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I think you may have identified the crux of the biscuit regardless of side.

I didn’t know he was running for Congress?

I’d be surprised to see us moving Manning this offseason. He seems so tantalizing close to finally putting it all together. He’s only 26 coming into the season, and he has fewer than 300 innings on his arm during the past four seasons due to all his time on the shelf. Plus, the Tigers have committed a lot of resources to him over the years so I don’t think they’ll let him go for cheap. The one glaring hole in his game is the inability to miss bats. If he can plug that hole, he’ll be very good.

I think Leyland got a boost from the fame factor. Chewing out Barry Bonds was the highlight of his Oscar reel. And what other manager could look so cool smoking heaters in the dugout during games?

Bottom line, I loved how this season started in the first two episodes, and now in episode three the potential of supernatural is rearing its ugly head. I don't think they would do a callback to 1522 or whenever it was to not link to it directly in the storyline. Probably the most logical way they could extricate themselves from the idea that he is that guy would be to suggest that he is the latest descendant in a 20-ish-deep line of weirdos that emanated from the 1522 guy. And really, could the 1522 guy even get himself a wife he can propagate with? And could this guy himself a wife so he could propagate the line? Unless he is actual Satan in which case ... that would make this season just too ****ing stupid. I'm open to them making this logical somehow.

Wait a minute, though: I have not propagated my DNA, and my window s now closed. Is my life without purpose?

This raises a bunch of rhetorical questions about what's the point of a planned creation. It is accepted that God has no beginning and no end. Why did God pick a particular point in whatever the construct of time was to crate the universe? What did he did for all those eons before that? Hang around in nothingness? They also say God knows all and sees all, past, present and future. If God knows what's going to happen already, why bother with any of it? If he knows the outcome, what is free will, and not only why did he give it to us, but do we even have it? If he already knows I'm going to heaven or to hell, why am I trying to live a life that strives for heaven? Why do I think I can change my ways to steer me away from hell and into heaven? Why do I have to change anything? Why accept Jesus Christ as my PLS if he already knows where I'm ending up already? Isn't it all part of the divine plan? And if there is a divine plan, why are we bothering to pray? After all, doesn't the divine plan have everything already worked out? If the outcome is worked out already, what are we praying for? And if God will respond to our prayers and change his divine plan for us, why have a divine plan in the first place? Why allow me to pray for something and **** up that whole plan? What's the plan of a planned creation? There are bunches more rhetorical question that could be asked, these are just a few. Does religion have an answer for all this? I went to Catholic school for nine years and none of this was contemplated that i remember. But aren't these are the kinds of questions that critical thinkers need answered before they give themselves over to the idea of Christian God?

The strong implication was that Munch is that same guy, but to your point, that doesn't mean the implication is true.

Now, come on, wasn't Al the blind squirrel who found Casey Mize and Spencer Torkelson?

Have you seen ep3?

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.