116 Comments

No poll shoutout for RAGBRAI???

https://ragbrai.com/

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My sister has lived in Iowa for a long time now and one her sons has done it at least a couple times but it didn't even dawn on me. To answer HSB, I don't remember my nephew talking about big time partying.

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author

I have a friend who does long-distance races (12+ hours) on occasion. I'll have to ask him if he's ever ridden that. It seems brutal at that time of year

(also, welcome back! it's been a while!)

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It's not exactly the most scenic part of the country or the most pleasant time of the year to ride, but I hear from family friends who do it regularly that it's a blast and they return every year.

(And thanks! I hope to be around much more over the next few months.)

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

once upon a time, after i met my first friend from IA, i thought that this 7 day bike ride across IA sounded like a fun thing to do.

i wonder if it is like a giant moving party like the Bay to Breakers? even though nothing in the world is quite like the B2B ...

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to some extent, although the grueling nature of it (seven days, long distance, summer heat) and the limited signup spots tamp that down a bit (so I gather)

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D$!!

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hello hello!

sorry for the long absence -- it's been a hectic couple of years -- but I'm finally on sabbatical for a semester!

What's new?

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author

DMun! Not much new apart from some minor tweaks to the platform and an existential crisis for Cal sports

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sure would love to get some closure on it before the opener

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No 1 moved to Providence with his GF (she's at MIT) so they can both do their writing stage there. I was out to help him move from Philly at the end of June/through July 4th. I didn't reach out because we were busy with the move. Next time I'm there I'll give you a call.

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

Yes, please do! We're about a half hour outside of Providence, and even closer to the airport

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Nice. Actually I decided to just fly out of Boston since it was a direct flight and like half the cost. The Amtrak is very convenient (3 stops 1 hour) to South Station. Except when there is a broken down commuter train in your way, or the hot weather slows everything down.

I'm guessing I'll head over sometime next year before or after one of my work trips.

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Sounds good! Feel free to email/text/call once you get a rough idea of when you're looking at

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hola ...

what is the plan for sabbatical? travel? research? go to all the football games during last year of pac-12?

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I wish! Mostly research, but a little bit of fun travel in there. (Also, planning a wedding!) I missed the boat on the fun nonconference games, but if we end up joining either the ACC or the Big Ten, there will be many more games nearby!

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hold up...I think you buried the lead.

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Aug 9, 2023Liked by SGBear

ha sorry I realize not everyone's on fb. Engaged in January, scheduled for next May!

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Travel to Cal games

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i'd prefer ACC due to family and friends in the eastern time zone, and generally more interesting places to visit. though I'd welcome the opportunity to attend a game at the Big House.

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

I will definitely continue to travel if Cal remains a P5 team, at least for the revenue sports.

If we drop to the Mountain West/American or something similar, I’m done. Probably won’t even attend games at CMS.

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I would probably attend games against SDSU since I live 1 mile from Snap Dragon.

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I’m headed to Snap Dragon for G’N’R on 10/1…you’ll hear me lose my schitt when they play Nightrain and You Could Be Mine!

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I've never been to North or South Carolina so I would love to make a trip

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not complaining about possible ACC status since i'll probably get to quite a few of the games on the east coast within easy driving distance or a short flight from NYC.

plus, i regularly join the DBD away-game travel crew since it all requires a flight. looking forward to the game UW this year since i have never seen a game there.

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So if we're in the ACC we still have Furd as our Furd but does Duke serve as our U$C? Who is our new UCLA? North Carolina? Or are they are new Washington? Is Clemson our new Oregon? Help me, please.

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

feel free to disagree

Clemson = Oregon - gets the best preseason ranking treatment

Florida State = Washington

Louisville = ??

NC State = Colorado

Syracuse = ??

Wake Forest = Stanford - expensive private school

Boston College - Utah - lots of religion around

North Carolina = UCLA - public school near USC, good at basketball too

Duke = USC - private school near UCLA

Pitt = ??

Georgia Tech = Colorado

Miami = USC - lots of spoiled children

Virginia = Arizona - state school in purple state trending blue

Virginia Tech = ASU - same state as Arizona but not as good

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I would argue Virginia is the new UCLA -- they call themselves a "public ivy" and they're the flagship of a massive public university system

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Then UVa can't be UCLA if they're the flagship school.

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Yeah Virginia is basically Cal, so we should be buddies.

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right, whoops

maybe the analogy is that they're trying to do everything that we're doing, but just slightly worse, which is strong UC Los Angeles energy

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author

I'm curious which team is going to be the bottom-dweller that always seems to beat us (a la Colorado). Georgia Tech or Wake Forest seem like strong contenders

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I'd prefer the Big 10 because UMD is an hour away from me, Rutgers is 2ish hours away, and Penn State is 3 hours away. But the ACC isn't too bad: Virginia is about 3.5 hours away and Pitt, VTech, Duke, UNC, and NC State are all 6-7ish hours away (or 1 hour flights). I'd make a habit of regularly traveling to some of regional away games.

An added bonus of playing some of those teams in conference play is we'd visit later in the schedule rather than during sweltering August/September

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I would prefer big10 as well for the same reasons, but it seems that the possibility of joining big10 is pretty remote, no?

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It seems that way right now, although maybe we'll sneak in when the new tv deals expire and the realignment merry-go-round spins up again

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Aug 9, 2023Liked by Berkelium97, SGBear

in the meantime, lets plan to meet at SGBear's house a couple times a year.

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This would give me a million more reasons to hate Duke and could potentially institutionalize a Cal/UNC tailgate every other year

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Hell yeah!! I will also fly out for games at the Dean Dome and at Cameron at least once.

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Now instead of wanting both teams to lose when Furd plays U$C , I'll be wanting both teams to lose when Furd plays Duke.

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023Author

It would be a weird thing if I, someone who lives in central North Carolina, could easily drive to 5 different Cal games

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Rag

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Time!

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

Scott Joplin!

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when i was in grad school we bought a piano for our apartment. i was taking intermediate level lessons and played mostly classical. one of my housemates played a lot of Bach and Joplin. it was very pleasant ..

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Joplin and ragtime music got a revival because of The Sting (Newman and Redford, Best Picture of 1973). Timeless music.

When I see Bach, I think of a number of compositions including Toccata and Fugue and Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring has been done with piano very often and is a lovely piece. It also work with an organ. It was the recessional piece for my wedding (with Mrs Slug, of course).

But Toccata and Fugue must be played with an organ (the more pipes the better). That piece was our pre-ceremony music. Not the kind of thing our guests were expecting, I think.

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I endured 10 years of classical piano lessons as a kid. (much later in life i finally thanked my mom for ensuring i practiced an hour (!) every day.) Bach was my favorite composer, however in an effort to keep me interested in playing, my second piano teacher introduced me to jazz and ragtime. Both were harder to play than Bach.

(Jesu, Joy. . . was my wedding recessional piece as well!)

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Toccata and Fugue is a great wedding intro piece!!

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Ohifornia

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tbb is in heaven!

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Don’t Ohifornia my California.

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Califohio!

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Where?

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DBD Street Journal

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Penn Entertainment ditches Barstool Sports, partners with ESPN, sells Barstool Sports back to Dave Portnoy for almost nothing only a few years after they bought it from Portnoy for $551m. *sigh*

https://www.axios.com/2023/08/08/espn-gambling-penn-gaming-barstool-portnoy

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I dislike Dave Portnoy and Barstool Sports.

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Barstool Sports is a blight upon the sports scene. May it rest in pieces.

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AI-written dreck is now becoming a problem in the book market

https://www.thedailybeast.com/author-jane-friedman-finds-ai-fakes-being-sold-under-her-name-on-amazon

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On a related topic, over the years I have reduced my Amazon shopping as there is so much junk and fake shit on there. So much better to buy stuff online through a company that has at least some sort of vetting process

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I have noticed that online recipe quality has gone to shit. At first, there was a wave of pirated stuff - copies of other recipes with exactly the same ingredients and even replicating the specific words use in the preparation. And then AI came along, I'm seeing a proliferation of recipes where they are unique - but have techniques and proportions that don't make sense and make kind of bad food if followed. I have stopped following random recipes off the internet and am now sticking to actual chef's books for inspiration.

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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Jack Smith has subpeened Trump's Twitter account. This is Twitter, not Truth, so it has to do with J6 shenanigans, not witness tampering. Politico has some interesting details about the back and forth with Twitter.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/special-counsel-obtained-search-warrant-for-donald-trumps-twitter-account-00110484

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Woman fights off hawk and snake -- simultaneously. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66446697

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Study co-sponsored by Colombia University indicated that three-quarters of poll respondents (who are Chinese-American) experienced racial discrimination - including one in five being called a racial slur and one in 10 being physically assaulted.

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/01/chinese-americans-report-racial-discrimination-asian-hate

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Musk is such a jackass.

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Little Free Libraries become controversial in Arkansas

https://www.newsweek.com/republican-wife-replaces-library-books-bibles-1818305

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The right will turn everything into a culture war issue.

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The same DC grand jury that indicted Trump on the third set of charges of Conspiracy to Defraud voters is still meeting with the same people - hinting that they're deciding whether to indict at least one co-conspirator. Lock. Them. Up!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/washington-dc-grand-jury-trump-indictment-b2389764.html

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[NYTimes] Last week's indictment indicated that there was an internal campaign memo that supported the DOJ's Conspiracy to Defraud Voters. The NYT obtained a copy and it is a very detailed smoking gun. It has motive, it has specific people's names on it, it tells where, how, why, admits that Biden won, acknowledges that it is probably treasonous to do so, conspires to lie about actually winning a state that they lost, weaves the 1/6 Capitol insurgency into it. Fucking traitors to Democracy.

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/chesebro-dec-6-memo/ce55d6abd79c2c71/full.pdf

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Yup, and getting easier to prove every week.

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

i thought i read that there is nothing stopping Trump from continuing to run for president and win even if convicted and in jail. it might hurt his chances (or not) though.

not sure how he gets out of jail automatically if elected president ??!!

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Correct, Trump can run if he wants. Eugene Debs even ran for president from jail in 1920.

But it doesn't mean he'll win. I hate the fucking scaremongering that pops up on the internet. Yes, I want people committed to democracy to do everything they can to ensure that wannabe dictators like Trump never have chance. I just don't think scaremongering is the way to go about it.

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Ohio rejects law to raise requirement to changing state constitution to 60% from simple majority. The election was seen as a proxy for abortion rights, with urban areas wanting to keep simple majority and rural areas wanting to change it.

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1191679261/ohio-election-results-issue1-abortion-state-constitution-amendment-ballot-voters

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At his rally in New Hampshire, Trump baselessly accused Fulton County DA Fani Willis of being a racist who had an affair with a gang member.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fani-willis-affair-gang-georgia-da-trump-b2390065.html

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PRO

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Rangers beat Athletics 6-1 in Oakland

https://www.athleticsnation.com/2023/8/8/23825494/athletics-rangers-scherzer-sears-bleday

After a tough loss at the hands of the first place Texas Rangers last night at the Oakland Coliseum, the A’s and Rangers faced off again tonight. Mark Kotsay sent lefty JP Sears to the mound for his Oakland Athletics. Sears is 2-7 with a 4.08 ERA in twenty-two regular season starts. Righty Max Scherzer is 10-4 with a 4.04 ERA in twenty regular season starts in 2023. All but one of those starts this year had been with the New York Mets.

In the top of the second, Robbie Grossman doubled off the left field wall, and Ezequiel Duran singled to drive him home. Designated Hitter Sam Huff singled to left field to advance Duran to second. Marcus Semien reached on an infield single to load the bases with two outs. Sears used his fourth strike out of the game to put away Corey Seager and end the inning allowing only one run.

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Bullpen fails to succeed in the aggregate, Giants lose, 7-5

https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2023/8/8/23825419/bullpen-fails-to-succeed-in-the-aggregate-giants-lose-7-5-san-francisco-giants-final-score

This season has started to remind me a little bit of the 2010 season. Recall in that year that the San Francisco Giants had a forgettable (though, not as bad as we remember) lineup but paired with an incredible pitching staff presented a formidable opponent.

Somehow, the Giants were 15-5 in bullpen games heading into tonight’s game. The team made a choice to stick with what had been working and not seek outside help at the trade deadline; and so they now find themselves in this position three out of every five days where they’re left to trust in an algorithm that tells them pitching 4-5 guys in a 9 inning game will help more than hurt.

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Hot-hand is the winning hand as Dodgers hold on to beat D-backs

https://www.truebluela.com/2023/8/8/23825482/julio-urias-freddie-freeman-mookie-betts-dodgers-diamondbacks

The Dodgers secured a winning trip against divisional opponents and fledgling playoff contenders, as they held on to beat the Diamondbacks 5-4 on Tuesday night at Chase Field.

Julio Urías delivered six strong innings, while once again Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts helped carry the offense, reaching base three times each, combining for three RBI and two runs scored.

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Dodgers reportedly sign Korean RHP Hyun-seok Jang with newly found international slot space

https://www.truebluela.com/2023/8/8/23823149/dodgers-hyun-seok-jang-south-korea-international-bonus-pool

Last Friday’s Dodgers trade of two minor leaguers for international bonus slot space has apparently been put to good use. The team has reportedly reached agreement to sign Hyun-seok Jang, a 19-year-old right-hander considered one of the top pitching prospects in South Korea.

Jang last week said he would bypass the Korean Baseball Organization draft, where he was expected to be picked first, so he could sign with a major league team.

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Since he's a HS senior in Korea and opted out of the KBO draft (where he would've been the #1 pick), he is a free agent and was free to sign with any MLB team. He wasn't subject to the posting procedure.

Scouts have said he's about the same as a 2nd or 3rd round pick in the US amateur draft.

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Carson Wentz tries to drum up interest in his free agency via his Commeagolts outfit

https://twitter.com/JClarkNBCS/status/1688248039176032256

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He fell off faster and harder than a RB in the NFL.

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Commeagolts would have been a better name for Washington than the Commanders

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Fans boo kicker performances during Cowboys practice. Two get cut, leaving a rookie as the only PK on the roster

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowboys-down-to-one-kicker-after-camp-competition-gets-ugly-jerry-jones-prefers-rookie-over-veteran-options/

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Is there anything more Saskatchewan than a sheep somehow getting loose on the Roughriders field?

https://twitter.com/sskroughriders/status/1688349557833502720

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Saskatchewan is underrated nice i think. there is a not a lot going on there but the countryside scenery is spectacular. I spent a couple days driving through once upon a time.

there is something different and special about the clouds there too. never seen anything like it. large, high clouds that seem to have a very sharp lower edge as if they were sliced off by a bread knife or something.

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Colin Cowherd lists a bunch of QBs who he says can't win a Super Bowl. The list includes Dwayne Haskins, which is technically very correct.

https://twitter.com/_MLFootball/status/1688966387526475777

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Dude is a class A clown.

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He is the Tucker Carlson of the NFL.

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023Author

Orioles indefinitely suspended play-by-play guy reinstated after the dumb reason for his suspension went viral.

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/sports/orioles-mlb/kevin-brown-orioles-masn-return-73K2AIZ5NNAX7LUYUBNUGZ34UQ/

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DBD AV CLUB

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Only Murders in the Building returned last night and life is thus a little bit better.

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Fun! Lots of fun, love that show!

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Barbie (17/19)

very much enjoyed this for both the social commentary and the hilarious references to many many fun things.

HAG .. you should go watch just for the Top Gun and Holy Grail references.

[semi-spoiler]

i particularly liked the battle scene on the beach where it appears that the Greeks were storming the beaches at Troy.

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as we were walking out we saw/heard some young men/women literally get into a shouting match about the movie being "too feminist"

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Sandra Bullock has lost her beau of eight years to ALS.

https://pagesix.com/2023/08/09/octavia-spencer-mourns-bryan-randall-sandra-bullock-lost-her-soulmate/

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(=<). ALS is a horrible disease.

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ELSEWHERE IN COLLEGE

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Sony Michel and Stetson Bennet V were on the same college team. Michel got drafted in the first round, played at four different teams, won 2 Super Bowl rings and retired before Bennet graduated from college. Bennet is an NFL rookie who will turn 26 years old in eleven weeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Michel

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He had a good career, I am surprised it was so short.

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Who gets screwed by the Pac-12's collapse? If you said fans, student-athletes, and their parents - then that's apparently the wrong answer

https://awfulannouncing.com/college-football/bowl-season-pac-12-collapse.html

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CAL

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Go Bears!!!

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From the story it doesn't seem like the bear did anything wrong.

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