136 Comments

DBD Auto

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Milage somewhat improved after replaced O2 sensor. Still not great though.

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May 7, 2022·edited May 7, 2022

I went to a small place in San Leandro to have my cat replaced when I moved back here in 2018. Of courses my check engine light goes on right before I have to smog it. It's a place I've been to many times with my other cars and have never had a problem. Maybe it's a new owner.

Anyways, in 2020 I go to smog it and the place i take it to says they have to fail it because there is a spacer, presumably to lower the readings. I ask how it passed the first time and they said the tester either didn't check or didn't care. So I took it to the local guy to have some other work done and asked them to remove the spacer. He said they could have it tested at the local place and if it fails they can put the spacer back on and retest. Turns out the first guy that tested it is pretty lax when he does the tests. I guess I know where to take a car that has mods.

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The pups and I just pulled into Paradise Valley in the Bronco Sport...we’re near Livingston, MT...Yellowstone Park, Kentucky Derby & W’s game tomorrow...a good day.

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Yesterday I finished replacing the seals in my power steering pump and also replaced the serpentine belt and the tensioner in the Acura. Hopefully I've fixed the leak. Seals and bearing were about 60 so maybe saved $200 vs a new pump from Napa.

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DBD A/V club

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Watching Bad Batch, which is enjoyable enough. Watched the first episode of Strange New Worlds- a Star Trek prequel to TOS with Captain Pike - we certainly enjoyed it, but I think the price of admission is a love of TOS, I'm not sure it's for everyone.

Finished Jane the Virgin (100 episodes - broadcast TV, seems kinda bonkers now); a not quite great show, both a parody and embrace of telenovelas.

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The show at The Greek last night was amazing. It opened with Metalachi, a band that does mariachi covers of 80's hair metal songs. Sam Morril and Mark Normand were both fantastic, with quick hitting, witty jokes. They will both continue to blow up and I'd recommend anyone see them live if possible. Bert Kreischer is a master story teller and knows how to get his crowd into a frenzy. He has a frat boy vibe, but his comedy is hilarious and a lot of fun. 19/19 WB

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This reminds me that I used to share a duplex in Berkeley with a guy who played in a Flamenco metal band called . . . you guessed it . . . Flametal.

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Sounds like a great show. Bert is very funny. He did a show for the Travel Channel (?) a few years ago called Bert the Conqueror. He would go to different places and try out extreme activities, like riding some guy's homemade amusement park rides and riding a human slingshot.

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He hosted that and Trip Flip on Travel Channel, though I think you need Discovery+ to see them now. He currently hosts The Go Big show on TBS, but I haven't tuned in to that yet

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I'm halfway through Ozark S4 part 2. The writing is certainly worse. Conflicts are too frequent and are resolved too quickly, so the story doesn't "travel" because there not enough time to building up suspense around that conflict. B, C, and D story arcs have ambiguous conflicts so they are not very interesting. Instead, they build suspense through long dramatic scenes where people ponder, which is boring. S4 part 2 is well below average, but the series is still really good.

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I find this show ponderous. Still I'll occasionally catch up when I have nothing else to watch.

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I am really liking Slow Horses, is building as it goes. Conversely, I watched Dark on Netflix and while it was really good in S1, S2 is just a skooch too cockamamie for me

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Dark S1 was brilliant. I felt like I was losing track of things in S2 and S3, however.

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Same.

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Slow Horses was quite good, the Brits do spy stuff really well for some reason.

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Non-Twitter business news...

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A story involving a friend of mine who runs ARM China (Haas MBA) and is in the midst of a high profile war with Masayoshi Son (Softbank CEO and Cal grad) who controls the parent company ARM.

May end up with a Mexican standoff...

Arm China says its ousted CEO Wu is refusing to pack up

https://www.reuters.com/technology/arm-china-says-its-ousted-ceo-wu-is-refusing-pack-up-2022-05-05/

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Just the way I like my tacos…wet.

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Birria's fantastic. Birria tacos and burritos are like a French dip but better.

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I remember after moving to Louisville I went to a Mexican place downtown and got a burrito. They asked if I wanted queso or wet. I was used to holding a burritos in foil so I had no idea what they were talking about. What a horrible way to eat a burrito. I don't want queso or enchilada (I assume for wet) sauce over a burrito.

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Richmond

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Mitch

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Dennis

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Marshawn listed his house there for sale at $5.3m a year ago. Since then, he lowered the price and then took it off the market without selling it. He bought it for $3.6m a decade ago.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1456-Sandpiper-Spit_Richmond_CA_94801_M20388-56846

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Spiders

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Your typical Contra Costa County municipality.

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Is it? I'd say Concord is more typical.

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Being facetious. Makes infinitely more sense for Richmond to be part of Alameda or even Solano County. Gerrymandering at it's finest.

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...District.

Still my favorite Irish/Russian/Chinese neighborhood in America

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Garage

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My building has 5 homes in it, 6 side by side garage spaces in 3 garages, and 6 cars parked in them (including mine).

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

I was at a conference this week talking to someone who lives in a gatee community in Elk Grove. As if that wasn't bad enough already, residents are required to have their car parked in the garage by 11 p.m.

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Don't have one and I wish I did. Parking a car in a garage seems like a waste of valuable space.

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It’s nice if you live in a place that is really cold or really hot. If you live in Coastal California, not as necessary though it probably extends the life of your car I would think

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Definitely extends the life of the paint.

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Do you use your garage to park your car?

I have a theory that 80% of homes owners in Southern California do not park their cars in their garage. I am one of those 80% and so are my two immediate neighbors. Furthermore, if you have an EV you shouldn’t be charging in your garage.

If I lived in a very cold or snowy part of the world I would probably park my car in my garage.

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I actually do use my garage to park my truck, even though it fronts on a busy street.

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Yes, we worked very hard to downsize and store our stuff efficiently so that we can barely fit two cars in our garage that was built for two 1929 sized cars. Now the caveat is that we have two classic cars (74 Dodge Dart and a 72 VW bus), so it's important for us to keep them stored inside, also we live on a very narrow street and have limited street parking. We do park two cars "on the street" one directly in front of our garage (with a 4ft wide driveway) and one right in front of it.

Our new neighbors across the street also have four vehicles and use their garage as a gym, they park one car in their driveway (where two would fit) and three on the street including a VW camper van and a Mercedes Sprinter camper van, taking up to what amounts to four street spots on our aforementioned narrow street with very limited parking. We find this rather insensitive as any guests now have to park way up the street and when they have guests or people working on their house (which is daily) there is barely any room for anyone else. Did I mention they are two people in a 5bd 3ba, ~3400sq ft home and they couldn't find a spot for their gym inside!

Of course, first world problems. Can you tell this is a sore spot for us? What do you all think?

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I think no couple should store three cars on the street and park one in the driveway. Especially if the driveway can accomodate two cars.

I live on a narrow street with limited parking. I'd find it annoying if someone decided to take up three spots when they could take up only two.

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And it's really four since the sprinter van is so large.

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they sound like jerks to me, signed, someone who used to live on a street with limited parking and garages on back alleys

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which model of Dodge Dart?

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Swinger with the ol reliable slant 6

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👍

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I live in Burlingame but I think I may be the only person on my street that actually parks my car in the garage. For everyone else it serves as the storage room.

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Why shouldn't you charge an electric car in a garage?

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Sounds like the beginning of a joke.

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Fire risk. It has been a thing recently in California and Teslas catching fire while charging.

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Tesla owners/lessees are guinea pigs for the battery system that comes with the car. This is true of many durable goods, especially items with "new" convenience features.

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how confident are we that the intervening variable here isn't "tesla"

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(minuscule) fire risk?

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Yep. Both cars in garage. Third bay reserved for storage/workshop. Neighborhood: 0/2, 1/3, 0/2, 0/2, 1/2, 1/1.

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Also, I just found out that one of my neighbors belongs to the family responsible for the Snuggie.

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Yep, we park both our cars in the garage, although we seem to be an outlier in our five-house development. Other houses: 0/4 cars in garage; 1/1 car in garage; 1/3 cars in garage; 0/2 cars in garage. We all have large basements for storage, so it's not like the garages are full of stuff.

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California homes mostly don’t have basements so everything goes in the garage.

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I've learned that a house with a basement isn't as common as I once thought it was. I have an 7.5' tall basement, which is rare enough.

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Nah, homes in your area generally have basements, although a LOT of them have been so fixed up, they aren't really basements any more, and I HATE that sellers now are counting substandard (and in many cases, not code-compliant) space in the sq. ft of their houses for sale.

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In my area of Berkeley basements are common. But in homes built since WWII, not so much. Crawlspaces and slab on grade predominate.

The house I lived in above Grizzly Peak Boulevard (my maternal g'parents home when he was a prof at Cal) was built in the late 40s/early 50s. Ranch style house with a stunning view of the Bay. It has a crawlspace that runs the length of the main house, but not under the addition to the Master BR.

Many homes in that area of Berkeley were built in the same era and most have crawlspaces. Some are slab on grade, though this is less common. Lots of mid-century modern and ranch style homes.

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We have a single car garage that we don't use for parking, for the stuff that doesn't belong in a basement. Most of the original houses immediately near ours either have a single car garage or a carport, it's only the new builds that have 2 or 3 car garages. Those are sort of a mixed bag in terms of who uses them and who doesn't.

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I have a beef with modern home developers. While building codes vary by state, they seem to build them the bare minimum - 10 feet wide by 20 feet deep. This is just deep enough to fit a car and squeeze out of the passenger doors with hardly any room for anything else - mowers, bikes, and whatnot. Garage space is not expensive to build when new (about $90/sf).

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

And I thought my garage was narrow; it's 11'-2" wide on the inside. The vehicle entry is 7'-10" wide. My garage was built in 1917.

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That's WIDE for the era, they are usually 6'6" wide doors.

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Traffic calming bollards in London are spaced 6' 6" apart. Though there is plenty of room for your car to get through, they feel quite stressful going through them.

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Plenty? Oh hell NO! For 2002 M5, sure but the 2018 is 6'3" wide

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Geez, that's narrow. I might have to fold in my mirrors if the entry was only 6'-6". A Ford Ranger isn't particularly wide, but it's probably only a few inches narrower than 6'-6".

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

They were built for Model-T's, which were 5'6" wide

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Actually, that explains a different garage we used to have off the back alley. It was narrow and built in 1925. My paternal g'mother said it was built for my g'father's Ford cut-down. It had no running boards.

That garage fell apart in the early 90s.

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I don’t know how any pre 2000 built homes with garages fit modern trucks and SUVs, especially if that truck/SUV has any decent sized after market tires and a small lift kit on it.

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I have a running list of cars I'd buy to put in a large one, not that they're very interesting, but still.

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What are they? If money were no object (not counting modern supercars) I'd get an R33 or R34 GT-R, FD RX-7, MK4 Supra. I already have my NA Miata. I guess I have a type.

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Well there's the US list and the Euro list 😂

There's no real consistency to it. Like right now my autotrader wish list is a '19 Jaguar XJ R, two manual BMW M6s ('87 and '17), an 86 El Camino with a crate engine, a '93 Corvette ZR-1, an '03 BMW M5, an '86 911 Targa, that sort of thing, maybe a '19 Range Rover HSE with the 3L diesel engine for road trips.

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That's quite the diverse list. My ideal garage would be Lotus Evora GT (fun car), Porsche Taycan GTS SportTurismo/wagon(practical car), Triumph Street Triple RS (in case it feels like a two-wheels day).

Though the dream list is usually some combination of lightweight, mid-engine cars.

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the "hit the lotto and retire to Portugal" is even more bonkers tbh. I get the appeal of the lightweight mid-engine cars. Even though it's a sad thing to admit about a dream garage, I've accepted that at most I'm going to be able to use a "fast road" car and that most anything exotic from the last 15 years (maybe more!) is going to be far too fast for road use.

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Euro list includes

Ford Sierra Cosworth

late 90s Alpina B10 wagon, possibly a B9 sedan

TVR Griffith 500

'82 Lancia Beta

Mercedes E500 (the early 90s iteration with the Porsche built v8)

Audi RS2 wagon (keeping with the theme of Porsche-built engines)

Citroen CX2500

'82 Alfa Romeo GTV

Renault Clio Williams 2

current Fiesta ST or Hyundai N20

'11 Range Rover with the 4.4 liter v8 diesel

'97 Fiat Coupe Turbo

'83 Renault 5 Turbo

'84 Peugeot 205 gti

Also I'm fixated on Italian cars with 2.0 liter engines for domestic and other markets that had punitive taxes on larger displacement engines - a Ferrari 308 turbo might be more trouble that it was worth, but a late 90s Maserati Quattroporte or Alfa GTV with 2 liter 6 cylinder turbo engines sound like they'd be a giggle.

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That's why Miata's are perfect. Underpowered but still great handling.

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😃💛M5 you say, '02, maybe in Cambridge green, 75K miles, well looked after?

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pqtm. I thought you put it on BAT or Cars and Bids?

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I remember seeing the 6 series BMW in Moonlighting. Had never seen one before and wondered why they would make a BMW that looked like that.

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Today in Covid

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This is my neighborhood, right next to the grocery store. Why I mostly still stay masked.

The H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program in Rosslyn this week told families that nearly 20% of its senior class had tested positive for Covid over the course of two days, just ahead of AP exams and prom.

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

that's actually quite impressive, in its own way.

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the mind boggles

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He claimed the company bends over backward for the high-paying customers in order to cater to their kinks.

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Elsewhere in college

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Someone who supported Bethany College poisoned the visiting Kansas Wesleyan baseball team's water ahead of their double header. It must have made them mad, because Wesleyan won the second game 33-2.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/33821610/paint-kansas-wesleyan-baseball-team-water-cooler-two-juveniles-suspected

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Gabe Kapler just got a woody thinking about all the ways Kansas Wesleyan ran up the score.

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

Boo hoo.

The NCAA and the P5 conferences brought this on themselves by fighting NIL tooth and nail for years, if not decades. NIL is payback for the antitrust violations of the NCAA over the last century+.

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022Author

In old news, Mark Emmert asked Congress to regulate NIL. IF ONLY THERE WAS SOMEONE WHO HAD A JOB WHO HAD THE TOP RESPONSIBILTY TO MANAGE COLLEGE SPORTS, INCLUDING CREATING RULES

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/33641798/mark-emmert-says-ncaa-congress-work-together-move-nationwide-nil-uniformity

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Wichita State fires AD because they aren't competitive in the NIL market. Shocker, I know.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/33856428/wichita-state-shockers-fire-athletic-director-darron-boatright-amid-criticism-school-compete-nil-market

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*[Lurch groan]*

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Bijan Robinson gets to drive a Lambo thanks to NIL

https://twitter.com/Bijan5Robinson/status/1522318602141065225

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The rich get richer and the poor, well, you know what happens. There is a feedback loop or virtuous circle to the programs that are already on the top of the heap, putting them leaps and bounds ahead of other Power 5 programs that are not perennial Natty contenders. For a school like Cal, it probably means a tough road out of fair to middlin' success or even just plain mediocrity in the future.

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Texas might be rich but they are the underachieving, wealthy trust fund kid at private school.

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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From the LinkedIn of a guy recently arrested for Jan. 6 involvement:

Received my degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Vuli ni Bula (the University of Life Education in Fijian).

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Regardless of language, doesn't that mean "semi-employable"?

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PRO

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Say Hey, you're a year older.

https://twitter.com/SFGiants/status/1522599634383740930

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Phil Mickelson passes Charles Barkley for worst pro athlete gamblers. But John Daly would say he's gotta pump those numbers up and those are rookie numbers.

https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/33862095/book-phil-mickelson-had-more-40-million-gambling-losses-2010-2014

https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/472150870273310721

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and to think I feel bad for occasionally dropping a tenner on the lottery

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Deebo Samuel starts following 49ers on the 'gram again.

https://twitter.com/49erswebzone/status/1522062613957406720

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Why am I not surprised?

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Jose Altuve batting with a 1-2 count against Wyatt Mills. Altuve gets two more balls on the next pitch.

https://twitter.com/zachleft/status/1521936540057841664

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Cup check! I love the announcers little 'ooh'

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Ow! That smarts!

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He got a hit after!

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A self-plunking like that couldn't have happened to a more deserving team.

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022Author

Why do the Giants pile on runs when comfortably ahead. Exhibit A, your honor.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap?gameId=401354622

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Phillies manager also screwed up the bullpen. Best setup man to close the 8th and brought in one of the worst relievers to close out the game up 6. He struggled big time so they hurriedly got Knebel up (their closer I think) to start warming up. They did a mound visit, threw to 1st a bunch, threw 1 pitch, then replaced him. Knebel came in not fully warm and proceeded to give up 3 more I think.

Almost as bad as the Timberwolves coach not calling TO in the middle of a 25-0 run.

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Wasn't Marte an A last year?

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Yes, Starling Marte was an Oakland A last year.

His brother, Ketel Marte, plays outfield for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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This rugby fan went to the Kevin Riley school of field awareness

https://twitter.com/justin_tafa/status/1522512016656588800

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Trolls gonna troll.

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CAL

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Such is Life, Cugel

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FET: I went to a Niners Raiders game once at Candlestick, was super hungover. The woman in the seat in front of me had a tattoo across her lower back that said “That which nourishes me also destroys me.”

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Shouldn't it have been on her belly?

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Raiders fan I assume?

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Yep!

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My mood brightened this morning when I realized that it's less than four months until football season kicks off and that we are thus far closer to next season than last. Then I remembered that I'm a Cal fan and my mood went back down. Even so....Go Bears!

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But we have Notre Dame in Sept.

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Go Bears!!!

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