caulfield12

Am supposed to do a Required Minimum Distribution from Vanguard before Dec 31st. Any thoughts (from those market timers)....do it now before the market falls even further, or wait out Russia/Ukraine and hope for a rebound the second half of the year? Feels like the days of 8-12% yearly stock market growth are coming to an end, and 3-5% before taxes/inflation will be the "new normal."

Is there anyone else fed up with Ryan Reynolds and Channing Tatum (Dog) movies? It almost makes me pine for Ryan Gosling, well, my wife at least doing that.

The biggest issue is playing long enough for the health care and pension benefits. I think it was Scott Carroll, former Sox pitcher and Purdue QB, who all the press was rooting to prolong his career long enough to qualify for those. He ended up with a 168.3 MLB innings pitched, and I think he qualified based on the number of days on a big league roster. It used to be 43 days rostered to qualify. For those who reach ten years, they get something like $7500/month ($90k per year) along with generous health/vision/dental plans for the rest of their lives.

As a 501c3, if he was donating that type of money to White Sox Charities, everyone in the world would know about it...they wouldn't be able to hide it, as it has to be reported publicly. And surely there are numerous tax advantages to doing so, as well.

Julio "Won't You Let Me Take You On A Sea" Cruz Thanks for 1983.

Dunston's daughter not close enough?

How ‘bout them Hawkeyes? With Joe Wieskamp, Jack Nunge and a healthy CJ Frederick…they would have been a legit national title contender.

Or Wil Cordero?

Well, another way to think of it would be how many of us stop following the Sox as their favorite team if they managed to win the 2022 World Series with Bauer rostered?

You have to think a team like the Rays, A's or maybe the Reds or Tigers would take him for just $5-15 million commitment the next two with LA covering the remainder. Rangers, perhaps.

For those who would argue for Bauer coming to the Sox, what's the most you would be willing to take on from the two remaining Dodgers' years, meaning they would pay/subsidize roughly 75%+? $7.5 million? $10 million? $15?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzybwwf2HoQ

Fixed for you.

And the US pays $37,500 for gold, $25k for silver and $12,500 for bronze, on the low side for most countries.

Otoh, you have the costs of training for downhill skiing escalating to the point it's no longer affordable for the vast majority of American parents and their kids to pursue. Look at US results there. Just one silver medal across all the events, and fourth in team on Sunday. Norway and most of the European countries have a much better ranking in the Inequality Adjusted HDI. In fact, that country is #1. Plus the ideal winter weather obviously helps as the second point.

https://sports.yahoo.com/how-team-usa-created-a-reality-show-to-find-olympians-204859588.html Well, this is a truly uplifting story at least. https://sports.yahoo.com/raising-age-limit-skating-end-073318467.html Discussion of raising the minimum age for skating to 18...likely eliminating squads and allowing careers to last across 2-3 Olympics.

Well here’s your next Gold Medalist (if she isn’t already too old at 18) in Torino Italy, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=adelia+petrosyan+ She’s actually Armenian-Russian, doing jumps already that nobody in history has pulled off at age 14…Adeliia Petrosian https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aqgXlYh9MRw

Seems like one of the tricks (minus musical chairs) directly out of the most recent Jackass movie...that one with Wee-Man.

Read this today in the comments section at medium.com, thought it was worth sharing with a fellow teacher "I'm a teacher. It's bad. But it's not just bad for teachers; it's bad for students as well. Each day, I stare out at a bunch of cold, dead faces, like zombies from an apocalyptic movie. I ask them about their lives, what they are thinking, what they are doing in their spare time, what kinds of things get them out of bed in the morning, to connect with them, to try to build some rapport, because this is my workspace, the classroom, and I prefer my workspace to be minimally affable, for my own sanity, and I get dead, empty space in return. The students turn their backs, stare at their phones or computer screens, wishing I would just stop talking and give them their required work for the day. There is no discussion. There is no energy or even life in that room . . . in all of those rooms, just cold, dead, empty eyes staring back, thinking the whole business of education is a joke, because their culture, and some of their families tell them this: be suspect of education. They think it's just another ruse, because when will they ever use English or communication skills, when will they need critical thinking skills, because all of this is just too hard to bother with -- just give me my grade, my course credit, and get out of my face, this is what they say. It's not just teachers who don't want to be teaching, it's also students who don't want to be learning, to be in school, because they find zero value in it, other than the job they hope to get at the end of all of it. It's Friday morning, and I am sitting here thinking: I can't do it; I can't face them again. It's the end of the work week and all my special reserves are exhausted and I have nothing to give to this battle, no armor or ammunition left. I don't smile either. Not anymore. I can ignore climate change, or the other social problems that are so immediate and so depressing in our society, ignore them for a minute or for a day, but I cannot ignore my job, those dead-eyed students, not even for a second, not even in my sleep, which is troubled, always, with trying to find some way to make this profession bearable, to make a student care, even just a little bit, about learning, and if they can't care about learning, to care just a tiny bit, an angstrom, about me, or other teachers, as people, just like them, trying to do some good for society, just trying to make it through, but it never works, no matter how hard I try to tap-dance in front of them, entertain them, inspire them, get them out of their zombie-like state. And, it's not getting better, only worse, year after year, as I see more and more good teachers retire early or leave the profession altogether, which is what I have resolved to do, because life is way too short, not to smile once in a while. And, please, while well-intentioned, do not respond to me with: hang in there, because hanging in there is what I have been doing for a decade, trying to figure this problem out, to find a way to make teaching bearable, and there is no way. We have failed. Education has failed, just as intended, just like the Post Office, a planned demise of a once proud and storied institution. We are devolving. The arc of history does NOT always bend towards progress, justice, or improvement as we once so foolishly and naively believed. The arc of history bends towards demise, and education is only one example of this." 

There's no way to force MLB owners to value wins over profits https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-lockout-theres-no-way-to-force-team-owners-to-put-wins-over-dollars-015040077.html Well-written article. Made me revisit the JR only will spend enough money to ensure the team's around 2nd place (well, that was the case until 2016/17) each and every year, which was basically the Sox philosophy from the late 90's until two decades later, mostly under KW.

Let's save Jared (not Subway dude) first...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kamila-valievas-doping-test-sample-201613301.html Now it turns out she had three heart-related drugs in her A sample, including hypoxen. And now an implausible excuse about her grandfather burping or breathing into her cup or mug...as he is supposedly the one taking the illegal heart medication she got caught using. Hypotenuse and the third drug will likely be added to the banned substances list quite quickly, but it will undoubtedly take a decade at least for the sport to recover in the eyes of the world. "Airing immediately after the Super Bowl, the Beijing Winter Olympics scored easily its highest ratings yet on NBC. Abbreviated primetime coverage of the Winter Olympics averaged a 9.8 rating and 21.28 million viewers on NBC immediately following Super Bowl 56, marking easily the highest rating and viewership of the Games. The NBC-only audience is not only the highest of this year’s Games, it also surpasses every night of last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics to rank as the network’s largest Olympic audience since the first Sunday in PyeongChang four years ago (22.7M)." https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2022/02/olympics-ratings-super-bowl-lift-most-watched-night-beijing-games/

But that's also counting international and DSL players....well, it used to be every team had a minimum of five US-based minor league affiliates, and quite a few had six, meaning two for rookie ball/short season, like Great Falls and Bristol with the Sox.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/33253001/kiley-mcdaniel-top-100-mlb-prospects-2022 Alek Thomas and Jasson Dominguez with interesting write ups. CJ Abrams retained his spot but Gore is way way down. No Sox…shocker. It’s front loaded with the big two Tigers prospects, Witt Jr., quite a few Twins and Indians after the Top 25-30 or so.

Has anyone seen the names of the five teams with over 180 players on their reserve list and the rumored two teams UNDER 150?...would be interesting to know.