If you think you are not religious then you don’t know what is religion. I think Americans are more religious today than ever before, but don’t recognize it because we equate religion with a specific association to specific organizations or specific beliefs in deities.
Religion is much more fundamental to who we are as humans. For example, if you identify yourself with an NFL team, like I say I am a Packers fan, you are religious. The religion, which is that to which you connect or bind yourself (re-ligio) is professional U.S. football. Republicans? Democrat? Conservative? Liberal? Progressive? All religions. Yes, even atheism is a religion. Religion is an aspect of our ego.
The problem in all of this is we have no understanding of our true selves, and the decisions we make are to maintain all these false selves that don’t really add value to who we are and what we truly need. It is the stranglehold of our religions that is driving decisions that we make against our own best interests.
All of the MLB wild card series games of both leagues are done with sweeps of each. The NL wildcards that I preferred to advance won. The Diamondbacks play the Dodgers and the Phillies play the Braves, and I look forward to watching both series. The Brewers, who finished the regular season nine games ahead of the Cubs to win the NL Central division, were swept in two both games by wide margins. Had the Cubs hung on to the third wild card they would have played the Brewers, who I am sure wish that had happened.
We have had temperatures well above average the last few days, and today could be the last one in the 80s so I’ve tried to get outside often. Perhaps one of the last days of shorts and tshirts.
I had an early meeting this morning so that enabled me to take my morning walk earlier than normal. The morning sun is glorious in what might be one of the last hot weather days of the year.
My 2023 MLB Playoff Preferences
I am not as crazy as to pretend that I can predict what will happen in this year’s Major League Baseball playoffs, but I did want to go down on record about what are my preferences given that the Chicago Cubs are not in the tournament.
Given I closely follow the Cubs, I am more emotionally invested in the National League games, so I will start with the easy part, which is that my preference for the American League champion is any team other than Houston. Houston has won it recently, most of the others have not, and that is the bottom line. For some reason I find myself drawn to the Baltimore Orioles, so I will prefer they play in the Word Series for the American League.
Wild card teams seem to excel in the tournament and do so at the expense of the higher seeds who are division winners. I think the wild card teams have the advantage of actually having played under playoff pressure for weeks up to the tournament just to make it in to the postseason. Of the the wild card teams, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Arizona Diamondbacks made it to the NLCS, and I think a championship between them and Atlanta would be very fun to watch.
My emotional preference is for Philadelphia to represent the NL in the World Series because of Kyle Schwarber, but I expect Atlanta to make it to the World Series and win it all because they are the best team in all of baseball. A big part of me likes the idea of Schwarber having the most success of the former Cub players after the 2016 World Series given how the Cubs front office gave up on him waaaay too soon.
The mornings of sitting outside on the patio drinking coffee are numbered for this year. The leaves are falling.
The intoxicating drug of wealth and the power it affords is driving the human race toward extinction, it appears to only be a matter of when and how.
“The Trump campaign is very good at manipulating the media, because it understands that liberal ideological bias is not the primary factor in shaping media coverage. The press, instead, is biased toward having a spectacular or interesting story that people want to read or watch or hear about. If you�����re clever, you can manipulate the press into telling the story you want by making it seem fun and exciting, even if the story is incorrect or misleading. Given how easily the Trump campaign got the political press to take the bait here, there’s little question we’re in for a long campaign season in which it does it over and over again.” – The Atlantic, emphasis added. In other words, it’s not about reporting nor civic duty, it’s all about making money, as is every facet of United States society.
I’ve written before about how the then low cost Timex Sinclair 1000 personal computer was so influential on my life. Today’s equivalent to the Timex Sinclair is the Raspberry Pi, and I don’t think it’s coincident it also originates from England. In my opinion a Raspberry Pi should be provided to every young kid, particularly if they have any interest with computers. The newest model has just been announced and will start shipping at the end of October, you can pick up an 8 GB model with case and power supply for just over $102.
Much more of the moon was visible when I started to take this picture, but still I like it.
I found the site Georgia v. Trump, a curation of articles published about the Georgia 2020 election interference trial. Added the RSS feed to my subscriptions.
I use Drummer to write many of my posts for micro.blog. I wonder what happens when I delete a post way back in the past? As a test, I deleted a post originally in Drummer on October 23, 2021 and it wasn’t removed during the publish of this post. Still hope to understand how micro.blog processes the OPML file. I do know that I have to specify in my blog settings the public URL for the outline file, so it looks like the script in Drummer let’s micro.blog know a change has been made to the OPML file and then I assume micro.blog reads the file. As I can edit posts in Drummer and publish the edits back to micro.blog, there is the appearance of a mapping of outline nodes to blog posts. I have found that I can even edit posts that I wrote way back in October 2021. The key question is, what does it do to deletions of entire posts? Manton confirmed that micro.blog does not delete posts removed from an OPML file.
Now that the iPadOS lock screen supports widgets, I’ve started playing with focus modes to change what I see throughout the day. Two of the key modes are Work and Personal. I configured Work to be the focus mode from 9 AM to 5 PM, Personal to be from 5 PM to 11:30 PM, and then at 11:30 PM is Do Not Disturb. Problem is, the Work mode is not kicking in at 9 AM and I don’t know why. Does anyone have ideas?
Looking back at it, the last week of the MLB baseball season is often been filled with angst. I do agree with what I wrote back in 2019, I’d rather be in the position of being disappointed that a good team did not succeed than always rooting for bad teams who occasionally surprise. The Cubs lost last night after having a 6-0 lead. In many ways the game encapsulates their current state, some good pitching to gain a lead or stay close, but not enough pitching to sustain the lead through 9 innings. In that state all other facets of the game have to be played near flawlessly, so a fielding error can (and last night was) be fatal. Good news is that the one loss does not put them out of the playoff standings, but they cannot lose two games in a row now and when they do lose they are at the mercy of how other teams perform.
I read that the U.S. government is again providing free Covid tests. We have a bunch of tests that probably expired and should be thrown out.
Over the weekend the samples of the astroid Bennu collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed in Utah. The samples were collected hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth three years ago. The successful mission is the first time we have retrieved a sample from an astroid. Now that OSIRIS has dropped what it collected from Bennu it is flying on toward another astroid, Apophis.
Today is the first day of autumn and on this, a day in the life of a member of the micro blog community in West Bloomfield, Michigan, ducks are enjoying sunshine. #mbsept
I’ve turned an emotional corner regarding this year’s Chicago Cubs. I now don’t expect them to make the playoffs, they are clearly in a downward spiral that they don’t have the manpower left to pull up from. I am not going to care whether they make the playoffs and focus on enjoying these remaining games.
Cubs starter Justin Steele got pounded by Pirates last night, and the Cubs lost 7-13. Fortunately, the Marlins also lost so the Cubs maintain the half game lead for the third wild card. My buddy said he thinks the Cubs pitching staff has nothing left in the tank, and that certainly looked to be the case last night. Steele is the best of the Cubs pitchers and he was cruising until he hit an apparent wall in the fourth inning.
Why The Cubs Are Fading
The World Series, like most major sports championships, is won by defense. In baseball that mainly translates to pitching, but also fielding. When you play the same team in a playoff series your hitters usually face the opponent’s best pitching, consequently you should plan for 3 or fewer runs scored and that means you want your pitching to hold the opponent to 3 or fewer runs.
Since the beginning of September the Cubs have been in playoff games. Nearly all of the teams they faced need to beat them to move ahead of the Cubs in the Wild Card playoff standings. By my count the Cubs have played 17 games so far in September and in 7 of them their opponent scored 3 or fewer runs. My conclusion is that the Cubs pitching is simply not good enough to win in the playoffs.
I think my conclusion holds if you look at the larger body of work over the season. I expect that in a high percentage of the games the Cubs won they scored 4 or more runs, too many of those they needed to score 4 or more runs. During the regular season it is not surprising that your hitters will have more success because they will be in many situations where they face poor pitching.
A team built to win in the MLB playoffs has the pitching that more often than not can hold their opponent to 3 or fewer runs. Truth is the Cubs got through the 2023 season with only one reliable starting pitcher, maybe two (Steele for sure, and possibly Hendricks). Stroman and Taillon have not been consistent and Taillon has been aweful. Javier Assad joined the starting rotation too late in to the season so it is really hard to assess his reliability. The bullpen is no better, only Merrywather and Alzolay has been reliable, though Leiter is borderline.
The fact that the Cubs are in a playoff race is much more important this year than they actually make the playoffs, and the goal long term is be winning division championships and not gain a playoff berth via the wild card. While at the beginning of the season there was some hope the Cubs could compete with the Brewers for the NL Central division championship, I think it was evident early on through head to head games with the Brewers that this Cubs team is not as good or better than the Brewers. Sure, the Cubs can win any game, but can they win a series?
Bottom line, the Chicago Cubs are on schedule for their long term goals of winning division titles and the World Series in upcoming years. Clearly, the Cubs need to improve their pitching. Jordan Wicks has shown he is a piece of the puzzle for next year, and we can hope Taillon will return to the how he pitched in the past. Stroman might be back, but with Hendricks being another year older I think the Cubs need to sign at least two reliable starting pitchers during the off season as well as keep Merryweather.
From the lineup perspective, I think the Cubs should be aggressive in their attempt to sign Bellinger, but I doubt he stays and his departure will create a big gap in their lineup. Maybe youngsters Morel, Mervis, or Crow-Armstrong can help fill that gap but all are too inexperienced with MLB pitching. Consequently, the Cubs need to sign at least one big-name hitter to maintain their current starting lineup performance.
Finally, the biggest question of the off season might be whether David Ross has what it takes to manage a championship caliber baseball team. Every manager makes questionable lineup and in-game decisions, and this is Ross' first manager job so we need to keep in mind that he is learning on the job. I personally can’t pin the current Cubs situation on Ross, the bottom line is that the players have to perform and they are not performing. Ross has made lineup changes and pitching changes, as far as I can tell he is doing everything he can to try and have the Cubs win games. I would not be in a hurry to replace Ross unless there is a championship experienced person to replace him. So, David Ross' fate, like Rick Renteria’s was in 2015, may be decided more by who is available rather than by his own performance.
I am frustrated by and mad about the Cub’s performance this month, but I am mostly mad at the Cubs veterans who have under performed with the pressure on. Frankly, if it weren’t for Suzuki the Cubs would probably would have a longer losing streak. Swanson, Bellinger, and Happ have not met expectations as the veteran leaders. In the big picture I am happy about where the Cubs are, they met my expectations for this season and look to be on track of near year and beyond. All of the younger Cub players who have never been in this position of a playoff race in September are gaining valuable experience of how to deal with the pressure, and in my opinion experience matters most.