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Mar 13

I’m Sean McDevitt, and this is The Weekly Click. One of the delights of sending this email is hearing from you! Click reply and say, “Hi…”

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There Will Be Baseball

MLB @MLB

Let the fun begin!

Baseball is back!

After 99 days of a lockout on the players, the MLB owners and Players Association agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. So, after all that hand-wringing and soul-crushing shenanigans, what exactly happened? What’s different?

In a Twitter thread by Evan Drellich of The Athletic, he outlines the details of the new CBA agreement.

Bonus Pool
The players wanted a bonus pool of $100M. The compromise number of $50M is excellent. It’s a way for the impressive rookies and quality players to get a bit more money

Minimum Salary
The minimum salary is now $700k and a sliding scale up for each season. When the lockout was going on, there was a narrative of millionaire baseball players against the billionaire owners, and that just wasn’t true. Most professional baseball players were not making a million dollars. With the minimum salary going up, it will help the most significant number of players.

Universal DH
I’ve been screaming about this for years. The National League was behind every other example of organized baseball in existence. This will make the game much better and make the World Series a more equitable set of games.

Schedule Changes
The regular season will be delayed, but only a tiny bit. More importantly, there will be a full slate of 162 games. To do that, it looks like there will be some scheduled doubleheaders during the season. Also, the doubleheaders will be nine-inning games. No more of this seven innings crap. Plus, no more stupid “ghost runners” on second to start extra innings.

Expanded Playoffs
The owners wanted expanded playoffs because that’s where a lot of money is made. The players used this as their primary bargaining chip. The owners wanted a 14-team playoff. The players proposed a 12-team playoff, and that’s the compromise. I hated the one-game Wild Card, and expanded teams mean Wild Card three-game series, which is much better.

On to free agency, spring training, and an actual regular season starting in about a month.

Star Trek/Wars Teasers

New Star Trek and Star Wars television series are coming soon and the first real teasers for them have hit the internet. Both shows begin on their respective streaming services in May.

First up is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which fans of Star Trek: Discovery have already seen glimpses of with a reintroduction of a few characters fans knew were traipsing around the galaxy at the same time. Of course, Star Trek fans were introduced to Captain Pike, Number One, Spock, and others in the original pilot, and a version of Captain Pike made an appearance in the Kelvin-Timeline Star Trek movies. However, this version is the retro-updated version of the USS Enterprise back before Kirk and company took command.

There are a lot of Star Trek shows, but this is the only one that reminds me of the fun and hope of the original series. It looks beautiful and the cast is top-notch. I’m hoping we see a Captain April.

I always thought there was a story to be told right after Obi-Wan Kenobi drops off Luke at the Lard Homestead and walks into the Tatooine desert. Now, we are going to get one.

Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped its first teaser trailer for the Disney+ show and we finally get a glimpse of what’s in store.

Man, when the “Duel of Fates” hits I actually got a tingle in my spine. Actually, when the music transitions from “Battle of the Heroes” to “Duel of the Fates” then back to the first was amazing. Also, the lightsaber swiping to form the Disney+ logo at the end was a good bit of design.

May looks like a good month for Star Trek and Star Wars fans (like me).

Heardle

I watched someone else play Wordle and thought a.) This seems like fun and b.) I would suck at this, like really suck.

However, I found Heardle which is like if Name That Tune and Wordle had a baby. It seemed way more up my alley.

First opportunity to play, I had no clue at all what the song was. Ultimately, it told me it was “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast. The only Outkast song anyone knows is “Hey Ya,” so this was total crap.

If there was a version of this of just 80s songs, I’d kill.

How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal?

Ed Yong, writing for The Atlantic, examines the distinct lack of societal change that is occurring after millions have died and nearly a million alone in just the United States.

He starts and doesn’t let up:

The United States reported more deaths from COVID-19 last Friday than deaths from Hurricane Katrina, more on any two recent weekdays than deaths during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more last month than deaths from flu in a bad season, and more in two years than deaths from HIV during the four decades of the AIDS epidemic. At least 953,000 Americans have died from COVID, and the true toll is likely even higher because many deaths went uncounted. COVID is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after only heart disease and cancer, which are both catchall terms for many distinct diseases. The sheer scale of the tragedy strains the moral imagination. On May 24, 2020, as the United States passed 100,000 recorded deaths, The New York Times filled its front page with the names of the dead, describing their loss as “incalculable.” Now the nation hurtles toward a milestone of 1 million. What is 10 times incalculable?

The whole thing paints a sad portrait of America.

Did Dua Lipa ACTUALLY Plagiarize Levitating?

I’m sure you’ve heard Dua Lipa’s song, “Levitating.” It’s super catchy and set some Billboard records. You may have also heard a band called Artikal Sound System saying that “Levitating” was ripped off from their song, “Live Your Life.” They absolutely sound the same with practically the same chords and definitely the same melody.

Adam Neely explains in the video below, there are certainly some mitigating factors on this whole plagiarism lawsuit.

I’m pretty convinced what happened was not plagiarism, but someone independently coming up with a strikingly similar chord progression and melody. What clinched it for me was the Song Exploder podcast breakdown of the creation of Lipa’s song.

I expect Artikal Sound System will lose its lawsuit. However, I think the influence of Outkast’s “Rosa Parks” in this song merits a songwriting credit and royalties. Not because it’s plagiarized, but because of the similar melody/structure.

Here are the articles I think you should read this week:

Until next time, thanks again for reading. The format for the newsletter is settled… at least for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, put down the phone for a bit and go for a walk. Spring is coming soon. Be happy.

As ever, thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing.

Be seeing you,

The Weekly Click