Anyone else going on SAT? I’m taking the family and am pumped for my first euro footy experience (even if it’s only in SB, Indiana).

I thought that was Ted Cruz nickname, been a long time since I was in the 2nd grade, according to the juvenile put down code, can you reuse nicknames?

D1baseball featured Taylor in a review of the Cape Code League by Patrick Ebert which was pretty long. Here are some excerpts from it along with a montage of Taylor swings at the plate with the Hoosiers.

"During my conversation with Indiana outfielder Devin Taylor on a beautiful summer evening, it quickly became apparent he had two simple goals for his time spent in the Cape Cod Baseball League: to have fun and to get better. His team had just lost to the Brewster Whitecaps, 4-3, and Taylor had struck out in his only at-bat, a pinch-hitting appearance. You wouldn’t have known it by the way he graciously greeted the fans that approached him after the game, however, smiling from ear to ear the whole time."

After spending just over a week with Cotuit, Taylor was off to Cary, N.C., to participate with the Collegiate National Team. After playing eight games in nine days adorning the Stars and Stripes, Taylor headed back to Cotuit acknowledging more work needed to be done.

“I decided I wanted to come here earlier than USA [Baseball] just to get some at-bats in, get back into the rhythm that I had during the spring before I head off and face the top guys in the nation,” Taylor said of the first half of his summer. “I just love playing baseball. I plan to stay out here all summer and just get better every day. You can always improve on the baseball field, just playing the game consistently.”

Through 15 games with the Kettleers, Taylor is slashing .304/.400/.543. Three of his 14 hits are home runs, and another is a triple.

Last summer he was named the NECBL’s Rookie of the Year playing for the Keene Swamp Bats, where he batted .314 with eight homers and 30 RBIs.

I’m not sure Taylor knows how not to hit, as he hasn’t missed a beat since arriving on campus as a promising recruit out of Cincinnati. A 6-foot-1, 215-pound lefthanded hitting, righthanded throwing outfielder, he kicked off his college career by earning the Big Ten’s Freshman of the Year honors. He was also named First Team-All Big Ten in each of two years with the Hoosiers, batting .315 with 16 homers and 59 RBIs his first year and .357 with 20 home runs and 54 RBIs this past season.

He’s quick to recognize that he isn’t a complete player and there will always be work to be done. Time spent in the weight room is a priority with the simple goal of getting bigger, faster and stronger. He worked hard from year one to year two at Indiana, reducing his strikeouts, and while speed isn’t a big part of his game, it’s one of his primary areas of focus this summer. Not just when it comes to stealing bases, but taking extra bases aggressively and covering ground in the outfield.

Playing with and against the best players in the nation and for Coach Roberts, Taylor is absorbing as much as he can, aiming to return to Indiana as an ever-improving version of himself. He’ll enter the 2025 season as the favorite for Big Ten Player of the Year, one of the frontrunners for the Golden Spikes Award and a projected premium pick in next summer’s MLB Draft.

“[I’m] having some fun, learning a little about baserunning from Coach [Mike] Roberts, which has really helped me on the bases,” Taylor said of his summer goals. “I need to gain a little bit of speed, I’m not as fast as I want to be as an outfielder, which I’m working on in the weight room.”

Here's the montage of swings at the plate by Devin.

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or Biden moment or whatever you want to call it. I thought he was having a stroke.

TIL = Today I learned

Brian May obtained a PhD in astrophysics in 2007, is a science team collaborator for NASA on the Pluto mission, is the former Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, and co-authored two books on astrophysics and the like.

In other words, his hairstyle is an homage to Isaac Newton rather than the style of a rocker.

*I only recently checked out Reddit and I love it. Some great stuff there, and the subreddits can be a wealth of information on all sorts of interests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Astrophysics

Nt

Consider who this word vomit appeals to...

A couple ground rules first.

1. No disparaging the Olympics as "stupid", "pointless", "boring" or any other nonsense descriptors. The Mods will lock you out of the thread if you are found to be doing this.

2. No rooting for or complementing athletes that aren't American, even if there is not an American participating in the event. This will be strictly enforced as well. Mods will bar you from thread as well as possible suspension. The only exception to this is if you'd like to comment on the appearance of an attractive female athlete from another country.

Now let's get to some fun. These opening ceremonies are actually awesome. Some real Parisian pomp and circumstance. Acrobatics, Les mis, other cultural allusions that are going over my head. Athletes from the different countries are coming down the Seine on river boats rather than the typical boring walk into the stadium.

No, I don't believe actual MAGA branded leaf blowers are being sold so put your pants back on... I was listening to a podcast the other day and one thing caught my attention. An independent voter was asked their thoughts on the election and the voter explained their reasoning for not voting for Trump.

That reason... the voter described Trump as a leaf blower that keeps running 24/7 outside of your window. Loud, obnoxious and blowing sh*t all over the place every day. This also reminded me of some users on this forum that spam the threads and make discussion impossible - just noise, questionable and way too many tweets, and some pretty shallow comments.

Anywho, I don't have anything against real leaf blowers but I typically only use mine for about 10 minutes each week.

Please

I’ve seen two clips of hers played a lot. Here’s the one her supporters are rallying around:


I read the nut of her comment as a realistic and essentially conservative one: human beings don’t get to invent themselves out of whole cloth, we are all shaped and exist in context of our world as it is now and as it was before us (that led to where we are now).

Then there is this one:

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She can imagine being what can be, unburdened by what has been.

So here, I read her as saying the ideal state of affairs is to throw away the burden of the past and history and strive for the possible.

These two statements aren’t necessarily inconsistent, but I wonder if she links them together at any point ? Is her view that we are born into a circumstances and can change them with imagination (why the first quote then and its emphasis of the inescapability of the past)? How much deference does she want to give the past? How much humility to what has gone before? How much of a burden is tradition?

I talked to a left-wing friend yesterday and she was really scared of a second Trump presidency. She sent me this podcast to listen to:


I'll provide a short rundown of the predictions/reporting:

1. Eliminating independence of, institutional pushback by, the executive bureaucracy--they call this dictatorial and authoritarian. They predict Trump will go after Comcast and use the FCC to hound news media that oppose him.

2. Immigration enforcement on a large scale including large deportations, possible creation of camps at the border to house either deportees or asylum seekers.

3. Independence of the Fed--Trump wants more/total control.

4. DOJ--wants to go after his political enemies, open investigations against them, and drop all fed charges against him.

I pointed out how (1) and (3) are actually more democratic, not less, since at least in those instances someone who is elected and is politically accountable would be in charge of those areas. Also re (1), the elimination of Chevron deference should mitigate that concern.

The Fed one, I think, is the most dangerous. Still, the Fed chair is subject to senate approval.

Stay off the internet if you're going to go see it because I can't imagine how people are going to avoid all the spoilers. There are so many cameos and Easter eggs throughout that I'm sure I missed a bunch even though I saw a ton of them. It's the best Marvel movie since Endgame, knocking Spider Man: No Way Home back to 2nd best. There is no way that Hugh Jackman is going to stop being Wolverine anytime soon either. Or that RR/Deadpool won't be a major player in the MCU going forward. They are both simply the perfect castings for their roles and Disney can print $$ with them

Cignetti kicking things off at 12:30 p.m. ET with opening remarks and a Q&A press conference. Later in the afternoon, Cignetti will meet with reporters for an extended individual Q&A from 1:15 p.m. to 2 p.m. Fisher, Katic and Ellison each will have their own individual Q&A sessions from 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Indiana will also join the Big Ten Network crew live at Lucas Oil Stadium, though the exact time is to be determined

https://247sports.com/college/india...gnetti-and-the-hoosiers-will-speak-234123873/

Hopefully this isn't the first in a series of incidents at the Olympics.

This is nuts. Estimates are that up to half of the town is lost.


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Attending a Black only sorority is a protest for votes from the radical left. The list on non-attendees tells the tale.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...cial-homophobic-assault-chicago-a8752836.html

Actor Jussie Smollett was admitted to hospital following an attack that is being described as a possible hate crime. The musician and Empire star was approached by two men who yelled racial and homophobic slurs at him at approximately 2am on Tuesday

“The offenders began to batter the victim with their hands about the face and poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim,” the statement reads. “At some point during the incident, one of the offenders wrapped a rope around the victim’s neck.”

Click to expand...

This is 2019 and yet...

Does this kind of thing matter to people? Why or why not? It’s anonymous, yes?

Gays for Gaza. Do these idiots really not know Hamas would kill them?

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Kind of goes against the whole idea that BLM is just some group controlled by dems.

While giving the voters a chance to make a choice is desirable, I don't think BLM understands the logistics of re-running the primaries and how long that would take. We aren't setup to just have a secure online poll that could be accomplished in a timely fashion.