Home of the Braves – This image was posted in one of the baseball forums I follow. People immediately launched into how fake it is, calling it bad Photoshop from before the time of AI. Someone said it’s not even shopped, it’s just two image put side by side because the two never played on the same minor league team at the same time. I know the socks don’t match, I can see the giant M on the caps, I have no comment on whether or not Chipper looks fat… but the simple fact of the matter is that the picture is real. Someone jumped into the comment thread with his autographed copy signed by both players:
The M on the caps, and the logo’s on the sleeve, are throwbacks to when the Braves were in Milwaukee. This is from Spring Training down in Florida back in 1996, when both players were in Atlanta on the MLB team. That’s the world we live in. Not knowing what you are talking about is no longer a barrier to having an expert opinion and expressing it loudly. This person’s autographed photo, along with the explanation he provided, should have shut down the argument but he was largely ignored and people continued yelling stupid things at each other. I recently watched a short video of a pickup truck backing out of the driveway, across the street, through the neighbors yard and then through the wall into the house. Someone in a European country asked what sort of polystyrene American homes are made of. I explained how frames are wrapped in OSB that keeps the studs in place and gives the vinyl siding guys something to nail into. A random person that doesn’t know me from Adam called me a clueless idiot and further said I knew nothing about building houses. I replied that I knew some things about building houses… from the time I spent building houses. That person just silently removed his comment but some people double down.
The Ford Maverick in that picture is what caught my attention. That’s Bob Barker on the Price Is Right in 1974. A closer look reveals a Mercury tag on the front bumper, meaning that’s basically a Maverick rebadged as a Mercury Comet. From 1960 to 65 the Comet was based on the Ford Falcon platform. In 1966 the Comet grew to a mid-size car based on the Fairlane. There was no Comet in 1970 but the name was brought back in 1971, again as a compact car, based on the Ford Maverick. Today Ford Maverick is a small pickup truck, electric Mustangs are a thing and Mercury no longer exists. What a world.
Is Red Lobster done? The company did file for bankruptcy this week which came as no surprise. Sometimes a change in ownership does a company a lot of good. When a company gets passed around from one parent company to another, that’s never a good sign. Sometimes when a company or brand is failing, and the owners don’t know exactly what to do, they try anything. Or maybe several things. Sometimes everything at once. One way Red Lobster generated revenue was by selling off its real estate. But then they had to rent the same buildings they just sold. This seemed like a good idea to someone at the time. Making the unlimited shrimp for $20 deal permanent was an attempt to get people in the door, and it did. But many of those people ate massive quantities of shrimp and ordered little or nothing else. A loss leader is a sale item that attracts attention but does not make a profit. That promotion resulted in $11 million loss in just a single quarter.
Red Lobster currently operates 551 locations in the U.S. and 27 restaurants in Canada. Another 100 or so may be closing soon but the goal at this time is restructuring in a way that keeps most locations open and returns the brand to profitability.
Just because we don’t know exactly how the pyramids were built doesn’t mean it was aliens. Actually the discovery of a lost branch of the Nile River may shed some light into how materials were moved into place. Satellite imagery and geological surveys have offered confirmation of what many long suspected, that the location of the Nile River has shifted since ancient times. Read the full story at Baptist Press.
This exercise demonstrates how meaning changes based on which word in the sentence is emphasized. It would be easy to do when speaking but we all know when text messaging that it’s hard to indicate tone. I have often said there is desperate need for a sarcasm font. There was a meme going around that said in a thousand years the anthropologists studying our time period won’t know the difference between a butt dial and a booty call, and that’s what makes interpreting the biblical text difficult.
Mortgage rates are through the roof. Instead of a tiny home, this person built only a roof. Or maybe they live in an attic? I would like to talk about things going in the news and the world around us but from now and until November I am trying to avoid saying anything about the presidential election at all. It consumes so much of the news cycle on a daily basis that it’s hard to learn about anything else. So please enjoy this collection of weird buildings from around the world. Maybe you’ve seen some these edifices before, or maybe it’s just deja vu.
The Master's Table 