10.31 The Pumpkin Princess
10.30 Tom Verducci in SI: [T]he true threat to baseball is the aesthetics of the game—pace of play, including the enormous influence of pitching changes on declining offense and length of games. It is the climate change issue of baseball.
10.28 PETA advocates the banishment of the term “bullpen,” suggests “arm barn” as a replacement
10.27 Dr. Deborah Birx told House investigators that more than 130,000 American lives could have been saved with swifter action and better coordinated public health messages. ”“““After the virus’s first wave, “I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30-percent-less to 40-percent-less range.”
10.26 Mort Sahl dies at 94
10.26 Sean Patrick Maloney on Morning Joe: “Donald, they’re [the GOP] laughing at you up on Capitol Hill. They use you like some cheap mistress for their purposes, but then they laugh at you behind your back and then they run away from you when they try to talk to voters in swing districts.”
10.23 Derek Thompson in The Atlantic: Americans are buying more stuff than ever before. That’s good. But because of supply constraints, it can feel like there’s a painful shortage of just about everything. That’s bad. Economic growth is booming, but the president’s approval rating on the economy is falling, which is a historically odd juxtaposition. Businesses everywhere are struggling to fill jobs, which sounds bad, but employer pain is workers’ gain, and wages are rising, which is wonderful. But because prices are rising too, inflation-adjusted hourly-wage growth actually declined in September, which is not wonderful. The strange October economy is a chapter within a broader saga of strangeness. Last year, COVID-19 put our economy in a time warp by forcing tens of millions of Americans to stay home, destroying millions of jobs, and accelerating the digitization of at-home shopping and entertainment. The pandemic thrust many people back into the homestead economy of the 1830s, while also re-creating the Depression-era economy of the 1930s and advancing into the virtual economy of the 2030s.
10.23 Jay Black dies at 82.
10.22 Chris Porterfield dies at 84. Belinda Luscombe: “ He was a gentleman journalist. . . He really set the collegial intelligent-but-not-showoffy tone of Time when I got there.” Bruce Handy on his management style: management style: “a rare combination of kindness, grace, wit, humility and high standards.”
10. 22 Peter Scolari dies at 66.
10.21 Alec Baldwin discharged a “prop firearm” on the set of a movie he’s filming in New Mexico, killing one crew member and injuring the director
10.19 Lunch with Jack Davies at Better Bite.
10.16 Superman changes motto from “Truth, Justice and the American Way” to “Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow.”
10.18 Colin Powell dies at 84
10.18 Derek Thompson in The Atlantic: ”The pandemic thrust many families into a homebound lifestyle reminiscent of the 19th-century agrarian economy—but this time with screens galore and online delivery. More families today work at home, cook at home, care for kids at home, entertain themselves at home, and even school their kids at home. The writer Aaron M. Renn has called this the rise of the DIY family, and it represents a new vision of work-life balance that is still coming into focus. By eliminating the office as a physical presence in many (but not all!) families’ lives, the pandemic may have downgraded work as the centerpiece of their identity. In fact, the share of Americans who say they plan to work beyond the age of 62 has fallen to its lowest number since the Federal Reserve Bank of New York started asking the question, in 2014. Workism isn’t going away; for many, remote work will collapse the boundary between work and life that was once delineated by the daily commute.”
10.16 Saratoga Book Festival, with Beau Breslin.
10.13 William Shatner, age 90, goes into space. “What you’ve given me is the most profound experience I can imagine,” he said to Jeff Bezos. “It was so moving to me. . . .Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see … it was unbelievable. . . .I mean, the little things, the weightlessness, and to see the blue color whip by and now you’re staring into blackness. That’s the thing. This covering of blue is this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue around that we have around us. We think ‘oh, that’s blue sky’ and suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, like you whip a sheet off you when you’re asleep, and you’re looking into blackness – into black ugliness. And you look down, there’s the blue down there, and the black up there, and there is Mother Earth and comfort and – is there death? Is that the way death is?” So what if it was a total PR job? Captain Kirk went into space! Very cool!
10.12 Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post: “The Democratic Party, for better or worse, has to represent the entirety of the sane political spectrum, from Sens. Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Sinema on the right to Sen. Bernie Sanders (and the Squad on the left. That’s because the GOP has left the building. The Republican Party once at least pretended to believe in conservative principles such as fiscal restraint, muscular national defense and personal responsibility. It now stands for only two things: reclaiming power and kowtowing to former president Donald Trump.
10.11 Matt Amodio‘s historic run on “Jeopardy!” ended with 38 wins and more than $1.5 million in prize money. Amodio finished No. 2 on the all-time consecutive wins list, behind only Ken Jennings with 74 wins.
10.11 Jon Gruden out as Raiders coach
10.10 During the course of the last two minutes and the overtime period of the Packers-Bengals game, kickers missed five field goal attempts. Game ended when Packers’ Mason Crosby finally made the winning field goal.
10.9 Saw No Time To Die with Ginny, Molly and Shawn. James Bond did what?
10.5 SI on the Yankees’ 6-2 loss to the Red Sox in the Wild Card game: “It was the most embarrassing performance by a group of New Yorkers since Andrew Cuomo and his staff wrote a book about leadership.”
10.3 Tom Brady on getting older: “You think people care what you think, and then you care less what people think, and then you realize no one cared, anyway.”
10.3 Shohei Ohtani of the Angels finishes the season with 46 home runs, 100 RBIs, 26 stolen bases, a 3.18 ERA and 9–2 record across 130 1/3 innings.