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They're going to be partying in the Richmond District tonight

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1523710639713181702

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DBD test kitchen

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Made steak au poivre for mother's day. results on the IG.

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Dolly Parton x T.Bell collab

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I didn’t know about this. Mexican pizza sounds good. Also Panda Express should offer Chinese pizza.

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Tell the DBD a fake fact.

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Arby's stands for America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir

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There are no escalators in the entire country of Uganda.

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Caesar stopped and did not cross the Rubicon.

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The Russians got as far as Cheyenne across to Kansas, but we held them at the Rockies and at the Mississippi. The Russians - reinforced with 60 divisions - sent three whole army groups across the Bering Strait in to Alaska, cut the pipeline, came across Canada to link up somewhere in the middle - but we stopped their butt cold. The lines have pretty much stabilized now.

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Cal has a shot at making the Rose Bowl.

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Aaron Rodgers was the 2004 Rose Bowl MVP.

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The trophy awarded to college football's national champion is called the Tom Holmoe Trophy.

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Speaking of Holmoe, here's something that sounds like a fake fact but is true: Tom Holmoe had a better winning percentage against U$C than either Pappy Waldorf or Jeff Tedford.

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hahaha

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May is Mental Heath Awareness Month. An estimated 26% of Americans suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. For too long people with mental health issues have felt shame and suffered in silence. If you are in pain let trusted family members and friends know and contact mental health professionals. Equally important, if you are close to someone who has had struggles, check in and be available to them. Thankfully today there is less of a stigma in sharing one's experiences. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/05/03/fact-sheet-celebrating-mental-health-awareness-month-2022.html

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The Philippines decided that it needed more Ferdinand Marcos - someone with tons of name recognition but no policy platform.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/prospect-marcos-revival-looms-philippines-votes-new-president-2022-05-08/

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I didn't know that much about Philippines politics until I saw John Oliver today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtdVglihDok

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Oh I downloaded last night's episode. Still need to watch it.

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to be fair, the a decent number of the politics in the philippines is about name recognition but no policy platform - see all the former TV and movie and sports stars in the government.

Here's a list of 75 https://www.esquiremag.ph/politics/news/retired-actors-who-found-new-beginnings-as-politicians-a00204-20171011-lfrm2

(For those wondering why there's so many signs and Filipinos named Bong, Bong is "Junior" in tagalog)

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Mama needs a new pair of shoes!!

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What unusual ads are you being served now thanks to an innocuous google search (or other innocuous action)?

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I bought one cycling jersey two years ago and now my ads are still 1/3 cycling gear

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The phrase "see sexy stormtroopers and a seductive Boba Fett" in a Facebook ad for a random SF strip club.

I was looking at several live music clubs in SF, looking for date night ideas. I must've tripped up the weirdest algorithm. I blame Zuck.

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Free Fly shirts. I bought one of their soft water-sports shirts three years ago and it's been non-stop Free Fly ads since then. That being said, it is a really nice shirt.

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Cord covers

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Car seats. I bought a forward-facing one for Cf-98 a few weeks ago and apparently advertisers think I'm planning to buy enough to transport a small army of children.

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Ukraine / Russia

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Hero rescues four people, two of whom had gunshot wounds, taking them on a wild ride through streets of Donesk - including on a mined road and through a hail of bullets that results in four bullets to the legs and getting a little toe blown off. Car stalls due to the bullet damage, but is started again and they make it to a hospital. Hero is a 15 year old girl.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-escaping-war-1.6445840

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Fortunately, Putin does not announce anything new at key May 9th celebration

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DBD AV CLUB

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Watched the first 2 episodes of season 2 of Tehran. Suitably ridiculous but well executed

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Finally got around to Don Cheadle's piece Miles Ahead - Miles Davis. Okay enough though certainly a fictional plot but it imagined his life and times enough to satisfy my new found interest in him and his music.

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May 9, 2022·edited May 9, 2022

Ha!

Miles Davis composed and recorded the music in a single recording session while he watched a screening. He took notes while watching a rough cut and then invited a quartet of French and US musicians in a for few hours (from 11pm to 5am one night), improvising each number and allegedly sipping champagne with Jeanne Moreau and Louis Malle.

For Elevator to the Gallows, as below.

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Finished Winning Time - very solid show, not quite great, but very good.

Watched "Elevator to the Gallows" tight thriller from 1961, Louis Malle's debut as a director. Had some of the same felling as American Noirs - but was much more nihilistic.

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Finished Ozark...maybe a titch below their previous efforts, but not bad. Ending such critically acclaimed shows seems a tough endeavor.

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Loved the show though not crazy about the final season. Thought the last episode was aces though. Great ending.

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TOWN PLANNING

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May 9, 2022Liked by BentPawn

I became an expert in Town Planning by playing SimCity in the early 90s.

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This is one of those things you don’t notice until you go somewhere without it. I went to Prague in the late 90s and it was such a weird hodgepodge of things jumbled together. I saw a strip club next door to a church. Also right next to a tourist site in the old city there was a big billboard for a gay porn site with two gentlemen engaged in amorous acts. I thought it was hilarious but if you were just entering capitalism you’d think man this is some fucked up shit

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Houston . .. Houston Texas. . . greatest city around!

(I honestly barely noticed when I lived there)

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Back in the day I used to major in Urban Studies. The classes were fun. But I switched to architecture in junior year.

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Had a brief, very brief post grad appearance at CSUS, way back, to try some silly endeavor that touched on urban/county planning. I was incredibly bored by it with the ultimate cameo memory of sitting with a study group of older, sober bureaucrats with styrofoam coffee cups and floating cigarette butts. Bailed out after two months shaking my head.

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By town planning, do you mean UN Agenda 21? Sorry, I am living in the past, I think that was 10-15 global conspiracies ago.

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I used to hate HOAs and town planning because of the petty enforcements and brain-number bureaucracy. Over the past two decades, I've learned to love them because some people cannot be trusted to do the right thing and will ruin it for everyone if left without boundaries.

I picked the above picture because it reminded me of a typical highway-offramp town, which made me vaguely sad.

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HOAs have always struck me as the most localized argument that democracy doesn’t work

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That picture reminds me of many off ramps along the 5 that I stopped at while driving from San Diego to Berkeley when I went to Cal. I don’t know if they were more depressing to look at during the day or night. I always wonder where do these employees live out here?

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The picture reminds me of many offramps on highways in the midwest. Reminds me of Kettleman City halfway between the Bay Area and LA.

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At least Kettleman City has an in n out...

I was reminded of the towns off I-81 along the Appalachian mountains

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There are quite a few stretches of 81 and 84 covering Harrisburg - Scranton - Newburgh where you’d be genuinely psyched to come across that much commerce right by the interstate

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Yep, that was my stop when driving from Berkeley to San Diego or vice versa so I could get gas and In N Out.

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I always stopped there too

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I'd take a bus from Anaheim to Oakland as part of the SD-Berkeley trip to visit my girlfriend and Kettleman City was the scheduled lunch break.

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Ooh...I wonder when they added that. I don't think I stopped there the last couple of times i drove it.

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That made getting gas there more tolerable. It's usually the first spot where you have to refuel when driving from SF to LA.

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Yeah, we hit that the last time driving down.

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I think I usually get it at Santa Nella coming up and Grapevine going down. That's usually about 300 mi when I used to drive to Long Beach.

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i-77 has some excellent scenic turnouts. i prefer that one of if iam headed SW of NYC

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yP2esv4NFDRgfKA6

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ELSEWHERE IN COLLEGE

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ASU's backup DE has been arrested for killing a pedestrian while DUI. Ugh.

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/driver-faces-dui-charge-after-pedestrian-hit-by-car-in-scottsdale-police

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In related news...

Kentucky RB Chris Rodriguez, SEC's top returning rusher, arrested for DUI and careless driving

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/kentucky-rb-chris-rodriguez-secs-top-returning-rusher-arrested-for-dui-and-careless-driving/

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TODAY IN COVID

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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Keep off the lawn, but okay to trample on a woman's rights

https://twitter.com/presssec/status/1523649143951962115

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"I Want to Meet With the Taliban’: Tales of Trump’s Head-Scratching Diplomacy

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/09/mark-esper-memoir-taliban-trump-afghanistan-00030810

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PRO

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Jokić rumored to win MVP again. Rumor has it that Jokić said that "he had to drag Aaron Gordon and DeMarcus Cousins up and down the court for 48 minutes".

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33886198/sources-denver-nuggets-star-nikola-jokic-named-nba-mvp-second-consecutive-season

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Warriors destroy the nets and the Grizzlies

https://www.goldenstateofmind.com/2022/5/7/23061762/warriors-grizzlies-recap-steph-curry-jordan-poole

Game 3 did not start well for the Golden State Warriors. They were sloppy on offense, with seven first quarter turnovers. They had poor shot selection. Their defense was fine, but the Memphis Grizzlies bested it anyway, making three after three after three.

At one point the Grizzlies led 21-8. Chase Center was quiet. Steph Curry was scoreless.

And then the Warriors made a shot, and made another shot, and made a few more dozen shots. Before long you forgot entirely that there had ever been a double-digit deficit, and the rout was officially on.

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Great game. I loved the game plan. Didn't come out and shoot a ton of 3s like they did in the past. Just cut into the lane and finish in the paint. Let the Grizzlies shoot open 3s in the beginning to bring their confidence up, after which they regress to the mean.

I do hope Ja is alright. No way Poole's hand injured Ja's knee. Here's an unbiased doctor's video that if that amount of pressure injured someone's knee he would be injuring every single knee he evaluates. This is as opposed to the team doctor saying that definitely injured the knee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BegbbyqgKA&ab_channel=BrianSuttererMD

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Everyone in the NBA is such drama queens these days, fouls and hard fouls are part of the game. Way too much whining all the way around, both on the floor and from the fans.

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The Grizzlies complaining reeks of entitlement. Between his campaigning to get Poole suspended and the borderline dirty playing by some of his players, I'm beginning to really not like the Grizzlies coach. However if they keep the core together they should be a force to be reckoned with for years to come in the West.

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Seems like desperation from Memphis to get a contributor suspended, it will be interesting to see how GS plays tonight with Brooks back in the line up for Memphis. If they go back to Memphis up 3-1 I have a hard time seeing them losing the series.

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Yeah this is a huge game

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And a nail biter it was, Curry closed it out with 8-8 from the FT line. Wishing Kerr a speedy recovery from his COVID diagnosis. Happy we had a HC waiting in the wings to taker over.

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Game #28: Third straight sweep, ninth straight loss

https://www.athleticsnation.com/2022/5/8/23062833/game-28-oakland-as-minnesota-twins-score-result

The past couple weeks have been a performance only a mother could love.

The Oakland A’s lost their ninth straight game on Sunday, this time 4-3 to the Minnesota Twins at Target Field. The defeat wraps up their third straight series in which they were swept by the opponent.

On the bright side, the A’s scored a few runs this afternoon! That’s progress, after totaling one run on 11 hits in their previous three games combined, and averaging 2.6 runs per contest during the losing streak. They even held a brief lead today in the 3rd inning! But it wasn’t quite enough, and their bats went silent again the rest of the way.

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Too bad that Baseball doesn't have an authority to step in and stop a team from self-sabotage.

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Relegation. I'm sure there are some AAA teams that could beat the A's.

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My Cubbies are right there with them! If the Reds didn’t suck so hard I think we’d be getting more attention for our own suckage.

Big picture, I had hoped in 2012 when we got Theo that he would rebuild the organization so that we could be a perennial contender like the Cards or Dodgers or Yankees. Instead, we are just following the periodic tanking then contending and then tanking again cycle that every other front office group of assholes follows. Oh well

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Difference between the Cubs and the A's is that I think the Cubs rebuild is sincere. I have buddy who's son is Pete Crow-Armstrong and was part of what the Cubbies got back in the Baez trade. His dad grew up in Chicago and is nutty Cubs fan. That Pete got traded there is like an incredible dream come true. Can't wait for him to get the call. Really thoughtful kid too.

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Giants win back-to-back for Mother’s Day, beat Cards 4-3

https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2022/5/8/23063053/mlb-scores-san-francisco-giants-saint-louis-cardinals-recap

On a fine Mother’s Day, the San Francisco Giants honored everyone’s mother by beating the Saint Louis Cardinals 4-3, to win back-to-back games for the first time this month.

Jakob Junis turned in a solid start, going five innings and allowing two runs on just three hits with five strikeouts. Both runs came off a second inning homer by Juan Yepez, the only real mistake Junis made all day.

LaMonte Wade Jr. made his return to the lineup felt, though, by blasting a two-run homer in the bottom of that inning that tied up the score.

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Walker Buehler, Dodgers finish off sweep of Cubs

https://www.truebluela.com/2022/5/8/23062893/walker-buehler-100-starts-dodgers-sweep-cubs

To begin their gauntlet of 31 games in 31 30 days, the Dodgers wanted to rely on starting pitching to take some pressure off of a bullpen that is sure to be taxed over the next month. Sunday night saw the Dodgers send their best to the mound, and Walker Buehler delivered with seven strong innings to beat the Cubs, 7-1, finishing off a sweep at Wrigley Field.

Buehler induced a season-high 15 swinging strikes on Sunday. He kept the Cubs off balance by throwing his cutter the most often. Buehler threw the cutter 38 times in his 98 pitches, a pitch he’s thrown 26 percent of the time this year.

After a double and single scored a run in the first inning, Buehler kept Chicago off the board after that, giving up only two singles and two walks the rest of the way. He struck out six on the night.

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Did y'all see the fake marina at the Miami GP?

https://apnews.com/article/miami-dolphins-nfl-sports-formula-one-2e704306c793e91f02ca6b331901c69f

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Absurd, so dumb.

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I assumed it was a boat sales deal, where customers could look at them. Like a boat show.

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I think it was like an Epcot version of the marina in Monte Carlo

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That was, uh, something...

The race itself was kinda dull, unfortunately.

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The more that I got into F1, the more that I realized that the bulk of the excitement comes on Saturday during qualifying. The new cars this year does allow more passings during races, but it certainly pales in comparison to the Kentucky Derby, for example.

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Some good racing back in the pack, but only 1 real exchange of the lead after the first corner of the first lap, even with an extended yellow/safety car. Not that that isn't what happens in a lot of F1 races. Still, sat thru it, hoping against hope. Looking at the post-race, the heat and humidity did really do a number on the drivers. Wonder what would have happened if the race were longer? I despise F1's aversion to refueling that requires shorter races than might otherwise be, and takes a lot of potential late race drama out of it. But then, F1 is more about the social event (and engineering/car prep) than it is real racing,

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Kid (and family) are ejected from 3rd row seats after (allegedly) pushing Chris Paul's mom. Paul was not happy with the kid.

https://twitter.com/DallasTexasTV/status/1523462415635009537

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80-1 longshot Rich Strike wins the Kentucky Derby with this stunning surge on the backstretch

https://twitter.com/NBCSports/status/1523104042427334660

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That was a fun race, hoping this result does stand unlike last year...Medina Spirit (RIP).

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May 9, 2022·edited May 9, 2022

The biggest thing about the Derby is racing luck...20 horses, going farther than they ever have, before a crowd of 150,000 people...real nice ride by Sonny Leon to pilot through the openings. When the first half goes in :45 & change, you’re gonna have horses that just stop, and basically start backing up. Rich Strike was moving well, and Leon navigated the holes perfectly with a full head of steam after saving all the ground for nearly a mile. That horse has the pedigree to run all day, but wasn’t even supposed to be in the race and was 80-1 for a reason! Tough to see him winning Preakness with the tight turns, but a great story.

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Made a great move mid-race, but also was hopelessly blocked until 2 horses just in front both bore out a lane, opening a hole, which he instantly dove into, with another great move. But the best of all was the move around Messier, who put it in reverse. That could easily have ended it. Still, despite talk about pace, 2 strong favorites were still at the lead down the stretch (good runs there too), and were not stopping; they just got out-run. Time was 2:02.6something, so it wasn't a fast overall time. A lot of fun, and really, a lot of good racing.

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May 10, 2022·edited May 10, 2022

Honestly, Rich Strike probably should never have been 80-1, considering:

1. none of these horses are unbeatable, or ultra-talented, unlike recent years;

2. Summer is Tomorrow is ALL speed, and was guaranteed to ensure ludicrous early fractions, meaning a pace meltdown was a real possibility;

3. the horse is bred to run all day long, as he’s out of a Smart Strike mare (strong distance broodmare sire) and is by Keen Ice, who beat American Pharaoh at the Derby distance of 1 1/4 miles in the Travers at Saratoga;

4. probably most importantly, he broke his maiden by over 17 lengths in a mile race at Churchill Downs as a 2 y.o.

Should’ve been a long shot definitely, but NOT the longest shot on the board.

Hindsight is 20/20...Newellbany and I ABSOLUTELY do our best handicapping AFTER the race, tho....if you ever need a winner, hit us up...;-)

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I'm not sure how far back he came from but totally reminded me of Mine That Bird. Calvin Borel navigating from dead last halfway (?) through the race.

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Calvin LOVED the rail!!!

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Calvin By-rail.

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Ump who threw out Bumgarner after one inning apologizes

https://apnews.com/article/mlb-entertainment-sports-arizona-baseball-d6b6384287c31ed971b1155c4ca824b1

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I was kinda shocked the ump apologized, but good for him.

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Angel Hernandez needs to apologize for his entire career.

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And since it's Madbum, here's Madbum and Joe West.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZPevbDtCbM&ab_channel=MLB

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CAL

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Finals week(s)

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Go Bears!!!

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From CBS' Pac 12 prognostications:

"Cal will have the Pac-12's best defense … and worst offense: Coach Justin Wilcox has earned nearly universal praise from his peers as a defensive mind, and that will continue despite losing two NFL Draft picks on that side of the ball. Key contributors are back for more, including leading tackler Daniel Scott. Unfortunately, the team's leading passer, rusher and receiver are all gone from a Golden Bears squad that ranked No. 96 nationally in points scored a year ago. Purdue transfer quarterback Jack Plummer should be solid, but quarterback play alone hasn't been the issue. "

Full article:

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/pac-12-spring-football-overreactions-usc-utah-destined-for-clash-to-end-conferences-playoff-drought/

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I don’t know who the writer is, but that article is a little click-baity. His PAC-12 football world is pretty black & white. Little nuance in the article.

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Well I think it is click baity but also Cal is such a minor team on the national stage that someone doing an article for a national paper will spend like ten seconds thinking about them before just regurgitating the Cal-Under-Wilcox narrative of good D, bad O like a chatbot because after all, how far off the mark will that ever be? Not enough for anyone but us to care

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You expect an article titled "overreactions" to push back on some existing narratives instead of just stating them unironically. Maybe the editor hated the content and changed the title afterwards?

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Kind of true. Whether USC is back and in the national championship mix is a little far-fetched.

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The best of times worst of times narrative is so on brand for Cal football.

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