Asithappens

How do you know that Luhnow got railroaded? I mean, is this along the lines of evidence showing that Iran was going to bomb 4 embassies?

At least steered the church to convince the laity that scripture is ultimately authoritative and complete. Because it's not. It still depends on interpretation. By humans. That's kind of the fraud behind Luther. There is no text that is not open to differing interpretations. And look, it's not like god wrote the bible. It was written by men. Luther just tried to make the argument that his "team" (or rather, not the other team) were the ones who could correctly interpret the bible. Or that the other team was not capable of doing that. And if scripture is so authoritative and complete, then why did Luther need to conjure up his 3 solas? That's part of my point from before. Luther says "faith alone", but he's wrong. It's not faith alone. It's faith combined with works. That's in the bible. Faith without works is dead.

I just gave an example.

It’s easy to see how this focus, and the larger worldview informing it, appeals to well-heeled establishment types of every political stripe. The allure runs deeper than the conditioned boardroom response to a team of Ivy types bearing proprietary intellectual property. McKinsey presents itself as the most luxurious and state-of-the-art solution to the ancient business problem of squeezing the maximum return out of people at the minimum cost: Like other such companies that advertise in airport terminals, the brand’s broader vibe is both coolly sensible and steeply expensive. That is to say, the elegant McKinsey finessing maneuver is to carry out remorselessly brutal work that bears a real human cost, but in such a way that it doesn’t look brutal. In this sense, McKinsey sells not just solutions but a certain sleek aesthetic. This, too, arrives as a suite of solutions duly outfitted with its own patois: Luhnow and the former McKinsey consultant Pete Buttigieg use the same totemic catchphrases—big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, counterinsurgency—to describe the respective futures of running a competitive baseball team and a moderately sized American city. It is striking, but not really surprising, that all this well-credentialed cleverness and machine-tooled efficiency tends to deliver the same solution, which amounts to more for the client and less for everyone else; that is the goal, after all. So it will likely not surprise you that Luhnow’s Astros have been credited with originating MLB’s recently announced plans to eliminate 42 of 160 minor league baseball teams, most of them in smaller cities. MLB currently faces several lawsuits concerning the appalling pay and conditions in the minor leagues. That’s a problem that could be solved with comparatively small expenditures—or by simply eliminating a whole lot of jobs. Which would you expect to be a consultant’s preferred recommendation? It is still true that no organization in baseball works harder to gather more data, or parse it more effectively, than the Astros. They are likely to receive a fairly severe punishment, by MLB standards, for the cheating they’ve done. Still, the organization itself and the values it has evinced—in the absence of what are conventionally understood to be values—seem unlikely to change. The people in charge will continue to work on solving the problems they care about and continue not caring about the rest. There’s no reckoning coming, but there is something perversely satisfying and darkly apropos about seeing where all those McKinsey-scented insights and learnings (to use another corporate consultancy term of art) wound up. All those merciless cullings and endless organizational refinements, all that data and all the brilliant minds and machines working it over, all resolving to some underpaid grunt in a folding chair whaling away on a garbage can because the members of the team’s brain trust of thoroughbred data nerds simply took it for granted that they could get away with it. All that data, all those numbers, all those shifting variables continually delivered the same answer: What are you going to do, stop us? tl:dr Luhnow is a cheating piece of shit.

The MLB penalties should have been more severe. This was organized, sophisticated, electronically-based cheating on a scale way, way beyond "normal" sign stealing. Which, I think most would say, wink wink nudge nudge, is a part of the game. But when you start going way beyond with shit like the Astros (and it looks like other teams) were doing? No.

Kinda, but Luther is way overrated when it comes to the idea of a "pure" interpretation of scripture. Imo. Faith alone? Nah, Marty. Faith without works is dead. That's in the bible, dude. Marty was just a man.

Yep. And it's almost the entire fault of the evangelical (fucktard) community. Self-righteous, hypocritical, narrow-minded. They are little more than modern-day Pharisees. Fuck Franklin Graham and all his toadies.

Learn to read, bro. That's in no way what I said.

I don't think they need to punish the players. And yes, this may just do it.

Good. I got a lot of negs in another thread where I called the Astros cheaters. Fuck anybody who condones this shit. So, neg away. The Astros that I root for are better than this.

Jesus dude, give it a rest. I don't read all the posts here but this is at least your second shit post of Dallas > Houston.

Imo, Sam is an overachiever. But he's still pretty damn good. He's our guy. Fuck the Sam Haters. Hook 'em.

BoB is like a certain high-ranking politician. He spouts lie after lie and (so far) there's no accountability. Fire his ass now.

Yeah, but they made the playoffs. BoB probably gets a contract extension.

I really want Houston to kick ass, but I really don't like BoB. Imo, the Texans won't achieve greatness with him. But no matter how bad they play in the playoffs, BoB prob won't be fired.

Somebody told me that Rose's Seafood in Seabrook is pretty good.

ok. thanks.

Seabrook, Kemah, etc. Want to get some stuff from a place that gets fish from the fishermen. Not looking for a restaurant.

I thought it was extremely entertaining. You knew that the El Salvadoran/Brazilian/Uruguayan/Paraguyan nurse would do all right at the end, and it was fun to watch how it played out.

Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer do a kickass version of this. A snippet of this song is in the movie Wonder Boys. Great film. Great song.

It's not the end, I agree. The Astros are still sacks of giant shit, though. Shame on them.

Trump is strokin' out, it seems.

AJ and anybody else in the front office who had a role in this need to be banned from all things baseball for at least a year.