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I appreciate the apology, thanks for that. I think the debate continues to be valid as long as people have opinions about each side and has something to say about the topic itself. I don't know about the concession on the point itself, exactly, but then, I wasn't looking for one either, so I don't care so much about that ... 😁 This debate is meant to be all in good fun, anyway. Have a great weekend! Go [local_sports_team]!

That's understandable. The Tigers have been drafting, trading, developing, and performing in an apathy-inducing way for about seven years now. I respect diehards and I do consider myself one, but that doesn't necessarily mean committing to living and dying with each game or each season no matter what they do. I think it's OK for our passion to wax and wane based on how seriously the team is competing, to be excited and engaged when they're focused and successful, and apathetic when they look for all the world like they have no idea what they're doing.

okey doke

Wait a minute, what are you looking for here? Are you looking for people to stay in their lane, or for people to merge over as soon as possible? Because I myself am all for everyone staying in their lane until they get to the lane closure and then zipper-merge at that point. I even suggested a sign for that.

And here, I was going to just let this go ... Look: I didn't call you this, or "fascist", either directly or indirectly, and you and everyone else here can easily see that. But it doesn't surprise me that you're confused about all this, anyway. But it’s really quite simple to understand. This unseemly nonsense of you outing me by name in your post is all about trying to shame me for my observation. By calling me by my name instead of my handle, you’re making your criticism about me personally, and as a deflection, because you can’t effectively defend against the actual point I am making—which I get, because it’s not easy defending people who put themselves and those around them in danger by purposely getting in the way of other cars in order to regulate their driving behavior. So you've tried to change the conversation from the nature of people taking enforcement of a driving preference into the own hands to being about me so that, I guess, other posters can join you in piling on me? Is that what you’re trying to accomplish here? Because if that’s the case, then your outing post is off to a slow start. It also bears noting that you may or may not be clear about what “partisan politics” actually means. I said nothing here about political parties at all—I just noted how a particular phenomenon leads some people to act in ways that resemble the social control mechanisms of fascism in broad terms. But based on your response, I can reasonably assume you must be awful sore that these days, the political party you identify with is considered by most people to be the party of fascism, and since you went right there with you're criticism of me, you seem to be sensitive enough about that to be personally embarrassed about it. And really, I don’t blame you. If people on my side of the political spectrum were engaging in fascism—a near impossibility, since fascism by its very definition emanates from the far right—I’d be embarrassed about that, too. OK, that's enough of that. If you don’t mind, I’d like to set all this aside and get back to the pet peeves. Will that work for you?

I hypothesize that if the rate of home runs and strikeouts increase, it will increase the amount of prop betting on home runs and strikeouts, and I ... ahem ... bet that Baseball hypothesizes the same.

In our defense: 2022 Tigers: 79 wRC+ Don Kelly career: 72 wRC+

From the department of Lemonade Out Of Lemons: A lot has been made about how much the Tigers have been shut out this season, and rightfully so. It’s beyond embarrassing. But if we widen out the lens to include all games of scoring either one or zero runs … well, yeah, it’s bad because we are still in the worst 7% of all teams in history. No amount of lipstick can make that pig look better. But, so far, anyway, we are not even the worst at that this season. We have had 41 games in which we have scored zero or one runs, but this year’s Oakland A’s have had 42 such games. Meaning that when it comes strictly to scoring one or fewer runs, the A’s have a worse offense than we. Little victories where we can find them …

Leave it to you to make the conversation all about me the person when you can’t refute a good point on its own terms.

To this point in particular, I have been wondering lately what the effect of a sudden change in organizational hitting/coaching philosophy, competence, and (frankly) personnel might have on the players we currently have in our system. We have seen for years now players flop around for us and then go on to productive careers with other teams which presumably have better hitting systems in place than we. Can Akil, Willi, Kody, et al, be saved?

I’m not so sure the ball is going to continue to be deadened in its current state. Baseball just doubled down on pull-happy sluggers because prop bettors dig the long ball. Also, the strikeout. So whatever they can to that encourages more of that, that’s what I myself would expect to see. I don’t know whether moving in the fences, particularly in left, will address the dearth-of-dingers problem since for the last five seasons, the 3-year-rolling HR park factor is higher for RHH than for LHH. That might suggest a different problem at hand than our particular outfield configuration. If we examine park factors on the Savant site, we can see that Comerica played better than average for HR hitters for eight of the eleven seasons from 2007-2017, then cratered after that. The only changes to the ballpark since 2003 was in 2013 when they raised the RCF fence by three feet and lowered the LF fence by a foot. The configuration has been the exact same ever since. Dig a little deeper and we can see that home run rates have suffered due to environmental factors (temperature, wind, etc.) more for Comerica in the past two seasons than any other ballpark. I’m not saying we could not benefit at all by restructuring fence depths and height, to your point that recent results might lead to suboptimal player procurement and hitting strategies, but it does bear considering that the past couple of years have been unusual versus the seasons that went before it.

Love the use of "licit".

Yes, I like this. I also think what could help is if they have a sign that says, "Stay in your lane until lane closure" or "closure point", or "merge point", something along those lines. I think that might be a good way to train drivers over time to get comfortable with zipper-merging. Maybe adding a sign near the lane closure that says "Start merging here" would also help.

Jesus, how many different ways can he say, "Nice country you got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it ..."

In all seriousness, absolutely. The more illegal immigration there is, the more Republicans believe they gain politically. Same with rooting for high murder rates and runaway inflation. They want all to happen while D is in control and they will do whatever they can to help it along.

If Xi survives October? What do you know about what's going to happen with Xi in October?

Stock market reaction aside, I don't understand how yesterday's inflation report was bad news—unless we're talking strictly about how bad it was for the stock market itself. As far as I can tell, the inflation number was good news. It showed an increase of just 0.1% month over month, and that was after a month of July for which the CPI change was zero. That's a lot different, and a lot better, than the monthly changes of 0.6% to 1.3% we were seeing for eight of the nine months preceding that. I know the big media takeaway is 8.3% which was the increase over year ago, but if the next ten months go the same way the last two have, we would see a year-over-year inflation figure of roughly 1%. I don't know about you, but I would take that. It probably won't be that, but with energy appearing to level off from an historic spike, which should put a damper on food inflation before the end of the year, I could see us next July talking about 2% to 3% inflation again—barring another pandemic or similar global catastrophe, of course.

There's something to be said for that, since we would have been on the hook for that contract of almost $20 million per year through 2008. Flip side, Papa Doc was motivated to win a ring before he died in a way Baby Doc ain't, so who knows, maybe he still goes out and throws 4/40 at Pudge and 5/75 at Maggs anyhow.

Sounds good to me! 👍🏼😁

I was listening to Pod Save America yesterday and they talked about how the polls show favorability to Democrats, but how can we trust any polls because of the polling error in 2016 and 2020? There are a few logical reasons why the polling might have been off, including that Trump voters may not respond when pollsters call, or there was a mixing of polling methodologies resulting in skewed projections. But the more I hear and think about it, the more I wonder whether the Party of Projection, who have spent much of the last six years accusing Democrats of rampant vote fraud, has been engaging in misdirection, as projectors do, to distract us from examining closely whether they themselves have been cooking the voting machines, switching votes, tossing votes outs, taking massive dumps (of votes, of course), etc. I have nothing to prove it, and I’m not even leveling an accusation against them. All I know is it would be totally on brand for them to do it, and I sure can’t dismiss it.

I did not realize that Correa is going through free agency for the first time, and that the $62 million he's earned is not a ton of money, since if the Tigers offer him the most money he'll take it, and bonus, he's lying when he said in July that a rebuilding team isn’t something he wants to be a part of.

Do not insure your Amazon purchase with an Asurion extended warranty. Yeah, i know, you already knew that. So did I. I thought this was a special circumstance that warranted it. I had previously bought a (much too expensive) docking hub for my laptop setup that started to fail in less than a year, and I was out well over a hundred bucks. So I bought a new hub from a different company for cheaper, and which I extended through Asurion with a three-year extended warranty for eight bucks. Within six weeks (beyond the return policy limit), the sound input on the hub failed. When I plug my speakers into the hub, the sound is supposed to come through the speakers. It no longer does. I contacted the company, Mokin, twice asking for technical support or a replacement, and got no reply. They are a Chinese company, which may or may not have something to do with their lack of responsiveness. So I contacted Asurion. First of all, it's likely you won't be able to handle the issue online by yourself because, as in my case, you may not even see your product listed. Luckily they have a chat app so I was able to successfully process the issue through that. But here's the deal with that: First of all, you don't get a replacement product through Asurion. You get an gift card and you get it for the amount of the product only, not any taxes or shipping you might have paid. So that part of the money is gone. Secondly, unlike Amazon itself, which might send you a replacement product before you have to send the defective product in, Asurion will send the gift card only once they have received your product. So you need to trust this company hardly anyone has ever heard of to follow through on that part of the deal. But lastly, and the best part, is that once you process this transaction, your contract with Asurion is completed. You do not get to apply it to any replacement product you receive. So I spent eight bucks on an extended warranty that terminated within six weeks because I had the temerity to leverage the warranty once. Stay away from Asurion.

There's no other way to put it: early merging culture is fascist, practically by definition, because it encourages people to take what's not even a law, but is merely a more, into their own hands and enforce it against other drivers simply because they don't like them doing what the actual law allows them to do.

It is fine to drive in a lane as long as it is open to drive in.

Seems to me the car driving to the end of the lane is playing by the rules of the road, and the guy who jumps into the lane with the explicit purpose of blocking or stopping the car already has road rage.