No OnionWars For Now

I was very, very excited when it was first announced that The Onion was going to be buying InfoWars. But it looks like I’ll have to put a lid on that excitement for now, because a judge has just rejected the bid on procedural and transparency grounds. The door isn’t closed on the Onion folks eventually getting their hands on it, but for now it’s back to the drawing board.

“I don’t think it’s enough money,” Lopez said in a late-night ruling from the bench in a Houston court. “I’m going to not approve the sale.”

It was not immediately clear whether there would be a new auction in which The Onion could bid again for Jones’ assets. Lopez said he would leave the decision about what to do next in the hands of the trustee, Christopher Murray, who had overseen the auction.
The judge said Murray had acted in good faith in running the auction in which The Onion’s parent company initially appeared to prevail, but he said the trustee did not run a transparent process and should have given a rival bidder associated with Jones another chance to improve its bid.
“I think you’ve got to go out and try to get every dollar,” Lopez said. “I think that the process fell down.” 
The ruling dashed, at least for now, Global Tetrahedron’s plans to take over Infowars and radically shift its content from anti-government conspiracy theories to satirical humor. Instead, Jones can continue operating his far-right media business as he has for decades.

I understand the focus on money, because that’s how these sorts of cases generally should work. And the Judge did also make it clear that the rival bid wasn’t worth enough, which is nice, I guess. But I’m bothered by the idea that the pursuit of pure cash, even if it’s going to a good place, trumps the will of the very people who would ultimately be benefiting from it. Unless I’ve missed something huge, I haven’t heard a peep from any Sandy Hook families who would like for Alex Jones to continue being Alex Jones.

Yes, my concerns are more moral than legal, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Giving the wants of the victimized more weight than those of the guilty in a case like this one feels like the right thing to do, not to mention that a company associated with Jones shouldn’t be able to do an end-run around the system and just buy all his stuff back for him in the first place. That strikes me as a bug in the system, not a feature of it.

Ba Da Ba Ba Ball

Man. Why can’t this fella ever be my delivery guy? Half the time it’s all the ones around here can do to get it all the way up to my apartment rather than just dumping it in the unsecured vestibule and hoping for the best.

With 16:30 left in the second half of the matchup, Loyola-Chicago had the ball down near the right baseline when an Uber Eats delivery man waltzed onto the court looking for someone to claim the McDonald’s he was holding. 
An official timeout was whistled as the delivery man was ushered off the court, and the game announcers couldn’t believe their eyes.

One of the announcers wondered, probably jokingly, whether the referee had called it in. But based on a second video of our hero wandering around with the stuff in his hands while talking to some folks, I think it’s safe to say no.

Hopefully, if these two ever did find each other, a good tip was given. And when I say good tip, I mean one other than in future, maybe don’t amble onto a basketball court mid game.

Disco Gunther, Reggae Cena And Other AI Wrestling Tunes


Like I said to Barb when she sent this, if this tech had been around back in the days when most of my friends liked wrestling we would have wasted so many hours doing this it’s not even funny.

The title is a bit misleading, though. They’re not improving wrestling theme songs as much as they’re writing hilarious songs about wrestlers. But Hulk Hogan should maybe think about using his next time he speaks at the Republican convention.

Sam Driver and Adam Pacitti use the latest in high tech artificial intelligence to improve the WWE entrance music of its top Superstars.

Today In Rotten Baseball Ideas: The Golden At-Bat

The Golden At-Bat rule could give MLB a new shine. But is it worth it?
I don’t remember where this theory came from and I’m too lazy to try looking it up, but for years I’ve heard people say that when a headline ends with a question, the answer is almost always no. This is definitely one of those times.

What if a team could choose one at-bat in every game to send its best hitter to the plate even if it wasn’t that guy’s turn to hit? That’s the Golden At-Bat concept in a nutshell.
Say there are two outs in the 10th inning in October. The Yankees and Guardians are tied. Does this ring a bell at all? But in this alternate October universe, it’s not Juan Soto who is due up. It’s, say, Oswaldo Cabrera. Except the Yankees say: No, no, no. We’re going to use our Golden AB here … and send up Soto. Then home run magic happens.

“Wouldn’t that have been the (ultimate) Golden At-Bat homer?” one front-office executive mused, as we were talking about this concept. “Can we send Juan Soto up there to do that? He actually did hit that homer in that moment.”
He did. And that’s the goal. So should baseball change the rules to attempt to create more of those moments? That’s the question.

And the answer, as you can probably guess from the first thing I wrote, is a hard damn no from this guy.

I can see why the idea might be appealing. Put the fate of the team in the hands of its biggest star when it matters most. How exciting, right? But the problem is that for you to like this, you have to not like baseball very much as it is. And you also have to not understand why things are exciting in the first place. And you have to not care about the human beings who play and run the game and their relationships with one another.

Ok, so that’s more than one problem. There might even be more, but those are mine.

Baseball is already plenty exciting. A lot of that is because of the unpredictability of it. Remember when pitchers used to hit? That sucked most of the time because many of them didn’t really know how and the universal designated hitter is almost certainly for the best, but how fun was it when one of them took somebody deep? Or how cool is it when some guy fresh from the minors or a guy in a slump or a veteran who struggles to get much playing time comes off the bench and wins a game? Guys have built careers on moments like those. If you enjoy that stuff, this Golden At-Bat thing isn’t for you. If your team has anyone halfway good on it let alone a Juan Soto or a Shohei Ohtani, how many big swings do you suppose the minor leaguer or the veteran is going to get? That aspect of the game is all but dead under this system.

And let’s talk about that veteran. that guy looking to break out of a rut. The one trying to find his place on the team. Sports can often be as much about confidence as they are talent. What is constantly getting sat down when it’s supposed to be his turn doing for his confidence? You can only be told so many times that you suck too much to be relied on before you start believing it. How are you going to learn how to handle a high pressure situation if you never get to handle a high pressure situation?

Even if you’re playing ok, what message does it send to you about your value to the organization if you’re repeatedly being swapped out for someone the manager thinks is better? How many guys are going to quit on the team, ask to be traded away or walk in free agency because they feel disrespected?

This isn’t so great if you’re a star, either. The season is long, and it puts a lot of wear and tear on your body. Should we be asking even more of someone who might already be just barely able to play as it is? Or what if you turn out not to be very good in the Golden spot for some reason? How many times can you swing through an 0-2 fastball and let the team down before it starts messing with you and your play suffers?

You’re going to have a hard time convincing me that none of this will mess with team dynamics. Not just between player and coach, but between the players themselves. You’ll have those who want the others to step up, and then the others who will quite rightly point out that they can’t step up if no one lets them.

But let’s pretend that none of that is going to happen and we can just focus on the positives it would create. How long are those going to last?

A lot of this seems to be about creating big moments to keep modern fans engaged. Maybe I’m the crazy one here, but if you’re at the point of considering fundamentally changing your well established sport for no reason, those aren’t fans you’re chasing. You’re alienating the millions who already watch your offering and enjoy it for the sake of what, exactly? This is completely different from the pace of play stuff like the pitch clock. That made sense. The game has gotten far too slow, to the point that it’s irritating a lot of us who have been watching it for decades. Why not experiment with some rule changes to speed it up? I’ll say that even about the ghost runner on second base in extra innings. I hate that stupid thing, but at least I can understand what it’s trying to accomplish.

But this? It’s not trying to accomplish anything. It’s all about trying to manufacture that which cannot be manufactured in the hopes that somebody somewhere who has never cared will suddenly care and then keep on caring forever. A moment is only a moment because it’s momentary. It comes into being because of a set of twists, turns and circumstances that all line up just so. That’s why it’s exciting. Ohtani and Trout facing off in the WBC is something we don’t see. It was a thing that happened because a rare situation allowed it. If it happened every couple weeks, would we still be talking about it like we do? Or to put it another way, if we had an eclipse every day, would you still bother racing to get your spot at the point of totality each time? Of course not. Things like that are special because of their uniqueness. To force a moment, to whatever extent you can even do that, is to take all of that away. Hopefully, baseball will realize this before it goes too far.

Is Everything Moving On High Speed?

I think we have a new phenomenon called New Year’s Creep. It’s not just Christmas. Now people want to speed right on to the next thing.

I was walking through the mall the other day, and I heard Auld Lang Syne playing! This was in November. All I could think was way to make me feel even worse about the fact that I haven’t bought any Christmas presents yet. Now you’re giving me the feeling that I missed the whole holiday. In half a second, I was filled with that letdown feeling I always feel after the noise makers stop dinging and the people stop singing at the end of New Year’s Eve, that feeling that all the fun stuff is over and now it’s time to drag myself through gloomy January.

It was just once, and maybe I’ll never hear it again. But I sure thought it was weird.

If The Justice System Doesn’t Get Him, The Afterlife Might

I’m not a believer, but I often find these sorts of coincidences funny. It’s as though if there is a god, he’s making sure people know to keep their hands off his shit. Theft is only for evangelists, dammit!

The image shows a statue of an angelic figure with large wings, holding a sword aloft in one hand. The statue is made of a material that resembles bronze or a similar metal, giving it a golden appearance. The angel has a determined expression and is wearing a flowing garment. The background is a clear blue sky with a few clouds.
And the angel said unto him, “I dare you, bro.”

A drunken thief was injured after falling on the sword of a statue of St. Michael the Archangel that he was trying to steal from a church in Monterrey, Mexico.
Local media reported that during the early hours of Jan. 14, Carlos Alonso, 32, allegedly went to the Christ the King Parish in downtown Monterrey to rob the church.
In the darkness, Alonso reportedly jumped over the fence in front of the church entrance, broke a glass door, and entered the church.

While trying to flee with a statue of St. Michael the Archangel, the alleged thief tripped and fell on the angel’s sword, seriously injuring his neck.

Charges are expected to be filed once he recovers.

Thanks For Your Help, Said Both Sides Of The Equation

Our boy made a couple of mistakes here.

  1. If you’re going to shoplift at Walmart, maybe leave the 37 pounds of marijuana at home instead of in the trunk of your car.
  2. If for some reason you haven’t done that, definitely don’t give your key fob to the police when they offer to help you load the stuff you did pay for at Walmart into that same car.
  3. Really though, don’t hand the cops your key fob is just sound advice in general. Don’t do that, everyone.

After Tull was arrested, he asked officers if he could keep the items that he did buy and officers agreed to put those items in the back seat of his car. The Morgan Citizen reports that Tull gave officers his key fob.

When officers got to the car, they opened his trunk instead of the backseat so that the items he bought would stay out of view. When police popped the trunk, they immediately smelled a strong odor of marijuana.
Officers found three duffle bags full of vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana totaling 37 pounds, according to the Citizen. They also found a smaller bag of suspected Psilocybin mushrooms.

But on the bright side, he was responsible for what the police are calling the largest drug bust in the history of their department, so he’s got that going for him.

Gosh Darn It, I Forgot To Bring A Reusable Again. How Silly Of Me

Though I understand the impulse to get annoyed when all you want is one simple bag in which you can carry one simple thing and you can’t have one, this seems like a slight overreaction. Seems like some Olympic level grudge holding, too.

The image shows a white car that has crashed into a building, partially entering through what appears to be a glass storefront. The car is positioned with its front end inside the building, and there is visible damage to the glass and structure around it.
Just dropping in to see if you had the bag I asked for.

At around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, the driver slammed the car into the store, damaging some items there. With the lights partially out, the man rushed into the store and assaulted the owner.
The driver was reportedly under the influence of alcohol. No casualties were reported as a result of the accident.

Police saw this as a retaliatory crime, as the driver had earlier been accused of physically harming the owner in late November of last year.
In November 2022, the man had asked the owner for a plastic bag when buying ice cream. The owner refused the request, abiding by a ban on single-use plastic bags by the Ministry of Environment.
Enraged, the man spat on the store owner.
The owner’s family later filed a complaint with police. The owner rejected the accused man’s request to settle the matter privately instead of opening a case.

The driving through the store incident happened in January 2023, so almost a full two months after what should have been a fairly simple matter to resolve. But now? Now it’s not quite so simple, as based on the charges he’s facing he could wind up in prison for up to 15 years. South Korea doesn’t take kindly to retaliatory crimes and destruction of property, apparently.