Minor League Baseball To Experiment With Robotic Umpires
Friday, March 12, 2021
Birmingham Barons outfielder Luis Basabe moves toward a ball in front of the vintage scoreboard in 2019 at Rickwood Field, America s oldest baseball park, in Birmingham, Ala.
Jay Reeves / AP
Umpires will have a little help behind home plate in some minor league games this season – from a robot ump.
Major League Baseball announced Thursday that select games in the Low-A Southeast will use a robot to help call balls and strikes. The use of the technology, called the Automatic Ball-Strike System, will also ensure a consistent strike zone is called, and determine the optimal strike zone for the system, according to MLB.
In The Pandemic s 1st Year, 3 Huge Losses In 1 Family
Friday, March 12, 2021
The Aldaco family of Phoenix suffered multiple losses in this year of unfathomable pain. Three brothers perished in the pandemic: Jose (left) in July, Heriberto Jr. (right) in December and Gonzalo (holding guitar) in February. They appear in this undated family photo with their father (second from left).
Miguel Lerma
In the year since the World Health Organization first declared a global pandemic, on March 11, 2020, millions of families have endured the excruciating rise and fall of the U.S. outbreak. The waves of sickness have left them with untold wounds, even as hospitalizations ebb and infections subside.
VIDEO: The Early Days Of The Pandemic As Seen Through Your Camera Roll
Courtesy of Rachel Fishback
After an entire year, it s easy to forget how suddenly the COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives. But looking back through the photos on our phones can show us just how quickly everything changed.
We asked people to send us their last normal photo of 2020 and their first pandemic photo. Thousands of you responded.
From college acceptances to remote learning, planning a wedding to sharing vows over Zoom, hugging a grandparent to mourning them alone these are some of the stories that defined our pandemic year.
Microtransactions Are Great For Game Companies, Less Fun For Players By Keller Gordon | NPR
Assassin s Creed: Valhalla if you re willing to pay real money.
Screenshot by Elijah Smith / Ubisoft
Assassin s Creed Valhalla, the latest installment in Ubisoft s
Assassin s Creed franchise, came out in November 2020. Like most
AC games, it was highly anticipated; it sold more copies in its opening week than any other
game in the series. Needless to say, fans were excited.
And yet, just over four months after its release, fans are castigating Ubisoft for including and leveraging overpriced, in-game purchases –– more commonly called microtransactions.
You ve probably heard of microtransactions before, even if you re not a hardcore gamer. Take a look at your phone s app store, and almost all the games in there will have a little textbox that says In-App Purchases.
Maniac Recounts Deadliest School Mass Murder In American History
Little A
Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Sadly, mass murders at American schools have been so common that it s all too easy for people to instantly name several that have happened in the last few decades alone.
One that has been largely forgotten, however, is the Bath School disaster, which took the lives of 38 children and six adults in 1927. It remains the deadliest mass murder in a school in American history.
In his new book,
Maniac, author Harold Schechter tells the horrifying story of the massacre, in which a farmer-politician bombed a school in Bath Township, Mich. It s not an easy book to read the details of the terrorist act are, as you might expect, extremely horrifying but it s a fascinating look at one of the most unspeakable events in American history.