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The way I see it is that MLB's profits or lack thereof are not of concern to the fans. We as fans simply have to look at the price and value of the various products being offered and choose what to consume. If MLB as a whole loses 10% or 20% or 30% of its revenue and value because of the RSN collapse, it means nothing to the fans. They are always going to try and maximize revenue no matter what. At the end of the day, they are going to resolve their differences and play 162 every year. And all 162 are going to be available on some sort of platform. They can try to squeeze more money out of loyal fans, but fans will continue to have the option of pirating the games or simply not consuming the product. And they can't go too far, or like you say, they risk become a niche entertainment offering. The product itself is as good as ever and there are plenty of seats at the ballpark. It seems to me like some MLB owners are still in denial about the RSN collapse. The amount of money that the Dodgers are spending depends on their RSN continuing to exist. Others are finding that with one push of the button, Comcast can move them to a premium tier and a huge fraction of the subscriber revenue evaporates overnight. Again, too bad. I've said this before, but perhaps the one aspect where I do care about MLB's revenue is regarding the Brewers' revenue with respect to the rest of MLB. And the Brewers got royally f***ed in the RSN era, so things can only get better for them from here. I predict that the Dodgers' RSN will fail and they will be forced into a massive salary dump by the end of the decade.

Nobody is saying that lithium mines are a panacea but they are certainly better than oil extraction and refinement. Showing these "scary" pictures shouldn't sway anyone. The water numbers sound bad until you do the math. A Tesla battery uses about 150 lbs of lithium, so one metric ton of lithium is enough for 16 EVs, over the entire life of the EV, so 31,000 gallons of water for 1 EV. Meanwhile, 1 barrel of oil is estimated to take 1,850 gallons of water to extract and refine, so if you assume a 50 mpg car uses 70 barrels of oil in its lifetime, that's 130,000 gallons of water. Obviously there are other components besides lithium that go into EV batteries, but my point is that it's probably a wash at best. And it's really about the CO2 emissions more than water, and EVs obviously save a huge amount of CO2, even if you are burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity because power plants are way more efficient than cars.

Parts is also a huge one. They will eventually be able to ditch many of their parts suppliers. It also will help that we found lithium deposits everywhere once we started looking for them.

The Volvo XC-40 has better cold weather battery performance than Tesla in my opinion. The XC-40 is pretty popular on the west coast but if they make a longer range XC-40 and get the price down a bit it will sell like crazy. I can understand why people would prefer a RAV-4 right now. It's worth noting that one of the reasons that Detroit is so pro-EV is that EVs are soon going to be cheaper to manufacture than ICE vehicles, which could be quite lucrative from a profits perspective.

Good thing in never gets cold in Norway, where EVs are now 90% of new vehicle sales. (81% full EV, 9% PHEV). Most people weigh cost vs convenience. Gas is roughly $8/gallon in Norway. So it isn't surprising that the US states with the most expensive gas prices are the ones that have gotten to around 20% of new vehicle sales being EVs. Which is honestly pretty incredible given they were a fraction of 1% just a few years ago.

I got a Tesla in December and have been driving it around in 10-20 degree weather this week in Seattle and haven't charged it a single time. Range is maybe 20% reduced but everybody knows that EV range is reduced in winter. It's still getting well over 200 mile range. No idea how it performs below zero...probably further reduced range but it doesn't get that cold here. Might be a bigger concern in the Midwest but my parents have an ID4 that they've been driving around in Milwaukee without any problems this week. All I'm saying is that it doesn't make the news when ICE cars have to get towed because they don't start in the cold, but Tesla owners having trouble with supercharging (due to user error) is suddenly a news story???

Thankfully ICE engines work perfectly in the cold and never have any problems starting on cold mornings!

And there’s no sign that this one is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs like the last two. At least for now…

Has a coach ever been fired at halftime?

Playoff McCarthy is more fun on the opposing sideline.

Good thing I bought it in the afternoon 😂

Bitcoin isn't going anywhere, it's basically the gold of the digital age. I threw a couple thousand in FBTC to see what happens.

What are the odds that the next Alabama coach is fired within 4 years? I bet it's at least 75%. Not that I feel bad for whoever it is, they are going to get paid either way.

That was a huge disappointment. Michigan was clearly the better team but it should have been closer than it was.

How do you even "buy" BTC without excessive transaction fees on an exchange that isn't liable to lose your investment at the first sign of trouble? Robinhood?

NY6 was always a weird concept…it’s supposedly a “special” exhibition game? Nobody is going to miss them after this season. The 12-team playoff makes it much easier to understand which bowl games matter and which are exhibition games. Although I think the new issue will be that most of the extra playoff games will also be blowouts.

Balmer bought the Clippers and Seattle is almost certainly getting an expansion team.

Strongly agree with Jimbo's analysis, but at worst this should have been a close matchup that could have gone either way. Not a blowout. Lights were too bright.

Three close family members got laid off in the last year. All business/MBA types, tech or tech adjacent. Two have found new roles, one has been unemployed for nearly a year (but is notoriously picky). Consensus is that job market picked up in Q4. Some slowdown now for the holidays but I think we're way more likely to see hiring pick up in January rather than a string of layoffs like last year. It's definitely not like the golden times of a few years ago...and there is a lot of tension about evolving hybrid/remote work arrangements that hasn't fully fleshed itself out yet. Hoping for the best for you @LouisEly!

It's bad to have Yamamoto and Ohtani on the same team. First, the obvious one of never seeing Ohtani bat against Yamamoto. As well as robbing a fanbase of the opportunity to get excited about signing an international superstar. Instead, all of that excitement just goes to seeing if the Dodgers win 105 or 110 games before getting bounced in the postseason. If the NBA is any guide, people love to see the superteams lose, and it happens quite frequently. But in MLB we'll probably get writers moaning about how MLB's postseason format is unfair to the Dodgers.

If you use the $700M figure then you have to inflation-adjust the $/WAR figure. I think it's pretty widely accepted that this was a market rate contract and it never turned into a true bidding war because Ohtani had already picked the Dodgers as his preferred destination.

If they did indeed hit the "soft landing", it's an impressive achievement. I assume rates will sit in the 5% range for a bit until there is either a recession that drops them back to zero or more inflation that causes them to go up further. Consumer confidence seems to depend on whether you are getting f***ed by high housing costs in a low wage job or not. I don't know what to think of that. The average consumer doesn't seem to have any interest in curtailing their spending. Personally I think stocks are going to continue to rally.

Isn't the entire concept of taxpayer funded stadiums based on the idea that a big chunk of that investment is going to come back via player salary taxes?

I don't think that's true. Between Ohtani, Freeman, and Betts, the Dodgers are pushing a billion dollars (in today's dollars) in dead weight in the 2035-2045 timeframe. Additionally, MLB salary inflation has slowed considerably in recent years and will likely continue to be slow moving forward since the era of lucrative RSN deals is pretty much over. A top-5 payroll in 2010 was in the $150-$200M range. These days it is somewhere around $250M. In 10-15 years it might be $350M-$400M at most (assuming that big markets like LA can still extract $200M/year from their local TV rights, which is far from guaranteed). So the Dodgers have potentially tied up nearly a quarter of their projected payroll in the late 2030s. That's not enough to make them a poverty franchise, but it would absolutely cause issues. Unless they are even richer than we think they are, which I guess is totally possible given their ridiculous TV contract.

One has to admire Ohtani for using his leverage to make this work. In terms of achieving his two primary goals of getting paid and winning a championship, he couldn't have orchestrated it any better.