Cup of Coffee: April 2, 2024

Good morning!

Today, as always, we have recaps, which include a no-hitter from the most unlikely of pitchers. We also have news about the White Sox signing Mike Clevinger, Jazz Chisholm Jr. whining, The last word on the Royals stadium referendum before the polls open today, the Giants pissing off some fans for no good reason, and a Quote of the Day.

In Other Stuff we talk about escaping Florida, a grocery store chain that Republicans hate, and my difficulty in getting my mind around living World War II participants in the year 2036.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Astros 10, Blue Jays 0: Astros starter Ronel Blanco didn’t even make the damn team until the last day of spring training, he didn’t make his MLB debut until he was 28, he had never gone more than six innings in a game, and he was making only his eighth career start last night. He began by walking George Springer to lead off the game but then he retired the next 26 batters, with out number 26 coming on a great play at first base by José Abreu, who flipped it to Blanco covering. He then waked Springer again with two out in the ninth. That brought up Vlad Guerrero Jr. who went two-and-two on a clearly pressing Blanco. Honestly, I expected him to lose it right there, but Blanco induced weak contact to second base and a close 4-3 play later he had his no-hitter on just 105 pitches. Wow. What a damn story. And it got Houston its first win of the year, too. I’d say something about their 10-run attack, but today’s newsletter is looking like it’s zooming toward like 6,000 words right now and I gotta do SOMETHING to rein this crap in.

Cubs 5, Rockies 0: You can’t beat the excitement of a home opener!

Look, you wanted them to sign Cody Bellinger? Well, they signed Cody Bellinger. Real pyrotechnics are expensive and money doesn’t grow on trees. And no, I do not know why they have four pyrotechnic engines but only two are lighting at any given time. Just know that someone tried moderately hard to entertain you, OK? God, the ENTITLEMENT of some people today.

Anyway: Shota Imanaga was fantastic, shutting out Rockies hitters for six innings while striking out nine. Indeed, he took a no-hitter into that sixth inning. Christopher Morel hit a little league three-run homer, which involved a single, a bad error which allowed two runs to score while the ball rolled to the wall, followed by another error which allowed Morel himself to go home. Cody Bellinger added a two-run single in the seventh, so it made up for the bad pyrotechnics.

Atlanta 9, White Sox 0: Losing by the same score as a forfeit seems pretty appropriate for a White Sox team that’s blatantly mailing it in this year. At least the weather shortened it to eight innings, thereby providing some modicum of mercy. As for Atlanta, Austin Riley hit a three-run homer, singled in another run, and scored on a wild pitch. Orlando Arcia knocked in two. Charlie Morton pitched shutout ball into the sixth. It’s good that he left then and that it was a day game as I’m sure he had a big night ahead of him. I mean, he’s 40, so those plans probably involved ordering in food to his hotel room at 5:30, watching documentaries about shipwrecks and famous battles until around 9, and then hitting the hay. Old guys like us live for that kind of shit. Frankly, I’m jealous.

Pirates 8, Nationals 4: Make it 5-0 for Pittsburgh. Indeed, it’s the first time they’ve won their first five games since 1983, which may as well be 182 years ago. Connor Joe hit a tie-breaking RBI double in the eighth inning. He also knocked in a run in the sixth. Bryan Reynolds drove in three, with a run-scoring groundout and a two-run double after things got out of hand. This graf from the AP gamer sums up the state of the current Washington Nationals on the day of their home opener:

Three of the loudest ovations during pregame introductions were showered on players no longer playing for Washington, which has finished last every year since its 2019 World Series title: Sean Doolittle and Geraldo Parra (of “Baby Shark” fame) — who are both now Nationals coaches — and [Michael A.] Taylor, who drove in Pittsburgh's first run with a sacrifice fly.

Rough stuff.

Rangers 9, Rays 3: Josh Jung accounted for the Rangers first four runs, hitting a three-run homer and singling in a run. Then in the ninth he was hit by a pitch — while swinging at it, I should note — and, goddammit, he has a fractured wrist. Just awful news for a super important player for the Rangers. We’ll hear more on his prognosis today, I suspect, but he’s gonna be out a long time and that really sucks. Oh, and I’m sure Rangers fans will note that, before Jung was hit, Rays pitcher Phil Maton plunked the previous two batters, so whatever the hell he was up to I have no idea.

Elsewhere, Adolis García hit his third homer on the season — his 100th career homer — and Dane Dunning pitched into the seventh and picked up the win. But, honestly dudes, I’m sticking to last year’s decision to let the whole “Golden Age of Hollywood Dane Dunning” bit die. If it ever comes back it’s gonna be for a REALLY GOOD reason. Besides, part of why the Dane Dunning bit started was because I was reading a whole bunch of books about early-to-mid-century Hollywood at the time and I had all kinds of material at the ready. By now I’ve cycled through most of it so it’s stale. These days I’ve been reading a lot of medieval English history, so what I need to do is to find a player whose name reminds me of a Plantagenet king. Preferably one of the crappier ones like John, Edward II, or Richard II. I could get a lot of mileage out of that, I reckon, what with all of the conflicts-with-the-magnates business and whatnot.

Orioles 6, Royals 4: Kansas City had a 3-0 lead after three but a two-run homer from Ryan Mountcastle tied it up in the fourth. Mountcastle struck again later, knocking in a run on a single, but the Royals tied it up at four with a sac fly in the top of the ninth. Jordan Westburg came up in the bottom half, however, and hit a walkoff two-run homer and that was that. Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez homered for the Royals, but they’re 1-3 on the young season while the O’s are 3-1.

Reds 6, Phillies 3: It was tied at two at the end of regulation but Phillies reliever Connor Brogdon walked the first two men he faced in the tenth which, thanks to the Manfred Man, loaded the bases, after which Spencer Steer launched a grand damn slam to give the Reds a four-run lead. Philly tried to rally in the bottom half but it resulted in just one run. The Reds have been really good at calling the big late home run play this year. More teams should do that.

Angels 7, Marlins 4: Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got somethin' to say, but nothin' comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, and motherfuckers act like they forgot about Mike Trout.

Miami jumped out to an early 4-0 lead. That lead was cut into a bit by a Trout homer in the fourth. Then in the sixth Trout hit his second homer of the game — and it went 473 feet, which is the longest anyone has yet to hit one so far this season — to tie things up. By the the time the game ended the Angels had scored seven unanswered runs and had gotten six shutout innings from their bullpen to win it going away. Miami is now 0-5. I fully appreciate that Trout is gonna strain a calf or a quad or pull an oblique and miss like 75 games here pretty soon, but I’d really, really love him to put up one more MVP-caliber season, even if he won’t win the MVP because the Angles are gonna lose like 97 ballgames.

Tigers 5, Mets 0: Tigers starter Reese Olson took a shutout into the sixth and three relievers carried that shutout through nine. The problem was that Mets starter Sean Manaea took a shutout through six and three relievers carried that shutout through nine, causing this one to head into extras nil-nil. The tenth inning was a different story, however, as Mets reliever Michael Tonkin got his ass lit up for five, with the first run scoring on a fielder’s choice/error situaish, the second run scoring on a sac fly, and then Carson Kelly jacking a three-run homer to put things out of reach. Not that it mattered, as Shelby Miller of all people finished the shutout in the bottom half. Detroit is now 4-0. The Mets are now 0-4. And, I’ll be damned, Shelby Miller is still alive.

Red Sox 9, Athletics 0: The Red Sox scored three runs between the second and third innings, and on each occasion the runs scored via plays on which two separate Oakland errors occurred. The other six runs were merely a function of the Red Sox being better than the A’s. Oakland had five errors in all and now have 13 errors in their first five games. No one would wanna watch this team if it weren’t for the fact that no one wanted to watch them to begin with. Jarren Duran had three hits and three steals in the first three innings, Trevor Story added a two-run double. Ceddanne Rafaela hit not just one but two sacrifice flies. The pitching has really been the story for Boston in the early going, though. Here Tanner Houck struck out 10 batters in six scoreless innings. In their five games so far, all five Red Sox starters have gone five innings and have allowed two or fewer runs.

Mariners 5, Guardians 4: Dominic Canzone hit a three-run homer to help give Seattle a 4-0 lead after two and later Luis Urías drew a bases-loaded walk for run number five. Julio Rodríguez made two great plays in the field: robbing one batter of extra-base hit with a leaping grab near the center field wall in the top of the second inning and then making sliding for a catch in left-center in the fourth to rob another.

[Editor: Actually, Craig, both of those plays robbed Guardians DH Will Brennan]

Oh, so it’s personal. Wonder what Brennan did to Julio?

Yankees 5, Diamondbacks 2: New York had a 5-0 lead by the top of the third via RBI singles from Oswaldo Cabrera and Anthony Volpe, an RBI double from Gleyber Torres, and a sac fly-error combo which allowed two more to come in. Luis Gil — who has a neck tattoo that says “God Bless Me” that I should probably get myself now that I’m a tattoo guy, right? — came back from TJ surgery and, while he didn’t pitch long enough to get the win, he allowed just one run while pitching into the fifth. The Yankees are 5-0 to start the season for the first time since 1992. They finished ten games under .500 that year and their two best players were Mélido Pérez and Danny Tartabull, so don’t get too excited, but being 5-0 is better than not being 5-0.

Cardinals 6, Padres 2: An early two-run homer from Willson Contreras and RBI hits from Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt staked the Cards to an early 4-0 lead while Kyle Gibson went seven, allowing just two runs. Brendan Donovan also went deep on a night where everything went the way St. Louis drew it up to go when they were building this team over the winter. I’m guessing their former manager, Mike Shildt, did not enjoy watching this from the Padres dugout.

Dodgers 8, Giants 3: James Paxton who, due to all of the offseason excitement, I did not realize had signed with the Dodgers, tossed five shutout innings. A three-run Teoscar Hernández homer in the sixth blew this one wide open. Freddie Freeman had three hits. Freddie Freeman always seems to have three hits.

The Daily Briefing

The White Sox sign Mike Clevinger 

As if things weren’t bad enough with the White Sox, they went out and signed Mike Clevinger yesterday. It’s a one-year deal. Terms were not disclosed, at least by the time I went to bed last night.

I say bad because while Clevinger was ultimately not suspended by Major League Baseball, he was accused of domestic violence against the two mothers of his various children and said children last year and there is no small amount of buzz floating around that he’s a pretty big creep apart from that. At the very least he gives off a bad vibe, but he’s eligible, the White Sox want him, and who am I to keep two fairly miserable parties from coming together?

Clevinger, 33, is 60-39 with a 3.45 ERA in 788 innings across seven seasons in the big leagues, including a 9-9 stint with the White Sox last season. He’ll no doubt get a lot of chances to prove himself in Chicago’s rotation. If he disappoints he’s still likely to be one of the Sox’ better pitchers. If he pitches well, he’ll likely be a trade chit come July.

Jazz Chisholm Jr. doesn’t like the roof being open

The Marlins started the season 0-4, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. is not just upset about that. He’s also upset about the conditions in which those four games were played. Specifically, he did not like that the roof at LoanDepot Park was open for three of those four games:

"That we couldn't see," Chisholm said after Sunday's loss, when asked what made the Pirates relief pitchers such a challenge in the series. "That's all. I feel like the shadows were really -- we're not used to playing in shadows. We normally play inside every day.

"So, when we get a shadow for three of the four games at home for the first time of the season, it's kind of hard to adjust to. You know, we're used to the roof being closed and being able to see every at-bat. It's kind of tough to see when it's black out there and you're facing a guy throwing 101 [mph], you know?"

I’m usually among the last people to tell someone to suck it up when it comes to difficult working conditions, but this seems rather whiney. Not only did the Pirates have to deal with the same shadows, but it’s not like the Marlins were coming off a two-month stretch of nothing but indoor games. It was the start of the season! The one game in this series in which the roof was closed was the only game they’ve played indoors since last fall.

I know people get used to what they get used to, but late inning shadows during day games have been part of baseball for about 150 years. That aside, a brief look at the box scores reveals that there were reasons besides the shadows that the Marlins took a golden sombrero in their opening series.

The Royals campaign for a new stadium lacks credibility

There’s an important stadium-related vote in Jackson County Missouri — home to Kansas City — today. There has been early voting before now, but by the time you go to bed tonight we’ll likely know whether voters will agree to repeal and replace a sales tax that would otherwise evaporate in 2031 in order to pay for a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals and to foot part of the bill for improvements for the NFL’s Arrowhead Stadium.

I’ve only been following the Royals push for a new stadium from afar. Mostly because, unlike a lot of stadium projects, this one is at least dependent on an actual referendum, which will give the taxpayers who will be fleeced in all of this some say in their fleecing. No, it’s still not ideal, and yes there are still all kinds of backroom dealings afoot, but putting it to voters makes it a bit more legitimate, even if the end result is still a bad idea in my view. And it’s a bad idea in my mind, if for no other reason than Kauffman Stadium is still one of the best ballparks around and it’s a shame everyone seems to want to put the wrecking ball to it.

Like I said, I’ve not been paying close attentions to the arguments and counterarguments in the lead-up to today’s vote, even if I’ve gotten the sense that there has been a lot of deception and goal post-moving in the year or two leading up to it. Thankfully, though, one of you hipped me to a pretty clear-eyed post that breaks a lot of that down for us in pretty simple terms.

The post is from Lee Judge, a syndicated political cartoonist and contributor to The Kansas City Star that some of you may have heard of. Over at his Substack, he outlines and scrutinizes some of the talking points which have surrounded the stadium campaign. He ultimately concludes that he can’t support the referendum due mostly to just how dishonest everyone who wants it to pass has been about it. Among his issues:

• There’s was a weird, unsupported claim floated — and apparently since abandoned — about how Arrowhead Stadium is fine to renovate but Kauffman was somehow built with “bad concrete” despite the fact that the stadiums were built simultaneously under a single contract. The abandonment of that claim happened almost simultaneously with people asking for proof of it;
• The Royals have talked about not wanting to displace businesses and to be a good community partner, but the ballpark plans they’ve released basically blow up everything in a six square-block area of downtown Kansas City that is currently home to a lot of businesses, and no one seems to care too much about that;
• The project is being sold as one which involves “no new taxes” but given that they’re replacing a tax that is set to sundown in seven years with one that will last for decades into the future, is that really “no new taxes?” Judge compares it to you being close to paying off your mortgage only for the bank to say “we’d now like you to keep paying that for many more years, but since it’s the same payment, it’s not new!”
• Then there are the usual “economic benefit” arguments which, however rosy they sound, are 100% certain not to be realized based on the economic scholarship we’ve discussed here on many occasions.

It seems pretty clear to me that the real argument for the new stadium is that Royals owner John Sherman wants a new stadium and that every argument in favor of a “yes” vote on the referendum is a disingenuous justification working backwards from Sherman’s desires. Or, as Judge puts it:

If the half-assed way the Royals and Chiefs have presented this proposal to the public is any indication, I wouldn’t feel confident about the teams’ execution of their half-assed proposal.

Bottom line: on far too many issues the teams are saying trust us and then giving us reason after reason not to.

Tomorrow, I’ll vote no.

Tonight we’ll see if the voters of Jackson County agree.

The Giants pissed off a bunch of fans for no good reason

Like a lot of sports teams, the San Francisco Giants once created an area near their stadium where fans could purchase walkway bricks or tiles and inscribe their name, the name of a departed loved one, or a short message of some kind. The Giants version of that was on the walkway near a statue of Willie McCovey. The inscribed-tile-laded walkway has been around almost as long as the ballpark has been there. Fans paid either $95 or $225 for the tiles, some as long as 20 years ago.

There has been a big renovation/construction project in that area of the stadium complex over the past four years — the Mission Rock project — that led to the McCovey statue and the tiles being removed, putatively temporarily. The statue was recently replaced but the tiles were not. Per the San Francisco Chronicle, the team sent emails to fans who purchased walkway tiles to inform them that their names and messages will now will be available only digitally at a nearby kiosk because “the tiles in their original state could not be salvaged during construction.” They dug ‘em up and destroyed them and figured that the fans wouldn’t care and would be fine with a digital kiosk no one would ever look at as opposed to a tangible thing in nature. I know the Giants are a San Francisco baseball team but that’s the most Silicon Valley corporation thing imaginable.  

To say this didn’t go over well was an understatement. The Chronicle quoted a bunch of fans who were outraged, many of whom considered their tiles to be memorials to loved ones who had died. It didn’t help that some team spokesman offered up a statement in which he said, using classic corporate passive voice, that “there was a desire to have a different design around the statue” — whose desire, exactly? — and that “it allows for the recognition of the original participants in the program to be recognized within the context of this new park.” It was the PR-speak equivalent of “yes, we know this is not want you want, but we want this and thus you should want this too.”

The backlash was fierce, however, and within a day the Giants reversed course. As noted, the tiles are all gone, but they’re going to figure something out. Which I presume will involve the creation of replacement tiles based on the database which they were going to use to power the kiosk.

Just another reminder that sports teams don’t care about you. They may act like they do, and they will certainly tell you that they do until you can hand over some money, but once the transaction is completed, so too is the caring, at least from their perspective. In no way do any of them seem to appreciate, like some of them once did, that people view sports and sports teams as community institutions which have at least moderately greater responsibilities than a corner liquor store. I don’t think they’ll ever acknowledge that. There’s nothing in it for them but some pesky responsibility.

Quote of the Day: MLBPA Edition

“Remember, we’re talking about baseball players, so it’s not necessarily rational.”

— An anonymous baseball agent talking about how it might be difficult for the MLBPA to move on with unity and rationality following the recent attempted insurgency by Harry Marino. In my experience that applies to a great many other things, of course, even if it’s considered rude to discuss it openly.

(via The Athletic).

Other Stuff

Escape from Florida

NBC News has a story about how, while Florida is still gaining residents faster than most places in the country, an increasing number of people are up and leaving due to it, basically, being a hellhole.

Inflation is hitting harder there than most places. The cost of home and car insurance is skyrocketing to the point where it’s a legitimate crisis. The political atmosphere, dominated by Trump and Ron DeSantis, has become toxic even for many people who consider themselves to be conservative. And that’s before you get into everything DeSantis did with culture-war driven education “reforms” which are basically the establishment of white supremacy and bans on abortion and transgender medical and mental healthcare. Moving there has been a miserable experience for the people interviewed in the piece and many are now looking to go back to where they came from.

I feel bad for the people interviewed for the article insofar as I feel bad for most people who undergo misery, at least on some level. But I have my limits, because most of this stuff about Florida was easy to figure out many years ago.

The political trajectory of the place, driven in large part by a heavily white geriatric population and the ascendance of DeSantis and people like him, has been apparent for some time. Florida was already prone to hurricanes and other severe weather before most people got their brains around climate change — at least to the extent they have gotten their brains around it — and it’s manifestly obvious that it’s going to to get worse. Which, of course, is most of what is driving the spiraling costs of insurance. The traffic and rent/mortgage increases referred to are a function of the rapidly growing population over the past several years. All of the above is made more miserable by a state government that believes it exists in order to advance a culture war as opposed to provide services, infrastructure, and sensible governance for its people.

The only part of the article that is actually funny are people’s complaints about it being hot and wet all the time, which makes me believe that a lot of people visit in January or February and decide to move there based solely on their having a nice vacation. I suppose we’re all guilty of that sort of vacation thinking from time to time, but I don’t know how one doesn’t know how miserable Florida can be outside of tourist season. It’s pretty obvious! It’s not like moving someplace and only finding out after the fact that some obscure tax exists on 5+ axle vehicles or people who maintain chinchilla farms.

I feel like I’m ahead of the curve on Florida. We vacationed there a few times when I was a kid and, while there were some fun times, I generally disliked it for a number of reasons both objective and subjective. Years later I had to go there for a work thing for a week in the month of June — and had to wear a suit the whole time — and I wanted to die. Every other time I’ve been there, including for baseball-related stuff like spring training and the Winter Meetings, the place has given me bad vibes. And all of that was before the political nightmare the place has become. The place has always seemed to be closer to both oblivion and the primordial than anyplace else in America. And on top of that it’s just tacky.

If you would’ve asked me 15 years ago which states I’d least like to move to, Florida would’ve been at or near the top of the list. After reading articles like this one, I cannot imagine it ever not being there.

Texas Republicans go after H-E-B

If you were reading this newsletter three or four years ago you’ll recall me spending a frankly unreasonable amount of time talking about the San Antonio, Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B. I’m the last guy in the world you’d expect to fanboy for a multi-billion dollar corporate chain — or anything else Texas-related for that matter — but H-E-B is absolutely glorious for a host of reasons.

I became familiar with H-E-B due to Allison’s parents living outside of San Antonio. Our twice-annual trips down to visit them almost always begin with the two of us stopping at H-E-B to stock up on things we plan to cook while in town. The produce is always fantastic, there are always freshly-made tortillas in the bakery, and unlike most other grocery store chains they remain committed to staffing at high levels and having multiple — often dozens — of open checkout lanes with actual people running the registers. Think of any reason why the grocery chain you patronize sucks — and God knows most of them do — and know that H-E-B probably doesn’t do that. It’s just better.

But there’s a lot more to it. In addition to just being a pleasant grocery store, H-E-B is that rarest of things: a good corporate citizen which actually believes that with the great privileges it is given by our legal and financial system comes great responsibility.

On one level, H-E-B does typical things corporations do, such as make charitable donations (though H-E-B’s policy of donating five percent of pretax profits to food banks and educational causes is more generous than most). But it goes way beyond that. The company takes good care of their workers, paying them well, treating them well, and offering generous benefits. H-E-B also has a dedicated operation called “Mobile Kitchen and Disaster Relief Units” which act like shadow first-responders, distributing hot meals and fresh water to volunteers and victims in areas hit by natural disasters in Texas. Or, in the case of the deep-freeze and attendant power outages Texas experienced a couple of years ago, hybrid natural/man-made disasters. After the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas H-E-B and the family which owns it donated $10 million toward building a new school.

It’s also worth noting that H-E-B, through its 86 year-old chairman, Charles Butt — only the third chairperson of the store since its founding by his grandmother in 1905 — also involves itself with political causes that one tends not to associate with either wealthy executives or gigantic corporations.

For example, Butt fought GOP-led voter suppression efforts by publicly supporting Harris County, Texas’ efforts to send mail-in ballots to all eligible voters. He has contributed to candidates and groups that support public education and oppose private-school voucher programs. H-E-B has likewise supported Pride events. It has initiated various efforts to push back against the stigma often faced by customers who rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as SNAP or food stamps, welcoming such customers making their shopping experience less fraught than it has unfortunately become in many places.

You would think, then, that everyone would celebrate H-E-B and Good Chairman Butt (which is totally the title I will assume once I impose my New World Order). But this is America — indeed, this is TEXAS! — so you will not be shocked to learn that there has been pushback against them. From Texas Monthly:

This weekend, [Republican] party officials in four counties in East and Southeast Texas voted to condemn the “Democrat billionaire” for involving himself in “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”

Despite its deep red political tilt there are, obviously, many millions of Democrats in Texas, including many public officials, who “advocate for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform,” yet no GOP party officials I am aware of make a point to formally condemn them. I mean, that’s just weird, right? Even in the places that are most dominated by one party, there is always at least some opposition. That’s how democracy and pluralism works. The Ohio GOP rails daily against almost all of the things I stand for, but it’s not passing formal resolutions condemning notable people or businesses who support liberal or progressive causes. Well, except for George Soros, but that’s a different story.

I suspect What makes H-E-B and Chairman Butt different is that, to Republicans, a huge corporation and an old white billionaire who support center-left causes are seen as committing an act of class betrayal. They’re not supposed to like those things! They’re supposed to bankroll the right-wing fever dreams that our most deeply red radicals can devise! It’s one thing for the college educated city folk in Austin or Houston to not want a corporate theocracy, but for a rich guy born during FDR’s second term to oppose it is basically treason.

Welp, tough crap, dudes. Maybe you’d feel better if you went and got a bag of fresh tortillas at H-E-B.

Please help me with this math

I read an article yesterday about how the National WWII Museum in New Orleans is using AI to create an exhibit called “Voices from the Front” in which, via the use of AI, 360 video, and other technological advances, World War II veterans and those who supported the war effort in non-military roles can “talk” to visitors and explain their experiences and stuff. Real survivors of the war effort are the subjects of the video and audio capture. Right now the process merely involves computerized searching the audio files of the recorded subjects to produce relevant responses to visitors’ questions, but the hope is that one day, with voice recognition and more robust AI, it will be able to generate new, interactive dialogue and the presentation will feature holograms and stuff.

I rip AI a lot, but this is pretty cool. It seeks to preserve knowledge and human experience and to present that knowledge and human experience in a uniquely visceral way. As someone who spends a lot of time in genealogical records and reading history books, I often think about how cool it would’ve been to have been able to capture first-hand information in better forms at the time. This project is looking to do that, so good show!

But I am sort of struggling with this passage from the story:

Out of the 16.1 million Americans who served in the war, only 119,550 - less than 1 percent - are still living, as of last year’s data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. By 2036, the department projects, only a few hundred Americans who served in World War II will be alive.

“We’re racing against time,” said Peter Crean, a museum vice president and a retired U.S. Army colonel who spearheaded Voices from the Front, which opened this month.

I am aware that this is not just about soldiers, sailors, and airmen, nor should it be. The article is framed by the experience of a USO dancer, for example, and there were countless people who contributed to the war effort in countless other non-military ways. If anything, I think we should be more expansive in those definitions, partially to accurately reflect history, but also because I think it’s important to impress upon people just what national sacrifice really means, because we simply don’t do that anymore.

But I am really having a hard time with the math.

By December 7, 2036, we will be 95 years removed from the United States’ entry into the war and around 91 years removed from its end. That USO dancer is 94 now — and presumably turns 95 this year — which means she would’ve been 16 or 17 in 1945. Which, sure, I can see that. What’s more, there are always stories of people who lied about their age to get into the military or military support positions, not to mention child laborers, so let’s say there were a number of people who were between the ages of, oh, 10-15 who meaningfully contributed during the war years in some capacity. That makes the birth cutoff year somewhere in the 1931-35 range, with a much heavier emphasis, I’d suspect, toward the earlier date. Which means that by the 2036 bogey mentioned in the block quote above, people who meaningfully served in WWII are going to have to be around 105ish. Maybe a little younger, but at that point we’re talking about people who were nine or ten at the end of the war and there can’t be too many of them.

According to the Census Bureau, as of 2020, there were only around 11,000 people still alive in the United States who were 105 or older. I can accept that, thanks to medicine and science, more people than that will survive to that age come 2036. But I can’t picture it being ten times more 105+ year old people in the space of just 16 years. That seems like way too much. So where is that 119,500 figure coming from? Again, service can come in many forms, but are we including kids who filled their Radio Flyer wagons with rubber and scrap metal in the definition of “Americans who served in the war?” Seems a bit . . . loose.

I’m honestly not trying to stir shit here or criticize anyone. I’m just genuinely unclear about this. What am I missing?

Have a great day everyone.

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