Linked List: August 17, 2019

Saturday, 17 August 2019

Yankees Clinch 27th Straight Winning Season ★

Bryan Hoch, MLB:

Securing their 27th consecutive season with a winning record, a streak that dates to 1993 and is second in Major League history only to their 39-season run from 1926-64, the Yankees peppered rookie starter Aaron Civale for three runs and eight hits over six innings.

What a streak. Next best in MLB are the Cardinals with 11.

Trump’s Large Union Crowd at Shell Was Given the Option of Not Showing Up — and Not Getting Paid ★

Anya Litvak, reporting for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.

“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.

“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.

Easy call to boycott all Shell products — forcing your employees to serve as paid supporters is authoritarian bullshit. And this is why Trump accuses protestors of being paid stooges — pure projection.

WatchOS 6 Beta Suggests New Series 5 Watches in Titanium and Ceramic ★

Nice scoop from iHelpBR. Marco Arment’s take:

Two fantastic watch materials. Titanium in watches can be made to look like steel but slightly darker and much lighter-weight, and the previous white-ceramic Editions were really cool.

Agreed. Watch-grade titanium is a very different beast than the titanium in the original PowerBook G4 models. The fact that it’s much lighter should make haptics better than in the stainless steel models.