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She blinded me with...

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So, what did you study with that grant money?

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/02/the-science-and-spectacle-of-microwaving-peeps/

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It's a popular thing, microwaving peeps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRT1f5luywU

I haven't done a peep, but I've microwaved mashmallows to make s'mores. The marshmallow will puff up to gigantic size. It's quite fun!

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Zeus: screw Florida and the Bayou in particular

https://twitter.com/chrismehl7/status/1621524808734494720

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Anxiety

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I think I'm weird, maybe there are times I should be filled with anxiety, but oddly I'm not at the moment exactly - but maybe later - I could be a bit strange. I told y'all about fighting 3 three fellow students in 8th grade - knock one out, the other 2 where too afraid to do anything that day, but one of them brought a baseball bat.

Works? well until the next day when there were 20 students to thrash me, but saved by a leaving teacher. Going there was not fun, got dropped out of the PE class, sent to woodwork shop instead. Had to run home after every day from this school.

OK, but as an adult, and manager here been in dozens of potential fights with local thieves - never really bugged me in a main way - until I was evicting some tenants I hadn't signed a lease with, and was let in by existing tenants who said they would be back in a total of 4 months.

But that didn't work - was evicting them, the morning before 3 days of them being toasted out, they came by at 7:00 AM to kill me with a hammer to my head - was able to stop, stepped back and told them if they stepped in I would kill them both (was carrying a 30 inch pipe with a small ending attached), they declined, and OPD arrested the tenant with the hammer.

So I wasn't concerned? Not exactly, got though the fight, but stopped and barfed a LOT maybe driving to buy a view device to put in the door, to not open for these kind of visitors. Was not fun at all.

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Going there was not fun, got dropped out of the PE class, sent to woodwork shop instead. Had to run home after every day from this school."

@you still got your PE@

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A great Jason Isbell song off his album The Nashville Sound

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Been dealing with anxiety and panic attacks for most of my life. In the early years matter were complicated by misdiagnoses and side effects often from mis-prescribed medications. Been stable the last dozen or so years but it's been one of the great battles of my life.

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That sounds a lot like my wife's journey to her diagnosis of an anxiety disorder. She's fine 99.99% of the time, but the unpredictability and inherent irrationality of panic attacks (even though they tend to be mild and brief) makes it an ongoing challenge. I'm glad to hear you've achieved stability--I hope you keep winning the battle.

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Thanks for your kind words. It can feel like such a blessing to be "normal."

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Seems like everyone has it these days though some are better than others at hiding it. Then again, I'm in healthcare where the system is designed to keep adding stressors until you break.

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Do you believe that we have more anxiety today as a society or are we just better at discussing it and diagnosing it?

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Definitely think both. We live a world where belonging, identity, and purpose are harder to find and therefore, harder to anchor oneself. Add to that, increasingly shorter and shorter attention spans that create temporal dislocation, rewiring of the brain, and failure to experience boredom and deep time. In my opinion, this makes it harder to understand people in history and therefore, less connection with history and our own trajectory in it.

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Definitely both.

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The latter…I think it’s easier to identify now.

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I think it's something slightly different in that we have more anxiety out of proportion to the threats we face. We should be happier with so many advancements that have brought us prosperity, comfort, and better health...but we aren't.

Basically, we've set the bar higher (rightfully) for what it means to be human but we still have the same tools available. We're also MUCH more productivity focused as a result of having made so many gains as a species which is its own stressor.

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Somebody I’m close to has significant anxiety. Meds help a bunch but need tweaking on a fairly regular basis. Hard to feel like you can’t help much from the outside.

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we recently got our 15 yr daughter tested in various ways after some recent academic and social challenges at school. they have diagnosis for ADD and anxiety, which are apparently common together and tend to reinforce each other.

as with many things, my wife and i are trying to be supportive as possible but both have different approaches.

luckily our daughter is receptive to the testing and all the new meds and people involved in trying to help. but i can imagine that even all that could be quite a new burden to shoulder.

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My 16 year old daughter was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and depression after we learned of some self harm she was engaging in. She too is on some meds and feeling much better than a year ago, but there have been many bumps along the way. As a parent, it can be very tough to sort out what is mental health, what is age related, and what is just overall personality characteristics. We have her connected with an amazing therapist, after having a pretty lousy one and this has helped her tremendously.

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Both my daughters (18 and 20) started on very low doses of adhd meds a couple of years ago and it's been an absolute game changer for them. The central irony is that you have to remember to take the meds first thing in the morning when all of the previous day's dose has worn off, which doesn't increase the chances that you'd remember to take the meds. My older daughter has been trying out a mild anti-anxiety medication and it seems to be making a positive difference.

I should note that I have spent a lot of time working on behavioral anxiety management and probably have undiagnosed adhd, so this doesn't come out of nowhere - though I will note that both daughters have thoughts on my wife acting like she isn't part of the team, it's not just me ;)

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Feb 3, 2023·edited Feb 3, 2023

Ma Chitwood passed a healthy dose of anxiety down to me through the genes and DNA…her whole family suffers from it, so I’m usually a pretty anxious guy.

Then she and Pa Chitwood met up at Cal, and compounded that anxiety by raising me a Cal fan. Social Services has been called for less.

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when you're thinking about pairing off with someone for the long term, all kinds of people will tell you to look at their parents just in case there are any worrying previews, but not so often to think about the potential neuroses of your offspring

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It's not as big an issue on Pa Chitwood's side, tho that branch is not without it's own peccadilloes.

The former Mrs. Jimmy C had horrible anxiety issues...worse, she refused to address them, which I think is incredibly dangerous.

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The premise of Arsenic and Old Lace.

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I'm screwed.

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You must've

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been born yesterday

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been a beautiful baby, buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfzY4ZuwQxk

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OUR CRUMBLNG DEMOCRACY

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An apparent spy balloon from the PRC has violated US airspace

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/suspected-chinese-balloon-us/index.html

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GOP wingnuts itching to blow that thing up

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1621508281171849218

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NGL, I know the smart, safe thing to do is exactly what Biden is doing. But my heart thinks it would be hella cool to blow that ish up.

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Why do I assume if Trump were in the White House when this happened, he'd look up at it without eye protection, like during the eclipse.

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Apparently multiple balloons (at least 3) transited US air space under Trump, not one was shot down and each was declared not a threat

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He'd nuke it while gazing smugly as the radioactive fallout blankets Montana.

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Or use the Jewish space lasers.

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Sounds like we might need to have some congressional hearings on why Biden didn’t shoot it down, in fact, we might need to impeach Biden over not shooting it down as it shows he is clearly compromised via Hunter Biden’s laptop by the Chinese Communist Party and is in fact the Manchurian Candidate.

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Government decides not to shoot it. Probably because it's white.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/suspected-chinese-balloon-us/h_c062862904e5d17b23284a85714e7351

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Shot down today once it was over the ocean and still within the 12nm limit to engage. First F-22 air to air take down.

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pltm

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It’s not the spelling error that I have issues with, it’s the taking credit for a Democratic policy that is the problem.

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My local congresscritter is the worst about this. He's an obstructionist, election-denying, anti-vaccine lunatic, but you better believe he's taking full credit for all the local projects funded by the infrastructure bill that he voted against.

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Oh you live in Andy Harris' district

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That is so infuriating, it is the ultimate lazy, loser in the class project getting credit and the A grade despite not helping at all.

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Oh Brother...

Sarah Huckabee Sanders picked for GOP State of the Union response

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/02/sarah-huckabee-sanders-state-of-union-00080926

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She looks like a lazy eyed drag queen.

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That’s right in my wheelhouse…. ;-) ;-)

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I'll have a response to her response but I don't think she'll like it.

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I hope she gets heckled in local restaurants again, for old times' sake

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DBD AV CLUB

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Emily in Paris (Netflix ... 13/19 .. undecided about WB)

decided to watch a few episodes while i was working out because i had heard about it enough.

cant imagine i'll watch the whole thing, but it was fun and refreshing at times.

i particularly like the French commentary on Americans and Germans and anyone not French.

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PRO

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Saudis continue their sports-washing, this time sponsoring Women's World Cup

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jan/31/womens-world-cup-football-sponsored-visit-saudi-arabia

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Arrest warrant issued for Joe Mixon. Apparently, he menaced somebody with a gun

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35578579/bengals-joe-mixon-arrest-warrant-menacing-charge

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Every time you see a FB player accused of some violent offense, you kind of figure the guy has CTE

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Then Mixon has had it since he was young. He beat the snot out of an 18-year old woman while he was enrolled at Oklahoma. I'm not sure the CTE thing applies in Mixon's case. He could simply be a degenerate a$$hole.

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Yeah, I don’t think this is CTE related. I remember when he did that at Oklahoma.

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I dunno, they have found in guys who only played in high school….

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Feb 3, 2023·edited Feb 3, 2023

I’m no Mixon fan, but she did call him the N-word…still shouldn’t be hitting anyone.

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That’s right, I forgot about her using that slur. That’s a case of a white woman in Oklahoma learning about the laws of FAFO.

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I've never understood the need to carry (and especially brandish) your own gun when you can easily afford to hire an armed professional for protection.

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These twins have more on the line than just a $25 wager for the Superb Owl

https://whyy.org/articles/twin-brothers-separated-at-birth-rooting-for-opposing-super-bowl-teams/

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Ford back into F1. Ford vs. Ferrari is back on, apparently.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/64509697

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Dillon Brooks hits Donovan Mitchell's balls, so Mitchell chucks one ball at him

https://twitter.com/flashpicks/status/1621534734844153857

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That’s wild - he totally went for the nuts purposefully. What a jackass

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Impressive mental processing speed shown by Brooks to recognize and seize that opportunity while falling.

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ELSEWHERE IN COLLEGE

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Plans to have Texas and Oklahoma leave Big XII early have stalled

https://twitter.com/petethamel/status/1621499858996584449

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The gym I used to play at was a catholic school down the street that No 1 went to. Since it was K-8, they had a lot of balls that were kids balls (up to 6th grade I think), so 1 inch smaller in diameter which I think is the same size as the women's ball. One day we played at least 2 games and didn't notice that we used a smaller ball.

You can notice it's smaller and lighter, but if someone picks up a ball and you all start playing with it, it's easy not to notice.

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2023 Recruit Football Team Rankings, Cal 85th

https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeTeamRankings/

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Wilcox is trying to really hard to catch Mark Fox in ineptness.

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Though I think Wilcox is a career coordinator and lacks the organizational chops to be a Head Coach, at least at the P5 level, I will give him this - he at least appears to be making an attempt to adapt. Schitt-canning Musgrave and Angus, then hiring a spread guy in Spavital to better take advantage of the evolution of football offenses are at least proactive moves…just wish he’d made them 3 years ago.

Contrast that to Mark Fox, who is just a stubborn prick that refuses to adapt to modern day college basketball from a coaching, schematic and recruiting standpoint.

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Feb 3, 2023·edited Feb 3, 2023

Wilcox is several steps ahead of all of us, playing chess to our checkers, as they say.

He's getting quality Group of 5 players now, so that in a couple years when we get relegated we wont have a massive exodus of our Power 5 players. An event like that could tank the program. Instead, we'll be locked and loaded and ready to be a .500 Mountain West team right out of the gate! (and realistically we'd be competing for the MWC championship in our first year if not for a few bad bounces in all of our toss up games.). If not for Wilcox, we'd eventually be staring down a 1-10 rebuild season in the MWC which would take a good 3-5 years after that to even keep the score respectable against the likes of Boise and Fresno.

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Except Boise and Fresno State will take our place in the Pac-1X.

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You can probably count on Nevada & Utah St for all the competitive challenges needed.

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Got hit earlier today with a $1,000 home owner's assessment and a $2,150 garage door bill after it failed to open this morning. Your post made me laugh out loud for the first time today. The key question is will he still be pulling in the $4.5 mil a year for being a middling Mountain West HC?

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Feb 3, 2023·edited Feb 3, 2023

I haven't tuned in to call MBB so don't know whether this statement applies to Fox, but the other major redeeming factors for Wilcox are that he runs an extremely clean program and his guys always play hard for him. These two factors make me continue to believe and hope that he can get the other stuff needed to be successful figured out.

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The one thing I would have to give Fox, at least as of a few games ago, is that the players play hard. They may lack the coaching but they do play hard.

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Feb 3, 2023·edited Feb 3, 2023

12th of 12 in the Pac. I clicked and it has all our transfers but I'm not sure they're being calculated.

Edit: Overall rank is 56 (10th in PAC), transfer rank is 30

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Having only 12 official commits no doubt hurt the ranking which was just behind Buffalo. That hurts. Player development is not a Wilcox strength, and it must be impacting recruiting. Shocking how few players from the offensive side of the ball have been drafted under Wilcox. I thought I read somewhere it was zero. And the guys who seem destined for the league - Mettaur, Polk, Sturdivant, Coleman - all seem to want out before their time is up at Cal. You have to believe that opposing coaches are using that little fact against him.

I went back and looked at Bruce Snyder's bio yesterday. He had 20 Utah State players drafted when he was head coach there, and more than 40 drafted while at ASU. I think the entire Cal offensive line from the 90 and 91 teams got drafted. I know, I know, Cal was never meant to be a development school for the NFL. But still......

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When Cal’s good, they get guys drafted.

As an unabashed Wilcox critic, I am at least intrigued by some of the offensive changes he’s made, and the relative unknown of Sammy Jax da Fifth…who knows, maybe the O-line meshes, the D-line gets a pass rush, and the O clicks and they compete. That schedule is brutal though…

I’m expecting a 4 or 5 win season, with a return to bowl contention in 2024…again, I would punch someone’s Nana and Pop Pop for the Sun Bowl…

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We'll have a bigger draft class when more players graduate (extra covid year still impacting). Lost more players to unplanned transfer than running out of eligibility so you have to use the portal (which we did).

Agree that Wilcox has been a mess on the offensive side. Really hope Spavital and the new assistants can get us in gear. I've also already made the mental shift that each team will have 2 developmental programs: "boot camp" for underclassmen and "finishing school" for upperclassmen. It's ok for NFL-caliber players to leave after boot camp if we can bring in others for finishing school. Those NFL-caliber guys will still be on the field helping us while they're here.

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Like your analysis, but it's the boot camp part that worries me. Really looking to see if those 6-5 redshirt freshman O lineman - Jackson Brown and Trent Ramsey - can make a contribution this season. At least one of them should start if if the training, coaching and strength development part of it works.

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Oh yes, we need every bit of OL depth we can muster. I think Bloesch is VERY promising as a coach but we won't know until Jackson V takes some snaps.

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That's a lot better, esp. with the transfers

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Yeah, about where I'd expect. We'll still be in the transfer market after spring ball (moreso than other programs with larger incoming recruiting classes) so hope we can climb a little more as the depth charts shake out above us.

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We at least have a potentially dynamic game changer at the QB position.

Even when they landed Jack Plummer, he seemed like at best a solid, unspectacular solution. The marriage of Sammy Jax da Fifth and Spavital could be pretty nice.

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CAL

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Go Bears!!!

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[MT&F] Hakeem McMorris (Malik's lil bro) absolutely dominated in Day 1 of the WSU Open that featured women's pentathalon and Men's heptathalon. McMorris won four of the five events on Day 1 and came in 2 in the fifth event.

https://live.athletictiming.net/meets/19291/winners

https://calbears.com/news/2023/2/2/track-field-mcmorris-sets-three-facility-records.aspx

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Congratulations to Hakeem!

Malik is extremely nice and very much a family man. I love that he's back on campus and can share in his brother's success while here.

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[MBB] Devin Askew out for the season

https://twitter.com/CalMBBall/status/1621322939495862272

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There goes our final four hopes

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From the Front Page: Nick writes a tart little article about Mark Fox and him not trying to avoid an L

https://writeforcalifornia.com/p/is-mark-fox-quiet-quitting

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It was a great article.

Fox has either thrown in the towel, or he knows he will return next year because Knowlton won't fire him.

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