76 Comments

On to space

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of course then we get some sort of bullshit political speech from a spokesperson

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"Of all the ways Amy Cooper might have expressed her exasperation during a dispute with a birder in Central Park — rolling her eyes as she agreed to restrain her cocker spaniel, railing against avian life-forms, giving him the finger and moving on — she instead chose a potentially lethal option. Confronting her adversary, Christian Cooper, she said that she was going to call the police to report that “an African-American man” was “threatening” her life."

That didn't occur to me the first time I read about this event.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/nyregion/Amy-Cooper-Central-Park-racism.html?action=click&algo=top_conversion&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=457846656&impression_id=859512146&index=0&pgtype=Article&region=footer

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Wait, what didn't occur to you? The fact that she leveraged their identities to gin up a fake threat in order to unleash potentially lethal police force on him is the entire crux of the outrage here.

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No, that calling him "African-American" in the context of a racist act is odd.

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I don't think it is at all. She's a rich, educated New Yorker, and there are social norms here. She can be perfectly comfortable using her power to punish someone she intuitively feels is lesser without having to out and out say the n-word or something. Think of it, she's posing (on the phone) as an innocent, helpless victim here. A good person who deserves the help of the police from a dangerous man. Of course she's going to try to sound like a polite damsel in distress. You can hear in her voice how her inflection changes to emphasize her vulnerability and connote a sense of fear. She's being extremely manipulative.

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I still think it is odd, revealing and weird. Also, I haven't watched the video.

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Just leash your damn rescue dog, FFS!!! Send her dumb ass to Rikers. At least she lost her job, and they repo-ed her poor dog. Good riddance, Amy Cooper.

It literally was a scene straight out of Black Mirror tho....

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Also enjoying the miniseries on Grant, it's not great, but it is very good, and gets to the heart of what made him the Civil War's best general.

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my 7th grader is learning about Civil War in "school" right now. perhaps we'll watch together

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Superior Northern numbers definitely helped...Hiram’s wins were unfortunately accompanied by incredibly high body counts. Does the miniseries touch on the incompetently awful Gen. George McClellan? It could be argued he was basically the Wyking Jones of the Union army....

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A) In his Vicksburg campaign he had inferior numbers, but defeated 3 separate armies.

B) If you're to dinging him for the casualties in the campaign from the Wilderness to Richmond, that's somewhat true, but also, he's the mercy of the skills of his Corp commanders which was somewhat uneven (his favorite was matching on Atlanta). But his goal was achieved.

C) That's way too unfair to McClellan, for he did possess great skills in logistics and planned a masterful attack against Richmond- but then had a massive failure of nerve, but then again, conducted a great retreat. Weird guy.

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Yes, I should've been more specific....Vicksburg was brilliant. Wilderness, Spotsylvania, etc. were what I remember, though I'm not sure another General would've had any more success. Casualties were going to be significant, and by then, inevitable. I look forward to watching the Grant piece.

As for McClellan, he seems by most historical accounts to have been a real boob. The failures of nerve happened often, and in some minds, his Southern sympathies/leanings and questionable decisions bordered on treason, with him even running against Lincoln in the '64 election. The war shoulda/coulda/woulda been over in '62.....

On a side note, when my nephews grow up and ask me about the Wyking Jones-era in Cal Basketball, I'll simply say that Cugel said it was an insult to Gen McClellan to have been compared to the future Cal hoops coach. Egads!!!

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pqtm

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at the mercy...

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I really like Merriam-Webster's word of the day. I rarely see a word I don't the meaning of, but the history of the word is always interesting.

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Not Merriam-Webster related, but are there some words that folks know, have looked up, read, or even used multiple times but rarely enough that you either forget it or feel like you retain only a fuzzy idea of the meaning? One of the NYT crossword clues today was theodicy, which I remembered after I got 3 letters, but it's definitely a word I continually gain and lose. Other words like that include teleology and epistemology.

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Though, I'll say epistemology has come up in regular enough use over the last 5-10 years that it's now a little more cemented in my mind.

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What fresh hell is this

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2020 has fun surprises around every corner

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I miss the old days when monkeys only flung poo at people they didn’t like

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I just realized that if there was no pandemic, this weekend would be the last major (I think there would still be some outdoor track and field in the original schedule) weekend for Cal Olympic Sports. Both women's rowing (NCAA at Oak Ridge, TN) and men's rowing (IRA at NJ) championships, where Cal is perennial natty contender, would have had their finals on Sunday.

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The k-12 program at Berkeley Lab has a livestream on identifying stars today at 2: https://k12education.lbl.gov/home-resources/live-science-series

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Today in CV19

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were there 12 of them?

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By around next week, US will have suffered more deaths than it did in WW1. Granted, CV19 has been 3 months rather than 17 months.

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That will leave only the Civil War and WWI as events that killed more US citizens. And the wars featured people shooting at people, actively trying to kill them.

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What about the Spanish Flu?

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After a certain point, this kind of political negligence is indistinguishable from deliberately killing people off. This administration may well have been banking on COVID 19 missing their base states, that is looking like a mistake

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Mark Zuckerberg, who has allegedly been been funnelling enriched Uranium to Iran, said that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth.

https://www.axios.com/mark-zuckerberg-fact-check-twitter-facebook-0e3d9e92-00cd-4467-9ac8-bc50d4f8800e.html

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The Nats beat reporter for the local sports network is Mark Zuckerman. He gets a fair amount of nasty tweets pointed at Mark Zuckerberg. Periodically Zuckerman will reply with some baseball related retort to put the original tweeter in his or her place. Most are pretty funny.

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Ha. The Shovel had "Mark Zuckerberg - Dead At 36 - says Social Media Sites Should Not Fact Check Posts".

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Elsewhere in college

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JT Daniels transfers to Georgia.

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His tattoo bill is going to be stupendous

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George Floyd

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Derek Chauvin apparently taken into custody, finally:

https://twitter.com/Stowydad/status/1266416438753005569?s=20

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Rodney King Part 2

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MN: Lady in electric rascal tries to stab people to keep them from looting Target.

https://twitter.com/Naj_ToTheJayy/status/1265871893934018560

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Oh man. Apparently, she can walk. This story is a double-scoop of WTF on a waffle cone.

https://talentrecap.com/white-woman-pretending-to-be-disabled-stabs-black-people-during-minneapolis-protests-video/

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god bless america. that's nuts.

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What kind of moron defends a Target.

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Also did you see that Chauvin and Floyd worked together for 17 years.

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Isn't the evidence a bit circumstantial like both guys are doing security for a big music concert in an arena? I think the possible spin of this incident to a personal one is not good for the big picture (of eventual racial equity a couple of generations from now).

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I saw that this morning. WTF.

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Hanlon's Razor

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Grabthar’s Hammer...nice to meet you.

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"By Grabthar's Hammer".

I watched "Never Surrender" a Galaxy Quest documentary. It was pretty good.

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That was a lot of fun.

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I attended the Galaxy Quest screening featuring the San Diego Symphony performing the score last summer. House was packed...good times.

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That sounds great. I remember taking No 1 to the SF Symphony where they did Bugs Bunny on Broadway (I think was the name). They played along with the classical music in the episodes. Was pretty cool. They also showed how they used a slide to make the opening sound in the Warner Brothers/Looney Tune song.

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PRO

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"This year’s reconfigured Triple Crown lost one of its favorites Thursday when Nadal, the undefeated 3-year-old trained by Bob Baffert, suffered an ankle injury after a workout at Santa Anita in California and will be retired from racing. He’s expected to make a full recovery.

“It requires two screws,” co-owner George Bolton said of Nadal’s left front lateral condylar fracture, per Bloodhorse. “He is now going to become a stallion. It’s very sad, obviously. I just got the call this morning. It’s a call you never want to get in horse racing.

“He retires undefeated. He retires, thank God, on a soon-to-be recovery. He gave us four great races.”

The “Nadal retires” headlines naturally caused some consternation among tennis fans, who were worried that Rafael Nadal, the 19-time Grand Slam singles champion, was hanging up his racket at the age of 33."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/05/29/nadal-horse-retires-fans-nadal-tennis-player-freak-out/

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Read "Triple Crown" - horses

Read "Nadal" - wait, tennis

Read "Bloodhorse" - wait, what?

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Game Clock Manipulation: the game clock will no longer start if the offense commits a dead ball penalty in Q4 or OT. The Belichick rule. Wasn't he the first one to exploit it?

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An oversight that's been around, but rarely exploited until Belichick realized it was an advantage. Unfortunately, I doubt other sanctions, particularly NFHS (High school), will make the fix in as timely a manner. (Not that HS FB is exactly a monument to competent game management anyway.)

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possibly, but it go used well against him in the playoffs this year no?

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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Trump, who murdered two puppies yesterday while pissing on the American flag, signed an Executive Order against Twitter to protect online free speech

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/

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If social media companies could be sued for libel for posts of their users, then they would block like half his posts. What a dumbfuck.

Dudes, haven’t posted much as I am homeschooling three kids in my “spare” time, but hope all are well!

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I think Twitter should be shut down so that Trump and associates can return to free speech like his father did - group meetings around a burning cross while wearing big white hoods

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He's definitely put himself in a catch-22. Shutting down Twitter would mean he wouldn't be able to get his "message" out there.

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Wow...when I click on it I get a "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible"

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Just read the Tweet from the Twit. wow.

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He literally chose a quote from George Wallace (ie, Alabama governor who was for 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever').

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regulations bad

wait

regulations bad unless i wanna

then

regulations good

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CAL

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Go Bears.

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