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Snake Diggity

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Everything posted by Snake Diggity

  1. I wasn’t making a prediction. I agree the GOP is fucked. It’s Trump’s/Putin’s party.
  2. Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, or Chris Sununu.
  3. I’m not talking about voting. I’m mostly talking about funding. Find some kind of Hulk Hogan crossed with David Duke crossed with Chris Kyle crossed with Elon Musk type dude and give him enough money to take 10% of Trumps primary votes from the far right. Then, if you have the right moderate candidate you have an actual chance.
  4. Dems and moderate Republicans need to find and fund a viable nut job to outflank Trump in the GOP primary. Then they need to coalesce around a moderate candidate (DeSantis ain’t it). If they don’t get somebody to draw some of the crazies away from Trump then he has already won.
  5. Over on the Rays and Orioles.
  6. There are 3 moves I wish the Astros had made this offseaon that they didn’t make: sign Omar Narvaez, sign Andrew Heaney, and trade Luis Garcia for 1-2 elite prospects to restock the farm system. That would have made their offseason an A+. As it is, they made a very good signing in Abreu, a fine signing in Brantley, extended one of the highest upside young SP in the league, and are entering the season as the odds on favorite to return to the ALCS, with no glaring roster holes, an improving farm system, and a good amount of payroll flexibility. That can’t be worse than a B grade.
  7. Who do you think he’s gonna get primaried by, someone better?!
  8. Trump’s comment on Haley’s announcement was something like “she loved me and said she’d never run against me but then changed her mind so I told her ‘good luck’, and I wish her the best.” Hard to believe she didn’t get his blessing and there isn’t some sort of deal in place. Who knows if it’s for her to be his VP pick and who knows if he will end up honoring it. But there’s no way his response to her announcement would be that positive if they didn’t have some kind of deal.
  9. Who spied on your campaign? No one. Who stuffed the ballot boxes? Sane, legal voters whom you scared into action. Who paid off the FBI? No one, although you tried.
  10. Conspiracy theory: Haley negotiated to enter the field to ensure the GOP “moderates” cannot rally around DeSantis in exchange for being Trump’s VP. She will play moderate throughout her short time in the primary (through SC) while being very careful not to appear opposed to Trump and going hard after Meatball Ron. Trump probably actually thinks he can literally fuck her after they win. I believe that if this weren’t the deal Trump would have already released a statement condemning her as a traitor replete with a nickname (“Sikhy Nikki”?)
  11. Transitioning roles for pitchers comes with risk. Dudes change their pitch mix and effort level based on role and there’s always the chance doing that fucks them up. If Houston only had 4-5 viable SP I would be a lot more open to it. Abreu’s upside is that of a healthy McCullers. He’s not going to be a playoff ace, but he could be a viable #2 starter worth $25-30M/yr. That would be awesome but I don’t think the odds of that outcome are high enough to justify taking him out of his established role as a playoff-closer-level reliever.
  12. They have 6 SP lined up plus Whitley and Bielak and a few other interesting arms in AAA. Abreu was utterly dominant out of the pen last season. Not worth the risk of derailing him to try to get greedy.
  13. The Rangers seem like they’re only one player away from making the playoffs. Why they weren’t more proactive about upgrading their OF is beyond me. They spent all that money on middle IF last season then dumped a fortune into their rotation, and they didn’t have enough to patch LF with Mitch Haniger or Joey Gallo or Michael Conforto? That said I think Young has made several good moves this offseason and this will be a very competitive team. Heaney, Duffy, and Eovaldi are 3 of the potential best value pitching signings of the offseason.
  14. That looks very close to what I would expect. Unfortunately I do not consider that a very team friendly deal. Pretty much paying market rate for those free agent years which are into his mid 30s.
  15. From your keyboard to god’s will.
  16. Black, Williams, Umeozulu, Hudson, and Simmons are the 5 in-state must-gets from this class. If Texas gets 3 of those 5 it is likely a good year.
  17. Meatball Ron is fucking hilarious. Especially considering it is likely that Trump has busted his ass to lose a bunch of weight JUST so he can use it without looking stupid. I mean, all that WOULD be hilarious, if it were an episode of The Office involving Michael Scott and Dwight, instead of the 2 men most likely to be the 2024 GOP nominee for POTUS.
  18. What do you think happens when it becomes clear that Russia will be defeated? Putin just says “bummer, ok fall back” and everybody just accepts peace? Unless you think Putin will be taken out by rational, western-friendly Russians before then, how do you suppose Putin reacts to his ultimate defeat?
  19. It’s impossible for me to see this ending without it escalating. There is no way Russia will ever agree to a negotiated peace that doesn’t include them keeping Donbas/Crimea and there’s no way Ukraine/NATO will agree to giving up Donbas. NATO is either going to eventually abandon Ukraine which means much higher odds of conflict with Russia later since there’s very little chance Russia stops at Ukraine for good, or NATO is going to put Russia into submission which means very high likelihood of nuclear exchange. This is bad.
  20. Handicapping odds of each player signing an extension before 2023 opening day: Tucker 10% Valdez 12% Altuve 12% Bregman 8% Garcia 8% B Abreu 15% Pena 5% Brown 5% Y Diaz 8% McCormick 5% Leon 1% Lee 1% Urquidy 1% Stanek 5% Maton 2% Others 2%
  21. Figuring out which societal changes to make to entice 1st world women to want to have more children is very very difficult. The bottom line is that children require a massive investment of time, energy, and money. Society can probably address the money part, but there’s really nothing that I can think of to address the time/energy part. Taking away the requirement for parents to actually spend time and energy on their kids kind of defeats the purpose of having them at all. And I cannot envision any scenario where the population depends on some kind of state-run foster-care-for-all system. I wonder how a significant reduction in working hours for ALL people would impact the birth rate. Would shifting to a standard 1500 hour work year, combined with financial assistance for parents (free childcare and healthcare and addl tax breaks) do it? If women (and men) had more “free time” would they be inclined to have more kids?
  22. She couldn’t remember the melody, much less the words.
  23. A lot of great discussion in this thread in the last few pages. I think a big part of birth rate decline is that raising children relative to expectations has become exponentially more expensive/difficult than in the past. It may not actually be more of a sacrifice to raise kids in the world today than in the 70s, but I think people certainly feel like it is. Anecdotally, my experience as a parent thus far (currently have a 7 yo and 4 yo) has been that the sacrifice in freedom and the intensity of pressure to be a good parent has been a lot worse than expected; I am relatively well-off, so the financial burden hasn't stung much, although shelling out $3000/mo for daycare didn't feel good. Anyway, I don't think I'm actually having a harder time raising my kids than my parents did, but it certainly feels like I am; that influenced our decision to stop at 2, and it certainly influences how I talk about the experience of having children to people who have not yet had children. I think that summarizes the cause of the drop in birth rate in the 1st world over the last 30 years. To change that, you have to change the perception of the experience of having children. My solution to address that would be similar to ideas that have been cited many times in this thread: paid parental leave (2 years per guardian per kid), free daycare (free starting at age 2), universal Pre-k, universal healthcare, and significant tax incentives for people having 3+ kids. I don't think that alone would get 1st world birth rates above 2.1, but it would make a difference. Many first world countries (primarily the US, Canada, western Europe, and Australia) can likely bridge the gap in the short term with immigration and by extending the working age. Longer term, increases in worker productivity is the answer. If robotics and software can make a 2040 worker as productive as 3 2020 workers, then the economy and standard of living will be better off. But obviously if there is a net decline in population, eventually the economy and standard of living won't matter (unless we cure aging/death). I personally am very optimistic on this issue. I think things will be done to address the problem. I do think Russia and China are proper fucked and that is risky for the world, but I think that risk will have either turned into reality or been mitigated within the next 10 years. For now I would predict the best years for humanity lie ahead and would guess world population stabilizes around 12 billion, accompanied by massive increases in standards of living worldwide. I for one really like the idea that we might finally be forced to treat every young person as the tremendously precious resource they are.
  24. Oh. Hahaha ok I get it now. I mean, what you said is true, but I don’t feel like knowing the songs “Strawberry Fields” and “Scarborough Fair” automatically dates me; both were well before my time. But yes, she is stuck with my increasingly old ballsack.
  25. Are you talking to me?
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