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Weather

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much more concerned w/ the snow/weather in Steamboat next week. it had been a slow start to the ski season up until about a week ago.

they got a couple good storms and now they say snow EVERY DAY from Dec 23 until Jan 1! that is about as good as one could hope for since we'll be there Dec 26-31.

in NYC .. overnight lows in the high 20s

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It’s 83 degrees, sunny, humid, and breezy in St. Croix today. I drove to my AirBnB late night last night and woke up to a beautiful 150 degree view of the ocean.

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only been to St Johh (and St Thomas for flights). we were there for Xmas a couple years ago and it was great.

it is pretty strange geography that St Croix is part of USVI but so far away.

on the other hand the British ones are a short boat ride away ..

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I love St. Croix. I can’t wait to go back once this pandemic is over.

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I haven’t been to the USVI in 30 plus years and I only had the brief, rose-tinted view one gets from a cruise. It is beautiful, but…While it is American soil, it is sad how poor this place is. More than 40% of this island lives below the poverty line, compared to 19% for the worst state in the US (Mississippi).

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That sounds similar the Mrs. Bk97's impression of St Croix when she was there for work a few years ago. While it was technically the U.S., it apparently felt very much like a developing country. The scenery and wildlife were lovely, but the place seemed neglected and forgotten by the mainland.

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You could make the same argument for the various reservations in Arizona and New Mexico

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As someone who has worked in Indian Country for the last 15 years, this is true of almost all reservations, especially those without gaming.

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

This is true and I bet it is similar for all US territories. What source are you using because I would be interested to know wha the rate is for PR and Guam. I also feel like this is something all Caribbean island territories and nations struggle with for a variety of reasons due to colonialism and systemic racism of the region.

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49 and rain (according to google) for the next 9 days starting tomorrow.

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45 and cloudy, rain coming in tomorrow

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San Diego: partly cloudy with a high of 63 and a low of 41 today. Supposed to rain Thursday through Saturday this week.

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Snow’s coming down where I am (Polson, MT). Currently 26 degrees.

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that answers my question from a few days ago. we spent a little time on Flathead Lake during our summer trip to Glacier NP. we were in Lakeside and Bigfork.

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Supposed to rain all week! Have any of these rains made a dent in the drought?

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New snippets seem to suggest that they've brought us back to where the snowpack is supposed to be, on average, this time of year.

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SNOWPACK!

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42 (which is a warm-up) and raining. Supposed to rain all day without interruption for the 2nd day in a row. The high of 45 will be the warmest it will be all week.

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First morning when my thermometer shows below freezing - 30 degrees. I'll wait and do my run a little later so I can still just use shorts. A slow warm up this week with sixty forecast for Christmas Day.

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It dipped to 21 when I woke up this morning. Other than the past few days, December has been pretty mild around here so far.

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15 this morning in RI! I poured boiling water into the bird bath to thaw it; half-hour later, frozen solid again.

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Turned cold here over the last 7 days - we've been in the 30s, next will dip into the 20s with rain.

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DBD Not Official Financial Advice

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China's top livestreaming celebrity Viya gets fined 200m USD for unpaid taxes - which means she's grossing like 1.3 bil a year.

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DBD Test Kitchen

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Wife made black bean & sweet potato mole chili, had over lime cilantro rice with avocado salad on the side. Paired with a Domaine de Thalabert 2015 Crozes Hermitage. Daughter made a lemon - pistachio cake for afters.

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Had homemade burgers on white bread (too lazy to go to market), but made my own sriacha mayo and that was pretty great. On Sunday a friend hosted a Skyline Chili and eggnog night with Christmas Vacation. He's from Kentucky so I guess that's close enough to Cincy.

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Since Cincy's airport is in Ky, that makes him an honorary Cincinnatian (Cincinnati-ite?)

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I think Cincinnatian is the correct demonym.

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DBD AV Club

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In prep of Matrix 4 this week – they had the US premiere at the Castro Theater the other day; my wife and daughter saw Keanu, Carrie-Anne Moss, etc. – I figured I'd jump the M1 last might. Just want some of the parts I wanted to re-watch. 2.5 hours later, I'd watched the whole thing. Such a good movie! Too bad M2 and M3 were, uh, not.

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

School of Chocolate on Netflix. A bit better than typical cooking reality/competition shows. I have followed the lead instructor for years on IG, he makes completely insane chocolate sculptures and entremets.

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Finished season 2 of For All Mankind - great series.

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yup! altho the way they resolved the crisis in S2 E10 was a bit too quick (and the inter-crew "bickering" coulda been avoided if Ed were more open about his plan)

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I didn't read the scene that way, I feel that he wasn't sure what he was going to do until he got to a decision point.

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no, I agree that he *was* planning on doing the other thing, but he still coulda given them a head's up when he changed his mind. #DramaticLicense.

The Karen thread bothered me more

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I plan on starting this weekend due to all the positive comments here.

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HAG, did you ever see the Top Gun movie? i feel it went by w/o anyone saying anything

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The new one? Did it ever get released? If so, I missed it.

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It got pushed back to, I think, Nov 2022. I think it was supposed to be summer 2020, then pushed to 2021, then again pushed to 2022.

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wasnt there all this hype about it in Sep/Oct about the same time as Dune and Bond movie

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

I honestly don’t remember any hype about it or it being released. Was it released to theaters?

EDIT: A quick look of IMDb and it is scheduled for release in May 2022

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well there you go. May 2022. I'm going to be in line watching this on IMAX. or whatever is the best big screen and audio out there.

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went to the new Spiderman film Friday night so I could maximize my exposure to a super infectious variant, the film was perfectly fine.

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No 2 and 3 are excited to see it. We may all be going to the new King's Man movie late Christmas Night.

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Also going to watch Shang-Chi with the kids sometime over break as well.

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Hmmm... That doesn't seem like a you film, did you take your daughters?

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older daughter went too. said she liked it.

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Given the complicated thing they were trying to do, I thought they pulled it off incredibly well.

I also never thought I would give a crap about what happened in the Andrew Garfield movies, but this movie retroactively made me do it. That's the most impressive part to me.

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Endgame did the same thing with Thor: The Dark World

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I thought it was as fan servicey as you can get, but that's not a criticism. I liked the movie in the same way that I like a lot of the later MCU movies, in that they don't take themselves too seriously.

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I never watched the Garfield movies, should I watch them before this movie?

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I'd say they're skippable. The new movie catches you up well enough.

And Amazing Spider-Man 2 really is a bad movie. The characterizations in this movie rescue it.

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My wife and I watched Love Hard on Netflix over the weekend. It was a fun Christmas RomCom.

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The Jimmy Yang movie. It was "cute", but prob the least believable romcom I've seen in awhile.

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Yep, that is the one.

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Total Recall 2012 (Netflix 11/19, WB). As a stand-alone movie, it was perfectly cromulent. But it’s a bad remake. It’s a nonstop action fest without anything really unique plot points or devices – except for a intra-planetary elevator that switches gravity midway. But the elevator was a distraction because I had to suspend disbelief since it is a physical and engineering impossibility. And it lost all the charm and fun of the first version. The is-he-dreaming or is-this-real subplot was badly done. Fine enough for a plane ride, but not anything more than that.

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there was a remake? TIL...

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I watched the Matrix trilogy over the weekend in anticipation of the Matrix Resurrections.

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as I noted above, I watched #1 last night. When HBOMax came out (with the trilogy) I watched it then. and was still disappointed with 2 and 3

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For me, Reloaded is really good. It has some great action sequences, world building of the Matrix, we get to go to Zion, and it flips everything on its head with the big reveal that Neo isn’t the “One”.

It suffers because they didn’t quite stick the landing in Revolutions.

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There's some really good action sequences in 2

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Ugh....never got into the Matrix. Watched about 10 min and didn't continue.

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First one is really good, second one OK, third one zzzzz....

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Metallica 40th Anniversary show Night 2!!!

Fucking amazing set last night. I also went on friday night and they played songs from every album (minus LuLu) in chronological order (Kill 'Em All to Hardwired) and last nights set did the reverse starting with Hardwired to Self Destruct and ending with Seek and Destroy from Kill' Em All. Both nights (2 hour sets) had one cover song and one non-album song.

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Station Eleven on HBO Max....interesting first 3 episodes

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My favorite TV/Culture podcast - the two hosts put it as their favorite TV series of the year.

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The book was good so I was excited for this series. From a review I read it sounds like they made some minor tweaks which help with the story.

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For some dumb reason decided to watch all 4 hours of Zach Snyder's Justice League . . . and it wasn't that bad. I've seen worse. Sure the action was unintelligible and even with 4 hours of explanation time, a lot of the movie happens without the audience understanding why (Flash hitting the Speed Force etc. etc.) but it did clean up a lot of the Joss version. It'd say it's a lower 1/3 level super hero movie but the top of those.

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Our Crumbling Democracy

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Peng Shuai now tells Singapore paper she never claimed to have been assaulted. Lol. I get the CCP can make anyone within China believe anything they want them to believe, but their efforts to gaslight the international press are pretty comical.

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I have news for you on how many people in China believe the internal story too.

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is it a low number? not sure if you're saying that even the citizens know it's bullshit

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It's a middle number (granted you have to adjust for Chinese people I know - so living in Shanghai and much more than average exposure to international stuff).

But the idea that the CCP can make anyone within China believes anything they want them to believe doesn't really give anyone here any agency. It's not a closed system here.

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that's fair. I wasn't meaning to imply that Chinese would take it at face value, rather that the CCP seems to think that they will (and the international community also).

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I think, much like the republicans in the US, they're playing the back of the room (here, it's the ultranationlistic patriotic youths) and even they don't believe much of what they're saying.

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yeah, as this had progressed, I wonder "do they think anyone will buy this?". they're not playing to an internal audience.

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The internal audience they're playing to is above them (as in further up the leadership chain) rather than down to the populace, but they're picking up a decent part of the populace too.

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I've got half a mind to go to West Viriginia myself and kick Manchin in the nards.

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Now that I've read the WaPo story on what Manchin offered the Biden White House, I don't like what Manchin did, but I would have taken his support for what he would have supported and then come back later with a bill to fund what he wouldn't.

Manchin is a pig, and pigs get slaughtered. The Biden strategy was all wrong in going scorched earth on Manchin. Live to fight anohter day.

Now the problem is where will Biden find the needed support to pass *any* of the Build Back Better Act? Take what you can get and live to fight another day.

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

I agree, I would have taken the deal. The Biden administration has turned down two good deals now in order to get an even better deal.

I believe Romney and some GOP members were willing to work with Biden and democrats to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour and they said no. Which I thought it was a mistake as most blue states and cities are already implementing a higher minimum wage of $15. Red states will never willingly raise their wages so raising it to $12 would have really helped people in those states and $12 an hour in some of those states is a substantial increase.

Secondly, I believe Romney and some GOP were on board for a compromised child tax credit that would have phased out some programs (I believe TANF) and would have paid a little less than $3,500 but it would have been funded for more than a year. Which would have eliminated it needing to be in the BBB bill and seems to be a problem for Manchin.

Now if the Dems had a larger majority, I would understand not taking that deal but when your room for failure is basically 0 you should strongly consider anything that will bring some republicans along.

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Sure, but save some kicks for the other 50 people who also oppose the bill for strictly political reasons in spite of its popularity in their home state.

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There are also probably several other Democrats who wouldn't vote for it but get to use Manchin as cover.

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Yeah, I agree with this as well.

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if Manchin flips parties, we can say goodbye to any judicial nominees, including a potential Breyer retirement. Not sure what shouty Twitter lefties want

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They want everything they want but don't want to talk about how to do it when what they want has at best minority support.

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True but calling out Manchin for being a cheesedick is also totally fair. I mean it’s Twitter; it’s just noise anyway

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Still want to kick him in the nards.

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Absolutely - Manchin needs to realize he's losing in the next election anyways so might as well vote for something that benefits his constituents.

Of course, unless he's angling for something else.

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It feels like a dance. Bill will get watered down a bit more and some government widget factory built in WV before finally passing

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This is what I feel like is going to happen. Couldn’t they just break the bill up into several smaller bills and go a la carte to pass certain pieces?

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Problem with that is that the other smaller bills would now require 60 votes to pass the filibuster, and good luck getting that.

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This possibility seems a bit underappreciated right now. It wouldn't be the first time Manchin negotiated this way.

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Good point about judicial nominees and a SCOTUS replacement for Breyer.

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Breyer needs to retire so badly

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He really does. Retire or die but he needs to step aside.

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Today in Omicron

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It took all of 2 weeks for Omicron to become 73% of all new cases in the US. That is some fucking scary spread. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

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Daughter got P2 this morning. Again no side effects at all...it's good to be young! (And glad that I was able to take the side effects for the team!)

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Like Heinz, there are 57 varieties of Omicron. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/19/1065575540/nih-director-francis-collins-omicron

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Got boosted Saturday and had no ill effects, aside from a bit of a sore arm. After the second shot, I felt kinda crappy, so I was pretty pleased about how my body processed the booster.

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I received Moderna round 3 on Friday at lunchtime. Side effects were mild: I had a fifteen-minute spell of chills and shoulder aches about 7 hours later. I had another 30-minute spell of chills mid-day Saturday. Otherwise, the only side effects were loss of appetite and general lethargy. By Sunday afternoon I was entirely back to normal.

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Man, I hope the projections of a couple months of high transmission before ebbing run true because otherwise I don't know what I'm flying into. We still have reports of under ten cases a day - and even with underreporting, that's fractions of what's going on in the US

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prognosis out of SA is looking pretty good for reduced severity:

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1472670895328088076

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What about long Covid though?

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Nobody knows anything about Long Covid, but a lower severity of outcomes would seem to be good for that too.

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I think it's too new to know anything long-term

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Pro

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NHL just shut down for a week!

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RAIIIIDDDEEERSSSSSSS

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A's skipper to be Mark Kotsay. Not much of a surprise.

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Mets secure their goal of finishing third in the NL East by hiring Buck Showalter.

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Just brutal...almost as bad a hire as LaRussa

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pqtm

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What’s Ichiro up to? You’re right if you guessed “destroying Japanese high school girls”

https://brobible.com/sports/article/ichiro-japanese-high-school-pitching-girls/

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Age before beauty. Also the most wholesome "destroying of high school girls" on Al Gore's Internet.

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Tom Brady gets shut out. Here’s his best throw of the night, which was targeted at Gronk – who caught 2 of 11 targets. https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/1472781369810071552

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I had a dream last night that Tom Brady had a crush on me and I had no interest whatsoever. Bad day all around for Tommy.

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I heard on the radio this morning that this was the first time that Tom Brady has been shut out since 2006. The head coach of the team that last shut him out?

Nick Saban.

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Worth noting that his top 2 WRs and top RB all got knocked out of this game with injuries. That may have had some impact.

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

Not much impact. Brady was dogschitt from the opening whistle. Tampa was sleepwalking.

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Ehh, I think they might have been able to score more than zero points with all of their weapons available.

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Well, they should've still. Succop missed a makeable field goal badly.

But Brady was misfiring all over the place from the beginning, and has struggled throughout his career v. NO. Don't forget, that Saints team embarrassed Tampa in Raymond James last year on Sunday Night Football, 38-3, WITH Godwin, Gronk and Evans.

There doesn't always have to be an excuse, sy...the Saints are a bad matchup and their D dominated. It's really that simple.

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It also doesn't have to be only one reason. Could be the Saints played great AND the Bucs were short-handed for much of the game.

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Cam Jordan was a beast in last nights game. He was borderline unstoppable, living in the backfield and harassing Brady all game.

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Lots of "Go Bears" uttered during that game - visual only, Christmas music in the background, trimmed the tree.

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author

England loses the second test of the Ashes badly, which can be summarized by cupless Joe Root’s day.

https://twitter.com/TheBarmyArmy/status/1472612718981046279

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gee that's a shame

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pipe down sheep shagger

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I was being sympathetic! Nothing more demoralizing than inventing a game and then getting spanked at it all the time, just like the Scots and modern soccer.

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(I was not being sympathetic)

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[Announcer, whispering]. We’ve replaced their regular players with scrubs. Let’s see if anybody notices.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/32907444/nba-nbpa-agree-allow-teams-short-handed-covid-19-sign-replacement-players-memo-says

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49ers’ offense hitting a stride in their most complete win of the season

Kyle Shanahan’s offense took Atlanta’s defense to the woodshed on Sunday.

https://www.ninersnation.com/2021/12/20/22846047/49ers-offense-stride-complete-deebo-garoppolo

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Goff clips the Cardinals' wings. In his best game in a Lions uniform Jared outplayed Kyler Murray and the NFL best Cardinals by a lot.

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Goff on the covid list per ESPN.

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It seems like half the nfl is on the Covid list. Keenan Allen was on it and he is vaccinated.

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Nice. They can’t even tank correctly.

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

Kingsbury can’t beat Goff....Jared with ownage from the LAR days

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Looks like Kingsbury's team may be falling apart late in the season again.

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Looked like a team that lost a tough divisional game at home the previous Monday...

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Getting blown out by the LIONS tho?

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Other College

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Bo Nix to Oregon

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author

He is so inconsistent. He will have a fantastic game and then have terrible games – even against cupcakes and conference doormats. He was tolerated at Auburn because he was born-and-bred Auburn. Oregon fans are going to hate him.

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He's slowed down his up-and-down ways this season though.

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Sounds like a great fit for a fanbase that was already tired of the team's tendency to faceplant a couple times per season over the last few years.

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Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021

Yep, he is basically the SEC Garbers. Very inconsistent passer but is a decent threat in the run game and scrambler. He has a 2-1 record in the Iron Bowl like Garbers in the Big Game.

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100%. I was just about to write the same. My mom went to Auburn, as did 95% of that side of the family, so I pay attention to the Tigers. You get a different version of Bo Nix every game.

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So, career day coming against Cal, then. Great.

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I had the same thought! He will pass for 400 yards against us and then faceplant against Oregon St

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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I was at his first start for Auburn...which was against Oregon. 2019 in Arlington, TX. Heartbreaker for the Pac.

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This will be interesting to watch and see how it turns out.

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deletedDec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021
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Michael Penix Jr is inconsistent too. He had a great season in 2019 against weaker defenses. Then he had a so-so performance in 2020 against difficult competition, but ended up winning games. In 2021, he had a bad season.

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Back with DeBoer he could click from their Hoosier days

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However, Penix does have a gun for left arm. He throws a beautiful ball.

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Cal

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TIL: Travon Clark and his fiancée just had their second kid not too long ago. Congratulations to the happy couple.

https://twitter.com/trevon2221/status/1472757538357760005

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Dec 20, 2021Liked by SGBear

I went to visit my folks in Corpus Christi this weekend, flying through Houston Hobby. I had a roughly 2-hour layover in Houston on my way home yesterday, so I decided to walk around the terminal. I was wearing my Cal hat. As I was looking at some of the space-themed stuff in the terminal, I heard a "Go Bears!" coming from the moving walkway. I turned around and returned the favor. Simple, yet elegant.

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Houston is a HUGE transplant city - with the energy sector and the medical center. The majority of my friends in Houston were from somewhere else - not because of shared interests or anything just that Houston is one of the three major cities of the extended South (Dallas and Atlanta being the other two)

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I know where that is! Haven't been there in a few years though.

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these are the best stories

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Go Bears!!!

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