Have to think Elly is winning a Silver Slugger as the top offensive Short Stop this year.

Hayes couldn’t create runs if he was Petrie Dish full cholera virus. 🧫 🦠

An apt day to remember that Dolly Parton once recorded a cover of Stairway to Heaven - and, in defiance of every moral law in the universe, she absolutely owned it.

The Reds aren’t “cheap.” They’re constrained. People keep acting like ownership is sitting on a pile of money and just refuses to spend. That’s not the real problem. The real problem is structural. A small-market team under the current CBA has to make nearly perfect decisions for a decade just to have a realistic shot at the playoffs. Even then, a World Series title is almost mathematically out of reach against the Dodgers and Mets of the world. LA alone spends more on payroll than the Reds generate in total revenue. That’s not an excuse. It’s just the board we’re playing on. Ownership has made some emotional decisions retaining popular players that didn’t make long-term sense. They’ve also made some good ones. But until the league actually addresses the revenue gap in a meaningful way (floor + cap + real revenue sharing that isn’t watered down), small-market clubs are going to keep living in this cycle of “almost” and “wait till next year.” Fans deserve better than that. So do the players who develop here and then leave for teams that can actually pay them. This isn’t about loyalty or vibes. It’s about the math.

Around 2032 or 2033, the Social Security "trust fund" runs out of bonds to sell. Then benefits decline an estimated 23% automatically. For decades, FICA taxes collected exceeded the amount paid to retirees. So the excess money was used to purchase US treasury debt. The US govt spent the money and gave Social Security an IOU for the FICA taxes collected. Those treasury bonds (the IOUs) added up to $3 trillion at their peak. A few years ago the amount of FICA taxes collected was no longer enough to cover benefits. So now Social Security has to cash in bonds to meet their payments to retirees. The "trust fund" pile of IOUs is down to about $2.5 trillion. Around 2032 or 2033, the $2.5 trillion in bonds will be depleted. At that point, under current law, the Social Security department of the govt will automatically cut benefits to retirees. It will be around 23% the first year. What will Congress do? Congress will likely pass emergency legislation telling Social Security to pay benefits out of general fund revenue. The US govt budget deficit will immediately increase by another $600 billion to $700 billion per year. We will likely have annual US govt budget deficits of $3 trillion per year or more. You probably don't own enough gold for what will happen to your dollar buying power.

Now is the time to bring them back #RestoreTheSnyderVerse #MakeTheBatfleckMovie

The math says otherwise.

No one should have to beg the government to exercise a constitutionally protected right anywhere in the country. Thank you @AustinScottGA08 for cosponsoring HR 645, the National Constitutional Carry Act.

@Reds can Sadek please say 60% less words. My blood pressure can no longer take it. Please stop the incessant yammering. {breath}

All my favorite content creators are supporting Thomas Massie!! This song is great!! 😎

How Often MLB Starters Pitched 7+ Innings: 1988: 48% 1989: 44% 1990: 41% 1991: 42% 1992: 44% 1993: 41% 1994: 41% 1995: 37% 1996: 37% 1997: 38% 1998: 38% 1999: 34% 2000: 36% 2001: 34% 2002: 35% 2003: 33% 2004: 32% 2005: 35% 2006: 31% 2007: 29% 2008: 29% 2009: 29% 2010: 34% 2011: 34% 2012: 30% 2013: 31% 2014: 31% 2015: 29% 2016: 23% 2017: 19% 2018: 18% 2019: 16% 2020: 11% 2021: 13% 2022: 14% 2023: 12% 2024: 13% 2025: 11% 2026: 9%

The President almost just got assassinated and members of the media are using the opportunity to steal bottles of wine. You don’t hate them enough!

In 1972, a Stanford psychologist gave 4-year-olds a choice. "One marshmallow now or wait 15 minutes and get two." Rich kid waits. Poor kid eats it immediately. For 50 years, psychologists said this proved poor kids lack self-control. Wrong. Poor kids learned that promises get broken. The second marshmallow isn't coming. Professor Jiang Xueqin spent 50 minutes explaining why the poor kids are the rational ones: The psychologist was named Walter Mischel. He put a marshmallow in front of 4-year-olds and said: "You can have it now, or wait and get two." He tracked them for decades. The kids who waited did better at everything. His conclusion: success means delayed gratification. Long-term planning. Self-control. So educators built curricula around it. Teach kids self-control, resilience, self-assessment. They'll succeed. It didn't work. "If you take a bad student and teach him self-control, resilience, and self-assessment, the student doesn't actually get better." The reason is simple: correlation does not equal causation. Successful people wake up at 4am. But waking up at 4am won't make you successful. If you're successful, you wake up early because you're motivated. If you're successful, you have self-control because your environment rewards it. The traits don't cause success. Success causes the traits. Here's what actually determines success: "We know for a fact that rich people are much more likely to succeed than poor people. School doesn't really matter. If your parents are rich, you'll be successful. If your parents are poor, you will not." The difference starts with parenting. A rich kid touches a hot stove. The parent says: "You made a mistake. Don't worry about it. Let me explain why fire is dangerous. You could burn yourself. We'd have to go to the doctor." A poor kid touches a hot stove. The parent says: "Don't you ever do that again or I'll beat the crap out of you." Same lesson. Completely different worldview. The rich kid learns: the world is safe. I am respected. Adults explain things to me. The poor kid learns: the world is scary. I must fear authority. Don't ask questions. There's another difference. Rich parents keep promises. Poor parents can't. "Next week we'll go to Thailand." Next week, you go to Thailand. "Next week we'll go to McDonald's." But the paycheck isn't enough. "Sorry, we can't go anymore." Rich parents offer stability. Poor parents can only offer volatility. Now go back to the marshmallow test. "If you believe the teacher will keep his promise, you won't eat that marshmallow. If you think the teacher is lying, you will eat it." If you're a poor kid, you've learned that promises get broken. Adults lie. The second marshmallow probably isn't coming. So you eat the first one. That's not lack of self-control. That's rational decision-making. "Poor kids are not stupid. Poor kids are rational. They're responding to the circumstances they live in." The same logic applies to resilience. "The idea of resilience is that you believe the world will help you. If you're rich and you fail, someone will help you get up. If you're poor and you fail, that probably tells you that you shouldn't be doing this." Why try again when trying again has never worked? And self-assessment? "If you're a poor child who lives under a lot of stress, it's hard to be self-reflective. Because if you look back at yourself, all you think about is your pain and your stress." Here's the deeper structure. "As a poor person, if you want to survive, you have to obey authority. As a rich person, you maximize your outcome by negotiating with others." Poor parents command their children because that's what the world will demand. Obey the police. Obey the boss. Don't talk back. Rich parents teach their children to debate, argue, negotiate. Because that's their game. "From day one, rich kids know they're playing a different game." Here's something stranger. 500 students took an IQ test. Then they guessed their ranking. The top 5% thought they were top 20%. The test was easy for them, so they assumed it was easy for everyone. The bottom 5% thought they were average. "People who are stupid lack the capacity to know they're stupid." This is the Dunning-Kruger effect. And it explains why the most confident people are often the least competent. "This helps explain why the world is why it is. Often the people in power are stupid. They don't know they're stupid. They were confident." Can poor kids escape? "Yes. But it means leaving your community. You have to be extremely individualistic. Very ambitious. High risk tolerance. Most people don't have that." The professor is one of them. "I'm a poor kid who succeeded. My father was a dishwasher. But I left Canada for the United States. I got lucky." "You can work as hard as you want, but the chances are against you. It takes luck. And that's often the exception to the rule, not the rule itself." Here's what he wants you to understand: When we see differences in success, our default explanation is differences in ability or effort. We forget that a poor kid eating the marshmallow isn't weak. He's learned that waiting doesn't pay. We forget that a poor kid giving up isn't lazy. He's learned that no one's coming to help. We refuse to admit that the traits we associate with success are products of environment, not causes of it. The marshmallow test is about measuring childhood, not measuring character.

Um, this ain’t good.

🚨 MLB history in the making in the NL Central! Brewers: 8-2 (.800) Reds: 7-3 (.700) Pirates: 6-4 (.600) Cardinals: 5-5 (.500) Cubs: 4-6 (.400) Games Back: 0 — 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 This perfect ladder has never happened before in any MLB division. First time ever after exactly 10 games played by everyone. A true early-season statistical unicorn! ⚾️

🚨 MLB history in the making in the NL Central! Brewers: 8-2 (.800) Reds: 7-3 (.700) Pirates: 6-4 (.600) Cardinals: 5-5 (.500) Cubs: 4-6 (.400) Games Back: 0 — 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 This perfect ladder has never happened before in any MLB division. First time ever after exactly 10 games played by everyone.