Author: Admin
In baseball’s Age of Collaboration, the hot seat for managers should be viewed more as an oversized sofa, with front-office executives and statistical analysts all squeezing in. Firing the manager when others bear responsibility for shaping rosters and influencing decisions often amounts to blatant scapegoating. Perhaps that is one reason early dismissals are becoming less common.Only three managers have been dumped before the All-Star break since 2018, all in 2022. The Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies went on to reach the postseason after making changes that year, but the trend did not last. Teams take pride in removing emotion…
As Sarah Strong dominated the South Carolina frontcourt during UConn’s national championship victory, gobbling up rebounds, protecting the rim and scoring from everywhere on the court, it was easy to imagine her also doing so at the next level. WNBA executives had to be drooling over the idea of drafting the next Huskies star.But they’ll have to wait another three years. Under the collective bargaining agreement, which expires at the end of the 2025 season, American-born players are eligible to be drafted after completing four years of college. The one exception is that players can declare after their junior seasons…
As the Bahrain Grand Prix unfolded and George Russell raced in second place, messages slowly came through on his radio that different systems were failing. Team principal Toto Wolff put it simply: “The car was wounded.”The Mercedes driver suddenly suffered a brake-by-wire failure, and it took time to find the settings to reset the system, Wolff said. He lost the GPS, and he experienced onboard Drag Reduction System (DRS) issues, which led to his race engineer having to tell him over the radio when he could use the system.The fear arose that the Briton “would lose the whole dash —…
At least beyond Cam Ward, there is no consensus on where each of this year’s crop of quarterbacks may get drafted. After Ward presumably becomes a Tennessee Titan, the rest of the group is a complete mystery. It’s just as likely Ward is the only quarterback we see on Thursday night as it is that four quarterbacks go in the first round.Lucky for us, we’re going to cut through all that uncertainty and play quarterback matchmaker, placing all of this year’s top quarterback prospects on the teams that make the most sense. In some cases, that has more to do…
Last summer, a federal judge, Amit P. Mehta, delivered a landmark ruling that found Google had illegally dominated online search.“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” he wrote.Now, Judge Mehta has to figure out how to fix Google’s monopoly. His decision will be informed by a three-week hearing, which starts Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, where the government and Google will argue over how to restore competition in online search.The Justice Department wants Judge Mehta to break up Google by forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser, which could cut…
Since “Black Mirror” debuted in 2011, the dystopian sci-fi anthology series has taken seeds of nascent technology and expanded them to absurd and disturbing proportions.In doing so, it has become a commentary on defining issues of the 21st-century: surveillance, consumerism, artificial intelligence, social media, data privacy, virtual reality and more. Every episode serves in part as a warning about how technological advancement run rampant will lead us, often willingly, toward a lonely, disorienting and dangerous future.Season 7, newly available on Netflix (the streamer acquired the show from Britain’s Channel 4 after its first two seasons), explores ideas around memory alteration,…
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has scrapped a plan to offer help curbing measles in Texas schools after some staff working on the agency’s response to this year’s record outbreak of the virus were warned they could face layoffs, an agency employee said.CDC officials had initially weighed expanding a service they had been offering to hospitals in Texas — onsite assessments to root out how errors in ventilation and air filtration could be enabling spread of the virus – to other kinds of facilities like schools as well. “Being on the ground allows us to actually look at…
At first glance, Skenes looks like the most complete incarnation yet of a specific type of analytics-friendly pitcher, one who seems purpose-built to hurl fastballs and sliders as hard as he can for as long as he can before ceding the mound to relievers. And at some level, that’s what he is. But Skenes’s path to becoming a top pitching prospect was different from everyone else’s. As a catcher, he wasn’t exposed to a recruiting subculture that emphasizes pitch velocity and spin rate more than actually getting batters out in games. “He wasn’t on that summer grinder circuit, and doing…
A $5 cap on fees for overdrawing your bank account balance is likely to be among the latest consumer protections from Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidency to fall.Congress voted last week to strike down the $5 cap on most overdraft fees approved by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last year. President Trump is expected to sign the change into law, though the timing is uncertain. The change means that the biggest banks and credit unions will be able to continue charging hefty fees — often ranging from $15 to as much as $35 — for covering shortfalls when you…
The federal food stamp program is facing scrutiny in some states that want to block enrollees from using their government benefits to buy soda and candy.Three Republican-led states — Arkansas, Idaho and Indiana — on Tuesday moved to ban purchases of soda and candy with benefits provided by the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Those states have a combined total of roughly 1 million residents on SNAP out of the program’s total 41.7 million U.S. participants.Other states are also likely to restrict SNAP recipients’ food purchases, experts say. Lawmakers in states including Arizona, Kansas and Tennessee have introduced similar measures to…