Cup of Coffee: February 12, 2024

Good morning!

Congratulations to the Kansas City Football Club for winning yet another Super Bowl. That’s about the extent to which I can speak intelligently about last night’s game given that, rather than watch it, I spent like three hours writing an exhaustive survey of what each of the 30 MLB clubs’ fan bases are like from a vibes perspective. As always, I have my finger on the pulse of America and what it wants.

Nevertheless, the piece was super fun to write and it has a bunch of laughs, but I hope it kinda pisses some people off too because I haven’t had a good fight with anyone for a while. All I can tell you for sure is that it is 100% accurate and that you should forward it to your friends so that they come here to see what my whole deal is. Almost everyone who has become good friends with me in my life started by wondering what the hell was wrong with me first. It’s just my thing.

Otherwise, we have stuff about Billy Eppler, Corey Kluber, dumb criminals, and the not-unclear messages being sent to you by The Man.

 The Daily Briefing

Former Mets GM Billy Eppler suspended for faking injury list placements

As you likely saw on Friday, Major League Baseball suspended former New York Mets general manager Billy Eppler through the 2024 World Series for improper use of the injured list, including the “deliberate fabrication of injuries.”

The league said its investigation “concluded that the pattern of conduct was at Mr. Eppler’s sole direction and without any involvement of Mets ownership or superiors.” What’s more, since Eppler resigned in October and a new head of baseball operations, David Stearns, has taken over, the league considers the matter closed with respect to the club.

I’m far more interested in knowing whether this matter is closed, or should be closed, with respect the rest of the league. Almost all nefarious behavior in baseball history has been something that was passed around the league before people realized, oh wait, we’re not supposed to be doing this. Indeed, at the time the investigation into Eppler was announced last fall there was a lot of talk about “The Phantom IL” and about how whether or not an injury requires an IL trip is often a matter of opinion and nuance as opposed to something that is objective and obvious.

Given those circumstances — and my doubts that Billy Eppler was the first to come up with anything of consequence, be it good or bad, on his own — I’d bet my mortgage that the practice for which Eppler was just sanctioned is fairly widespread. Or, at least was very widespread until the league put Eppler’s head on a pike. I mean, I don’t particularly like the fact that Major League Baseball tends to engage in exemplary discipline as opposed to comprehensive discipline as a matter of principle, but I must admit that it tends to work fairly well as an ethos in practice.

Speaking of the Eppler news . . .

The New York Times had the Eppler story on Friday afternoon and pushed out this breaking news alert about it:

We all make mistakes, of course, but writing things like “The MLB” and identifying Eppler as the team’s one-time manager rather than its general manager is far more likely to occur when you eliminate your sports department and rely on people who don’t know what they’re talking about to produce actual editorial content. And yes, even a news alert like this is editorial content.

Corey Kluber retires 

Two-time Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber announced his retirement over the weekend.

Kluber, 37, pitched 13 seasons in the bigs, suiting up for Cleveland for nine years, followed by one year each for Texas, New York, Tampa Bay, and Boston.

Kluber won his first Cy Young with Cleveland in 2014 after going 18-9 with a 2.44 ERA (160 ERA+). He won the award again in 2017, finishing 18-4 with a 2.25 ERA (202 ERA+). He’d retain his dominance through the 2018 campaign but a freak injury in 2019 sustained on a line drive comebacker, followed by a series of more wear-and-tear issues which began to pile up in the ensuing years, sapped his effectiveness in his final few seasons.

None of that takes away from what was a really nice career from a guy who, while he was never considered a top prospect, just worked on his craft and emerged, for a time, as one of the best pitchers in the game. In the process he earned three trips to the All-Star Game and some downballot MVP votes in three different seasons. In all Kluber went 116-77 with a 3.44 ERA (122 ERA+) in 271 career games, all but 11 as a starter. He also threw a no-hitter in 2021 while pitching for the Yankees.

Here’s some of Kluber’s statement announcing his retirement, in which he also thanked the five clubs that he played for, the MLBPA, his agents, club staff members, teammates and his family:

“With sincere appreciation, I am announcing my retirement from Major League Baseball, concluding a remarkable 13-season Major League Baseball journey. I am deeply grateful for the support of numerous individuals and entities that profoundly influenced my path. As I take my leave from the pitcher’s mound, my passion for baseball remains unwavering. I eagerly anticipate exploring opportunities to continue contributing to the sport in a different capacity. To all who have been involved with my baseball odyssey, thank you for crafting an indelible and unforgettable ride. For all of those that will be part of my next chapter in baseball, I look forward to passing on what I have learned to the next generation of MLB players.”

Happy trails Corey Kluber.

What’s each team’s fandom vibe?

On Friday, I shared one of y’all’s comments about the White Sox stadium renderings on Twitter. It went over well, with a lot of folks laughing at it, just like I did. But one person made a somewhat deeper observation:

I can’t say that I know a ton of White Sox fans, but that observation generally tracks. Back in the early HBT days I sort of made a sport of trying to wind up fans of basically every team whenever I could. I found that White Sox fans were among the toughest to wind up because there’s nothing you could say that they haven’t already thought or internalized.

All of this inspired me to think back over my near constant interactions with the fanbases of each MLB team over the years, be it in the comments of my blog(s), in various fan forums, or on social media. That, in turn, inspired me to summarize the highly subjective impressions I’ve developed of the fan bases of all 30 teams over the years.

Before anyone yells at me about this: Yes, I know that “not all ___ fans are that way,” so please save that criticism. This is merely a sampling of genuine sentiment I’ve received or observed from fans of various teams at some point or another, not some authoritative assessment.

That said, I have been actively writing about baseball for 17 years now, I am absolutely certain that I written more words than any baseball writer on the planet over the course of those 17 years, and because it’s all been online in bloggy forums with comments section and because I’m a social media addict, I’ve probably heard about 1000x more fan sentiment, from more distinct fan bases, than anyone going. Which is to say, this piece is not some personal attack on anyone. It’s just what I have observed and what springs to mind when I’m inspired to think of fans of each team.

So let’s do this. Let’s let the hate flooooooow through us . . .

Yankees fans: The biggest drama queens going. When things are going well it’s The Yankees Universe! The Evil Empire! No one can stop us and no one dare try! When things go even slightly sub-optimally, however, they would have you believe they are suffering through the worst stretch of baseball imaginable and no one’s woes can compare. The micro-agita is pretty extreme, too. Like, there is NO fan base who comes within 100 light years of Yankees fans when it comes to nitpicking insignificant batting order decisions or choices about who should be the 26th man on the roster. All of that being said, I rather like Yankees fans. Based on what I’ve seen from them, however, I simply think that it would be completely exhausting to be one.

Red Sox fans: For years the signature trait I observed involved Red Sox fans continuing to act as though they were cursed victims despite the fact they’d won one, then two, then three, and then four World Series titles. When you add in the unprecedented success the Patriots have had, along with championships and pretty consistently great play from the Celtics and Bruins, there has never been a more egregious case of rich people crying poor in all of sports history. This, thankfully, has died down over the past several years. Indeed, these days Red Sox fans are a fairly baseline “happy when they’re good, cranky when they’re bad” lot. Indeed, these days I tend to think more about Boston media reactions because there are SO many Red Sox media folks online. That crowd tends to be the most provincial bunch of marks imaginable. Like, when Rickey Henderson dies one day, there will absolutely be headlines that read “Former Boston Red Sox left fielder Rickey Henderson has passed.”

Blue Jays fans: Quiet most of the time but surprisingly feisty when the Jays are good. Very quick to detect disrespect when almost no one else would or even should. Maybe there’s some AL East little brother stuff going on here? Maybe it’s their inner-Leafs fans coming out? I dunno.

Rays fans: I haven’t encountered a great deal of vocal Rays fans online over the years. For a time there were some people involved in the Rays blogging world who, because not everyone knew who their fifth best pitching prospect was, took it as a sign of massive disrespect, but that was like a decade ago. They still do get mad when you note that the Rays, more than any other team, like to raise banners for pretty modest accomplishments, but in their defense, we do that specifically in order to make them mad.

Orioles fans: Fairly baseline and realistic fans, both when they’re good and when they’re bad. But I gotta say, I got a lot of crap hurled at me from some of them a couple of weeks ago when I suggested that it’d be prudent to wait more than seven minutes after the announcement of the team’s sale to canonize David Rubenstein. And NO ONE wanted to be reminded of the fact that Peter Angelos was similarly hailed as a savior back in 1993. I’ll let it pass, though. John Angelos is enough to make anyone temporarily insane.

Tigers fans: Also fairly baseline in my experience. Tigers fans never got too high when the team was great and haven’t gotten too low when they’ve been dog crap. I suppose their experience with years and years of great Red Wings teams tempered their reactions to the former and their experience with the Lions, at least until very recently, tempered the latter.

Guardians fans: Cleveland fans, in any sport, will not demonstrate unqualified exuberance unless and until an actual championship trophy is raised and even then about 95% of them will hold back while waiting for the other shoe to drop. People talk about how much of a gut-punch the 1997 and 2016 World Series were for them, but true Cleveland fans were talking about how they were gonna blow it before anyone else considered the thought. Not that you can blame them. I honestly cannot picture what a cocky, arrogant, rah-rah Cleveland sports fan might look like. All of them speak in dire, philosophical, and metaphoric parallels, like they’re characters in some novel that was smuggled out of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. “Winning? Talk no more of winning, my child. Is the rooster who crows ‘winning’ when the farmer trudges forth with the axe in his hand?” Cleveland fans say, after which they take a long, sorrowful drag off of some weird, brown cigarette they obtained on the black market.

White Sox fans: As noted above, they know and have internalized all possible criticisms of their team before you can offer them. There’s some quite understandable Cubs Little Brother Syndrome going on as well, but it rarely comes off as toxic in my experience.

Royals fans: The most surprising thing I’ve ever experienced along fandom lines was when the Royals got good for like three seasons in the teens and a contingent of Royals fans became the most obnoxious loudmouths I’ve ever encountered on the Internet. I mean, on one level it was cute because most of them had no experience rooting for a good team so you almost wanted to muss their hair and tell them that they were adorable. But there was a shocking amount of toxicity in that crowd too. Like, I made a passing remark about how Royals fans stuffed the All-Star ballot box in 2016 — which they totally did — and in response Royals fans found my email address and started to sign me up for all kinds of weird mailing lists and tried to guess my passwords for various places. At least they did that when they weren’t posting angry 15-tweet threads full of gross photoshopped pics of me which they claimed was totally justified because I obviously hated their team. When they weren’t doing that they were talking about a thousand-year reich of Royals dominance based on their allegedly unique discovery that shutdown bullpens were useful. Then the Royals finished at .500 that year and haven’t smelled .500 since and those fans got super quiet. Weird!

Twins fans: Pretty baseline happy-when-good-bummed-when-bad without much in the way of weird quirks or toxic traits that I’ve noticed. When I was an unambiguous Atlanta fan a lot of them used to mock me for the Ron Gant/Kent Hrbek play but, in their defense, I totally would’ve been doing the same to them if the situation was reversed.

Astros fans: I don’t want to rehash every argument from the sign-stealing scandal, but at some point someone needs to sit Astros fans down and explain to them that “but someone else did something wrong too!” does not mean that the Astros did not do anything wrong. Because I’d say that argument has been either explicitly or implicitly deployed in about 96% of all interactions I’ve had with Houston fans about sign-stealing over the past four years. Seriously, if you put Astros fans in charge of the police department — and if they employed the same logic about crime as they do about the sign-stealing — they’d tell you that Jeffrey Dahmer should never have been arrested because they never arrested the Zodiac Killer.

Angels fans: I’ve never encountered many Angels fans online, but the ones I have encountered really, really hate the Tungsten Arm O’Doyle tweet, I tell you what.

Rangers fans: For as deluded and obnoxious as Cowboys fans can be I’ve never seen that trait in Rangers fandom. They’ve genuinely enjoyed the club’s recent success and the Ron Washington Era success and never seemed to get too neurotic about the down years. As is the case with all of these subjective assessments I am sure many of you can cite counterexamples, but Rangers fans may be among the most chill I’ve encountered, at least for a club that has actually had success and expectations surrounding it. Pirates fans are more chill, but that’s more an act of self-defense in their case.

A’s fans: The poor bastards. To their credit, they know where things stand. And despite having every reason in the world to talk about how victimized they’ve been by their team’s ownership, most of them have taken the healthier route of offering straightforward middle fingers and FU’s at John Fisher instead. I kinda like that and I think that, because of that, they’re gonna be OK.

Mariners fans: I feel like M’s fans are in deep need of a lot of therapy. it’s not their fault, though. They’ve dealt with distant corporate ownership for much of the club’s existence during which they were almost made to feel guilty for expecting all that much. And while I’m not quite sure what the current state of satisfaction is with Jerry Dipoto as GM among Seattle fans, the fact that he likes to make a bunch of deals for the sake of making deals with very few of them actually meaning much has conditioned M’s fans not to know what to expect even if they’re going through motions which, superficially, should inspire hope. I don’t intend to compare being a baseball fan to experiencing childhood trauma, but there are at least some vague parallels between people who were brought up by largely well-meaning but uneven and erratic parents and what M’s fans have had to unpack.

Atlanta fans: I dunno, really. I was part of Atlanta fandom for so long that I never took anything approaching a long, objective look at them. I did, however, begin criticizing the Tomahawk Chop when I was still deep into the club and, boy howdy, did most of them react poorly to it. To the point where I, a person who was watching Bruce Benedict and Pascual Pérez years before anyone had thought to initiate the Chop, was castigated as some newbie who didn’t understand team history. Whatever the case, there is definitely a much pricklier reaction to criticism among Atlanta fans compared to fans of a lot of teams and it’s given voice to a lot more “you’re not a real fan, I’m a real fan” rebop than you tend to see in baseball. Perhaps that’s because they’re a deep south team and everyone is such a college football fan that they just autopilot to the sort of blind, dumb loyalty you see in that realm.

Mets fans: Mets fans make White Sox and Cleveland fans look confident and worry-free. Whereas White Sox fans give voice to all possible criticisms before critics get a chance to, Mets fans explain to their critics that they are woefully understating the problems. Whereas Cleveland fans won’t drop their anxiety until after a World Series trophy is raised, Mets fans will, as their trophy is being raised, say “welp, I guess we’re about to start 40 more years of hell; maybe it would be better to not give everyone hope.” I just want to pick them all up and hug them and tell them that it’ll all be OK, but they’d probably be suspicious of that.

Phillies fans: A tale of three fandoms, at least during my tenure as a writer. Old readers will recall the bombastic, often obnoxious arrogance of so many Phillies fans in my comments and on social media from 2007-2011 or so. Then when that run crashed they got real quiet and newly realistic. Well, not newly, I don’t suspect. Whatever their demeanor, Phillies fans have always been well-informed fans so I’m guessing they were fairly straight-shooters before the Charlie Manuel era too. Things just got a little out of hand early in the social media era. Either way, they returned to that informed realism when the team got bad and I’d go years without getting into dustups with prickly Philly fans. I always suspected that when they returned to competitiveness they’d resume that sorta jerky stance they had 15 years ago but nah, they didn’t. They skew kinda lovable now. They embrace every little quirk and oddity about every single player on the roster. When a player does something that, back in the day, might’ve made them hated, they’ve lifted them up and shown empathy. They are likewise the absolute fastest to create rather wholesome memes or t-shirts or catchphrases out of some on-the-field moment most of us wouldn’t notice otherwise. It’s a lot and, at times, I feel like it unconsciously drifts into love-bombing territory, which is itself potentially toxic, but for now it beats the bad old days.

Oh, and for those of you who remember him: old HBT commenter Halladay’s Biceps (or, sometimes, “Halladay’s Bicepts”) disappeared after my second and final ban of him circa 2011. Then he reached out to me in 2015 to tell me that he (a) quit drinking, which had been a big problem for him; and (b) he had embraced Donald Trump with all of his heart and soul and confidently predicted that he would become president the following year. I congratulated him for his sobriety and laughed at him for his Trump prediction. Guess he showed me.

Nationals fans: Another pretty straightforward entry. They sucked for a long time and people were pretty realistic about it. When they got great everyone seemed to enjoy it without going too crazy. Now that they suck again everyone is miserable but it’s an appropriate level of misery. Like, no one is driving their marriage off a cliff, losing lifelong friendships, or drowning themselves in a bottle of Old Crow because the team’s biggest offseason move was the acquisition of Nick Senzel. I mean, maybe they should, but they’re not, and good for them.

Marlins fans: I’m gonna be 100% honest and tell you that the only Marlins fan I speak to on anything approaching a regular basis is Baseball and the Law writer and Friend of Cup of Coffee Lou Schiff. Besides him I cannot remember having any active commenters who were Marlins fans, be it back in my Blogspot Days, at HardballTalk, or since I launched the newsletter. I thus cannot tell you, other than Lou’s pretty level-headed takes on the highs and lows of the Marlins, what that fandom thinks. They’re mysterious and perhaps unknowable, like the Sheliak Corporate. Frankly, I need them to win another World Series so I can get a handle on them.

Cubs fans: Things used to be simple with Cubs fans. They never expected much and their expectations were almost always met. The World Series victory and the couple of years of success on either side of that scrambled them good. Older Cubs fans — say, people over 40 — have always kept their heads about them, but some of the younger ones who came of baseball fan age between 2015 and 2020 have been a bit insufferable on social media and in certain Cubs online spaces. I mean, dudes, I agree with you that this or that front office move or Ricketts decision stinks, but you don’t get to play the “this is the worst it’s ever been” card if you don’t know who Mike Quade was.

Cardinals fans: Among the most hilarious things going is how loudly some Cardinals fans will yell at you about how they never — ever! — called themselves The Best Fans in Baseball™ so it’s unfair to mock them via sarcastic deployment of that moniker. My witches: do not cite the Deep Magic to me. I was there when it was written. You and your Cardinals fans elders lapped that shit up until social media became a thing and you were forced to confront people who didn’t much care for the sentiment. Personally, I’d just lean into it. Sorta like how the Yankees, Notre Dame, Chelsea F.C., and the United States of America still walk around acting like they’re elite dynasties even if they, objectively, are not anymore. Make the critics explain why they’re better fans or why you’re not the best. Once they start doing that the absurdity of the exercise will become apparent and they’ll be the ones looking foolish. Just don’t lie, man.

Brewers fans: They’re pretty well-adjusted fans. Probably a function of being in Milwaukee, which is one of the more well-adjusted cities in my experience. I know there’s some Chicago Inferiority Complex stuff afoot there, but the people I’ve met from Milwaukee don’t seem fazed about it and appreciate the city for the largely un-overrun and relatively less-gentrified place it is. My experience with Brewers fans is similar. Many would love it if the team spent more when they’re in contention or on the cusp of it, but people generally don’t lose their minds about it.

Pirates fans: If Mariners fans could use therapy for dealing with some erratic and uneven parenting Pirates fans should all be placed in foster care to get them away from what they’ve been experiencing for so damn long. If it weren’t for the imaginary friends they’ve created — the Steelers and Penguins — they might not have made it through. As for the purpose of the exercise: I can’t recall dealing with any obnoxious Pirates fans ever, and I’m not even sure what sort of form that would take. The last time I encountered “Sid Bream was safe!” trash talk was on a Prodigy message board.

Reds fans: All Reds fans I’ve encountered under the age of 60 are pretty cool and have pretty soberly accepted what the Reds are and what they have been for a long time. They seem to have an almost uncomfortably passionate love for Joey Votto, but unless one of them kidnaps him to put him in their own creepy personal museum like Saul Rubinek did to Commander Data in the Season 3 “Star Trek: TNG” episode “The Most Toys,” that’s probably OK. In contrast, almost all Reds fans I’ve encountered over the age of 60 have — with the help of Marty Brennaman — decided that nothing short of The Big Red Machine is REAL BASEBALL and thus they crap on almost everything that doesn’t meet that impossibly high standard. These are also the same people who still idolize Pete Rose and will, without any invitation to do so, tell you about how they know someone who knows someone who went to high school with Charlie Hustle so that’s how they know he’s a Good Guy. Which is on-brand for Cincinnati, honestly. Back when I was practicing law and I had to deal with Cincinnati lawyers they’d, like a lot of people involved in small talk before getting down to business, often ask you where you went to school. Except when Cincinnati lawyers did so, they meant “what high school?” not “what college?” or “what law school?” That whole city is a trip, man.

Dodgers fans: If it hasn’t been clear up to this point, all of the characterizations of fans are based on my interactions with them or observations of them online or in my comments. It’s not about what they’re like in the ballpark or whatever. As such, I’m not gonna give any weight to the whole “Dodgers fans show up late and leave early” thing. For one thing, I don’t care. Do what you wanna do. For another, have you ever driven in L.A.? Let he who hath not tried to get from the west side to Chavez Ravine for a 7:10PM Tuesday first pitch cast the first stone. As for the online stuff? Eh, not super notable. Yeah, they’re a bit spoiled, but can you blame them? I began writing about baseball in earnest in 2007. In the 17 seasons since then they’ve only missed the postseason four times. This despite the fact that the damn team went BANKRUPT and endured a forced sale during that stretch. Year 18, about to tee-off, features projections in which they’re expected to win like 104-06 games or whatever. I have no idea what a despairing or angry Dodger fan would even sound like at this point in time. All I know is that I’ve never had a Dodgers fan tell me that I was being unfair to them nor have I witnessed them being unduly tribal or something. They really don’t give a shit and I rather admire that about them.

Giants fans: There was a noted smugness during the World Series years but if you win three titles in five seasons you’re allowed to be a bit smug. Lately I’ve mostly observed Giants fans going through the stages of grief, with a heavy emphasis on “bargaining” in which they try to come to grips with the fact that, despite all of that relatively recent success and despite how rich the ownership group is, they’re being run in a way that is largely indistinguishable from the Reds. We’re probably moving more into “depression” now, but we’ll need a truly stinky 100-loss season before a substantial number of them reach “acceptance.”

Padres fans: For most of my time as a baseball writer San Diego folks have been fairly laid back fans who never got too high or too low. Mostly because they cared more about the Chargers or things completely other than sports. In the more recent era in which the team has been spending money and going for it I’ve mostly encountered confusion. Yeah, 1984 and 1996-98 were fun, but they were also a bit flukey or surprising. Now there’s definitely a “dog chasing the car but doesn’t know what it’ll do if it catches it” vibe afoot. When you encounter a Padres fan speaking passionately about what A.J. Preller should do, it’s as if there’s an unspoken “I guess . . I don’t know; I’ve never been here before” appended to it.

Diamondbacks fans: They’re a lot like the Marlins in my experience in that I don’t know many if any Diamondbacks fans. I cannot for the life of me remember a particularly active Dbacks commenter either. I don’t know if they’re demanding. I don’t know if they’re chill. I almost want to start saying provocative things about the team in order to flush a few of them out and ascertain what their whole deal is.

Rockies fans: There’s this criticism of Rockies ownership and management rooted in how they don’t care about putting a good team on the field because they know that since their park is nice and is in a fun area of town that they’ll get a bunch of fans to show up even if the team sucks. When I’ve asked Denver people about that they’ve usually said “well, yeah” and they don’t take much issue with it. Draw whatever conclusions from that you’d like.

OK, that’s all I got. It was too much, but that’s pretty par for the course for me, right?

Other Stuff

Free Legal Advice

I know that not everyone truly appreciates that they have a right to remain silent, but I implore you, if you do find yourself really jammed up, not to admit, many times and in granular detail, how you actually did the extraordinarily serious crimes of which you are suspected.

The latest lesson in this comes from a woman in Minnesota who, while high on meth and with weed in her system, drove her car into an Amish buggy, killing two children and a horse and injuring two others. From USA Today:

Additionally, police say Samantha Petersen called the human resources department at her work shortly after the car wreck.

“I (expletive) up ... I just killed two Amish people. They were kids ... I just hit a (expletive) buggy ... I’m not sober ... I’m high on meth," she said, the HR manager later told police, Dornink wrote.

Police also say they recovered text messages between Samantha Petersen and a friend. The friend texts Petersen about how a little girl had been killed, to which she replies, according to police: "I don't think you realize that I did that ... I hit that Amish buggy and killed two people... Made Sarah take the fall for it so I wouldn't go to prison."

Police say they also found various internet searches on Petersen's phone, including: “What happens if you get in an accident with an Amish buggy and kill two people?"

The “I made Sarah take the fall for it” part refers to the woman’s identical twin sister, who she called to rush to the accident scene and claim to have been the one driving. The thinking, it seems, was that the twin sister’s blood tests would come back clean and it would be considered an unfortunate accident instead of an act of vehicular homicide. It’s also worth noting that the accused had a number of past DUI charges while the twin did not. The ruse was sussed out by the police, however, when the accused openly talked to her twin at the crime scene about how “they’ll never be able to tell us apart and won’t learn the truth” or words to that effect. While she was being recorded by a cop’s dash cam.

Judgment, it would seem, is not this woman’s strong suit. She’s going to jail for a long time and she’ll totally deserve it.

Never retire, citizen! 

I, very technically speaking, "work" a lot. And I don't actually ever wanna retire from my "job,” because said work/job (a) has me answering to me and only me; and (b) my labor is, actually, just the monetization of the sort of farting around I used to do while not wanting to work real jobs and what I’d be doing with myself if I suddenly had enough money to live on forever. It’s like if you were paid to play golf or take naps or something. I’m extraordinarily lucky in this regard, but I’m well aware that not the case for most people.

Most people, even people who generally like their jobs, don’t want to work forever nor should they be expected to. There is more to life than work and, ideally speaking, we will all get to experience at least some measure of true freedom and leisure in our golden years and some modicum of life satisfaction before we shuffle off this mortal coil.

The business community, the political apparatus which serves it, and other interests which are part of both that community and that apparatus don’t want that, though. They’d like to squeeze every ounce of labor from you for their own purposes and what happens to you afterward is of no real concern to them.

That goes for The Economist, which despite the fact that it does a good bit of quality journalism, is first and foremost a tool of the capitalist class. If you doubted that, get a load of the package of articles it bundled together this past weekend:

I realize that I skew a bit more pessimistic than the average bear, but I defy anyone to see those articles pushed out in the same damn promo email and not think that they’re not being told something very dire in the most uncertain of terms.

Have a great day everyone.

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