unclevlad

What annoys me most is that for at least the rest of the NCAA basketball season, for ESPN games, I'll have not one but two analysts that I *cannot* listen to. Walton, of course; he's been loathsome for years. But the last several weeks...Vitale. Yeah, Vitale has been coming close to that *anyway* for several reasons. But these last couple weeks he's been on a Brady/Bucs binge, and it's just nauseating. This has nothing to do with disliking Tom or the Bucs; he's grossly overdone things. And with the win he's gonna bring it back up *every* game. Probably multiple times. Ugh. Good news is, neither one does that many games...and pretty often there's another game on. It also means we're gonna be *saturated* with the Brady/Gronk ads for the next 3 months. <sigh>

I'm looking at HSEG, and...if you're forced to burn END to use a shield, shields are generally grossly overpriced, IMO. In the section on fighting styles, it's noted that a shield can cause a problem with Encumbrance due to its weight; there's no mention of END costs. Shields are priced with a specific -1 Limitation, Mass...but that just feels like it's tied to the Encumbrance rules, altho one could argue that it forces you to use END for the shield when you defend with it, while not otherwise using STR. So I can see the GM's logic, but...I think it's being petty for the most part.

We're off to a *horrible* start. No it hasn't kicked off, but I *LOATHE* highly stylized versions of the anthem, and this one is AWFUL! The whole pregame's been pretty terrible. Not even any fun ads so far.

I considered adding basic food instruction...simple cooking, nutrition, etc. but that's gonna never fly as a graduation requirement.

refrigerator

Except it's not calculus...geometry and algebra is what's on the sample GED. Sometimes there's analyitical but it's just algebra and geometry. And I'm not sure what GED-level reading would be...but it ain't Shakespeare. And the rates at which Texas students can't pass the standard tests is truly alarming. I only pick Texas because I'm aware that they have such a test; I'm not trying to say anything about their educational system.

Oreos

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm donuts................... we have proof Cancer is, in fact, Homer Simpson.... frying pans

Yah, this isn't a free speech issue. Dobbs (among others) asserted that the products and services of Dominion and Smartmatic were unreliable. That becomes defamation. Free speech would cover the accusations of improprieties at polling places, for example, but do not permit this type of speech. Also: some types of trolling are not protected. Smear posts like "this place is a ripoff, they'll take your money and disappear" are actionable...if you can find the poster. Individual, isolated smear posts tend to have minimal impact, but in other cases it's a severe problem that has ruined businesses. Heck yeah, that's actionable. The allegations against Dominion and Smartmatic immediately rose to actionable because of the reach of the medium (Fox) to millions of people. Now add that it got repeated ad nauseum. NOW, add in that: a) it was asserted in places where those machines weren't in use, or were in minimal use and therefore couldn't have been the issue b) the courts threw out all the allegations, but the assertions continue. This goes beyond opinion. In the very early stages, possibly a retraction would've been sufficient. That stopped being adequate a LONG time ago. The case for Dominion/Smartmatic is beyond a smoking gun. It's as if Timothy McVeigh had recorded making the bomb, driving to the Murrah building, walking away to a safe distance, then smiling into the camera as he goes "now watch this!!" This is why NewsMax cut off Lindell's rant, why Dobbs was canned, why Guiliani's broadcasters inserted a disclaimer during his own podcast...without telling him they were gonna do it. Fox News will probably survive even a 10-digit judgment; NewsMax might not survive a much smaller judgment. And yeah, as Simon pointed out: the First Amendment is asserted *all* the time in wildly inaccurate ways. Probably not possible in practice, but requiring some basic understanding of civil liberties as an actual requirement to vote is worth considering, IMO. The problem is, of course, what you would require on such an examination. One of the better, introductory, basic classes I took in high school was a common law course. I think a one-year, required-to-graduate class covering common law, basic rights (and what they don't cover), and the fundamentals of money management would be a Very Good Thing.

books

Minor league baseball sites, possibly...but any single-use NFL stadium will be empty and unused for the next 5 months easily. That means you can keep your vaccination sites up and running, and dedicate nearby storage and the like, without concern for another event causing disruption. That won't be true of a major league baseball park for that long. How about major college football stadiums? With some, it wouldn't work *that* well; with an on-campus stadium, adjacent parking can be limited. But there's a lot of them around. And you'll often have the same advantage of extensive, covered areas with storage nearby...and, conceivably, facilities to offer reasonable-cost beverages or simple food like fruit.

I think I'm just as glad I spent most of my day, when I was paying attention here, playing the alphabet game. My blood pressure certainly is...

So I'm considering a martial arts build, and picking maneuvers. The first few points...25 STR, and 6 HTH DCs, so there's 11 dice. From the HSMA expansion pack... Knife Hand (Kung Fu template). In the book, it's 4 points, -2 OCV, +0 DCV, HKA 1/2 d6...or 2 DCs killing. That's the same as Killing Strike. But apply it to the character...it's saying 5d6 HKA, instead of 4d6+1. So it's giving 4 DCs.

antidisestablishmentarianism

voluptuous

sassafras

polygon

iconoclast argh, just missed again...ok, just for that.... joker

Aardvark

OK, I'm going to apologize in advance. This is...ugly. If people returned exactly where they were...or at least very close (assume, say, the principle of Safe Teleport applies)... If they were in planes in the air....the plane isn't there when they return. If they were on a ship in the middle of the ocean...there's no ship.... This is worse, and the ugly part. If they were in a car, say...driving on a freeway....... In Marion Harmon's Wearing the Cape series, the world changes in the relatively recent past (he doesn't date it per se, but first decade of this century) when The Event happens. Everyone on the planet blacks out for 3+ seconds. In most cases, this wouldn't matter...but in city traffic, 3 seconds is a lot. For a plane safely at cruising altitude, it *probably* wouldn't matter...and wouldn't matter if the plane's on autopilot. But at some stages on takeoff or landing........not good. Harmon doesn't try to give a body count, but he makes it clear...it was very, very ugly. And post-Event...people started gaining superpowers, but that's a separate mess. But the immediate aftermath of the restorative <snap> would be incalculably worse.

I haven't watched WandaVision at all; I'm not in the mood to give Disney money. My choice, of course. But the gaping plot...not hole, per se, but unanswered question was with that second <snap>. It's FAR worse than the story suggests. Here's one point: after 5 years with only 3.5 billion people, food production will be at a level to support.......3.5 billion people. What happens when, overnight, there's 7 billion? *To a degree*...if half of everything included animals, then there's a massive surge of slaughterable animals. But that won't last that long. And it'll still take time to slaughter, age safely, process, and distribute. OK, there's *some* food in the supply chain, but when you double demand, it simply won't last. And fruits and veggies? Tree fruits and nuts...perhaps the trees wouldn't have been <snap>ed but a fair few would've fallen to lack of care. But most veggies and grains? They're annuals.

Bad news: we're still at about 20,000 deaths a week in the US. Good news: that's actually down about 10%. Good, if early, trend: active cases have plateaued and actually started to drop a bit. WorldOMeters doesn't report # in hospitals but it would seem reasonable to expect that tends to follow the other two.

Yeah, likely story, you just wanted to do back to back...........<whap!> for P...Juan Martin del Potro, tennis. A bronze and a silver. Also the ONLY man to win a grand slam between Marat Safin's 2005 Aussie Open, and Andy Murray's 2012 US Open, other than Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic (Fed 13, Nadal 11, Djoko 5 in that period)

They may not vote Democratic...but they may also not vote. Think the Georgia Senate runoffs. Also, the threat is more acute, not in the general election, but in the primaries, where the "betrayers" will face far more resistance than normal.

END cost for Multiattack: Yes, but that's the only consideration. You pay the END for the number of attacks you declare, not the number of attack rolls you make. This isn't really any different from Autofire in that regard; if you declare a 2 shot burst with AF, you use 2 charges or spend 2x the per-attack END cost. AF has the 2 ancillary impacts...that it increases the active points on the power, thereby potentially increasing the END cost, and that the cost of Reduced END is impacted.