chasfh

Apropos of nothing, I kind of miss the tradition of having guests stick around for other guests on late night talk shows.

Well, if you've never had to make your way around India, how would you know?

I think it's gotta be three wild cards, right? They would have a hard time explaining away a 92-win third-place team losing a wild card spot to an 80-win second-place team, as would have happened just last season. Especially if that 92-win team is either the Yankees or Red Sox. Not only is the 12 an improvement over 14, but the bye situation should be an improvement as well. Instead of only the top record in the league with a bye and the other two division winners playing in a six-team wild card rounds, I assume they'll give byes to the top two division winners and have only the worst division winner play in a four-team wild card round. I assume they're still going to have the rose ceremony, though. After all, it is the 21st Century.

Or they asked for what's fair, given how revenues have been rising and overall player comp declining. One or the other.

First time we’ve had a situation in which the next word literally could not have been anything else. Wordle 255 5/6 ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨 ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜ 🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜ 🟨🟩🟨🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Some were speculating death counts could go over 2 million in the US, applying the then reported death rate to a projection of a majority of people infected. A million seemed more (for lack of a better word) achievable, especially with Trump in office leading an administration not taking it seriously.

players' fault tho

FWIW, I could see Russian technical and tactical incompetence as being something that's been endemic to that country for at least since WWII, and which may have been instrumental in the Soviet Union's demise.

Nobody asked for this, but a quick look at Indiana vs Illinois on COVID cases and deaths, fresh off the google machine: Pop Cases Rate/100K Deaths Rate/100K IN 6,732,000 1,680,000 24,955 22,800 339 IL 12,670,000 3,030,000 23,915 36,792 290 IN vs IL Diff: + 4% + 17% Is any of the difference due to masking or distancing requirements? I don't know. Probably due to a bunch of things.

I don't know how many total games I saw at Tiger Stadium, but it had to be at least 200, maybe 300 starting with my first game in 1972. Working at an ad agency as a client to media starting with the 1987 season, I'd get Tiger tickets a lot. Reps would call me if they couldn't get rid of them, which was not uncommon. So, maybe 15 or 20 or 25 a year for those five seasons. Then I moved out of town for my work. I saw probably another eight or ten at The Corner coming back into town for games. In the 21 seasons fans have been going to Comerica, I have come in for at least one game nearly every season since, and mostly I'd see two in a weekend. Plus a lot of those playoff games, at least one every round, including the 2006 World Series (not 2012, though). So I'd say maybe about 50 games total there? Give or take a dozen?

One thing I've been wondering about is, what happens if Zelenskyy does die? I have heard of no other names among that leadership. If it's a top-heavy leadership, then cutting off the head would do much more damage than if leadership responsibility is being diffused downward.

Hardly anyone learns the proper right of way etiquette when it comes to walk/don't walk. Many people in the city operate under the assumption that "the pedestrian is always right". Not literally 100% of the time, of course: sometimes a pedestrian will walk right into the intersection against the light, seemingly daring cars to run into them. Nobody supports a pedestrian's right there. Super easy to see they're in the wrong. When it comes to Walk/Don't Walk, though, there's technically a clear legal delineation of right of way that's basically never taught. When the the light is green and the Walk sign is on, pedestrians have the right of way, obviously. But once it changes to Don't Walk during the green light, the right of way shifts to the car, and the pedestrian is supposed to wait for the cars at that point. The idea is that both pedestrians and cars should have a fair chance of proceeding through the green light. IRL, however, pedestrians still walk with the green light even through the Don't Walk, unaware or unconcerned of the shift in right of way, and drivers can't simply hit them out of protest. Drivers either have to wait (and stew), or take their chances weaving through pedestrians, and regardless that the right of way is theirs, no amount of indignant righteousness will absolve them of the asshattery attended to that decision. But, there are IRL exceptions to the legality of the right of way which is supposed to protect people in a dispute. If you the car ignore the right of way and hit someone, clearly your fault. If you the pedestrian ignore the right of way and a car hits you ... well, technically, you're at fault, but in reality, the car is still going to get the blame.

Speaking of structural spatial isolation, we are seeing more and more of these in the city.

I think a lot of the bike memorials were just that: cyclist trying to pass a car on its right going through an intersection, and then the car turns right, right into them. I've seen bike-car crashes described that way in the media a few times.

Here's an example of what I mean. I took this video while trying our a car security camera. Thank god for the guy I saw him through the (ahem) driving rain!

While it is certainly possible for a car to go "off the rails", as it were, and hit pedestrians and bicycles who should be safe well within their space, whenever I see one of those white-painted bicycle memorials at street corners, commemorating a cyclist killed by a car there, I always wonder about the circumstances that led to it. Did the bicyclist challenge the car unnecessarily? I see too much of that in the city. I have a hypothesis, admittedly founded only by my own anecdotal experience, that maybe 80% of all car-bicycle crashes could have been avoided had the bicyclist taken more than their fair share of care. I've seen far too many bicyclists just blithely ride in front of cars (and trucks!) without even looking, assuming that since they have the right of way, all the cars around them are bound to cede the space to them. But while they may actually have that right of way, what they don't have is the size and weight advantage against a car, and when a car and bicycle collide, the bike always loses. That's why I believe a bicyclist should always take more than their share of responsibility and cede to a car that appears to insist on taking the space, even if the bike has the legal right of way to it. Sure, the bicyclist can curse and gesticulate toward the car for taking that right of way from them, but hey, at least they will live to do so.

I've waited in the right lane for people to cross before turning once I get the green, and I have experienced cars behind me honking at me, presumably because they felt I could have rushed a turn in front of the pedestrain starting to cross. To paraphrase Matthew 26:11, "For ye have the dickheads always with you ..."

This might concern Baseball if they cared as much about the younger demographic as they do the gambler demographic.

What are the chances the ruble collapses and Putin has Russia go all in on crypto? Heck, they’d probably like to create their own crypto, make it the official currency, and rig it so they can directly and capriciously control their people’s individual wealth. Of course he’s going to have to get out of this quagmire intact, first.

I think I can raid the couch cushions for the equivalent $3.75 US to take the other side of that. 😁 I do this, of course, because I’m a terrible gambler and I lose practically every bet I make, but this I would be glad to cough up on March 31.

Based on the general tone of reporting, it’s as though the Wicked Witch of the West released the monkeys saying “Fly, my pretties!” and they end up flying splat into the castle wall.

The flip side of this is, when you see someone at the corner and you stop, and you wait for a couple seconds before noticing they are looking away and not really paying attention to you, so you determine they must not be crossing. But just as you’ve committed your foot to moving from the brake to the accelerator, they pick that exact microsecond to start crossing after all. It’s once you drive beyond them that you hear a muffled “expletive!” coming through your closed car windows.

When people wait for their rideshare right on the corner. It's an issue here in the city before there's a state law requiring drivers come to a stop at an intersection when they see someone about the cross the street. So when I see someone on the corner looking back and forth, it looks like they're checking for traffic before crossing. So I stop to let them cross. Then they stand there for a few seconds and eventually see me looking at them expectantly, and they glare/shrug toward me as if to say, "so are you my ride or what?" Meanwhile the guy stopped behind me is honking the horn. So I feel sheepish and drive on. It's annoying, but just another new thing to get used to, I guess.

Nah, thought the better of it.

Worse than envisioning him creeping on a Miss Teen USA contestant?