Be Excellent To Each Other

How can they stop you from bunting in softball? Is it a foul, or something, stopping people from running?

Yep, circumference makes much more sense!

You'll have excuse me. We drove back from Scotland last night and didn't get in until gone 3am. This is after 3 hours sleep on Saturday night. I am beyond tired

The girls in my school played rounders, I had no idea that was a regional thing though.

We did a bit of softball at school, but it was basically those boys who weren't good enough to play cricket. Then in Winter, us crap kids would be playing hockey while the athletic ones played rugby.

Rounders is pretty much nationwide, but British baseball is only played in Wales and the north.

TIFU by answering my parents' telephone and, after hearing a poor line and deciding the voice was fake, saying "you're clearly a robot, goodbye" and hanging up. Turns out it was the local co-ordinator of a charity they're involved in.

My wife is currently objecting to part of my remains being put into a brick post mortem.

https://mumufication.com

Excellent.

Missed this! I don't actually know what would happen if someone tried bunting in slowpitch as I've never seen someone try it. The rules are unclear as they only talk about bunting in FP. My gut instinct would be that the batter is out and all base runners go back to the bases they were on before the pitch.

I went to a BBQ yesterday and met up with some people who I haven't seen for about ten years! It was nice. Everyone is the same but a bit fatter and has a kid or two with them.

My kids met the singer of my new band too and I think they were star struck.

Dust, wind, dude.

#Burttank might have a new rival...

W T F

The new Tay Tay song leaves me with confused feelings.

Is it the Right Said Fred link?

Anyone else get an email from CeX about their data breach?

Yip - last night.

Does anyone else use Microsoft Rewards? Basically, you get points for using Microsoft products so that’s whether you buy something from their store or even for using Bing.

I’ve signed up for it and haven’t done anything out the ordinary but I’ve amassed some points and I’ve just put some towards another free month of Groove music (Their version of Spotify). It looks like it’s quite easy to get points towards something whether it’s an Xbox live subscription or money off their store.

Worth doing if you’re into that kind of thing.

I've been following Hurricane Harvey with growing concern over the last four days. What isn't in doubt is that economically it will dwarf Katrina and Sandy as North America's most expensive disaster in modern history. However I'm also increasingly concerned that there might be Katrina level casualties revealed over the coming days. Not only has Houston been flooded with up to 50" of rain, but the cities of Beaumont, Port Arthur and surrounding areas have had as much over 48hrs. This Eastern area alone has 400,000 people and most of it is flooded. I'm further concerned about the Addicks dam, a huge dam inside Houston's city limits which is undergoing emergency and uncontrolled water release on a small end portion of the dam where the water has risen two feet above the lip. Chance of breach failure is small, but if it did...

To add to woes, two more probable hurricanes are set to line up next week. One possibly against Bermuda as a Cat 5, the other - to be named Jose - most models agree to be against Houston AGAIN. These predictions are early, but the UKMet and Euro models which have been accurate on Harvery seem to agree. Houston cannot take any more water, nor can the two city dams of Barker and Addicks. Lake Houston dam to the North of the city also is at its limit. I sincerely dread what potentially might happen. Considering a proper thread, if folk are interested.

Sure. Go for it. I might even be able to add something when I go back to work tomorrow and talk to our catastrophe modellers.

Let's hope they don't talk about trains, eh?

Finally, the Toasted Cheese Sandwich Subscription Service we've all been waiting for!

Just the thing to send to your lactose-intolerant enemies!

I don't have toaster at work.

I like how they include visual instructions, but I'm disappointed it doesn't arrive ready-made.

That's the best URL ever.

Just looking at that website made me feel happier.

'Cheese posties,' also the most genius company name.

Agreed. And they come with ingredient top trumps!

I've signed up. I'm all over that like Cras on cheese.

I'm not seeing that after repeated video viewings.

Song is ok to good, needs a bit of a cut, the pre chorus better than chorus.

Odd times around some areas of Bradford at the moment with cars being torched, targetted shootings, people firing guns into pub ceilings. Quite troubling.

Gangs having a bit of a falling out?

Hard to think why else.

Having a lazy morning with the kids and Bing the Bunny just straight up murdered a butterfly. Fucking brutal!

And he steals lollies from Padgett's shop.

Bing is corrupting our youth.

And the fucking panda never had any fucking trousers on!

I'd heard it was good for porn, but not to this extent.

Voight-Kampff test, right there.

Mimi also watched it, and has just texted me to say how upsetting it was.

She's probably not a robot.

Any AI smart enough to pass the Turing test would probably also be smart enough to realise that it would be advantagous to fail on purpose.

In all seriousness, it was awful.

"Hey kids! Let's learn about death at 9:15am on a Monday morning!"

That episode really upset me. I mean, it was BEAUTIFULLY handled, but I was not expecting it and I cried to the extent that I had to leave the room and am struggling to pull myself back together. I'm meeting a friend and my makeup needs to come off and be redone because I cried so much and look like a blotchy idiot.

Bing is a beautiful show and Flop is perhaps the best written example of empathy and patience that I have ever seen.

I don't think it was awful, and I think it's actually very brave and significant, but I bet there will be complaints because it WAS upsetting.

You're right, it wasn't awful, but still... unnecessary perhaps?

Well, certainly there doesn't HAVE to be an episode about death, but then it's one of those subjects that parents can sometimes find difficult to broach with their young children, and in that respect it can perhaps open discussion. I guess the difficulty is how you give parents the opportunity, because there will be a lot of parents that perhaps don't think they wanted to start that discussion today.

I have very strong memories of a similar subject in the Smurfs, when I was very small, of Smurfette's pet 'Mousey' dying, and her wishing she'd never loved Mousey to begin with rather than to have loved him and him grow old and die, and it was about realising in the sadness of loss that we had learned to love BECAUSE of all the times that we shared, and though this comes to an end with all living things we should not be afraid to love and make those friendships because life would be so lonely and empty without them.

I bet Flop handled it like a pro though.

I wish I was as good a parent as Flop.