"You just have a sense of... brotherhood."

Said Robert Gasser, a Brewers pitcher:

To begin the season - Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, and Shane Drohan shared an Airbnb at Triple-A.

In October, they started 3 straight games in the NLCS to help the Brewers win their first pennant in 44 years.

Before his NLCS start, Gasser talked about the tight-knit staff 👇 pic.twitter.com/t5DVbsHBCD

— Hunter Baumgardt (@hunterbonair) October 17, 2026

Texting that to Meade, I wrote "'brotherhood'/crystal blue persuasion/'There'll be peace and good — brotherhood.'"

He sent me this video of the song, and I said "I blogged that video in 2015." It was here: "The new Hillary catchphrase: 'Love trumps hate.'"

And I blogged about the song in 2006, describing what I'd just put in a podcast ("Audible Althouse #64," no longer on line):

Paris.

Galeries Lafayette in Paris is being looted tonight. It’s the French equivalent of Harrods in London or Bergdorf Goodman in NYC https://t.co/F5jZU4bswZ

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 17, 2026

"The D.S.A.’s rise is at once a story of party-blobification and of a revolt against it. Like the conservatives of the 1970s..."

"... the group frankly views the party it occupies as a host for an ideological movement rather than as a partner. It also practices an exaggerated form of the interest-group litmus-test politics that came to dominate Democratic politics in the post-1968 era, measuring its own strength less by general-election victories than by its ability to enforce candidate loyalty to left-maximalist positions.... It is a means of engaging seriously in Democratic Party politics while also casting a vote of no-confidence in the party itself...."

From "Is Anyone Actually in Charge of the Democratic Party? And Does It Matter? This year’s midterm elections are a test of whether a party can be a success and a failure at the same time" (NYT).

"If sexual misconduct prevents a victim from taking full advantage of her education, then the institution has to address it."

"That responsibility is an awkward fit in some ways, but it reflects the reality that colleges are not just classrooms; they are a very particular kind of community in which all members have a duty of care toward one another. The Cornell case shows how hard it can be for universities to enforce Title IX well and also why they have to keep trying...."

Writes Emily Bazelon, in "This Is One of the Saddest Facts About the Cornell Rape Case" (NYT).

The sad fact in question is that Jane Doe dropped out, and she did not complete her degree elsewhere. Her education — her path to a career — was disrupted. 

"I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down."

A column at the NYT, written by Chris Marquis, a professor at University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

When the case method is used in medicine and law, it serves a different set of goals.... In both fields, students are confronted by the messiness of reality, and the goal is to foster disciplined skepticism: ask what’s missing, challenge assumptions and test how an analysis could be wrong.

Business school cases operate on another logic.... The point is to practice acting like the person in charge....

"Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where masked infiltrators broke into the local government headquarters..."

"...  and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. Fires also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon.... Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu placed the blame for the chaos squarely on a far-left party, France Unbowed.... Protest organizers had hoped that the demonstrations on Saturday would lead to a convergence between the student demonstrations that have roiled France since September demanding better school conditions, and a broader social movement that addressed a wider array of concerns, including the rising cost of living. What emerged on Saturday seemed like a split-screen event, with marches occurring peacefully in one part of a city and groups of black-clad agitators sparring with police and causing damage in other areas. Then, as things unraveled, opportunist rioters joined in, exploiting the chaos, government officials said...."

From "France Reels After Largest Riots in Years/Centrist and leftist leaders blamed each other after anti-government protests devolved into chaos" (NYT).

"The age of AI will disrupt the workplace in all sorts of ways. But the work will continue..."

"... as other kinds of work have continued through technological disruptions. People still run the 100-meter dash, even though a car or a cheetah could do it faster. We still cook elaborate dinners, even though the frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes. We still have dinner parties, even though we could stream wittier banter from Netflix — because we are humans, and we want to seek excellence, not just consume it. AI may make it harder for us to get paid for our work. But if so, it will also make it easier for us to focus on the reasons that work is worth doing."

So says Megan McArdle, in "Every novel might have to pass an AI test soon/Artificial intelligence threatens writers’ livelihoods. It may also remind them why they write" (WaPo)(gift link).

The frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes? I don't believe that for one minute. Strike the "highly" and maybe you've got the beginning of a good enough analogy.

Also: "a car or a cheetah could do it faster" — there's no antecedent for "it." Do what faster? Anyway, it's not that people run the 100-meter dash, it's that other people care about and watch them running. Speed is interesting to us because of whatever it is that is going fast. We also care about and watch cars and cheetahs going fast, but it's not the speed per se that matters. It's the thing that's managing to go that fast. I've been impressed by a fast-moving tortoise.

As for reading, there are different kinds of readers. I don't think I'm the kind of reader who reads the novels that AI is going to get away with writing — conventional, fast-moving narratives with heroes and villains. Does it bother me if readers of hackwork are not getting human hacks? Maybe it does!