Mike Fast

Charlie Morton. One of the best men I've had the privilege of knowing in this game.

Congratulations on an amazing career, Charlie. Thank you for your kindness, humility, and authenticity.

Is that Maxwell's demon sitting atop the mechanism?

Your child should get a secant opinion

Umpires do that so they don't get hit by foul tips, right? But Superman wouldn't care about that

I'm sure Groesbeck and Mejia are lovely. One of these days I will find out.

I'm missing Limestone County, too!

and if they are not, they should face consequences, even if, or especially if, it was Katy police officers who did it.

Yeah, that's inexcusable. And accident with a loaded weapon is inexcusable, too, but multiple shots sounds more like horseplay or something similarly dangerous with deadly weapons.

The fields are a half mile away from the gun range and not down range from it, either. As far as I can tell, someone had a negligent/accidental discharge of a weapon not associated with the normal operation of the range.

Somebody discharged a weapon accidentally or was otherwise extremely careless with a loaded weapon. As you point out, this wasn't a case of a shot accidentally going over the berm or something. Normal gunfire from the range wouldn't be anywhere near the baseball fields.

Google maps image of RAC Katy baseball fields and nearby gun range showing the berms to absorb stray gunfire are pointed away from the fields

Something went badly wrong here. This gun range should not be an issue for the baseball fields unless somebody fired a weapon in a direction not normally intended.

This could be read, perhaps accurately, as a subtweet about several things, but I'll say explicitly I'm attacking the idea that baseball players are effectively weighed random number generators.

"Deciding on the methodology for data collection is a great way to make decisions without leaving fingerprints. Every decision about what to measure is implicitly a decision about what not to measure..."

-The Unaccountability Machine

It's very interesting reading this book after having read The Economists' Hour, by @bcappelbaum.bsky.social, another book I recommend.

The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions and How the World Lost Its Mind, by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, is one of those books that is changing the way I think about the world.

If we think we have a handle on what this means, we haven't seen the half of it.

It's not only nor even necessarily to be successfully married and have productive children.

There are a lot of people who don't fit that pattern, and the whole lot of them are very special to God's heart.

Our highest calling is to enjoy and show forth God's great beauty and splendor and the magnificent abundance of his gentle, humble, and faithful love forever and ever to all people and throughout the whole creation.

(my riff on the Westminster shorter catechism)

Bonhoeffer: Die Nachfolge und das Kreuz Die Nachfolge und das Kreuz. „Und er hob an, sie zu lehren: Des Menschen Sohn muß viel leiden und ver-worfen werden von den Ältesten und Hohenpriestern und Schriftgelehrten und getötet werden und über...

I could quote the whole thing. It's so good. Especially in these times. But alas, I won't try to rewrite the whole internet here.

www.evangelischer-glaube.de/bonhoeffer-n...

"Carrying the cross proved to them the only way to overcome suffering. But this applies to all who follow Christ, because it applied to Christ himself."

"...the indescribable certainty of his closeness and fellowship. Thus, in the midst of the most terrible torment they endured for their Lord's sake, they were granted the supreme joy and blessedness of his fellowship.

"Following after is a commitment to the suffering Christ. Therefore, the suffering of Christians is nothing strange. Rather, it is pure grace and joy. The acts of the Church's first martyrs testify that Christ transfigured the moment of supreme suffering for his followers through...

"...the cross places every follower in the community of forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins is the Christ-commanded suffering of the disciple. It is imposed on all Christians.

"The burden of my brother, which I have to bear, is not merely his outward fate, his nature, and his disposition, but it is, in the truest sense, his sin. I cannot bear it except by forgiving him, in the power of the cross of Christ, of which I have become a partaker. Thus, Jesus' call to bear...

"...by forgiving them. The Christian becomes a burden bearer—bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). As Christ bears our burden, so we should bear the burdens of our brothers; the law of Christ that must be fulfilled is the carrying of the cross.

"...of the city gates like a scapegoat. Thus, the Christian becomes the bearer of sin and guilt for other people. He would collapse under it if he were not himself borne by the One who bore all sins. But in this way, in the power of Christ's suffering, he can overcome the sins that fall upon him...

"...of reconciliation, but because Christ suffered for the sin of the world, because all the burden of guilt fell upon him, and because Jesus Christ bestows the fruit of his suffering upon his followers, temptation and sin also fall upon the disciple, covering him with shame and casting him out...

"...The wounds that are inflicted here and the scars that a Christian bears from this struggle are living signs of the fellowship of the cross with Jesus. But there is another suffering and another dishonor that no Christian is spared. It is true that Christ's own suffering alone is the suffering...

"Whether we have to leave home and work with the first disciples in order to follow him, or whether we go out of the monastery into the secular profession with Luther, the one death awaits us in both, the death of Jesus Christ, the death of our old people by the call of Jesus."

"Whoever enters into discipleship gives himself into the death of Jesus, he puts his life in death, this has been the case from the beginning; the cross is not the terrible end of a pious, happy life, but it stands at the beginning of fellowship with Jesus Christ. Every call of Christ leads to death

I really love Die Nachfolge und Das Kreuz by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on this topic.