Alright, alright, alright. Let’s see if we get Firstros or Lastros today.  George Springer starts with a dinger, as did the Cubs leadoff hitter. Bombs away, just like last year. The supposed to be contender Cubs are pulling away from the fire-sale Marlins. John Lester having given up four runs before getting the hook in the mid-4th. Meanwhile, all systems are crap for the Rays — with a smoky grease fire that is no threat to anyone being about what I expect out of them.

World leader puts foot in mouth, forcing press corps to spin furiously … Vatican edition. “Is the Pope Catholic” to be removed from list of rhetorical questions

McDonalds will now give up to $3000/year in tuition assistance thanks to tax law changes. See, work at McDonalds for 40 years and you can afford that Oberlin MFA in Puppetry, too

More proof that Ohio is just the Florida of the Midwest. Ohio woman wants to replace law-maker she was sexting with. We know he’s all about constituent service, what does she bring to the table?

Blockchain stocks falter as first round of suckers get wise. I think the blockchain in its current form scales terribly. Having to do exponentially more work on a regular basis to keep the distributed trust fresh was a cool idea — especially for an alternative store of value to fiat currency — but there are emerging, competing, less computationally intense ways of establishing distributed trust networks.

A little Eagles of Death Metal, since the gliberati seemed to like the lead singer’s statements on mass shootings.