unclevlad

Headline from NYT: Link, albeit paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/world/europe/putin-russia-military-planning.html TL;DR: Putin has been an idiot.

With spring training games going on, the strike threat gone, it's time to start a thread for the new season. And I get to start it with a bang. Instead of putting into the CBA, MLB and MLBPA made some rules changes...note that this facility was included in the CBA. 1. The Ohtani rule. If the starting pitcher is also listed as the DH, then removing him as a pitcher does NOT remove him as the DH. He can stay in that role. This only applies to the starters, but let's be honest, it applies only to Ohtani. 2. Extra runner starting on 2B in extra innings is BACK for 2022. Yay! I know it's polarizing, but I feel it *greatly* improves the game. 3. Expanded rosters through May 2nd. 28, due to shortened spring training. After that it's 26, and only 13 pitchers. I think the latter's a new angle; I'm a bit surprised but I'm also happy to see it.

MASSIVE!!!!! Surprise. Ash Barty has announced her retirement from women's tennis. She's 25...and as far as I know, there's no injury issue. 3 Grand Slams. Current #1 in the world. Just won the Aussie Open. But: I can believe this completely. I remember Mats Wilander some years ago...busted his backside, made #1...but decided he didn't care to keep it. And that was before social media.

my bad. a) I really dislike that so much basic stuff is in what's mostly the GM's book. This is one of the reasons why the common belief is that the system's so hard to learn. b) OK, I agree. It's stupid. You're 10 meters away from a 6 meter gap. The BBEG is 3 meters past the edge. You've got 30 meters of running and 20 of leaping. Half phase to move the entire amount, then attack. Requiring more is IMO being pedantic. Yes, sure, there can be combinations that might need addressing. You're 5 meters from the intersection, facing east, with a building blocking your view north. You want to move to the intersection (12 meters running) then teleport your full teleport range to the north. (So he's teleporting to a spot he can see.) How long does this take? I'd probably just go with a full phase right now, then a half phase burned for the character's next phase. My favorite forms of movement are flight and teleport; flight's the coolest, teleport's awesome for going VERY long distances quickly. After that? Parkour master. Lots of running, lots of leap, and lots of acrobatics...but the running and leaping clearly need to blend. Yeah, I suppose you could buy Running, usable as leaping...but I'd rather keep the scales separate. The max you can cover with a leap might be MUCH less than the max running, and the noncombat multipliers might be quite different. I suspect the rule's there to just keep thing simpler.

Are you suggesting that in the event a vaccine is developed and approved, that it should be required? Because my answer there is no, not at this time. Publicize it widely, sure. Get it approved for insurance, yes. Require it? I don't think the problem's severe enough to go that far.

Which is why swimming gets 1 point for 2 meters. And yes, it is glossed over, which argues for allowing flight to be used underwater in at least some cases. Human Torch? No...SFX conflict. Hawkman? No...can't use the wings. Iron Man? Hmm. Maybe; probably in a special version of the armor. Green Lantern? Yes. It certainly wouldnt' be worth a limitation to say one's flight can't be used underwater...but conversely it's not frequent enough to justify an advantage. It's perfectly legal...unless you sold back all your base running to shave the points, and everything's in fixed slots in a multi, or in a VPP where you're not trying to support them both. But yes, I get your point. Another one would be running and leaping combinations. They either get fairly expensive, or you get that hard divide in place. A lot of this may just be implicit in a point-buy system, particularly one that attempts to do everything. Some of it may be simply costing, to a degree; nailing a proper, balanced cost is very hard given the diversity of uses.

Yeah, the brackets have largely been smashed. 4 double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16. 600 would be perfect; best is 540. But you've got a top 1% bracket with 430...that'd be 25 of 32 in round 1, and 9 out of the 14 finished in round 2. And that's STILL a top 1%.

I'm suggesting that you should not have to buy Usable as Swimming to move underwater using Flight...because I'm talking about a framework where Usable As does not exist.

Very, very bad day for the Big 10. First 4 games of the day all had a Big 10 teams...and they went 0-4. In 2 cases, as the higher seed, including #3 Wisconsin losing to #11 Iowa State. And now, no one on the ESPN Tournament Challenge has less than 4 misses, with 4 more games left to finish this round.

For the applesauce...squash soup. Done it with butternut; whipped some up with a couple acorn squashes, and going through it right now. Basically, with acorns...halve them lengthwise with a large chef's knife. Strip out the seeds and stringy gunk...this is arguably easiest on acorn squashes, of the various squashes I've used for this. (Pie pumpkin and butternut.) You can wash off the gunk and save the seeds for roasting, but I got all of about 2 ounces from 2 squashes...didn't bother. Place in an oven-safe dish or two, cut side up; dress with salt and olive oil. I also sprinkle on some ground chiles; pumpkin pie spice, five spice, or garam masala would also be plausible. Roast @ 350 for 45 minutes to an hour. Remove from oven; let cool. The flesh can be separated from the skin relatively easily at that point. I got a kilo out of both squashes. I cored 2 granny smith apples...leave the skins on...and added a half liter of unsweetened vanilla almond milk. (No fat, no sugar. Not at this point anyway.) Everything into the blender until everything is integrated; it wasn't going to puree to smooth, but that's OK. I split into servings...in my case, about 300 grams per...and tossed into fridge. To cook: take out a serving. I've got a personal, smoothie blender; it does do a great job at pureeing. Add a good bit more almond milk...probably about 1/3 of the pureed squash, but play with it. Add sweetener, salt and seasonings (see above), and puree. The target is to get it to pour. Then just heat it gently on the stove, or in the microwave. So the applesauce just replaces the Granny Smiths I used. With acorn squash, the final flavor's fairly mild. Butternut has a bit more flavor; pie pumpkins have the most, of the ones I've tried. Those are only available for a fairly short time, tho.

And....why can't the little guys win consistently? Local news just reported that NMSU's coach just got hired by Mississippi State. For, I suspect, a salary 3-5x what he was getting, so ya can't exactly blame him. Oh. Correction. 8x, if Miss St is gving him what his predecessor got. NMSU was paying him $250K...yes, the lowest in D1. Miss St was paying Ben Howland $2.1M.

I'll withhold judgment on this. Accusation is trivial.

Brings to mind, IIRC, Hemingway and the push to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Glorifying fighting, when the reality is something entirely different.

Applying the Usable as Flight to the Running means he can move in circumstances that weren't possible before. Buying the Flight with Usable as Running doesn't do that. TBH, I think "usable as a second form of movement" is one of the most poorly written, poorly considered advantages in the system. I'd be perfectly happy to ditch it. Allow Flight to be used as Swimming implicitly...if you like, at 1/2 or even 1/4 of your flight speed, if you want to encourage actually buying Swimming. It's *extremely* rare that I even consider upping Swimming. Or maybe define a more specific Advantage for Flight...usable underwater. Are there really any other combinations of Movement A, usable as Movement B, that make sense? Ron built and costed things in ways that don't align with Hero, that's a given. I'm just offering them up because it is a plausible set of definitions. If not Ron's, then what is air walking? Escher: Ron's Clinging isn't a flat cost. I actually would be *fine* with a general Movement power. It's somewhat tempting to build it into my personal HD...maybe later. I'm still in the middle of changing the code...deleting a ton of stuff I simply don't care about, to run in a 6E supers mode ONLY. Well...ok, that's done already. Now it's the first of potentially *several* passes to streamline the code; there's a massive amount of cut-and-paste duplication.

Ohhh man. That makes me very sad; he was old school, not some airhead former player or vacuous talking head. It must've been something nasty; all I can find is, hospitalized quite recently, then...this. Bummer.......

Hugh: I don't personally feel that Running, Usable as Flight should be legal. Otherwise, for relatively routine velocities...say you want 18m for a nice combat half-move, and x8 non-combat. Flight would cost 28. Running would cost a base of 16 (+6m, +10 points for the non-combat), and 7 more for the Usable As. 6E1 p. 158 covers the advantage, noting that it has to be applied to the more expensive power. They point out Swimming...but IMO because Running has a non-zero base value, it's the less expensive power compared to Flight, Teleport, and Swinging. Champions Now has a power called Surfaces, that has 3 variants: --Clinging: effectively, STR only to remain attached to a surface. Unlike Hero, you don't get your base STR...which is higher cost, but makes more sense. --Air-walking is 10 points. Ron's definition is moving across a horizontal surface at an arbitrary height; the arbitrary aspect is a problem. I'd rather it was limited to slightly above the surface. As Ron wrote it, it seems to allow moving from 1 rooftop to another. --Escher lets you redefine "up" and therefore "down" as you like, so you can move across vertical surfaces, or the underside of a ceiling. It's 25 points...so, rather pricey. Grav Shift Walking is also covered by Clinging in 6E, and by Flight, only on a surface. The rules say "generally has to keep moving"...but that's at GM discretion. There's ways to handle it. While some will disagree with me, IMO an enormous problem with Hero is there's *too many* ways to do a number of things. That said...? I could see eliminating Flight only in contact with a surface, and adding an advantage or two for Running. Say, air walking for +1/4...lets you move slightly above any reasonably flat surface, including those which wouldn't normally hold your weight (so, yes, you can move across water). For an additional +1/4, you gain orientation independence, AND drop any requirement to be moving...so you can stand on water or cling to a vertical surface.

Oh my. Epic spellcheck AND editor failure from that story: When you know you're gonna ditch Mayfield, I guess this makes sense.

Best bracket on ESPN has 3 misses...and there's only 6 of them.

But.....not good enough for long enough. Another one bites the dust. St. Peters is the 3rd #15 seed to make the sweet 16. Amazingly, they're 0-5 vs. the 10 seed...but now 3-2 against the 7 seed. And looky, looky, looky......... Memphis 41, Gonzaga 31 at the half.........

They're looking better right now. I like this new computer, even if I'm not a Windows 11 fan particularly. Streaming the Murray St. game onto a 32" curved, 144 Hz monitor...while I have the NMSU game on the TV. Life is good.

Great defense or bad offense? Just switched over to the NMSU-Arkansas game. 13 minutes to go in the first half...the score is 5-2. Commentators just said "the sloppiness continues" so I guess there's my answer.

It's part of his 3 impossible things before breakfast.

National bracket on ESPN doesn't even have Baylor making the Final Four. Then again...they did have Kentucky. Even in this round...Gonzaga, Arizona, and Kansas are picked to win at least 94% of the time. Baylor...only 84%. This is going to be the round, I think, where brackets get shattered. If UNC can hold on, this game would jump start that nicely. EDIT: What's the best way to blow a 25 point lead, well into the second half? A flagrant 2, followed by a dead-ball contact technical's a good start. Then Baylor does a good job of disruption...and Carolina's completely rattled. Tie game going into OT....

That story sounds apocryphal, but one never knows. I can believe in the transcendent stupidity of an individual...even one as relatively implausible as that. A nurse? Stretches cred, but...it could be, sadly. But this is happening frequently enough to rate a national story.

Our tirades against the Browns, and those in the media, will mean nothing. The only thing that will is if the Browns lose season ticket holders and local sponsors...in large numbers. That seems unlikely. Still...I now fervently hope the league suspends him, or puts him on the exempt list, long-term. The Browns deserve it. Watson...well, let's face it, he doesn't care any more. He can't be hurt even *by* a suspension.