The Moraga TJ Maxx has Under Armour Cal football #1 jerseys in both yellow and blue. They're only 16.99. Maybe other TJ Maxx around the Bay Area have them as well.
Apparently being an umpire (or any sports official) makes you essential - it seems people need someone to yell at, and throw things at (where limited attendance is allowed) for mental health therapy purposes.
HeyAlumniGo and I used to be umpires for 4th-8th grade LMYA baseball when we were at Cal. we used to drive back to Moraga on Sat-Sun mornings. fun times getting yelled at by the local parents ...
Will find out when I get there. They are using as both, as much as they can get their hands on. Don't know if I'll have a choice. Not going to complain!
Welcome to 2021, a continuation of the Bizarroworld timeline with Republicans crying for financial regulation and Democrats crowing about free markets efficiently deciding who gets rich and who goes broke
In my opinion, companies like Robinhood are a bit of a scam. I mean, they do what they say they do - commission-free trading + fractional shares. They don't steal from their customers, so they're not stealing from their customers. They are scamming the listed companies and industry, where regulations have not caught up to technology. I just dealt with this at my company, so it's kismet that this topic has arisen.
These brokers end up setting up their own clearing-houses and other supporting back-office services and go the opposite strategy of a traditional broker. They don't charge for a trade, so they're not making commissions. They don't ask for a minimum balance, so they don't make a lot of money on the interest or carry trade. There's no upgrade services, so it's a weird app-like business.
Rather, they make it on the back-office account management. Securities account management is a regulated industry dictated by the specific exchange. There are fixed fees for different types of activities (setting up an account, distributing proxies). The SEC allows fractional share trading, but the exchanges didn't update all of their back-office regulations. Fractional share owners are not entitled to vote in a proxy or actually send people prospectus or annual reports, but that doesn't stop them from trying to charge for the distribution services.
These fractional share brokers encourage people to literally put a few dollars into an account and trade dozens of different stocks, perhaps only pennies worth of each stock. But the broker receives about $22 for opening up an account, another $4 for distributing annual reports and proxies, for example. It is a regulated industry, so the clearing houses do not need a contract with you. They just send you an invoice and you have to pay. No supporting back-up. No details.
For years, the big boys in the industry (eg, Broadridge, Mediant) kept screwing us with invoices that went up much, much faster every year than trade volume, trades, or dollars trades. It wasn't until I got contacted by a me-too brokerage two years ago where I could back into the math and figure out what these fuckers were doing.
They tried to charge us like $1k of account services off of servicing a single share of our share split into thousands of accounts. They wouldn't stop calling and threatening. However, they slipped up by giving me too much information.
Without giving too much away, I proved that I knew they were committing securities fraud and they should kindly sod off. They did. But I can imagine that they go to every single listed company and essentially bill all of them a few thousand bucks.
GameStop is going to get killed in Clearing House/Account Management fees this year.
It is a short squeeze. Wall Street firms were short selling game stock and a bunch of Game Stock fans organized themselves on Reddit to continue to buy up shares of Game Stock to push the price up.
Hey, I did almost major in Political Economies of a Non Industrial Society or PENIS while at Cal so I know just enough to be dangerous and lose a lot of money.
Why is Robin Hood preventing people from trading GME? Is it because Robin Hood is used for regular people that don't have a trading account from someone like Schwab?
any specific reason we are talking about Physics today? i am, of course, down to talking about it almost any day.
speaking of Cal undergrad physics. i took H7a and H7b before dropping down to 7c once i realized that i would never be amazing at it (and barely passing).
we had this eccentric guy Richard Muller. one amazing thing he did, on the very first day of class while speaking to a room of 50 future PHDs in physics, was to encourage us all to spend as much time as possible as an undergrad to take everything other than physics, especially the arts and humanities.
he said that there would be plenty of time for more math and more computers, but you wouldnt get back your youth and the invaluable discussions you would have w/ people and professors in those classes.
Muller's an interesting character. I always meant to read his historical novel about how Jesus performed the miracles with science, but I don't think that book is widely available.
He was also in the news during the past decade for first being openly skeptical about climate change, got some money from GOP to do his own study, and then presented his results in a public forum in favor of humans being the cause of climate change to the surprise of the politicians who invited him.
The Good Place (19/19) I finished the series finale. Superb. What a surprisingly poignant, sweet, thoughtful, ending to a really great show. The whole family was ugly crying (19/19).
Freaks: You're One of Us. (3/19) A dubbed German superhero flick on Netflix. Horrible. Like Heroes, but lower budget, worse writing, and acting. I have no idea why I watched it.
I loved the Good Place finale. One of the best. Along with Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, and The Wire. Can't remember other ones I've loved but there are others.
Yeah, I agree. Season 5 is good in a vacuum but when compared to seasons 1-4 it falls short. I liked the premise of how the media can influence policing and what cases get investigated but I feel like it was a bit over the top.
Season 4 was probably the best. Season 2 seemed boring at the time I watched it but it has aged really well and I enjoyed it a lot more with repeated viewing.
Yeah, people dumped on Season 2 because they found the stuff at the docks kind of boring, but personally I thought Chris Bauer carried that portion brilliantly. What a great performance.
The ex and I watched that for a few years. The one that sticks out, and I'm sure we've discussed this in a previous DBD, is the Rockridge house with the hay on the walls, with a family that had little kids.
ST 2 was a legit amazing movie. i put the reboots in the brainless/entertainment category as are some of the later movies w/ obht TNG and original crew
The reboots had too many conspiracy theories for my liking, which really ruins the utopian federation ideals. Of course, that's also the direction taken by the new Star Trek TV shows.
There's definitely a feeling of Star Trek becoming more like Star Wars (though some of the TNG movies had started doing that already). Perhaps not surprising since JJ Abrams made them. I did think the last one restored a bit more of the old-school Trek feel.
eh, this may be an unpopular opinion, but Wrath of Khan is perceived as good because was way better that the first, which is trash. But on rewatch it is as slow and ponderous as anything. True, Khan is a great character, but the movie is not.
Search for Spock is the better movie, and the action sequences have some pop at least.
The rule of thumb for a while was that the even-numbered ones were good and the odd-numbered ones usually not so good. Up through First Contact I think that's largely true, though Search for Spock is fine.
I thought Generations was a good first movie for the TNG series but First Contact was great. All the TNG movies after First Contact were forgettable at best.
It's pretty amazing that a movie that wasn't all that successful in the first place managed to get a sequel made, but here it is. It's all silly and confusing nonsense, of course, and seems to tick off every annoying cliche of the 90s sci-fi dystopia movie. I did always like Matt Frewer as an actor, though, and wondered why he was constantly getting crap roles like this.
(Why did I watch this? I keep up with a funny bad-movie podcast, "How Did This Get Made?" This is their entry for this week.)
I was just talking about the original Lawnmower Man with my brother and we both agreed that it is probably due for a reboot/remake movie or even series and were surprised it hasn’t happened yet.
so i think the controversy as TheBuckeyeBear says is the treatment of people of color.
it was confusing at first because i thought they just casted a black actor to play the queen, but in reality she is supposed to be black and that somehow elevates the Duke of Hastings to a higher position than maybe his blackness would alllow.
we have a "watch party" at work today w/ the Black employee group so hopefully i'll report back some more details.
-showing a Black woman dying in childbirth (when they have higher rates of dying in childbirth, not because they are genetically predisposed, but because the medical system has a lot of racism, even when people try to be anti-racist)
-an old white man inspecting the teeth of a young Black woman
Yeah, I May Destroy you somewhat dealt with this but it was the reverse situation and had to do with wearing a condom.
I guess it doesn’t cross our mind as rape because the sex was/is consensual but he didn’t give consent for potential pregnancy.
I suppose it also raises another question of, if she was having sex with him in the hopes of having a kid and he lied to her about being able to conceive but continued to have sex with her, would that also qualify as rape?
I read the books, so I'm watching the show (my friend and I hit start at the same time for one episode per week).
-I'm enjoying the fashion. Julia Quinn, the author, described the Featheringtons as all wearing really ugly clothes. I read an article with the show designer talking about how she didn't make them "ugly," she just made them ornate, which I'm really glad to see, because I actually really like the Featherington fashion! https://slate.com/culture/2020/11/bridgerton-netflix-costumes-historical-accuracy-featherington-dress.html
-There was some controversy that Shondaland cast POC for the show, with some people sniffing about historical accuracy. To which people say: POC *did* exist throughout time and also, you can suspend your disbelief that there are all these handsome dukes marrying lowerclass women with hearts of gold? Puh-leez.
-Then there was some follow-up controversy/thinkpieces on the situations that the POC were put in (some were true to the book, but they were white in the book and Black in the show, so then it introduced some undertones that were awkward at best and racist at worst).
-I haven't gotten to the rape scene in the show yet, and frankly, I'd forgotten that it happened in the book, but then remembered when the show premiered and people were talking about it. I'm not looking forward to seeing this happen onscreen.
-I love the voice of the actress who plays Eloise, but she is such an annoying character!
-Anthony Bridgerton (of the show) can fuck all the way off. He's insufferable.
-The actor who plays Simon Hastings: hello! But also, I feel like both he and the actor who plays Daphne Bridgerton could work on their face acting. Some of their expressions don't match what they're experiencing/thinking.
I basically watched the movie 1.75 times. 0.75 times before Parasite and finally watch it in its entirety after seeing Parasite. Maybe I just had too much expectation given the people involved, I was kind of underwhelmed by the movie.
While Belize pales in comparison to its neighbor Guatemala, IMO - Belize's kicks butt in the cave department. The "ATM" cave is an amazing place where you can get right up close and personal to Mayan sacrificial smoke pots. When the smoke pots weren't enough to stop droughts, they started sacrificing people. So you climb deep into a mountain with stalagmites & stalactites and calcium carbonate covered skeletons.
Another cool one is Barton Creek cave tubing. Hike up a river in a jungle, then drift down in the tube and into cave tubes - miles into a mountain. Like a prehistorical lazy river into crystalized caverns. Lots of weed for sale, too
There is both a musican and a contemporary artist by this name that makes these sculptures known as "soundsuits". I've seen several of these soundsuits from the Smithsonian to the Stanford Art Museum, the latter had one that looked like a much classier Stanford Tree costume.
During the total of ~14 months that I spent out in Carlsbad, NM for the experiment during grad school and my first postdoc, I went to the Carlsbad Caverns about a dozen times. I went to see the bats flying out of the cave at sunset 5-7 times either with other people or by myself. Despite the number of bats, they are just too small and too far apart for a person like Batman to hide inside it. I guess the scene from Batman Begins was a different species of bats (and it's also a movie).
Rodgers has got to hold out and demand a trade. I just don't think that will be happening. He might be able to force the Packers to get more short term help in the draft and free agency. Jordan Love might have good trade value right now given the uncertainties at QB around the league.
I mean, if he wants out, he’s got a lot of avenues to get out. Not sure that’s how it plays out or that AR would do this, but I could see it happening, esp. since GB started to make this bed by sacrificing assets (no less) to trade up for Jordan Love...
Damonic now has a "junior tape", released 9 days ago. It's from the OC Elite Orange football league, a private league that seems to have sprung up in order for promising student-athletes to showcase their skills since Covid shut down '20 California HS football season.
Competition doesn't look too keen, so he is straight abusing his opposition. The highlight (40 seconds in) is him picking up a running back that is literally half his size, thinks about suplexing him but ends up ripping the ball out of his hands and runs 60 yards the other way. Doesn't score because... well... he's 320 pounds.
Football Jersey
The Moraga TJ Maxx has Under Armour Cal football #1 jerseys in both yellow and blue. They're only 16.99. Maybe other TJ Maxx around the Bay Area have them as well.
Covid
Got my appointment for Saturday am my 1st shot.
Apparently being an umpire (or any sports official) makes you essential - it seems people need someone to yell at, and throw things at (where limited attendance is allowed) for mental health therapy purposes.
HeyAlumniGo and I used to be umpires for 4th-8th grade LMYA baseball when we were at Cal. we used to drive back to Moraga on Sat-Sun mornings. fun times getting yelled at by the local parents ...
Pfizer or Moderna?
Will find out when I get there. They are using as both, as much as they can get their hands on. Don't know if I'll have a choice. Not going to complain!
(Didn't see a category, and didn't realize its become an "old news" topic already!)
Laser beams!!
https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/marjorie-taylor-greene-penned-conspiracy-theory-laser-beam-space-started-deadly-2018?fbclid=IwAR1d4_HVAIZAkDLpDOalKvRDPgsCqwndbhAinO9UvZpo_7xLWeGM6ssg3r4
Unbelievable
Police helicopter called after a guy pulls a gun on a McDonald's cashier because [checks notes] his burger didn't have cheese on it.
https://www.krqe.com/news/crime/video-shows-albuquerque-man-pointing-gun-at-mcdonalds-worker-over-order/
that's ridiculous
now if they hadn't held the pickles on the other hand...
I would have thought that you can either get the cheese or your money back at McD without having to pull a gun out.
GME 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Wall St fighting back today. GME (-30%), AMC (-48%) and NOK (-27%) are all down at the moment.
eh. even if all the redditors jump out now most will be taking a huge profit.
I wonder if the shorters have doubled down?
Never go to war against somebody who prints money and who is allied with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.
The rich and powerful aren’t going to let the poor masses yearning to breathe free make an easy buck over them!
Welcome to 2021, a continuation of the Bizarroworld timeline with Republicans crying for financial regulation and Democrats crowing about free markets efficiently deciding who gets rich and who goes broke
Scratch that, I see the AOC comments and wanting to conduct a hearing about Robin Hood now.
In my opinion, companies like Robinhood are a bit of a scam. I mean, they do what they say they do - commission-free trading + fractional shares. They don't steal from their customers, so they're not stealing from their customers. They are scamming the listed companies and industry, where regulations have not caught up to technology. I just dealt with this at my company, so it's kismet that this topic has arisen.
These brokers end up setting up their own clearing-houses and other supporting back-office services and go the opposite strategy of a traditional broker. They don't charge for a trade, so they're not making commissions. They don't ask for a minimum balance, so they don't make a lot of money on the interest or carry trade. There's no upgrade services, so it's a weird app-like business.
Rather, they make it on the back-office account management. Securities account management is a regulated industry dictated by the specific exchange. There are fixed fees for different types of activities (setting up an account, distributing proxies). The SEC allows fractional share trading, but the exchanges didn't update all of their back-office regulations. Fractional share owners are not entitled to vote in a proxy or actually send people prospectus or annual reports, but that doesn't stop them from trying to charge for the distribution services.
These fractional share brokers encourage people to literally put a few dollars into an account and trade dozens of different stocks, perhaps only pennies worth of each stock. But the broker receives about $22 for opening up an account, another $4 for distributing annual reports and proxies, for example. It is a regulated industry, so the clearing houses do not need a contract with you. They just send you an invoice and you have to pay. No supporting back-up. No details.
For years, the big boys in the industry (eg, Broadridge, Mediant) kept screwing us with invoices that went up much, much faster every year than trade volume, trades, or dollars trades. It wasn't until I got contacted by a me-too brokerage two years ago where I could back into the math and figure out what these fuckers were doing.
They tried to charge us like $1k of account services off of servicing a single share of our share split into thousands of accounts. They wouldn't stop calling and threatening. However, they slipped up by giving me too much information.
Without giving too much away, I proved that I knew they were committing securities fraud and they should kindly sod off. They did. But I can imagine that they go to every single listed company and essentially bill all of them a few thousand bucks.
GameStop is going to get killed in Clearing House/Account Management fees this year.
Have the GOP come out against this? I haven’t seen many comments from Dems or Trumplicans about this.
Ted Cruz just agreed with AOC that Something Must Be Done
He probably lost a bunch of money. Also his head probably exploded when he said he agreed with AOC.
she immediately told him to fuck off
Does that mean he now gets a sticker that AOC told him to fuck off? Maybe thats one of the merit badges the republicans try to get.
Good for them and everyone on Reddit.
What's going on with it? I see all these posts on reddit about it and r/WallStreetBets but what's the TL;DR about it?
It is a short squeeze. Wall Street firms were short selling game stock and a bunch of Game Stock fans organized themselves on Reddit to continue to buy up shares of Game Stock to push the price up.
ahh...thanks
Hey, I did almost major in Political Economies of a Non Industrial Society or PENIS while at Cal so I know just enough to be dangerous and lose a lot of money.
Why is Robin Hood preventing people from trading GME? Is it because Robin Hood is used for regular people that don't have a trading account from someone like Schwab?
Physics
Why Physics? Cuz y'all are nerds and I love you.
any specific reason we are talking about Physics today? i am, of course, down to talking about it almost any day.
speaking of Cal undergrad physics. i took H7a and H7b before dropping down to 7c once i realized that i would never be amazing at it (and barely passing).
we had this eccentric guy Richard Muller. one amazing thing he did, on the very first day of class while speaking to a room of 50 future PHDs in physics, was to encourage us all to spend as much time as possible as an undergrad to take everything other than physics, especially the arts and humanities.
he said that there would be plenty of time for more math and more computers, but you wouldnt get back your youth and the invaluable discussions you would have w/ people and professors in those classes.
Muller's an interesting character. I always meant to read his historical novel about how Jesus performed the miracles with science, but I don't think that book is widely available.
He was also in the news during the past decade for first being openly skeptical about climate change, got some money from GOP to do his own study, and then presented his results in a public forum in favor of humans being the cause of climate change to the surprise of the politicians who invited him.
Scam
Here's an entertaining thread
https://twitter.com/_BeeEv/status/1352410396498526208
<<Leonardo clapping.gif>>
Texas town Sherriff's horrible triple-timing came unravelled two days ago
https://www.facebook.com/chase.steinmetz/posts/10221073494441176
Wow. Who has time for that kind of thing. crazy.
man, talk about the middle of nowhere...Stinnett is...remote
I assume the side pieces aren't from Stinnett. Otherwise people would've known in such a small town.
DBD AV Club
The Good Place (19/19) I finished the series finale. Superb. What a surprisingly poignant, sweet, thoughtful, ending to a really great show. The whole family was ugly crying (19/19).
Freaks: You're One of Us. (3/19) A dubbed German superhero flick on Netflix. Horrible. Like Heroes, but lower budget, worse writing, and acting. I have no idea why I watched it.
I loved the Good Place finale. One of the best. Along with Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, and The Wire. Can't remember other ones I've loved but there are others.
I thought Breaking Bad and Mad Men both went out well.
For as much as I loved Mad Men, it's one show I'm not in a hurry to rewatch
I'd say it's not really a binge-able show either. You kind of need to savor each episode. It was perfect for the week-to-week format of broadcast TV.
I didn’t care for the last season or finale of The Wire.
ST: TNG had a great series finale.
Season 5 of the Wire is no where near as good as 1-4, but I thought it was still good.
Yeah, I agree. Season 5 is good in a vacuum but when compared to seasons 1-4 it falls short. I liked the premise of how the media can influence policing and what cases get investigated but I feel like it was a bit over the top.
Season 4 was probably the best. Season 2 seemed boring at the time I watched it but it has aged really well and I enjoyed it a lot more with repeated viewing.
Yeah, people dumped on Season 2 because they found the stuff at the docks kind of boring, but personally I thought Chris Bauer carried that portion brilliantly. What a great performance.
Season 4 was definitely the most heavy-hearted because it was based on the kids.
Agreed on all counts.
Dumb, brainless shows/movies you enjoy
House Hunters.
The ex and I watched that for a few years. The one that sticks out, and I'm sure we've discussed this in a previous DBD, is the Rockridge house with the hay on the walls, with a family that had little kids.
dammit...wrong show. Was thinking Trading Spaces. Although we did used to watch House Hunters for a couple of years.
Star Trek movies.
the series are generally thoughtful, but the movies are closer to the brainless category.
i watched the first 2 reboot movies over the last 2 nights and drank a little bit of extra whiskey
The best thing Star Trek related
Star Trek V: The Restaurant Enterprise
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/star-trek-v-the-restaurant-enterprise/n9513
I had never seen that sketch, pretty funny.
I like this one the best.
Trekkies.
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/trekkies/n9511
Are we talking about all ST movies or just the reboots?
ST 2 was a legit amazing movie. i put the reboots in the brainless/entertainment category as are some of the later movies w/ obht TNG and original crew
The second reboot movie (Into Darkness) is definitely pretty brainless. I thought the first and third ones were good fun.
The reboots had too many conspiracy theories for my liking, which really ruins the utopian federation ideals. Of course, that's also the direction taken by the new Star Trek TV shows.
There's definitely a feeling of Star Trek becoming more like Star Wars (though some of the TNG movies had started doing that already). Perhaps not surprising since JJ Abrams made them. I did think the last one restored a bit more of the old-school Trek feel.
Agree on all points.
I like the reboot ones but not any of the ones before. Never was a trekkie so maybe that's why.
TNG: First Contact was the best of the TNG movies and I would argue one of the best of all ST movies.
Wrath of Khan is great, especially if you have seen the original episode that the movie is spawned from.
Search for Spock is good.
And to round out the trilogy, Voyage Home is campy but fun, especially to see 80s SF.
The reboots haven’t been bad. The second had a lot of potential but was a let down.
eh, this may be an unpopular opinion, but Wrath of Khan is perceived as good because was way better that the first, which is trash. But on rewatch it is as slow and ponderous as anything. True, Khan is a great character, but the movie is not.
Search for Spock is the better movie, and the action sequences have some pop at least.
The hell is wrong with you. Its perceived as good cause its fucking awesome
That is definitely an unpopular opinion.
I watched all the ST movies (original cast) in a row sometime in college, long after their theatrical runs and thought Khan was easily the best.
The rule of thumb for a while was that the even-numbered ones were good and the odd-numbered ones usually not so good. Up through First Contact I think that's largely true, though Search for Spock is fine.
I like SfS.
I thought Generations was a good first movie for the TNG series but First Contact was great. All the TNG movies after First Contact were forgettable at best.
Swamp People. A show on History Channel about gator hunters in Louisiana. Currently they're showing one of the hunters in Florida hunting pythons.
The other show I enjoyed was Ice Road Truckers (no longer in production). Truckers up in Northern Canada in the winter driving on Ice Roads.
These are probably the two most stupid ones I watch(ed).
The Lawnmower Man 2
It's pretty amazing that a movie that wasn't all that successful in the first place managed to get a sequel made, but here it is. It's all silly and confusing nonsense, of course, and seems to tick off every annoying cliche of the 90s sci-fi dystopia movie. I did always like Matt Frewer as an actor, though, and wondered why he was constantly getting crap roles like this.
(Why did I watch this? I keep up with a funny bad-movie podcast, "How Did This Get Made?" This is their entry for this week.)
I was just talking about the original Lawnmower Man with my brother and we both agreed that it is probably due for a reboot/remake movie or even series and were surprised it hasn’t happened yet.
It would have to change a lot, since the original oh-so-90s conception of The Internet is super dated now.
Bridgerton
So can someone explain the controversy to me about this show?
so i think the controversy as TheBuckeyeBear says is the treatment of people of color.
it was confusing at first because i thought they just casted a black actor to play the queen, but in reality she is supposed to be black and that somehow elevates the Duke of Hastings to a higher position than maybe his blackness would alllow.
we have a "watch party" at work today w/ the Black employee group so hopefully i'll report back some more details.
Some other things that came up:
-showing a Black woman dying in childbirth (when they have higher rates of dying in childbirth, not because they are genetically predisposed, but because the medical system has a lot of racism, even when people try to be anti-racist)
-an old white man inspecting the teeth of a young Black woman
That could be one but I read an article on Vox that it has to for with sexual consent. Something about her making the guy get her pregnant.
ah yes. i just read about that too.
honestly it didnt even cross my mind that something like that qualifies as a form of rape, as suggested by these articles.
Yeah, I May Destroy you somewhat dealt with this but it was the reverse situation and had to do with wearing a condom.
I guess it doesn’t cross our mind as rape because the sex was/is consensual but he didn’t give consent for potential pregnancy.
I suppose it also raises another question of, if she was having sex with him in the hopes of having a kid and he lied to her about being able to conceive but continued to have sex with her, would that also qualify as rape?
i am sure this has already been a topic of discussion but my wife and i just finished watching a few days ago.
~~~ spoiler alert ~~~
i thought it was great before the 2 got married and there was more "spicy" conversation as opposed to all the sex scenes in the final episodes.
I read the books, so I'm watching the show (my friend and I hit start at the same time for one episode per week).
-I'm enjoying the fashion. Julia Quinn, the author, described the Featheringtons as all wearing really ugly clothes. I read an article with the show designer talking about how she didn't make them "ugly," she just made them ornate, which I'm really glad to see, because I actually really like the Featherington fashion! https://slate.com/culture/2020/11/bridgerton-netflix-costumes-historical-accuracy-featherington-dress.html
-There was some controversy that Shondaland cast POC for the show, with some people sniffing about historical accuracy. To which people say: POC *did* exist throughout time and also, you can suspend your disbelief that there are all these handsome dukes marrying lowerclass women with hearts of gold? Puh-leez.
-Then there was some follow-up controversy/thinkpieces on the situations that the POC were put in (some were true to the book, but they were white in the book and Black in the show, so then it introduced some undertones that were awkward at best and racist at worst).
-I haven't gotten to the rape scene in the show yet, and frankly, I'd forgotten that it happened in the book, but then remembered when the show premiered and people were talking about it. I'm not looking forward to seeing this happen onscreen.
-I love the voice of the actress who plays Eloise, but she is such an annoying character!
-Anthony Bridgerton (of the show) can fuck all the way off. He's insufferable.
-The actor who plays Simon Hastings: hello! But also, I feel like both he and the actor who plays Daphne Bridgerton could work on their face acting. Some of their expressions don't match what they're experiencing/thinking.
the music is amazing too. they take contemporary songs and artists like Billie Eilish and play them during the ballroom dance scenes.
My daughter noticed that, of course I missed that.
Snowpiercer
Great movie but I haven’t watched the series yet. I saw that it is in HBO Max so I might give the series a watch now.
was a little disappointed in the season 2 premiere after thoroughly enjoying season 1.
The movie by the Parasite guy was good.
I basically watched the movie 1.75 times. 0.75 times before Parasite and finally watch it in its entirety after seeing Parasite. Maybe I just had too much expectation given the people involved, I was kind of underwhelmed by the movie.
Cave
While Belize pales in comparison to its neighbor Guatemala, IMO - Belize's kicks butt in the cave department. The "ATM" cave is an amazing place where you can get right up close and personal to Mayan sacrificial smoke pots. When the smoke pots weren't enough to stop droughts, they started sacrificing people. So you climb deep into a mountain with stalagmites & stalactites and calcium carbonate covered skeletons.
Another cool one is Barton Creek cave tubing. Hike up a river in a jungle, then drift down in the tube and into cave tubes - miles into a mountain. Like a prehistorical lazy river into crystalized caverns. Lots of weed for sale, too
Cave, Nick
There is both a musican and a contemporary artist by this name that makes these sculptures known as "soundsuits". I've seen several of these soundsuits from the Smithsonian to the Stanford Art Museum, the latter had one that looked like a much classier Stanford Tree costume.
Cave In. Great band and their most recent release ‘Final Transmission’ was one of my favorite albums of 2019.
https://open.spotify.com/album/3I8gDt7xv6s6cAVYPDVJbV?si=ZjTV0TQ8Qz-2zMkj91J4PQ
Skip the first song. It’s a weird noise instrumental.
Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. Apparently the longest known cave system. We did the 2ish hour tour. It was pretty cool. They also have longer ones.
Are these the caves that were used on The Outsider series?
Dunno. Maybe.
No it sounds like they were either Tennessee or Alabama. I remember we visited a Cave in Knoxville, but it wasn't a huge one like Mammoth.
Song by Mumford & Sons
Carlsbad Caverns. Millions of bats
https://www.nps.gov/cave/index.htm
During the total of ~14 months that I spent out in Carlsbad, NM for the experiment during grad school and my first postdoc, I went to the Carlsbad Caverns about a dozen times. I went to see the bats flying out of the cave at sunset 5-7 times either with other people or by myself. Despite the number of bats, they are just too small and too far apart for a person like Batman to hide inside it. I guess the scene from Batman Begins was a different species of bats (and it's also a movie).
Elsewhere in college
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
WHAT YEAR IS IT?
https://www.kplctv.com/2021/01/28/oberlin-family-denied-burial-plot-whites-only-cemetery/
jeezus.
That's a bold strategy, Cotton
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/geophysicist-accused-of-dragging-d-c-cop-and-pinning-him-down-with-a-baton-claims-he-was-just-patting-him-on-the-back/
He's white so he'll probably be elected to Congress
Right, not only is that a viable legal defense but it is a winning platform when running for Congress in the Retrumplican Party.
PRO
Curt Schilling Insists He’d Already Be Hall Of Famer If MLB Never Racially Integrated
https://sports.theonion.com/curt-schilling-insists-he-d-already-be-hall-of-famer-if-1846145304
PQTM
I almost thought this was a real headline because it was Curt Schilling
Yep, same here. It is getting harder and harder for The Onion to parody conservatives and the GOP in today’s society.
I did as well. I had to check twice.
I love the onion.
Assumes MLB would still be in business.
Top 5 Aaron Rodgers Landing Spots
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/aaron-rodgers-trade-rumors-ranking-five-logical-landing-spots-for-the-longtime-packers-quarterback/
I don’t see him being traded.
Rodgers has got to hold out and demand a trade. I just don't think that will be happening. He might be able to force the Packers to get more short term help in the draft and free agency. Jordan Love might have good trade value right now given the uncertainties at QB around the league.
I mean, if he wants out, he’s got a lot of avenues to get out. Not sure that’s how it plays out or that AR would do this, but I could see it happening, esp. since GB started to make this bed by sacrificing assets (no less) to trade up for Jordan Love...
CAL
Go Bears!
ICYMI: FB Zach Angelillo is graduating. In transfer portal.
https://twitter.com/zach_angelillo/status/1354237523132698625
Big Boy Damonic Williams (4-star DT, c/o '22) letting Cal fans know that he is an even Bigger Boy
https://twitter.com/DamonicWilliams/status/1354866222161006598
Damonic now has a "junior tape", released 9 days ago. It's from the OC Elite Orange football league, a private league that seems to have sprung up in order for promising student-athletes to showcase their skills since Covid shut down '20 California HS football season.
Competition doesn't look too keen, so he is straight abusing his opposition. The highlight (40 seconds in) is him picking up a running back that is literally half his size, thinks about suplexing him but ends up ripping the ball out of his hands and runs 60 yards the other way. Doesn't score because... well... he's 320 pounds.
https://www.hudl.com/video/3/12002862/60066e69a022f80ab4e245fa
DEMONIC dt/ng prospect