> Most importantly, the culling of 300 line judges means fewer part-time opportunities for trained officials and it will affect the pathway of aspiring chair umpires. Many chair umpires started off as line officials.
> develop a new joint strategy with them that will ensure officials can be retained within the sport, new officials can be recruited and the officiating community will be supported through the changes
Hope this new "joint strategy" works because it sounds like they're setting themselves up for poor chair officiating.
I went to one of those Disney vacation home pitches and the sale pitch was very convincing.
You've just paid about $10K for your ONE Disney vacation for your family of four. For just a little bit more, you could come to Disney as many times as you'd like, stay in your own modern condo and and have park perks. It essentially "pays for itself" if you take two or more full Disney vacations each year.
The sales pitch for any timeshare is similar. For slightly more than the cost of 1 trip, you could have 2+ trips (just pay for airfare!).
I just started blogging again regularly after 15 years of neglect. It feels like it's too late. While I do see traffic from Google, I often wonder if it's just not worth the effort. I will probably use it more like a journal, than any sort of commercial side hustle. I do enjoy writing with more of my personal style, knowing it will contrast against the AI drivel.
Talk about a downward spiral of terrible decisions. Cut staff and add checkout machines to save money. Customers start stealing (legit or not) so they lock down items behind glass, but have no staff to help customers so they see less sales! Wild.
I hope the shareholders who accepted these changes feel pain.
The problem with self-checkouts is that (1) it shifts the work to me without any benefit to me. I don't get a % off (and often asks you to tip [0]). And (2) it actually presents a legal risk. If I genuinely forget to scan I can still be banned from a store, or worse, charged, because I am doing a job I am not trained for, or because of a glitch in the system.
> The problem with self-checkouts is that (1) it shifts the work to me without any benefit to me.
A well implemented self-checkout is much faster than waiting in line for a cashier. Ever since the local supermarket implemented self-scan I haven't had to wait for a register to become available for more than maybe 30 seconds.
Of course if the self-checkout is of the "UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA" variety it'll be infuriating and much slower than a regular cash register.
> In civilized, high-trust societies self-checkout works well and is very convenient.
There's nothing convenient about me having to do the cashier's job, but badly, while having a tiny space to do my bagging in, while a computer yells at me.
Maybe for someone with truly crippling social anxiety, this is preferable to an actually functional check-out counter, but I'm blessed to not be afflicted by it.
And someone with truly crippling social anxiety isn't going to be standing there in the store with a line of people staring at them while a computer yells at them. They are gonna be sitting at home waiting for the gig worker to drop off their stuff.
At least in my jurisdiction, you have to be 18 or 21 to buy spray paint in an attempt to stop kids from spraying graffiti so the store legally has to check id before selling spray paint.
You're certainly not alone in resisting hearing aids. My dad just got some from Costco (most affordable) and really likes them. He probably waited 5-10 years too long.
My father-in-law however doesn't like hearing aids because he feels they amplify things he doesn't want to hear. Granted he's never been fitted to actual hearing aids. I understand his concern, but he's told me multiple times his hearing loss leaves him isolated during conversation. He told me one night that he has a lot to say, but can't hear so he spends a lot of time just smiling. It makes me sad that his pride (and stubbornness?) is causing him this stress.
Costco is great for this I found out. Free audiogram, and all name brand hearing aids.
I used to be like your father-in-law, pride, vanity, stubborn, not wanting to be told what to do, whatever it was. And my dad was like this too (the hearing loss is heritable), I used to mock him about not wanting hearing aids before my own hearing declined. When I finally got fitted, it was shocking to me how much my hearing had suffered. Suddenly I could hear birds and crickets again, and most importantly speech!
Maybe you can get your father-in-law to first play around with AirPods as hearing aids to win him over to get proper ones. The latest generation hearing aids, like the AP's, have amazing AI signal processing that will suppress noise and enhance speech. It's always cool when my Phonak's detect noise and shut it down.
The important thing about hearing loss in elderly, especially if someone has an elevated risk of cognitive decline, is the resulting social isolation, and the increasing risk of dementia [1]. It should be addressed sooner than later.
To sum it up, the AP's have the potential to provide an affordable on-ramp for more hearing impaired people to experience hearing restoration and warm up to better ones (hopefully covered by insurance). I don't think AP's would a permanent hearing solution, other than for people who are uninsured and can't afford real hearing aids (sadly).
Edit: I could not imagine wearing AP's all day, great as they are, while I don't even notice my receiver-in-ear hearing aids anymore.
Edit: While AP's are not perfect, having any kind of hearing aid is a 100% improvement over having none, which is probably also why the FDA allowed OTC hearing aids.
My hearing is on the border; the doctor told me hearing aids would help, but I don't "need" them. I've been resisting getting them because
- I've always (decades) had issues with distinguishing speech when there's background noise. Even when my hearing was "perfect", my brain just had problems separating the two. This is _especially_ true in a crowded area (mall, restaurant, etc) where the background noise _is_ speech. My father had the same issue, tried many different aids, and _never_ managed to get a pair that worked.
- Cost. I'm not interested in experimenting at thousands of $ per try. With the expectation that I'll wind up at the doctor's office a dozen+ times while they try something new to help me (with the first issue), and a likelihood that they'll never succeed; I'm very hesitant to shell out the money involved.
I have the same issue with noise spaces... If I can't see the person talking, it's impossible for me to distinguish anything but the loudest thing. I may as well be def in a noisy room.
One method is using directional information. My low-end aids have two microphones each, and can share audio information from one aid to the other. I believe there are also some other methods, but I don't know how those work
> It's too bad so many people think they're just mics and amplifiers. Modern hearing aids do a lot of signal processing.
This is what I'm still trying to convince my dad of, after he found the pair he was fitted with ~20 years ago absolutely useless. He found that they simply made everything louder which did nothing to help him pick out what he wanted to hear.
But he's always been picky about his soundscapes, wanting the TV muted during ad breaks etc etc.
I thought I had hearing loss. I don't. I have Audio Processing Disorder. When I found out about APD and read its symptom list, I cried. It's me, all over. Between that and ADHD I now understand how my brain processes (or doesn't process) sound properly and why even a well intentioned (but clueless) audiologist told me I had "selective hearing".
> he found the pair he was fitted with ~20 years ago absolutely useless
IKUK but that's like having bad vision so you put on a pair of your glasses from 20 years ago, still having bad vision, and deciding glasses just don't work well. Hearing and vision change over time. And that's assuming those were good hearing aids 20 years ago compared to what is available today.
It's rough now that I know it bothers him. Late at night, when the house is quiet and it's just you and him, he'll talk your ear off and hear every word you say.
> My father-in-law however doesn't like hearing aids because he feels they amplify things he doesn't want to hear.
I have this issue with AirPods too, in the "adaptive" mode. It feels natural outdoors, but sometimes indoors and especially in rooms with echo it feels like it makes distant chatter unnaturally loud and closer-sounding.
Jokes are discouraged so let me add some context for people who don't get the joke. "Homelander" is a character in the Amazon Prime series "The Boys". It's a show about "superheroes" where most of the heroes are either seriously evil, or morally flawed.
Homelander is the leader (think weak Superman) and as a result of being raised without parents (in a lab) has a "mommy" fetish that includes drinking breast milk, sometimes directly from the source.
So weird typing that out, it's such a messed up and wonderful show!
If you aren't scared of the NYPD you aren't paying attention. A worldwide(1) force that often blurs lines between law enforcement and "cartel" behavior.
Former NYC mayor Bloomberg once joked that the NYPD was his private army, and the 7th largest army in the world. This is hyperbole, but looking at staffing and budget, it actually is in the top 30, larger than that of many small countries.
Why is police stationed in the subway a bad thing? In civilized countries, they barely do a bad thing but are very helpful in deterring would-be offenders, or helping out the subway staff. Most of the time, they're lowly constables and recruits doing national service.
Of course, NY subway police is something else, and that's a very NY thing.
> Why is police stationed in the subway a bad thing?
Mostly, it's just a waste of money. Just move the fee collection to taxes and you can free literally hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to stationing cops and stop pretending that fare skippers are going to financially cripple the city. Cops can't keep up with the kids anyway.
> Most of the time, they're lowly constables and recruits doing national service.
"Service" is a reach given most of what they do is... nothing. Literally just standing around as a physical manifestation of security theater. If they want to be useful they can build housing or distribute food or bring people healthcare.
It's "national service". A concept perhaps alien in the US, but basically most countries have a programme where eighteen-yr olds have to go through service in a government job, either in the army, police, fire or EMT. I mentioned that as the comment above mentioned the IDF.
Police standing around in subways is still a deterrent from bad behavior, especially when coupled with a justice system that doesn't reward criminals. See Japan, Korea, Singapore, Dubai, Israel, etc.
Well, until the cops start actually serving the public rather than being (again) security theatre, I stand by my skepticism. I understand other countries have much less organized-crime-like police cultures.
National service is not a concept that's alien to the US, it's just one that was massively delegitimized by the government sending tens of thousands of young men and women off to die in Asia, for ends many would characterize as "meaningless" or "evil", in hindsight. Abuse and exploitation of patriotism leading to distrust and deflated enthusiasm. (This is a dynamic Israel might want to pay attention to.)
I would be more worried if I didn't have personal experience with digital marketers, and the businesses that hire them. They (ad tech) sell amazing, sometimes very scary, intrusive, tech but the implementation is almost always comically bad. The privacy concern is legitimate, but there are only a handful of brands smart/evil enough to use it as intended. The most common terrible example is Amazon ads: "No I don't want to buy another toilet because I JUST bought one". If Amazon can't figure this out, who is?
> develop a new joint strategy with them that will ensure officials can be retained within the sport, new officials can be recruited and the officiating community will be supported through the changes
Hope this new "joint strategy" works because it sounds like they're setting themselves up for poor chair officiating.
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