unclevlad

To echo GM Joe: a very good read.

Oh, I'm sure they won't go winless all season. In terms of place in the standings within their division, or total wins? Actually, the projected win totals are very close on DraftKings. Vikes, Under 8.5 is -130, so small favorite to happen; Raiders Under 7.5 is +150, so they're expected to go over. So pretty much...8 each. As was pointed out, tho, it's way too early to put much stock on these. The opponents and home teams are set, but not the full schedules. Neither team is stuck with an international game, but who knows how many Thursday games they'll have. And hey, the two of you can get together and watch the game!!! Vikes at Raiders, date TBA. Since it's a Raider home game, our resident geriatric gets to host. Just remember that tribbles need 20x their body weight in snack foods daily. Fortunately furballs don't weigh too much.

Hey, we can trace the popularity of energy drinks VERY easily. Go back to the original Coca-Cola...where 'coca' indeed had THAT meaning. Stimulant. Before 5 Hour or Red Bull, there was Mountain Dew first, with about 50% more caffeine than Coke or Pepsi. Later on...Jolt. The energy drinks generally just followed that trend, and IMO smartly realized their best path: teens. (Yeah, I can definitely see the argument that their marketing is much like Joe Camel.) Cuz what you can see is...for the office drone type, it's not energy drinks, it's ultra-high caffeinated coffee. https://www.caffeineinformer.com/most-caffeinated-coffees It's a HUGELY popular segment that makes a TON of money.

JUST in...the hit is NOT getting Brooks suspended. I disagree with that. There's been too much total BS going on this postseason, and I think some of it has been that the league *hasn't* been firm enough. It's plausible the league's sensitive to the broad criticism that they shouldn't be determining the outcomes of games...an extension of the "you can't call a foul to decide the game" that's polluted the NBA (and NFL, to a degree) for years.

Reverse receny bias. Namath in his prime was brilliant. That period was, admittedly, short...but the same can be said for Gale Sayers. And, remember: he's in the HoF. Besides, here's a full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_Jets_starting_quarterbacks Collectively, that's a really, really TERRIBLE list. That's the part we don't remember. How many of these even made the Pro Bowl in individual years, much less have an overall career described as anything but forgettable. The Jets have had decent seasons...back to back to the conference championship, but that was ALL on the defense. Hey, the QB was Mark Sanchez, and OK, he's responsible for one of the most memorable plays in Jets history...but it wasn't a positive one. I think that explains things like Watson being the best QB for the Texans...it's serious damnation by faint praise. And the history is short, too, with them. I'd still give it to David Carr, for giving a truly AWFUL team what he could. He's called a draft bust, sure, but he got *killed* on the field.

Yeah, you can argue those til you're blue in the face, like Rodgers being the QB over Favre and Starr? Antonio Brown over John Stallworth? Tom Brady as the Bucs best QB? That might be a major slam on the rest of the QBs that've played there...it better be, cuz it's saying no one else did much of anything. (I give Brady some credit for the SB win but not THAT!!! much.) Major recency bias, IMO, but that's perhaps to be expected. A curious point: it looked like every roster was set up on modern lines...3 WR, 1 TE, 1 RB. Except for the Bears. But then, it would truly be sacrilege to not choose both of their backs.

Oh my. I didn't see this before. https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-suspends-five-players-including-four-lions-for-violating-gambling-policy 2 were technical. The league rules say NO betting from any NFL-affiliated facility, including practice facilities. The other 3...for the entire season...were betting on NFL games, per NYT. Blowing basically any control off sports betting has opened the doors, and there are going to be downsides. How much this will be, kinda remains to be seen. It's not clear it's a real institutional problem. YET. But the potential for something Really Ugly is there.

The US has evacuated the Sudan embassy. The capital is a battleground between military factions attempting to seize control of the government. Oh my. This is one that slid under the radar. Caught it in an NYT editorial about that Florida person. Full story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/politics/death-penalty-ron-desantis-florida-parkland-shooting/index.html#:~:text=Florida once required a simple,and impose the death penalty. I'm actually in favor of the death penalty as an option...Timothy McVeigh is a prime example. I'm more than willing to limit it to some degree, retaining it for relatively egregious circumstances only. But, I think I want more than 8-4 to impose it, but I may have more of an issue with the criteria and general frequency for which the death penalty is imposed.

Dylan Brooks poked the polar bear, saying LeBron was old and he wouldn't respect him til LeBron dropped 40 on him. He might be a member of the Grizzlies but he's proving to be a cub. End of the first quarter: Lakers 35, Memphis 9. Yes. Single digits for Memphis. They're 3-25 shooting with 7 turnovers. Largest lead after the first quarter in NBA playoff history. Think I'll see what MLB Network has, they had a late game tonight...

With the draft imminent, I think we can expect there will be Considerable Grousing about how Our Team Messed Up...and laughter at the follies of other teams' draft choices. Since that's so focused on the upcoming season, it feels the proper time to kick off a fresh thread for our discussions.

EVERY fanbase thinks their team messes up more often than not. Unless you're a Jets fan, in which case, it's "every time" and "how many this time."

Generally, it requires some historical justification...often rather stretched, perhaps well in the past, but recognizably present.

Davis probably has one good point: the stadium lease. The Coliseum is consistently ranked as one of the worst stadiums in pro sports. The A's got an extension that substantially did lead to the Raiders' move. So what he's saying is the A's bear responsibility for the Raiders leaving too, at least in part. Might buy it, but this is Al's kid.

NYT is reporting that tracing digital evidence, Airman Texeira's leaks go back to the very start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/politics/jack-teixeira-leaks-russia-ukraine.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20230422&instance_id=90806&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=101745266&segment_id=131066&te=1&user_id=618f95a4931087ea799b0e9f4a9d3344 Apparently some of this may have been posted from *inside* the SCIF where he worked. If this is the case, then I suspect some security people are going to be fired.

Of all the ways to lose a perfect game... Drew Smyly for the Cubs. 7 perfect. Game's a laugher, Cubs have been bombing away all game, it's 13-0. David Peralta came in on defense in the 7th for the Dodgers. Leads off the 8th. Tops the ball, hitting a 1-hop-type dribbler down the 3rd base line...and he's a left-handed hitter with decent speed. The ball's in no-man's land. Pitcher charges. Catcher charges. Smyly gets there first, picks up the ball, getting ready to turn..................... .....when the catcher can't stop himself and rolls over the top of him, as Smyly is still bent over. It would've been close, at best. Peralta was far down the line as Smyly was getting the ball. But still...getting bowled over by the catcher on a dribbler.

I'd narrow it down even more. MadBum's pitching in the World Series was beyond Lights Out. 5 appearances, 4 starts, 36 innings, 1...ONE!!!!!...say it with me, ONE EARNED RUN!!! The only season where he had major postseason use was '14, looking at Baseball Reference. '10...22 innings (3 rounds)...and 2 were mediocre. '12...2 BAD starts, combined 8 innings and 13 runs in the DS and LCS. Then 7 sweet innings in the WS. '14...you've got a case, big time. CG shutout in the WC game against the Pirates. 7 decent innings (3 runs, 2 earned) in a loss to Washington in the DS. 15.2 innings in 2 good starts (total of 3 runs) in the LCS. 21 superb innings in the WS. That's definitely a major workload. Go to the regular season records...'10, only 7-6 with 111 IP. '12, 16-11 with a 3.37 ERA, 208 innings. Tied for 20th in ERA. Good, but not great. '14, 18-10, 2.98 ERA, 217 innings. His numbers from '13-'16 are better than I remembered. ERA under 3, all 4 years. WHIP under 1.1 each year, under 1.05 3 of em. Workload wasn't bad, never more than 227 innings. Then came '17. 4-9, 111 innings. Dirt bike accident, shoulder injury. '18...broken finger in spring training. ERA 3.26 in 130 innings. One may suspect he never really rounded into form. '19, he was back to a full workload...but not deep. 34 starts, only 207 innings. ERA almost 4, too. That's when he went FA. The D'backs paid for '13-'16 and WS Hero MadBum when there wasn't much indication he'd come back to that form. The WS record's awesome, but the overall body looks like the little girl with the curls...when she's good, she's very good, and when she's bad, she's very, very bad. Kershaw...my take is the back issues. He's got a BIG bend there to get it to break like it does. Post season? Neither Glavine nor Maddux have sterling post-season numbers...altho IIRC, a fair bit of those was the Braves' offense was dominated by mistake hitters. There's an open question about finesse pitching in the postseason, too.

That's a seriously common refrain. It's one of Jeff Van Gundy's rants. Sometimes he's right but others, he's soooo wrong. This is the latter. I'm MUCH more in tune with this article: https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/draymond-green-leads-the-warriors-by-playing-with-heart-but-they-need-him-to-play-with-a-brain-too/ Green's pattern and practice are *extensive* and well documented. Sure, OK, Sabonis was wrong...but he also got a tech. The stomp was above and beyond. The antics after the stomp largely gut any claims he might have had, about just needing to step. He knew, IMO. 3 prior suspensions in 7 years...and that doesn't even count the Poole incident. From an ESPN story yesterday: Mike Brown was on Inside the NBA pregame last night, after unanimously winning CoY...first time ever. He said, it's a players' league. That's brutally obvious...and it's also brutally obvious it's gone WAY too far.

You're a Bengals fan. That means you can't be serious about your football.

The A's have given up on Oakland. They've signed a binding deal to buy 49 acres of land on which to construct a new stadium. The location? Come on, need you even ask? Vegas. The site feels small, but they're not building a mega-huge stadium...seating capacity is listed at 35,000. The site is listed as across the freeway from T-Mobile Arena, a few blocks west of the Strip. That looks to mean its southern border might be Tropicana Blvd...which is a major bus route. That should mean fairly good mass transit access, which can help reduce the need for a huge amount of parking. Many steps yet to be completed, and the stadium won't open until the 2027 season. EDIT: another little story. The Diamondbacks have an extensive history of...seriously questionable acquisitions, overpaying for them much of the time, when the overall team wasn't close to good enough to justify them. Greinke was the big one, Madison Bumgarner was another, IMO. Greinke's long gone; after 4 horrible starts, MadBum got DFA'd today. Horrible, as in 2.4 WHIP and 10+ ERA. Little or no chance anyone will pick him up, as they'd be on the hook for his current contract...$20M this year, $14M next year. His ERA with Arizona has been over 5...over a span of 4 years. And Arizona's on the hook for it, that money was fully guaranteed. Let him clear waivers, and he'll probably sign with someone for cheap. He'll be 34 this summer, so there's a decent chance he can regain some form and help a team.

Not only that but they got a LOT!!! of data to analyze, and from the comments, passed at least one other significant milestone...it survived the period of maximum stress. Altho it's possible that the tumbling/failure to separate *could* reflect a stress-induced problem. Yeah, just getting completely off the ground is pretty big. Scaling the booster up is non-trivial. The story points out that many of the individual engines didn't fire. The failure analysis is going to make many engineers very happy. Heck, in some ways, from an engineering and development perspective, this was a REALLY good outcome. EDIT: oh yeah. Why I came into this thread. BuzzFeed News is shutting down. This follows a trend in digital media, where the income streams just aren't as viable as the early optimism promoted. Story is in NYT; they point out that the ad dollars are going to broader platforms. I also think it's plausible that the digital media industry spawned far too many companies, splitting the ad revenues in too many ways. Now we're maybe seeing the seedlings get thinned.

Hey, you can still have a dream...that the Rockies win more games than the Nuggets. EDIT: little consolation for ya...you might be an A's fan... A's pitching is giving up more than 1.5 runs per game than the Rockies. Their average margin per game is losing by...count it...4 runs. Per game!! KC's record is only 1 win better and their margin's about -2.2 runs per game. Heck, as hot as Tampa Bay's been, and they hammered Cincy for 6 more runs in the first inning...the A's margin is a run more extreme, on the wrong side, than Tampa Bay's. Losing THAT badly...well, it's still too early to write them out of the playoffs given the expanded format...but by Memorial Day...? There's 5 teams right now winning less than 1/3 of their games as we close in on the 20 game mark, which is about the point where there's at least some track record to consider. Not good.

Yeah, this isn't the first time I've heard that complaint...but it is the first time I've heard it from a player. And heck, if the home team's got the lead...the top of the 9th can easily now be over in an eyeblink. Closers were often slow workers, and the 9th inning felt like the last 4 minutes of a college basketball game, taking *forever* to complete with the fouls, and seemingly EVERY dead ball leading to a review for something...quite often, resetting the clock 0.2 seconds or somesuch nonsense, when there's still 30 seconds left. Can't happen now, with the pitch timing rules.

Another one, albeit not significant because it's a Definition mistake. Power: Mind Control Modifier: Can Be Dispelled the DEFINITION starts "An Entangle with this limitation...."

PG: LL's point is, you're jumping to the defense of the police, when that was never the issue. Beau gave a good rundown and even said, it was likely a justified shooting, from the police perspective. And I agree with LL: I don't really think we've discussed the impact of broad fearmongering. Of *hate* mongering, unfortunately, yes. But these aren't hate incidents, at least on the surface. Now...if you want to take umbrage with the tone of CNN's coverage...THAT, I understand completely. The first 30 seconds are enough. https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/04/15/new-mexico-police-shooting-wrong-address-contd-nr-vpx.cnn She's quite clearly emphasizing "innocent" and "wrong address." She's imputing bad police actions. If that's driving your reaction here...I understand that completely. There's a reason why I dislike CNN. Not as much as Fox, but that's boundless. One can be skeptical in general about police statements; there've been FAR too many that have been flat-out lies and cover-ups. But the analyst flat out states that, if you look at the video slowed down, she can see a gun. She largely corroborates the chief's story. But they STILL take that tone. That's grossly irresponsible, IMO.

OTOH: we have to recognoze that they were vulnerable because they made specific statements relating to entities. (And entities with the resources to pursue the litigation, and to assert sufficient harm to ask for HUGE damages.) Contrast that with, say, their COVID statements. There were no entities being harmed. Same with any climate denials. Mostly the same with Jan. 6th...they might be liable for emotional damages there, a la Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook families, but that would be harder to prove against them, and wouldn't rise to anything like the Jones case. Basically, they were burned because they were *massively* stupid and careless. They don't need to change much at all, to avoid a repeat.