Don

I've always kept up, but the last day or so has been like a beautiful symphony of insults, accusations, assbirths, and occasional decent thoughts. There was even a nice fatalist comment in there to frame the meaningless nature of all the bickering. It was great.

I just want you all to know that I went through the last four pages of this thread in the last five minutes or so, and I love you all. It was deeply entertaining on several levels.

Texas is weird because it feels like several different places at once. In my opinion, Western Texas is about as depressing as it gets. It's pretty much just New Mexico's b-hole. Eastern Texas definitely feels a lot more like the deep south than anything. Central/Northern Texas is basically Kansas with more money and weirder laws, but far more tolerable winters. Dallas might be the best outkick your coverage city in America too. Haven't really spent much time in the Houston/SE Texas area, but who knows, it might be great.

It seems fairly enforceable to me. Have league officials regularly check that nothing fishy is going on, rely on people to report if something is, punish swiftly and harshly for violations. I feel like getting 30 teams to comply with "Hey, don't hide a freaking camera in the outfield to run your own private feed of the catcher's signals" should be fairly doable for MLB.

I'm all for the "get what you can" approach when it comes to picking up signs or guys tipping their pitches, etc... That's been a part of the game forever. But if you're using your own private video feed to get access to that sort of stuff it's definitely crossing an ethical line. Either force teams not to do that, or give them both access to the video feed in dugout. Either way is fine by me.

Lolz.

Watched the first episode of Jack Ryan S2 last night. Really good start to the season. I had kinda forgotten how good that show really is. It's what Homeland should have been if it were planned out a bit better. Also, Wendell Pierce is one of my favorite actors working right now.

It's gonna be awesome when baristas in Tuscaloosa are pulling down $100k/year.

I like having a board communist. Variety is the spice of life.

Freaking great for Howie! Dude deserves this after all the years he’s put in. Super happy for him.

I basically have the same setup as you, though I still have Netflix at the moment. I usually do MLB.TV during the season too. Honestly, I'd like to cut Sling as it's rare that I watch much live TV on there... other than sports. Just sucks not having access to all the cable-based sports content without Sling, but I also wonder if it's actually worth the like $50/month to catch Sportscenter/MLB Network/a college basketball or football game here and there.

https://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article236661818.html Some straight up dirty shit going down in Wichita.

Seems like a pretty good thing for YouTube TV especially. Try to pick up a good chunk of the people that will be available customers in that market, do everything possible to keep costs to the consumer down for awhile, and invest a ton into original content that you don't have to buy the broadcast rights to. Maybe operate at a loss for a few years, but try to take control of a corner everyone will come to.

Kinda a bad sign that before I saw the babylonbee thing at the bottom, I was like "This seems plausible."

Rough shakeup in the power rankings for The Cosby Show there.

I thought this bit was kinda funny: "Butler said he punched Calderon several times and stopped after an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who witness what happened. The deputy assisted Butler in holding Calderon until Seattle police officers arrived."

I love the dude's standup and all, but you're absolutely right. Him just talking and telling old stories off the cuff is some of the most entertaining stuff I've ever heard. And not just because it's funny. The stories seem to always be this perfect mix of legit interesting and freaking hilarious. I've seen him do standup live before, and I'd gladly pay to see him again; but I'd pay 5x as much to go to a one hour live audience Q&A with him.

It would be so weird if the DNC chose not to support an exciting candidate with a (potential at this point) ground-swell of support in favor of an old establishment dem with the pulse and wide-spectrum appeal of a turnip. We’ve literally never seen them do that before.

I meant that in more of a personal finance way. In our current system the cost of healthcare for any given person in any given year has an extreme degree of potential variability. Depending on legislation used to create a universal healthcare system, the taxes could change quite a bit year to year, or perhaps remain constant. Who knows at this point? Definitely something that should be considered when the time comes of course. But I'd still feel pretty confident that the variability wouldn't fall between maybe 5% of annual income and 1000%, which is true of our current system.

I'm sure it wouldn't be terribly efficient. But the healthcare system as it is currently ran isn't terribly efficient either. Just the sheer amount of time wasted on medical billing in our current system (by patients, medical facility employees, insurance company employees, etc...) would make a Prussian jump off a building. So if it's a choice between an inefficient system that could potentially bankrupt a pretty solid chunk of the American population at any moment and an inefficient system paid for by a consistent and known tax amount, I'd take the latter.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nephew-8-room-fort-worth-135607059.html This one is just freaking sad. Obviously some things were done very wrong here from a procedural standpoint, and it basically ended up resulting in the murder of someone that didn’t appear to do anything wrong. I’d be interested to hear a couple of our LE people here explain the right way to approach a call like the one that prompted officers to arrive.

Just wow. What an emotional game.

You kinda nailed my thoughts there man. You do tend to get invested in the success of guys you like or just enjoy watching. Skaggs was one of those guys for me certainly. Always thought he could be a prime-era Barry Zito if things went his way. It’s truly sad for all of us, but worse for his family and teammates still. I’ll miss him.

Obviously we still don’t know the facts, but just the way that article is written suggests massive speculation rather than actual research or journalism.

Moral of the story: Don’t F with the captain’s booze. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/passengers-captain-drank-beer-had-cocaine-and-fired-a-gun-during-nightmare-fishing-trip/ar-AACozgx?li=BBnbcA1