers, some of them nuns, that the bible's explanation of the creation story was a way to explain to primitive people how the earth was created. (Although I don't recall them saying the explainers of that time were similarly primitive, although they had to be if they didn't know about evolution!) But yeah, at no time was evolution ever questioned, let alone rejected, during science class in Catholic school of the 1970s. I would suspect that the 26% figure in this poll from eleven years ago reflected an increase from the 1970s due to the rise of muscular Christian politics that started within the previous couple of decades. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the number of Catholics who would answer as such in a poll taken today would be higher, maybe even a third or better. I would bet money, though, that the percent of Catholics in the 1970s who would answer that they believe this would be more like the 15% copped to by mainline Protestants in that 2013 poll.

Big Bang and God (which I think is what you meant by "religion") are not theories of the same kind. Big Bang is a scientific theory, meaning a concept that has been well tested, and is accepted as an explanation to a wide range of observations. A scientific theory is created from large collections of facts and allows scientists to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. A scientific theory is testable and can be refined or rejected based on new evidence. The existence of gods is definitely not a scientific theory. It's more of a philosophical theory, one that contemplates the natures of existence, reality, knowledge, and morality. In that sense it better aligns with concepts like existentialism, utilitarianism, and metaphysics. There is no scientific basis for philosophical theories, although this is not to say there hasn't been a good deal of thought, debate, and even negotiation in the development of their precepts. Most of the major religions designed to codify the idea of gods developed across millennia in some cases, and I think Christianity is both one of the most developed religious philosophies and one of the more fractured. How many religions that consider themselves Christian consider other Christian religions to be apostate beliefs? Several of them, I think, with my old team the Catholics bearing the brunt of most of those. In any event, I'm with you on agree to disagree. I am also a fan of live and let live, and I suspect you might be, too. Too bad so many of your more fervent fellow travelers don't agree with either one of those.

CTRL+V is practically the opposite of typing slowly. 😉

More or less what I have also ... ahem ... evolved to. I think the nature of what's beyond this world is completely unknowable. I am open to there being a god, and I am open to there being no god, but in the end none of that matters because it is so unknowable. And despite the countless numbers of people lining up to convince people like me of one or the other, no one will be able to prove either side of the question. That's why I tend toward agnosticism and not at all toward atheism, which I think proceeds from the same conceit as belief: that they definitely know there is no god in the same way the more ardent believers definitely know there is a god. But neither side really knows, nor can they ever know as long as they're alive. I believe only one side is actually provable, and that would require whatever god or gods there are to reveal themselves, or to be objectively discovered. Absent that, no way to know or prove either way.

Yeah, if this is going all in on the supernatural direction it appears to be, I might check out of it, since supernatural doesn't exist and so I usually find its sudden appearance in otherwise grounded storytelling to be creatively lazy. As usual, YMMV.

Apparently, the new thing that happens when you are on a call with customer service for whatever the product or issue is—if they can't answer a problem you're having, they'll simply hang up, sometimes abruptly. Or, if they're nicer and/or less confrontational than that, they will ask you to hold and then they'll hang up. Maybe right away, maybe after a couple of seconds of silence. I would say at least half of the customer service calls I've had in the last year resulted in them hanging up. I'm guessing this has occurred more in the wake of COVID, given all the conventions of employment that turned upside down with quiet quitting and the like. I notice this happens particularly frequently with those CSRs with American accents, who I assume to be contractors working from their own homes, so I would assume they feel even less compunction about just hanging up on you. After all, this is their house, they're monarchs of that castle, they can do what they want. Every once in a while, though, some one with an obvious accent working with a loud call center in the background will do the same. Never used to happen at all.

If Baseball tried charging $500 for MLB.tv next year, probably more than 95% of their customers would bail on it. I know I would, and I'm a 98th-percentile baseball freak. They have nothing like a captive market.

They won't charge $500 for MLB.tv until at least 2050, or something like that. EDIT: @Sports_Freak, do you think they're going to do that soon?

We already have upper 70s wins in two of our past three seasons. I think something comfortably into the 80s is the minimum we should be asking for by now.

I can see him going to Miami. That would be an obviously perfect fit for him (assuming he's not some kind of wanted man there), and I think he's a good fit for them, despite Avisail Garcia's dead contract, especially if the Fish think they can close the gap between them and the wild card next year.

See, now, this is precisely what I mean. Jack Smith is a prosecutor doing the job in front of him, but mislabeling him, and everybody not in Trump's orbit, a "fascist" serves to reduce the word to a meaningless punchline such that, when real actual fascism comes to our door, nobody will be able to recognize it.

What do you think that's about? I'm not aware of any implication attached to it.

I can see that being true at the Trump level, but what about at the congressional or state level? Could it make a difference? This is not a passive-aggressive question, I’m seriously not certain.

TBF, the difference is easy to understand because there were still considered norms when Hillary did that back in 2016 and it was considered remarkable. Trump smashed through that barrier with a firehose and now using language like that considered unremarkable, especially for him. I think it’s all purposeful, too: by using words like “vermin” to describe your “enemies” (which is another word that used to shock when used in the political arena), or by calling every Democrat a “fascist” over and over, it reduces the power inherent in those words and makes people lazy about the actual danger they impose when the actions they lead to start happening.

It’s probably not unlike how some people botch pronouncing other people’s names on purpose as a sign of disrespect. How many different pronunciations have we heard of the vice president’s first name?

Blast from the past! How’s that guy doing?

Hopefully the GOP funding problem is systemic and not cyclical. I’m all for the Republican Party going bankrupt, and I think most of us here are, too, at least the Party in its current form. My main concern is that with their backs against the wall and it becoming increasingly clear they can’t fund and win democratic elections, they’ll start acting out in a bid to take power by force. Or do we think they’ll just peacefully accept their fate and retreat into their homes to binge watch Duck Dynasty and NCIS reruns?

Good thing this is not a country ruled by God's word.

One of the more depressing experiences I had was when I was leaving this downscale casino hotel I was staying at for a non-gambling thing I was doing in Vegas to go to the airport, 715am on a Sunday morning, and seeing just the most depressing group of people sitting at the slots, expressionless faces, mechanically putting coin after coin in the slot and pulling the arm, with all the computerized faux-festive music pouring out of the machines nonstop. I was thisclose to shedding a tear in despair at the scene.

Juno Temple is a lot better in Season 5 than I imagined she would be when I noticed it was she in the first scene of s05e01.

I use a bike pump to top up tires if I'm down by just a couple of PSI. Yeah, it takes a bit of effort but I also get to keep my quarters in my pocket.

Health is always a wild card, but assuming minimal injuries, I think we might have the horses right now to compete for and win a Central Division title. We're almost certainly not going to win 100 games, but 100 wins is also not what it's going to have to take to win this division. I take your point about Wentz and Hutchison, but their increased workloads were also due to plans falling apart because of injury, not because we planned on being bad and needed someone bad to get us there. Anytime massive amounts of injuries happens, it's all hands on deck, and if we get hit by the injury bug like that in '24, it'll be no different. But if we can stay relatively healthy and limit list time, I think this staff could do pretty well without having to rely on the likes of Joey Wentz to eat innings. If we do sign another pitcher, I think it's going to be because one of Skubal/Manning/Mize/Olson experience some kind of injury during the winter or spring. If none of them do, which of these guys would grab some pine based on being the fourth of four in potential? I assume that would probably be Reese Olson, would you agree?

That being the case, we should probably go ahead sign the remaining 58 free agent starting pitchers before they all get away. 😉