unclevlad

Well, just think...Warriors beat Lakers (hope, hope)...Lakers beat the schlubs who survive the 9-10 game...then you can get your revenge immediately, cuz it'll be Jazz-Lakers. One thing the play-in did was it made quite a few games interesting...you wanted to stay out of the 7 spot if possible (nyah, nyah, Lakers!), 8 and 9 seeds coming into the day were playing. The East was *mostly* locked up; Philly, Brooklyn, Bucks were all set earlier. But 4-5 could've flipped, and 8-9-10 was up for grabs. West had a lot of seeding...but by the same token, honestly, I don't think it matters that much, OTHER than the Lakers not making it to 6th. The play-in is always risky. But above that...there's just not a lot separating Phoenix and Utah, Denver and the Clippers, or Dallas and Portland, taken as pairs. So, Den-Dal and Clips-Port, or Den-Port and Clips-Dal...I don't think there's a lot to pick from either way. Same with 1-2 vs. 3-4.

Zoology New category: silly or cutesy pet names

Macroeconomics

But the far more interesting and important news is, new case numbers have dropped notably for several days in a row now. It's too early to say anything too strong, but it's quite hopeful.

Besides, the Romulan birds of prey were IMO the coolest ships Trek ever showed. For K...the Romulan warbird Khazara.

Whatever works. We can't appeal to an anti-vaxer's intelligence, clearly, so why not try this? And if it even lets a stage of re-opening advance by a week, it's CHEAP.

That isn't the threat. The threat is the culture of lying and manipulation presented as facts, which led to this.

Not mentioned was that the notable negative impact of the current approach is bird kill. This vertical design would seem to reduce that; animals generally should see the danger zone better. I suspect, too, that this design is considerably cheaper to construct; the horizontal fan blades are BIG suckers. Size translates to more stress, ergo tougher materials. The vertical layout looks to be smaller. Also, the horizontal fan has to be arm-mounted, on a base somewhat taller than the fan blade length. The vertical array would seem to mount on just a central support.

Well, it's more expensive, but only an extra +1/4. I think the rationale is, well, a personal surface is treated as "2 meters" even tho it doesn't matter what the size of the person actually is. So "AoE surface" must start from a 2m radius in all cases. The mistake, IMO, was saying they were the same thing. "Personal surface" should be an option in and of itself; then Surface becomes the 2D equivalent of Radius and can be priced the same.

One can never be too sure of things in these disputes. Is the club trying to squeeze the city above and beyond anything reasonable, or is the city being tightwads? There's a middle ground, sure, but obviously when things have been stalemated for so long, that's not the case here. My gut feeling is, the city doesn't have, or doesn't want to commit to spend, the money. The place is in poor shape. The location is also fairly miserable; it's COLD there. MLB Network has shown more games from Oakland in the last few years, and even day games in September has most fans (and broadcasters) bundled up. One factor: that part of the Bay has COLD water, and that has a big effect on the climate in the area. Tampa Bay has largely the same situation. Here, my take's always been that it's simply not a baseball city. The team had the worst attendance in the AL from 2015-2019...every year. From 2001-2019, they had the lowest attendance in the AL *14 times*. And everyone knows that stadium's a joke, with the rings. So, yeah, MLB is pretty much telling both cities to cooperate or they will probably *help* those teams to relocate. It's raising the heat on the cities. We'll see how it plays out.

I haven't seen any particular shortage of chicken thighs, which is my general preference. OK, sure, some days I can't get them...but not all that often, and hey, that's been true of most stuff. The price, on the other hand....ouch... Not AS bad as beef, generally, I don't think, but higher.

Ability to addict others?

And you're out on bail on a murder charge...and you try to have a pet tiger around??? When they catch up to this moron, I think that bail's going to be revoked....

The most involved hacking rules I know of, are in Shadowrun...because one of the core character concepts is the decker, who is...a hacker. The problem was always, tho, the decker played by himself. No one could help him. It was him rolling against the GM for however long it would take. Conversely, the decker was all but useless outside of hacking; it took too great an investment of char-gen resources to be good at anything else. IIRC, not as bad as a full caster; those were XP sinks like few others. (A Jedi in Star Wars was worse, but they were *insanely* imbalanced and supposed to be hard to build.) And that's gonna largely be the same thing here, if you make it involved...altho the cost of skills is such that at least your hacker-type doesn't have to be crippled. One concept I use is from the comments on the skill roll table, altho this might be in 6th only. 11-: competent. Can get a job using the skill. High school to associates' degree, IMO. 12-: skilled. Qualified to manage entry-level (11-) positions. Assoc to bachelor's degree. 14-: I read this as Masters level. 16-: Doctorate. 18-: Recognized among the top in his field. 20-: Getting into the realm of the tech geniuses That there are tech geniuses says that setting up REAL security, is going to call for tech geniuses to set up the protection. In many ways, the real-world experience...hackers broke into several fairly large databases (like Target) and harvested enormous amounts of personal data, but that led to tighter and tighter security. The pipeline hack that's shut down the critical pipeline to the East Coast, is going to lead to a *massive* investment in security. So generally, as LoneWolf suggests, it's going to be HARD. BTW: I don't personally think most of the skills listed would be complementary, or would tend to be specific subsets of Programming anyway. The big issue is that the people setting up the security had TIME!!!! to do it right, and to hammer the HECK out of it looking for problems. If you go with the notion of opposed rolls...because of the time aspect, high-end security might be 24-, or if you're just using a modifier, -10 is not that hard to imagine at all. Alternately, the safest form of security is simply no connection to the outside world whatsoever. For diverse networks like banking, the first key is the physical security of the communications lines so they can't be tapped. Mmm...come to think, these may well be encrypted as an additional security layer. Used to work on a team that test-fired missiles. Real ones. For combat deployment. At one point, they upgraded the lines, and our building got a military-grade encryption/decryption box. EXTREMELY fast at doing it; it had to be. So this is a context where Crypto actually wouldn't be a complementary skill, it'd be a full-scale phase of the problem. Also note the ongoing growth of physical verification methods...fingerprint scanning, for example. Or...when we had that upgraded comms line, ALL our computers had ID cards, and IIRC, single-use password generators, for computers that were not physically in a vault. ALL the computers in public-access areas were also scanned by the base's computer security people. By simply being on the network, they had permission to intrusively, completely scan any system added to it...and to order software to be taken off, if it was deemed a risk. Information security is taken EXTREMELY seriously.

No. They passed 250,00 acknowledged. Other than tracking to see if the outbreak is starting to be contained, India's reported numbers are pointless. And even trying to use them to reflect shifts in the situation have to be done with a grain of salt. Or perhaps a tablespoon. Still, if the reported case rates drop greatly, it seems fair to expect the actual rates are dropping as well, so it's better than nothing.

Well, it's another long-term Trump critic, but the more voices the better. Besides, "circular firing squad" is worth spreading. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/10/politics/larry-hogan-gop-firing-squad/index.html Another CNN story, about restaurant workers: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/10/economy/labor-shortages-pay-gaps/index.html

Give the system a security rating, and make it a competitive roll. Or give the system(s) penalties from -1 to -3, and when you're really getting into *secure* areas...areas where tech geniuses are building the security aspects...there's no upper bound. -10 might only be on, say, the government's metahuman database...real name, cover name/villain handle, known powers, threat assessment, weaknesses...but some things should have this level. Alarms. Fail a roll? Alert the other side. Fail a 2nd? Active opposition kicks in, with MUCH larger penalties, and possibly starting a traceback to see where the hack's coming from. Programming alone might not be enough. Crypto isn't needed to break in, at least most of the time; it may well be needed to be able to understand the data in the database, tho. Security Systems would be a more sensible complementary skill. Hacking can be as complicated as you want it to be.

Well remember that the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and fast food by and large pays minimum. So even if you can get 40 hours, that's still less than $300 a week. You'll still probably get *some* withheld for income tax, even tho you almost certainly won't owe any, or very little, if this is your only income, and definitely Social Security. So...knock off, say, 20%. Take home? About $220 a week, or call it $900 a month. With no benefits whatsoever.

Agreed but the people who left weren't that large a percentage of the Party...and the ones that are left will be the ones voting in most primaries.

Unfortunately, tho, it's Kinzinger. Within the Party generally, there's no sign anyone listens to him. The terrifying number is that about 70% of Republicans still believe the Big Lie. Which tells me they'll never change their minds now; it's embedded too solidly after 6 months. That's a crushing super-majority in the party itself. That makes fighting it extremely hard and dangerous; non-Trumpist Republicans have no good options.

A note dropped by Michael Kay during the Yankee game just now. Josh Hader became the fastest pitcher to reach 400 strikeouts. He only needed 234+ innings. The mind boggles........

How does Entangle supply a) target is stunned, and b) allow the attacker to draw the target to him? For b), Grab with stretching does that naturally. Wikipedia describes the attack like this: So the spear has to lodge. Best I can think of would be a Multiple Attack...I have no idea how I'd want to do the spear attack itself, because if it has to really lodge in, that feels like an *immense* amount of damage right there, for it to be stuck that well.

Youch...Phillies-Braves, Acuna Jr hitting. Fastball runs a bit high and inside...dead straight into Acuna's hand as it moves forward. So the hand is tensed, and with the bat on the other side, there was no possible way the impact could be dissipated. Acuna went straight down the tunnel. From the looks of it, 1 or even 2 broken fingers seems almost certain. EDIT: FORTUNATELY, X rays are negative.

I can't decide if I should applaud...this appears to be the kind of detailed, professional analysis of the data that's been needed...or cry. 7 million....? The tears are also because the deniers will reject this out of hand.

So now Real Madrid, Juventus, and Barcelona are whining because of the UEFA pushback to their woefully ill-considered plan to form the ESL. Missed the full context but on the FS1 baseball crawl, they were claiming retaliation was "unconscionable under the rule of law." WAAHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.............