During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force—the Luftwaffe—on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain.
Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a small rural city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared non-belligerence in the conflict. With Franco’s approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days.
Kamala Harris tested positive. I happened to go by the Naval Observatory where the VP gets a home on my run this morning and security seemed a little different than usual. Coincidence?
CDC said that - by the end of February 75% of kids have already caught Covid and 64% of 19-49 year olds have caught it. They warn the infection may not protect you from future variants.
Russian FSB created a false evidence of an assassination attempt against TV propogandist Solvyov. However, the FSB was so inept that they made the alleged evidence from someone who had a nazi book that signed literally as "Signature Unclear".
Checked online and they told me to check again between 11:30 and 12. Just checked an don't have to report. Woohoo! Done for the next year. I last had jury duty end of 2019 right before Covid.
Lauren Bernett, James Madison University's softball catcher, has died at the age of 20. No cause of death announced. May peace be found by Lauren's family, friends, and colleagues.
I did an OSU/Oregon double header. Brother of a HS friend was one of the ADs at OSU. Got them tickets for UCLA/OSU and I was in Portland at the time. She invited me to go to the UCLA/OSU game in the afternoon, then I drove down to Eugene to watch Cal/Oregon later that night.
Got there after Cal scored the first 2 TDs and watched Oregon score 40+ unanswered. If I weren't meeting my college roommate and his family at the game, I would've been tempted to just skip the Cal game and hang out in Corvallis.
Back when I lived in Bowles Hall as a freshman, I subscribed to the linen service, where you exchange sheets and towels once per week. One week I missed the exchange due to a late chem lab. I was bummed. But my roommate exchanged them for me.
In 2006 I had arranged with a friend who lives in England to meet him in London for a week and go to a football match (soccer to you Yanks). Shortly before booking my flight I took a financial hit and had to cancel, but he offered to pay for my flight. I accepted. He has since refused to accept repayment. Helps that he's well off, but still.
In a similar vein, my friend paid for flights and accommodations for a Costa Rica trip in 2017 (for the two of us), and because she flew a lot for work, we got upgrades. I'm not a fancy person, but sometimes my friends help me be a little fancy.
I was a public school teacher for twenty years and noted how friends with better paying jobs were always picking up tabs and spring for tickets. Graciously, I allowed this.
Elon Musk's effort to take Twitter private is more evidence that Section 230 should be repealed.
As long as Section 230 remains on the books, Musk has a platform that is vulnerable to extremists. Indeed, we put extreme power and responsibility in one man's hands because he alone has the power to banish bad actors from Twitter and "allow" good actors.
I am not calmed by Musk's assertion that he is a "Free Speech absolutist". Indeed, I am deeply distrustful of a man who makes such a claim while wielding Twitter, which has a wide reach in social media. He can do lots of damage to democracy in America and around the globe. His decisions will either help democracy or hurt it.
One of the best things that Jack Dorsey ever did was ban Donald J. Trump after January 6.
One of the worst things that Jack Dorsey ever did was allow Donald J. Trump to use Twitter to help create the January 6th Insurrection.
Antonio Brown quit football and signed up with Kanye's Donde Sports. He dropped a new album on Friday and started promoting it. Here is his performance to a crowd on Friday that wasn't feeling it. [*cringe*]
I remember when Dave Kaval chartered a boat for a takeover of McCovey Cove with A's flags and vuvuzelas and the whole deal. He also would set-up in downtown and gave anyone a brand new A's hat who threw their Giants hat in the trash. And he charged Giants fans more to park at the Coliseum, but would wave the surcharge if they just said "Go A's."
Even those promotions are basically about pitting the fans against one another, so maybe the current behavior is not that surprising. It's just picking a new target.
Well, in addition to building a sense of pride and identity, which the above gimmicks helped to do, early Dave Kaval also took the tarps off the 3rd deck, named the field after Rickey Henderson, lowered the price of beer, built the Treehouse, and launched A's Access. All good stuff. But that guy is gone.
Dave Kaval is a stanfurd guy, but he had a Cal Bear as COO (Chris Giles) for the entirety of the good years. Giles was a moderating force. When Giles left the A's, it allowed for Kaval's stanfurd side to flourish. And that's how we got into this mess.
NEW YORK -- In the wake of their season-ending sweep by the Boston Celtics, the Brooklyn Nets formally acknowledged on Monday night what was apparent throughout their season: All the issues they dealt with off the floor had a big impact on how they played on it.
"I think it was just really heavy emotionally this season," Nets guard Kyrie Irving said after their 116-112 Game 4 loss. "We all felt it. I felt like I was letting the team down at a point where I wasn't able to play. We were trying to exercise every option for me to play, but I never wanted it to just be about me. And I think it became a distraction at times. And as you see we just had some drastic changes."
Irving's acknowledgement was noteworthy given that his decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 hung over everything the Nets did all season. They started the season under a cloud of uncertainty because of a New York City vaccination mandate that required all workers be vaccinated in order to go back to the workplace. The Nets declined to allow Irving to participate as a part-time player before reversing course in December after a team-wide COVID-19 outbreak. Irving returned to the floor on Jan. 5 but was able to play only in road games before New York City Mayor Eric Adams pulled back the mandate for athletes and performers in late March.
For about 7.2 innings, this one day stop against the Milwaukee Brewers was shaping up to be one of the worst cross continental layovers. A real over-nighter in the Salt Lake City Radisson thanks mostly to ace Corbin Burnes being Corbin Burnes.
Mr. Burnes spent his evening dotting his cutter on the absolute edge of the plate to both righties and lefties, pushing the boundaries of the strike zone, forcing San Francisco Giants batters to wave at un-hittable pitches, mixing in a late-inning curve, and being generally good at his job.
That pitch has re-shaped his career. Should have 2 more wins - Devin Williams in BAL last week and Trevor Gott last night, both with awful, 8th inning gag jobs. Milwaukee's inability to score runs doesn't help.
Walker Buehler ran through the Diamondbacks lineup like a hot knife through butter, pitching his first career shutout in the Dodgers’ 4-0 win in Monday night’s series opener at Chase Field in Phoenix.
Buehler struck out a season-high 10 in his third career complete game. His nine innings are the most by a major league pitcher this season. Before Buehler, only four pitchers threw eight innings in a start this season — Logan Webb, Justin Verlander, Sandy Alcantara, and Kevin Gausman. Buehler’s 108 pitches are an MLB season high in 2022.
I think this is overly simplistic. ERA is similarly useless if it doesn't also paint a picture that takes into account things like run support. Win-Loss record could say something about a pitcher's ability to get to the later innings and whether or not the pitcher is efficient *when combined* with other stats like pitch count, innings pitched, WHiP, and ERA.
ERA shows how many runs you gave up per nine innings. It's imperfect (in that "earned runs" can rely on subjective judgments of errors) but it does tell you something concrete.
It seems to me that innings pitched already pretty much tells you if a pitcher can regularly get to the later innings. Wins are too heavily dependent on: (1) run support and (2) bullpen support, two things the individual pitcher has almost zero control over. If you combine those other stats (runs allowed, WHIP, IP) you've already got a more complete picture than what Wins tells you.
And yet wins are an important part of the picture is all I'm saying; it is not useless.
We are in agreement that wins are often affected by run support and effective relievers; starting pitchers have absolutely zero control over those two measures.
Analytics has shortened the number of innings pitched by starters. This is not a good trend for pitchers in general and certainly not for the game. You want starters to get to the 7th inning more regularly than not. That's happening with less frequency these days. Quality pitching is something to pursue and sending pitchers to the showers after 80 pitches is not helping them pursue excellence.
Nah, wins did matter, especially back when the game was different. It's a useless stat now that baseball has changed so dramatically with the over-reliance on analytics. But the 300 win plateau is still a sizable achievement and hag is right - not sure when we'll see another...
I don't see any pitcher getting anywhere close to 300 wins anymore. Buehler was only around 93 or so pitches after 8 and it was his 4th (?) start so he was close to being stretched to 100 pitches. Buehler said I'm not coming out after the 8th.
Peralta's hit was on a high pitch out of the zone. So it wasn't like he missed middle middle. I could see letting him go one more batter. I think if the last batter reached them Kimbrel was coming in the game.
Went for a walk yesterday afternoon and was wearing a Cal hat and sweatshirt. I'd seen some turkeys earlier, including a tom strutting for the hens. I was watching a group and deer and someone walking by asked if I'd studied at Berkeley. Turns out he had taught there for a couple years and was now working at Georgetown and is the founder of this media organization. Here's his bio: https://www.fairobserver.com/author/atul-singh
I heard somewhere (not sure where) that over the weekend Cal broke its single game attendance record at Evans diamond. Pretty cool. About half as many folks who showed up at a slimly attended A's game last week.
26 year ago today, someone pushed the AZ-5 button and the place went boom. Initial reports were of 3.6 roentgen of radiation. Not great, not terrible.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuclear-disaster-at-chernobyl
Today is NOT a good day I guess.
During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force—the Luftwaffe—on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain.
Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a small rural city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared non-belligerence in the conflict. With Franco’s approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nazis-test-luftwaffe-on-guernica
Today in Covid
Kamala Harris tested positive. I happened to go by the Naval Observatory where the VP gets a home on my run this morning and security seemed a little different than usual. Coincidence?
CDC said that - by the end of February 75% of kids have already caught Covid and 64% of 19-49 year olds have caught it. They warn the infection may not protect you from future variants.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7117e3.htm
Ukraine/Russia
Russian FSB created a false evidence of an assassination attempt against TV propogandist Solvyov. However, the FSB was so inept that they made the alleged evidence from someone who had a nazi book that signed literally as "Signature Unclear".
https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1518624592209850373
Russia does a false flag event in Transnistria
https://www.npr.org/live-updates/ukraine-russia-moldova-putin-04-26-2022
Russia cuts off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61237519
DBD Jury Duty
Checked online and they told me to check again between 11:30 and 12. Just checked an don't have to report. Woohoo! Done for the next year. I last had jury duty end of 2019 right before Covid.
Immune to Iocane powder, but not rattlesnakes
https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2022/04/25/Cary-Elwes-rattlesnake-bite-hospitalized/5961650936461/
Elsewhere in college
Lauren Bernett, James Madison University's softball catcher, has died at the age of 20. No cause of death announced. May peace be found by Lauren's family, friends, and colleagues.
https://twitter.com/JMUSoftball/status/1518950193751859200
NCAA CEO Mark Emmert gets pushed out. Last day is June 30, 2023. None too soon as his laissez faire approach on NLI has been disastrous.
https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/33811633/mark-emmert-step-ncaa-president-2023
UTSA hydration chart.
https://imgur.com/a/LBQiyHH
Eugene
I need to go visit. My director lives there, and he's retiring, so my coworker and I want to go hang out with him and meet his dogs.
Oldest daughter was an undergrad there. Loved the school but didn't care so much for the locals, especially after growing up in Berkeley.
Levy
"COOKIE! COOKIE!"
Several years ago I had a very nice college football Saturday there...aside from the actual game, of course.
I did an OSU/Oregon double header. Brother of a HS friend was one of the ADs at OSU. Got them tickets for UCLA/OSU and I was in Portland at the time. She invited me to go to the UCLA/OSU game in the afternoon, then I drove down to Eugene to watch Cal/Oregon later that night.
Got there after Cal scored the first 2 TDs and watched Oregon score 40+ unanswered. If I weren't meeting my college roommate and his family at the game, I would've been tempted to just skip the Cal game and hang out in Corvallis.
Something nice a friend did for you
Back when I lived in Bowles Hall as a freshman, I subscribed to the linen service, where you exchange sheets and towels once per week. One week I missed the exchange due to a late chem lab. I was bummed. But my roommate exchanged them for me.
Newellbany wouldn't have done that.
My love slave translated all of Hulk's James Bond movie reviews to normal text instead of all caps for ease of reading. They are really good reviews.
Newellbany once went a calendar month without disappointing myself and the rest of his friends.
It really meant a lot to us.
I'm sure I more than made up for it the next month.
In 2006 I had arranged with a friend who lives in England to meet him in London for a week and go to a football match (soccer to you Yanks). Shortly before booking my flight I took a financial hit and had to cancel, but he offered to pay for my flight. I accepted. He has since refused to accept repayment. Helps that he's well off, but still.
In a similar vein, my friend paid for flights and accommodations for a Costa Rica trip in 2017 (for the two of us), and because she flew a lot for work, we got upgrades. I'm not a fancy person, but sometimes my friends help me be a little fancy.
I was a public school teacher for twenty years and noted how friends with better paying jobs were always picking up tabs and spring for tickets. Graciously, I allowed this.
aww <3
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
Elon Musk's effort to take Twitter private is more evidence that Section 230 should be repealed.
As long as Section 230 remains on the books, Musk has a platform that is vulnerable to extremists. Indeed, we put extreme power and responsibility in one man's hands because he alone has the power to banish bad actors from Twitter and "allow" good actors.
I am not calmed by Musk's assertion that he is a "Free Speech absolutist". Indeed, I am deeply distrustful of a man who makes such a claim while wielding Twitter, which has a wide reach in social media. He can do lots of damage to democracy in America and around the globe. His decisions will either help democracy or hurt it.
One of the best things that Jack Dorsey ever did was ban Donald J. Trump after January 6.
One of the worst things that Jack Dorsey ever did was allow Donald J. Trump to use Twitter to help create the January 6th Insurrection.
VP Harris has La Rona
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04/26/world/mandates-cases-vaccine-covid-19#kamala-harris-covid-positive
Joe Biden to grants clemency to 78 people of low-level drug and non-violent crimes. What? No cronies or stooges?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-pardons-clemency-prisoners-recidivism_n_62674e33e4b0d077486472e2
Dr. Birx tries to re-write history. Bless her heart.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/birx-resignation-pact_n_62677181e4b0197ae3fa3c69
PRO
Antonio Brown quit football and signed up with Kanye's Donde Sports. He dropped a new album on Friday and started promoting it. Here is his performance to a crowd on Friday that wasn't feeling it. [*cringe*]
https://twitter.com/Breesoverrated/status/1517573297625522178
A's face off against Giants in the Bay Bridge series this eve.
I'm gonna be there sitting right next to the good guys' dugout.
...So on the first base side no doubt.
I was going to say I guess she'll be in Arizona along the first base dugout.
pqtm
I remember when Dave Kaval chartered a boat for a takeover of McCovey Cove with A's flags and vuvuzelas and the whole deal. He also would set-up in downtown and gave anyone a brand new A's hat who threw their Giants hat in the trash. And he charged Giants fans more to park at the Coliseum, but would wave the surcharge if they just said "Go A's."
I miss that Dave Kaval. This current one sucks.
Even those promotions are basically about pitting the fans against one another, so maybe the current behavior is not that surprising. It's just picking a new target.
Well, in addition to building a sense of pride and identity, which the above gimmicks helped to do, early Dave Kaval also took the tarps off the 3rd deck, named the field after Rickey Henderson, lowered the price of beer, built the Treehouse, and launched A's Access. All good stuff. But that guy is gone.
He has changed his tune to Viva Las Vegas I guess. Disappointed in the dude.
OMG, it just occurred to me what happened to him:
Dave Kaval is a stanfurd guy, but he had a Cal Bear as COO (Chris Giles) for the entirety of the good years. Giles was a moderating force. When Giles left the A's, it allowed for Kaval's stanfurd side to flourish. And that's how we got into this mess.
If only there were something you could've done to prevent some of the offcourt drama...
Brooklyn Nets acknowledge toll of off-court issues as season ends with first-round sweep by Boston Celtics
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33807879/brooklyn-nets-acknowledge-toll-court-issues-season-ends-first-round-sweep-boston-celtics
NEW YORK -- In the wake of their season-ending sweep by the Boston Celtics, the Brooklyn Nets formally acknowledged on Monday night what was apparent throughout their season: All the issues they dealt with off the floor had a big impact on how they played on it.
"I think it was just really heavy emotionally this season," Nets guard Kyrie Irving said after their 116-112 Game 4 loss. "We all felt it. I felt like I was letting the team down at a point where I wasn't able to play. We were trying to exercise every option for me to play, but I never wanted it to just be about me. And I think it became a distraction at times. And as you see we just had some drastic changes."
Irving's acknowledgement was noteworthy given that his decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 hung over everything the Nets did all season. They started the season under a cloud of uncertainty because of a New York City vaccination mandate that required all workers be vaccinated in order to go back to the workplace. The Nets declined to allow Irving to participate as a part-time player before reversing course in December after a team-wide COVID-19 outbreak. Irving returned to the floor on Jan. 5 but was able to play only in road games before New York City Mayor Eric Adams pulled back the mandate for athletes and performers in late March.
TIL that Ryan Forehan-Kelly is an asst. coach on Steve Nash's bench.
I would love to have been in the room to hear Sean Marks's thought process while assembling his super team.
"I know KD is emotionally fragile, but he's KD!"
"I know Kyrie brings a trunk load of baggage, but he's Kyrie!"
"I know James Harden is a fat and a ball hog, but he's James Harden!"
"Fine, I'll trade Harden - I know Ben Simmons hates his job, but he's Ben Simmons!"
Exactly...wonder how much of this was pushed for by Jay-Z and whatever group owned the team...Marks is pretty sharp - this felt forced upon him.
Well to be fair it almost worked last year and could maybe work next year
Joc says ‘Shhhhh’
https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2022/4/25/23042095/mlb-game-recap-san-francisco-giants-milwaukee-brewers
For about 7.2 innings, this one day stop against the Milwaukee Brewers was shaping up to be one of the worst cross continental layovers. A real over-nighter in the Salt Lake City Radisson thanks mostly to ace Corbin Burnes being Corbin Burnes.
Mr. Burnes spent his evening dotting his cutter on the absolute edge of the plate to both righties and lefties, pushing the boundaries of the strike zone, forcing San Francisco Giants batters to wave at un-hittable pitches, mixing in a late-inning curve, and being generally good at his job.
Corbin Burnes proving his Cy Young was not a fluke. What a beast. His cutter is so good. He pitched three years at St. Mary's in Moraga.
Is that right? He went to St. Mary's? Whoa.
I knew Tony Gonsolin did, but I didn't know Corbin Burnes did.
That pitch has re-shaped his career. Should have 2 more wins - Devin Williams in BAL last week and Trevor Gott last night, both with awful, 8th inning gag jobs. Milwaukee's inability to score runs doesn't help.
Walker Buehler strikes out 10 in first career shutout
https://www.truebluela.com/2022/4/25/23042117/walker-buehler-shutout-strikeouts-dodgers-diamondbacks
Walker Buehler ran through the Diamondbacks lineup like a hot knife through butter, pitching his first career shutout in the Dodgers’ 4-0 win in Monday night’s series opener at Chase Field in Phoenix.
Buehler struck out a season-high 10 in his third career complete game. His nine innings are the most by a major league pitcher this season. Before Buehler, only four pitchers threw eight innings in a start this season — Logan Webb, Justin Verlander, Sandy Alcantara, and Kevin Gausman. Buehler’s 108 pitches are an MLB season high in 2022.
Glad Roberts let him finish it. Are wins soon gonna be a useless stat?
In related news, the D’bacls are awful...Ketel Marte gets paid and forgets how to play baseball.
They were honestly always a useless stat. People have just woken up to that fact lately.
I think this is overly simplistic. ERA is similarly useless if it doesn't also paint a picture that takes into account things like run support. Win-Loss record could say something about a pitcher's ability to get to the later innings and whether or not the pitcher is efficient *when combined* with other stats like pitch count, innings pitched, WHiP, and ERA.
ERA shows how many runs you gave up per nine innings. It's imperfect (in that "earned runs" can rely on subjective judgments of errors) but it does tell you something concrete.
It seems to me that innings pitched already pretty much tells you if a pitcher can regularly get to the later innings. Wins are too heavily dependent on: (1) run support and (2) bullpen support, two things the individual pitcher has almost zero control over. If you combine those other stats (runs allowed, WHIP, IP) you've already got a more complete picture than what Wins tells you.
maybe these newfangled WAR varieties will become en vogue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_independent_pitching_statistics
And yet wins are an important part of the picture is all I'm saying; it is not useless.
We are in agreement that wins are often affected by run support and effective relievers; starting pitchers have absolutely zero control over those two measures.
Analytics has shortened the number of innings pitched by starters. This is not a good trend for pitchers in general and certainly not for the game. You want starters to get to the 7th inning more regularly than not. That's happening with less frequency these days. Quality pitching is something to pursue and sending pitchers to the showers after 80 pitches is not helping them pursue excellence.
Nah, wins did matter, especially back when the game was different. It's a useless stat now that baseball has changed so dramatically with the over-reliance on analytics. But the 300 win plateau is still a sizable achievement and hag is right - not sure when we'll see another...
Now a hold...THAT'S a completely useless stat.
I don't see any pitcher getting anywhere close to 300 wins anymore. Buehler was only around 93 or so pitches after 8 and it was his 4th (?) start so he was close to being stretched to 100 pitches. Buehler said I'm not coming out after the 8th.
He even stuck with him after Peralta reached. Plenty would've yanked him after that...
Poor Torey Lovullo...seems like a good guy - must be hard to watch every night.
Peralta's hit was on a high pitch out of the zone. So it wasn't like he missed middle middle. I could see letting him go one more batter. I think if the last batter reached them Kimbrel was coming in the game.
CAL
Went for a walk yesterday afternoon and was wearing a Cal hat and sweatshirt. I'd seen some turkeys earlier, including a tom strutting for the hens. I was watching a group and deer and someone walking by asked if I'd studied at Berkeley. Turns out he had taught there for a couple years and was now working at Georgetown and is the founder of this media organization. Here's his bio: https://www.fairobserver.com/author/atul-singh
I heard somewhere (not sure where) that over the weekend Cal broke its single game attendance record at Evans diamond. Pretty cool. About half as many folks who showed up at a slimly attended A's game last week.
I saw the pictures. It was very lively. Was there something going on or do we have any special player?
Go Bears!!!
[MGolf] Men currently in seventh, 19 shots off pace after two rounds. Cal is doing perhaps slightly better than expected.
https://results.golfstat.com/public/leaderboards/gsnav.cfm?pg=team&tid=24550