April, 2023 archive
The Umpire Strikes Back 0
My brother has umpired baseball for years, mostly high school games. He has regularly attended course and workshops on how to umpire, because he loves the game. (So do I, for that matter, but he was good at it.)
According to him, the behavior of parents and other fans has taken a serious turn for the worse over the past decade, so much so that leagues are having trouble keeping and recruiting umpires.
In Deptford Township, New Jersey, a local Little League has come up with a novel strategy for fighting back.
Responsible Fiscals 0
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another oxymoronic (emphasis on the “moronic”) “responsible gun owner” exposes children to politeness.
Broken by Brexit 0
Apparently, things are not going well in the United Kingdom.
Afterthought:
Anyone who pays attention to history knew that Brexit was a bad idea.
I did a “junior year abroad” at the University of Exeter (mumble) years ago (Let’s just say I saw Monty Python episodes when they were first-run).
The picture that Der Spiegel paints is not the England that I visited.
A Shot at a Beer 0
We are a society of stupid.
Aside:
I don’t like Bud Light either, but that’s because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not beer.
Guinness is beer.
All the News that Fits 0
At the Kansas City Star, Melinda Henneberger takes a long look at the damage that those who peddles lies as “news” do to our polity. She starts with the story of Andrew D. Lester, the man who shot a young black man who was sent to pick up his little brothers, went to the wrong address through a quite understandable mistake, and was shot for knocking on a door.
A snippet; follow the link for the rest.
That, Lester’s 28-year-old grandson Klint Ludwig told The Star, is how the retired airplane mechanic fell “further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line” while immersed in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia.”
Melinda Henneberger isn’t alone in her concerns. Retired Navy Captain Larry Gebhardt, writing at the Idaho State Journal, is concerned that we are becoming (being turned into?) a nation of scaredy cats afeared of each others’ shadows.
Image via Job’s Anger.
Twits Own Twitter 0
Microsoft is pulling back from Twitter, and Elon Musk is not taking it gracefully. A writer at Techdirt pulls no punches:
This is why Twitter is failing. Elon Musk himself is a liability. He’s the one driving advertisers and partners away.
Follow the link for Exhibits A to ZZ.
Geeking Out 0
Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager. Xclock is in the upper right and GkrellM in the lower right. The wallpaper is from my collection.
The Crypto Con 0
Barnum was wrong. There’s more than one born every minute.
