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You have a basic misunderstand of what James Brown is trying to get across with this lyric. He is not saying black people are too lazy or too entitled to open up the door themselves —because, I guess, it’s a stupid door, how easy is it to just open one, for cry eye?—and so they refuse to try to better themselves because they insist white people open up the door and formally invite them to participate in American society. What he is getting across is that nearly four centuries of obstacles had made it practically impossible for black people to simply do the same things white people do to succeed. White people think it’s just hard work and gumption that makes them successful—black people know there have strong institutional advantages built into the societal system that prevent them on balance from basic levels of success since America’s time immemorial. It was a lot more explicit when James wrote the song fifty-plus years ago, but it is still strongly implicit today. You might be inclined here to point to affirmative action policies as leveling the playing field between black and white people. But benefiting from AA has always been akin to hitting the lottery. It was designed to be a quota type system rather than universal policy, apparently intended less to lift up an entire people than it was to assuage racial guilt over the historical oppression of that people by the people who literally put themselves in charge of them. It’s not that white people are obliged to literally open a door and formally invite black people to be basic citizens. It’s that the institutions need to continue to remove the obstacles that are still in the way of black people (and other people of color, particularly those indigenous to the Americas) that prevent them from being accepted as true equals by the white people still firmly in control of society.

I have questions. Why are we cheering her saying she still defends Trump against the Epstein charges? Since when did iOS start hyphenating running text? Who’s Natalie?

The scaling part of it makes sense. That part is inside the question’s room. I’m having trouble getting through the question’s door.

That’s incredible considering how much better pitchers generally were 20 years after he started playing. Age 38, 233 OPS+ … talk about locked in.

Which basically tells us that the rate of success of getting away with it is super high, because even with the potential cost of getting caught, they all do it anyway, since they all deem the risk to be worth it. High rate of success multiplied by the benefit of succeeding usually explains behavior other people find inexplicable or even impossible due to the draconian penalties attached to it.

Dǐck Stuart is one of those guys who played within my lifetime (technically) who almost never registers with me as I think about players from his era. Talk about Dr Strangeglove: he had over 200 home runs and still couldn’t clear 8 WAR for his career. Amazingly, there are five other 200-home-run hitters who had even fewer wins even having hit 200+ homers, like Dante Bichette and Jose Guillen and Mark Reynolds.

My question is, how can the dWAR for DHs be anything but zero? How does a DH lose 1.7 games for his team without picking up a glove? The only way any of this comes close to making any sense for me is if 1Bs generally have negative dWARs and SS generally have positive dWARs because the average 1B loses runs for his team and the average SS gains runs for his team, taken against the average of all eight positions, solely by the nature of positional relativity. That would help explain the difference in dWAR between players at those two positions—but that still wouldn’t explain DH dWAR for me. I’m just trying to make the concept click for me mathematically to help me understand how individual players at positions contribute defensively to runs and wins on the field during games, versus accepting it as a purely economic concept applied primarily to roster management. We can just go ahead and drop it here since our going round and round like this is no fun for anyone, not even me. I can pursue the question on my own in my spare time.

Well, TBF, they didn't say he was "pro-life" ...

lol good one! The conversation wouldn't even have to be that opaque. It just has to occur in relative secret and not be on the record.

Saw this in one of my newsletters. Interesting that the Tigers let him go rather than move him to the hitting coaching team. Astros are hiring Anthony Iapoce as an assistant hitting coach, general manager Dana Brown told reporters. Iapoce, 52, was the Rangers’ hitting coach from 2016 to ’18, the Cubs’ hitting coach from 2019 to 2021, the Red Sox’s senior hitting coordinator in 2022, and the Tigers’ first-base coach the last two years.

Perhaps a leftover from an earlier era when 14-year-olds could get married under circumstances. I'm guessing it'll change at some point.

I was noodling this earlier: if they do go to some kind of salary cap, then teams that have significant long term deals on the books might get those deals grandfathered in and their caps adjusted to reflect that.

I'd be surprised if we ended up with a permanent DH, even from one side of the plate.

I’m not sure anyone is signing or offering a thing long term until they have a really good idea what the landscape is going to look like under the new CBA.

There's only one certain way to keep her quiet ...

And the snotty, dismissive look on her face as she says that last part—something that can't come across in print—is a real clincher for your point.

OK, I can see where this makes sense, so this brings us back to the original question: how can a DH generate -1.7 defensive WAR if it is not related to positional adjustment, and he doesn't use a glove the entire season?

All depends on whether you're voting for Most Valuable or Best Story.

OK, then let's make it -10 at 1B and +6 at SS. That works for me. The actual numbers don't matter to me. The principle does, and these numbers go in the same direction as the numbers from the old Fangraphs article. So, I come back to the question, does a slightly above average first baseman still lose runs for his team and a slightly below average center field still gain runs for his team, because of the positional run adjustments? EDIT: let's ask an even more basic question: you appear to be saying that Tango calculated his positional adjustments based on fielding runs saved or lost by players at these positions during actual games he studied. Do I have that part straight?

It's generally accepted that the Tigers offered the most money to Bregman last winter, which is the thing many people claim all the time is all it takes to get these greedy bastards to sign on the line that is dotted. 😁

I'm out of reactions today, but Like

Getting back to the hot topic at hand: can I just tell you how surprised I am that MAGA has not simply dismissed the trove of Epstein emails Democrats have released as being a forgery? I mean, how easy would it be to claim that Democrats doctored the documents to remove Clinton's name and add Trump's? Red hats would totally, absolutely, 100% buy that, and it also would sow enough confusion in the marketplace of ideas that independents, uncommitteds, and apathetics would throw up their hands and bail on the story not knowing what to believe. So why aren't the Republicans selling that? And why aren't they releasing doctored documents of their own that removes Trump's name and adds, I don't know, Obama or Pelosi or Newsom or Jeffries or somebody? I know that's a complex job, but I mean, come on, Russia does this **** all the time. They practically invented it! Is someone in St Petersburg asleep at the switch or something?

Man, is this ever ballsy. Tell you what: if the courts see fit to strike down the voter-approved redistricting plan in California while simultaneously upholding all the legislator-drive redistricting plans in all the red states, we are truly good and ****ed. Because at that point everything will be all but officially in the bag for the Republicans to finally realize their goal of make America a one-party fascist state, like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia or the Jim Crow South.

That's why I posted this back in June!

I'm out of reactions today, but Like. Did you know "Barely Legal" is still being published as a magazine by the Larry Flynt people? Unreal!