unclevlad

Mmm...is Kansas returning to form? Baylor 28-10 end of 3, altho Kansas has the ball and nearing the red zone. Mismatch of the year, perhaps? Tennessee led UT-Martin 52-7. At halftime.

There's a chance this'll be a trap game for the Jets. Another bad team...they've beaten Cleveland, Pitt, and Miami w/o Tua, all damaged teams. Yes, they beat the Pack too, last week...but with the Pats *next* week too, this is just setting up as a big time trap game. FiveThirtyEight gives them < 40% chance to make the playoffs...lower than either NE or Miami.

OK, yeah, Tunneling would work for the "pass through overgrown areas" aspect...but it would likely be expensive. You need Fill In, and IPE. FIll In is +10. How much of a movement rate do you want? Tunneling is its own movement rate. Vegetative barriers aren't that likely to have high PD, but wood suggests, what, 3-4? So... Tunneling --base 3 points --+5 meters (gets you to 6 meters, half normal rate): 5 --+3 PD: 6 --Fill in: +10 24 so far. IPE...Tunneling is Obvious. Do we want Inobvious, or Invisible? I think we can just say Sight is the only sense we need to address. If Invis, then it's +1/2, and we're at 36. So that ain't cheap any more. Wanna move at full speed? Raising to 12m would add 6 more, so now we're at 30 before IPE. Oh, and here's the kicker. I remember we went over this before, but per RAW, 6E1 310, Tunneling cannot be used to escape an Entangle.

The one aspect of this that may be positive is that they're exposing their goals and objectives openly. Makes it somewhat easier to counter. The negative is, he thinks there's enough support so he can say it openly.....

Just noted on the ESPN news crawl... WIlson's ruled out for tomorrow. Now I gotta root for the Broncos to win.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

But this wasn't a criminal proceeding, it was an evidentiary hearing. Standards of evidence are less; opportunities for rebuttal/refutation are more limited, I believe. The converse of "less likely" would put heavy brakes onto the proceedings. I think this is generally analogous to getting a temporary restraining order...if you can't even get one of those, then you've got NOOOO chance in a trial, even a civil one.

That would be an interesting question: most touches by a RB over the last, say, 3 years combined. If we just say 20 touches would be pretty high use, and certainly heavily involved in the offense, then 3 full years would be 980. Single-season? Last year, 3 backs topped that mark. Najee Harris (Steelers), Jonathan Taylor (Colts), and Joe Mixon (Bengals). (from StatMuse) Derrick Henry had that level in '19 and '20...and them played in only 8 games in '21. That's the point of the 3 year span: wear and tear. The current active rushing yards leader is Mark Ingram, with just over 8000 in 12 seasons. He's played in 153 games, and missed 30...so, 1 out of every 6. And his workload only approached 20 touches per game in 2014; for the last several years, it's been about 12-15. And here's McCaffrey: https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/player/christian-mccaffrey-26328/career-stats 2018, just over 20 touches. 2019, a bit over 25 touches. 2020...first 3 games, 25 touches, then BOOM. '21, 19 touches a game for 7 games, then BOOM. Running backs aren't valued because they don't last, because it's likely *relatively* easier to teach, and because there's a decent stream of em in most draft years. So, yes, the question of how much McCaffrey can actually contribute is definitely wide open.

well heck...if they don't catch the scammer who set up the fake financial firm, his personal Rebel's Run will turn out to be quite successful. (Mind, I hope he does get caught. And just because I love doing this... Ohana Capital Financial, Provo UT...is a branch of Ohana Capital Financial in Wyoming...but the Wyoming branch's listed address is in Utah. The Wyoming branch fell delinquent on their taxes in 2020; they were dissolved, but later reinstated in 2021. The branches were incorporated only a couple weeks apart. Oh, and the same people incorporated a branch in Hawaii, a couple months after the first 2. Yeahhhh...the shenanigans going on there would at least make me talk to a financial pro before I gave them any serious cash. Especially the tax delinquency. And this took me longer to type up here, than it did to find out.

Carolina has officially thrown in the towel. Christian McCaffrey traded to the Niners, according to Al on TNF just now, and Adam Schefter. For draft picks, which means they're basically walking from the table. Reload for later.... EDIT: yeah, we know no one values RBs. Draft picks are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th next year, 5th in 2024. Which is probably pretty good for Carolina; Niners apparently have a surfeit of bonus 3rd round picks, so it doesn't hurt them to potentially overpay. They need a back.

only 2-6 from the line. what a bum... Of note, too: he got the double-double coming off the bench.

Wow. Saints just gift wrap 2 touchdowns via pick-6's. First one, the receiver doesn't look the ball in...bounces off his hands. He's got 2 DBs converging, but he was WIDE open. The DBs just say "thank you" as the ball just sits in the air. Bye-bye. Then Dalton...the fact that he's still in the league tells me all I need to know about the state of QB play...forces a ball. He was getting spun a bit, but I think he just failed to read the defense. And this is against a Cardinal defense that had 2 picks coming in. Oh and before I started streaming, Dalton threw a pick in the end zone. EDIT: addendum. Just announced. I suppose we should've expected this. Since NBC shows the night game on Thanksgiving...that was a hole in the normal TNF schedule. So of course, the NFL just decided to give Amazon a game Friday night. So there will be 4 games on short/very short weeks.....<sigh>

Oh my. She won't worry about renting a place for some time, I'd say. Her new personal space will be rent-free.

The critics complaining about Johnson are going beyond the movie in isolation. Plus: perhaps it's true to the source...but that may also say more about the source, and in particular, translation into a different medium. Pretty sure it was Spider Robinson, in one of the Callahan books, that said something like "we often consider the intelligence of a speaker based on the degree they agree with us."

Oh, piffle.... In the age of social media, retro means "last month!!! Wow that was like forever ago!!!:

Opening game notes... From the Athletic's Pulse newsletter, Lakers look just like last year. No outside shooting. No fixes for the core issues. Granted, playing the Warriors, but they were very dismissive. Tonight, the Nets fall, and Ben Simmons looks...pretty miserable. They lose...to the Pelicans. Down 18 at the end of 1, down 30 apparently at one point. Final margin was 22. Legler's comments seem to be wondering how long it'll be before the whole thing completely falls apart. I mean, we all know the Nets are renowned for their stability and professionalism and demeanor......

Largely not gonna happen. Johnson's salary for Black Adam is reportedly $22.5M. After that, for any action movie in any sub-genre, you've got to nail the SFX, and those are never cheap. And, you can't NOT do it; the bar's been set too high by far, far too many films. There are parallels between actors and athletes in team sports. Salaries for the big names only continue to explode...but it also applies to the backup wide receivers, to the utility infielders...a little bit of success translates to getting paid quite nicely. This also holds for directors...they're the head coaches, and the known quantities get bigger bucks. On-set staffing? I believe Hollywood is mostly a union shop, so there's LOTS of people who are, shall we say, less than fully utilized. But exceptionally well compensated.... So, yeah, there's probably about as much excess fat as on bargain-bin bacon, but trimming it is a bit tricky.........

I wonder if that's a cousin of our dear fuzzball, death tribble. The resemblance is striking, wouldn't you agree?

Oh my. From the Atlantic's review of Black Adam, in re Dwayne Johnson: As you can imagine from that, they were not impressed. Reviews appear to be a mixed bag, but the most common seem lukewarm. "Derivative" might be the most common theme I saw, said in one manner or another.

And the Padres turn to small ball to pop 5 on the board while shutting the Phillies down the rest of the way. Series is now 1-1

But that holds for quite a few movie types. Star Wars movies run HOW much these days? Star Trek...I suspect not as bad but they aren't cheap. Dune was $165M, reportedly. F&F 9 was over $200M, but that was pretty much expected to pull in a *bundle*...I believe that's one of the highest-grossing franchises in movie history. What are you gonna make for $100M? That's going to have large-scale appeal? Knives Out! did just fine...and then some...on a much smaller budget. But then, you have to be careful...budget doesn't tell the whole story. Robert Downey came out *better* than anyone else in the MCU because he took a lower base pay...but a percentage of the gross. The Knives Out! cast was, by and large, in a similar position. It is an issue, tho. I believe the exceptional level of risk and the fundamental stakes, are why so many movies retread familiar ground. They can't bomb that badly.

Ah, but now you're requiring a secondary power to make the teleport work. Safe Blind Teleport would do it, sure, and it's cheap, but now you can't control your arrival point, and/or stitching more onto it...which is your complaint with Desolid. And as Duke says, how much will you actually need? Alternate Desolid from APG would be the simplest basis, as standard Desolid is massive overkill. But I've got no issue that "provides no defense" simply erases the need for "affects physical world." The two are completely interconnected, in my book...the only reason for Affects Physical World is because the defensive aspect of Desolid is too close to perfect. Alternate Desolid, this never enters the picture. You would have to define a new limitation, as you don't want the PD/ED it provides, and IIRC it has a +KB aspect you also don't want. Fine...they pretty much cancel each other in terms of points, so both go POOF! for +0. I'll grant that Tunneling feels right, but the problem here is that the Hero implementation explicitly denies "just passing through without disturbing anything." If you're willing to toss that out the window, then Tunneling works nicely. And we've pretty solidly established that nothing fits without significant tailoring. Given that: teleport has the worst connection to the style of effect, IMO, so it's the weakest basis.

FREAK!!! second inning for the Phillies. Bloopers. Broken bats. Decently hit, medium-deep fly ball to right...dead into the sun. Soto had no chance to catch it. Hard-hit ground ball, comes up a bit on the first baseman, gets away enough to prevent a double play...letting the runner on 3rd scored. Even the third out was adventurous...another high fly ball to Soto. He's fighting to keep it in sight, but manages. By that point, tho, Snell has to throw 36 pitches in the inning, and the Phillies get 4 runs. EDIT: fun!!! Padres aren't known as a power club, and San Diego isn't a home run hitter's park...but the Pads get back to back homers to start the bottom of the 2nd. So, 4-2. For some reason, they only allowed 3 hours between the start of the Padre game, and the start of the Astro game. Of course, yesterday that would've been fine; that game only ran about 2 1/2 hours. This one? Likely going rather longer...

You can't see an arrival point that's safe.

Just for grins, another maze: I have the feeling I'd be screaming, as no simple rule would seem to work...or at least, would be harder to maintain. I seriously doubt I could get through it before losing my cool completely. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/09/longleat-hedge-maze-longest-in-world.html The hedges here are 8' tall. Article notes it takes 6 gardeners with gas-powered trimmers a month to trim this back...and that has to be done every 6 months.