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Why not? The amount is a rounding-error risk for the 1 in, like, 100 chance that he will be a productive, respected member of a team.

Are you the backup Strategy Expert now?

Not that anybody cares about Michigan State baseball, but they are bringing the hammer down on #8-ranked Louisville 12-4 after seven innings, and having squeaked out a 4-3 win yesterday. Spartans may not be anything this yea—or any year for that matter—but thank god baseball is back!

Do it! You're alive right now and you'll be a long time dead later. Do it!

I am lucky that on January 31, 1989, as I was blissfully ignoring my New Year's resolution by sitting on the couch munching shelled peanuts and watching TV after another day at the salt mines, I was shamed by an ad in the Detroit Free Press and motivated to go sign up for Vic Tanny. Thirty-seven years later, I am still working out on the regular. Again, I consider myself very lucky that I was uniquely motivated that day by my self-imposed shame. Had I not made that resolution in the first place, had I not been flipping through the Free Press that night, had I not been drawn to and read that ad and remembered my resolution that I was blowing so spectacularly at that very moment, I would likely be in a far different state with my fitness and health today. And here is that ad:

Go, Jack White!

They don't have to create fake numbers. That doesn't mean they would never. All I'm saying is they destroyed any trust someone should have in labor numbers as reported by the government, and that destruction of trust will certainly survive this administration.

I am super lucky that, while blissfully ignoring my New Year's resolution by sitting on the couch munching a bag of shelled peanuts and watching TV after another day at the salt mines, I was motivated by a Vic Tanny ad in the Free Press on January 31, 1989, to go join up. As I remember the cost was $72 a year which was supposed to be fixed for a lifetime. I became aware six years later that the fine print allowed them to jack up the price after six years, which they did, to $99. Either way, because I was motivated to use the gym if I was going to have to pay for it, and I have been working out on the regular ever since, 37 years this month. And here is that ad.

You know as well as anyone that this administration forfeited the benefit of that doubt a loooooong time ago.

Before you dance on its grave, I would consider buying low on it while it's down, given how this government is (putatively) all in on crypto.

Plus it's the only city in the area you can comfortably append "-tucky" to the end of. 😉

I think it's just as likely that such voters twist themselves into agreement on various issues with their preferred party's candidate that they would find wholly objectionable if it was the other party's candidate. Not unlike this ...

Mama mia, that's a cutti petutti!

I played in a softball league maybe 20 years ago that had a safety home plate, set off a couple feet from the plate itself. That's the plate you had to cross to score. Once you got halfway to home, you were committed to go all the way, and then it became a force play. If you accidentally went to actual home plate instead, you were declared out. I thought it was a great idea, and I'm surprised no softball league I've been in since has used it.

Eighty-five percent of the time is almost exactly six days out of seven. That means you get one cheat day a week. Works for me. 👍🏼

Did they find something on your colonoscopy? I ask because my first one was clean and they told me to come back for ten years. Then they found a couple of blips in my second one and have front-burnered my next one to seven years instead of ten. I’m not asking because I want to know about your colon, necessarily. I’m asking because I wonder whether they are coming around to recommending colonoscopies every five years being the new standard. They did move the recommended age for first colonoscopy up from 50 to 45, and colorectal cancer is on the rise.

I usually smoke my bacon. Either that or the bacon factory smokes it for me.

I just checked out of the library ”Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II”. I am interested to see exactly how they transitioned from a warfaring shogun-oriented society to a peaceful western democracy.

Interesting—how are you weighting Reference vs Fangraphs? Is it different for pitchers versus position players? Also, are you using FG WAR for pitchers, or RA9-WAR at all? Sees to me it should be the former to match up with Reference, although RA9-WAR is much more results-oriented, which factors into Hall voting more than a WAR figure used more to project future performance.

Yes, the RFK admission was embarrassing, wasn’t it?

Good one overall, although I’m not sure I can agree that “good ideas tend to win elections” as much as we might like. Trump brought a lot of bad ideas the his campaign that a substantial majority of people disagreed with, but ended up winning mainly because of the weak candidacy of his opponent. Personality and popularity has always mattered when it comes to elections, and perhaps that’s even truer now. I do agree with your opening thought. Winning parties have no incentive to change their approach based on high third-party vote counts, because for them, the winning has validated everything they campaigned on. Same as when a candidate wins an election by the thinnest of margins, then claims a broad mandate to do everything they ever wanted for themself and their benefactors that is antithetical to the losing party’s voters. Just by logic, we can see that how many votes the losers end up with matters not a whit, so the whole idea of sending a message with a third party vote crumbles. Winners win and just do what they want anyway, because they believe they have earned that right. So when it comes down to it, voting for a third party candidate you already know is going to lose is an exercise in futility and, depending on how much you want to brag about your political savvy for voting third party in the first place, vainglory. I’s your right to do so at any time, and no one can prevent you from doing so. It’s just that there are times when the effect of your protest vote on the entire body politic, and body social, matters more than others, which should inform a voter’s decision on voting third party versus holding your nose and voting for the lesser of two evils.

I think Taylor has a claim for Michigan, at least for the Detroit area.

Or Burr Ridge.

It’s funny whenever you hear that someone everybody dislikes or disdains or whatever turns out to be the nicest guy. I interviewed John Sterling, erstwhile radio PxP for the Yankees, for a blog once and even though people would say how they despised him and the way he said “thuhhhh … Yankeeeeeeees … win!”, he could not have been a nicer fella to me during the interview. Very engaged in the whole thing, even though it was a crap blog. I was very impressed by what a mensch he was with me.