The whole video is 45 seconds long and there was a point pretty early on where my lizard brain was screaming RUN. But think about how fast that thing went and how much force it came with; it made me realize that the videographer was in exactly the right spot. I would have died if I ran. Everyone involved with this video reportedly survived.
I saw this on reddit. The OP posted a comment that said the group was on a guided tour and had taken a break (I think). He had walked away a little bit from them and had seen this rocky outcrop that he knew he could sit behind to protect himself. Had he tried to move away he could've been caught in it. Had they kept walking further on instead of stopped for a little bit, they would've been in the middle of the avalanche (further down the hill that you can see toward the avalanche).
Can't even remember the teams involved but saw an inside the park HR the other day when the ball took a weird bounce off an angle in the left field wall and rolled along the fence toward center. Exciting to watch.
Because gubmint got behind the curve and refused to exercise their prerogative to regulate proactively, even harshly, though it signaled the near destruction of licensed cabs and the new serfdom of thousands.
NASA will announced that they'll release their first images from the James Webb telescope. I mean, not including the initial test image they already released. And not including the sneak preview image that Biden will announce today at 8pm Pacific. To be clear, first images will be released tomorrow, not be confused with the first-first-first or first-first images.
Who cares man, love the hype! Hype it up 10x more, I will lap it up like a dog inhaling toilet water. So fucking awesome to have this scientific exploration at the forefront of the news as opposed to basically anything else that would normally occupy that space!
If a Defensive End gains leverage by looping around, an offensive lineman should cut off the angle and then use his own momentum against him by attacking the outside shoulder
Binged Season 5 and Season 6 of Game of Thrones (16/19, WB). Pretty good story, but it's a bit uneven in places as the plot goes sideways in an attempt to not be repetitive. Jon Snow nihilistically facing the oncoming cavalry charge was one of the most beautiful shots I've ever seen.
Watched Thor: Love and Thunder on Friday night with Avi, Rob and Twist. Tone was very uneven and all over the place, but it was a lot of fun and very enjoyable. Christian Bale was very good as Gorr the God Butcher. Think it's an upper third but not top tier MCU movie.
I mostly enjoyed coasting on the Taika Waititi vibes of it, but the plot and themes kind of fall apart if you think about it even a little bit. I don't think the same was true of Ragnarok.
I've actually liked the individual entries for the most part. And they are doing the thing that people used to complain about them not doing: making more distinct entries with specific artistic voices behind them. You've gotten a Chloe Zhao movie, a Sam Raimi movie, another Taika movie, etc.
If anything, this post-Endgame stuff is more comic-booky: different heroes doing things in different storylines that don't necessarily intersect, plus a lot of weird multiversal stuff that requires the audience to buy into a lot of fantasy/sci-fi concepts.
But at some point I think they do need to provide some idea of where this is going. In the previous phases everyone knew an Avengers movie was coming up soon. Now it's unclear.
Eternals was our family’s least favorite marvel movie haha. We were all bored. I liked Dr Strange, but it was so different from the first one that I still don’t know how I feel about it.
I really quite liked the latest Dr. Strange, yeah it was very different, but I think B.C.'s portrayal is enjoyable and solid - even if the movies are different.
Eternals is the one movie I thought would've been better as a TV show. Trying to introduce ten difference characters in one movie led to a lot of rushing and a lot of "why should I care". If we learn about each character individually maybe we get a bit more "ok I like this character." And despite my personal attraction to Gemma Chan, I don't know that she can carry a super hero movie as the lead.
I feel like a lot of post-endgame stuff ends up between "Fine" and "Very Good" - maybe where we end up at Secret Wars where He Who Remains gets all the heroes and villains onto one planet to fight it out will make it worth it. But I am enjoying most of the content - even the tv shows that people don't like, I find a lot of them have SOME stuff worth watching.
Speaking of slaps--in his new book, Simu Liu reports that his parents slapped him in the face a LOT while he was growing up. I'm surprised. My Asian parents were spankers, but never in the face and never after elementary school.
In the big picture, corporal punishment has gone from ubiquitous to abhorrent within 3 generations and it's been uneven around the world. Living in Hong Kong in the late 90s, I was shocked finding out that all my local contemporaries routinely spanked their children and beat them with feather dusters. Simu Liu's parents were born and raised in China, so having a son who grew up Canadian and rebelled must have been unthinkable to them.
Charles Leclerc survives some late-race issues to win the Austrian Grand Prix, although Ferrari's hopes of a 1-2 finish went up in flames when Carlos Sainz's internal combustion engine turned into an external combustion engine
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc had never won an F1 grand prix without starting from pole position until today, at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. He started in second, behind rival Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, but thanks to aggressive driving and proper tire management from the Ferrari team, Leclerc was able to win his first race since the Australian Grand Prix back in April. Verstappen finished in second place, with Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton taking third.
The Austrian Grand Prix was a bit of a messy one, with several drivers being penalized for exceeding track limits. There were also a couple of minor collisions, which sent some drivers spinning off the track, such as Red Bull's Sergio Perez, whose car was damaged so badly he had to retire from the race just a few laps afterward. But the main story was Ferrari's successful successful strategy, after weeks of critical mistakes. For the past five weeks, Ferrari—and Charles Leclerc specifically—suffered a combination of strategic mistakes and bad luck, which cost both the team and its drivers precious points. However, Leclerc managed to fight back hard, even while battling a malfunctioning throttle pedal, and win his first-ever non-pole position grand prix today.
Condy Rice (former Furd professor and current Director at Hoover Institute) has joined the Denver Bronco's ownership group. The current head coach was an assistant at Furd. The GM Is John Elway. Are the Broncos now officially the evil empire?
I was at yesterday's game and they had pretty good turnout, especially for a game against an AL West team. Around 20k after nearing 30k the previous two games. A handful of Dodgers fans were there as well.
It was a far cry from the last A's game I saw at Camden Yards, which had an overly optimistic 8k (maybe half actually showed up). I had never seen a concourse that empty pre-game...
I caught a little of the Friday and Saturday games on TV. Floppy hat and Hawaiin shirt giveaways helped with the attendance but the fans were really into it and credit that to them playing well.
One run on five hits. Another quiet day for the Oakland A’s lineup.
The A’s lost 6-1 to the Houston Astros on Sunday, wrapping up their weekend series at the Coliseum.
Oakland just never got anything going today. They at least reached base in six different innings, but they never put multiple runners on at once, and they only got into scoring position three times. That futility has become all too familiar of a story this summer.
The Dodgers overcame their largest deficit of the season to win 11-8 and sweep the four-game series against the Cubs. The Cubs took a 5-0 lead after their P.J. Higgins hit a grand slam in the first inning. After the Dodgers scored three times in the bottom of the first, the Cubs made it a five-run lead again after David Bote hit a three-run homer in the third.
In the bottom of the third, after a Freddie Freeman double led to a run, the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. A two-out walk to Gavin Lux made it 8-5 and then a key throwing error on Mookie Bett’s grounder led to two runs scoring and put the go-ahead run at second base.
Trea Turner punched a two-run single to left to give the Dodgers an improbable 9-8 lead. And this will still the bottom of the third.
The Cubs’ announcer said they have been playing each other since 1890 and this is the first year one team swept the season series. Big change from 2016/17 when we played in back to back LCSs
Nick's excellent article on our AD depressed the hell out of me. I have no confidence in Knowlton in terms of hirings, firing and handing delicate or difficult situations. Some one give me hope.
My mother-in-law allowed me to stay at her place as a chaperon for my kid who is taking a summer school class in NYC. She is staying up at her second house. When I arrive, she drops the bomb on me that her building's gas supply was condemned so she has no access to her stove, oven, or drier. I do have a microwave and hot plate. I vowed to see this experience as glass half-full rather than empty.
Her place is in Brighton Beach, NY. For those who don't know, it is essentially 80% 1st generation immigrants from ex-Soviet states. There's a reason it's called "Little Odessa". There are no standard Western style grocery stores here, but there are plenty of Euro-Soviet markets with tons of cheap fruit out front, a small section for produce and meats, and row after row of imported canned and boxed food written in Cyrillic. Ex-Soviets don't appear to have a strong take-away dining culture, so most take away food is dominated by non-Soviet foods like pizza, doner kebab, and fried chicken - and that's not going to be sustainable over the coming weeks. But the grocery stores do have a cold-bar culture. So I am going to be eating a ton of cold-bar food in the coming weeks. Tonight, I think it's going to be boxed chicken broth + "tree dumplings" (aka pelmeni) and whatever salad I can make from the produce section.
I'm also going to try my hand tonight at some Eastern Bloc spirits.
You're not wrong. I took a stroll through two more markets today. Meat-based dishes are more often than not some sort of fried cutlet. I can read enough cyrillic to identify котлета по-киевски (cutlet-a po-kyiv-sky) - chicken kyiv. I went with "veal cutlet" and some random prepared salad that aren't too mayonnaise-y. The other thing they've got are these giant pasta and pastry filled meat pie/dumplings. I'm looking forward to getting them next.
I saw Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1982 with Mathew Broderick in a rare pre-release in San Francisco before it hit Broadway. That Brighton Beach (BB) is the one and the same of the one that I'm at. BB from the late 19th century through the great depression was a Jewish neighborhood. Hence, it is the backdrop for Neil Simon's "Eugene" trilogy along with Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. This trilogy is semi-autobiographical about Neil Simon's own life growing up poor Jewish lad in New York, but in the Bronx rather than Brooklyn. BB started becoming Ukrainian in the 1970s when the ashekenazi jews migrated here, followed by Russian chain-migration after the Wall fell in 1989. Based on my observation, I am the only Asian person walking around here. There are a few Latin Americans working in the shops, but everyone else is Slavic or central european. I have seen no African Americans here.
I read zero cyrillic. Not long after the break-up of the USSR I had a couple work days at the recently opened U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. The last night I had dinner with some embassy employees. They offered to walk me back to the hotel but I said I was good. Turned out I wasn't and ended up wandering in circles for awhile. Couldn't read the street signs and couldn't find anyone who spoke English.
My cousin who is a lot more well travelled than I am said her biggest difficulty language wise was the central Asian former Soviet republic (Uzbekistan, Kazakistan, etc.). When we were in Moscow 30 years ago, I remember memorizing a few Cyrillic words like 'PECTOBAH' was restaurant.
"Eastern Bloc spirits", by which I take it you mean vodka and the variations on vodka. That would be my takeaway, admittedly tied to the mid-80s.
I had college friends who majored in Russian studies and made more than one trip to the Soviet Union during their college careers. Stolichnaya was the Soviet standard in vodka, but truthfully vodka was more than just Stoli in the Soviet Union. If folks could distill vodka themselves, they would. Alcoholism in the old Soviet Unions was rampant. Reputedly, in the 1980s roughly 50% of Soviet citizens were alcoholic. I don't know if this was more legend than reality, but I know that those who went to the USSR commented on the prevalence of vodka in daily life; it was ubiquitous.
Mortality in ex-Soviet males post-1989 essentially doubled with alcoholism being the main cause of it. If I remember correctly, accidentally freezing to death from passing out outside was a top 3 cause of death.
I went on a winter trip to Harbin in Northeast China (near Siberia) to see the world famous snow and ice festival about 15 years ago.
(It's very very cool - here's a CNN blog about the 2019 version)
Was staying in a cheap Chinese tourist class hotel, and part of the standard package is usually a pretty crappy breakfast. Harbin is very close to Russia, and has a very strong Russian influence - the main street and giant Orthodox church are all Russian, as are a lot of the restaurants.
So it wasn't a surprise that there were a ton of Russian tourists in the hotel. The breakfast is set-up only at large round tables - so you have to share tables. I get myself some congee and eggs + bacon and sit down, look over and there's a family with parents and either 2 adult kids or 1 adult kid and 1 spouse/partner. Between the 4 of them (it's 7am!) they have two empty vodka bottles, and 2 empty cans of beer each.
So last week we had pulled pork all-American BBQ sandwiches - very tasty. But there was a lot of pulled pork, and yesterday that was added to fried vegetables with I guess leftover spicy tomatillo sauce to have over rice, with cotija cheese to sprinkle on top, and some crema as well - very tasty indeed. Went well with a 2017 Ridge Pagani Ranch Zinfandel.
Daughter made tasty "burnt" butter cupcakes for dessert.
This reminds me, I've been intrigued by the idea of digital pinball machines. I found the old Wii pinball simulations to be enjoyable enough, and you can get some now that are basically HD TVs set into a pinball cabinet driven by a decent cpu/gpu. They're cheaper than real pinball. $700 gets you a 75% size version that is so-so with only 720p. Slightly more than $1k gets you basically full size 1080p. You can pay lots more and get 4k. Still would prefer to try before buying though.
My workplace is renown throughout the region as having the worst IT department among employers. I can attest to this—I typically am able to get a work-around going way before there’s any hope of our IT folks working on it.
I received a new gaming computer as an extremely generous birthday gift from my fiancé's family, but it immediately had severe artifacting that caused it to crash frequently. It's currently been sent back to the retailer to replace the GPU. Had to pay for the shipping myself, naturally.
For the last two weeks, I've been experiencing slowness in applications communicating across the network or to the cloud. Often an application that I'm working in will show (Not Responding) when I save and hold there for about 15-20 seconds, sometimes longer.
We also have many employees (probably a daily majority) working remotely, which, I would imagine, impacts response times. I rarely work remotely and I'm in the same building as the servers.
There was a recent case of an online auction of antiquities wherein the auction site was overwhelmed with traffic, leading to an outage. The auction house had to postpone the auction until July 21st, citing a need to upgrade the biddr platform. They emailed the participants that due to the successful work of the IT staff capacity has been increased.
it's pretty good. we have an outside group do it. they are local, but we founded by folks from Sarajevo, so they have good (SF) nighttime tech support based there.
I actually split the diff the other day. It was about 9pm here in Japan and I spent an hour with someone who had just finished lunch. I wouldn't have been able to work with one of the SF-based folks
Perhaps it's time to travel to Europe. Euro is almost at parity to the US dollar.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/investing/euro-dollar-parity/index.html
one friend got covid after landing in rome (sick there); another got it after being in Paris (sick at home).
YMMV
This POV of an avalanche in Kirgizstan is something else.
https://twitter.com/US_Stormwatch/status/1546200692125093889
The whole video is 45 seconds long and there was a point pretty early on where my lizard brain was screaming RUN. But think about how fast that thing went and how much force it came with; it made me realize that the videographer was in exactly the right spot. I would have died if I ran. Everyone involved with this video reportedly survived.
I saw this on reddit. The OP posted a comment that said the group was on a guided tour and had taken a break (I think). He had walked away a little bit from them and had seen this rocky outcrop that he knew he could sit behind to protect himself. Had he tried to move away he could've been caught in it. Had they kept walking further on instead of stopped for a little bit, they would've been in the middle of the avalanche (further down the hill that you can see toward the avalanche).
I think I got the details pretty close.
It's making the rounds. It showed up earlier on my FB feed.
Who has the best/worst home baseball field dimensions? Do you like symmetry? Or do you prefer quirky outfields and/or walls?
I like asymmetry, so weird dimensions, weird walls, etc. Anything that can make the ball bounce weird.
Can't even remember the teams involved but saw an inside the park HR the other day when the ball took a weird bounce off an angle in the left field wall and rolled along the fence toward center. Exciting to watch.
^^^
https://twitter.com/Cubs/status/1544090717458468864
That's the one.
I kind of miss Tal's Hill (the slight hill and the flagpole at the edge of centerfield at the Astro's home park Enron/Minute Maid)
That was an interesting feature. I thought they should've kept it.
Uber is and was an unethical company and is doing nothing to persuade me to use Lyft instead
https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/10/leaked-uber-files-reveal-history-of-lawbreaking-lobbying-and-exploiting-violence-against-drivers/
Yeah I’m still at the “this is just a cab but more random” stage…why aren’t these regulated like cabs?
Because gubmint got behind the curve and refused to exercise their prerogative to regulate proactively, even harshly, though it signaled the near destruction of licensed cabs and the new serfdom of thousands.
Can you tell I'm still pissed about this?
Are you saying Lyft is just as bad?
Missing a not in there?
SGBear loves unethical companies! Where was he on Jan 6?
Probably taking an Uber to the Capitol
He probably asked for the extra gas guzzling truck.
SHE BLINDED ME WITH
Researchers at Berkeley Labs and elsewhere find the world's largest bacteria
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1107012619/largest-bacteria-ever-discovered-thiomargarita-magnifica
Scientists are surprised about asteroid Bennu and say "duh" in retrospect
https://www.inverse.com/science/bennu-osiris-rex
NASA will announced that they'll release their first images from the James Webb telescope. I mean, not including the initial test image they already released. And not including the sneak preview image that Biden will announce today at 8pm Pacific. To be clear, first images will be released tomorrow, not be confused with the first-first-first or first-first images.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/first-james-webb-telescope-photo-unveiled-biden-rcna37549
Who cares man, love the hype! Hype it up 10x more, I will lap it up like a dog inhaling toilet water. So fucking awesome to have this scientific exploration at the forefront of the news as opposed to basically anything else that would normally occupy that space!
UK scientists using Deez as bait
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62096272
Elsewhere in college
Aloha, which in this case means goodbye
https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/07/08/hawaii-historic-aloha-stadium-nfl-college-set-to-be-demolished
I saw the NFL pro bowl game at that stadium in 2011. The stadium was terrible.
governor just approved the funding for the new Aloha Stadium project
If a Defensive End gains leverage by looping around, an offensive lineman should cut off the angle and then use his own momentum against him by attacking the outside shoulder
https://twitter.com/ElliottWilson/status/1546157186274840579
Impressive. Those security guys have no fucks to give about causing injury. NONE.
I wish the security were that quick in Japan.
Tortellini
DBD AV CLUB
Binged Season 5 and Season 6 of Game of Thrones (16/19, WB). Pretty good story, but it's a bit uneven in places as the plot goes sideways in an attempt to not be repetitive. Jon Snow nihilistically facing the oncoming cavalry charge was one of the most beautiful shots I've ever seen.
Watched Thor: Love and Thunder on Friday night with Avi, Rob and Twist. Tone was very uneven and all over the place, but it was a lot of fun and very enjoyable. Christian Bale was very good as Gorr the God Butcher. Think it's an upper third but not top tier MCU movie.
I mostly enjoyed coasting on the Taika Waititi vibes of it, but the plot and themes kind of fall apart if you think about it even a little bit. I don't think the same was true of Ragnarok.
MCU post-Endgame has not been very good IMO
I've actually liked the individual entries for the most part. And they are doing the thing that people used to complain about them not doing: making more distinct entries with specific artistic voices behind them. You've gotten a Chloe Zhao movie, a Sam Raimi movie, another Taika movie, etc.
If anything, this post-Endgame stuff is more comic-booky: different heroes doing things in different storylines that don't necessarily intersect, plus a lot of weird multiversal stuff that requires the audience to buy into a lot of fantasy/sci-fi concepts.
But at some point I think they do need to provide some idea of where this is going. In the previous phases everyone knew an Avengers movie was coming up soon. Now it's unclear.
Eternals was our family’s least favorite marvel movie haha. We were all bored. I liked Dr Strange, but it was so different from the first one that I still don’t know how I feel about it.
I really quite liked the latest Dr. Strange, yeah it was very different, but I think B.C.'s portrayal is enjoyable and solid - even if the movies are different.
I liked Eternals, but I get it, it's very tonally different from other MCU stuff.
Eternals is the one movie I thought would've been better as a TV show. Trying to introduce ten difference characters in one movie led to a lot of rushing and a lot of "why should I care". If we learn about each character individually maybe we get a bit more "ok I like this character." And despite my personal attraction to Gemma Chan, I don't know that she can carry a super hero movie as the lead.
I feel like a lot of post-endgame stuff ends up between "Fine" and "Very Good" - maybe where we end up at Secret Wars where He Who Remains gets all the heroes and villains onto one planet to fight it out will make it worth it. But I am enjoying most of the content - even the tv shows that people don't like, I find a lot of them have SOME stuff worth watching.
The Old Man, Only Murders in the Building and For All Mankind are what I look forward to every week.
We really like Ms Marvel, not really at all what I was expecting, but quite fun.
Also on the 4th episode of Dark Wind which is very good.
Looking forward to Better Call Saul today.
Saw Chris Rock at the Paramount in Oakland Friday night. Best comedy show I've ever been to. The laughs were consistent and hearty.
What did he mention about the Will Smith slap?
Speaking of slaps--in his new book, Simu Liu reports that his parents slapped him in the face a LOT while he was growing up. I'm surprised. My Asian parents were spankers, but never in the face and never after elementary school.
In the big picture, corporal punishment has gone from ubiquitous to abhorrent within 3 generations and it's been uneven around the world. Living in Hong Kong in the late 90s, I was shocked finding out that all my local contemporaries routinely spanked their children and beat them with feather dusters. Simu Liu's parents were born and raised in China, so having a son who grew up Canadian and rebelled must have been unthinkable to them.
https://people.com/movies/simu-liu-healed-relationship-parents-after-trauma-we-were-dreamers/
He came out and immediately said he was fine and the feeling was back in his face. That was the extent of it.
That slap was the best thing that could have happened to Rock - gave his career a nice boost at a time when he had kind of faded away
"It's easy when you have good material."
TODAY IN COVID
CDC announces that the B.5 omicron variant is now the dominant version in the US. Apparently, prior omicron infection does not offer much protection.
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
PRO
Charles Leclerc survives some late-race issues to win the Austrian Grand Prix, although Ferrari's hopes of a 1-2 finish went up in flames when Carlos Sainz's internal combustion engine turned into an external combustion engine
https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/ferraris-charles-leclerc-back-in-the-title-hunt-after-f1-austrian-grand-prix-victory
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc had never won an F1 grand prix without starting from pole position until today, at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. He started in second, behind rival Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, but thanks to aggressive driving and proper tire management from the Ferrari team, Leclerc was able to win his first race since the Australian Grand Prix back in April. Verstappen finished in second place, with Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton taking third.
The Austrian Grand Prix was a bit of a messy one, with several drivers being penalized for exceeding track limits. There were also a couple of minor collisions, which sent some drivers spinning off the track, such as Red Bull's Sergio Perez, whose car was damaged so badly he had to retire from the race just a few laps afterward. But the main story was Ferrari's successful successful strategy, after weeks of critical mistakes. For the past five weeks, Ferrari—and Charles Leclerc specifically—suffered a combination of strategic mistakes and bad luck, which cost both the team and its drivers precious points. However, Leclerc managed to fight back hard, even while battling a malfunctioning throttle pedal, and win his first-ever non-pole position grand prix today.
Condy Rice (former Furd professor and current Director at Hoover Institute) has joined the Denver Bronco's ownership group. The current head coach was an assistant at Furd. The GM Is John Elway. Are the Broncos now officially the evil empire?
https://www.denverbroncos.com/news/statement-from-rob-walton-on-behalf-of-the-walton-penner-family-ownership-group
Yes.
Jet's Zach Wilson was reportedly mauled by a cougar a few years back
https://twitter.com/tezah__/status/1545992424199274496
I guess this depends on how you feel about soaking.
Do you think he had a brain fart or just prematurely celebrated a goal that he thought was beyond the goal line?
https://twitter.com/sportbible/status/1546221239336837124
Making big money betting on Canadian football
The Baltimore Orioles have improbably won 8 games in a row. They have as many wins as the SF Giants.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/standings
I was at yesterday's game and they had pretty good turnout, especially for a game against an AL West team. Around 20k after nearing 30k the previous two games. A handful of Dodgers fans were there as well.
It was a far cry from the last A's game I saw at Camden Yards, which had an overly optimistic 8k (maybe half actually showed up). I had never seen a concourse that empty pre-game...
I caught a little of the Friday and Saturday games on TV. Floppy hat and Hawaiin shirt giveaways helped with the attendance but the fans were really into it and credit that to them playing well.
They have been playing good ball and are winning the close ones. Only a couple games out of the wild card at this point.
And they're the last team in the AL East. Strong division. All 3 WCs could come out of there.
Heinz did not renew their sponsorship of the Pittsburg stadium.
https://twitter.com/ThePoniExpress/status/1546474758912581632
Can’t wait for [awkward technobabble initialism] field!
Which crypto currency gets it?
Acrisure (Insurance)
Giants destroy the Pads to even up the 4 game series.
Boo!
MLB All Stars:
A's- Paul Blackburn
Giants - Joc
Dodgers: Betts, Turner, Gonsolin, Kershaw
I bet Rodón will end up an all star when one of the pitchers gets replaced because they pitched on Sat.
Game #87: Another quiet loss for A’s
https://www.athleticsnation.com/2022/7/10/23203107/game-87-oakland-as-houston-astros-score-result
One run on five hits. Another quiet day for the Oakland A’s lineup.
The A’s lost 6-1 to the Houston Astros on Sunday, wrapping up their weekend series at the Coliseum.
Oakland just never got anything going today. They at least reached base in six different innings, but they never put multiple runners on at once, and they only got into scoring position three times. That futility has become all too familiar of a story this summer.
Dodgers comeback and beat Cubs 11-9
https://www.truebluela.com/2022/7/10/23202028/dodgers-cubs-freddie-freeman-brusdar-graterol-trea-turner
The Dodgers overcame their largest deficit of the season to win 11-8 and sweep the four-game series against the Cubs. The Cubs took a 5-0 lead after their P.J. Higgins hit a grand slam in the first inning. After the Dodgers scored three times in the bottom of the first, the Cubs made it a five-run lead again after David Bote hit a three-run homer in the third.
In the bottom of the third, after a Freddie Freeman double led to a run, the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. A two-out walk to Gavin Lux made it 8-5 and then a key throwing error on Mookie Bett’s grounder led to two runs scoring and put the go-ahead run at second base.
Trea Turner punched a two-run single to left to give the Dodgers an improbable 9-8 lead. And this will still the bottom of the third.
The Cubs’ announcer said they have been playing each other since 1890 and this is the first year one team swept the season series. Big change from 2016/17 when we played in back to back LCSs
GBBR. Pretty amazing game.
GBBR. We went crazy on the throwing error by the 3B.
CAL
Go Bears!!!
Nick's excellent article on our AD depressed the hell out of me. I have no confidence in Knowlton in terms of hirings, firing and handing delicate or difficult situations. Some one give me hope.
I had forgotten that Knowlton's contract was extended through 2029. I wonder if men's bball will have climbed out of the abyss by then...
I had forgotten Knowlton even existed
At least he might know how to fund the department
Baby steps!
https://twitter.com/KikiDoodleTweet/status/1546548781969453056?s=20&t=HYvguAPSmIVJjn2LJGXJQQ
Okay, but hear me out.
What if this is how T-Rexes moved.
(click through to see video)
No new comments?
Xfinity internet and cable are out at my house.
DBD Test Kitchen
My mother-in-law allowed me to stay at her place as a chaperon for my kid who is taking a summer school class in NYC. She is staying up at her second house. When I arrive, she drops the bomb on me that her building's gas supply was condemned so she has no access to her stove, oven, or drier. I do have a microwave and hot plate. I vowed to see this experience as glass half-full rather than empty.
Her place is in Brighton Beach, NY. For those who don't know, it is essentially 80% 1st generation immigrants from ex-Soviet states. There's a reason it's called "Little Odessa". There are no standard Western style grocery stores here, but there are plenty of Euro-Soviet markets with tons of cheap fruit out front, a small section for produce and meats, and row after row of imported canned and boxed food written in Cyrillic. Ex-Soviets don't appear to have a strong take-away dining culture, so most take away food is dominated by non-Soviet foods like pizza, doner kebab, and fried chicken - and that's not going to be sustainable over the coming weeks. But the grocery stores do have a cold-bar culture. So I am going to be eating a ton of cold-bar food in the coming weeks. Tonight, I think it's going to be boxed chicken broth + "tree dumplings" (aka pelmeni) and whatever salad I can make from the produce section.
I'm also going to try my hand tonight at some Eastern Bloc spirits.
Sounds like a challenge you'd see on a cooking competition. Good luck
The hot platte can be utilized for one pot/one pan meals!
How about chicken Kiev?
You're not wrong. I took a stroll through two more markets today. Meat-based dishes are more often than not some sort of fried cutlet. I can read enough cyrillic to identify котлета по-киевски (cutlet-a po-kyiv-sky) - chicken kyiv. I went with "veal cutlet" and some random prepared salad that aren't too mayonnaise-y. The other thing they've got are these giant pasta and pastry filled meat pie/dumplings. I'm looking forward to getting them next.
Any noticeable connection to Brighton Beach Memoirs? Which I haven't seen, but then I didn't know its ethnic story.
I still read a little cyrillic myself, but haven't any need for it for many years.
I saw Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1982 with Mathew Broderick in a rare pre-release in San Francisco before it hit Broadway. That Brighton Beach (BB) is the one and the same of the one that I'm at. BB from the late 19th century through the great depression was a Jewish neighborhood. Hence, it is the backdrop for Neil Simon's "Eugene" trilogy along with Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. This trilogy is semi-autobiographical about Neil Simon's own life growing up poor Jewish lad in New York, but in the Bronx rather than Brooklyn. BB started becoming Ukrainian in the 1970s when the ashekenazi jews migrated here, followed by Russian chain-migration after the Wall fell in 1989. Based on my observation, I am the only Asian person walking around here. There are a few Latin Americans working in the shops, but everyone else is Slavic or central european. I have seen no African Americans here.
I read zero cyrillic. Not long after the break-up of the USSR I had a couple work days at the recently opened U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. The last night I had dinner with some embassy employees. They offered to walk me back to the hotel but I said I was good. Turned out I wasn't and ended up wandering in circles for awhile. Couldn't read the street signs and couldn't find anyone who spoke English.
My cousin who is a lot more well travelled than I am said her biggest difficulty language wise was the central Asian former Soviet republic (Uzbekistan, Kazakistan, etc.). When we were in Moscow 30 years ago, I remember memorizing a few Cyrillic words like 'PECTOBAH' was restaurant.
Was my favorite meal when I was a kid, chicken fillets wrapped around tasty frozen butter - yum.
Whoa, that sounds rather challenging.
"Eastern Bloc spirits", by which I take it you mean vodka and the variations on vodka. That would be my takeaway, admittedly tied to the mid-80s.
I had college friends who majored in Russian studies and made more than one trip to the Soviet Union during their college careers. Stolichnaya was the Soviet standard in vodka, but truthfully vodka was more than just Stoli in the Soviet Union. If folks could distill vodka themselves, they would. Alcoholism in the old Soviet Unions was rampant. Reputedly, in the 1980s roughly 50% of Soviet citizens were alcoholic. I don't know if this was more legend than reality, but I know that those who went to the USSR commented on the prevalence of vodka in daily life; it was ubiquitous.
Mortality in ex-Soviet males post-1989 essentially doubled with alcoholism being the main cause of it. If I remember correctly, accidentally freezing to death from passing out outside was a top 3 cause of death.
I went on a winter trip to Harbin in Northeast China (near Siberia) to see the world famous snow and ice festival about 15 years ago.
(It's very very cool - here's a CNN blog about the 2019 version)
Was staying in a cheap Chinese tourist class hotel, and part of the standard package is usually a pretty crappy breakfast. Harbin is very close to Russia, and has a very strong Russian influence - the main street and giant Orthodox church are all Russian, as are a lot of the restaurants.
So it wasn't a surprise that there were a ton of Russian tourists in the hotel. The breakfast is set-up only at large round tables - so you have to share tables. I get myself some congee and eggs + bacon and sit down, look over and there's a family with parents and either 2 adult kids or 1 adult kid and 1 spouse/partner. Between the 4 of them (it's 7am!) they have two empty vodka bottles, and 2 empty cans of beer each.
So last week we had pulled pork all-American BBQ sandwiches - very tasty. But there was a lot of pulled pork, and yesterday that was added to fried vegetables with I guess leftover spicy tomatillo sauce to have over rice, with cotija cheese to sprinkle on top, and some crema as well - very tasty indeed. Went well with a 2017 Ridge Pagani Ranch Zinfandel.
Daughter made tasty "burnt" butter cupcakes for dessert.
IT Support
This reminds me, I've been intrigued by the idea of digital pinball machines. I found the old Wii pinball simulations to be enjoyable enough, and you can get some now that are basically HD TVs set into a pinball cabinet driven by a decent cpu/gpu. They're cheaper than real pinball. $700 gets you a 75% size version that is so-so with only 720p. Slightly more than $1k gets you basically full size 1080p. You can pay lots more and get 4k. Still would prefer to try before buying though.
My workplace is renown throughout the region as having the worst IT department among employers. I can attest to this—I typically am able to get a work-around going way before there’s any hope of our IT folks working on it.
I received a new gaming computer as an extremely generous birthday gift from my fiancé's family, but it immediately had severe artifacting that caused it to crash frequently. It's currently been sent back to the retailer to replace the GPU. Had to pay for the shipping myself, naturally.
I think our servers may be at or near capacity.
For the last two weeks, I've been experiencing slowness in applications communicating across the network or to the cloud. Often an application that I'm working in will show (Not Responding) when I save and hold there for about 15-20 seconds, sometimes longer.
We also have many employees (probably a daily majority) working remotely, which, I would imagine, impacts response times. I rarely work remotely and I'm in the same building as the servers.
I have had slow internet at home and at work for about the last 10 days. Made me wonder whether there's some ongoing DDOS attack going on.
There was a recent case of an online auction of antiquities wherein the auction site was overwhelmed with traffic, leading to an outage. The auction house had to postpone the auction until July 21st, citing a need to upgrade the biddr platform. They emailed the participants that due to the successful work of the IT staff capacity has been increased.
it's pretty good. we have an outside group do it. they are local, but we founded by folks from Sarajevo, so they have good (SF) nighttime tech support based there.
I actually split the diff the other day. It was about 9pm here in Japan and I spent an hour with someone who had just finished lunch. I wouldn't have been able to work with one of the SF-based folks
I've tried them many ways and I've never liked them