87 Comments

Well, howdy, everybody.

Two things:

1. Will there be something equivalent to fanshots/posts, etc.?

2. Hey, does this mean Ken Montgomery gets a fresh start?

#FreeKen

Hope all you all are staying safe. F' COVID.

BTW- I'm lazy, can we cuss here or not?

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Oh, and is Cam Mellor an actual Cal person? Or SBNation off-the-shelf, in-house talent pool guy? Or gal?

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And where the Hell is G®EAT? AKA Taco...

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The Big 10 will only play Conference games this season. (If there is one)

https://www.si.com/college/cal/news/

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Tace Bell

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Remember when Taco Bell attempted to be more of a better quality fast-casual restaurant like 10 years ago with a brand new ("fresh") menu and celebrity chef Lorena Garcia in commercials? The better food was tastier than their normal offering but so much more expensive that the Taco Bell became effectively more costly to eat at then Chipotle.

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It was the Taco Bell Cantina Menu that started in 2010. I think some of those changes may have been kept by Taco Bell Cantina (AKA Taco Bell with alcoholic drinks). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taco-bell-cantina-menu-review_n_1665096

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I think Pacifica still has a Taco Bell Cantina. It is off the 1 and has a great view of the beach and ocean. No trump exaggeration but it is probably, in terms of location the best located Taco Bell in the world.

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All the taco bells in China are Taco Bell Cantinas.

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That is an awesome Taco Bell. Lots of surfers filing in and out. Hip vibe.

And you can buy booze there.

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I must have missed that thing.

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The cinnamon crispas were my favorite thing. They eventually disappeared like the fried apple pie at McDonald's

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The fried apple pie at Mickey D's was my amuse bouche....yummm

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hahaha

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I still love Nachos Bellgrande.

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I like Taco Bell's offerings, and their prices. I get various other Mexican and fast food offerings in the mix, but Taco Bell is fine too,

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No 1 drove cross country with some friends from Louisville. They had flown back to visit their parents. Their parents gave them a large Taco Bell gift card to use during the drive so they had visited Taco Bell quite a few times on the drive back.

I haven't been to Taco Bell in probably at least 20 years. I used to get the 7 layer burrito. In college I used to get maybe 5 - 6 of the $0.59 tacos. .59-.79-.99 FTW.

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I haven't been to Taco Bell in ages. What's the point, when literally any local taqueria is going to be better.

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That's why I don't go to Taco Bell, Qdoba, or Chipotle.

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I've been to Qdoba once in Lebanon NH and it was not exactly awesome.

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I don't eat Taco Bell much, but they serve different purposes. When you crave Taco Bell, you aren't craving Mexican food--so you won't fulfill that desire at an actual Mexican restaurant.

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what, wet cat food tacos is what you want?

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Hmm, I guess I just don't often get cravings for whatever kind of food Taco Bell is supposed to be, then. I suppose it makes sense though, if you really like getting a hit of that lab-tested fast food feeling. But for my money, it's not that tasty, it's not good for you, the quality isn't good... I feel like even if you want a fast-food chain interpretation of Mexican, I'd so much rather go to a Baja Fresh or a Rubio's, or even a Del Taco or Green Burrito, ahead of Taco Bell.

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I don’t think we even have those choices around here: most the Baja Fresh locations seem to have closed and the other ones never were

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Green burrito isn’t what it used to be, since merging with Carl’s Jr. They don’t even offer a green burrito any more!

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I just checked and it seems the green burrito is back! Maybe my complaint helped :)

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Fuck this is making me want Mexican for dinner tonight.

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La Grana Fish opened a permanent location

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Just go to the taco trucks. Since No 1 is back for a couple more weeks we'll probably go either to El Farolito or a taco truck on International Blvd.

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True...Gordo's any day...

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I so miss Gordo's and Cactus, my little College Ave. daily double!!

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I used to eat 7 layer burritos while getting my MBA. Haven't been to Taco Bell in at least 10 years. Do they still offer it?

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YES. All 7 are individual layers of delight.....

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or Taco Bell for those that can type

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Today in the Covid

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Another record number of new cases yesterday: 63,247

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/us-reports-record-single-day-spike-of-63200-new-coronavirus-cases.html

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Washington Post has almost 63,000 two days ago and 58,500 yesterday. Interesting how each site seems to have their own count. It's too early to tell but Arlington has had a slight uptick the last few days.

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Some update differently. Our county website's daily summary often adds cases to past days as data from labs/drs isn't always instant.

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Enough to fill Memorial Stadium. Silly us for thinking we wouldn't see Memorial Stadium filled in 2020.

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And after a steady decline since early May, deaths are beginning to trend upwards. It's a trailing indicator, so the recent surge of cases will not be clearly reflected in death rates for another couple weeks.

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you mean like people gathering over the holidays like Memorial Day and July 4th? No 1 said the campgrounds were full in Tahoe on July 4th. And stupid young people gathering at parties.

I'm curious what's going to happen at colleges once the students go back. One thing Vandy is doing is only allowing students that live in a building to enter that dorm. I guess that just means they'll congregate elsewhere.

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It's really frustrating to see that all the economic and social sacrifice during March and April is going to waste because a large number of Americans are too dumb and/or selfish to do their part.

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I think there are a lot of people who are "too dumb and/or selfish," but I also think we shouldn't just attribute the problem to individuals. The whole system is flawed.

There's this idea that Asians and Asian countries are more collectivist, and that's why everyone has been wearing masks. I'm going to set aside the fact that Asian countries were hit hardest by SARS, so they know the importance of wearing masks (though this is a non-trivial factor). I don't think it's just this idea that the public will do all these things for the common good. I think it's because they have incentives to comply and disincentives if they don't.

Narrowing in on Taiwan: the government set very clear mask policies early on, when they didn't have enough masks. They invested in mask factories, ramped up supply, and then revised their mask policies to reflect the supply and the public health need. Everyone gets an allotment of 7 masks per week--the incentive is yay free stuff! (And protection.)

When leaders have clear messaging and it's easy for people to comply, they're much more likely to comply. It's been MONTHS of this in the US, and we still don't have enough masks, not to mention medical equipment and testing. Even people who want to do what's "best" for the whole might not have an easy way to do so.

Back to the idea of "collective good" in Asia. In Taiwan, a lot of people still don't wear seatbelts, though it's better in the cities. Seatbelt wearing didn't increase until the government mandated it (and fined those who don't buckle up). You need incentives and disincentives; it's not just about hoping people will do things for the good of the whole.

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I can’t speak to the availability of N95 masks but paper and fabric masks are easily available and would make an enormous difference. I could certainly understand people not wearing masks for cost reasons, but I don’t think that’s what we’re up against here.

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I know that my mom had to send something to her brothers to allow them to send her masks. The government was limited who supplies could be sent to and it had to basically be immediate family members and brothers and sisters. And her youngest had to send it because her 2nd oldest brother already had sent some stuff to his son.

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Not to disagree with you too much, but I would attribute a lot of Asian people following the government policies this time around on that past SARS experience. The fear and experience of going through that before have expediated both the government response and people's adoption of those policies.

Sadly, this is unlikely to be the last global pandemic and we will probably get another data point within the next few decades to see how the US will react to the next pandemic (also hopefully with much better leadership).

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Dumpster Fire

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Trump vilifies mail-in voting but says absentee voting is fine in the same tweet

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1281556758457188352?s=19

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"The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president.

Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings.

Instead, Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-the-victim-president-complains-in-private-about-the-pandemic-hurting-himself/2020/07/09/187142c6-c089-11ea-864a-0dd31b9d6917_story.html

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Of course it has hurt him. Like everyone else.

A key difference is he was the one who de-emphasized and de-funded epidemiology, because he didn't think it was a necessary expenditure of resources, and is not well enough informed to know better. And was both slow to respond, and incorrect in his response, because he is not well enough informed to know better. And has a real aversion to adverse news, not being able, never mind willing, to function in the real world, vs the world he wishes existed, and more troubling, still believes can exist.

His mismanagement didn't cause most of the current problems, but it certainly has exacerbated them, instead of effectively mitigating them.

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Case in point:

"White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is leading a Trump administration effort to demand the Food and Drug Administration reverse course and grant a second emergency authorization for the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus."

Again? What fucking morons.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/10/peter-navarro-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus/

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If Trump really believed in it he'd take doses on camera during the briefings.

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He says he has.

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Heyalumnigo is saying something different. Trump says a lot of dump things that are blatantly false. Just because trump says he is doing something doesn’t mean he is actually doing it. He can say he has taken it but it would be more impactful if he proved he was actually taking it by doing so on camera.

Just like it would help if trump would do more than just say wear a mask and had photos of him actually wearing one.

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So they are just ignoring all the new research results that have came out that showed no positive effects for the use of hydroxycloroquine to treat COVID-19? Does the Trump administration really have that much stock in companies that make this drug?

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Compare the deaths per capita in our country against well-managed countries, and the tens of thousands of extra deaths that have happened and will continue to happen are the result of his mismanagement. That gigantic number, not to mention the economic fallout resulting from the outbreak, constitutes "most of the problem" in my opinion, and his mismanagement is the cause.

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He has had a lot of help from the governors Cuomo, Abbot, and DeSantis

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I agree there have been other incompetent leaders in our country, but I think if the advice and signals given from the federal level had been strong and thoughtful, governors would have been more likely to fall in line than risk being outliers. Especially Republicans would not have had as much room to play pandemic response as a cultural issue.

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Without wanting to underplay what a trash job the administration did and is continuing to do with pandemic "management," your alternative proposal is based on the assumption that 1) Trump is a crazypants outlier, and thus 2) that absent Trump, the various governors on the right would not have been crazypants. I think that's highly unlikely.

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A symptom of poor management is not having already established good working relationships with other, be they governors and mayors, or those making key decisions in other countries, so that everyone is ready to manage a problem when it arises, vs independently scrambling more than should have been the case in a purely reactionary mode.

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OOoooOOOooo, I would disagree with that last statement: His mismanagement DID cause most of the current problems, because he refused to take any federal responsibility to respond to the pandemic.

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Problems with infrastructure, an out-moded employment system where the only thing more out of date than the system is the philosophy its based on, a completely inadequate elder care system, a lack of cohesion between Federal and State/local programs, an inept corrections system, the lack of universal health care, an out-moded election system, an economic system and a supply pipeline both based in far too many cases on staying just barely one step ahead of collapse, and a wild-west approach to system build out all existed long before Trump arrived in Washington.

That's what I was meaning by not causing a lot of the problems.

But the mismanagement of the pandemic, and a lot of the fallout, has in turn exposed and worsened a lot of problems that wouldn't have been as bad had a better job on the run-up been done on making improvements to things that were in position to blow up totally once a serious problem (pandemic or otherwise) arises.

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All those things may be true, but the absolute incompetence of this administration has made us like a third-world country; no testing, ignoring the scientists, magical thinking, fake cures and politicizing mask wearing is all 100% on this administration.

Trump and his Republican enablers are responsible for 100,000 dead Americans - that's not acceptable. Some would have died for sure, but the reason this pandemic is spinning out of control is 100% on Trump & Co.

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Hey I live in a third world country. We wear masks and life is back to normal here - except for movie theaters and very occasionally having to show a health code on my phone to get into some places.

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Pro

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This is a smart move for he and his family. On a larger scale, the time has probably come for Buster to hang them up and begin the coaching phase of his career....the mileage, ballpark & various injuries have robbed him of what little power he had, and he proffers basically replacement level numbers. It will be interesting to see if the Joey Bart era commences or if Zaidi puts that off for another season.

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I can't imagine how anyone with a newborn could play. For example, AJ Pollack has a premie (I think) and they've been going to the hospital every day. The Dodgers haven't said he's opted out but I can't imagine him playing.

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I watched the Spurs - Bournemouth match yesterday and Spurs were dire. Only left it on because I was on a conference call

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I'd have no idea what you're talking about, but my son has taken an interest in soccer. No the play or soccer or any sport, he has autism and seems fascinated with the social aspects of fandoms.

Now, if we could just get him to stop using the term "yid."

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Dire - much like the "food" at Taco Belle

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Cal

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Jul 10, 2020Liked by Ruey Yen, SGBear

(TL;DR - I figured out via Twitter that CNN's Brianna Keilar was my RA in the dorms at Cal, and she confirmed it, LOL)

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Go Bears.

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I always take my Taco Belle to Pizza Hut.

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I've heard that Pizza the Hut like to eat at Taco Bell.

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