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Irrationally nervous? vis-a-vis Cal FB would be, and I won't cop out and say any game but close. I've long since backed off from irrationality into rational nerves regarding USC, UW, UO etc. matchups. The irrationality would probably apply to FCS, and Group of 5 teams. Maybe Oregon State but that too has become fatalistic over the recent decade plus. Be nice to get cured of it.

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I miss Late Nite DBD

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sup girl

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hey big boy

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BREAKING NEWS ... University of California Will End Use of SAT and ACT in Admissions

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/university-california-sat-act.html

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Numerous other universities have in the last year of so (before the distance learning craze of the last 2 months) have already dispensed with using these tests. (Where was this 45 years ago?!)

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they had already stopped using the GRE for grad school admissions, so i think this was somewhat in the cards even before coronavirus

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From Twitter, @alexweprin

Networks are beginning to get creative with the pandemic-spurred production shutdown. CBS says it will air a special next weekend called "Haircut Night in America" in which celebrities like Jerry O'Connell and Kelly Osbourne give themselves haircuts.

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I can't remember the last time I got a haircut. It falls out at about the same rate as it grows so it stays the same length.

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Me neither. A trim probably in Feb when my wife did it, but a "real haircut", I think about a year ago.

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i am finally getting a haircut this weekend. meeting up w/ sister-in-law's family for the weekend at some house we are renting in PA and they are bringing their hair clippers.

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Haircuts become legal in most Oregon counties for the first time in 10 weeks tomorrow.

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Heh, they were always legal, if you were living with someone who could do it.

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Only if neither one of you had been potentially exposed, or were quarantined!

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No 3 cut mine about 3-4 weeks ago. I may have him do it again in a couple of weeks.

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Creative? More like desperate I'd say.

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I just saw something about how ViaCom bought Some Good News

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Ohh..interesting. Maybe that's why John Krazinski said they'd be taking some time off.

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honestly this kind of sucks. He'll be the producer with a new host.

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Annie Glenn, American Hero

By Connie Schultz

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/05/20/annie-glenn-american-hero

I held up my camera. "I've never shot a photo of just you, without John."

To my surprise, she grinned and pumped her arms in the air. It is one of my favorite photos of her because it is the Annie Glenn I knew, the friend I loved. The public perception of her wasn't wrong: She was kind and brave, in her quiet way, and ever gracious. But she was also whimsical and wise, and very funny.

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Sort of off topic (except when this story broke, my daughter said they could do another King's Speech about her) - Was that the MOST boring film ever to win best picture? I think so - although TBH I haven't seen them all.

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Huh, I didn't know D$'s Twitter handle was @gyllensworth

https://twitter.com/itsmonicakim/status/1263313843188633601?s=20

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I didn't know this history about vaccines--may be interesting for some of you as well! https://twitter.com/sjmelchor/status/1263174936786538498?s=20

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Local police blotter:

A man wearing shorts that apparently did not fully cover his genitals prompted calls to police Wednesday in the Donaldson Run neighborhood.

Arlington County Police were dispatched to the area of Zachary Taylor Park, on the 2900 block of Military Road, around 11:30 a.m. and again shortly after 1 p.m. Callers described a tall man who was exposing himself, in sight of children.

On Nextdoor, one poster said her daughters encountered a tall man “with very short athletic shorts and tattoos on his legs.”

“He had short hair and an athletic build and was listening to headphones,” she wrote in a post sent to ARLnow. “The shorts did not cover much if you get my drift! I reported it to the police.”

ACPD spokeswoman Ashley Savage said officers located the man but were unable to find evidence of a crime.

“At approximately 1:18 p.m., police were dispatched to the report of an exposure involving a subject with a similar description to the earlier call for service in the same area,” Savage said. “Officers located an individual matching the description and made contact with him, however, he denied having exposed himself. The reporting party was no longer on scene and did not wish to respond to the Magistrate’s Office to swear out warrants. The incident was documented by responding officers.”

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Did they conduct a dress code check like in high school? Shorts must go past your fingertips?

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May 21, 2020Liked by SGBear

That’s not the relevant tip they should have passed in this case

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The old IRS audit, though I've never been audited.

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Elsewhere in college

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Not sure if it should go here or under the crumbling democracy topic, but I see that Cohen is being released from prison to finish serving his sentence from home to reduce prison crowding and avoid Covid issues (an actual outbreak of good decision making on both health and economic fronts), and at the same time, in a time when every aspect of government is financially strapped, and prisons remain a health safety challenge, Laughlin and her husband are going to serve time in prison (a complete waste of money and space and a completely avoidable contribution to the exposure management problem) for spending money to get their kid into USC.

(Can't wait to read DC's analysis!)

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I think that SC didn’t need their help in embarrassing itself as an institution which is exactly why a custodial sentence is in order. Lock them up!

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Can we have the corrections department send a bill to the USC alumni association?

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I don’t see why not...

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Oregon commit Luke Hill (4-star CB) arrested for 8 different charges, including 1st degree attempted murder. May affect his playing time. /s

https://247sports.com/Article/Oregon-Ducks-football-Luke-Hill-arrested-on-eight-different-charges-147338890/

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The UofO had already pulled his offer and discontinued recruiting him. Obviously found red flags when they looked closely.

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What little thing always makes you irrationally nervous?

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"I need to talk to you."

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My stomach just did a swoop.

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This just made me break out in a cold sweat.

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That reminds me: "Take out a sheet of paper"

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That almost always warns that things are about to go/end badly.

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TBH that is rarely a little thing.

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YES, OMG

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Summer squall lines

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If in tornado country, definitely. Horizontal rolling clouds (ok, not a little thing!) for similar reasons.

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Doesn’t even need to be a tornado! We get some amazing microbursts here along squall lines, and the multi state ones can be a doozy. A few years ago I got stuck waiting one out on the southern end of the Jersey turnpike and the slow lane was essentially unusable for 20 miles because so many trees blew down onto the road.

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i am comfortable at high speeds on a road bike but i am terrified of motorcycles.

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I may be the world's worst descender on my road bike.

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Scared? When I was in college, I used to zoom down Claremont Canyon as fast as I could, near 50, no helmet, but when I turned 30 (and now wearing a helmet) I never again went at that balls to wall speed.

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May 21, 2020Liked by Erik Johannessen

Short putts for birdie. Makes no sense to be nervous about a good thing when there's no pressure/nothing on the line. But the "for F's sake DON'T BLOW THIS" thoughts really creep in when the putt is 3-6 feet long.

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Today in the 'rona

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We have found the one up side to a state Unemployment system that is so understaffed and underequipped, even after ramping up, that there are still thousands on initial claims not processed, and people who haven't been able to file a claim, some going back 2 months.

The foreign originated fradulent claims that are plaguing our neighbors to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars haven't been detected as an issue here. Apparently not being able to get an on-line claim started, or get anyone on the phone before being disconnected, has deterred the crooks as well as the unemployed!

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I work in Downtown Raleigh, NC. It is a commuter city as very few people live downtown due to it getting hollowed out during the decline of big tobacco. But it has seen a long, hard revitalization over the past 25 years. Everyday I read about a restaurant that is closing. I fear that when I get back to going to the office that there will be no retail left.

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I don’t have an aggregate sense of what’s going under hereabouts but it sounds like a lot of independent restaurants in DC are toast. I rarely bother because nobody in the family really wants to eat the same stuff as me when it involves the PITA factor of going into town. I’m hoping that the more local immigrant joints hold on.

A friend from grad school has been working as a curator at the National Building Museum and just got laid off after 13 years, it sounds like some of the smaller and more local institutions like that are in dire straits.

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We all know that mainstreet has been crushed by CV19. I'm curious to know how much CV19 is affecting white-collar business. So, how has your company adjusted to CV19 from a business perspective (ie, not a health/safety perspective)?

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I should have been able to easily book new freelance work coming out of Chinese New Year. . . and nada. All the budget that went towards what I do (consumer events + retail marketing) has been shifted into digital/online stuff like live-streams and media buys.

My client is doing very well through CV19 - I think revenues are down, but they're the least down of any large retailer in China.

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I work for our county landfill, which is a division of the public works department. We are an entirely fee funded operation and have seen almost no change to business or activities. We've made some operational changes to promote less licking of the customers, but most everything is the same.

My work specifically hasn't changed at all, except for trying to use video conferencing software on computers that are not capable of it.

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"less licking of the customers" well, what is even the point of going to the landfill then?

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exactly what the irate customers have said.

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I work for Salesforce, which in the past has been able to weather economic downturns pretty well because of the nature of the business (all online, and something companies will turn to as a cost-cutting measure). It's been business as usual thus far, except the company has suspended hiring (which is also what happened in 2008).

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That's funny, my ex was hired by Salesforce in 2008, though IIRC she was only brought on permanently at the beginning of 2009.

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That's about what happened to me. I was a contractor at the time and would have been hired permanently in '08 but the freeze put that on hold for a while.

All worked out in the end.

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Doing the same work, just from home now. We still use a lot of wet-signature documents in our transactions though, so the logistics for that has been a bit of a pain.

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I volunteered to take home delivery of secure hard drives from a justice type organization to keep things moving along

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Well, my company is me, and I've worked from home for decades, so little impact on me personally, but a lot of impact on my workers and dealing with tenants.

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We are hemorrhaging money at a pretty significant pace. In my division, we have put in place customer accommodations that waive all fees (annual, late, over limit) and allow customers to defer all payments for up to 90 days, and have suspended all interest accrual for deferred accounts. Most banks are offering deferrals, but we are the only one that has stopped accruing interest on those accounts. More than 400,000 customers have taken us up on this. The interest suspension alone reduces our income $50MM a month.

This program will end June 1, and be replaced by the ability to request either a 90 day deferral, or if you've already had that and still need help, a second deferral of payments for 60 days. These will still accrue interest, so at that point the risk to us becomes only increased collections costs and then writeoffs when those deferred accounts still can't pay at the end of their deferral. We have forecast that our loss rate will double, and have taken a $700MM charge in anticipation of that.

And this is just cards. Mortgages is a whole different horror show. They never deferred interest for a few reasons (some of which are regulatory treatment of forbearance), not the least of which is that it would cost us $1B/month. We have stopped issuing home equity lines of credit altogether.

So far, we are still making decisions at an enterprise level that help the customers and hurt us, which I approve of but shareholders may not. For instance, we are not proactively decreasing credit lines (which in the Before Times we regularly do when people have adverse credit actions) and are allowing people to use their full credit limits even if they are deferring payment. This will increase our losses in the long run but seems like the humane thing to do.

As we veer towards a loss for the year, I do wonder whether the operating committee will have the stomach to stay the course, and what the breaking point will be.

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That’s a sobering look at the inside. It won’t be any consolation but we’re still paying our mortgage

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It’s hard to tell because your experience of federal contract work is as much a function of the customer and scope of work, but it hasn’t affected me in the slightest. I’ll be interested to see if the administration tries more monkey business with civilian agency spending for the FY21 budget - logically speaking that would be a horrible idea right before an election but you never know!

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i work for Vox. while viewership and pageviews and all that have been up, since we are funded w/ ad revenue, that has taken a steep decline. i think 9% of people were furloughed, mostly on SB Nation and Eater, since sports and eating out is happening a lot less. there were some pay cuts if you made more than a certain threshold, so i was part of that.

but in terms of actual work, we are already a very remote-culture company even though we have significant offices in NY and DC. i would go into office 2-3 days a week, mostly for the sense of working in a company w/ other people that i like even though my day-to-day job does not depend on it. i would typically work around my personal schedule. stuff like my favorite SoulCycle instructor or appt w/ my therapist.

work itself has continued like before with some changes in priorities to address the decline in revenues. my work has been reprioritized a bit, but mostly the same stuff as before since i was working w/ revenue data stuff already.

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Virtually no impact. Most of the businesses I deal with in my portfolio are in the cloud. I already do most of my work from home so not much on an adjustment. The impact on traditional brick and mortar service industries is immense, however.

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I work for a company that both develops code for other companies (mostly bluetooth stack and services) or writes tests for the bluetooth SIG. Other than not traveling to bluetooth F2F events, nothing has been impacted. Just about everyone works from home anyways so most of us still dial into the conference calls and work from home. The SIG still has to get work done so we still are getting paid by them.

I really don't like working from home since I moved back to Ca and don't like writing tests but tolerated most of it since I did get to travel 5-7 times per year to interesting places. I took the job because it was with people I had worked with and liked working with. And when I decided to leave my last job fairly quickly when it was pretty obvious the owner of the company was a tyrant and my boss and his boss, both of which I had worked with at another company and was good friends with, left I also left pretty quickly and left after knowing I could get a job at the current company. Within a couple of weeks everyone else either left or were laid off and the office in the US closed. The owner lived in the Philippines and opened an office there with the developers that lived in SE Asia. Hopefully the F2F events start back up by next year. For now I'm sticking with it because by working from home and with flexible hours I can go watch No 3's baseball games. There would be no way I could get from silicon valley to Benicia by 4 or 5 to watch him play.

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You have games back to watch? I thought those were still pretty much shut down. In Oregon, we are still trying to figure out how to have a fall season at any level. (Can't have a baseball game with <25 total present.)

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i think he is saying that in general. not currently (??)

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i am in the same boat, working a semi-easy job (which i truly enjoy) but it does afford me the time and flexibility to be home more now that the girls are teenagers (13 and 16). i cook more, do homework a lot, and just talk to them. my wife is the one who actually works hard but spends less time on the domestic stuff

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Yeah I meant back when baseball was still going on. One reason why I'm staying with the current job rather than looking for a programming job in the valley. That and the travel 6-7 times a year with 3+ international locations is worth it.

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I work for an internet infrastructure software/service company and business has not been affected at all. And management is not forecasting to be negatively affected even if the shutdown converts into a sustained global recession. However, the firm has cancelled about 15% of approved headcount reqs and pushed out another 15% into next year. Travel budgets reduced 90% for rest of year. Everyone essentially thanking their lucky stars they work for a recession/lockdown resistant industry.

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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Trump boasts that the US economy is forecasted to grow 21.5% at an all-time record rate QoQ in Q3. I mean, let's not bring up that this is QoQ growth compared to Q2, which is forecasted to contract an annualized 44.5%.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-governor-hutchinson-arkansas-governor-kelly-kansas/

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"On Friday, President Trump announced the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, based on the recommendation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a move that surprised official Washington and infuriated Democrats. Now, there is additional concern about Linick’s replacement, Stephen Akard, who is already on the job — and is also keeping his existing State Department position, setting up a clear conflict of interest."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/20/pompeos-new-acting-inspector-general-is-already-creating-conflict-interest/

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Trump committing more impeachable offenses:

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1263111195642540032

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PRO

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Dallas Cowboys: Welcome to the Andy Dalton Era?

https://twitter.com/brgridiron/status/1263493683548225536

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CAL

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GO BEARS!

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Here's incoming freshman Justin Baker practicing with 49er's Richard Sherman and Seattle's DK Metcalf via his 7-on-7/offseason program. In other news, Baker's upper body is yoked.

https://twitter.com/justinrbaker/status/1263244530116997120

https://twitter.com/CoachCross2/status/1263234341099855872

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@like looking in a mirror...@

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Ripped

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Breaking: Napolitano says UC system will resume live classes in the fall (Mercury News scoop).

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/20/coronavirus-university-of-california-campuses-will-open-in-the-fall-napolitano-says/

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I got to imagine that Universities are perhaps one of the few places where opening up happens earlier. Students are low risk. Faculty are easily distanced with some prudent steps. Nearby medical facilities. Existing infrastructure to assist who still want to distance. And... I can't think of a way to avoid a utter collapse of the entire UC Athletic Dept without football.

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I think they're going to be opening up earlier because they'll be financially fucked if they don't. Never mind the tuition and fees, the lost housing and dining revenue will be dire. The University is full of fixed costs that don't vary much based on the number of customers they get.

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I wouldn't think dining revenue would be one of those things though!

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It is a sizable chunk of cash, and easily redirected to any number of places, so while a hit here has varied consequences, they are still usually significant. Plus, since everyone has to eat, in any times, dollars that get spent off campus when they could be collected on campus are hard dollars that can't be recaptured.

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It's not as bad as housing, as long as you don't have a lot of debt backing the physical infrastructure, and you're about to furlough all of your staff. I don't know if UC meets those conditions.

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I think the X factor is the interaction of the students with the locals, not least to safeguard the locals from all these mobile vectors. I was horrified when the president of Brown hand-waved that away as an issue.

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I have to read the details but it looks like Vassar is steering towards in person classes with staggered arrivals and testing at the beginning of the semester and making an effort to keep students on campus as much as possible.

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Testing is going to need to be more frequent, or a run of even a few exposures that could be capped with isolation of a few students/faculty will turn into a wide spread exposure, and potentially a spike in cases, before symptoms show you a problem exists, and after its too late to curb or control it.

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To me it’s a less of a question of “can you make this work” and more a question of “can you limit the damage when it fails.” Mind you I think about almost everything that way

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I'm with you. I am of the mindset of "lets figure out how to make this work" (the engineer in me, not the anything is possible crowd) rather than "lets find an excuse to not do it", but dealing with the damage, or just the consequential issues that are bound to arise, is always in the forefront of my thinking, and yours.

I think we think similarly in part because of the fact that we are engineers of a sort. And also, this is not one of either one of us' first few rodeos.

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Thats kind of what I thought most schools with a good number of students from around the country or the world would not be on campus. Just too many unknowns and students packed in close.

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