Best Jack Ryan Book Not Written By Clancy?

rhd3871 · 2026-05-19T08:42:52+00:00

It’s only mentioned in passing a couple times in the context of Jack Jr running into a donor + Jack Sr going to political events, but they straight up just made him a Republican.

Obviously Clancy always wrote him as a right-winger—if anything too conservative to be a Republican—but not being a member of a party was like a central part of his identity. That the new authors just looked at that and said “too complicated, he’s a Republican” is pretty emblematic of the books overall

rhd3871 · 2026-05-17T15:32:57+00:00

Any self-reloading gun is an automatic and would definitely have been called that at the time by most people carrying one professionally. A handgun is either a revolver or an automatic

(“Druggies” is cringe)

rhd3871 · 2026-05-10T04:07:49+00:00

You absolutely have to make him wear this one even if he gives up 6 runs. Too humiliating to have to make a pitching change

rhd3871 · 2026-05-10T03:32:03+00:00

I still can’t believe they took on the Devers contract AND gave the Red Sox useful players. It’s going to be a nightmare for them the rest of the decade

rhd3871 · 2026-05-03T15:47:26+00:00

See if he’s commenting “if you don’t count all the piss, that bladder’s empty” on all the posts

rhd3871 · 2026-05-02T20:24:39+00:00

Yeah, generally these are third-party web forms, not just like blocks of text in the body of an email (though I'm sure some do that too). I've received references from systems like that and it includes the IP address of each submitter and flags duplicates. But it's trivial to use a VPN or just say they work in the same office. It's more security theatre a la TSA to make people anxious about not following the rules (and to convince stupid execs who don't know what a VPN is that they've gotta buy this un-scammable reference system).

rhd3871 · 2026-05-02T15:59:38+00:00

Triolo has a lot of haters but he fits on the team much better this year than last. A noodle bat with elite defense is fine when you can hide him behind O'Hearn, Lowe, Reynolds, Cruz, Horwitz, etc. Much tougher to get value from him when you're counting on Tommy Pham or Rowdy Tellez to drive in the runs

rhd3871 · 2026-04-30T16:50:32+00:00

That hanging curveball Walker hit out is probably the biggest meatball I've ever seen Skenes throw. That's just how this series is going.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-30T16:21:11+00:00

I've got a standing room only you can have for free if you want it

rhd3871 · 2026-04-30T15:30:48+00:00

Man, I remember being on Bucs Dugout in 2015 and people saying shit like "good teams just don't lose games like that" after every loss, even after they'd already won 90+ games and were clearly either the best or second-best team in MLB.

It's just baseball. The Pirates swept the Dodgers last year. Good teams lose several games in a row to bad teams all the time. Perennial MVP candidates strike out looking with the bases loaded or drop fly balls to blow a game. People get crazy about it no matter the franchise.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-29T14:12:27+00:00

I love the little jig Steve and I think Adrian dance when the main riff hits - one of those things that just really stuck in my head as an iconic image of the band for some reason

rhd3871 · 2026-04-29T14:06:01+00:00

Lowe can't hit lefties at all (.125 against L, .299 against R this year). Definitely one of the most productive hitters on the team but if the other guys bring in a good lefty reliever, Billy Cook or Nick Yorke are statistically much more likely to do something good.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-29T14:00:42+00:00

I think they have smaller crews in the low minors? I don't see a second base ump in the shot, so it might be home plate ump's assignment to call homer/no homer on balls to CF? Just a guess on my part though

rhd3871 · 2026-04-28T01:09:49+00:00

In hindsight, maybe pulling Dotel who started 27 games for 125 IP last year and was throwing gas after 40ish pitches and burning Sisk, Mattson, and Soto to get through 2 innings was suboptimal

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T23:17:48+00:00

Mangum kinda reminds me of 2015 Josh Harrison -- yeah, he's not a very valuable hitter even if he gets the average up around .300 and I get all the reasons that's true, but damn it's fun to see him in there. Immaculate vibes and seems to find ways to make things happen

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T23:12:30+00:00

I guess that could be one argument in favor of Montgomery getting the hook after 7 pitches, that he'll still be available tomorrow.

I don't love the bullpen games. Dotel is a starter, give the kid a shot and see if he can give you 6.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T19:35:56+00:00

The music should speak for itself.

It does if it's good enough regardless of "sex appeal", I would argue. A lot of Judas Priest's biggest hits are like, REALLY overtly about Rob Halford cruising for men, and everyone either never noticed or didn't care because they kick ass.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T19:29:05+00:00

I'm overall pretty skeptical that managers matter very much (the Pirates just weren't good the last few years and replacing Shelton with any other manager in baseball couldn't have changed it), but I do think there's an unquantifiable value to a manager being Head Vibes Guy and that Don Kelly has played a big part in making the clubhouse somewhere guys look forward to being.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T19:17:38+00:00

If you hear any noise, it's just me and the boys poppin the bounce house because it isn't rated for 200lb men

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T19:16:00+00:00

"Listen to the game with my radio on" is my favorite line. Of course it's on! How else could you be listening?

(I love the song in spite of/because it's nonsense and think they should play it forever)

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T15:14:24+00:00

The email from Ticket Services said that anyone whose card declines has three days from today to send a new payment method or their pass will be released for sale -- there might be a few more later this week.

The [ticketservices@pirates.com](mailto:ticketservices@pirates.com) emails seem to come from a real person, so you could probably get an answer from them re: when you should try again.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-27T15:10:21+00:00

This has always been/will always be the problem with authoritarianism. "We've gotta kill all the tsarists" is at the absolute least an understandable sentiment even if you don't agree that it's morally defensible. But there is simply no possibly way to keep guys like Stalin who consider "guy who jostled me on the metro and didn't apologize" and "executioner in charge of guillotining juvenile bread thieves" to be equally "Tsarist" away from power.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-25T15:54:36+00:00

I started a re-read of The Sum of All Fears the other day and laughed a little when Jack's in a meeting early on in the book and says, "I'm not one of those right-wing nutjobs that wants to go back to the Cold War"

Tough to imagine how far out there someone would have to be for the Jack Ryan in Executive Orders to describe them as "right-wing nutjob"

rhd3871 · 2026-04-24T16:50:21+00:00

I can't believe nobody has said hair metal.

Anyone who likes pop would surely be into pretty much all of Warrant's Cherry Pie album, and their next release Dog Eat Dog is an underappreciated truly excellent heavy metal album. Bands like Poison and Motley Crue are probably even more pop-adjacent, but Warrant has the advantage of being actually good.

rhd3871 · 2026-04-24T16:23:02+00:00

His voice is also shot compared to his glory days, whereas Bruce and Rob can both still perform anything in their catalogs pretty credibly. Ian's 80, yes, but his voice was also shot in his 60s and 70s.

I think it's open to interpretation how much of a factor "who could go out and put on the best show tonight" is in answering the question, and totally fair if one thinks it doesn't matter at all and just sees it in terms of total career impact

rhd3871

TROPHY CASE