unclevlad

So, hand washing glasses and plastic; not unusual. Hear a THUD!! What... The faucet's turning looser than it should... Wait...what's that big gap...... Cheapo home builders. Granite countertop, great! Undermount sink, fine. ONLY using glue to mount it...not so fine. The glue gave out. The better way is to support the weight; the glue will fail. It lasted for about 10 years, tho, so the builder's off the hook. And of course it's Friday afternoon. And these days, service people tend to be VERY busy. First countertop people said...late September. OK, that's not good. Next one said Monday. YAY! Can't figure they'll work weekends in any case, right? That'll get the sink re-mounted. There's a second part; they want to dismount the garbage disposal (understandable). So that'll have to be remounted...and reconnected anyway, so dismounting it is no big deal. They did point out, tho: the adhesive will need to cure. So I have the plumber coming in Wednesday. Ugh. Oh well. A few days isn't a crisis.

Note from the US Open. Tomorrow's Swiatek-Jabeur match is the first time since 2013 featuring 2 players in the top 10. One...sure. Serena, clearly, if nothing else. But that's how prevalent upsets have been for a pretty amazingly long time. What's curious is, it's happening now when the rankings for both men and women have been so volatile for the last couple years.

The details in the NYT story are kind of macabre...they sound like bad TV writing. Story says Mr. German had made a freedom of information request for emails, planning a follow-on. I rather suspect that they'll come out now, supporting his initial charges (that Telles created a toxic workplace, harassment, improper contact, we know this drill.) The evidence sounds as solid as a CSI show, as csyphrett said.

Rules changes have been made official today. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-larger-bases-shifts --Pitch clock, including a rule that the batter has to be in the box. Love this. Super-fidgety hitters and slow pitchers are incredibly annoying. --The infield shift is out. Hate this. Just caves in to robotic hitting. OTOH, the fact is...that's how it's taught ALL the way back to elementary schoolers (a comment I've heard a few times) so expecting hitters to adjust is impractical. The bases go from 15 to 18 inches as well. Fundamentally, the goal here is safety, to help avoid collisions and tripping, particularly at 1st. So pretty much what's been discussed all year, I think. EDIT: ....how much ya wanna bet that the conspiracy theory types will argue favoritism...that the clock's started slower for Yankee pitchers, for example. One thing that MIGHT happen...if this is operated by the home team, then there's a more plausible case for favoritism. Not sure who'll run this, tho.

Still going, but it's a foregone conclusion at this point, with the Bills up 21 halfway through the 4th, and the Rams overall getting very badly outplayed. Aaaannnddd....Stafford throws another pick by trying to dump a ball short but getting it batted. That said, it's week 1. Good win for the Bills, as a road game, as one of their tough games (division winner vs. division winner). Rams have to be worried, tho, that a notable concern was the domino effect of losing Miller, and, yeah, the pass rush hasn't been impactful. Sloppy game, as expected. 7 turnovers to this point, with 5 minutes left.

Well, I suppose that's better than calling him Chucky........

Got me curious. The last time any Canadian team won the Cup? Montreal, 1993. By comparison, the diehard hockey towns of LA and Tampa have won 6 in that period.

When one sees "under medical supervision" connected to "family has been called in"...yeah, that's not a good combination, ever. Well...RIP. I'd say you earned it, ma'am.

Or to be precise, Sorcereur avec Fromage....

HSMA p. 7 has the core list of HTH martial arts maneuvers. Going past that, you get into the rules to build your own if you want more. I have a couple I often build...a power strike that's +1 OCV and +3 DCVs OR -1 DCV and +4 DCVs depending on my mood, for example. It's pretty easy. What I'd MUCH rather see than a list...especially just SFX-related stuff since that's trivial to specify...would be a maneuver builder that writes up the HSMA rules. Huh...I might just do one for myself. Not like the rules are that complex from a coding standpoint. HD's list is, I believe, straight from HSMA. And yeah, at least in the HSMA styles, there's almost nothing that's not on that list. There might be a few...especially ranged combat (Enerjutsu), and I think the speeder package (Hypercombat) might. But the vast majority are standard maneuvers using style-specific names. Books like Lucha Libre...that's almost a campaign book where the fundamental focus is the world of Mexican-style cinema and wrestling, so it wouldn't surprise me at all that there are wider-scaled maneuvers. And was there an HSMA prior to 6th, with the build-a-maneuver rules?

And to take that further, out of how many cops and military? And on the politicians, they don't mention the level, or the nature. City council? County school board? The count also includes candidates, not simply elected. So how large is the pool of people here? Not saying it's good that there are any...but there will always be some. So, the phrasing is misleading, but hey, it's the Daily Beast. The original AP story discusses the fact that just being on the list means little...how many times have you signed up for something you later went, oh, this was a mistake.... To be sure, some people saying that are doing CYA, so denial skepticism is justified.

Oh, I hear ya. "Rabid" doesn't begin to describe some of em. There was a period where, driving home from work...Finebaum's radio show was on. Ohhhhh man................ On the flip side, after being #11 (?), Oregon dropped out altogether. Yeah, that happens when you get taken behind the woodshed. EDIT: ESPN Bottom 10 is out.

Grinder of a match. And just now, Francis Tiafoe backed up his win over Rafa by taking out Rublev to make his first-ever Grand Slam semi. He also moved into the top 20 for the first time ever. This is his breakout tournament. Man, the Vuelta's snakebit. Down to 138 riders from the 184...a full 25%. And now down one of the more notable riders left.

Preseason ratings have about as much predictive value as a Magic 8 Ball.

Yes, it was. IIRC, the Seminoles in Florida have a too-similar tale. But putting down the Indian tribes was considered laudatory, and it's part of the folklore of the West. Arguably THE most prominent character type in American movies is the gunslinger. Billy the Kid is lionized to a fairly large degree, despite the fact that he was nothing more than an out of control punk with a fast finger. The Chicago gangsters were romanticized for quite some time. Bonnie and Clyde. It's this broader history LL is referring to.

Figure that the last events to qualify as an insurrection would've been during the Civil War, so it wouldn't come into play. The key takeaway is in calling it an insurrection, and the article points out that several different judges now have said yes, it was. The guy was convicted, the event has been characterized...boom. This will likely go up the judicial chain before anything is really settled, tho.

For sure. STR is very common; Spidey's listed as lifting 10 tons; that's in the 40-45 range. He's not bulky. Captain America almost always LOOKS bulkier and more muscular...his info on Marvel puts him at 6'2 and 240, whereas Peter Parker is 5'10 and 170. But he's many times stronger. DEX, I think, tends to run to build...but there's exceptions like Beast. For BODY, even in the rules, look at the BODY of walls. Metal is much higher. In the real world, there are a number of assorted physical properties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenacity_(mineralogy) The simplest example can be brittleness. Stone is generally relatively brittle; metals rarely are. So a translation here: I might buy extra BODY when I define my body is made of a material that's definitely not brittle. Granted: it's not the only way to do it. Keeping the BODY down and going with Damage Reduction can also fit. And going another way: a glass giant has bulk, but the BODY might be pretty darn awful. Because sharp enough blows will be shattering good-sized chunks, and the whole thing falls apart relatively easily.

An analysis in FiveThirtyEight today...Republicans may lose certain governorships. 2 moderate governors (Mass and Maryland) opposed Trump, opposed the steal, supported abortion rights...how dare they!!! The Mass governor chose to retire; the Maryland governor is stepping down after 2 terms. But figure that in the even MORE highly charged party primary, neither would've stood much of a chance. And that's the point of the story: in purple to mildly blue states where it may matter most, nominating a hard core Trumpist may well backfire. Let's hope so.

That's much of the issue we have...not that you have training, but that the vast, overwhelming majority of people *don't*. And that's the concern. Only 8 states require any kind of training. And how often does that training, for a civilian, extend beyond proper handling and safety? I also think the de-escalation training is huge. Gun possession in itself feels like it creates an escalation mindset, not a de-escalation one. What's going to be the fallback reaction during a threat? Pull the gun. Got that number (8 states) from an anti-gun site, EveryTownResearch.org. I'll tend to buy it because it's easy to fact-check, and because figure there's lots of states that are very lenient. A point that's less supported, but still makes sense to me, from that site: Also, you commented about cases where guns protected the elderly/less capable. Question: how many of these were at home? There's a difference between gun possession at home, and carrying in public. Another angle, tho: how many impulsive home shootings, how many accidental shootings, are there, relative to the number of successful defenses?

Baltimore has been a great story this summer, making a major turnaround and, IIRC, actually reaching a point of being the 3rd wild card. But that run may have come to a close yesterday, as Toronto swept a doubleheader...in Baltimore. Toronto was only 2.5 up going in, but that took it to 4.5, and 5 in the loss column. With 27 and 28 games left, that's a decent working margin. The Battle of the Birds has 8 more rounds to go, starting with tonight and tomorrow, but the Orioles now probably have to take at least 5 of the 8.

Freak injury. But 315 pound guys shouldn't be jumping up and landing on 1 leg. Looks like the fool landed not quite square, and with the amount of force...yanked the entire lower leg. I feel bad for the kid, cuz hey, being emotional in a positive way doesn't deserve losing the entire season...altho, upside, he'll likely get a medical redshirt since it was the first defensive drive of the entire season. But no, I'll not feel bad for Kelly or LSU.

The number's easy. 8675903...

Walk Judge and you have runners on 1st and 2nd, none out. What's the run expectation in that situation? OTOH, *if you can get Judge out* you're in great shape. That's the analytical though process...and its flaw, to overvalue the self-validating outcome and undervalue all others, and to lose the individual player impact in the sea of numbers. Now...what was the actual strategy? I was loosely watching. The pitches weren't that close. So, was it a semi-pitch around? Pitch carefully, don't give him anything to hit, if you walk him...not great but manageable? That's just a recipe for disaster. And when you get to 3-1, WALK HIM. Because at 3-1 the hitter's waiting for a mistake. Was it pitches just missing from the start? Still get to the point that at 3-1, disaster's looming, and the worst-case scenario is becoming too likely. The Twins are not a good team, either. Yeah, fine, they're fighting for a division, but in a bad division. Cleveland is 5 over...8 over against the division. Minnesota is 3 over...and 9 over versus the division. They're staying alive by feasting on Detroit...23-38 in the division. KC to a lesser degree, they're 26-30. The division as a whole is a collective 50 games under .500. 311-361, .462 win percentage. That would slot them between the D'Backs and Angels. (The NL Central is about as bad, tho, because they've got 3 very bad teams.) So, yeah...I'll agree that stupidity is the norm in sports. Or maybe brainlock. The numbers are used badly. And they got burned.

Follow-on question: can there be a viable society where civilian gun ownership is a necessity?

So many flaws. I'm over 60, never particularly muscular, and these days, the usual aches and pains don't help. In many cases, I could offer up some defense to a knife wielder, tho...while I scream my head off. Your only notion of defense is the counter-attack...escalating the situation. DARN well better hope my attacker can't disarm me or I put myself MUCH, MUCH worse off. Against a knife, I might be able to find something for defense in many places...but I'll have to find my gun if I'm at home. Depending on the nature of the disability, do we really want a disable person with a gun? Do we really want a LOT of people to have guns? With people with anger triggers? Escalation from words to *shots* does happen. Go back to the summer of 2020. Numerous incidents where Trump supporters actively tried to intimidate or disrupt Democratic rallies. And things were very tense. Now throw in 15-20% of the attendees having guns, and the enormous anger of that summer. Protecting the vulnerable is a major problem, I completely agree, but you wouldn't just be arming the vulnerable. You're also jumping straight to the highest degree of personal escalation without ever considering if some middle ground is possible, and ignoring both the difficulties in using a gun, and the risk of misuse.