In the latest article by Katie Woo regarding MLB winter meetings and the St. Louis Cardinals, the president of baseball operations, John Mozeliak, said this:

We have every intention of fielding a good baseball team. It’s going to have a different profile, but we still have a lot of belief that some of our younger players will take that next step forward. We’re excited about what we have. Now, it is Dec. 5, and things can happen and things can change. But we’re still going into (next season) with optimism that it’ll be a fun baseball team to watch.

This is unintentionally one of the funniest, tone-deaf things I’ve ever read. It begs the question, “Does Mo really think Cardinals fans are stupid?”

Look, I get it. He has to say something to try and get people to come to the games. I mean, they aren’t going to come to the games, especially when they are double digits out of first place in the friggin' National League Central. It won’t be a fun baseball team to watch. It just won’t be.

Maybe I’ll eat those words and this collection of youngsters Major League the hell out of the season. I doubt it.

Here’s a playlist of the 100 most streamed songs on Spotify.

The current top pick is The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” followed by Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Love.” I could not pick out Lewis Capaldi in a lineup.

There isn’t a rock song until “Bohemian Rhapsody” at 38.

Laura Theisen –

I thought everyone knew The Popcorn Trick. But it has recently come to my attention that some people were unaware of The Popcorn Trick. Thus, I will explain The Popcorn Trick.

1. Acquire popcorn at a movie theater.
2. Acquire a straw.
3. Stick the straw in the popcorn.
4. Go to the self-serve butter machine
5. Position the popcorn so the butter from the machine enters the straw.
6. Keep that popcorn butter button pressed for as long as you want. Move the straw up and down a little if you feel like it.
7. Enjoy a bag of popcorn that will not be dry. The pieces at the bottom of the bag will be buttery as hell.

Of course, The Popcorn Trick only works at theaters with self-serve butter machines, which favors multiplexes more than indie joints.

.@Ken_Rosenthal weighs in on the rumored Golden Bat rule:

"My instinct is - it's not baseball" pic.twitter.com/ATKvMgcejN

— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) December 3, 2024

Ken Rosenthal is absolutely correct. It is not baseball. In fact, this idea pisses me off more than the stupid ghost runner at second shit.

When does Rob Manfred, who apparently dislikes baseball, find new employment?

So good. Way better than the original. I’d love to hear a wholly reimagined Crazy Nights album done in this style.

Here’s another version with a piano and more of the original guitars. He’s really talented.

Will Leitch, writing at his Medium page, has a few thoughts on AI, algorithms, and making decisions.

The ability to organize your own thoughts — either through writing them down, or just simple, straightforward cognitive processing — is fundamental to being a person. It is what makes us who we are. The notion that someone would want to outsource this to a robot — or, worse, to allow a corporation to define it for them so that corporation may more efficiently sell you shit — deprives us of the very point of being a human being in the first place. It’s not about being a good writer, or even a good person. It’s about having your thoughts and beliefs and emotions be your own. It’s about having control of your own life.

That, to me, is what I find most confusing as I get older, my sitting-at-the-breakfast-table-and-grousing-”the whole world’s going straight to hell” moment:

https://youtu.be/6Ncnpe6p93E

It’s not that people are making choices that are different than the ones I would make, or that people are somehow worse than they were before, or even that we’re staring at our phones too much in the first place. I use many of these services myself, after all. It’s that it has become commonplace, even almost trendy, to opt out of decision making entirely. We let Spotify tell us what music we like. We let Amazon tell us what we want to buy. We let ChatGPT tell us how to express ourselves, or even how to construct thoughts in the first place. We let YouTube, Netflix and TikTok algorithms tell us what we want to watch. We let our cars drive us around. We all have infinite options, the opportunity to make the world whatever we want it be, to discover who we are and what we might have to offer this life and the people in it, and it is becoming increasingly clear that we are collectively deciding to beg out of it entirely. We had the opportunity to use technology and connectivity as a way to elevate ourselves, to evolve into something bigger, to discover our best selves. We have instead ceded everything. We have become a Trad Wife to technology.

I don’t know how to fix this, and, more to the point, I’m not sure people even want to. Life is hard, you know? It’s exhausting to be alive. It’s easier, even comforting, sometimes, to let someone else take the wheel. But, at the (very real) risk of sounding hectoring or helplessly lame, we only get to do this once, people. This is the sole life you get to live. Maybe we should try to actually live it? Because one thing is clear: These tech companies, their algorithms, their ravenous need to shove us away from a life that belongs to us … they’re driving us into a ditch.

Laura Olin –

You don’t actually have to stay on Twitter.

Even at the height of its influence, it was strategically only useful for a couple real reasons: because reporters were obsessed with it, and because it played some role in creating culture. The first is increasingly less true, and the second is largely less true.

Is Twitter a good persuasion tool? No. The people you need to reach for that reason probably never used it in the first place.

Is Twitter a good amplification or framing tool? No. Musk’s algorithm elevates views he likes and demotes those he doesn’t.

Is Twitter a place for creating culture? No, unless you’re a Nazi.

Is Twitter a good organizing tool? No. It’s filled with bots, not secure, it demotes links, and few people you’d organize with still use it.

Is Twitter simply any fun to be on? No, especially if you’re not a white man and regularly get rape and death threats.

A key fact: Not many people used Twitter in the first place. What mattered was WHO used it. The people who mattered are now largely gone or drowned out by the tidal wave of shit.

Overall: There are many better tools to persuade people with, organize with, frame arguments with, and have fun with.

Twitter’s gone, and now that Trump won again with Musk’s help, it’s gone forever. Let it go.

No one outside the Beltway or Elon Musk's Right-Wing Dutch Oven™ cares about Biden's pardon. Why would they? For almost a decade, conservatives have shrugged at every one of Trump's scandals, convictions, and fuck-ups. Nothing matters!

— John DeVore (@JohnDeVore) December 2, 2024

Every director should have the "Spike Lee joint" thing

• A Danny Boyle gem
• A Christopher Nolan unit
• An M Night Shyamalan disappointment
  — Mat™️ (@futurekid.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 7:08 AM

Patrick Rhone –

You do the work because the work is worth doing. There may be many reasons why doing the work to get something or somewhere you want wont get you the results you were hoping for. But, this is not a reason for not doing the work. The work is worth doing because it makes you smarter. The work is worth doing because it gives you experience. The work is worth doing so that not doing the work is not a reason you fall short of the goal.

There will be insurmountable challenges to meeting many of your goals in life. Try anyway. Try because the challenge is worth meeting. Try because it may make the next opportunity surmountable. Try because it will make you better and smarter and stronger. You may fall short for many reasons, don’t let the work be one of them.

The work is how you grow and that makes the work worth doing every time.

Sigh.

Purdue fired head coach Ryan Walters on Sunday afternoon.

I have no ill will toward Coach Walters. He left Illinois, the program that helped make him a head coaching prospect, on terrible terms, and I doubt he’ll be a head coach at the D1 level ever again.

In my opinion, this shot and this one from The Godfather focused on Michael’s eyes are two of the best shots ever committed to film.

They just so happen to be in my two favorite movies of all time.

Seth Godin –

It’s a way to offer connection or acknowledgment.

It’s a recognition of feedback and the time it took someone to consider us.

We can use it after we share something important, or someone shares with us.

More than the end of an exchange, it can be the beginning of a relationship.

“Thank you” helps someone feel seen and understood.

It reminds us that we’re not alone.

Most of all, it’s a chance to be kind.

Seth Werkheiser –

Instead of posting something on social media tonight, email an old acquaintance. Text someone a photo or link. Tell them about a book you’re reading. Send an email to someone you admire. Ask someone how they’re doing. Write a letter. Call your bestie.

In getting away from the algorithms and the walled garden of social media DMs, we return to a wide open world of possibilities.

Dave Winer –

Analogously, Trump is Kennedy and Biden/Harris is Nixon.

And the social web is, in 2024, what TV was in 1960.

Trump has mastered the new medium. To a large extent, he created the new medium, and the resulting network formed around him.

So when Carville says he wants to figure out how to communicate the way Trump did, he can’t because our way doesn’t work in his universe. We have to create our own.

Analogously Nixon might have said about TV in 1959 – how can we get into that? If you have to ask you can’t get there. You have to fit like a hand in a glove, like Kennedy or Trump.

The next Democratic candidate to win the presidency will have to be a media creator. They must create a medium that’s perfectly adapted to the communication interests of the 50 percent of the electorate that voted for Harris and the other 20 percent who would if they just knew who she was.

Look at the picture of Kennedy and Nixon. Did we elect Kennedy over Nixon because he had better policy? No. We elected him because he has better hair. Because on TV what counts is your hair. A friend who was a TV news person told me that.

So if you want to win, create an internet farm system. A network with everyone who wants to run for office nationwide on the Democratic ticket. And let’s see how they work in the new medium. We get to know them like we knew Archie Bunker. And let’s get some people we get to know who also tend to tell the truth (though they can screw up and we’ll forgive them, remember the gotchas are over).

Jim Abrahams, a film director and writer behind hit slapstick comedies like Airplane!, Hot Shots!, the Naked Gun series, and more, died Tuesday, his son Joseph confirmed to Variety. He was 80.