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My dad was on the detail to clean up Dachau in 1945-46. Or, more exactly, he was on the detail to force POWs and the local townspeople to clean up Dachau. He did not talk much about it, but what little he did say was truly horrifying, and I've always thought, if that's the part he was willing to share with us, I can't imagine how horrific the parts he kept from us were.

Hey, people, stay the **** away from Chicago. It's not safe for you here. 😁

I'm not a fan of nostalgia for a lot of reasons, although I totally get its appeal. But I think nostalgia is definitely a bad thing when it comes to OBT, because if the team is, as you suggest, steeped in nostalgia, that means by definition there's nothing to recommend the current team, outside of the ... ahem ... inside baseball stuff you and I and the rest of us here are interested in. I remember thinking what a bad year 2003 was going to be when I saw the commercials in the preseason touting Tram as manager and Gibby and Lance as coaches. Hey fans, come on down to the ballpark, it's 1984 all over again! We know all too well how that turned out ...

I had read that the English use of the non-rhotic "r" (i.e., dropping the r sound in words) started in the 18th Century as an affectation among the upper classes around London and spread throughout the country from there, but I had no idea that the rhotic r was still in wide use in England through the middle of the 20th century. Apparently, the standardization of pronunciation to embrace the non-rhotic r was related to the wide spreading of BBC broadcasts.

Pretty cool. Here's a 1934 map of Detroit from that website.

I had to do a double-take to make sure this wasn't Jake Rogers.

More than half of the alerts I've gotten from Tigers Twitter in the past 48 hours are about Scherzer and Verlander. I agree it is a big deal that they're coming back and that JV is making his Mets debut here, but I think it also sucks that it qualifies as the most exciting news of the season surrounding this team, and by a country mile.

Franklyn who, now?

I’m not even thinking about Austin Meadows anymore. Not even on my radar. My expectation is that he never takes another at bat for us.

Another delayed start time, and if predicted radar movement is any indication, the game may not start until after 9:00 PM. This is a big down side of the more balanced schedule: you get teams early in the season you will not see again, and you have to either wait out the rain for hours and hours, layer on doubleheaders the following days, or figure out which of the very few off days during the rest of the season both teams can give away for a quick come-in-and-get-out game sometime down the road.

You’re welcome. Solid backhand there. 😜

I don't know who Charles McDonald is and whether his opinion should matter, but he sure didn't like the Lions' draft. https://sports.yahoo.com/2023-nfl-draft-grades-for-nfc-eagles-get-top-marks-so-do-rebuilding-cardinals-and-one-team-received-an-f-185301750.html Detroit Lions Favorite pick: Brian Branch, DB, Alabama (45th overall) This was by far the best pick that the Lions made over the weekend. Brian Branch was a projected first rounder for most of the draft season, but slipped to the second round for whatever reason. He’s not the most athletic defensive back out there, but he’s a smart player that played a variety of roles in Alabama’s defense. He’ll play a lot of snaps as the Lions’ overhang defender this year and he’ll make a whole lot of plays. Least favorite pick: Jack Campbell, LB, Iowa (18th overall) The positional value is one thing, but the bigger issue is taking Jack Campbell in the first round. He just wasn’t projected to go anywhere near this spot and likely could have been had a full round later than where he was selected. Campbell is a quality linebacker when he’s coming downhill in the box, but his ability to be an impact player in coverage and in space down the field is a major question mark moving forward. That’s not the profile of a first-round linebacker — those types of players have to be weapons in the passing game to be selected and Campbell isn’t that guy. Really odd selection at the 18th pick, even stranger than the Jahmyr Gibbs pick at 12th overall. Overall grade: F Yeah, an F. Perhaps this take will get Old Takes Exposed in two or three years as a laughably bad take, but as things stand right now the Lions’ draft class was just baffling. Taking Gibbs with the 12th pick in a year that they signed David Montgomery felt extremely rich. Even taking Sam LaPorta with the 34th overall pick over Michael Mayer was a head-scratcher. Gibbs and Campbell made up the most shocking first round picks in quite some time, and not in a positive way. Hopefully for Lions fans, this take ends up wrong. To put it nicely, they had an unorthodox strategy in the 2023 NFL Draft.

Also, Cheryl Hines used to be so, so kissably cute, which Melania, IMHO, never was.

I wonder what the good people of the Thumb would think if they were told they live in Detroit. 💀

Is it? Something always felt off about the company's product to me.

Cheryl Hines is looking rather Melania-like here.

This is from a couple years ago and there's been realignment since, so it may not be completely accurate today, but it's pretty close and it's really cool.

I have a feeling Florida's is going to change sooner than later.

The NFL might have an uphill battle spreading their sport around the world.

If any of you wanna come on over and murder me or buddha, this is probably the best place to do it. Although if y'all just wanna murder each other, you can probably get away with it over there, too.

Surprised by the amount of snowfall in the Appalachians, although I guess I probably shouldn't be.

The one that strikes me here is Salsette Island, in India: There are almost 24 million people who live on this island, an area roughly the size of a patch of suburbs that runs from 8 mile and I-94 in Grosse Pointe to 8 Mile and Telegraph in Southfield, up to downtown Pontiac, across to Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights, and back down to Grosse Pointe. That's more than twice the number of people who live in the whole state of Michigan on a patch of land that makes up less than half of suburban Detroit.

I didn't know that at the time I posted this.

In addition to our having lived it as adults, I also believe the current past of 20/30 or so years ago seems a lot closer than WWII did in 1960 because we have video of that era made available to us on demand, some of it in HD, while 1945 was not nearly so accessible to the people of 1960. In fact, I kind of wonder whether WWII feels closer to me now than it felt to me 30 years ago because so much of the account of that time (video, newspaper, etc.) is available to us now in a way the couldn't have been back then.