It’s starting to feel as if I’m posting only Friday Notes posts (or the related Science Notes posts), but I do have some other things up my sleeve. In fact, some amount of water has been building up behind the dam, and I’m hoping to open the spillways soon. Or soonish, anyway.
In today’s post, I have some news about my Minnesota Twins, a couple of graphs, a bit about Reacher, season three, a whole bunch of pictures, two memes, and a funny thing I hadn’t noticed for a long time.
So, let’s jump right in…
Starting in 2010, I got seriously into baseball and seriously ramped up my understanding of the game. I wrote a large suite of Python functions to capture the XML data from the MLB site and generated all manner of graphs, charts, and tables (obligatory: oh, my). That ended in 2019 largely due to lack of being able to watch the games because of disputes between Fox Sports North (the regional sports network that carried the Twins) and cable outlets that carried them.
That ended badly for FSN. For a while there was a Bally Sports Network, but they were only available on one outlet — one I didn’t have and didn’t intend to get just for Twins games. In any event, I lost the ability to watch the games and with it the interest in tracking all those stats.
More recently, MLB restricted access to the XML files, so I couldn’t get them even if I wanted them. (Which I sort of do, but I’d have to dig the Python files out of their ZIP container and update them. A very large project.) I’ve kept an eye on the Twins but haven’t been as devoted as I was in the 2010s.
This year, though, MLB is offering “Club TV” — for a mere $100 you can watch all the games of your club (in this case, Twins.TV) except for games broadcast by someone else with exclusive rights. On top of that, T-Mobile offered a deal giving me access to all the games on MLB (again, except for those with exclusive — read: exclusionary — rights broadcast elsewhere).
As is often the case with freebies, I haven’t leveraged it much, but I did pony up the $100 for Twins.TV and have been watching the games. At first it was just watching — the Twins had a very rough start this season — but lately they’ve been on a roll.
Yesterday they won their 11th straight game — first team in the MLB to do that this season. And their pitching has been very, very good this season. Which is a nice change from the 2010-2019 seasons (one of which includes their worst season in franchise history). Twins starters so far:
223.2 IP, 212 H, 9o ER, 60 BB, 220 K, 32 HR, 3.51 ERA, 1.18 WHIP
Which may not mean much to those who don’t follow baseball, but those are some very good stats. In particular, the 22o K (strikeouts) with only 60 BB (walks). And suffice to say that a 3.51 ERA is respectable. Our currently hottest starter, one J. Ryan, has even more impressive stats:
46.0 IP, 33 H, 14 R, 14 ER, 5 BB, 54 K, 7 HR, 2.74 ERA, 0.83 WHIP
Those are “Holy Cow!” stats. Only 14 runs (R) in 46 innings (IP). And 54 K with only 5 BB gives him a walk-to-strikeout ratio of only 0.093. Both the ERA and WHIP are highly respectable. Really nice to see in a Twins pitcher.
The problem has been the batting (and to a lesser extent, fielding: 26 errors on the season). But here in May, the bats have woken up, and the Twins now have a run differential of +28. Extra nice for the hometown crowd, they’ve been killing it at home where they’re 15-6 (with a +35 run diff).
Watching the Twins is fun again!
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I’ve mentioned several times previously how my Babylon (Anime) post was getting lots (and lots) of hits.
With 5,395 views, it’s my fourth most-viewed post in the 14-year history of this blog. If it gets 29 more views, it’ll be in third place. The pace is slowing down a bit, but I’m pretty sure it’ll get those views.
Not bad for a post written in 2021. All of its competition are posts written in the early twenty-teens that have been accumulating views for years. Be interesting to see where this one is when I celebrate the blog anniversary on July 4th.
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I mentioned last year that I was very disappointed with Amazon Prime’s season two of Reacher. I’d really liked season one [see Jack Reacher], which was based on Killing Floor (1997), the first book in the Lee Child series. But season two was, in my opinion, a very bad adaptation of the eleventh book, Bad Luck and Trouble (2007).
Fortunately, season three, which dropped earlier this year, was a lot better. It’s based on the seventh book, Persuader (2003) — not my favorite book in the series, but still good.
In my view, generally speaking, every change Hollywood makes in any adaptation is crap. That is no less true here. As is not uncommon, many of the changes reek of “modern sensibilities”. Some notes I made that won’t mean much if you’re not familiar with the story [spoilers ahead]…
Reacher encounters an opponent (Paulie) who’s tough to beat.
The credit music usually seemed inappropriate to the story’s tone and says more about the musical taste of those making the show than complementing the show. Except for the last episode.
Duffy (the female co-star) wasn’t at fault for the situation (in the book she is), which reeks of the modern Hollywood mode of “perfect women”. They added Elliot, an almost comic relief subordinate (white male wimpy guy, of course), to take the blame and to screw up later in letting a Bad Guy get away. Nor is Duffy operating illegally here (as in the book).
Elliot is such an idiot, he almost deserved to get killed by said Bad Guy.
Reacher and agent Duffy.
They entirely removed Mrs. Beck, so there’s no aspect of Paulie messing around with her. It’s one of the uglier Reacher books in that regard, but I was surprised that — in these lurid days — they removed it. Mr. Beck actually is an arms dealer here rather than a just slightly shady importer.
The hidden trapdoor in the garage (where they kept Theresa) looks cool on film but is stupid. It requires considerable effort to re-conceal every time they use is. Also, Theresa is a CI (confidential informant) here rather than an agent.
Reacher does the soldering of the truck’s seal, which really isn’t in character for him. That change is inexplicable to me. And they brought back Neagley (who isn’t in the book) from season two.
That is not how you flip a car. The book describes it exactly. And it’s the maid’s car in the book, so they need to not damage it. Angel’s laptop is another addition. The desperate phone call was pretty pointless; didn’t amount to anything.
Episode one was great; episode two was good; the rest were just okay.
But a hell of a lot better than season two, so maybe Hollywood is finally returning to good storytelling. Maybe. (Well, I can dream, anyway.)
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A 1979 quote from the inestimable Bill James that seems more relevant today than it was when he said it:
The rich grow richer and the poor grow livestock for the rich.
From Esquire magazine. James is famous among baseball fans for inventing the field of sabermetrics (advanced baseball stats).
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If a picture really “is worth 1,000 words”, here are 15,000 more words for this post (plus some text). I shouldn’t need to mention [click for big] but I did.
From April 2nd (at 1:08 AM) after a wet snow that stuck to the trees. In part, I wanted to see how my iPhone camera did with a night shot (pretty good).
From April 12 (at 3:10 AM) when the full Moon shone into my sleeping eyes and woke me up. The view is what I saw (and the snow is long gone).
Some cool clouds I saw during a walk on April 23rd.
This, and the next ten are from a walk I took on May 7th. I lucked out when I bought my condo here, because there are some very nice places to walk.
And some tall trees!
Also, a park with Lions, but I’ve never seen any.
The park has a fishing dock on a small lake stocked with fish. (Maybe some of them are lionfish?)
The park has great (long) walking paths.
The view from across the lake looking back at the dock.
In addition to the paved paths, there are trails one can follow. This one leads back to the nearby street.
Out of the park (from that trail) and headed back. This sign always cracks me up. But I assume (from the guns pictured) she means semi-auto.
“I have often walked down this street before.”
If you didn’t recognize the lyric, it’s from My Fair Lady and is titled “On the Street Where You Live”. Or in this case, where I live. Full disclosure: I live off this street on a Way (a loop with both ends connecting to a street).
The mock apple trees were in bloom, which I love. They only bloom for about a week and then litter the ground below with pedals (already happening in the picture). Very pretty (and they come in pale red-lavender; you can see a little one on the left).
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Later that day…
I’ve been eating two oranges a day ever since I was sick over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays (with an RSV — super nasty and the first time I’ve been sick in many years).
I’m not eating the oranges for their vitamin C — I take vitamins that supply that — but because I really love them. One characteristic of that RSV was a major loss of appetite (I lost over 10 pounds) but at one point I got a craving for oranges. Had some delivered by Amazon within hours of the craving and have been eating them ever since.
[But from the grocery store, not Amazon. I’m trying to eliminate Amazon from my life. Which isn’t easy, to be honest. I resolved to not order stuff from them, but it’s hard to give up Prime Video and Amazon Music. But I do intend to.]
The picture is meant to show how weird oranges are these days. I recall them having the usual orange slices (like the candy) and not those weird parts in the middle. No matter, they taste great.
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If you read this far, your reward is this meme a friend sent me recently:
It’s one of the funniest meme images I’ve seen. I especially love the look on her face and the “Hey teacher” part. It still makes me chuckle despite having seen it many times now.
Bonus Meme:
Made by yours truly. I understand there is growing “buyer’s remorse” among those who didn’t understand that he told us all along who he is. I’m having a hard time finding any sympathy. More like exuberant schadenfreude.
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Lastly, despite knowing the 4:20 thing for ages, until I happened to create an analog clock image (for this post) capable of displaying any time desired, I hadn’t realized how the hands line up:
In fact, they don’t quite unless the hour hand only moves in large steps. On most analog clocks, they’d actually line up at about 4:23 or so, but I got a kick seeing the alignment at the infamous 4:20.
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Stay clocking, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
∇
Logos con carne 
May 16th, 2025 at 3:07 pm
I think Gilmour’s daughter is wearing his famous black Strat.
August 21st, 2025 at 2:04 pm
[…] the time, it was exciting enough that I made them the lead story in that month’s Friday Notes post. (That post also gets into why I’m watching baseball […]