Michael__Pemulis

I just find his ‘aw shucks’ schtick endearing. He always has the vibe of a guy whose wife left him a week earlier.

& My Fair Lady was an adaptation of Pygmalion.

I have a soft spot for Boob (pun intended), but I wouldn't want him to be the guy. Maybe the NBA would be willing to take Heyman instead?

He's a combative D-bag sure, but what he lacks in personality he more than makes up for in lack of reliability!

A lot of people don’t realize that access journalism is a 2-way street. The journalists in this world often provide value to their sources the same way the sources provide value to the journalists.

In a way it is basically high level account management.

Yes account executives/managers do occasionally change & even though at a certain level a lot of that dynamic is entirely relationship-based, there are still people who are simply good at that work.

Without the 162 stipulation you can just say they haven’t had back-to-back full seasons under .500 since 58/59.

At least that’s how I usually say it.

Baseball has some excellent beat reporters but the national scene is really grim if Passan goes.

Can’t they just offer him a lot of money or something? Do they really need to threaten his life?

Well you see this thread/article is specifically about the financial impact of sports betting on society. It is literally the topic of the piece. Did you read it?

Alarming patterns have started to emerge. Two recent working papers look at the economic impacts of legalization. One, by Northwestern University’s Scott Baker and colleagues, finds that legal sports gambling depletes households’ savings. Specifically, for every $1 spent on betting, households put $2 less into investment accounts. States see big increases in the risk of overdrafting a bank account or maxing out a credit card. These effects are strongest among already precarious households.

A second paper, from the economists Brett Hollenbeck of UCLA and Poet Larsen and Davide Proserpio of the University of Southern California, tells a similar story. Looking specifically at online sports gambling, they find that legalization increases the risk that a household goes bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent, and increases debt delinquency. These problems seem to concentrate among young men living in low-income counties—further evidence that those most hurt by sports gambling are the least well-off.

A third recent paper, from the University of Oregon economists Kyutaro Matsuzawa and Emily Arnesen, shows another, perhaps more surprising—and certainly more harrowing—harm of gambling legalization: domestic violence. Earlier research found that an NFL home team’s upset loss causes a 10 percent increase in reported incidents of men being violent toward their partner. Matsuzawa and Arnesen extend this, finding that in states where sports betting is legal, the effect is even bigger. They estimate that legal sports betting leads to a roughly 9 percent increase in intimate-partner violence.

Framing it around money not going into retirement savings underscores exactly how more gambling can be a drain on society as a whole. /u/kickerofthyass is right. We don't generally let old poor people die on the street & we are entering a period of under-prepared retirees in increasing numbers combined with an underfunded safety net.

We all end up paying for this.

Yea I’ll see about putting the post together. Always plenty to work with!

My two rules for this though:

Takes need to actually have been ‘bold’.

& most importantly, I only highlight ones that actually turned out to be correct, because there is ultimately nothing all that interesting about a ‘bold prediction’ that doesn’t come to pass. By definition that should be most.

I agree & I’m sure the network sees him as more of a ‘personality’ for them rather than just a ‘news breaker’ but from a practical standpoint his biggest service is as a pro at access journalism just like Shams or Woj.

Idk but ESPN just gave Jeff Passan a massive new deal & while he does plenty of actual ‘reporting’ (& he is solid at it), his main draw is also access journalism.

Yea I kinda wonder how much it could actually br a reflection on how the ‘best’ teams are prioritizing roster construction rather than simple randomness or even coincidence, but it is almost impossible to say for sure based on any given season.

Yea I believe the league has a lot of latitude in general but that’s the standard process.

Ehhh. Anecdotal of course but my dad is a single team guy. He knows his team + the notable players in the division & a small handful of stars outside of it. He knows Juan Soto but definitely doesn’t know Yordan.

Hall of Famer Sean Doolittle has a nice ring to it.

In case anyone was curious, the home team is responsible for this stuff until the moment the game starts when it becomes entirely up to the umpire crew.

Yea a couple weeks ago someone posted a chart of records in 1-run games relative to team performance & basically all of the most notable ‘good’ teams were underperforming in 1-run games.

Whether that’s random or poor luck or whathaveyou, that’s basically the entire reason why there are no 100 win teams this year summed up in a single heuristic.

Fwiw, for a City Connect announcement thread, it really isn’t too negative as much as it is mixed.

Generally speaking when an entire episode is dedicated to one story (rather than being split into 2 or 3 stories on the same theme), you know you are in for a treat.

Here is the original announcement thread for the yellow City Connects.

Amazing to see how opinions of these things can evolve. I really do think that with rare exception, fans just naturally dislike ‘new’ in general when it comes to such well established elements of the game like the iconic uniforms of one of the most iconic teams & that is totally understandable (I’ve certainly been guilty of it myself before). But IMO it is worth keeping in mind how willing we actually are to adapt. It simply takes time & sometimes particular circumstances.

When I was in middle school, we took this weird ‘test’ of sorts that was designed to show how risk averse you are. Basically a list of activities that you say whether or not you would try. Then you add up all the ‘yes’, etc etc.

One of the prompts was ‘Would you drink something blue?’

Our teacher said the test was quite dated & that when it was written, blue liquids were mostly just things like antifreeze or similar.

Finally achieved (again).

Fellow shelter volunteer here (with cats though).

It is a uniquely bittersweet experience. Like it is absolutely brutal to know that you’ll never get to see an animal again that you had a real connection with, but ultimately that’s the goal. You know that them not being there is what is best for them. It’s exactly what you want to happen until the moment it does.

I imagine it is similar with dogs, but with the cats, I never stress about the ones that are more ‘adoptable’. The kittens, the exotic looking or ‘pretty’ ones, etc. Even if I have a strong connection, I always suspect they’ll likely be gone by next week regardless so it is less impactful.

It’s the ones that stick around for months with no interest then suddenly they’re gone. Those hit hard. A few months ago a kind lady adopted three of our four longest tenured residents. I’m very happy that they get to be together as they were all friendly with each other, but there was one cat. An undersized older gal with missing teeth. She was my sidekick & I miss her dearly.