unclevlad

Not sure there are any clear, strong use cases for this, but... What would people think about Selective Invis. Like Selective Desolid, Selective Invis allows the character to leave certain parts visible, at discretion. Now, unlike Selective Desolid, there isn't a compelling reason to do so, but it feels like it may have some useful deception aspects. I don't think it should be a *big* advantage, but it does feel like maybe a smaller one. +1/4? +1/2? Can't see it any larger than +1/2.

When no option is palatable, and "no preference" is not allowed, is it really a choice? Mind, lethal injection has been questioned; it's not a given that it's just drifting off to sleep. A side point: firing squads may remain infrequent enough to make the question meaningless, but...it would be interesting to me, to know how many of the staff decline to do more than one. The emotional reality/aftermath will be more than some bargained for.

To continue that, I'm not sure how many people will really notice if there are no presidential debates. My feeling is...not that many. And if that's close to true? It's implausible to think it'll make any difference in the fall mid-terms. The first real test for the Republicans should actually be upcoming fairly soon, with the primaries. How many Trump-endorsed candidates win nomination, how many don't? Analyzing this may well be tricky, tho.

I can't see that working. Current audiences expect spectacle. Yeah, OK, balance it with plot and characters...but there has to be spectacle.

If the Republicans can continue to gerrymander as successfully as it appears they may be in Florida, the mid-terms are likely a foregone conclusion.

I'd also suggest that streaming series are a better kickoff point, NOT theatrical releases. OK, End Game and Infinity War went 3 hours, but those were closers. 3 hours is a LONG movie...and even at that, there isn't that much time to do broad-scale general intros. In a series, devoting 3-4 hours may be OK, particularly if it's structured properly. 4 solid episodes of nothing but intro material is likely to be excessive, but there's stages here. To keep with that prison breakout: --each breakout...not all at the same time/in the same episode. Perhaps the latter ones start introducing the master villain and why he's engineering these breakouts. --team formation (can happen before or after the breakout) --grab the grunts or most obvious...Juggernaut is usually pretty blatant, for example --the more serious bad guys start declaiming the larger-scale plot --maybe a midlevel villain team gets grabbed...and the connection among all these events becomes clear. This can complete the introductory arc. Trying to interweave is tricky. The timeline for a movie is so different from that for a comic strip or, to a point, a streaming series, and is overall LESS predictable. Agents of SHIELD was, I believe, Marvel's only conjunction along those lines, and AoS was largely separate.

The Variety story also cites that the purchase has left the joint corporation highly leveraged...AKA, with lots of debt. That also means layoffs are ineviable, and emphasizes the need to have as much churn as possible, so costs can be recouped through multiple channels. MUCH of that revenue will simply be offsetting the acquisition costs. To be sure, tho: no one can say DC's had a consistent vision, and continuity has been weak to non-existent. I'm sympathetic towards the actual workers who'll get terminated...but it's an acquisition. It's a given. It's highly leveraged, so it will be extensive. The question is how they restructure, to create a product that works. What they've had for the last 10 years or so, hasn't worked. And yeah, I agree with LL: I'll believe it when I see it.

Unfortunately, it works pretty well for them. EDIT: another thought about trying to protect Trump from debate debacles. The Democrats already have a major theme they can hammer...in a 10 second spot, no less. Put up a picture of Vladimir Putin on one side, a scrolling montage of the atrocities on the other. Simple voiceover: "Do you want to put this man's staunch ally back in the White House?"

This actually brings up an interesting point. How long do folks build their END consumption per turn, versus purchased END, to last, assuming normal use? 3 turns has been cited a couple times....

Perhaps. There's a degree of circularity to that; the ridiculous contracts massively inflate the average contracts, which help inflate the top contracts. At best, it might be fair to say they're overpaying for the next 2 years, and maybe paying market value for the next 2. We'll see. Note that some of the massive contracts (Goff, perhaps Ryan, Cousins and Wentz) won't escalate moving forward, so that $40M may still be on the high side even 3 years from now. And further down the line, Mayfield's a case of a QB you'd think might've seen that level in '25 or so...but likely won't now. Then again, we are seeing the new salary cap kick in with some of these deals. It remains to be seen if the Wentz/Cousins/Goff contract missteps slow down the massive, seemingly semi-automatic overpayment to QBs. To be sure: you're probably better off betting on MORE salary inflation rather than less. The NFL hype engine screams the positive and generally buries the negative.

archer, you're assuming Biden is going to run for a second term. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion. I do agree that Biden's not going to fare well in debates...his mis-steps WRT Putin have been bad. Not that we disagree with them per se, but e.g. the war criminal comment was completely inappropriate for a head of state to make at that time. CNN is opining it's a petty revenge move driven by Trump. That's certainly in character and plausible...but CNN is going to take the most anti-Trump view of things they can. But I don't think your argument holds up. Pulling out of CPD debates doesn't mean pulling out of debates during primary season. It's plausible, sure, that there won't really *be* any meaningful primary opposition to His Orangeness and thus few/no debates. Trump is also going to spew extensive nonsense during the primaries; isolating him from debates doesn't protect him from himself.

Characterizing that as "good"...that's an overstatement. Only 4 QBs will make more next year. Mahomes...no brainer. Allen...understandable. Rodgers...if we only focus on the football numbers, ok, I get it. The 4th is Watson. WILDLY!!!!!!! overpaid on multiple levels, but *believed to be* top 5 QB talent. At a similar level, you've got Dak...Jerry's always overpaid for His Guys, and Dak's one of those. Stafford is next, looking at average annual value, tied with Dak. His contract is somewhat complex. He's similar to Carr. After that, it's Wilson...if he's not top 5 now, he was not very long ago. Then you've got Goff, Cousins, Wentz, and Ryan in the low-mid 30's. At best, it seems Carr fits in here, IMO. Plus, it's a HUGE raise. He was making $25M; it seems unnecessary to go as high as the Raiders did. On the flip side, overpaying for the QB you have is routine. The fear aspect that he'll leave, and you'll instantly drop to irrelevant, is enormous, I think.

I'd say it's closer to "refuses to give us everything we ask for, no matter what" in this case. Yours is right in some other contexts, tho, to be sure. EDIT: strike "ask for." Demand.

Well. Collectors are insane. That's a given. The person who bought the ball that was Tom Brady's last TD pass is getting his money back...because at this point, that ball won't be the last one of his career. The buyer had paid $518,000 at auction.

Perhaps the most overt statement to date that the Party bigwigs are fundamentally opposed to democracy.

Well it wasn't a Tesla, so hadda be a Transformer.

Yeah, I saw that comment in a separate story. The Ukrainian claim could be self-serving, so there's always some reason for doubt. BUT, if Russia's willing to put out a story that paints them SOOOO BADLY...ya kinda gotta feel the Ukrainian story is *confirmed*. Huh. We're in a time warp. Welcome to 1984.

Russian defense ministry is admitting it sank while being towed now. At this point, no matter what the outcome of this war is or how it ends, heads will be rolling in Russia. The degree to which that's figurative versus literal, and WHOSE heads...that's up in the air. Putin has to be losing face with the military, if not the rank and file...the former, and the oligarchs, know the truth.

Oh, so you're ok with trying to poison the dog, now??? And look, it's never too early to try to impart SOME sense of good taste. No, I'm not wasting my 60% African small-farm, small-batch chocolate bars, but Peeps are 2-3 steps below chocolate Santas and bunnies, so there's room for a middle ground. (I remember getting a couple 1 or 1.5 ounce mini bars like that. Oh. My. Gosh. TO DIE FOR. Flavor lingered for a good 5 minutes, I swear. SOOOO good. Those days are long gone, alas; that store was only open for a couple of years. Part of the problem is, it's simply TOO HOT down here to safely ship good chocolate. The forecast highs for the next week: 86, 86, 87, 90, 88, 90, 90, 89. In APRIL There was a short period where a few surprising stores popped up...but all of em closed maybe 15 years ago, give or take. Now we're Wal Mart and chain restaurants almost exclusively.)

Duct tape, of course.

From the story: Now, let's be fair; the candy iconography is pagan, not Christian. It's spring, it's fertility and growth and new life. But the writer's otherwise spot on. Calling Easter's offerings "candy" is a GROSS mischaracterization. It's gunky, gooey, and uniformly AWFUL junk. It's worse than most Valentine's candy...which can be just fine, thank you, but the average supermarket boxed assortment is just plain BAD. ALL the major candy holidays have that...chocolate Santas at Christmas are the same as the chocolate bunnies at Easter, waxy, godawful aftertaste...BLEAH!!! But the others all have redeeming aspects. Plenty of decent, if everyday, stuff for Halloween; high end chocs come out at Christmas and Valentine's. Easter has nothing above abysmal. I'm talking myself to commit an act of defiance...a bag of Sprouts' dark chocolate coated almonds...sweetened with stevia. (Almost no sugar issue at all. Calories, OTOH....) Fighting back against bad Easter pseudo-candy!! Who's with me????

And every time I think no one can plumb greater depths of front office stupidity, I'm proven wrong. Which just goes to show I'm insane. Doing (or saying) the same thing over and over and expecting a different result..... Collectively, we are all total suckers.

I love laughing at the occasional, indignant "purist" who decries non-pitchers pitching in cases like this.

People will usually support installing cameras to help secure public places like that. The problem arises when it comes time to pay for maintenance. The radio problem doesn't surprise me. The Army actually found similar kinds of issues; the tech may be fine, but the human element is frequently an issue. Sometimes it's simply remembering to make a shift in frequency, as was mentioned; information overload can be another, or simply being on the wrong channel, and adding to the confusion rather than reducing it.

You don't want to wait for a huge spike, but there are clear costs for restrictions. Right now I think we're split between the never-vaxer, no restrictions types, and these days, a hyper-sensitive "do anything and everything to stop it!" position. The cost of restrictions is hard to measure, but they're certainly out there. I don't have much of a problem with just mask mandates, but even those hurt bars and restaurants, if nothing else. There's probably no real choice, tho. The country is simply too polarized for any solution; short term, this is probably best, even tho long term I think it'll be worse.