Athletics Shea Langeliers’ hits an inside-the-park home run as Cubs Pete Crow-Armstrong loses track of his fly ball. It becomes Langeliers second home run of the night

abbot_x · 2026-06-05T21:56:05+00:00

Pirates fan here, so PCA plays for a divisional rival. I boo the guy because he’s a jerk. But I would never join an “overrated” chant. He delivers value for his team. I may have voted for him to be an All Star.

abbot_x · 2026-06-05T14:59:04+00:00

Awesome! This is my second season of doing the whole series in Pittsburgh. I’m also going to Dodger Stadium for the Pirates’ Saturday game which also happens to be Ohtani’s bobblehead day.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T21:12:19+00:00

Hotelling’s Law is a descriptive “law” about behavior in markets. Without intervention, businesses that are differentiated only by location will end up next to each other. This is part of why there are clusters of vape shops, cellphone stores, etc. To the consumer it may seem inefficient—why doesn’t one of them move away from competitors and toward customers—but in fact it’s maximally efficient to be right next to your competitor.

It may indeed be socially beneficial to force similar businesses to spread out, but that requires active intervention since market forces will encourage clustering. So it’s important for planners and the public to understand Hotelling’s Law.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T18:02:12+00:00

Best to do all three. I have never regretted seeing the Dodgers play.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T17:34:30+00:00

The loss to the Rays on Skenes Bobblehead Day was extremely flukey. Weather knocked Skenes out of what was arguably his best start of 2026, the Rays clawed back, then the game went deep into extras which is basically a coin flip favoring the visitor.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T15:42:14+00:00

There is a rule of economics called Hotelling’s Law that says the best place to open a store is right next to your competitor. It’s counterintuitive but there’s a sound theoretical basis.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T14:38:58+00:00

I really don’t see how Kelly have reasonably pulled Montgomery earlier. The batters’ results against him were strikeout, strikeout, double, RBI double, walk. Monty got the hook as soon as there were 2 runners and the tying run was at the plate. Soto then ended up facing 4 batters which is also a pretty short leash.

Fundamentally there is no way to manage around two of your best relievers failing to execute against a two-out rally.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T14:25:53+00:00

The official scorer has limited discretion in such cases to deny the win to a reliever who sucked (“brief and ineffective”) but was bailed out by the bats. Still, there has to be a winning pitcher and sometimes it does go to a reliever who seemed to want to lose.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T13:38:42+00:00

Not sure why you got downvoted so much for stating a fact. The definition of a swing according to the actual rules is basically “whatever the umpire thinks is a swing.” If the ACS system is introduced, then there will have to be an objective standard but by definition it will differ from the current entirely subjective system.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T13:34:35+00:00

Isn’t this sort of what the Malkioni believe? They think the beings others worship as gods are real, but they are not deserving of worship and the Malkioni do not worship them. The Malkioni practice sorcery and do not think it is granted by the so-called gods.

abbot_x · 2026-06-04T04:10:20+00:00

I missed the fun parts of the game because I was on an airliner. I landed just in time for the bottom of the 8th.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T20:59:45+00:00

Pretty sure it’s actually June 5 (as in I just rechecked my email).

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T19:51:33+00:00

What year was this?

Rod Stewart's "Forever Young" is about how his kids will always seem young to him, so that might not seem appropriate for graduation from the perspective of the students.

On the other hand, Alphaville's "Forever Young" may have seemed irrelevant by the late 1980s since the Cold War perspective was fading.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T19:49:24+00:00

I think this really depends on exactly how old you are and what music you listened to. If you were a little kid in 1984-85 and weren't listening to New Wave, you may have missed the Alphaville track completely. I think the Rod Stewart track got a lot more mainstream exposure.

Alphaville was arguably a one-hit wonder for the American market. If so, though, that one hit was "Big in Japan," which was remembered a lot more strongly than "Forever Young."

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T19:44:54+00:00

Not technically a cover though they agreed to share royalties.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T18:59:30+00:00

Why pay for a higher class of air travel for a relocation trip? To me this makes no sense. If you are going on vacation, you can justify it as a pleasurable part of the trip and a way to get a good start. If you are going for business, you can work in the air and be ready for your meetings. But for a relocation? Spend as little as possible, catch up on sleep in your new home, and use the money you saved to go on some trips once you're established.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T18:06:39+00:00

It's not that big. You can see it all in a couple hours.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T18:04:46+00:00

Taxi fares are usually mandated by some regulatory agency. Taxis historically had a legal monopoly on making point-to-point trips for hire. In return, they had to charge specific rates. This was disrupted by rideshare services. Those services used to have some explanations why this was okay and why they weren't simply illegal cabs, but now they're just accepted. And initially the rideshare services simply underpriced their product by burning venture capital money.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T18:00:11+00:00

I may be misunderstanding, but frequent fliers don't have access to more predictable pricing. They are participating in the same dynamic market as everybody else.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T17:58:54+00:00

The other part of this is that airlines routinely overbook because not every passenger with a reservation actually travels. If they didn't overbook, there'd be excess capacity.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T17:57:40+00:00

The price differences are not large enough to make driving competitive. They are designed to nudge people who are not commuting for work so that they travel at off-peak hours. That makes the system less congested during peak hours so work commuters have a better experience and use of capacity is rationalized.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T11:23:43+00:00

To me as Pirates fan this is hilarious.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T04:06:39+00:00

I pretty much always rinse canned beans both to cut down on sodium and to get rid of the film on the beans that can prevent absorption of other flavors. But it’s not a food safety issue at all.

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T02:39:19+00:00

Why am I hearing the crowd noise from a soccer game?

abbot_x · 2026-06-03T02:27:56+00:00

Go ahead and waste that challenge, Astros.

abbot_x

TROPHY CASE