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First hand account of what it's like to be attacked by microwave (i,e, "Havana Syndrome")

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/seized-some-invisible-hand-what-it-feels-have-havana-syndrome-n1281326

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I think that's a Hydrox!

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another forbidden snack

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DBD autos

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I've put down a deposit on a 2022 Toyota Rav4 Prime (fully refundable) but that's what I'm looking at when I get back to the US

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The Miata is only 22 miles away from 69,420. I missed resetting the trip odometer at 69,000 so I'm going to plan a route such that I end up at the parking lots above the Lawerence Hall of Science. I'm going to take a picture of the odometer with the bay above it. I tell myself, Yes I'm mature.

The Acura went past 200,000 a couple of weeks ago.

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nice

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Used car prices are jaw dropping right now. Since you have another car to drive this is a great move.

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What are you replacing it with?

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CeeJay has a new Subaru Forester. I've been in it and it's a nice car.

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Personal Finance

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Real estate advice needed. My grandfather is planning on leaving one of his homes to my mom and my aunt. My aunt plans on selling the home since she lives in Virginia. I keep telling my mom to just buy out my aunt and keep the house as a rental. This is in San Diego and the house is probably worth close to $1 million as is, it’s two blocks from my parents house and my dad does most of the handyman and yard maintenance at this house now.

The catch, my parents don’t make much money so she is worried about getting a loan. I suppose she could take a loan against the inherited home or her current home but my mom is worried about paying it off.

I would like to step and help her, even put the financing in my name and we would co own the home together.

What I’m asking is, what is the best way to do this?

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I concur with Cugel. Co-ownership is not a good idea because getting two people to agree on something is difficult. Money and family don't mix. Put it on the market as "coming soon" via MLS (you can pay about $500 to do this). This should hopefully create a bid, which will establish a market value for it on which the sister can be bought out.

The inheritance shouldn't be a problem because it is below the Estate Tax threshold. However, you would have a difficult time putting the property in your name because you don't own it and a equity transfer is a taxable event on your folks. She is better off owning it and writing a promissory note to you (ie, loan) secured by the house with a commercial or near commercial interest rate.

If the sisters can't agree on what to do, then I'd look for a small property of at least half the value of the original house. Then get ready to do a 1031 Exchange so that your folks can get a tax shield.

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Well, this is complicated. First question should be, can your aunt & mom agree on value? Cause otherwise, none of this will work. What also are the tax implications of receiving the house? Is that a taxable event?

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I have a HELOC, which is great for temporary financing. Super flexible, good rate. But what about when you sell your house and the HELOC is no longer available? I had an investment opportunity pop up last week and needed bridge financing until a divestment settles next year. A securities portfolio-backed line of credit is a great option*. You can draw on the line up to a certain percentage... say 50%... of the portfolio value. The rate is about the same neighborhood as a HELOC. I knew they existed, but I don't know why I didn't think of personally using it earlier, but I'm mentioning it here in case it's useful knowledge to someone else.

* - No promotional fee paid by Scootie, but I believe she's in charge of this product.

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we have been using our securities based lending recently.

it is usually a better rate than HELOC. in fact not too much worse than our home loan at 2.8%.

we could have bought the most recent car purchase outright, but ended up loaning the $$ while the money still stays invested in the larger portfolio.

there are also ways to buy a 2nd home and take a much larger loan if necessary. we are keeping it as "dry powder" in case we need it for an investment opportunity like that.

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i tried explaining securities based lending to my 17 yr old and her comment was ...

so this is another scheme that rich people have to stay rich.

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teenagers can be terribly cynical

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But also unprejudiced when passing judgement.

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What is the scariest book that you've read?

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Some of the short stories in "Innocents Abroad" by Gene Wolfe. I liked Lovecraft when I was a teenager.

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"It", though if I really thought about it, "The Stand" might creep up that list in light of current events.

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Pet Sematary. Genuinely terrifying. Amityville Horror also did a number on me when I read it as a teen, alone in our Tahoe cabin.

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Pet Sematary. Good choice. ‘Sometimes dead is better”.

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Stephen King and his supporters thought this book was bad because it was so dark, so he published it in order to get back at his publisher. It backfired.

https://www.tor.com/2013/01/24/the-great-stephen-king-re-read-pet-sematary/

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Thanks for sharing--that was a good read. I knew that he wasn't a fan of the book because it was so relentlessly grim, but I didn't know about the issue with his publisher at the time.

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What happens when an AirBnB takes over a neighborhood?

https://slate.com/business/2021/10/airbnb-housing-shortage-luxury-vacation-rental-galveston-texas.html

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This is very much happening in Tahoe, and several Tahoe communities are fighting back by severely limiting the ability to short-term rent out homes. All over the lake, even pre-panny, the stores and local message boards are full of notices about how the housing shortage has left them unable to fully staff, because staff can't find anywhere to live -- there literally aren't enough homes available for full-time living because of the Air BnB market.

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@ why don't they just stay at an air bnb @

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Sounds like the basis for a policy. We may not need to build as much housing; simply outlaw certain forms of ownership...like timeshares...or multiple unrelated owners.

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Or foreign nationals from owning real estate.

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It's not foreign nationals that bugs me so much. It's foreign corporations looking to make a speculative kill and, in the process, threatening to wipe out the viability of other established properties.

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Panny? PANNY?!?!?! Please say this is NOT a thing.

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Twist calls it the "pandemmy".

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lol my wife sometimes calls it the pandy

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"Knickers in a twist" doesn't quite do it, does it?

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Is it clear now?

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this reminds me very much of conversations with my aunt and uncle & cousins about the town where my cousins grew up. They lived in a house that was right on the beach where the Firth of Forth opens up to the sea, which had been available because when my aunt & uncle were looking, nobody in their right mind would commute 30 miles to Edinburgh. Over time, people got more willing to commute, but also the genuinely wealthy started buying the seafront housing for weekends and holidays, and the reasonably wealthy started going through local real estate offices to do "holiday lets." There had always been a element of that - my mother and aunt had been taken to North Berwick in the 50s for family holidays & stayed in flats & houses that were short term rentals - but it got to the point where there were almost no actual residents on the seafront. Anyway that's more of a bougie example, but it seems like AirBnB has achieved that same hollowing out, but at scale!

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The minor fall, the major lift

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Travel News

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Paris .. we booked a trip for 4 days over Thanksgiving for the family.

we have traveled many places but never been there as a family.

looking to do a cooking class, some historical walking tour, etc aside from the general walking around and soaking up all the French vibes

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Going to be in Boston, Philly, and LA. My mom's aunt is in hospice in Boston. She's visited a couple of times since June. I told her I'd go the next time she went. She left yesterday and I'm going next Mon night. Going to be in Boston for a few days. Then we visit No 1 in Philly for a few days, then fly to LA for a few days for my nephew's bday. Overall it's almost 2 weeks. Going to miss the next 2 Cal home games. Other than missing GO's food, maybe that's not a bad thing...

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When are you going to be in LA?

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Around the last wed of Oct until either Oct 31 or Nov 1.

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Well, damn, wife and I are leaving for Maui that Thursday. until the 31st

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That's too bad. If we end up flying out on Tues I'll let you know. Otherwise we'll have to wait until the next time I'm down there. I'm assuming you actually want to meet up :)

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Missing the Colorado game means you either miss a meh win over a bad team or you miss out on the full plunge into a death spiral. Either way, the trip sounds more enjoyable.

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Inevitably it will probably be a 1030 pm EDT game so it probably means I'll safely be able to go to sleep a bit after midnight.

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you stopping by NYC?

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Nope not this trip. My mom has wanted to take a train trip so we were thinking of taking the train from BOS to PHL but it was like 250 so we decided on a 1 hour $65 flight.

No 1 was talking about possibly driving up to NYC but my mom has seen most of the stuff so we're going to try to find things around Philly. We've also done DC so we probably won't do that either.

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I went to Tibet. It was not relaxing, but it was unbelievably pretty. I'm very tired, I didn't sleep well at altitude.

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must've been all those chinese tourists

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And the annoying Europeans

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What did you see?

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The highest point on earth. Some awful bathrooms. Some very below average restaurants. Shrinking glaciers, lots of Tibetan monasteries, lots of discussions about the dalai and pachen lamas.

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Did you get picture of Everest?

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Many. We had perfect weather (apparently the week before it was completely fogged in)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUwLbOULAIm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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Great pictures. Thanks for sharing.

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UC Lhasa

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well they are owned by the neighbor to the north 😬

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It should be noted that W4C has never been under control of those pantsless heathens up north. In fact, W4C North remains our fiefdom until some point late Friday evening

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I thought we were making a UCLA joke

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Ha!

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Did you go to Everest from the Nepali or Chinese side?

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Nepal is somewhat closed (and its where Delta variant began and is rampant) and I can leave China, but getting back in is fraught with hurdles and one has to be prepared to not be let back in despite having all the paperwork current. (I had a friend go back to SF for her father's funeral, and the Chinese consulate in SF would not give her the final piece of approval to return to China for 5 months so she paid rent in Shanghai and worked reverse hours for 5 months - she's finally back and working here but what an ordeal).

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Cuckoo

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My great grandmother had a cuckoo clock. It fascinated me. Then it broke and clock repair was too hard/expensive to find.

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My m-i-l has 3 (maybe 4) cuckoo clocks. I expect that we will eventually inherit at least one of those clocks.

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crumbling democracies n rising autocracies

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The Kraken, who is facing $4b in defamation lawsuits, goes on air to claim that there is a secret server that takes votes and manipulates them. She also claims that they're updating the software so that there's no trace that it ever happened. I also have an invisible bridge for sale.

https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1447617856468766721

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there have been instances, IIRC, of voting machines that have no change logs for the records, but the paper copies are the comparator that allows you to tell if something has gone awry. It's only an issue if you don't have anything to compare it to

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"In general, people are going to have to appear, or, you know, we will move contempt charges against them," [Liz] Cheney said. She said the entire committee was in agreement on that point."

Looks like the FA-ers are about to FO.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-jan-6-panel-advance-contempt-charges-if-subpoenas-not-followed-cheney-2021-10-13/

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He's not my district and I've already voted.

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Sure, and while we're at it let's blow up the moon to stop its effects on sea level fluctuations.

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Yes. Sea level would lower by .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 millimeter. Probably less.

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I saw reference to 14 microns, and the sea would be back to its original level by tonight.

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Sadly it's a long way from the dumbest policy proposal we'll ever hear

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we're only 2 years removed from trying to buy greenland and blowing up a hurricane with a nuke

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Dems to cut $1b of the $3.5 infrastructure bill.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/12/pelosi-signals-democrats-could-trim-biden-build-back-better-plan.html

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Unfortunate but $2.5 trillion, plus the $1.2 trillion hard infrastructure bill would still be transformative and help a lot of people.

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Today in COVID

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How do you think an endemic Covid will permanently affect our society?

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Significant expansion of work-from-home options

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Drive-through fast-food, ghost kitchens, and venues with outdoor seating are going to remain much more popular.

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I think that Covid has permanently damaged our local Cal Alumni Chapter. Relationships are too casual for people to ever be in other people's circle of trust to do in-person activities. Game watching tends to be indoors, crowded, and with drinking/food (masks coming off). The link (alumni) is too general/historical for people to really be passionate about. And I am skeptical that people want to have another organization that is purely online. I am preparing to have a discussion with UC Berkeley about potentially shutting the NC Chapter down or potentially it just becoming a weekly Facebook post with no activities.

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Shanghai's is MAINLY a networking group chat with occasional online seminars by Cal affiliated folks for work stuff (Fintech! Investing! blea). In the past we've done more Cal stuff, but the majority of the group chat is Chinese cal grad alumni - I try to feed a lot of Cal Bears History photos and background into the chat but I get teh feeling that the majority don't care.

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DBD AV

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Finally gettting Dune and No Time to Die in China in the next two weeks

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DBD Kitchen

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Bottle gourd stir-fry. Bottle gourd tastes like nothing, but has a firm zucchini like flesh - which means it will absorb any sauce you put on it. It's got a slightly slimy texture, so it needs a bit of a sauce. I sauté it then simmer it in chicken broth until soft, then fry it in fresh garlic, oyster sauce, and mushroom powder. It was great and a nice change of pace from the typical veg.

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that sounds interesting!

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Cal

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I am not expecting a close game on Friday. I think we will lose something like 45-24.

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That's assuming we can score 24. I'm thinking we'll be lucky to even get 13.

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Mighty confident of you that we will score.

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well, this as well.

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Go Bears!

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Recruit Kaleb Johnson decommits. Flips to Iowa.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CU9GM33MwYW/

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Well, if you prefer the Hinterlands of Iowa to Berkeley...?

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He is from Ohio so Iowa is a lot closer to home and actually wins games.

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he prefers a winning culture, fans who are engaged, good coaching and being closer to home I suspect

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Oh boy - facing the reality of Cal fandom these days. Limited interest and attendance, seemingly poor coaching.

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these days? this IS cal fandom

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Yes, limited interest/attendance and poor coaching is the historical norm for the program. Sometimes a guy like Snyder or Tedford makes us think it won't be anymore. Doesn't last.

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Final score for the Colorado game will be 20-7, haven't decided which way however

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Oct 13, 2021Liked by Berkelium97, SGBear

20 - 6

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pltm

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Ouch.

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Other College

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New bottom 25. This time Chase Garbers is the cover boy for the article...ouch

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-rankings-thanks-to-cal-colorado-and-arizona-the-bottom-25-has-a-pac-12-flavor/

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at least the tailgate food has been fucking good. Thanks me

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Indeed

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Pro

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Roger Goodell makes sure that Dan Snyder is protected and that Gruden is the only one thrown under the bus.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/sports/fallout-continues-from-gruden-resignation-over-emails/2828760/

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One wonders what Snyder has on the other owners and Goodell

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Makes one wonder who (probably Goodell) and what Gruden did to piss off the nfl.

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kompromat

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Manfred wants to do more non-traditional venues. Where ever a game is played, it will probably draw more people than Miami, Tampa Bay, or Oakland.

https://twitter.com/markjburns88/status/1447987752964927491

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Where would you send MLB teams?

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Montreal

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I agree with this. I guess I was thinking places that haven't had a team before.

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Dominican Republic. Actually, it might be interesting to see a MLB All-Star team play an exhibition game against a DR All-Star Team.

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They could do a full Caribbean circuit. Cuba, DR, PR, Jamaica

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This would be pretty cool.

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Havana

Tokyo

Mexico City

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I think it would be cool to see a game in Havana. MLB has already done games in Mexico City and Tokyo, sorta with the MLB all stars. Maybe Korea? The atmosphere during games is cool.

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How about MLB Cuban All-Stars vs Cuban National Team. Are there 25 Cubans in the MLB right now? They can add Puig since he seems to have burned bridges.

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Vegas.

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Mexico City

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Build a stadium atop Ayers Rock

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Maine

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Astros dispatch of the White Sox 10-1, and win the series 3-1 to face Boston. Altuve and Correa were the usual thorn in the side of CWS.

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Winner Take All game 5 Giants and Dodgers...shaping up to be an all time classic.

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That's the way it should be, except that this really should have been in the NLCS, not the NLDS.

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Yep. We deserve to see this matchup as a 7-game series

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Giants forget how to play baseball, lose to Dodgers 7-2 in NLDS Game 4

https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2021/10/12/22723621/mlb-2021-nlds-game-four-san-francisco-giants-los-angeles-dodgers-final-score-recap

The San Francisco Giants lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-2 in Game 4 of the National League Division Series tonight at Dodger Stadium.

You ever have one of those days where literally nothing goes right? You stub your toe getting out of bed, the hot water isn’t working when you get in the shower, you get to your kitchen to discover you’re out of coffee, you leave one minute late and end up in a traffic jam, you pull into work to find that someone just pulled into the last parking spot, the power goes out while you’re on an important phone call, you realize you left your lunch at home when you don’t have time to go get anything, you get a flat tire halfway home, you come home to find that your dog has just had an absolute field day pooping all over your house and also you’re out of milk? Yeah, one of those days.

That’s basically what this game was for the Giants. They were all having this exact day at the exact same time. It was a faithful reenactment of “Homer at the Bat” in which Kris Bryant showed up ready to beat Shelbyville, only to discover that every single one of his teammates had had some kind of a horrible curse placed upon them and had each individually forgotten how to play baseball.

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Walker Buehler proved he was the right choice for Game 4, as Dodgers even NLDS

https://www.truebluela.com/2021/10/12/22723263/walker-buehler-dodgers-pitching-correct-choice-offense-giants-nlds-game-4

Walker Buehler didn’t earn the win in Game 4 of the National League Division Series, but he did all he could to keep the Dodgers’ season alive. He wasn’t alone in the 7-2 win over the Giants on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, but Buehler justified the Dodgers’ decision to pitch him on three days rest.

After the first two games in San Francisco were split, it was Buehler who brought the idea of pitching on short rest, something he’d never done in his professional career. Down two games to one and facing elimination, that option became more and more appealing, instead of mostly a bullpen game with bulk innings from Tony Gonsolin.

“I think taking down as many outs as we can with the best arms available was the original thought,” manager Dave Roberts explained before Game 4.

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I always felt there would be a game 5. Now which team adapts and beats the pitcher that shut them down.

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Right after the final pitch SRO tickets on Seatgeek were around 230 and the cheapest seat was around 290. Looks like I can get one ticket right now for 253.

I had thought about going to Pac Bell Park, hanging outside, and see how low tickets get before the game. Though I don't think they'll go down low enough that I'm willing to pay.

Last night I sat on the couch and only got up once to stand up and then sit back down until the top of the 9th (had to run to the bathroom). I hadn't planned on it but I didn't want to jinx it. Got real hungry by the end of the game.

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i am going to send you a Dominos pizza delivery for game 5

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heh...I was thinking I should just eat a late, large lunch and then I'll survive throughout the game.

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"Seems like splitting these games was by far the most likely outcome. Probably the next two as well."

- sycasey

Oct 11

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Called it! Game 5 was our destiny.

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