2020 Baseball Projections

~ Darren Cohen ~ Leave a comment

After correctly picking the Nationals to win the World Series last year, it’s time for my all important 2020 projections.

*I had to edit this post the day after posting as baseball changed the rules around who makes the post season! Now the top two teams in each division get in while keeping the next two as Wild Cards. My picks to win it all did not change.

NL East: Phillies/Braves

NL Central: Cubs/Cardinals

NL West: Dodgers/Padres

Wild Card 1: Mets

Wild Card 2: Diamondbacks

AL East: Yankees/Rays

AL Central: Twins/White Sox

AL West: Astros/Angels

Wild Card 1: Rangers

Wild Card 2: Blue Jays

AL Champs: Rays

NL Champs: Dodgers

World Series Champions: Dodgers

Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.

Bill Veeck

More Outdoor Biking Around NYC

~ Darren Cohen ~ Leave a comment

Monica and I decided to do some more biking around NYC this weekend. With all activities rightly pushed outside during COVID, we are making the best of it. We started again in Midtown, went down to the Battery for some coffee, and then back up the Hudson for an outdoor breakfast on the Upper West Side. Then we went around Central Park before heading to the East Side. Next it was over the 59th Street Bridge into Queens! There we checked out a very cool place called Anable Basin Sailing Bar and Restaurant for a beer and a bite in Long Island City. Finally it was on to Brooklyn via the Pulaski Bridge where we finished the ride!

Birthday Bike Ride Across NYC

~ Darren Cohen ~ Leave a comment

With all indoor activities still closed, Monica and I took off on a 4 borough bike ride. Started in midtown Manhattan and went down to Tribeca before heading to the Lower East Side for breakfast. From there we crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and went for coffee in Greenpoint. Over the Pulaski Bridge into Queens and then the 59th Street Bridge (this will always be the name) back into Manhattan. Headed north for lunch in the Upper East Side. Outdoor dining is back and an Irish pub was the perfect stop. Next we kept heading north and crossed the pedestrian bridge onto Randalls and Wards Islands before heading into the Bronx via the Triborough Bridge (again this will always be the name). Our final destination was the Bronx Brewery which has a backyard open.

Images of NYC Coming out of COVID-19

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Apple Going ARM

~ Darren Cohen ~ Leave a comment

This will be the first time in the 36-year history of the Mac that Apple-designed processors will power these machines. It has changed chips only two other times. In the early 1990s, Apple switched from Motorola processors to PowerPC. At WWDC in 2005, Steve Jobs announced a move from PowerPC to Intel, and Apple rolled out those first Intel-based Macs in January 2006. Like it did then, the company plans to eventually transition the entire Mac lineup to its Arm-based processors, including the priciest desktop computers, the people said.

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Apple has had the best processors for consumer facing products for years, so this is a long time coming. There will be some issues, and one that came to mind was running Windows in a virtualized space or Bootcamp. However, the need most had to run Windows is lessening as more and more and services have moved some their offerings to the cloud while being accessible in the browser. There will always be outliers on the margins, but any pressure on Intel is a good thing at this point.

Always Read Margaret Sullivan

~ Darren Cohen ~ Leave a comment

That argument can be dismantled in a nanosecond. Should the denialist views of, say, Alex Jones of Infowars on the Sandy Hook massacre be given a prestigious platform, too? But Cotton is a prominent political figure, you say? By that logic, the lies of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway should be welcomed on news-discussion shows daily because she’s close to the president.

Perhaps a more useful way to think about many of these tough issues is to consider the role of journalism in democratic society: to dig out and present the information that helps citizens hold their elected officials accountable.

What if we framed coverage with this question at the forefront: What journalism best serves the real interests of American citizens?

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So many in the press have become nothing more than stenographers for those in power, and as this piece points out that has to change.

The Newsletters Chosen for my Inbox

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It seems that every media outlet, company, and person on the internet has a newsletter now. For a while I signed up for so many that I ended up reading none. Now I have paired down what reaches my inbox, and it feels like a perfect balance. Here are the newsletters that I find are must read.

The Daily Book – New York Times

Theatre Update – New York Times

Reliable Sources – CNN

The Morning Brew

Stratechery (Subscription) – Ben Thompson

The Interface – The Verge

Stop Using Third Party E-Mail Apps

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Several users of popular email app Edison Mail this morning are reporting that they are able to see email accounts of other users within the iOS app. In what appears to be a major privacy breach, users report that after enabling a new sync feature, they have full access to these other email accounts.

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Popular e-mail apps like Spark, Newton, and Edison all require access to your data to implement the features they advertise. This is bad for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it’s really not needed. Use the default e-mail apps or the apps provided by your e-mail provider. So GMail app for Google users, Outlook if you host on Microsoft (no do not use for Gmail), or your built in app that comes with your machine. That is the list. Most corporations will block third party apps for good reason, but you should follow that same practice for your personal e-mail as well.