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Ninth-inning scares are so fun, aren’t they? Super entertaining.

NOPE!

Holy ****, that’s the second throwing error by Sweeney today. ****’s falling apart.

Vest is totally overthrowing at the moment.

I thought the joke was obvious, but maybe not so much.

Very exciting for the nineteen Spanish speakers who live in the Detroit area!

We are a good team.

Lucky on back-to-back plays there: India got fooled on the overthrow by Sweeney and stayed on second, leading to no error; and Salvi’s bomb just barely stayed in the ballpark. At the very least, it might be 3-2 right now.

Kenta Chaos!

If Casey does come out, seems Brant Hunter is the most likely guy to come in. I doubt they’re going to bring in Bailey Horn if there’s only a two-run lead in the eighth.

He’s gonna be out at first, and that’s seven solid innings from Casey in fewer than 90 pitches. Would love to see him come out for the eighth. A few runs here would help that case.

Casey threw that first pitch to Fermin a little too confidently, which is to say, a little too recklessly.

You must read this, because this is the whole ballgame right here.

Tork has been so so good and so incredibly consistent: Season (23 days): .428 wOBA, 188 wRC+ Last 14 days: .423 wOBA, 185 wRC+ Last 7 days: .423 wOBA, 184 wRC+

You how how Dan describes the uniforms being worn by the two teams toward the beginning of the game? The Cubs do, too, except it is sponsored by Benjamin Moore Paints, which is why Pat Hughes makes sweet, sweet love to the description and to the ad copy following it.

From the story: “There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” said a senior defense official. “Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.” You heard right: the explicit primary consideration of the people being hired into the Department of Defense is not the interests of the country and its security, but rather, the individual interests of the head of the department.

I had not heard any buzz about the oners, but I was wondering whether the other three episodes would be shot that way. Makes sense they would do them all as oners, versus the first as a oner and the rest conventionally. The premiere episode had one of the more powerful scenes I’ve ever seen: in the interrogation room with the father and son alone, after the father had seen the evidence that the son appeared to be involved, after he’d asked the son earnestly and the son denied it, the father starts to weep into his hands, the son reaches out to touch dad’s shoulder, and dad instinctively pulls away from the son … that’s just so gut-wrenching to watch.

My wife and I just watched the first episode of Adolescence, and it is fantastic. I cannot wait to watch the rest of this four-part mini-series. I would binge through the rest of it today were my wife not quite opposed to the idea of binging.

Just as annoying to me as the fact that AI can’t do logic at a high school level is that fact that it is programmed to be so phony-baloney polite. By “phony baloney” I don’t mean in the way that it is making an honest effort to be polite and simply botching it, but in the way that it is annoyed and is just using sarcastic overwrought apology language to highlight to everyone else that I am being a complete **** for pushing back on it. It's almost as though the implied parting shot is, "there, are you happy now?" I’ve been annoyed at this faux politeness since almost the beginning, since it is coming from a machine that has literally zero capacity to muster up any politesse on its own. Someone had to program that in there, and if I had to guess, it's being done by people from other countries with cultures that respond really well to the kind of apology theater our culture regards as ridiculous.

Flooding the zone with different takes on it to deflect blame while they pursue the exact same policy in the background.

Second generation Latinos pulling up the ladder behind them.

The irony is that Republicans definitely own certain demographics and can do literally nothing to lose them, short of showing empathy or speaking with nuance.

It was jarring to see the strike zone at first, maybe ten years ago? It looked like something out of MLB The Show. I’ve gotten used to it over the years, just like I have gotten used to the pitch type and speed popping up when the pitch crosses the plate, which started maybe four or five years ago. I wouldn’t miss that one so much, but I might miss the strike zone at first. Remember maybe a decade or so ago when umpires tried policing batters for delaying games dicking around at the plate, like stepping out between pitches, by enforcing some sort of time limit on them between pitches? It worked for about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, but then they stopped because players were grousing too much and the league wasn’t really standing behind the umps on the effort. Plus, there was no real penalty on batters for infractions, like a ball called against them, and no similar effort to stop pitchers from slowing down the game as much as they wanted, so why should the batters have to listen to umps pick on them? The only thing that ended up working to stop the dicking around was the pitch timer, since the umps could just say, hey man, don’t yell at me, it’s the timer, which you can plainly see. It took the blame out of the ump’s hands, which is why it works so well. It’s transparent, with universal, consistent, unavoidable enforcement. Same thing with having umpires police moving mitts. It would create nothing but headaches for them having to deal with unhappy catchers, pitchers, managers and base coaches on what would appear to be subjective judgments in the moment. Get some sort of automated system that detects moving mitts, with audible tones for violations, and it might work to stop egregious pitch framing movements. Or else go to a fully implemented ABS regime for each and every pitch. That would definitely work to stop egregious pitch framing movements.

A person needs well-honed critical thinking skills to be able to suss out when AI is full of ****. Probably why mankind is doomed. 😉

Fire Hinch! 😝