Excessive coverage influences news

I never thought I would use Donald Trump and Lamar Jackson in the same sentence – sorry, Lamar.

What they have in common is endless media coverage by TV and radio stations and websites that have time and space to fill. The problem is the coverage influences events.

The excessive coverage of the Lamar Jackson contract situation (when there is very little actual news) has alienated some fans from Lamar and made the rest of us just sick of hearing and reading about it. I think it’s been unhelpful to having a resolution and probably helped both sides to dig in.

Trump is evil but he is an expert at getting attention which the media gladly gives to him. I doubt that he ever would have been nominated in the old days when national TV news was only on for half an hour. I blame the media for helping him – even negative coverage takes up space that could have been used on other candidates and stories.

I watched Babylon (2022)

Babylon looks great but it lasts too long – over three hours. I got tired of orgies, dwarfs, booze, drugs and a guy who ate a rat. There’s too much of this stuff. Brad Pitt gives an excellent understated performance while Margot Robbie is appropriately over the top. Lesser known actors are also excellent – Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li.

This 1929 scene is recreated in Babylon. Brad Pitt’s character is one of the stars.

The Nuggets collections

Nuggets is a series of vinyl and CD collections started by Lenny Kaye in 1972. They are compilations of garage rock and pyschedelic songs from the 1960s, many by one-hit wonders.

Groundbreaking garage rock compilation ‘Nuggets’ turns 50

The 50 Best Garage Rock Songs of All Time

Here are some of my favorite songs from the compilations

The Compact Disc turns 40

I bought my firsr CD player and discs in 1984. There was no US disc manufacturing plant yet so my copy of Born in the USA was made in Japan. I like CDs and am not nostalgic for records – I scratched too many and there were some that were defective which you rarely with CDs.

The Orioles have enough money to keep their young players

A few weeks ago, John Angelos, who runs the Orioles, held up the Rays as his role model. The Rays do not spend a lot of money. Now, we learn that the Orioles were the fourth most profitable team in baseball. They also have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball.

It was obvious that the Orioles were not going to keep Manny Machado in 2018. The team was bad and they didn’t want to spend the money.

The situation now is different. The team is good and they should find a way to lock up players like Adley Rutschman on long-term deals. Other teams have done it with their young stars. It would be terrible for the Orioles to accumulate all this young talent and let it leave. They can afford to keep the players.

A 90-year-old tortoise became a father

The CNN video compared him to Larry King but I think Tony Randall became a father at an even older age. I’m sure neither of them had to get up in the night to change diapers.

AI pictures of what an arrest of Trump would look like

I wish these were real but they were made by AI. It shows the potential for AI to be used to spread false information.