Reality is the new fiction, they say.
College basketball starts tomorrow and promises to test my resolve. It was easy to eschew college football, because I never cared that much and knew that UNC was sure to disappoint (unlike Cincinnati!). So it was easy to proclaim college football as a monstrous affront to public safety and common decency. Ignoring my cherished Carolina hoopsters, though, will be more of a challenge, diminished expectations notwithstanding. We’ve entered a strange universe where Rick Pitino is the voice of reason.
Hot stove time! Fancy anyone on the Rays roster?
If you only visit one inscrutable Russian cyberpunk farm today, make it this one.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Maybe think about a different shirt for Dad this Christmas, returning Quinnipiac students.
SLF graduated from there and her dad (and mom at one point) was a professor there (emeritus now). i saw the basketball unis on one of the uniwatch twitters today and in the background noticed the cheerleaders wearing standard cheerleading unis with a giant Q on the front and was going to search this out and make fun of her. thank you for making it easy
do we still like descendents?
other day doing a post election playlist on youtube i put on “i’m not a loser” and there was a word there that made me skip to the next tune.
asking for someone with milo goes to college in the local store’s bin.
I do. I have seen them a couple times in the past 3 years with an ear out for the numerous problematic songs and the seem to avoid them. SLF got a set list from the sound board from the UC theater show, i will investigate further
Another reason I’ll probably watch CBB is the paucity of other options. Right now I’m watching disc golf.
It has been a brutal year for the RSNs with nothing to show but canned programming from mid March to late July and again since baseball’s regular season ended. I haven’t looked at schedules but I’d guess that between now and the start of NBA and NHL there will be a lot more televised UC Davis and Sac State level hoops than one would normally expect.
Comcrap actually refunded a few $ of the “regional sports fee” on my last bill.
I’m watching bridge online right now.
Of course some of our local college football fans have reason to be excited this weekend…undefeated San Jose State on national network TV at Boise State.
i did that in freshman baseball. got spiked next opportunity
i was playin 2b
Global Terrorism Index 2020
One more attempt to get a chess tournament going. So far, PTBNL, sslinger, Glorious Mundy and myself have joined the FK Chess Club. In order to stage a tournament, chess.com needs at the very least 5 participants. Would anybody else be up for some fun Thanksgiving chessing, say round 10 AM Friday your time? We would play quick games and the tournament has the time length option, so for example one hour.
although i only know how the pieces move, i would join as the 16 seed, but alas the boy is going to go hit instead and i have to help
I signed on but I’m nowhere close to playing, least of all in a tourney. It’s been decades. I need to refresh with some puzzles etc.
It’s been 40 years for me … EC beat me like a drum!
That looked like a well played game on both ends. I’m duly intimidated.
Yeah, that level won’t happen in a blitz, at least not for me. That’s the fun part about it – time pressure is a great equalizer.
Sounds fun if we can make the numbers!
I missed this but would enjoy playing in the future (I am an active/strong-but-now-declining player). For anyone interested in getting more into chess, the (temporarily online, which I haven’t been playing) Tuesday Night Marathon in SF is an excellent tournament. I’ve been playing it for the last 12 years or so. https://www.milibrary.org/tuesday-night-marathon. Always an interesting group of people…
I am also not a football fan (college or otherwise), so Cincinnati’s season has been mostly lost on me. Really looking forward to the start of college basketball though.
Also, love that S-K song. The entire Woods album is really great and was an unexpected (to me, at least) shift in their sound. I’m pretty meh about the two post-hiatus albums and it’s tragic that Janet left the band.
Bearcats basketball today vs Lipscomb!
Heels face Texas shortly in the championship game of the Maui Invitational, which is taking place in tropical Asheville NC.
The driving drumbeat totally makes that tune, and was disappointed by the last SK album.
Who gets to stay at the Biltmore Estate?
With color commentary by Bill Walton from a remote location festooned with Grateful Dead stickers.
As should surprise no one, Bill Walton broadcasting from home is even more bizarre and random than usual.
A bit of trivia I wouldn’t have guessed but was inspired to look up by this comment: the City of Nashville has four universities that play Division I basketball. I knew the SEC school obviously but couldn’t have named any of the other three. Here’s the Wiki map; without looking at city limits I think New York,
Boston,Philly, DC, Chicago, Houston and LA all have at least four, but I wouldn’t have put Nashville in that group.You crossed off Boston because Harvard is in Cambridge and BC is in Newton? Those schools (plus Northeastern and BU) are probably closer geographically than most of the other cities you mentioned.
Yes, I was thinking about city limits as the boundaries. Cal State Northridge is over 25 miles from both USC and Loyola Marymount, but those three plus UCLA are all in the City of Los Angeles.
Harvard’s sports facilities are all in Boston.
It looks like BC’s are as well, but I’m less sure (Newton/Boston line cuts through the middle of their campus).
I did not expect to spend 15 minutes this morning researching college sports facilities in Boston. You are correct! All four basketball venues are within the city limits of Boston (BC’s Conte Forum by a whisker; the city limit line runs almost directly alongside the building if Google Maps has it right). Also, Boston’s city limit line is quite a tangle. But then, most of the acreage of the University of California at Berkeley is in the City of Oakland, which also has Piedmont plopped right in the middle of it.
I know the Berkeley-Oakland border is funky (the Claremont hotel has a Berkeley address but pays taxes to Oakland) and there’s a lot of UC property in the hills on the Oakland side, but they’ve also bought up a lot of City of Berkeley land over the years. I wonder if you include all those parcels (including Clark Kerr, which is a pretty big campus) if there really is more in Oakland.
By acreage Cal still has more land in Oakland, but by density most of the working buildings are in Berkeley, notwithstanding those eggheads up in the hills. The CoB’s GIS map gives a pretty good indication.
That map still labels the Clark Kerr Campus as the “California School for the Deaf and Blind”, which ceased to exist about the time I was a student.
Property maps are funny, that derives from the underlying County Assessor’s layer, which in turn goes back as far as property holding records exist. Picture Jack Nicholson in the county land office in Chinatown. The source map for that particular parcel references the Ranchos of Vicente and Domingo Peralta!
Add Baltimore to that list, improbably (Coppin State, Morgan State, UMBC, and Loyola of Maryland).
There don’t look to be many more cities with three or more. I see Charleston and San Diego.
Yes, Janet leaving the band was a big blow, she’s so dynamite. I loved it when she joined Malkmus & the Jicks for a tour or two but I don’t know what she’s doing now. Also saw Filthy Friends, Corin Tucker’s band with Peter Buck, which was a fun show. Back when there were shows, you know.
have i been wrong about vince? am i stereotyping?
Middle aged Italian-American guys can go either way! Understandable that the Florida-Texas-Arizona trajectory and all the golfing would lead you in a certain direction, but I lean toward him being one of the good ones based mainly on his continued, fruitless struggle toward properly rolling the Rs in Hispanic names.
Yeah if his handle was @vinniemeatballs it would be a different story.
Aw man, Diego…
just found out.
and i was fine till i watched the clip.
:-(
For the very unfortunate ones who don’t know Manu Chao
his maradona song with mano negra was less forgiving.
Fortunately I have zero non-refundable money in the Kauai trip which is scheduled in less than two weeks. Cancellation appears imminent.
I respect Hawaii for raising the drawbridge early, and once you’ve made that choice and incurred the economic pain it would be foolish to change course now.
This is a great example why direct federal COVID relief support for state and local governments is crucial. We need locals to make the hard choices in support of everyone’s health, and only the feds have the capacity to back that up.
I don’t blame them but oh man closing the doors for Christmas and New Years is going to be fatal for a lot of their businesses.
The only part of the trip I have any personal concern about is the airport/airplane part, and I have bagfuls of the disposable KN95 masks for high-risk situations like that. Once over there, the place is a condo so there’s no exposure to hotel common areas, all activities are outdoors and most places in Hawai’i have always been set up for outdoor dining. Plus the trip is in the dead period pre-Christmas so there wouldn’t be big crowds in any case.
Meanwhile, I was out and about yesterday and here come all the Thanksgiving visitors flooding into the Tahoe basin. I’ll mostly be sheltering in place until Sunday night.
A bit of scrambling, the free cancellations and some Black Friday deals got the trip switched from Poipu to Waikoloa, which I’ve been to before and is fun. I was looking forward to Kauai but if the mayor doesn’t want visitors, that’s best saved for another time. The Big Island has mandatory rapid-result tests on arrival at the airport, which is in addition to the mainland test required to fly to Hawai’i in the first place, but once those bureaucratic hurdles get cleared it should be a fairly normal trip. If any other issues crop up in the next 10 days I’m sure I’ll just cancel the whole thing.
Mele Kalikimaka, FKers. I’ll still have to pass that rapid test in Kona but at least I made it to Honolulu. This airport is a ghost town. I’ll pass on the single eatery I found open, a Burger King.
Now that I’m here there’s at least passing thought being given to staying longer than the nine days scheduled. It’s the safest place in the US right now and the next several weeks on the mainland look to only get worse. The lodging for a stay over Christmas and New Years would ordinarily be prohibitively expensive but travel is so far down (29 passengers on a 175-seat flight from Sacramento, with about a dozen appearing to be one family) that maybe somebody will take some income rather than zero. I’ll consider that possibility in a few days.
I saw that Hawaii has a new program reaching out to people working remotely. They’ll pay for your round trip airfare if you commit to doing a certain amount of volunteer work while there. If I was a single fellow I’d be on that immediately.
Whoa if I could get Figgy there without putting her in the cargo hold…
This new documentary about Frank Zappa sounds promising, first one with the full participation of the family. I read this review and this review, both good, but neither bothers to explain that it’s directed by Bill S. Preston, Esq.
That’s kind of amazing that neither mentions the actual director was Billy Preston. I will totally want to see that – I don’t listen to him much any more, and really only had a select few albums that I loved, but man he did some amazing stuff. And he’s one of the few artists from back in the day that I really regret never getting to see.
Not Billy Preston. (I checked.)
Alex Winter, aka not-Keanu.
I’m a little slow.
I had this conversation with my kids the other day, but I made sure it was clear that he was always an unscrupulous asshole. I also pegged Biden ethering his political career with “a noun, a verb, and 9/11” as an explanatory moment.
It may be different, but when my clients are granted immunity they are no longer in legal jeopardy and can be force to testify or be punished for contempt.
If you have a full pardon for lying to the FBI, I imagine you can be compelled to testify on that subject under penalty of contempt.
Happy Thanksgiving to all you FKers and your families!
Happy Thanksgiving FKers wherever you may be! Stay safe, eat well. Be thankful.
Yes Happy Thanksgiving.
I am especially thankful to you all this year for providing this daily virtual socialization.
happy black friday eve!
[edit] may your turkey and/or tofu yield many sandwiches and/or stirfries.
Belated Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Dropped off Lil Miss Aces at her retail job at 5:30 and said a little prayer. People are still out there but it is very low key.
Meanwhile I am ready for the best of lunches. Got a loaf of good old fashioned white bread for the great turkey sammich.
I just found out that you can add any bank account to your Amazon payment method, as long as you know the account owner, IBAN and BIC. You can make orders against that account in the matter of seconds.
How did I find that out? Because some FKer used the bank account of my charity, and Amazon withdrew the money for him. After I complained, they took it seriously and their thorough investigation ended with them telling me tough luck.
My several Amazon refund/failed delivery events have all ended in someone else keeping my money and/or goods. I wish I could stop doing business with them. Because they know that’s almost impossible there’s no incentive for them to have effective customer service.
As a customer, I had very positive experiences, to the point that i felt they must be screwing the vendors. I always felt they were geared towards customer satisfaction, and that may be true in this case, too, albeit to an absurd level. Their customer used my account to order goods – he is protected, while I get the finger. The ease of adding an acsount with zero verification fits into that pattern, too.
I agree on the general point of it being better not dealing with them, but I’m just too lazy to look for the alternatives.
Wow, nice win for the USF Dons! First win over a top 5 ranked team in 39 years!
Great for them! Also, although Syracuse plays in it, I’m not unhappy when ACC teams lose to unranked opponents. The conference has the a bit of the vibe that SEC has in football
Wait, the Cal-Stanford game is happening now?
And does the fact they’re playing mean that Scott Atlas won?
John Yoo argues that the game itself constitutes torture.
No!
After the coup Trump will rename it the National Board for Re-Education Sciences and this will make perfect sense.
Apparently Stanford has a player named Thunder Justice Keck.
Jet Toner is still around too.
It felt like Cal dominated that first half, but a couple special teams mistakes leave it tied at halftime.
All that sales effort they hit me with does not appear to have sold very many cutouts.
STOP FUMBLING DAMMIT.
Ouch, that was a tough way to lose.
2 turnovers –> 14 Furd points
2 blocked kicks –> 4 lost points by Cal
Lose by 1 point
Aaaaarrrgggghhh
All I really cared about in this pathetic season of college football was keeping the Axe.
I’m flashing back to one of the Big Games I attended in my misspent youth, where Stanford blocked a chip shot field goal with ~no time on the clock to preserve a tie and keep the Axe. The tradition continues.
today scrolling though twtr hardly paying attention (as one does) i saw this amazing US soccer goal that on its face made no sense.
until in close up i saw the pony tails.
She is a bernie bro?
She did hit it with her left.
i woulda said man bun?
Baltimore has 18 guys on their COVID list and might not be able to field a squad for their next game, which has been rescheduled twice already. The Broncos have lost all four of their QBs and might start a converted receiver Sunday. And the 49ers aren’t allowed to play in their stadium any more. Looking good, NFL!
Such a stupid mess.
And Nathan Peterman made an appearance for the Raiders.
Man that was ugly. A hallmark of Gruden 2.0 has ugly losses to bad teams right after a win streak. If the past is prelude they’ll lose every game from here on.
I turned on the DVR expecting to bail on today’s game by halftime. It was entertaining. Pretty sure the Jets would go 0-30 this year if they had the chance.
Raiders just missed the chance to be the only team to beat KC and the only team to lose to the Jets. Bailed out by Greggg Williams, defensive super genius.
It wasn’t just that play either, Carr had missed open receivers like five times in the 4th quarter before finally hitting the last one. Carr barely avoided out-sucking the NYJ defense.
Defector:
Yep.
NFL is now trying for a Wednesday afternoon (yay baseball!) Baltimore-Pittsburgh game. In Reno they will be pre-empting Days of Our Lives, Dr. Phil and Ellen DeGeneres.
Apparently it’s a day game because NBC wouldn’t bump the more highly rated lighting of the national Christmas tree.
Aubrey Huff plays the papist anti-Christ card, excellent.
shor. but those EYES.
dammit i did it again.
Amazing how secure the F1 cars are nowadays
With a big assist to the Nomex suit.
Yes – supposedly only light burns to hands and ankles
you wanna go back in time and give one to niki and ronnie… and all the ones i don’t remember.
i remember ronnie’s. monza was terrible. my dad was all, oh they fixed it. it’ll be fine. 3 seconds in.
i guess it wasn’t the fire that killed him tho.
wow. i thought he was gonna get carried out.
And suits
Man, the Bills should really work on their Hail Mary defense
And the catholic diocese of Buffalo was already having a rough week.
I’m already looking forward to a fair ruling Amy Barrett will give on that one.
I hope they improved
Heh.
CBS All Access execs must have had my picture on the whiteboard when they decided to build a streaming service around nothing but Star Trek and the Champions League.
Would honestly pay for a whole year just to watch Real Madrid get bounced in a light Ukrainian snow.
The last round of games in group B should be fun … thanks to the round-robin head-to-head tiebreaker (1st over 2nd, 2nd over 3rd, 3rd over 4th, 4th over 1st) all 4 teams can still qualify.
Shaktar beat Real twice and didn’t go through.
Americans starting key Champs League matches today for Barcelona, Juventus, Chelsea, and Dortmund, and another just came in to start the second half for Leipzig. A left winger, a right winger, two central midfielders, and a right back. This is why I am bullish on the USMNT at the moment.
Pretty wild second half in that Leipzig game.
The Juventus game, which just started, features the first woman to referee a Champions League match.
this is all cbs?
Yeah, they have the whole tournament on their streaming platform. Some of it may also be on their cable sports network.
hulu plus just voided soccer. I’ll get 2 EPL matches a weekend, this thursday i can watch South hampton-man u
And another American (a teenager) comes on for Barcelona for the last 10 minutes.
Weston McKennie. Remember this name.
Wow! That’s got to be on a very short list of the most beautiful goals ever scored by an American abroad.
This is “Q’s” son, right AV? I’m having trouble keeping up.
Lot going on here
And father and son are now feuding, at the same time Q has mostly disappeared, further supporting the idea that Q was their creation all along.
yeah that’s the son, dad’s the main guy. they wrestled it out of the cold dank hands of some other guy tho.
unproven, shor, but the amount of circumstantial evidence pointing at them would more that convince someone. let alone a Q’er if it wasn’t about Q but about pedodeepstate instead.
quickest catch-up is this reply all. gives you the OG 8chan developer’s story and some of the circumstantial evidence.
Qclearance expands on it with i think 10 epps. next week is the last installment.
and monday’s Qanon anonymous was a dive into the sidney powell Q stuff.
one fun circumstantial evidence trail is the pen stuff. there are Q drops with that pen on a desk near papers with presidential seal that intimate Q being with trump. but also, jim watkins is huge into fountain pens.
the irony is not lost on me that the more you know about Q bullshit the more you sound like a Q believer, vocabulary and all.
pull the thread on follow the pen and look at the wood grain on the desk! aha, the tripcode switch time matches what a coincidence! what if i told you that Q is anti pedo, but he posts on a site that has a whole /board *for* pedos??
I get tired. I can’t keep anything straight and give up
Everyone has that one uncle, amiright?
As if extended family holiday dinners weren’t awkward enough.
unavailable now
There is now something called the MLB Draft League, apparently an official summer showcase league for draft-eligible players based mostly on the remnants of what used to be the NY-Penn League but operated by something called Prep Baseball Report. Also, the draft is now in July, during the All Star Break.
In other minor league news:
will the draft league high schoolers get paid? Will they retain eligibility if they do? What is different about the “draft league” from indy ball?
Sure sounds like an unpaid internship
didn’t blez get sued for that?
So today Barr emerges from hiding to announce that the election was fine, says that he turned the silly investigation of the Russia investigation into a special counsel investigation months ago without telling anyone, and makes an unscheduled visit to the White House, and then a federal court unseals a decision revealing that the DOJ is investigating a “bribery-for-pardon scheme” involving “senior White House officials.”
OK
Hopefully the bribery-for-pardon scheme is recursive, so that the pardon also covers the bribery.
Colin: this you?
“We’ve got people from America and Brazil and all over Europe. I’ve got two listeners in Antarctica, which is interesting to me. I’m hoping they know each other.”
Heh, I’m not a big podcast person (and it’s been almost five years since I was last in Antarctica). Come to think of it, I don’t think I have seen a single vinyl record down there (plenty of Betamax tapes though).
That was a good speech
It provoked the predictable psychotic reaction from the deadenders, including Trump replying to a tweet about it by asking the Georgia governor “what are you afraid of?” On the other hand, the biggest wackos are suggesting that Georgia Trump supporters shouldn’t vote in the senate runoffs because of this, so….
I’m sure such truth tellers will be among the first lined up against the wall when Gen. Flynn’s martial law takes effect.
while the anti tyranny people will go along with it.
it’s funny that they’re calling for paper ballots only, and you know, i hope they get that for all of us by next election.
Speaking of those runoffs, if you thought Loeffler was the one with the sketchiest stock transactions in office, think again I guess.
This guy’s plan for the runoffs isn’t turning out so well.
I’m going to rob a bank.
[Robs bank]
But I wasn’t serious when I said I was going to rob the bank.
Tommy was in every A’s yearbook during the 70s as one of their top farm prospects but had little more than a cup of coffee in Oakland (75 PA). He did have one of baseball’s great mustaches.
I had so many of those 1977 Topps cards, in the prime of my card collecting years. One of the better designs of the late 70’s but still kind of bad. I mostly agree with this ranking, 1972 was the best.
That’s a solid ranking, and man that ’76 Johnny Bench card is fantastic.
I personally have a soft spot for the ’71 set because I somehow (in the 80s) came into possession of the Reggie and spent hours staring it at it under plastic. But now I am wishing I had the ’72 Reggie. It’s better.
The ’72 Catfish Hunter is one of my favorites of the 500-odd cards I still own.
I have a few of the 1979 Topps Yankees (including Reggie, but not including the Mickey Rivers shown there) along with a checklist card from Burger King (3 free cards with an order of fries). I’m guessing these are not worth anything.
In 1979 after a family vacation I returned home to find that my Topps Super Sports Card locker had been broken into and two of the slots had been totally cleaned out. Teen son of family my parents asked to keep an eye on place had ripped the lock off and taken all of my “specials,” and all of the Yankees including many Reggies, my hero. I am still as angry at that punkass Yankee fan kid today as I am anyone I have ever met.
I’m angry at that kid too. What the hell!
I don’t remember the name but I was one of the select few (avg. attendance 1,109) who saw him manage the 1982 Bisons.
That may have even been the year I got a foul ball.
That’s an average 1,109 rattling around in the legendarily derelict War Memorial Stadium. That’s one of those old places I wish I’d somehow had a chance to get to…mostly because of The Natural but there were some great AFL games played there too.
The most decrepit places I ever saw a game would have been Comiskey Park and Tiger Stadium in their final years. Tiger Stadium was creaky but at least maintained to some extent; old Comiskey was literally crumbling. Edit: California Memorial Stadium before the renovations should probably be on that list too.
I went to a game in old Honolulu Stadium in 1975, last year before the old wooden firetrap was dismantled. The national anthem singer choked on flying termites!
Firetraps are a slightly different category. I’m sure I mentioned on here at the time when old Civic Stadium in Eugene burned (some kids started it).
The Ems had moved over to the U of O ballpark next to Autzen some years earlier. I did see a few games at Civic Stadium in its last years.
The place the A’s Northwest League team played in Medford was scary that way as well.
Ditto – I saw my school play a football game there around the same time. We lost.
I see that Aloha Stadium is now going to be condemned as well (at nine years younger than the Coliseum). That place never quite got the use they hoped for.
The way I understand, it needs $30M worth of repairs to maintain its occupancy permit. They’re planning on a new football stadium for UH in a couple years anyway, there hasn’t been any revenue during the Covid crisis to pay for the repairs, so screw it, they’ll give up the permit. But it leaves UH without a home football field for a couple years at least.
That’s too bad. I went to a lot of HS football games in that place, and one NFL exhibition (9ers vs Chargers(?)) where the traffic was so bad, we didn’t arrive until halftime.
Yes, the Rockpile. They fixed it up, or at least slapped a fresh coat of gray paint on everything, for The Natural (filmed in 1983). Before that it was really run-down.
As I remember it, the layout for baseball was kind of weird too, with the area behind home plate being completely flat. The $3 “Box Seats” on my ticket stub (Dad was spending big that day) were just sections of that flat area separated by railings.
[OK, looks like it was the area down the 1st base line, and was slightly sloped:
]
I also went there one day as an extra for crowd scenes in The Natural. They got a few sections worth of fans, filled out by cardboard cutouts (as pictured in this article), and moved us around the stadium as they filmed from different angles. The big finale was filmed a different time, at night, and I think they filled the stadium for that one.
Paul Sullivan (young Roy Hobbs) was a year ahead of me at my school. Peter Poth (“Losing is a Disease”), who might be the best thing about that movie, was the father of one of my brother’s friends.
The Bisons clearly had social distancing at sports events figured out 40 years ago. It looks like some of these 2020 NFL games.
Those seats on the third base line below the posts actually look pretty good with a nice slope to them. A couple things I’m noticing: the remarkably tiny dugouts, and compared to the protective screens that extend down the foul lines today, oh man look at that. Foul ball death if you’re staring at your smart phone, which fortunately had not been invented.
There’s a lot of reasonably productive outfielders being non tendered right now. With the deadline about an hour away, I’m really concerned the A’s are going to cut Canha.
Nevermind, maybe Fisher has a better financial situation than we think.
Bullet dodged I guess.
The interesting thing that led me to is that Dave Kaval has been almost completely Twitter-silent for the last couple months. That’s very unlike him.
I’m sure he’s just saving up his hot takes for the draft EIR the city is supposed to publish in “late 2020” according to the A’s website.
Marine Layer scoop: City planner expects publication of draft EIR “in Q1 of 2021 pending AB734 Certification by the Governor.”
FYI, the sarcastic italics ML used for “draft” EIR is misleading, a DEIR represents about 90% of the CEQA work and is the main document for public input and policy maker review. A final EIR is only published afterwards and is largely a fait accompli.
It’s frustrating that he’s so invested in the project failing that he shades things like that, but on the other hand he did some actual reporting here that isn’t happening elsewhere.
Yeah, there’s just something about the internet/social media that takes people from “I have an opinion” to “This is my side no matter what and everyone else is an idiot.”
So how do the overall chances of pulling this off (EIR, finances, land acquisition, lawsuits, transportation infrastructure) look at this point?
And even if it does happen, can we assume that 2023 is no longer a realistic target for opening?
I guess it’s good that they didn’t design a ball park to help Chris Carter break the all time home run record
Pre-COVID I would have put chances at a little better than 50-50, or “good” by ballpark project standards. It just seemed like the political will and private financing were lined up better than ever before. Post-COVID, who the fuck knows?
Any reasonably productive middle infielders get non-tendered? Daniel Robertson?
Maybe Hanser Alberto. Greg Garcia, if we’re just interested in putting the bare minimum out there. Travis Shaw, if you think he can play 2B.
Going by MLBTR’s list, there’s a lot of interesting relievers though, along with OFs.
Some surprising names on there.
I was looking at Ryne Stanek’s bb ref page. It is uncanny how he went from elite to useless at the exact moment the Rays traded him away midseason.
Scott Atlas may be gone but Mike Pompeo is still working hard for the virus.
I am OK with the Angels trading for peak value, but I also know that he will do the most annoying damage to the A’s at the worst time and I will give up on baseball because of it
Damn.
It’s all true
Look who’s the witch now?
when even giuliani taps the desk ’cause he thinks you’re in disrespectful wacko land. (:35)
but seriously folks. that trump statement today. yeah, iono. i can totally see him declaring martial law to protect his 81M-6.9M voters. they’ve already floated the trial balloons, per playbook. it’s the only mechanism left for him. and it’s pretty evident people believe there’s no way he’s so damn loathed that this many people actually voted against him.
Salvaging a capsized container ship by lifting it with dual massive floating cranes and cutting it into pieces with a huge chain. Heavy machinery is cool.
That is so FKing badass
RIP Arecibo
when i started reading edward’s comment i thought it would end anti-EPA. boy was i surprised.
Arctic refuge drilling permits to be auctioned on January 6th. Along with the accelerated execution schedule and the preemptive pardons, it was only a matter of time for the environment.
In this year of a depressed free agent market and widespread non-tenders, KC gave Mike Minor 2 years, $19M. Am I missing something or is it just Royals gonna Royals?
Yeah that seems high to me but sounds like SP is the one place teams are willing to spend on this offseason.
Maybe I don’t want fans back
In other Soccer Racism News, the players for PSG and (pause for copy-paste) Basaksehir of Istanbul walked off the field yesterday after one of the refs, in red carding an Istanbul assistant coach, said “The black one over there. Go and check who he is. The black one over there, it’s not possible to act like that.”
They are replaying the match today, with PSG needing a draw to advance.
Apparently the ref has a credible explanation, he used the Romanian word for black which is negru, which the Basaksehir side heard as “negro,” sparking the walkout. So it may not have been a slur so much as a poor choice of language in a multi-linguistic setting. That said, using skin color to point out an individual is problematic and an international ref should know better.
When I first read it, the way the article was structured I thought he was talking about Demba Ba being “the black one” not the assistant coach, which I though “woof” that is really bad, But the ref was being yelled at by Demba Ba. The ref in real time made the same point to Ba, which, yeah I guess, I get it. But this is still 2020 and distinguishing like that is not ok. We know better now. just walk over to the offending party.
I liked the audio being clear and hearing Ba explain that you don’t call out “white guy.” I don’t always meet clients or their parents or girl friends before I am in court with them for the first time. For years I have been describing my self as a “Short white guy” not “short guy.” Just doing my part to stop making white the default.
When I came to Syracuse I was asked at my high school what sports I did. I was a national team sprinter and long/triple jumper at the time. So, I said track. They told me, OK, the practice is, IDK, Mondays at 5 PM. I got there and something just didn’t feel right. All the kids were small and scrawny and not really athletic looking at all. I thought to myself, man, this will be one sad season. Then the coach came and said OK, today we’ll just do easy 10 miles, and I was like – I never did 10 miles in my life. Turns out, it was a cross-country track team, and the admissions lady just assumed that that was my jam because I was white.
When I joined the sprinters/jumpers, I was the only white guy. So I was “The Fast White Kid”.
«Scrawny white guy raises hand»
This is a good Heather Knight article but she slightly misses the real point. It’s not that SF City Hall players sell themselves for a low price. It’s that they finance their day-to-day living with bribes (meals, home repairs, vacations) and put their salaries in the bank.
Interesting that Nuru is spending his days volunteering at the food bank while Willie Brown funds his defense.
And they probably convinced themselves that they’re less likely to get caught, and maybe even that it’s not “really” bribery, by taking “gifts” rather than a deposit into their bank account or a briefcase of cash.
I may have committed some “light” bribery
Nice win for Cal, impressive defensive in the second half. Plenty of folks on Tightwad Hill again, from the pics.
Later, the mythography of the Trump Death Cult will say the martyred Saint Rudy is buried in the caverns under Mar-a-Lago.
Becerra to HHS, so Gavin gets to name a Senator and an AG.
and possibly SoS
Start the stopwatch. Find the seven missing states. Report.
~ 4 mins but i got them all. first minute was spent not believing there were that many missing and counting the present ones.
reminds me that whenever i hear lower 48, i feel sad for maine.
1:32. Harder than I expected.
1:20. Helped by knowing the states alphabetically (via song). Also four of the seven fall into known pairs so once you get one you get the other.
I was missing two without the song and had to go through the song to remember N and S Dakota.
having started my US education later than most, i didn’t know the song.
but put up a quiz about missing greek letters and i’d do pretty well. oh-mehhhhhh-ga!
But what about a geography quiz based on the names of all the Wombles?
i am wikipediaing this for the first time and everything about it seems very strange and ultimately unknowable through a single song.
Ugh
Somehow I missed that the winter meetings were starting already…this plus the trade deadline used to be one of my favorite baseball related times of the year. I guess it’s hard to be hyped when the biggest pros we can expect this offseason are not trading Chapman and tendering Canha/Manaea.
Does anyone else ever see the site spend forever spinning its wheels apparently loading, even though the page itself is loaded, with big circles showing up around a handful of posts?
you had me until the circles.
mine looks loaded early but if i hit z before the progress thing stops moving the first unread will move on me and i’ll lose track of where it was.
Same here
I think I have seen the circle thing, at least for a few seconds; it is when some elements – maybe the avatars – have not loaded yet. I don’t know that there is anything specific to FK broken; these things can happen whenever there is any kind of network problem (in my case, usually crappy wifi at home).
my feelings are in conflict with each other.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html
Seems very hot-takey and click-baity to me.
Saying “a vaccine was available for the entire brutal duration” is quite an abuse of the word “available.”
As documented in a NYKer article today (and as he sort-of half acknowledges himself as several points) a lot of the accelerations he talk about are exactly what already did happen – the vaccines were designed in January because of previous work on MERS-CoV, and manufacturing and distribution logistics were ramped up during the clinical trials. So even if we accept that skipping safety and efficacy trials (for an entirely new type of vaccine) is a good idea, the idea that availability should or even could have been moved up another 6-8 months is still a big stretch. No one can just create and distribute a billion doses of a vaccine at the snap of a finger, no matter how much money you throw at it.
And this part
also seems just plain wrong. Officially we have had 15 Million cases in the US. Based on death numbers, the true number is probably more like 30 Million. Maybe that will double again by spring. But estimates of herd immunity are 70% of the population (220 Million cases), still many times worse.
i read that with my emotions. like, we waited so long to roll it out by that time herd immunity will have happened anyway. in your calm quoting style i see how it was written.
then again maybe herd is ahead by a head after all…
Meanwhile, this happened today to the woman who blew the whistle on Florida faking its COVID numbers…
DeSantis is a fascist. This is so despicable yet perfectly in character. If protests spring up He’d also be ok with vigilantes driving their trucks through the crowds.
Also since there’s such a wide variance in the intensity for people who get COVID, it’s believed there’s a wide variety of levels of immunity. Asymps/mild symps may only get a few months of immunity, those recovered from bad cases might have longer/stronger immunity. But those who get the vaccine will have the maximum amount of immunity, as measured by antibodies present after.
Ted Cruz boldly stepping forward to volunteer to handle Trump’s argument in the Supreme Court if it “grants cert” when there is no cert petition pending is just a perfect encapsulation of his empty-suitedness.
Is there some kind of competition to be the most ridiculous GOP lawyer in Texas? Their comically corrupt AG is now trying to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s original (i.e. trial) jurisdiction over litigation between states, by suing Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia for…not voting for Trump I guess.
The first paragraph of Trump’s attempt to intervene in this case as a plaintiff (which would defeat the whole reason for original jurisdiction but whatevs) cites a Rasmussen poll, and the second paragraph erroneously claims that “no candidate in history” has won Ohio and Florida but lost the election (Nixon managed it in 1960). And those aren’t even close to the most embarrassing parts of those two paragraphs, let alone the rest of this pile of vomit.
I mean, come on.
1960? Wasn’t that the election the Dems won thanks to voter fraud in the midwest?
Trump has spent a month now looking for his Mayor Daley.
Ted was totally gonna argue it though! Sad!!
I guess the I Hate Democracy 2020 Tour won’t be playing 1 First Street NE this year.
As this article points out Dylan was already aggressively commercializing his music, so how much worse can this be? OTOH I will cry when I hear Desolation Row used in a United commercial.
At least Pete Seeger didn’t live long enough to endure his song in a Volvo ad.
The Bills road white uniforms look sharp!
I’ve never much cared for the all-white look. They are also making a big deal about the fact that they are using white facemasks this year. I don’t even know what color those normally are.
While I’m realistic about the 8-3 Bills really being a second-tier team, I’m surprised they are an underdog to this SF team (missing Garoppolo, Kittle, and Bosa) at a neutral site. Maybe just because they generally shit the bed in these prime-time games.
Hard to overcome fumbling on your own one yard line.
I already hate the refs, the announcers, and several players on my own team.
Time to pour pint #2.
“Only team that has not won on Monday night this century”
No more!
I was rooting for them, even if not in my team’s best interest. Buffalo is one of a few flawed-but-entertaining AFC teams who should make for some fun playoff games. Depending on whose roster is less COVID-ridden on any given Sunday.
OTOH the all-red Bills home uniforms are hideous.
Home unis are blue.
These are the “color rush” ones, and yes they are.
Vallejo police union really showing its ass with this message to Otis Taylor on the occasion of his last Chron column.
I seriously get cops testifying about less egregious threats against them
She seem smrt
They had the nerve to have an indoor Christmas party in the first place, when they knowingly associate with people like her all the time, so…
They congregate indoors. They ask an anti-vaxxer to testify about the vaccine rollout. And DeSantis seems to literally want to kill all the old people in his state. The Trump GOP couldn’t be more of a death cult if they were tossing virgins into volcanos.
and they’re all seniors!!
I’ve been trying to no avail to find the Firesign Theater bit (I think it was an ad?) that starts with something like: If you’re trying to save on your heating bill, got any old people around the house? Set them outside for the winter…
Doug Jones to AG? meh, i guess
He’ll probably be happy to get out of all that makeup he has to wear on Star Trek Discovery.
Oh wait, you mean the senator.
One of us!
That is quite a hunk of man there.
Dick Allen is pretty high on the list of guys from the 60s-70s who should be in the Hall of Fame. This obituary is a nice appreciation, and includes an awesome picture of him throwing out a first pitch wearing a fedora, but neglects to mention that the last uniform he wore was Oakland’s green and gold.
LOL Uniturd.
One playoff appearance later…
And zero playoff wins
Congressional Rum Caucus
The Congressional Rum Caucus is first-ever Congressional caucus promoting the rum industry.
Not gonna lie, I’m sad that we’ll no longer have an official fudgehouse.gov
It’s depressing to once again lose a young star shortstop the A’s choose not to afford. It’s not helping to know Bobby Crosby is in charge of replacing him.
The promise of Bones Crosby was enough to justify not retaining Tejada, now, in this environment, is not even close to entertaining and dismissing the idea of justifiably passing on the Free agent short stop.
The Lansing Lugnuts are cordially invited.
So what happens to the guys who used to play short-season ball in Vermont? They just screw around in Arizona until they’re ready for the Cal League?
In Lansing they know all about screwing around:
Now that they’re in the A’s fold I may have to get me a Lugnuts hat.
It is actually two fewer affiliates since the A’s (and most teams) had two different teams in the ASL the last couple of years and I think they will go back down to one.
I would guess some combination of fewer players drafted and signed, more players from previous years released early in their careers, and expanded rosters for the Arizona teams.
Hmm
Fresno will take it. So I guess MLB will be happy that they can now pit all levels of cities against each other.
Neil Demause with the postmortem on MLB’s successful attack on the minor leagues.
Of course the fucking Astros were behind that, too
Seems like a problem that the base of one of our two major parties is terrorists.
holy shit
Shots on the court or shots at the club?
And you people were worried it would be Wendelken.
I don’t know who this person is, but if you are going to pick random American Fottballers to promote in my feed, maybe this isn’t the right image to evoke:
I mean I get that this is all window dressing, but what if Tacoma actually decides to hold their ground and there is a perfectly good AAA club-stadium several hours to the south? There are multiple flights a day to Seattle from Fresno and supposedly that has always been the rub against Fresno.
Figures this would happen now that Fresno has lost AAA.
Yeah saw that. I mean the argument was mostly bull anyways-other AAA teams have just as bad service, but I laughed all the way through the article.
The plus side is that, between this and only having 1 Ace under 18 now, I will likely have to drive up anymore to drop off kids for visitation. $49 fare and pin a return label to the lilest Ace’s t-shirt..
Mmmm, tom ka gai.
Apparently his given first name is Blaze.
Full Name: Blaze Ka’ai Tom
That’s an 80-grade name.
Looks like he had a very nice year at the plate in his first taste of AAA in 2019, bats lefty, has played all three outfield positions, and he’s only 26. Could be a nice pickup of someone whose career got stalled by the loss of 2020 minor league baseball. Always nice to have a Hawaiian on the team anyway.
From BA: Tom is an undersized, 5-foot-9 outfielder who reached Triple-A in 2019 and was named MVP of the International League playoffs. He has a good lefthanded swing and drives the ball from line-to-line with surprising power for his size. He’s a fast runner who uses his legs to leg out doubles and triples more than steal bases, and he can adequately play all three outfield spots. Even Tom’s biggest champions don’t see him as an everyday player, but he does enough things well for scouts and coaches to see a potential fifth outfielder/pinch-hitter and runner type.
Sounds Tony Kempy
This line from BP is relevant: “ this is a very Oaklandish profile.”
That’s a lot of money to spend just to say “oh we will pay what we owe”
I never understood how the W’s thought this case might win, or even be compelling enough to get City/County to negotiate the debt downward. The arena lease plainly stated that leaving prior to the end date meant reimbursing City/County for the remaining debt service for the 1996 capital improvements, which were made almost exclusively for the team’s benefit.
I think the twitter algorithm needs updating and/or WFH isn’t working for their company. This is a football thing I know about and when I saw it promoted in my feed today at 244 PM PST, I thought, and then what happened?
For the past 5 or 6 months I have consistently been getting Twitter stuff promoted about a day after it was written so this tracks.
Nurse U and I want to make some more donations before end of year. After I give Ed $5 I’m looking particularly for East Bay-focused groups providing immediate relief. Anybody have suggestions?
My local giving is to the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
There is also the Berkeley Food & Housing Project, and some kind of city-run Berkeley Relief Fund.
I’m guessing you already know about all of those.
Yeah the food bank is in our giving rotation. I’d really like to find something like the Berkeley Relief Fund, supporting both individuals and small biz and arts groups, but more broadly than just this city.
Maybe something like this? I don’t really know anything about them.
Thank you, they sound promising, I will investigate.
Interesting. Charity Navigator gives a very strong rating to East Bay Community Foundation. But reading through the FAQs of the Covid fund this stood out:
But, as long as they are funding organizations that are giving directly that could serve what you want, but you also can’t restrict your gift to any one particular org.
Thanks for that research and info!
I came across this group in an article on Berkeleyside Nosh.
That does look good – I’ll look into them a bit too.
Berkeley Hat! Fantastic store. I second this excellent graphic recommendation.
35 across
They sort of recycled that one from a few months ago.
yeah, it seemed familiar
One of the primary baseball beat jobs at the Chron is open for the first time in a long while with Hank Schulman taking a buyout.
In older Chron buyout news, Phil Matier is leaving.
I will miss Matier’s column. Invaluable source of information from insiders choosing to strategically leak information. So while reading you had to keep asking what the source was trying to gain from the leak. But that said, there’s no other regional mouthpiece that fits that important role.
on one of this weeks effectively wild included a comment that lance lynn said if he didn’t like the team he was traded to at the deadline last year he would opt out. Which, kudos to him and the curt floodyness of the position, but makes me sad that it might have been the A’s he chose not to play with and sad on what might have been if he were in the fold rather than Minor.
I was going to ruin 3-1/2 beach hours with Cal football, but the game didn’t show up on time on Sirius XM and checking on it I see I can go back to enjoying the day.
Must be rough
Not just no Cal football to listen to, but today there were…clouds!!
There are more people here than I expected given the light loads on the flights over, and I don’t imagine Californians will be cancelling their plans to come over for the holidays (or to flee to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe). I did the math on how much it would cost to stay a while, and running those numbers led me to conclude I’d rather stay in the already paid-for place rather than blow the entire 2021 travel budget now.
This article suggests it’s a mixed bag. A lot of SLT hotels closed and refunded reservations, but AirBnB and VRBO leave it to host discretion. On the client side, some are observing the health order and cancelling, while others are still heading your way. Interesting also relative to existing sharp local divisions about the whole vacation rental thing we’ve discussed before.
The Christmas cookies we need:
That’s fantastic!
Yeah those are lovely. Amazing piping and color work.
RIP John Le Carre. Somehow an even better writer than his reputation would suggest. If anyone out there hasn’t read at least The Spy Who Came In From the Cold recently, it’s well worth your time.
Reply fail, oh well.
For some reason I could never get into his stuff. Tried reading at least a 2-3 of his books and I don’t think I ever made it through one. One xmas we did the family tradition of going to a movie and I chose Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy based on all the good reviews, and I think all 5 of us snoozed at some point. It’s now known in the family as Tinker Toy Tater Tots. But I know he’s beloved by many, so I feel for his loss nonetheless.
Better late than never, Clevelands.
Beat me to it.
In the spirit of the “alternate electors” Republicans have meeting in state capitols today, I want to say that the A’s totally crushed the Yankees in the Alternate ALCS.
I imagine this process with a soundtrack by Faithless No More. WE CARE SOMEWHAT!
bad news andeux
I am not really invested in any of this, but I appreciate (pronounced a-pre-see-ate) the work put into this.
Trump loses again. Thanks California.
Crosby and Rosales get promotions for 2021. No indication which will start at shortstop though.
They might have an extra month to figure that out.
i like that idea
I do too, would help avoid the unseemly specter of MLB players being prioritized for the vaccine over regular folks.
Also, I assume and hope MLB will make vaccination compulsory for its personnel. Will be interesting to see how many anti-vaxxers assert themselves in that scenario.
Thanks Scott
Yeah, pay for a short stop and a reliever (they are cheap!) and mid level starter and boom. you have a team
Another normal day in America.
As long as we’re pointing out crazy, depraved shit happening in Texas…
So much easier just to get married via a private video conference with the county clerk from one’s couch.
If you’re ambitious you could do that AND still infect a wedding photographer. Congrats btw!
Those people need to be yelled at by Tom Cruise.
Negro Leagues = Major Leagues
(finally)
Something this story is making me think about: Should the corporate combination of the American and National leagues get to have the trademark for “Major League Baseball,” when they now finally acknowledge that there was a “major league” of baseball that existed solely because the owners of American and National league teams were extremely racist? If “major league” has a meaning outside of “American League and National League,” then maybe people shouldn’t have to license the name “Major League Baseball” from the entity descended from that moral stain.