unclevlad

Fernando Tatis suspended 80 games for PED violation. This doesn't kill the Padres' playoff hopes but it's very damaging to making any deep playoff run. 80 games also stretches about 30 games into next season. So soon after signing Soto, too. This is Very Very Bad News.

IIRC, SCI isn't over and above TS. MOST TS is actually SCI...the C means compartmented, and anything that's TS is almost certain to need that as well. You might have a TS for, say, nuclear information, but no need to know the control codes used by targeting radars in missile systems. They're totally unrelated. Secret clearances are...somewhat common. Not too hard to get. Had one for quite some time. OTOH, TS is RARE. The investigation for a TS is very intrusive. Handling even Secret documents was a serious matter. Leaving out TS in improper circumstances...yeah, that's really, really bad.

PFT on the Watson ruling: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/08/12/is-today-the-day-peter-harvey-rules-on-the-deshaun-watson-appeal/ They're postulating a basically disgusting, rather petty batch of legal maneuvers and counters, in the event of a 1 year ban. IMO it's worth reading all the way. The story shows why, IMO, this case is going to explode in the league's face HARD, down the line. Evening update: no word yet. Watson issues an apology...eek. Sorry boyo, it's WAY too late for any lame attempt. And it's REAL weak. "I'm sorry for the decisions that I made that put me into this position." Uhhh....huh. Browns are apparently ready to accept 8 games and a $5M fine...who cares what THEY'RE prepared to accept? I don't believe they have any standing in this process. Fans in Jacksonville apparently ROUNDLY booed him...despite, as one might expect, rather a sparse crowd. Looks like Watson was in only for a couple series. 1/5 for 7 yards. Yeah...3 series. Looks like -4 total yards...lots of penalties is part of it, but still. Josh Dobbs comes in for 4th series, 3/3 for 28 yards, a 41 yard run...net, a 70+ yard TD drive. The only thing better than Watson getting suspended, is him looking HORRIBLE. THEN suspended.

Oh man. Really unfortunate mess. MAJOR mess. Oregon vs. Washington. Tied in the bottom of the 7th, ergo extra innings. Winner to LLWS...a lifetime dream. Runner on 1st, batter pulls a ball down the 3rd base line. VERY close, fair or foul. Umpire raises both hands...which always means "foul ball"...but apparently is *saying* fair ball. You can see Washington's 3rd base coach jumping up and down. The ball goes down into the corner...and the runner from first has no opposition. Thing is...did the defense *stop*? The visual signal was Foul Ball. The ruling in the end? Fair ball, the run's allowed to score. No explanation, but it just happened. It is possible that the runner would've scored anyway, but that's not a given at all. And to lose like that was just....UGH. I'm never gonna overly criticize Little League umps...seems reasonably clear the 3rd base ump messed up, but heck, the umps are volunteers too. It is, as I led with, just quite unfortunate.

WOW. Don't care that it was AA, that's insane. Favorite baseball movie: Major League. What can I say, I'm partial to Grumpy, rather than Cute.

The NBA has announced that the #6 will be retired for all teams, in honor of Bill Russell.

Yes, in fact, it does.

Not a story the NFL wants to hear. Headline and lead from NYT:

Killing attacks will ALWAYS pose a problem because you can't split 3.5 points of damage into 3 even increments, and also thinking that 1d6-1 is an increment. It's not. It's a translation. Of course it doesn't scale. Plus, using that "buy 1d6-1 to get 3d6-3" can be recast. What's 1/2d6 + 1/2d6...? Sounds like 1d6 in any sensible scheme...but it's not because the system uses beneficial rounding which is a distortion, so it's not "1/2d6" it's d3, and 2d3 is better than 1d6. But even at that, 2d3 is worse than 1d6+1. They're NOT purchase increments. The purchase increment should be DCs, and what you're doing at the end is converting the fractional DCs. 1 DC == 1 pip. 2 DCs --> 1/2 d6 == 2 pips. 3 DCs --> 1d6 == 3.5 pips. OR 1 DC == 1 pip 2 DCs --> 1d6-1 == 2.5 pips. 3 DCs --> 1d6 == 3.5 pips. ONE of those steps will always have a larger increment, +1.5 instead of +1. That can't be helped as long as killing damage is in use. Oh, BTW: HD does let you buy 1d6-1 for 10 points. NOT 12.

That sounds right...but... https://epicstream.com/article/ezra-miller-removed-from-daliland-tiff-credits Miller is listed in IMDb as playing Young Dali, so he's probably in a decent number of scenes that are presumably important to the story development, and it's much too late to even consider reshoots, since it gets released in mid September. I expect this is the producers doing the most they feel they can...and Miller's involvement came before his toxicity escalated to polonium-like levels. That was what I saw, too. And the "it was horribly bad" could well be true, but it's also potentially pure CYA. I don't believe WB in the slightest, not given that they're gutting HBO Max regardless. Remember Babylon 5? And PTEN? And how higher ups wanted PTEN to die, as they were trying to form The WB at the time. So...they did. They killed Kung Fu, and basically forced Claudia Christian off the show. (She wanted to do a movie, that was gonna pay a LOT more. She would've had to be written out of scripts for a chunk of the season...but that would've been quite manageable. The studio said No, so she quit.) This has a similar feel, of the executive suite more interested in getting its way, collateral damage be damned. Another argument: the video, and other outlets, mentioned that both Batgirl and Supergirl have been viewed as being too woke. Whether that's a real factor or not...they're both dead in the water. Also, that kind of characterization frequently does translate into a good-sized segment *loathing* a movie, so the "it's too horrible to let live" charge has a basis.

Don't look now.... But... Based on the standings showing Baltimore in 3rd, TB in 4th today? If the season ended today, the Orioles are the last playoff team. 22-30 on 1 June. 58-52 now. That's over .600 ball, for almost 60 games.

But hey, self inflicted futility is the hallmark of half the teams in the league. And then there's the Jets. They have plenty of self-inflicted futility, and now you can add losing their big #1 pick OT....which may have been at least partly self-inflicted. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/34374198/new-york-jets-coach-robert-saleh-says-mekhi-becton-season-likely-knee-injury

I'm not sure I see much reason to keep ANY of the Miller footage in, if you're gonna have to re-shoot everything where he's Barry anyway. It just feels a lot more sensible to just dissociate from him *completely* as fast as possible. There's just wayyyyy too much that's incredibly toxic in these reports, and the problems just keep piling on. Right now there's another: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ezra-miller-vermont-child-services-department-1392572/ This is in addition to the felony burglary charges from yesterday. If he's connected to a cult where he's putting YOUNG kids at risk, this almost has to be the kiss of death; Warner will have no choice but to cut all ties ASAP. Much like Jared Fogel and Subway. But heck, at this point? It's already too serious in my book. The longer they appear to hang on to him, the more damage I think they'll do to the entire brand.

And in the DC Quick references table on V1, after the index, 2 DCs is given as 1/2d6 OR 1d6-1. Which, I believe, is mentioned in other places, AND it's how it's done in HD. Your argument then asserting 6 DCs is 3d6-3 is absurd. That's not how it's done, and you know it. The issue has never been anything but how to treat the residual 1 or 2 DCs, it's not the basis for scaling up from 2 to 2*N. This, BTW, is why the Standard Effect rule is so bad. Of course negation is purchased in DCs, but overall attack power is limited in DCs...THEN converted to dice based on DC-affecting advantages. When dealing with bonus damage separate from the attack power itself, all bonus damage is bought in DCs...then converted to dice. That is the correct process to follow with negation. If a GM said I'd be stuck with getting the averages for the amount negated, but he rolls full dice? Then damage negation becomes even LESS cost effective in a combined defense because the moderately high rolls become MORE likely. I don't care about the issue of taking a little BODY; taking ONLY negation is foolish. The proper treatment for negation in an overall defense strategy is to counter STUN. Which means that shift? Is EXTREMELY alarming.

Yeah, given everything going on, Warner's not putting a dime into a venture like DC Heroes. Rumors of DC's overall vulnerability have been circulating for a few years, which arguably suggests there's more smoke than fire, but the new CEO is a slash and burn cost reductionist. And games are just not significant revenue streams now. The RPG industry in general, is also...not in good shape. I'll grant I don't follow things closely, but...what new stuff is coming out? And that's *before* the last 2 years. The 18 months of social distancing had to be massively damaging. Granted, connecting online might help some, but that's got limitations, and I don't think it's all that close to the same thing. Article here: https://www.wired.com/story/tabletop-rpg-workers-say-their-jobs-are-no-fantasy/ We hear much the same about comic artists...making ends meet is HARD as a freelancer, and that's the dominant model. It's great for the employer; it's a TON cheaper. (For a full-time, full-benefits, on-site employee...for every dollar the employer pays in salary to the employee, they pay another dollar *or more* elsewhere...group health care share, leave, Social Security employer share, facilities costs, etc. etc. A freelancer generally avoids ALL of those; they're self-employed and must find their own insurance...which BTW is MASSIVELY more expensive if they can't get covered by a group plan.)

Hey, we all know the Bengals' history. Lose the SB, go back into their shell for multiple years. I mean, sure, I believe in SB hangovers, but they're not supposed to last multiple years... So no need to diss the Bengals; history says they'll do that to themselves. Besides, the list of teams *totally* worthy of rejection and disdain is...rather extensive. The Bengals can be slotted in Mostly Harmless.

ESPN is reporting that the NFL is appealing, at least in part, because they consider each case to be a separate violation of the conduct policy...so, 4 violations, not one. While I get it, isn't that something to bring up before the arbiter? If they did, and she still said "6 weeks"...they're overturning. If they didn't, or didn't do it clearly or forcefully...that's their mistake. Appeals don't give you a second chance to fix your tactical argument.

RAW says 2 DCs killing can be treated as 1/2 d6 OR 1d6-1. The first is nonsensical and mathematically Just Plain Wrong, so I'll always argue for the second. The other argument is whether we should round up or down. I prefer rounding down here. And while I agree with you on the standard effect, I will NOT!!!!!!!! give the defense an advantage. Treat them the same, IMO. Asymmetry here is bad, IMO. For a 2 DC per d6? No, never do the conversion where you're doing it. ALWAYS convert the negation levels, which is in DCs, to dice...which is the units of the attack. It's the same table as we've been talking about, so it's no trouble, and it's giving them the identical breakpoints and funky incremental weirdness. 1/2 d6 averages 2 STUN on attack, so that's how much it is for negation. It's 2/3 of a BODY, ok, call that 1 BODY as well. I'm really not worried about that. Just for grins, a bit of analysis. This is looking at the STUN on the higher end. Note that the low-end STUN is similar...but odds are that other defenses will make the difference moot. The notional situation is a 12d6 attack with 4 dice of negation; I'm not implying this is the whole of the defense. (Which is why the low-end stun is less relevant to me.) The 50% point is the same...the mean of each distribution is 28. Note that from 32-35 net STUN, 12d6-14 is about 5% more likely. Also, this was Monte Carlo, but should be fairly close. AnyDice says 36+ STUN on 12d6-14 happens 10+% of the time; 38+, it drops to 5+%. On 8d6, tho, 36 STUN is WELL out towards the tail...it's only 2% of the time. What this suggests is, if you take this approach to damage negation, you'll probably want to be careful with your CON, as those somewhat-above-average rolls that might lead to getting stunned, are in the range of uncommon, but still semi-regular. This would worry me. This is basically the same chart, with an additional 16 DEF applied. Same thing: just knocking the average off is actually significantly increasing the frequency of significant STUN. What's going on? The standard deviation of 12d6-14 is the standard deviation of 12d6...which is just under 6. The standard deviation of 8d6 is a bit shy of 5. So while the means are the same...the distributions are notably different, and both highs and lows are more likely with the 12d6. The lows are less important, tho.

So, in other words, just subtract the average. This is OK for normal damage; it's wonky for killing damage, tho, because the BODY is rather irregular, at least using your numbers. Sure, it's great for specifically 6 levels of negation, but what about 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5? There has to be a 2 point jump in there somewhere. (I'd argue for 5 dice, because a 5 DC KA is 2d6-1, and thus assuming rounding down, where the 2 point jump in damage would occur.) Also, structurally, you're giving damage negation the "standard effect" approach...but giving it a bit more. I'll grant that I'd be fine with updating standard effect to operate similarly; as it is, standard effect reduced the power's effectiveness by 1/7th. That's turning a 7d6 into a 6d6, at least when you're just counting pips. I've got no issue that the odd die gets rounded down, as I'd rather take a bit away, but compelling that to be the case with ALL the dice is a poor choice. Simpler, but poor.

A federal judge denied an emergency request for a TRO for 3 LIV golfers to compete in the FedEx Cup's first event, which starts Thursday. Yeah, it's real hard to claim irreparable harm when LIV is giving guaranteed checks. If that's the best grounds the players had, then I wanna know the lawyers...so I can avoid them for ANYTHING. That argument is absolutely ludicrous. Note that the anti-trust grounds are different, so this doesn't speak strongly there. Still, denying a TRO is largely saying "stop wasting the court's time."

I'd be interested to see the trends over time, altho it's possible they're not directly comparable. The question, for example Bold mine. This has, I think, grown greatly due to Trumpism.

......while also keeping those lovely profits intact. Yeah, I'm a little cynical whenever I hear an owner moaning about money.......especially after a Super Bowl appearance.

So the Bengals got a new naming deal for the stadium. Paycor Stadium. Now there's one that rolls off the tongue...... Elsewhere, the Washington Commanders fired their DL coach due to "philosophical differences." Just as training camp is really picking up? Not exactly an encouraging sign. And the league owners gave approval for the sale to the Broncos. Ugh. But it was largely foregone, I suppose.

The essay in Vogue is worth reading.

Well since Mr. P kicked off the NFL thread, I'll get the college thread. Preseason polls are about as full of meaningful comments as afternoon talk radio, but still...the preseason picks are Next Verse, Same as the Rest. Bama, Ohio State, Georgia, Clemson. Hey, maybe one of em won't live up to expectations. Asking for 2 of em to fall flat...that's a bridge too far. Scary...the very lightweight first week...even called "Week 0" in the schedule on si.com...has 10 games, largely non-entities...and it's Aug. 27th. GAH!!!! Not ready for football. Nevada's actually coming down to play the Aggies that weekend. No game time listed yet...I'm wondering if the Aggies are hoping to get it picked up. Hopefully it'll be an evening kickoff; if it's an afternoon kickoff, the stadium could be dangerously hot. The seating area is ALL concrete. (Yeah, it's as attractive a place to watch a game as that sounds like.) Mid 90s is still quite common. The big bonanza is, of course, Labor Day weekend. Games start Thursday (probably all night games...the Aggies took a paycheck game at Minnesota, 5 days after the season opener...? No one else has scheduled such a quick turnaround) with more games Friday, and of course the massive slate Saturday. The NFL has no games, so there's Made For TV matchups Sunday and Monday, I presume ESPN night games. Heh...for grins, SI had a link to another story. Best team in each state. Ouchhhhh Not terrible, DEEPLY terrible. Well, they had 1 decent, freak season where they went 6-6 and won a bowl game...2017. Almost the only one they made in my lifetime...and I'm retired. (1960 was the prior one.) Take out that season, and since 2005 they're a combined 38-145. Yeah. Deeply terrible.