unclevlad

So, someone got nailed for spewing a defamatory, salacious story with no evidence: https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/mlb/2021/04/12/joe-west-awarded-500-000-defamation-lawsuit-against-paul-lo-duca/7197588002/ You have to turn off your ad-blocker. If averse to that (can't blame ya): Paul Lo Duca claimed Joe West gave Billy Wagner preferential treatment when West was behind the plate, and Wagner was pitching. EVERYTHING is tracked in baseball; story points out that the situation *could not have happened* because the situation (Lo Duca catching Wagner with West behind the plate) never occurred. West sued. He didn't get all his claims; he didn't back up his assertion that his chance to get into the HoF was impacted. Still, $250K + $250K to work on reputation repair.

In a similar vein, I wonder how many games include the numerous Easter eggs that you could only find be clicking practically *everywhere*...and how many players that would go to the trouble of finding them. Argh...games that *didn't* have automaps !!!!! Sprite-based graphics only...at EGA or maybe VGA resolutions. Action movies with no CGI whatsoever.

Baseball games that ran 1:45 to 2 hours... 8-9 man pitching staffs World Series games *in the daytime* NBA Finals games were still shown on tape delay heck, for that matter...not shown at all. I remember listening to the radio broadcast in 1970 when Jerry West hit the 60 footer. OK, it's possible we chose to listen to the radio broadcast because it was Chick Hearn, the best basketball broadcaster ever. But certainly...if it was on TV, it wasn't heralded. In fact, in general, sports TV was...pretty limited. MLB: the game of the week on Saturday. That was it. NBA: I think live coverage of the later playoffs and finals kicked in a bit later...mid 70s? The NFL had their Sunday slots and got the coverage because of that. BUT, they still got hammered with the Heidi move. Regular season games were broadcast on local channels, off-network...and quite often with spotty reach and mediocre signal quality. Even for the day. And NOT every game by any means. The Dodgers trumpeted their *radio* coverage; the TV coverage was an afterthought.

Thinking more about this... The escalating tension between corporate America and the ReTrumplicans might provide the the dynamic to either force the Party to clean up its act...or see the Party split. Either should isolate the Trump wing, which should help to contain them.

That's the value of that "deaths above normal." Causes of death can be intentionally mis-stated; they can simply be missed (nursing home deaths a year ago, for example) or they can be indirect and therefore misunderstood, such as when a heart failure death is counted as a Covid-19 death...because it caused the heart damage. (Or whatever.) One denier asserted that causes of death were being deliberately shifted to Covid-19 for financial/insurance reasons. This was...dunno, a couple months ago now. Deaths above normal doesn't discuss causes...but, it's still a massive red flag. WHY are these deaths happening? I doubt anyone ever believed the Russian stats...the cases *might* have been possible, but the death rates were really dubious. And yeah...the story quotes numbers as of the end of last year. If the real number is more like 400,000 today, that's 1 death per 350 people...which would be on par with Czechia, which suffers from the highest per capita death rate right now. More unpleasant news from Axios: the new variants are causing more problems; infections among children are rising. And the story makes a point that I'd not considered..."the more widely a virus can spread, the more opportunities it has to mutate." Welll, smack me upside the head...yeah. That's long past effective containment now...and probably has been for months...so the New Reality may be that we can return to a more-or-less normal life...but figure that the New Best Case might well be Every Year Is A Bad Flu Year, for quite some time to come. If we can get Covid-19 deaths down to the level of influenza and pneumonia...that's still around 50,000 a year. And that might be the *best* feasible outcome.

What's a toy store? <whisper whisper whisper> REALLY? They had entire STORES like that????

Sure, Fox could replace them, at least for a while. BUT, they'd just move to some other venue, and take some of their fans with them. That's not something Fox wants, not over the longer term. ESPN has had more complex issues; they could never cover ALL the sports world, especially college football and basketball, but their cost-cutting layoffs and other moves have, I think, helped all the others. They may be the #1 sports network, but they carry almost none of the top events any more. Second worst NFL allotment (TNF is the worst of course), no college basketball tourney, almost no postseason baseball (and nothing in the later rounds). NBA finals is ABC, not ESPN; same owner but you don't need cable for it. That's markedly reduced their status. And that's what Fox would rather NOT have happen.

Someone mentioned it in passing. I think we can add record and PC/video game stores pretty much too, right? Hastings shuttered in 2016, so maybe that's a little too recent for this thread. Most gaming stores disappeared more like 10, 15 years ago I think. Radio Shack been mentioned? Five and Dime stores...!!! Or is that too old? Penny candy...I *do* remember this.

Hm. There's one that might be dead. I remember one summer vac that had a long road trip, in a motor home. Late 60s or very early 70s, as we left California in '72. Driving vacations these days? I suspect they still happen some, but it feels like they're mostly dead. Drive TO some destination FOR the vacation, ok...but not AS the vacation, with no particular destination as the focus. Something I suspect few of us miss: smoking in public, like bars/restaurants. If you think beer advertising dominates sports broadcasts...cigarette ads were MANY times more ubiquitous, on both TV and in print. Major magazine back and inside front covers were cigarette ads. Full-page, full color. Time, I remember for sure. Pretty sure the womens' mags had their Virginia Slims. Sports Illustrated for sure. Huh. There's another one. Not gone but a shade of its former self, I believe: the SI Swimsuit Issue.

I'll buy the first part: that Fox charges through the nose because they're a must-carry. I saw someone asserting they could drop the ads, but...even if they could cover all costs, that'd cut their profits, so that is simply Not Gonna Happen. These disputes happen, and they will get worse. I remember Fox just spamming their broadcasts with complaints about, IIRC, AT&T U-verse not wanting to pay whatever they were charging. For a couple weeks, IIRC, NFL games on Fox were all but unwatchable for me. I can also remember ABC and CBS issues. More info on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_dispute Cord-cutting may well turn into a transformational phenomenon. I daresay practically no one is *happy* with the size of their cable or satellite bill...unless it's $0 because they already switched. Numbers I've seen online: 90M in 2018, 86M+ in 2019, estimated a touch under 83M in 2020 and a touch under 80M for 2021. This may *strengthen* Fox's position for now; "if you don't have us, what's gonna keep half your subscribers from bailing?" And if they can hold onto that stance for a couple years, their own streaming service may well grow enough so they can take a major cut in carriage fees, and not really care.

The point of the thread, tho, is more like, what did we experience Back In The Day, that's long gone. Ziegfeld *died* in 1932. And pop culture references are almost implicitly memory mayflies. The White Album. Woodstock. The 1967 Monterey Pop festival. I daresay just dropping these would result in nothing but blank stares, and they're either the generational event (Woodstock) or a reference to a Mount Rushmore-level talent (Beatles, Hendrix). HoJo's...pretty good choice. They're completely gone. Not sure Sambo's was ever that big...more regional than anything...but as you might guess, they eventually caught more than a little flak for that name. Anyone else remember *the best* root beer ever, IMO...Hires? Got swept up by, IIRC, the conglomerate who owned one of the other names, and they buried it. Hasn't been available for years, apparently possibly at a *very few* locations.

Yeah, I've seen a fair bit of concern being expressed about Sinclair, especially as. IIRC, restrictions on station ownership are being relaxed. That's part of the reason why saying "Fox is the enemy" is somewhat misleading, as they're not the whole of the issue. And to LL: it's debatable whether Fox takes the lead. Sometimes I think they do...not necessarily intentionally, but by getting a guest on who can drop a nice juicy nugget whose reality is largely only in their own mind, then running with it. And running. And running. And running. And you can't separate Fox from their hosts, particularly now, when they've decreased their news coverage and increased their hosts' air time.

Note that's largely, albeit not entirely, implicit in the post above. "Can see the target" isn't entirely linguistically equivalent to "sees". 6E1 p. 148: That makes clear that perception is a factor, and thus implicitly incorporates range mods to perception. Also note that sight's not necessary, if you purchase, say, Targeting on your hearing, or even on your clairsentience. On the latter, you also have to be able to have the clairsentience and the mental power active together; that's not necessarily easy to accommodate. Clairsentience gets expensive. Note that applying ACV on a power does NOT do this; nor does AVAD vs. Mental Defense.

Well in that case, best of luck however you elect to proceed.

So when's your last day, if we may ask? Giving notice doesn't per se imply a date. I think I gave a couple months, to allow other people to pick up what I was doing. And give it...oh, a week to 10 days before your brain realizes It's Really Over. THEN throw yourself (or get your friends/family to throw) the big retirement party. Trust me, you're not mentally ready for that party that day. Yeah, you're quite ready to have the *company* retirement party, but that's something quite different. Hold off on that steak au poivre, grilled prawns, and 2002 Bordeaux for a week and your brain will be ready to fully savor it.

The difference with the assassinations is that they came largely out of the blue. Yes, especially with the MLK shooting, there was something of a buildup, but it wasn't necessarily to that. Jan. 6th was the result of a process that's been growing for many years. Distrust, fear and hatred are NOT Trump's legacy. They were his vehicle. He didn't lose power as a failure of those factors; I'd say he darn near kept it because of them, despite being the most clearly incompetent officeholder ever. Heck, look at the non-reaction about the Gaetz accusations. Trump's been gone for a few months but they sit on their hands. If you're not still pro-Trump and pro-Trumpist lies, you're catching a LOT of pushback. The social changes have to start by making it blatantly clear that Trump was a manipulative, sociopathic narcissist, so that even a major portion of those who believed in him, start denouncing him. If that's even *possible*. Trump and Fox have a stranglehold on "truth" to a HUGE segment of the public, and if that can't be broken, then the amount of change that's possible is very, very limited and probably will be short-lived. It may well be fair to say that Trump is not the real enemy; Fox is. Because they'll switch right around to the next tool they can use to extend and tighten their grip. Doesn't have to be DJT; could be Junior, or Cruz, or Hawley. Won't be Gaetz or Greene. Could be Abbott. It's probably an overstatement to say Fox is the real enemy, tho, because they weren't the first to fearmonger.

Historic Dates

Barber Shop (one of their trick-style categories...Samuel Barber, barbershop music, things at a barber shop)

Trump may be out of the limelight but Trumpism isn't gone at all. And while I would be perfectly happy to never hear about Trump again...that won't work. Not while Tucker Carlson continues to spew revisionist history with regard to Jan. 6th, not while the voter suppression movement remains. Those are the overt aspects. A subtler sign is the serious rate at which US military personnel are turning down vaccinations, and which some states see the same thing. This is evidence of the deep penetration of...perhaps not the Trumpist mindset, but the distrust which helped it flourish.

Operas

insurance types ack we posted at almost the same time... OK.. j, huh? Jesters, clowns, and the like (not counting those on this board)

There has to be something to talk about...... <ducks> Emoticon names

Maybe he was scarred for life, but you can get an AWFUL lot of therapy for $30M. EDIT: according to Sportrac https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/carolina-panthers/sam-darnold-25098/#:~:text=Sam Darnold signed a 4,average annual salary of %247%2C561%2C929. one plausible reason the Jets bailed comes in 2022 when his cap hit *explodes*.

Noted on CNN...the ref who collapsed on-court during the Elite Eight? Cause was a blood clot in his lung (!!!!) The story here is actually kind of funny, since things came out well in the end: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10001074-referee-bert-smith-told-he-had-blood-clot-in-lung-after-collapsing-at-ncaa-tournament?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial

And the first post-Trump book is out, RIPPING DJT and others: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/04/08/john-boehner-book-gop-todd-pkg-tsr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/ Won't be the last.