If memory serves, there has been much consternation about The Correspondent, which apparently has launched. They want me to be a member to read their content but don’t provide much in a way for me to determine the quality of the content.
Last year the Cubs and Brewers played game 163 and this year the Cubs are home watching the Brewers play the Nationals in the NL Wildcard game.
Another Goat On The Northside
Joe Maddon will not be the manager of the Chicago Cubs next year and that is not a surprise given they did not meet expectations this year. In a world where people both have too high and too low expectations for professional sport coaches and managers, the common playbook front offices take when teams under-perform is to fire the manager.
Yes, change is needed, and yes, it is easier to fire one person, the manager, and not the team. But, Maddon is not the reason why the Cubs did not make the playoffs. First, and foremost the reason is that Cub players did not do their job. The same players who once ground out at bats in 2016 where doing nothing more than swing for the fences all this year. Second, the Cubs lineup is nothing but the same style hitter, with no diversity on the bench or apparently in the farm system, and the talent, that’s on the Theo Epstein and the front office.
Frankly, up until this point, what Epstein and the front office have done is succeed with the easy decisions and fail at the hard decisions. How hard is it to tank year after year and stock pile on draft picks that every talent scout in America says is a good bet? When Maddon became available, was it really hard to quickly decide to drop Ricky Renteria and sign Maddon?
Be careful for what you ask for, you just might get it. Now Epstein has to make one of the most important decisions of his tenure, who to hire to replace the manager that guided your team to the first World Series in 108 years. David Ross might be a good guy in the clubhouse, but will he have the players attention any more than Maddon? Will Joe Girardi be too hard? Who Epstein hires is crucial towards getting the most out of all the the talented players that are now starting to enter the end of their contracts.
Worse of all, the attention on hiring the next manager redirects attention away from the real heavy lifting of the offseason, which is to make changes to the lineup so that you get more professional at bats. Changing the lineup means moving one of the core players who won the World Series, which is something Epstein has refused to do to date. If you only replace the manager and keep everything else the same, why should we expect a different result?
On Saturday Epstein announced that Maddon will not be returning. If next year is no better, who will be the scapegoat then? You can’t fire the entire team.
Google Assistant crashing issue plagues some Android users - 9to5Google I’ve had this issue on my Pixel 2 and cleared the cache and uninstalled the most recent update to resolve the problem. The update has been reinstalled so I assume clearing the cache was the real trick.
I have a problem with Republicans critiquing Democrat election strategy because they don’t want Trump to be re-elected. Trump represents your party. You put him in office and Republicans can remove him via either impeachment or the election. Have a backbone. Stand for the country or stop hiding behind false patriotism.
I’ve got a Sandisk USB-C storage drive that I have been using with my Pixelbook. For some reason the write speed has become incredibly slow, making it nearly impossible to write large files.
The Lovable Losers Of My Youth
The common denominator for all my favorite professional sports teams is that they were losers during my childhood. The Green Bay Packers were the siberia of the NFL during the 70s and 80s until Reggie White started playing for them in 1993 and three years later won the Super Bowl. Ever since 1993 the Packers have been at or near the top of the NFL.
The Chicago Cubs were the epitome of “lovable losers” for a century. Even though the Cubs flirted with chances to make it to the World Series in 1984, 1989, and 2003 but it hasn’t been until the last five years that they have consistently been at or near the top of the league, and you know they won it all in 2016.
Like the Green Bay Packers, the Detroit Red Wings were also once the dominant team in the NHL but during the 70s and 80s they were known as the “dead Wings.” The owners had to give away cars to get people to come to their games. In 1997 the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, and of my favorite teams they have won more championships in my life time, winning again in 1998, 2002, and 2008. Since the calendar turned to the 2010s the Wings have been in a rebuilding phase.
Finally, the Detroit Pistons where also perenial losers during my childhood but where the first of my faves that I witnessed winning a championship in 1989, and again in 1990 and 2004. Frankly, the championship they won in 2004 is one of the most gratifying because nobody really expected it and they upset the perenial champion Los Angeles Lakers. Like the Red Wings, the Pistons are rebuilding but apppear to be nearing returning to the tops of their league sooner than the Wings.
Over my life time I’ve seen the long road it takes to get from basement to top floor of a professional sports league. I’ve seen how it takes for a team to learn how to be a champion, particularly from the Red Wings who had huge playoff failures after being the best team in their league the entire season.
Of all my favorite teams, the Cubs have the most talent and I expect will have chances to win championships again in the foreseeable future. The MLB’s farm system enables a franchise to have more control over its future if they have the right leadership. The NHL is similar, which is why theirs and the MLB front offices have such a huge influence on their long term success, much more than in the NFL and NBA that seems to depend much more on health and luck.
I am dissappointed that the Chicago Cubs will not make the playoffs this year. I will always love the Cubbies, win or lose, but I much better like where they are now, a very good team that can disappoint than a bad team that surprises.
Will the Chicago Cubs win another game this season? The last weekend is coming up, but they haven’t won since the collapse. Have a chance to spoil the Cardinals hopes of winning the division, but I don’t think that matters. Sad ending to the season.
I am going ahead and installing iPadOS on my iPad Pro. Got to take the plunge at some time.
I have installed iPadOS on my iPad Mini. I like having more icons on the home screen, I now have only two home screens on the Mini. Not sure that Today View is the most useful on the Mini. I don’t like that cut the width of the widgets in half.
So, what if we made a really big Bulletin Board System, one that could be dialed-in to from any city, and where thousands of people could interact, rather than just a few? - paleotronic.com
I am receiving emails from various iOS app vendors warning me their apps are not compatible with iPadOS and to not upgrade my device if I need their app working. I don’t think I have seen this happen before and given Apple’s beta cycle, I am surprised that this is an issue.
In order to successfully avert the climate catastrophe, we quickly need to solve our collective action problem. We have to find a way to cooperate internationally, to reduce rather than expand. Humanity’s greatest challenge in the 21ˢᵗ century is not the climate — it’s us.
To achieve cooperation we have to get over the origin of sin: the illusion of separateness that leads to supremacy. This problem is particularly hard because the United States is founded on supremacy by way of colonialism and slavery. Supremacy is so unconscious it permeates all aspects of our life, including American Christianity.
To all of this we have to open our eyes.
If Trump gets his way and practically nobody is able to immigrate to the United States, in what way does that make your life better?
The Atlantic, The Press Is Embracing False Equivalence Again
To be “fair” in covering him (Trump) is to be unfair—to the truth, to history, to the readers, to the national interest, to any concept of journalistic purpose. The stuffy way to put this problem is “false equivalence.” The casual way to put it is “But what about her emails?”
First Humberto took a swing at Bermuda and now hurricane forecasters say Jerry may be taking aim at the small island that is currently mostly without power.
I watched the Apple iPhone event this afternoon and found all the emphasis on the cameras to be over the top. I know that Google has received praise for the cameras in the Pixels so I get that Apple wanted to proclaim loudly they have the best camera. I am not a camera nerd, all I want is the camera on my phone to take decent pictures, which it does. I don’t care about all the whizzywigs, and I wouldn’t buy a smartphone because it has the best camera. It feels like Apple is still playing the features game to convince people to throw down $1k on their phones, case in point, the portion of the event that got into the details of the A13 processor.
When I look at this comparison of phones, I am drawn to the Pixel 3A XL because it has enough features for the lowest price.
I wonder if I am the only person who thinks Apple should do the same thing they did with the iPod and make the Apple Watch work standalone or with Windows? The tie to iPhone constrains sales, in my opinion. The iPod didn’t really take off until it started working with Windows, and if Apple really wants to sell watches, they need treat it like a standalone product.
Happy Apple event day! Does the Internet have holidays?