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What I’ve learned from this is that the notion of hundreds of Russian nationals at the Internet Research Agency toiling away on fake X accounts in St. Petersburg is almost certainly not accurate, since second world labor demands relatively high second world wages. Instead, the grunt work of creating and maintaining troll social media accounts surely gets farmed out to third world countries for third world wages.

We may or may not be able to time the market, but the time feels right to take some overheated profits from Mag Seven-driven SP 500.

You’re still young enough to do 70/30, at least. I’m around 60/40 equity to fixed and I’m already retired.

The Cyrillic letters were a dead giveaway.

I don‘t know whether it would be so much of a discount this season, since presumably Skubal would be paid much more this year under an extension this winter versus taking the arb award figure. A raise over his arb number this year would probably have to be the sweetener to get him to lock up before he’s an actual free agent, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s not exactly Scott Boras’s jam.

That’s OK, I won’t miss him.

So will continuing to phase out the Avila pickups.

WTAF is going on today

And you'll probably get it if (1) you're not an ass about it and (2) you walk away if you don't get it at first.

feature not bug

And another lot just sold today!

I've been getting more messages from non-Tigers friends suggesting there must be something to the rumors since they keep seeing articles about it.

This is in part why I have cars custom built for me by the factory instead of driving one off the lot. I have no problem waiting a couple months for a car fresh off the boat with the exact specs I want.

I’m out of reactions, unfortunately, but definite Like.

I am out of reactions, unfortunately, but big Like for this one.

Trump’s highlighting how black/Muslim Mamdani’s middle name sounds, in order to to amp up the fear and loathing.

Update: the first three trailing stop limit sells have triggered, and we’re pretty close to the fourth one, which might happen today. I also have a 6% trailing stop sell on VOO that would sell 10% of my position in it. Given how much the mag seven makes up the index, once that bubble bursts, that’s coming down a bunch, too. Might as well clear some profits up here at the top.

I would love to see how many actual pages were viewed, to see how they scale against each other. I don’t know whether I’m surprised the Phillies have more views than the Braves, given the Braves’ legacy and their hold on an entire region. Cardinals are fifth in the NL Central in page views? My, how the mighty have fallen. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fan base.

I do take Skubal at his word that he would prefer to stay here. I can envision his choosing Detroit in a tiebreaker over Los Angeles or New York. I don’t think he’ll give the Tigers any kind of substantial hometown discount, but I bet what he really wants to see from Detroit is a commitment in years. If we try to lowball him on years, probably anything less than eight, I think he leaves.

I love Dearborn.

You make this sound as though this is a bad thing.

Avila's not responsible for them. He merely acquired them, and over three years ago. Harris is responsible for them. To the degree they are succeeding here, it's because of Harris, the new coaching regime, the improved developmental system, and newly found access to the best of analytical resources. Except Skubal, though. He got himself fixed all by himself.

I don't hate Avila. I'd bet he's a nice man, good husband, fond of his kids and grandkids.

Hiring Hinch is a good move, although I do wonder whether, had Avila known the kind of man he was truly getting, he would still have recommended the hire to Baby Doc. Also, remember: Hinch was not Avila's first choice. Only when Pedro Grifol came off the board did Hinch graduate into Avila's consideration set. All due respect, I don't take your loosey goosey "probably 80%" figure at face value.

Avila was terrible practically all the way around. I think the main problem was that Avila basically Peter-Principled his way into the big chair, which he clearly showed he was not competent to occupy. He was by acclamation a very good scout, and he was probably a decent lieutenant to Dave Dombrowski. But he was exactly the kind of guy we could have expected to see once Ilitch tabbed him without even talking to another soul about the job. Compared to that, Harris has already established himself as a relative wunderkind. (Note that I do mean "relative" and not "absolute".) He inherited an absolute mess from Avila and set about figuring out who we had who could still help us, at least in the short term, and getting rid of the others. He is still dumping Avila pickups left and right. It takes time to remake an entire organization up and down, and I get that people are impatient because they always want a winner NOW GODDAMMIT! And for his efforts, Harris has taken us to two LDSes in his first three years, and we are still nowhere close to his vision of peak Tigers yet. To be fair, Harris has whiffed on several of his pickups, but a 100% hit rate is not a reasonable goal. A much higher hit rate than the the previous guy is a reasonable goal, and Harris has exceeded that quite handily. And it's true, Harris has not made The Big Free Agent Signing and the Big Trade we all crave yet, but I believe that's in large part because Big Free Agents are still leery of signing here over coastal contenders, a perception that takes time to overcome; and we had not yet gotten to the position where one Big Trade in exchange for top prospects would be the thing that makes us favorites to go to the World Series. I believe we are better positioned for each right now, although I do think the Big Free Agent is still going to be a lot harder to pull off than the Big Trade. Either way, I agree with you and just about everyone else here that this is the winter Scott Harris has to made a very substantial improvement to the big league roster. I think the difference between me and just about everyone else here is that I've been willing to give Scott Harris the time he's needed to fix the aircraft carrier and get it turned all the way around toward perennial contention. If that makes me a Scott sniffer in your eyes, well, can't be helped, I guess. But I really do have trouble understanding the idea that Harris is a failure because he hasn't completed the job he has set out to do yet. But, hey, it takes all kinds to make up a fan base, amirite? 😃