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Who is this? You know who it is. (Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images) | Getty Images
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Time: 6:10 Central
Weather: Partly sunny, 59°
Opponent’s SB site: Over The Monster
TV: Twins TV. Radio: To be a BoSox broadcaster, do you have to have that stereotypical accent? I’m asking, I do not know
The Red Sox have not had the start they hoped for, at 22-27. Why? Is God finally sick of Red Sox fans?
No ruling that out, but Keagan Stiefel at OTM has a more prosaic answer; the Sox just aren’t hitting. As of Monday they were 27th in total bases, and 29th in both OPS and homers. That’s partially some unfortunate roster moves, that’s partially some guys being less effective than usual. But the team still has a decent pitching staff, so maybe they just need the bats to “come around.” Facing three pitchers not named Joe Ryan this weekend is a good opportunity to do just that. And, BTW, as of Monday, BRef still had the team at a 36.7% chance to make the postseason; they had the Twins at 8.0%.
Their starter today is 6’6” Payton Tolle, still considered a rookie after appearing in a few games late last season. He throws upwards of 96 MPH with a hard sinker, cutter, curve and change; right now his speedy stuff is his best. His profile pic looks freakishly like Nick Offerman.
After last week I highlighted a The Guardian story about a Wisconsin man who Got Bit By Thousands Of Snakes On Purpose, here’s a The Guardian story about a Wisconsin man who’s trying to do something less wacky. Journalist/comedian Charlie Berens is trying to organize communities to push back against massive government giveaways to AI datacenter projects.
The story’s well worth reading, even if it should be three times longer with a ton more detail. (It should be a ProPublica story, in other words.) Do you know what TIF (tax-increment financing) is? I do, but only because I’ve been following Neil deMause’s reporting on stadium subsidies for years; this article is not clear about it. (TIF is, essentially, a scheme where companies are given huge subsidies on the expected economic growth their projects will deliver to a community. Most of the time, they don’t deliver as hoped, or anywhere even close.)
In any case, I wish Mr. Berens and the people trying to resist this stuff the best of luck. I hate many, many things about our world, but if you forced me to narrow it to a top four or five, AI would be right up there. I hate it with pure fury. I hate it all the more because many people love it. Why? Because they are stupid morons. Seriously, if anybody you know likes AI, don’t trust that person to feed your fish when you’re on vacation, much less watch your dog. They are dangerously dumb.
To wit, deMause sharedthis horrible website with hideous AI-generated images of what every MLB team’s stadium should look like if it represented the TEAM’S SOUL. Here’s their ideal Twins stadium:
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I guess I’m stealing this image without our site paying that site anything to use it. Oh No! Except that all of AI steals the work of artists and writers and doesn’t pay them anything.
Forget how all the relative sizes of humans are deeply wrong, the bridge is angled backwards (and there aren’t any other bridges), there’s no bullpens, the trees are massively f***ed up, etc. Ignore these things. (It’s what deMause calls “vaportecture.”) Just pay attention to how stupidly ugly this is.
I guarantee you more than 50% of sports team owners think images like this are nifty and wonder “how can I get public financing for an awesome stadium like that!”
And a non-zero percentage of them will get public money for this bullhonky, too. Sigh.
In unrelated news, I was recently trying to look up an old tawnyfroggy post about Big Ed Delahanty recently, for another conversation I was having with another person, not baseball-related. I found the post, here it is. If you don’t know who Big Ed Delahanty was, he was a old-timey (pre-Ruth) baseball slugger who also drank too much, and at one point fell (jumped?) off a train bridge into the middle of the Niagara River about two minutes upstream from the falls. It didn’t end well for Big Ed.
(When I have conversations with friends & associates, I randomly refer to Weird Internet S**t I remember about dead baseball players or 1930s movies nobody has seen, alright? It’s how I do.)
Anyhoo, the thing that struck me about tawny’s post is it’s still on this site… but the byline is gone. It’s by “blank.”
I suppose that’s the fate of all of us who write on the InterWebs, in the end, isn’t it? To be a “by: blank.”
But maybe a phrase or two we use will be recycled in AI! Immortality right there, baby.
And if you clicked on this post wanting Nick Punto content because of the homepage image, here ya go.
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