unclevlad

The Tour starts outside France periodically, but usually much closer...Belgium, the Netherlands. Spain next year...which makes me think the Pyrenees are gonna happen at the START? Ewww. Harsh. This is the first time it's started in Denmark, not surprisingly; and that almost certainly means, it's the first time any stage has happened there. It's also why, as the Fuzzlord points out, there's the day off for travel. The Tour usually has only 2 off-days. The riders won't need the break; the Denmark stages are all flat. Well, they won't need a break unless the wind gets nasty...that changes everything. But after the transit day...hilly, hilly, hilly, mountain, medium mountain, mountain; rest day; medium mountain, mountain, MOUNTAIN (3 HC climbs with a summit finish on Alpe d'Huez to boot).

Short TT today, won by Lampaert, but Pogacar is only back a handful of seconds. Gonna have to try to catch tomorrow's stage; it's VERY unusual. Coastal. So, coast hugging for the most part. BUT, that bridge at the end...!!! 18 km, apparently. WIDE open to the elements, so who knows what the wind will do. Could be a pretty boring (overall) stage, or could be a potential trap stage. Might also be an awesome stage for overhead shots...the very colorful peloton against the ocean backdrop. Gonna have to try to remember to stream it tomorrow, at least the last hour.

I'm surprised by this...right now I'm trying to decide if I should've been or not.... YMMV but this is pretty much the last word on the toxicity of Kyrie...maybe Simmons too, but definitely Kyrie.

Yeah, just saw this too. Ridiculous to obscene, IMO. Insulting as heck. USC and UCLA are largely suggesting the rest of the conference is minor league, is my read...regional, not national. Not Our Kind Of Programs. I'm also thinking that the Big 10 is looking at some teams leaving, perhaps. Rutgers and Nebraska would be a guess, altho where Nebraska would go is up in the air. Maybe Maryland instead? None of those 3 have ever felt like good fits to me. If they do go to 16, much of this will be to position themselves directly opposite the SEC as the real 'premier' conferences, and put as much pressure as possible on the Big XII and ACC, while sharply damaging the Pac by stripping teams from the biggest market. This also may be the deathknell for the Pac 12 network, which, AFAIK, has never been handled well. It's gonna be another summer of cannibalization, looks like. It would be.....interesting...if USC or UCLA gets into the Rose Bowl...as the Big 10 rep...wonder how the crowd would react. Granted, switching conferences isn't like changing cities, but they've been in the Pac for a LONG time, and that history is meaningful to many. Huh. Esoteric thought. Once everything is in place, the SEC and Big 10 will have, I think, many/most of the classic football powers between them. Wonder about collusion between them to break away, together, into a separate football division.... Comment from ESPN types... EDIT: last side thought. Walton's reaction to this could be most entertaining..............

Well, that certainly counts as a breakfast for those who don't care any more.....

Yes, but CTE issues have been percolating around soccer for a few years now. Headers can involve a sharp neck acceleration...with the ball coming in on an opposing vector. tkd: doubles doesn't require the same kind of court coverage. It's a far less intense/explosive/strenuous game...which is why those older players remain very good at it. Top singles players don't generally play that much doubles. Younger ones, yes...Cori Gauff still does, I believe, even when she's pushing to be in the top 10 now. It was principally, I think, a test for her. Of course, another major factor is that the doubles pay scale is minuscule, compared to singles. Wimbledon awards about $2.1M to the singles winners...and about $570K to the winning doubles *teams*. To split. So it's about 1/7th the amount. Mixed doubles is much lower still. And winning the doubles is not easy. Those fields are pretty darn loaded.

Freakish, to be sure, but...you'd think he knew the bat was right by his feet, wouldn't you? Rather than doing the split step to throw, a crow hop, then get the right foot planted, THEN push off and throw...? No...he just goes about his business like nothing is going on... Maybe I'm being too critical, but bats fly through the infield often enough that you'd expect someone with as much experience at SS as he has, to be more aware. That said: his fielding percentage is well below average among shortstops. Looking at last year's fielding stats...among shortstops with 500+ innings at the position, to specify a reasonable sample size...he was 29th out of 33 such players. His value...when he had any...was from his offense. Right now he's doing a really good job of playing himself out of the majors altogether...or would, except the Tigers gave him a really overblown contract.

The running mitts just show that no one teaches proper base running. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12435649/#:~:text=Because of the risk for,study to prove this claim. But you can't break the bad habit when you don't teach people to run the bases in the first place. An absolutely ridiculous, HORRIBLE rules situation is arising right now, Pirates vs. Nats. Runners on 2nd and 3rd, one out. Very soft liner to 1st, caught at shoetop level. The runners had both taken off...but the ball was caught. First baseman, after a bit, throws to 3rd. The runner on 2nd is standing on 3rd. He's tagged. The 3rd baseman then touches 3rd. The ruling is that the run counts...WHAT??? Had there been none out, should it not have been a triple play??? Should not both runners need to return to their bags to tag up??? I don't know the rules well enough, but saying that tagging the runner from 2nd, who's REQUIRED to return to 2nd...and so is the runner on 3rd. That part makes no sense. At all. Analyst explains certain aspects of it...apparently there are some *ridiculous* nuances to the situation. The rule's a major part of the problem. Multiple rules, actually. Worse, the umpires are denying any appeal because the Nats started walking off the field. Just STARTED...because they thought the appeal was over, and the umpires failed to make their ruling clear. The game was delayed a good 10 minutes because no one knew what the HECK was going on, or what the rules were. NO explanation was ever offered. Next half inning showed another side. Nats down 4-3. Walk, error, single, and double get us to 2nd and 3rd, 1 out, 2 runs in. Nats call a safety squeeze. As the analyst notes...forcing the defense to do unusual things leads to unusual results. The bunt was poor...catcher jumped on it in fair territory, just a couple steps from the plate. Runner on 3rd was paying attention...knew he had NO chance, so he went back. Gold star. But the runner's busting it down the line...and the first baseman had left his position. He was badly out of position and off the line too much. Kinda going...ok, what now.... Looks like he figured the play was at the plate. Catcher throws him the ball...but the runner's past him, and the swipe tag attempt misses the runner by a lot. Safe at first. Get players out of routine situations, and far too often, they just don't know what to do. ARGH!!!!!! THEN after another soft liner to the infield. 2 out, bases loaded. Batter hits a clean single to left. THE RUNNER ON 3rd TAGS!! The runner on 2nd is charging behind...and DARN near runs past him. He then runs through a stop sign from the 3rd base coach...which is understandable. He's assuming that he needs to charge home and that he'll have the room to do it. So many players just don't know how to really play the game.... Then again, the Pirates are 16 under, and the Nats 19 under, .500...

Baseball has a huge issue with batters getting hit...or buzzed high. I've never heard anyone do anything but blast those high, tight fastballs. For GOOD reason. BUT... --hitters dive plateward...a lot. That narrows the gap between the inside edge of the plate, and the nervous zone. It also means the batter's almost incapable of diving back out of the way. --pitchers throw max-effort fastballs ALL the time. Max effort is almost automatically harder to control. Story here is from 2019, but it's still interesting: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-hit-by-pitch-continues-to-reach-new-heights/ One argument the author rejects is that velocity alone may account for it...but I'm not phrasing it as velo per se, but max effort. But...perhaps that's not the reason. The author further reasons that relievers, and the greater number of reliever innings, is a factor. That makes some sense too; heck, they passed a rule limiting teams to 13 pitchers this year. 13 per team means that, at any time...last year, over 900 pitchers were used across the majors. 669 pitched 10+ innings; 564 pitched 20+. That's a WHOLE lot of marginal, at best, pitching. If we could say with high confidence that a pitcher intentionally tried to bean a hitter...anything shoulder high or above counting as such...personally, I'd applaud a 20 game suspension for the first offense...that's also costing the player 1/8th of his salary, remember...but proving intent? Good luck. The player's assoc is also strongly against major suspensions, when there's ANY doubt, so they'd fight hard. You could try tossing out something like 5 game suspensions for any buzzing...but that'll get fought just as hard, and doesn't address the root of the problem I suspect: that pitchers are taught and incentivized to throw in such a way that it *will* happen distressingly frequently. Another option is to penalize fighters. The NBA has a rule: leave the bench to even get around a fight? Get suspended a game. MLB's consequences for fighting are a joke. Make them bigger. Maybe short suspensions but fines based on game checks....as if suspended. Rendon only got 5 games...should've been 20, for coming off the bench and throwing punches. (OK, slaps, they were open-hand.) MAKE it bloody damn PUNITIVE. I'm not in favor of, say, automatically ejecting a pitcher who hits a hitter. Classic case against this, the curve ball that slips out a bit. Other side issues...the batters already crowd the plate as much as they can get away with...and we sometimes see clear evidence their feet are going outside the box. Elbows...with big-time, often projecting, elbow guards that darn near appear to be *in* the strike zone when the hitter's crouched. So...this may just be another consequence of how baseball is taught, to a degree.

He got a SB ring for sitting on his backside all year...well, most of it. With the *Pats*. The year Brady started the year under suspension for Deflategate. He came in for a couple games after Jimmy G got hurt in week 2. Some things cling longer than others......when I want them to.

Oh, come now, we need something more inventive to call "the best"....and do we wanna let him off that easy? I'm not sure it's possible to maximize the degree to which both Watson and the Browns get hosed, at the same time. If really ugly details come out? The Browns next year are NOT on the hook for the full $46M, it's all base salary. They'd be on the hook for the bonuses, which is $9M a year. Still a fair bit to just sink. You didn't mention when, either. The recent angle...what were the Texans doing? They slip off the hook, most likely, if Watson dies, or is unable to participate. Hey, who knows...if he's suspended for the year, and the appeal is rejected or denied quickly, there is no reason to delay the litigation until the off-season, so let's hear as much as we can, and maybe Watson gets a lifetime ban, and gets stuck for millions more for the rest of the cases...AND the Texans get double teamed, paying for the civil cases, then getting *hammered* by the league.

No....she hasn't been playing, PERIOD. Not WTA level, anyway...and the WTA records will show ITF events like Challengers and Futures (not sure they use the same terms, I know those are the mens' names). She played doubles at Eastbourne, but that was literally the first matches since Wimbledon last year. Eastbourne isn't a minor event, it's a WTA 500. But it was doubles only, just to get *some* matches on grass in.

Certainly possible but she's got a LOT of work to do to be competitive. She's 40, and her daughter's 5 in the fall. She'd have to be pretty seriously dedicated...get back into shape, get matches in, sharpen up her strokes. Does she want to? She was non-committal at a post-match presser, but that was understandable to me.

Baker Mayfield, on camera: "I think it's pretty obvious the mutual decision on both sides is to move on." No surprise, just confirmation. And once that's coming out in public, it seems basically impossible to backtrack. Nothing notable on the Watson hearing. It's expected to continue, with a decision by the end of the week. Hoping for the best..............

As opposed to, say...Philly fans? Suspensions from the Angels-Mariners brawl. Winker got 7 for really kicking it off...but...pitching coach got 5 and manager Nevin got 10 (!). Why? The pitcher they were using was a reliever...nothing so new there...but it was his first career start. Then he drills a fastball square into the backside? VERY clearly deliberate, and therefore, the clear assumption was...this was planned by the pitching coach and manager. So this is junior Bountygate...and Nevin gets 10 games. On some levels, that's minor, given a 162 game schedule, but that's big for baseball, outside violating the drug policies or personal conduct policy.

But that's missing the point. The kid who hit the girl was a 20 year old student. He wasn't a nobody, probably; getting to go to school in the US suggests decent money. But there's nothing I can readily find, that says he's anything significant. Yet the Saudi *government* made it an act of the state to allow him to flee the country to avoid prosecution. This is multiple levels above The Golden Rule, IMO. https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/02/saudi-students-escaping-us-justice-what-we-know-and-dont-know.html So this is pattern and practice. The Saudi government is, by ANY standard of justice, flouting the law routinely. To be sure, trying to call them to the carpet does run afoul of the Golden Rule at the national level; oil is the lifeblood of the economy still. But with that, and all the other issues...blacklisting anything and everything associated with the Saudis looks...pretty darn reasonable.

Rafa starts strong, taking the first 2 sets 4 and 3, but 23 yo Argentinian Francisco Cerundolo, a player clearly on the rise (started the year at 127, now 41) outhit him in the 3rd and even the first half of the 4th...won the 3rd, break up at, IIRC, 4-3...but then Nadal picked it up, cracked the whip, and ran out the 4th to win the match. Good match. Cerundolo got unlucky with the draw, too...only 1 in 3 odds that any non-seed will play the seed in the 1st round, and 50% chance it'll be a lower seed, 17-32. It'll probably cost him a couple spots as some players make runs. After that, Serena back on center court. RUSTY!!!! as all heck, but that's a given. Her first singles match since her injury last year...at Wimbledon. Lost the first set; came back to blow away Harmony Tan from France, another unseeded player, 6-1 in the second. Third was up and down. Serena's TIRED, but she's completely used to the moment. Tan's not. That said...Serena gets the break up at 5-4, serving for the match.......and drops her serve. Serena....dropping serve? Almost never happens. Tan gets to 6-5 up; Serena struggles greatly, but holds in the end. Tan gets up 9-7...with Tan serving. Serena's return.........hits the tape. It's over. On some levels a MASSIVE upset; on others, just due to the layoff, not that big a surprise. Serena was totally gassed. Not much pace on the serve throughout the match...and especially in the 3rd. The question now may be...is this the end for Serena? I don't expect a decision today...but before the end of the week? It's certainly plausible.

Thought about it, but HD warns against. It'd be only with GM permission, and a GM might not want to open that door at all. Plus, this might be getting too cheap. VPP: pool size 18; control cost 40. Common mods: extra time (5 minutes, only to activate, char can take no other actions); VPP only mod (bases/vehicles, -1) nets out at 24, according to HD. This'd count as DEFCON 2. Especially as Perks aren't normally allowed in a VPP.

That's my take as well. The core is for supers, but there's a lot from Fantasy Hero. Damage Over Time is for drugs/poisons, which suggests pulp/ninja/noir. Languages is another area. Saying strictly in 6E, the only major issue I have would be, do we really need 5 levels, and 5 points to avoid all proficiency checks? When we get into HD, the *extreme* proliferation is crazy. There are ~70 languages in the 6E1 similarity map; there are over 600, IIRC, in HD. 2 dozen aboriginal. Close to 40 in the Algonquin-Wakashan family. 40ish in the Hamito-Semitic...4 different modern Arabic. The Indo-European is massive...sure, tons are common, but there's several dozen fringe languages. It covers seemingly every local, identified variant. It's symptomatic of the issue: the level of detail is far too fine for a game. I'm perhaps less critical about the KS and PS groups than some. They're probably a bit too expensive, I'll grant...I'd consider making them 2 points each, flat cost, for the characteristic roll. (We *don't* need 11-, 10-, and 8-.) Then make the skill enhancers give +1 to ALL of em, and make further levels cheaper. Recognize that character points are a precious, precious commodity...the cost of these skills in particular can be onerous, when much of what they offer is character depth, not power.

Ooohhh...now there's an idea for a Christmas-edition chocolate package for the wealthy nerd. One ounce squares for each. The rare earths in single-origin chocs from around the world. Some with added goodies...sea salt and caramel, almond, coffee, orange, cinnamon-vanilla quality milk choc...yummmmmmm. 7 pounds of Good Stuff. Might run close to $200 when all's said and done, but oh my............ My contribution this AM...nothing fancy. Got some nice, lean looking, hickory smoked bacon, no nitrates/nitrites. Mmm. Planned on using it for the 4th of July weekend chile...but it actually hit its sell-by date Sunday. OK, no big. Dice down. Toss into oven til just starting to crisp. Add 1 good-sized sweet onion, continue baking til the onions have shed their water and started to brown. Let cool. Frittata filling from heaven. I'll get more bacon Thursday.

For $60M a year, I can put up with a lot of BS. Condoleezza Rice, perhaps? She might not want it, and likely is older than they'd want at 67. But, some of the problem with Goodell could be ascribed to tenure; he's been in place for 16 years. So...4 years, 4 year extension, the retire? Even if it is a crap job, I don't think there will be any shortage of applicants.

a quark

But he's never stopped being anything but a mercenary. As a basketball player, he thinks he's bigger than the game. He did win the title with the Lakers...but in a bizarre, SHORT season, with an extended R&R in there. Plus, I'm focusing on now. He's 37. He's missed a fair number of games. Lakers were shaky in 20-21, and horrible in 21-22. And I blame James...partly for the moves he wanted made, and partly because of the moves he indirectly forced, this season.

And Wall's also got an extensive injury history. Feels almost a foregone conclusion that one of the three won't play more than half the team's games. Wall's also a bit of a concern, in that while he's got good numbers for his career, it's come with mediocre teams. His 4 most durable hears (13-14 through 16-17, the Wizards made the playoffs in 3 of em....and won first round matchups as the 4 or 5 seed. But that's also in the Eastern Conference, which was...shaky, to say the least...in that period. Then came a nasty injury history, and the whole Wall/Beal issue boiled over. Then with the Rockets, things didn't exactly go swimmingly. The Rockets are willing to eat that massive salary because they don't see him being happy in a rebuild. I can get that...but I can also see another flake, when you combine that with the issues in DC. For the Clips, they may get a window. If Wall only costs *them* that midlevel exception, he's dirt cheap. Their core issue is the same as the Lakers, to a degree: too much money tied to 2 players in the same part of the court. The Lakers toss Westbrook into the mix, which gives them no room to do anything. Wall at full expense would create a similar situation...but not at the midlevel exception range. But the Clips may still have serious issues with overall roster depth. And while I do love Kawhi, I'm not a huge Paul George fan. I don't trust him in the clutch, in the playoffs.

I was intending "delusional" to be rather more denigrating that simply "uncoachable"...so, OK, he may well be both. The NBA's biggest issue, IMO, is the sheer number of their most-hyped players that are.....flakes? jerks? self-centered pinheads? Take your pick. Kyrie, Simmons, LBJ belongs there now, Harden...the worst offenders. All of em team wreckers, IMO. Very poor for the league's rep.