Too Big to Fail

Mike Trout and Aaron Judge both just finished their age 33 seasons. A hypothetical Trout through age 29 / Judge from 30 onwards player would be 4th all time in fWAR through age 33, behind Hornsby, Ruth, and (just slightly) Cobb.

Understandable that Habba would confuse Reggie and Jesse Jackson since they both hate Trump (and also the racism):

I ran the numbers a few years ago and determined that if Rice's family hadn't died in that tornado and he'd given up pitching to play outfield full time, he had a pretty decent chance to have beaten Cobb to be the all- time hits leader.

General consensus is he started taking them after the 1998 season when McGwire and Sosa got so much attention; he was 34-35 in 1999.

I am 45 and this dude looks significantly older than me.

Pictured: Dazzy Vance, ostensibly aged 33:

Speaking as someone who has taken both amphetamines and steroids, they differ not just in degree but in kind.

Gavvy Cravath is actually a pretty good comp; a power hitter whose 20's matched the bottom of the dead ball era who would have been a superstar if he were born 20 years later.

I mean... yes. But.

Yeah, it's not actually all that uncommon for pitchers to take a while to find their groove. Johnson's giant frame took him a while to get accustomed to (not unlike Judge), and so he didn't become a real monster until he cut his walk rate after 30. Jamie Moyer, Dave Stewart, other pitchers.

Adrian Beltre, I guess, other than that monster 2004 season was significantly better in his 30's than his 20's. But he was a phenom who debuted at 19.

Trying to think of any baseball player other than Judge who made a legitimate giant leap in skill after age 30, and other than pitchers - Dazzy Vance and Hoyt Wilhelm spring to mind - I'm drawing a blank. Sam Rice doesn't count; spent his 20's depressed over his entire family dying in a tornado.

Under the Dome rules. RULES.

It's extraordinarily difficult to pull data on annual vacations taken by car; nobody tracks that information in a way that meaningfully defines "vacations." Does visiting your parents for Thanksgiving count? Air travel data is easily accessible.

Not to pull a @professormusgrave.bsky.social, but if you assume that everybody involved has kids when they're 18 years old, then the youngest Americans to live as adults in an economy where a median wage earner earned a living wage for a family of four become great- great grandparents next year.

How Reagan ruined America JDN 2457408 Or maybe it’s Ford? The title is intentionally hyperbolic; despite the best efforts of Reagan and his ilk, America does yet survive. Indeed, as Obama aptly pointed out in his rece…

Every article is this article:

I mean this with so much delicacy it almost hurts my fingers to type it out, but: the 1960's were more than one generation ago.

Real hourly earnings in the US for non-supervisory employees peaked in February 1973 and did not reach that level again until March 2019.

I feel like before anybody opines on what the US economy was like "a generation ago" they need to have this graph tattooed on the inside of their eyelids.

The last year a majority of US workers...
- had a defined- benefit pension plan: 1995
- had a single family income in 2- adult households: 1977
- earned a living wage for a family of 4: 1973
- took at least one vacation via air travel per year: Never

In short, Iran is a land of contrasts.

Trump is basically saying he wants the U.S. to have control over the Musandam Governate and everything within a 100 mile radius of it, which seems like kind of a big ask of, um, Oman for example.

Top five Stephen King endings (novels only) in no particular order:
- Revival
- Later
- Cujo
- Pet Sematary
- The Dead Zone

Wait until you get to Later. It might be my number-one recommendation for people asking about what King's whole deal is (especially since it's only ~250 pages so it's a lot easier to recommend than a big doorstop novel).

Pretty sure Bazaar of Bad Dreams has more great short stories than, like, the last 3 short story collections combined (Herman Wouk is Still Alive; That Bus Is Another World; The Dune; Mister Yummy; Ur; Under the Weather). Best one since Skeleton Crew.

I have to believe that Sleeping Beauties was basically just written by Owen King and Steve slapped his name on it to goose sales, because it's incomprehensible to me that he himself could have played any serious role in creating something that awful.

Great book, and there are lots of good-to-great books to come! I'd rank them:
1. Later
2. Billy Summers
3. The Outsider
4. Bazaar of Bad Dreams
5. The Institute
6. If It Bleeds
7. End of Watch
8. You Like It Darker
9. Fairy Tale
10. Holly
11. Finders Keepers
12. Never Flinch
13. Sleeping Beauties

I will also say that underrepresented on Bluesky - not at all surprisingly given the nature of the site - are the single most rabid and delusional AI evangelists I've ever encountered: investment bankers who are leveraged to their hair plugs in AI investments.

There are a lot of thoughtful, intelligent, well-reasoned AI enthusiasts I enjoy having conversations with on Bluesky.

I've read some AI threads on Reddit and it's full of people who are basically "what if Pete Hegseth but instead of a 12 year old's conception of machoism and evangelism it was AI?"

A lot of stuff is way more specifically inheritable than people realize. My wife has severe - SEVERE - OCD including excoriation (skin picking) which is so bad that it's led to permanent nerve damage and once almost killed her. My 7 year old is developing that. She's also got my intrusive thoughts.

People don't like to hear "it's complicated with tons of different variables and there's no easy answer as to why this occurs" and so they look for a clear and concise answer, and RFK Jr. is there to give it to them. Brick wall when I say my son had the same vaccines and has no developmental issues.

Because of my daughter's developmental disabilities, I've come into contact with lots of parents of children with developmental disabilities. It's *astonishing* how many of them are searching for any answer as to why their kids are the way they are and latching on to "vaccines" because it's easy.