unclevlad

Let Sleeping Zombies Lie

The stories include this bit. Another story noted a separate point: this is the 3rd teacher in Cobb County to die from Covid-19. In the past month. I sincerely hope this comes back to bite them in their backsides. HARD. The sooner, the better.

It's an unusual flavor...not one I use that much. Used to do cardamom coffee, but by and large I've switched over to coffees with exceptional flavors of their own, and I rarely add anything to them. I vaguely remember that my mother made a few types of cookies with cardamom, tho. It might be in some spice blends that I use.

The dreams in which he died Were the best he ever had

The NFL isn't going to do a bubble even for the SB. I wonder if the teams will. KC can't go down to Tampa Bay until 2 days before the game...league mandate. Dunno how that'll impact the Bucs. Intent clearly is all events will be virtual. But I'd want my guys out of harm's way. It won't be for that long.

Died in the church and was buried along with her nameNobody came

Jeremy spoke in class today

I believe the one time I was in one was in Cherry Creek Mall in Denver....yeah, snootier.... Duke, there weren't that many...128 was the number cited, IIRC. So it's not particularly surprising you've never heard of em.

Interesting reads. I can't connect to the movie references, because the *only* DC characters movie I think I've ever seen in full was Dark Knight. And everything I've seen says I've probably made a wise choice to avoid em.

Q: What do you mean, you guys can't play a note??? A: Yeah, it certainly looks home-made....

Sure you do. The ads. And another very bad, late decision, this one by Buffalo. Down 17, you do NOT go for 2, you take the point. The difference between 15 down and 16 down is very small; the difference between 16 and 17 is 2 scores or 3 scores, so it's large.

Not sure about that...if you include the cosmic-level powers like Beyonder or Eternity. Probably not equal to Galactus or that level, either, but that level is "whatever I feel like, they can do." But that's the limit of my caveat. And yeah, I wasn't gonna go too far with that longer contact as it's very hard to translate. Besides, once you get to 20 minutes, it's only another +1 to points per week. Considering the "any power" is probably, what, +1; per 20 minutes is +1 1/2; 4 powers at once is +1 1/2. So that's +4 already...and clearly, we're blowing any notion of damage caps or active point caps out the window before ever *talking* about the Aid or Transform self side.

But of note is that many, many sites bitch at you when they detect an ad blocker.

Anything can be proven if you include a false axiom.

Wait a minute... Down 8, 2:10 left, 4th and goal...kick a field goal???? Packers coaching staff deserves to lose. Brady dumps off to a back for 9 on first down. One first down and it's almost over, unless the GB defense can somehow force a turnover.

Another sign of the long-term changes in US retail shopping patterns: Godiva will close all its US brick and mortar stores by the end of March. (They are keeping the stores elsewhere open.) Some of this is the general downturn in in-person shopping. Another factor is simply the extended decline of customers at retail malls.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcovid-data%2Fcovidview.html I'll highlght one number: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm Yeah...it's just a flu..... As a side note: the time frames are obviously different. However, 70% of all recorded coronavirus cases in the US have been identified since Oct. 1st. If we assume that 70% of cases means roughly 70% of hospitalizations, we get about 250 hospitalizations per 100,000...500x higher than the flu. Even if a bad flu year results in 10x the hospitalizations, we'd still be looking at a coronavirus hospitalization 50x higher than a bad flu season.

One thing to note: the entry-level boxes have fairly poor performance. Granted that this won't be a machine tasked to do a lot, but this still shows up in web browsing. SOO MANY sites dump dozens of ads and graphic after graphic, and auto-playing videos. (HATE!!!! those.) Altho this made me think: I'm assuming he's going to use wi-fi for the most part. FOR SURE you'll want 5 GHz wi-fi. That shouldn't be a big deal; it should be common enough. 2.4 GHz is generally much more crowded. But either way, it's possible his effective connection speed won't be very fast at all, at least at times.

If the mission is to enforce federal labor law, then a virulently anti-union stance would clearly seem to be a violation of the organizational charter. Republicans are whining the action made the position political. Perhaps so, to a degree, but it's also plausible to say he was never doing his job in the first place.

I've long felt Rogue might well be the single most expensive character to define, at least among the everyday-style Marvel characters. Not more powerful per se...more expensive. Think of the number of dice to drain a 15d6 blast...that's at least 75 active points. Sure, you can take a few phases, but it's still gonna need to be 5-6 dice at least. Then start piling on the advantages: --any power --how many powers at a time? Believe it was several --return rate to victim On Rogue's side, it can't be Aid as written. It's a 15 point Transform. And you've still got --any power, but matches power(s) drained from victim --multiple powers at once --fade rate --Partial Transform? And the active points will be so *insanely* high that 0 END will be needed. You always have to be careful in trying to translate oddball powers, as they are, as Hugh mentions, most often plot devices. Rogue's power is a HUGE problem for her...kiss her boyfriend for 10 seconds, steal ALL his powers *forever*? Or something about that level. Once you break that down, it's OMG that's an insane power. I think we as players too often have the very bad habit of trying to recast it so it's semi-manageable and usable, rather than going with implementing it very closely to the presentation, points be damned.

I'm not a fan of the Fire OS, either. It was far, far too intrusive for my taste, and IIRC VERY slow to boot up. AND, I've been a Prime user for years. I basically deregistered my Fire, tho, and it just sits in a discard box. However, if you want to go tablet, there's no Android tablet worth a damn, honestly, and hasn't been for some time. Well, OK, I might be a power user. But I'd look at a slightly older iPad as my alternative. Don't go too small on the screen. A Chromebook can be a very reasonable choice. It focuses around Chrome...not to be pedantic, but that is its focus. It's not a general-purpose device particularly; but it is built for running Chrome, and you can then use all the Chrome extensions, like a password manager. Comparing the two, the biggest advantages of the iPad are compactness, and the *easy* option of portrait or landscape mode. For the Chromebook, the bigger screen, but the orientation is a bit of an issue. Chrome OS probably makes files management easier, but this might not be that big a deal. Either way, I'd consider adding a Bluetooth speaker to the package.

There's a fairly extended debate about why Transfer was dropped, IIRC from some time last summer. There is at least one fairly common logistical problem with having them combined; that's if you want to tweak the fade or return rate. By 5E, each side (fade or return) has to be bought separately, but the costing is being applied to the "combined power". IOW: 1d6 Drain, 5 points per minute (+1): 20 points 1d5 Aid, 5 points per minute (+1): 12 points 1d6 Transfer, 5 points per minute fade, 5 points per minute return (+2): 45 And of course that active point cost comes into play for END costs and for power frameworks. It also limits you on the amount you can drain, to the amount of Aid you get. You can't do a 2d6 Drain and, say, a 6d6 Aid so you can drain over multiple phases. So the combination really isn't a great idea.

The differences between Cruz' stunt and Boebert's: --the Republican Party is internally divided; it remains to be seen how that plays out. If Trumpism wins, Boebert may not see much long-term backlash. --the money may NOT continue to roll in for Boebert, altho how long the corporations continue their stance remains to be seen --Boebert's too easy to connect to crackpots like Paul Davis, the idiot that filed the suit to overturn the *entire* election. FiveThirtyEight showed polling that immediately after the Capitol incursion, 16% of Republicans supported removing Trump before the end of his term. It dropped a bit up until the 20th, but as the day neared, the impetus to do so pretty naturally waned. 10 Republicans voted to impeach, in the House...which might not sound like a lot, but impeachment votes have rarely been anything but pure party-line, as I understand. (Nixon would've been the exception, but there was smoking-gun level evidence against him.) The 2022 primary elections will be enormous.

Yeah I might've heard that too, I can't recall for sure. But that was also the first class, so all the early players were up, including Cy Young. He didn't make it. Then you've got regional bias...much stronger back then. Are Boston voters gonna vote for Ruth? HECK no. So saying "no one can possibly be deserving" is just a joke because it was never about "deserving." But the BBWAA has always had its share of egotistical <bleep>s. Mariano had everything...numbers, titles, awards. Sustained *excellence* for well over a decade. The reference standard for relief pitchers, GOAT by acclamation. And a nice guy!!! Even if you hated what he did to your teams, you still had to admire how he did it. THAT is what it took to get a unanimous choice. And the impact of bias is still out there; Jeter didn't get a unanimous vote, on a weak ballot. The only other player voted in, was Larry Walker, and he barely made the threshold. So you can't argue "there are 5 I considered more deserving"...it had to be "Derek Jeter isn't an HoF-level player" or spite. Hey, I disliked Jeter, and particularly loathed New Yorkers' attitudes about him (a la Pats fans and Brady)...but the numbers and impact are there.

Neither was Mays. Or Mantle. Or anyone until Mariano. That said, your sentiment's one I've heard on multiple occasions, from baseball people.