I wrote a fan letter to an author I like, and she responded, and then I responded, and then she asked if I'd be willing to tell her more about my job, because she'd like to use it for a story! We chatted this morning for two hours, and I hope at least some of it was helpful. Her heroine lives with a boyfriend at the beginning of the book, but they break up, and she needs to find somewhere new to live. I told her how I get a discount on my rent because I rent from and live with my brother, so I was able to give her a sense of what kind of living situations her heroine can afford if she's getting a discount on rent vs striking out on her own.
The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he’d be finished in Hollywood.
April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her “real life”—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction.
On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she’s Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep from her.
With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?"
The show that Marcus stars in is sort of based on Game of Thrones and how it has similarities and differences from the book. No mystery, though I did once hear an author describe the similarities between romance and mystery. In both cases, you basically know what's going to happen (two people fall in love/someone is murdered and their killer is found), but you still read the book to see HOW they get to the end.
There is a known issue with old Miatas when the radiator turns olive green. They tend to fail. People have said when you buy an old one with an olive green radiator to replace it since inevitably they'll fail. So I bought one and all 9 coolant hoses and started the replacement with No 3's help on Sat. Got the radiator out and replaced some of the hoses. I also bought a new thermostat and removed it. Started to remove the gasket bunk stuck on the thermostat housing but I need to be careful because the housing is aluminum so I have to make sure I don't gash it. Got some goof off and wet/dry sandpaper and lightly sanded what I couldn't scrape off.
One heater hose runs back behind the engine against the firewall and is blocked by the Cam Angle Sensor. I have a leak there (well known leak point) so I decided I'm going to get the o-ring there and take that off so I can replace the heater hose and fix the leak. The CAS is supposed to be a PITA to put back so I hope that goes back on smoothly. Then last two hoses are called devil hoses because they attach above the oil filter and is way in there. I think I'm going to skip those because I don't have a lift to help me get behind the engine. Just putting the car on 4 stands doesn't help.
Hopefully I can get the CAS back in without too much trouble and finish it off this weekend. Fingers crossed.
My dream is to get a garage tall enough to support a proper lift. It would save so much time and make so many jobs so much more convenient (especially swapping winter/summer tires and doing tire rotations).
They make so many jobs so much easier. The older I get, the more I appreciate them. The cost of a shop designed to accept one, height and a floor slab that won't crack, is what stops most of us. I had a friend that had one, and when he built a new house, he specifically built a new shop to accommodate it.
yeah that would be awesome. Have you looked into the quick jacks? These look pretty cool and is enough for some stuff like rotating wheels and stuff. Oil change, etc. But not enough for some things like getting way back behind the engine.
Even though I got reputable jack stands off Amazon not Harbor Freight, I'm still weary about getting under the car. When I need to take the tires off I put them under the door sills just in case and when there's room I also put the jack under the front of the car just in case.
Disappointingly, the name does not come from a historical wine cellar being there. It is named after the Spanish explorer - Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra
Used to live on the last house before the sand dunes in El Segundo, chosen by my dad because of the excellent schools (when half the city is the Standard Oil plant, great tax base).
one odd element of my recent obsession with Portugal is getting confused by pictures from Lisbon, where they have a bridge that looks almost exactly like the Golden Gate one. I couldn't understand why car dealers were photoshopping their wares into pictures of San Francisco (because I'm an idiot)
That bridge is very confusing. It's significantly smaller in person, but one can't deny it looks very similar. Also, very near one of the best places to get custard tarts.
We were supposed to have an event there this last April, which obviously was cancelled. I'm assuming next Apr will also be cancelled since the New Orleans event in Feb was cancelled. I'm hoping they'll just use the same locations for the 2022 events instead of choosing new locations.
serious question. we discovered over the weekend that our super sweet 13 yr has a major social media addiction.
she wants to "quit" but can't bring herself to. anyone else had similar experiences and/or remedies that worked?
we have been mostly relaxed and permissive w/ both daughters and it was seemingly working out fine. but perhaps it is time to app-blockers, parental controls, etc.
one short term thing she can to help cut back, is to turn off notifications. If the phone isn't blinking and buzzing at her, she can get control of the urge to check obsessively.
After Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mitch McEvil did his Mitch McEvil thing, I realized that I needed to stop doomscrolling for my own mental health. I've kept the apps on my phone because I still need to use them for work, but telling myself that looking at them is not an option to fill time has helped.
Other friends have removed the apps from their phones, and that's helped them. They can still access them on their computers. I think that it's important to stay connected, so a good exercise to walk through might be:
-who do I want to make sure to stay in touch with?
-how do I stay in touch with them? (make sure you have emails and phone numbers)
-set up regular video chats with the people you want to stay in touch with, write emails and letters
-what would be a meaningful use of my time? (come up with projects)
I don't know what apps are interesting/engaging/addicting for 13-year-olds, so I'm not sure how applicable all of this is to her, but I hope she finds some solutions!
I cannot speak for HeyStudentsBears' daughter, but a survey of my daughters and their friends suggests that they view email as a way that organizations send them information and something that the olds use to communicate. My mother spent literally years nagging my daughters about sending her email and ignoring my suggestion to send them texts. Guess what happened when she switched to iMessage? 😂
Is she struggling with TikTok? Because that's worse than Twitter I'd say.
My daughters have both had their challenges with TikTok, my older daughter will uninstall it periodically to force a reset, and my younger daughter will leave her phone in another room if she needs to get something done.
Since your daughter is 13, you could have her uninstall and use parental controls to stop her from reinstalling.
she really only uses Snapchat and Tik Tok. my guess is that Snapchat is more of an offender than TT.
you post something, look for "likes", look to see what others are saying about you or not in various private chat rooms which number from 4-50 people.
also, the impression i get is that there is a lot of "implicit assumptions" people make. lets say i post a thing. if you dont like it, then it might be a sign that you are somehow disapproving of it.
i guess we all grew up w/ similar peer feedback, but it was all verbal or non-verbal and in-real-life, and not primarily online.
Ah okay. Yeah, my older daughter has always been more of a snapchat user that her sister: a combination of the group chat function (mostly camp friends) and then maintaining streaks with individual friends - although she would sometimes surprise me with things that she'd picked up from the stories features. The 15 year old swaps pictures and such, but she's nothing like as much of an extrovert as her sister so the use case / time suck isn't the same. Both of them seem to get a lot of use out of insta for posting and 1:1 chats with friends that maybe aren't on imessage group chats.
The informal rules of when you can like something or if you pull it for insufficient likes is more than I can keep up with for Instagram, all I know is that I must not be within the first 50 (older girl) or 25 (younger girl) to like a post. I never got drawn into that with them on SnapChat.
I'm not sure what to suggest if she's looking for the dopamine hits of social interaction on Snapchat. It's a really hard time to be a middle schooler online and I don't envy them one bit. If she's into maintaining streaks then all I can suggest is occasional bursts. (The best thing about camp for my girls, no shit, was breaking the social media use for 7 - 8 weeks, because it proved to them that they could. That's not why we sent them, but it was a nice side benefit)
I would concur, in a sense, that getting involved in some activity helps. Camp being cancelled has contributed to the issue, because people have been pressed to come up with other activities, especially since so many of those are curbed too.
I tend to disagree with the camp that preaches a hard cap, or a ban, on any given social media platform. They are all tools, what matters is how you use them, and all of them can be helpful in a number of settings.
My daughter was often saved (in an earlier era, I know, but not that different) by 4H, Band & Band camp, the Jazz band, softball, etc. The social media of the day productively entered into all of them, but didn't dominate them, because there was so much to occupy her.
Find and involve her in some activity. Any activity that interests her.
same about camp. it was 4 wks that they realized that life was fine, if not better w/o electronics.
on the other hand camp was cancelled this summer and she was forced to go to dad's-makeshift-summer-camp-at-home. and the pandemic has only made things worse.
It really depends on the definition of "sandwich"...should I be counting the tacos (debatable), burgers (I guess they count), and open-faced "sandwiches"?
Varies. Obviously depends on if I buy lunch meat when I'm at the store. If I do then it's probably 3-4. Otherwise it's usually 0 unless I decide to make a salami sandwich. I buy one of the 3 lb Molinari and Son's salami from Costco every so often. Many times I'll cut slices off and have some with cheese but sometimes I'll make a sandwich with it.
I had a colleague in Singapore who ate Cantonese every day. I mean, she was Cantonese, so it's of no wonder. What made it interesting was that I would occasionally have a sandwich. She thought sandwiches were repulsive and disgusting. Her disgust for sandwiches gave the westerners in the office endless fun. She had a good sense of humor about it.
"Hey, Janice, we're going out for a sandwich. Want one?"
That's like somehow disliking a burrito. There's so much variety in what can go in it that it seems ridiculous to hate them--there's some combination of ingredients for everyone.
One of the best burritos I had was a Sushirito near Pasadena. It was last summer when Nos 1 and 3 and I were down in LA for a baseball tournament. Just different than a Mexican burrito but it was so good. Kind of like a poke bowl in a tortilla.
if we defined "sandwich" broadly enough to include any bread products including tortillas, 5 - 7 times a week. If we're only talking loaves of leavened bread, 1 - 2 times a week.
Bengalis (me) usually celebrate Durga Puja around the same time of year. so despite growing up as Indian-American kid, i knew little about Deepavali.
Durga is known as the mother goddess and this time of year is associated with the fall harvest. she is a fierce character with an all-seeing 3rd eye and 10 arms, all mostly holding implements of destruction.
on the other hand, as awareness of Indian people and culture in the US has grown in the last few decades, i too have become more aware of its importance.
Gujaratis (my wife) celebrate it as a big holiday as does most of northern India. i cant speak for south India as much since it is an entirely different place. it is also particularly culturally relevant since day 3 of 5 is Laxmi Puja, where you "pray for prosperity" to the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity, and my in-laws a very keen on financial prosperity, to put it mildly.
US Biotech firm Moderna says the Phase 3 trial of its vaccine was 94.5% effective. They got Operation Warp Speed money, so I imagine a brag-storm is imminent.
right but he is young so still can be considered one of their key pieces. A big, young double double guy isnt easily replaceable. Add Booker with the scoring...you sell off replaceable assets for a veteran HOF but past his prime point guard and you might have something
Interesting. Hopefully it works out for them because that is a huge contract to swallow ($85m over the next two years). Paul looked great this year, but will his body hold up over the next two seasons?
Stunningly, 49ers unable to move the ball without Garoppolo, Kittle, or Mostert, lose to Saints. Also hurt by one of the worst roughing calls I have ever seen.
Is this the play that Brees was hurt? I didn't see it live but I wonder if the official saw that Brees' helmet moved on the hit and assumed a roughing call when it actually hit off the shoulder of the OL after the 9er hit him.
Yeah I think this is the play where he was hurt. I think they assumed that the DL tried to land on Brees with his weight, but he clearly didn't -- wrapped up and fell to the side. It was just a hard hit.
The worst part is that there was initially no flag, but then when Brees came up lame several seconds later the official threw it.
Niners got screwed on another similar call back in 2013 (that one actually did cost them the game, unlike this one that wasn't very close in the end).
It's similar to what the Vegas Knights complained about on the Joe Pavelski hit. The results made the official throw the flag rather than the actual hit.
eh, it was great , but the (3!) defenders were dumb in that they looked to be trying to catch the ball, not just knock it down/knock it it out of the receiver's hands.
Tim Hudson and Barry Zito are on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the first time, as well as Dan Haren, who the A's acquired from the Cardinals for Mark Mulder. Nick Swisher, drafted by the A's in 2002, is also still on the ballot.
You've got to think that Huddy should hang on the ballot for a few years.
I can understand the defense being ragged with the dline quarantine and tackling is always going to be dicey in game 1 but... the offense was so far beyond putrid that I have no idea how they are going to improve significantly this season. Garbers looked lost and the play calling just totally sucked. Is Musgrave an Oregon plant sent to destabilize the Duck's sole competition for mastery of the North this year?
The run-pass balance of playcalling was weird. Early in the first half we had a stretch where we ran 6 times in a row and then later in the half we passed 10 times in a row.
I think once UCLA started to blitz the end rusher every single time, we decided to call quick passes. The announcers noted that the defender that was defending the TE or RB that was kept in to block would blitz when they saw their assignment was blocking. Our passes were off target and the receivers got no separation at all.
The OL was putrid. The defensive tackling could have, SHOULD have prevented a few scoring drives. The play calling was WTF. 2 QB draws back to back on that first drive??? The first drive should have been 7. I think Musgrave really wanted to establish the run but gave up too quickly and put the entire offense on Garbers' shoulders which was a piss poor decision. Still not seeing the WRs get separation either.
It was pretty discouraging that we couldn't establish the run against a run defense that porous (they gave up over 250 yards to Colorado the previous week). Oregon State has had some of the worst run defense in the nation over the last few years. If we can't get anything going against them, we're doomed.
I went out during halftime to get something at the hardware store and check out the farmer's market. I think I checked the game when I got back and it didn't seem much better so I moved my focus to the Packers game and briefly kept checking the Cal game.
I taped the game because of a conflict but accidentally heard the score on the radio as I was driving home. I then listened to the satellite radio call for most fo the 3rd quarter. 2 thoughts. First, UCLA's announcers are HORRIBLE. Makes me almost not hate Joe Starkey. Second, we SUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
Starkey was Starkey. First quarter was him making an error on every other sentence. I had to also keep a play-by-play on the computer just to know results, down, and distance.
I assume he didn't travel with the team. Is he still broadcasting with Pawlawski? I wonder if it was like MLB where the visiting broadcasters would not travel and have to watch the TV broadcast.
No Pac-12 radio broadcast crews are traveling this football season, and doing all road games from a combination of tv and an all-22 feed, which is not close to synced with the tv. (30-60 second timing difference.)
TV crews are a mixed bag. Some are traveling and some are not.
It does produce a lot of extra confusion, and inconsistency between calls.
I can't imagine how heaping this on top of normal Starkey could be anything but a train wreck in a tank farm next to a chemical plant on fire.
well, no one has yet to convince me that Starkey hasnt been dead for 20 years and the increasing errors he makes are just the computer sim program they use to mimic his voice being corrupted. That said, the UCLA announcers were godawful on an incredible scale. No description of the setting, half assed descriptions of the play, just a lot of "Holy shit, UCLA is AMAZING" talk which is acceptable to a degree but give us a little context please. They effing suck
I watched the third quarter because that was when I was free and because I like you guys. Good lord. Hopefully that was just a case of the team not being match fit, to use a UK soccer phrase.
Cal doesn't have a roster that is about to out-talent other Pac-12 teams. They need to beat them with discipline and coaching. If you can't practice then you can't have that advantage.
Plenty of reasons to be concerned, but IMO you can't really evaluate one way or the other based on this. Need to see what it's like when the team can actually prepare for a game.
I probably won't be concerned until after the next game. Give them a full week of practice. I think if we have tackling issues again then I'll be concerned. There were quite a few broken tackles in the first half. At least the players were in the right position so that's a plus.
When it was 27-10 that Bruin TD was the pivotal blow. With the way our offense was playing it seemed like a 17 point lead would be completely insurmountable.
Low energy, poor conditioning, bad tackling and offensive malaise. The only good thing about the game was rotating in some new faces such as Woodson who had the blocked punt and Damien Moore at running back, who I guess is now third string, also a couple of freshman receivers played. Clark and Remigio did virtually nothing all game.
Just gave a virtual tour of my facility to a Cal mineralogy class. Their messages in the comments made me smile:
1) lol "no stanfordium"
2) Oooh Go Bears
Wait this is awesome, I didn’t realize Berkeley had been helping in the whole process!
3) ^!
4) Thank you for the presentation! Love your ppt artwork!
mmmm (Angelina's) chocolate
https://www.zingermans.com/product.aspx?ProductID=P-ANG&crf=201116&cmp=1&_ccCt=ae4m-2bp5z8-t8k54r-1x7za374
https://www.zingermans.com/Product/angelina-advent-calendar-from-paris/P-AGA
FORTY FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS?!? I like how they don't tell you how many cups it makes. It's probably two.
maybe it includes shipping from Paris?
Zingerman's is always pricey. On the other hand, it's cheaper and more feasible than going to Paris.
!!!
I wrote a fan letter to an author I like, and she responded, and then I responded, and then she asked if I'd be willing to tell her more about my job, because she'd like to use it for a story! We chatted this morning for two hours, and I hope at least some of it was helpful. Her heroine lives with a boyfriend at the beginning of the book, but they break up, and she needs to find somewhere new to live. I told her how I get a discount on my rent because I rent from and live with my brother, so I was able to give her a sense of what kind of living situations her heroine can afford if she's getting a discount on rent vs striking out on her own.
Cool! I take it that this fan letter is via email rather than snail mail?
Yes, I wrote a fan email :) But, I have been writing pen-and-paper letters to my childhood librarian! (background here: http://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2020/08/at-home-in-the-library-my-taiwanese-american-story/)
You have to let us know if/when the book comes out.
I just remembered something I told her that IS relevant to this group: Nobel laureates get permanent parking spaces on campus!
which of us, other than you, is going to win a Nobel?
Ha, sadly, no Nobels for cake eating (yet)
I don't know how many people on here like reading romance, but I will keep you all posted!
Only romance? Or is it romcom, or mystery also?
Hmm her most recent book, Spoiler Alert, has elements of a romcom: https://oliviadade.com/books/spoiler-alert/ "Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret.
The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he’d be finished in Hollywood.
April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her “real life”—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction.
On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she’s Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep from her.
With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?"
The show that Marcus stars in is sort of based on Game of Thrones and how it has similarities and differences from the book. No mystery, though I did once hear an author describe the similarities between romance and mystery. In both cases, you basically know what's going to happen (two people fall in love/someone is murdered and their killer is found), but you still read the book to see HOW they get to the end.
Sounds like it could be very romcom. Reminds me a little of You’ve Got mail.
my translations of WfC and CGB real life situations into k drama plots are way more creative!
Speaking of, have you gotten to write and be creative lately? Want to share any stories with us?
Car DIY
There is a known issue with old Miatas when the radiator turns olive green. They tend to fail. People have said when you buy an old one with an olive green radiator to replace it since inevitably they'll fail. So I bought one and all 9 coolant hoses and started the replacement with No 3's help on Sat. Got the radiator out and replaced some of the hoses. I also bought a new thermostat and removed it. Started to remove the gasket bunk stuck on the thermostat housing but I need to be careful because the housing is aluminum so I have to make sure I don't gash it. Got some goof off and wet/dry sandpaper and lightly sanded what I couldn't scrape off.
One heater hose runs back behind the engine against the firewall and is blocked by the Cam Angle Sensor. I have a leak there (well known leak point) so I decided I'm going to get the o-ring there and take that off so I can replace the heater hose and fix the leak. The CAS is supposed to be a PITA to put back so I hope that goes back on smoothly. Then last two hoses are called devil hoses because they attach above the oil filter and is way in there. I think I'm going to skip those because I don't have a lift to help me get behind the engine. Just putting the car on 4 stands doesn't help.
Hopefully I can get the CAS back in without too much trouble and finish it off this weekend. Fingers crossed.
My dream is to get a garage tall enough to support a proper lift. It would save so much time and make so many jobs so much more convenient (especially swapping winter/summer tires and doing tire rotations).
They make so many jobs so much easier. The older I get, the more I appreciate them. The cost of a shop designed to accept one, height and a floor slab that won't crack, is what stops most of us. I had a friend that had one, and when he built a new house, he specifically built a new shop to accommodate it.
yeah that would be awesome. Have you looked into the quick jacks? These look pretty cool and is enough for some stuff like rotating wheels and stuff. Oil change, etc. But not enough for some things like getting way back behind the engine.
I've seen them and thought they looked pretty useful. I could see myself plunking down the cash to get one eventually.
Even though I got reputable jack stands off Amazon not Harbor Freight, I'm still weary about getting under the car. When I need to take the tires off I put them under the door sills just in case and when there's room I also put the jack under the front of the car just in case.
When jacking up my miata to change the oil I used to use wooden blocks on 4 points of the undercarriage. Made it a bit safer than jackstands.
I have two 3 ton and two 2 ton jacks. Hopefully the weight (or lack thereof) of the Miata isn't straining them.
Used something foolproof after you get it jacked up, like giant blocks of wood.
A city/town in California that has an interesting Spanish-language name
Diablo
Alameda?
El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula or simply LA
Rancho Cucamonga - I think it means “Sand Ranch”
Not a city, but Contra Costa County is good. Literally means "opposite coast," as in, on the other side of San Francisco Bay.
Los Feliz (pronounced los FEE-liz for some reason)
similar to San Rafael, not pronounced with a Spanish Accent.
Bodega Bay
Disappointingly, the name does not come from a historical wine cellar being there. It is named after the Spanish explorer - Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra
My second favorite named bay.y favorite being Botany.
KHAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN !!!!!!
El Segundo - Just because it's named for the second Standard Oil refinery on the west coast
Used to live on the last house before the sand dunes in El Segundo, chosen by my dad because of the excellent schools (when half the city is the Standard Oil plant, great tax base).
the bermuda triangle of wallets too
Los Gatos
Manteca
phat.
Los Banos
Tell the DBD where you live in four words (or less) without using any proper nouns
County named after fruit
nearish pea soup place
Ellen and Oprah's neighbor!
Yes - I like that one better!!
the land of oaks
university extension farm town
old bay and lobbyists
above strawberry creek
top of the bay
top of the bay
Whales vagina and zoo
Containment area: relocating yankees
Near the orange bridge
one odd element of my recent obsession with Portugal is getting confused by pictures from Lisbon, where they have a bridge that looks almost exactly like the Golden Gate one. I couldn't understand why car dealers were photoshopping their wares into pictures of San Francisco (because I'm an idiot)
That bridge is very confusing. It's significantly smaller in person, but one can't deny it looks very similar. Also, very near one of the best places to get custard tarts.
I think the place is called Pasteis de Belem. You are right, those little custards are awesome.
I hope to find out one of these days, even if just for tourist reasons
We were supposed to have an event there this last April, which obviously was cancelled. I'm assuming next Apr will also be cancelled since the New Orleans event in Feb was cancelled. I'm hoping they'll just use the same locations for the 2022 events instead of choosing new locations.
I hope to find out, for custard tart reasons
It's a very SF-ish city. Hilly, on the water, street cars, an orange bridge
In between Dog & Ghost __________
south of south bridge
across river government seat
canyon between glendale/pasadena
first coronavirus hot spot
Quit
serious question. we discovered over the weekend that our super sweet 13 yr has a major social media addiction.
she wants to "quit" but can't bring herself to. anyone else had similar experiences and/or remedies that worked?
we have been mostly relaxed and permissive w/ both daughters and it was seemingly working out fine. but perhaps it is time to app-blockers, parental controls, etc.
one short term thing she can to help cut back, is to turn off notifications. If the phone isn't blinking and buzzing at her, she can get control of the urge to check obsessively.
unless it becomes the opposite where she's constantly checking to see if someone has liked her post.
After Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mitch McEvil did his Mitch McEvil thing, I realized that I needed to stop doomscrolling for my own mental health. I've kept the apps on my phone because I still need to use them for work, but telling myself that looking at them is not an option to fill time has helped.
Other friends have removed the apps from their phones, and that's helped them. They can still access them on their computers. I think that it's important to stay connected, so a good exercise to walk through might be:
-who do I want to make sure to stay in touch with?
-how do I stay in touch with them? (make sure you have emails and phone numbers)
-set up regular video chats with the people you want to stay in touch with, write emails and letters
-what would be a meaningful use of my time? (come up with projects)
I don't know what apps are interesting/engaging/addicting for 13-year-olds, so I'm not sure how applicable all of this is to her, but I hope she finds some solutions!
I cannot speak for HeyStudentsBears' daughter, but a survey of my daughters and their friends suggests that they view email as a way that organizations send them information and something that the olds use to communicate. My mother spent literally years nagging my daughters about sending her email and ignoring my suggestion to send them texts. Guess what happened when she switched to iMessage? 😂
same. kids think of email as an official thing where they get notifications.
That makes sense!
Is she struggling with TikTok? Because that's worse than Twitter I'd say.
My daughters have both had their challenges with TikTok, my older daughter will uninstall it periodically to force a reset, and my younger daughter will leave her phone in another room if she needs to get something done.
Since your daughter is 13, you could have her uninstall and use parental controls to stop her from reinstalling.
she really only uses Snapchat and Tik Tok. my guess is that Snapchat is more of an offender than TT.
you post something, look for "likes", look to see what others are saying about you or not in various private chat rooms which number from 4-50 people.
also, the impression i get is that there is a lot of "implicit assumptions" people make. lets say i post a thing. if you dont like it, then it might be a sign that you are somehow disapproving of it.
i guess we all grew up w/ similar peer feedback, but it was all verbal or non-verbal and in-real-life, and not primarily online.
Ah okay. Yeah, my older daughter has always been more of a snapchat user that her sister: a combination of the group chat function (mostly camp friends) and then maintaining streaks with individual friends - although she would sometimes surprise me with things that she'd picked up from the stories features. The 15 year old swaps pictures and such, but she's nothing like as much of an extrovert as her sister so the use case / time suck isn't the same. Both of them seem to get a lot of use out of insta for posting and 1:1 chats with friends that maybe aren't on imessage group chats.
The informal rules of when you can like something or if you pull it for insufficient likes is more than I can keep up with for Instagram, all I know is that I must not be within the first 50 (older girl) or 25 (younger girl) to like a post. I never got drawn into that with them on SnapChat.
I'm not sure what to suggest if she's looking for the dopamine hits of social interaction on Snapchat. It's a really hard time to be a middle schooler online and I don't envy them one bit. If she's into maintaining streaks then all I can suggest is occasional bursts. (The best thing about camp for my girls, no shit, was breaking the social media use for 7 - 8 weeks, because it proved to them that they could. That's not why we sent them, but it was a nice side benefit)
I would concur, in a sense, that getting involved in some activity helps. Camp being cancelled has contributed to the issue, because people have been pressed to come up with other activities, especially since so many of those are curbed too.
I tend to disagree with the camp that preaches a hard cap, or a ban, on any given social media platform. They are all tools, what matters is how you use them, and all of them can be helpful in a number of settings.
My daughter was often saved (in an earlier era, I know, but not that different) by 4H, Band & Band camp, the Jazz band, softball, etc. The social media of the day productively entered into all of them, but didn't dominate them, because there was so much to occupy her.
Find and involve her in some activity. Any activity that interests her.
same about camp. it was 4 wks that they realized that life was fine, if not better w/o electronics.
on the other hand camp was cancelled this summer and she was forced to go to dad's-makeshift-summer-camp-at-home. and the pandemic has only made things worse.
but thanks for the thoughts.
I have no useful suggestions only sympathy.
How many times a week do you eat a sandwich?
It really depends on the definition of "sandwich"...should I be counting the tacos (debatable), burgers (I guess they count), and open-faced "sandwiches"?
It's probably between 3 to 10.
4 or 5 at least. I love sandwiches. I have become a sandwich artiste during COVID.
Depends on the leftover sitch... average 2.1 times/week.
Varies. Obviously depends on if I buy lunch meat when I'm at the store. If I do then it's probably 3-4. Otherwise it's usually 0 unless I decide to make a salami sandwich. I buy one of the 3 lb Molinari and Son's salami from Costco every so often. Many times I'll cut slices off and have some with cheese but sometimes I'll make a sandwich with it.
Maybe once per week.
Anywhere from 4 to 8, depending on what the leftover load and the days' itineraries are.
FET
I had a colleague in Singapore who ate Cantonese every day. I mean, she was Cantonese, so it's of no wonder. What made it interesting was that I would occasionally have a sandwich. She thought sandwiches were repulsive and disgusting. Her disgust for sandwiches gave the westerners in the office endless fun. She had a good sense of humor about it.
"Hey, Janice, we're going out for a sandwich. Want one?"
[Janice]: 🤢
That's like somehow disliking a burrito. There's so much variety in what can go in it that it seems ridiculous to hate them--there's some combination of ingredients for everyone.
One of the best burritos I had was a Sushirito near Pasadena. It was last summer when Nos 1 and 3 and I were down in LA for a baseball tournament. Just different than a Mexican burrito but it was so good. Kind of like a poke bowl in a tortilla.
In my experience, just about every poke places now make these sushi burritos - same stuff just different delivery methods to the mouth.
Sushirito is good, but it will never be a comfort food like an actual rice and beans burrito. i am not sure i crave them.
isnt there one in Palo Alto?
I don't know. I did a quick look in the East Bay but I should probably spend more than 1 min looking.
that sounds very much like my jam
if we defined "sandwich" broadly enough to include any bread products including tortillas, 5 - 7 times a week. If we're only talking loaves of leavened bread, 1 - 2 times a week.
Once. Pastrami
Deepavali
Deap Vally
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deap_Vally
is a very regional thing ...
Bengalis (me) usually celebrate Durga Puja around the same time of year. so despite growing up as Indian-American kid, i knew little about Deepavali.
Durga is known as the mother goddess and this time of year is associated with the fall harvest. she is a fierce character with an all-seeing 3rd eye and 10 arms, all mostly holding implements of destruction.
on the other hand, as awareness of Indian people and culture in the US has grown in the last few decades, i too have become more aware of its importance.
Gujaratis (my wife) celebrate it as a big holiday as does most of northern India. i cant speak for south India as much since it is an entirely different place. it is also particularly culturally relevant since day 3 of 5 is Laxmi Puja, where you "pray for prosperity" to the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity, and my in-laws a very keen on financial prosperity, to put it mildly.
Today in Covid
US Biotech firm Moderna says the Phase 3 trial of its vaccine was 94.5% effective. They got Operation Warp Speed money, so I imagine a brag-storm is imminent.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/moderna-covid-vaccine-candidate-almost-95-effective-trials-show?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
A recent Stat News article on mRNA vaccines (that also compares Moderna and BioNTech): https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/
Elsewhere in college
SC really is tripping over their... shoelaces into winning games. Lots of poor coaching.
Doing just enough for Helton to keep his job. Excellent.
the worst!
Making just enough plays to win...Drake London is borderline unguardable....
South Carolina fires Coach Will Mushchamp. Wonder what suddenly brought them to their senses?
Someone found $13m under one of the couch cushions?
Covid relief funds being creatively applied.
[Me, Saturday]: "Ha! Look at all these beatdowns. Wow, Michigan got smoked."
[Me, Sunday]: ☹
Heh
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
From yesterday:
https://twitter.com/ChelseaClinton/status/1328096263523487751
TIL: There is a typo on the Liberty bell
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/stories-libertybell.htm
* sigh *
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328200072987893762
Scott Atlas, ladies and germs
https://twitter.com/SWAtlasHoover/status/1328120887128842240
PRO
in which Ryan Reynolds and the guy behind "it's always sunny in Philadelphia" buy a soccer club:
https://twitter.com/Wrexham_AFC/status/1328339177746927624?s=20
USA up 3-1 over Panama at 25'
Phoenix trades, like, their entire team for Chris Paul
https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1328400003564494856
they kept Booker and the Center they got #1 last year or whenever it was...thats all they needed to keep
Ayton? How good is he? Is he pretty raw and needs development? I forgot how good he was at UofA.
right but he is young so still can be considered one of their key pieces. A big, young double double guy isnt easily replaceable. Add Booker with the scoring...you sell off replaceable assets for a veteran HOF but past his prime point guard and you might have something
Interesting. Hopefully it works out for them because that is a huge contract to swallow ($85m over the next two years). Paul looked great this year, but will his body hold up over the next two seasons?
Wow I saw a proposed trade for the Warriors to get Kelly Oubre. Granted most of those trade articles are click bait.
NHL doing a Reverse Retro version of the Quebec Nordiques sweater as an alternative jersey for the Colorado Avalanche this year. It looks pretty cool.
https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2020%2F1116%2Fr776384_1296x729_16%2D9.jpg&w=1140&cquality=40&format=jpg
Will be interesting to see if the Carolina Hurricanes do something similar for the Hartford Whalers.
If you could do a retro jersey, what would you do?
NHL doing a Reverse Retro version of the Quebec Nordiques sweater as an alternative jersey for the Colorado Avalanche this year. It looks pretty cool.
https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2020%2F1116%2Fr776384_1296x729_16%2D9.jpg&w=1140&cquality=40&format=jpg
Will be interesting to see if the Carolina Hurricanes do something similar for the Hartford Whalers.
If you could do a retro jersey, what would you do?
I like the Joe Roth jerseys.
Ebbets Fields Flannel has some good Collegiate flannel baseball jerseys
https://www.ebbets.com/collections/collegiate-flannels-1
I like the Cal one but damn, $215.
https://www.ebbets.com/collections/collegiate-flannels-1/products/university-of-california-berkeley-1938-road-jersey
And they have the 1934 football jersey. on sale for $188.
https://www.ebbets.com/products/university-of-california-berkeley-1934-authentic-football-jersey?ref=isp_rel_prd&isp_ref_pos=1
I have the hat and it's definitely in my rotation.
https://www.ebbets.com/collections/collegiate-ballcaps/products/university-of-california-berkeley-1931-vintage-ballcap
Raiders destroy Broncos, at 70% likely to make the playoffs.
https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/2020/11/16/raiders-playofff-odds-move-up-to-70-percent-with-win-over-broncos/
Stunningly, 49ers unable to move the ball without Garoppolo, Kittle, or Mostert, lose to Saints. Also hurt by one of the worst roughing calls I have ever seen.
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2020/11/49ers-saints-terrible-roughing-the-passer-call
This was the wrong year for me to try to give up the Raiders for the Niners.
Is this the play that Brees was hurt? I didn't see it live but I wonder if the official saw that Brees' helmet moved on the hit and assumed a roughing call when it actually hit off the shoulder of the OL after the 9er hit him.
Yeah I think this is the play where he was hurt. I think they assumed that the DL tried to land on Brees with his weight, but he clearly didn't -- wrapped up and fell to the side. It was just a hard hit.
The worst part is that there was initially no flag, but then when Brees came up lame several seconds later the official threw it.
Niners got screwed on another similar call back in 2013 (that one actually did cost them the game, unlike this one that wasn't very close in the end).
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/49ers-roughing-passer-drew-brees/1rcixxtyuxoza18xwry6sntk5c
It's similar to what the Vegas Knights complained about on the Joe Pavelski hit. The results made the official throw the flag rather than the actual hit.
Yes, that was a god-awful call for the ages.
OMG
https://twitter.com/DeAndreHopkins/status/1328138316928012288
I heard there was a hail mary at the end of that game. Wow, that was even more spectacular than I expected.
that catch was insane. even just scrambling around and getting the throw off in the right direction was amazing.
eh, it was great , but the (3!) defenders were dumb in that they looked to be trying to catch the ball, not just knock it down/knock it it out of the receiver's hands.
Replay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reuYu-xjhNg
I think the guy in front is trying to knock it away, he just doesn't have enough height to reach it before Hopkins does.
Not sure I agree, I think the guy in front of Hopkins is trying to knock it down. He's just not tall/strong enough to beat him.
I'm still not sure how Kyler Murray wasn't sacked on that play.
2002 Oakland A's
Tim Hudson and Barry Zito are on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the first time, as well as Dan Haren, who the A's acquired from the Cardinals for Mark Mulder. Nick Swisher, drafted by the A's in 2002, is also still on the ballot.
You've got to think that Huddy should hang on the ballot for a few years.
Goff, Rodgers both top 300 yards passing in victories:
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/seahawks-at-rams-score-russell-wilson-seattle-struggle-again-as-los-angeles-wins-to-create-tie-atop-nfc-west/live/
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/packers-struggle-to-put-away-jags-get-by-with-24-20-win/
CAL
DOOOOMMMM? Might be too soon to jump to that conclusion, but it has to be on the table.
I can understand the defense being ragged with the dline quarantine and tackling is always going to be dicey in game 1 but... the offense was so far beyond putrid that I have no idea how they are going to improve significantly this season. Garbers looked lost and the play calling just totally sucked. Is Musgrave an Oregon plant sent to destabilize the Duck's sole competition for mastery of the North this year?
The run-pass balance of playcalling was weird. Early in the first half we had a stretch where we ran 6 times in a row and then later in the half we passed 10 times in a row.
I think once UCLA started to blitz the end rusher every single time, we decided to call quick passes. The announcers noted that the defender that was defending the TE or RB that was kept in to block would blitz when they saw their assignment was blocking. Our passes were off target and the receivers got no separation at all.
The OL was putrid. The defensive tackling could have, SHOULD have prevented a few scoring drives. The play calling was WTF. 2 QB draws back to back on that first drive??? The first drive should have been 7. I think Musgrave really wanted to establish the run but gave up too quickly and put the entire offense on Garbers' shoulders which was a piss poor decision. Still not seeing the WRs get separation either.
It was pretty discouraging that we couldn't establish the run against a run defense that porous (they gave up over 250 yards to Colorado the previous week). Oregon State has had some of the worst run defense in the nation over the last few years. If we can't get anything going against them, we're doomed.
Go Bears!
When did you rage-quit the Cal/UCLA game?
halftime. i have better things to do with my time than watch something over which i have no control
NEVER! Maybe the last minute.
I went out during halftime to get something at the hardware store and check out the farmer's market. I think I checked the game when I got back and it didn't seem much better so I moved my focus to the Packers game and briefly kept checking the Cal game.
I made it about halfway through the fourth quarter and then checked out and opened up the laptop.
I luckily had to go to work at 10:45, so I no longer had to watch
I taped the game because of a conflict but accidentally heard the score on the radio as I was driving home. I then listened to the satellite radio call for most fo the 3rd quarter. 2 thoughts. First, UCLA's announcers are HORRIBLE. Makes me almost not hate Joe Starkey. Second, we SUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
Starkey was Starkey. First quarter was him making an error on every other sentence. I had to also keep a play-by-play on the computer just to know results, down, and distance.
I assume he didn't travel with the team. Is he still broadcasting with Pawlawski? I wonder if it was like MLB where the visiting broadcasters would not travel and have to watch the TV broadcast.
No Pac-12 radio broadcast crews are traveling this football season, and doing all road games from a combination of tv and an all-22 feed, which is not close to synced with the tv. (30-60 second timing difference.)
TV crews are a mixed bag. Some are traveling and some are not.
It does produce a lot of extra confusion, and inconsistency between calls.
I can't imagine how heaping this on top of normal Starkey could be anything but a train wreck in a tank farm next to a chemical plant on fire.
well, no one has yet to convince me that Starkey hasnt been dead for 20 years and the increasing errors he makes are just the computer sim program they use to mimic his voice being corrupted. That said, the UCLA announcers were godawful on an incredible scale. No description of the setting, half assed descriptions of the play, just a lot of "Holy shit, UCLA is AMAZING" talk which is acceptable to a degree but give us a little context please. They effing suck
I watched the third quarter because that was when I was free and because I like you guys. Good lord. Hopefully that was just a case of the team not being match fit, to use a UK soccer phrase.
It looked to me that Cal was every bit a team that hadn't practiced much, never mind not having played a game yet.
That's pretty much what I think it was.
Cal doesn't have a roster that is about to out-talent other Pac-12 teams. They need to beat them with discipline and coaching. If you can't practice then you can't have that advantage.
I think that's most of it, but I'm concerned.
Plenty of reasons to be concerned, but IMO you can't really evaluate one way or the other based on this. Need to see what it's like when the team can actually prepare for a game.
I probably won't be concerned until after the next game. Give them a full week of practice. I think if we have tackling issues again then I'll be concerned. There were quite a few broken tackles in the first half. At least the players were in the right position so that's a plus.
The "tackling" felt very Dykesian
Yeah, it was alarming to see a serious degradation of fundamentals on defense.
When it was 27-10 that Bruin TD was the pivotal blow. With the way our offense was playing it seemed like a 17 point lead would be completely insurmountable.
I’m happy that the Bears are more mentally resilient than I am because that game yesterday was depressing
Low energy, poor conditioning, bad tackling and offensive malaise. The only good thing about the game was rotating in some new faces such as Woodson who had the blocked punt and Damien Moore at running back, who I guess is now third string, also a couple of freshman receivers played. Clark and Remigio did virtually nothing all game.
Provided Moore has good to decent pass pro blocking, he should overtake Dancy.