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https://twitter.com/zahra_gk2/status/1389826888785408000?s=20

@zahra_gk2: Hello! I’m not sure how many people will see this, but

My name is Zahra. My father is Dr. Hasan Gokal, the man who was wrongfully fired because he distributed expiring COVID-19 vaccines so they wouldn’t go to waste.

“They weren’t yours to give away.”

“Too many Indian names.”

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Chelsea FC are the first team to have both their female and male sides in their respective Champions League Final.

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Just noticed that SGBear picked an Ohio illustrator--yayyyyy Ohio!!!!

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Random music comments: Listening to a cover of the Beatles "Getting Better" - I never realized that's a fairly dark song; driving around I heard a extended version of the The Specials "Much too Young" - never knew that existed.

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I'm getting a bunch of 'page unresponsive' notes today whenever I put in a comment. Have to reload the page.

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I got one earlier, but it's only happened once so far.

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Me too, although mine says "a page is slowing you down"

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...and it's happened three times today.

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On a 19 point scale how much of a lightweight are you now? (1 = I'm asleep after a light beer, 19 = Andre the Giant).

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I think I am a solid 13. I don’t drink too much and I don’t drink too little.

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-5. I'm uncomfortably allergic to alcohol (breaks out in large rashes and itches for 12 hours. It's not deadly, but its awfully uncomfortable)

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Er, um, probably an 18.5 b/c there was that one time I passed out on BART after a Big Game win and ended up at SFO Airport after the last train back into town had departed...fun $70 cab ride back to Russian Hill, but hey, we beat Stanford...

Jimmy C doesn't drink anymore, much to the joy of Cal fans everywhere, especially Henry's...

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omg you really do belong on the DBD

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The Chitwood family does nothing half-assed

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11 or so. I barely drink -- I have maybe 20 drinks a year, but those come in a few 5-6 drink nights, and I do not get more that slightly buzzed from them.

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0

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1. Not asleep but I turn bright red. I don't get the sploches of the Asian flush, but I turn bright red after like a few sips of beer.

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my wife is a 1 too. falls asleep after 1 drink

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Heh, you and my love slave, totally the same (re: alcohol).

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i suppose it is a different conversation about how often one drinks during the day.

i just poured myself a glass of wine to go w/ pasta leftovers for lunch ...

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What kind of wine?

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some chardonnay from Australia. Kooyong, Mornington Peninsula.

not sure where i got it or how it got into the collection

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What kind of pasta?

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one of those crappy grocery store "frehs" spinach tortellini packages

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I think I'm in the 3–5 range. In my heyday, I could have 6 drinks in the course of a night and be fine, and that's slowly decreased over the years, so now it's maybe 2–3 drinks in the course of a night (only 1 or 0 if I'm driving).

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Mori is right, you're more a 6-8 like DC

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If the calibration is: 3~5 points = 2~3 drinks, then it'll take a lot to get to the big numbers!

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10-14

most nights i have a pre-dinner cocktail and either beer or wine w/ dinner.

i am on the high side when it is a long restaurant meal. can easily have a lot more.

on the other hand at a bar w/ young people i need to stop after 4-ish drinks.

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I'd guess around a 12. Occasionally I'll have a Denogginizer from Drake's Brewing. Since it is 9.75% alcohol it has quite a kick especially if you have a 22 oz. bottle. Then I skip wine with dinner. Otherwise its two glasses of Cab with dinner.

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realistically, in the 6 - 8 range. If I pace myself with 3 - 4 5-6% beers, I'm okay. A few weeks ago I was tired and had a >8% beer and was asleep by 8pm.

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Somewhere between 12 and 17 depending on various factors. How much I've recently eaten plays a role, but there also seems to be some randomness I haven't yet identified.

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3. I don't drink much anymore, so I have lost almost all tolerance. I had some Fernet the other night and I had a hangover the next morning. I blame g.oso's cousin.

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next time your in SF, go to the Hi Dive on the embarcadero and she'll hook you up

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Sadly I think I'm a 16-17, got to be careful.

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you might be the lucky winner!

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no idea. Not had any booze since the 'rona shut down everything.

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wow. is that from lack of availability or choice?

i have drank a bit more and at many more hours of the day during coronavirus times

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we rarely keep any or drink any at home, and all the bars/restaruants were closed for a while. and it's not priority in my life.

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Sulfur

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Brimstone! Which is a lovely evocative word for sulfur.

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Panda

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Pablo Sandoval 5'10" 268 lbs (1.62 Jose Altuves) is having a pretty good year so far for the Braves as a pinch hitter

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sandopa01.shtml

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The National Zoo re-opens in a couple weeks. I look forward to getting up to see the new (nine months old now) baby panda in person. As I type this he's napping in a tree.

https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/panda-cam

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Back in 2014, because I happened to have free time...I went to see Bao Bao on the first day he was shown to the public (I think he was 6-7 months old) on a random weekday. The true, hard-core panda-groupies that I ran into at the Zoo that day were actually a bit stalkerish.

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The zoo is re-opening with a reduced capacity reservation system and I read somewhere that you have to get a separate timed reservation for the Asia trail after you get to the zoo so hopefully that will keep those types under control.

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I was just surprised then by how all those couples have traveled the country if not the world to see ALL of the pandas in every zoo. There weren't that many of them (like there was only about less than a dozen couple and me...but they were really really passionate about their "encounters" with the pandas...through some heavy plexiglass).

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Come to Chengdu, they'll let you cuddle with the panda (for $300 USD and you have to wear a giant blue suit)

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They're furries.

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-monium

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Check out this house. It belongs to the estate of a 94-year-old woman who died 2 years ago, after living alone in this house. Closets? You'll love it!

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/329-W-23rd-Pl-Panama-City-FL-32405/42766938_zpid/

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Is that a Jay Pritchett quote?

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My favorite is the wall of 5x closet doors, one of which is a walk-through closet to get to the main closet, which has three closets attached to it. Also, carpeted kitchen, a blood drain + dishwasher in the laundry room, and the cartoonishly large safe.

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Looks like it could fit Corazon Aquino's or PChris' shoe collection.

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Which made me wonder what PC is up to these days, and it turns out he's a fashion designer! https://sloanandbennett.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jamespatchris/?hl=en

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Yeah, Lebron has worn his stuff before!

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I know we're supposed to be in awe of the storage - and it is remarkable - but I find the lack of outside light deeply weird. This is the other extreme from that greenhouse in Maryland.

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yes, quite a dark place for 14,000 sf. I don't think I would like it.

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Name a former or current Cal player (any sport) who represents the most average player. Not great. Not bad. Didn't blow up too often. Didn't shine.

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Alex Pribble

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Basketball; Conor Famulener, Ryan Forehan-Kelly.

Football; Darius Powe(college stats would not indicate an NFL player), Burl Toler

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RFK was playing pro in China when I got here. He was pretty good, but not good enough at being selfish, which is what the Chinese pro teams want.

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Well, I guess it depends on the pool of players to take average from. If you say average of the whole football team, then any of the starting players are above average. That's boring so I'm going to pick the average of the players on the field.

Ross Bowers, Jalen Jefferson, Eddie Young, DJ Holt, Anthony Miller, Daniel Lasco, Vic Wharton

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I missed the "didn't shine" part. So that would be players like Jordan Veasy, Trey Turner, Damariay Drew, Spencer Hagan

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How about the fourth starting linebacker in 2017 who played when Devante Downs (then Weaver), Jordan Kunaszyk, and Ray Davison were killing it. In 2018, Weaver and Kunaszyk were leading the country as an ILB pair, Cam Goode got injured leading to Tevin Paul's surprisingly good season. This 4th LBs stats were better in 2017 because he usually was often let loose to rush the QB and his 2018 stats were below average - because they tended to test Tevin Paul rather than go after this player's better-than-average on-tape performance. I really liked this player, who I am purposely not mentioning because it will take a moment to remember him.

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Alex Funches?

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Walk ons that sometimes play on special teams, otherwise never in the rotation.

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Every longsnapper ever.

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Dave Binn was in the league for 13 years! You don't do that by being average!

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Shareef Abdur-Rahim

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He won Pac-10 player of the year as a freshman!

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he was much better than that no?

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#3 pick in what is often regarded as one of the best NBA draft class ever. Definitely not an average player.

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Melvyl ...

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being retired.

What will UC Library Search replace?

At Berkeley, researchers currently turn to our online catalog, OskiCat, to search the Library’s collections. To find materials in other UC libraries’ collections, they use Melvyl, a complicated patchwork of catalogs and databases. (Melvyl made its debut in 1981 — 40 years ago — before most of Berkeley’s students, and some faculty members, were born.)

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When I was a student ('83-'88), not everything had been digitized to melvyl, so you still had to do some 'burnt-sticks-on-stones' card catalog digging.

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88-92 you still had to use the card catalog at the music library in Morrison Hall ( think)

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Same here. The NES library in Evans hall had a card catalog. Really old reference books and original sources had to be found through a stack pass at Doe.

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end - of - life event, like Adobe Flash

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For me, Melvyl was a text-based interface that you had to type in an application-unique search language - which is documented here via a UC Riverside site.

http://estc.ucr.edu/melstc.html

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Data Trends

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Some number of Taiwanese Americans responded to the Census identifying as Taiwanese. Pew Research Center says, "Nah bruh, you're Chinese"

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On the good Taiwanese news side, if you have social media (Fbook, Instagram, or Twitter), you can enter this giveaway for Taiwanese food!!! Liang's Village is a restaurant in Cupertino, and they also ship frozen food as Mama Liang's: https://twitter.com/tafestival/status/1390033562787844097?s=20

(I've been doing social media for the Taiwanese American Cultural Festival, taking place virtually this Saturday)

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Happy AAPI Month!

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Was that even an option on the census? I think they are just ignoring the people who picked "other" and then wrote "Taiwanese". I don't know what's the standard way people treat those kinds of data ("other") in social sciences. Since having people retake the census is not an option, I both understand why some people are upset but also not sure what Pew can do to remedy things. If one actually tries to use that data to represent all of the Taiwanese-American population, that's also very wrong.

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1) It is not an option on the census; there was the hope that if enough people wrote in Taiwanese, it could be listed as an option in the future

2) They didn't "ignore" the write-ins, they ACTIVELY changed that data to be Chinese. Their excuse was, "We think that fewer people self-reported as Taiwanese than who are actually Taiwanese, so using the self-reported number would be inaccurate." Instead of saying, "Here's the self-reported number; we think the real number is higher," they changed the self-reported number to 0.

3) You and I both know that, when doing research, you don't look at your data, decide you don't like it, and just write something else down.

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I'm sure you are correct, but I would appreciate a link (did a quick search but haven't found results yet) so I have something more tangible to throw stones at.

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Honestly, I think that's way over the top. They have a point, but there's a reasonable argument to be made that they would under represent Asians if they just threw everyone into an "other" category. And they could be criticized for that.

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Oops! I guess I was a part of that 60% that they cited to justify their decision.

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Thanks! I'm calling the second link Whitesplaining.

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1) That should change.

2) Is that actually a significant number for anything? They probably should just throw that out (or maybe that's how some researchers can end up with some extra papers?).

3) I don't know how social "sciences" deal with data, but I have always been skeptical of how rigorous they deal with data for the most part. I would think that their estimate of systematic errors should have this covered (or should be made larger).

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Would it have been better just to list all the other "others" in a lump? Could be a lot of different others.

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Right, if we'd been classified as "other," I would have been sad, not mad.

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what could possibly go wrong?

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Based upon the trends of the data, the Dodgers will never win again.

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I'd just be happy with a hit with RISP

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One can only hope.

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GRBB

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And the A's won't lose - best record in baseball

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CDC reports that US trend of declining birth rates continued in 2020. 2021 rates ought to drop even lower as effects of the pandemic emerge in the data.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/natality-dashboard.htm

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Taylor Swift is almost - but not quite - keeping up with the Kardashians

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0dl567,%2Fm%2F0261x8t&date=now%207-d&geo=US

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Since Ms. Swift is not so entirely SEO focused like Mrs. Kardashian-West this is a bit surprising that she tracks along so closely in the googling.

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Data (Star Trek)

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☑Fully functional in every way

☑Programmed in multiple techniques

☑A broad variety of pleasuring

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experienced too

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had a cat named Spot.

i don't know why, but i find it endlessly hilarious.

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Data : [asking Worf to take care of Spot] He will need to be fed once a day. He prefers feline supplement number 25.

Worf : I understand.

Data : And he will require water. And you must provide him with a sandbox - and you must talk to him. Tell him he is a pretty cat, and a good cat...

Worf : I will feed him.

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Our Crumbling Democracy

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Facebook commission expected to rule today whether Trump can return to FB. I mean, Trump would spend a ton of $$$ on Facebook, so I'm betting that they will.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/04/trump-facebook-social-media-return-485379

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hahahaha! It took all of 10 minutes for reality to prove me wrong

https://twitter.com/WRAL/status/1389929412901081090

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I think the powers that be at FB are learning that keeping the awfulness quiet is better for their revenue stream. Trump does nothing but create noise and attention for the awfulness they like to promote.

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Now they can start working on entities / people like Ben Shapiro who are obviously breaking Facebook terms of service to goose their page views and advertising income HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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heh.

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Good. I had no faith in Facebook to do the right thing, so I'm pleasantly surprised.

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Excellent

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Trump and cronies form another Big Lie money-raising scam. I mean lobby group.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/05/trump-election-integrity-organization-485399

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The grabbing hands grab all they can, all for themselves, after all it's a competitive world...

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Everything counts in large amounts, man.

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depeche mode lyrics from the 80's, for those old enough to remember.

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Old enough, but not a fan enough to know this.

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Cheney's boat is sinking. Stefanik appears as the heir to head up GOP. If this happens, Trumpism will defeat traditional Republican leadership. Boebert, MTG, McCarthy, Hawley, Jordan, Tuberville, Gaetz, and that ilk will stop being the remnant fringe from the previous administration and become the core of the GOP. God have mercy on our souls.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/huddle/2021/05/05/mccarthy-launches-campaign-to-replace-cheney-492738

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Are they still expecting Trumpism to have this much sway by the time the '22 midterms roll around? What if he drops dead between now and then?

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The dude just lives in a golf resort, eating McDonald's, aimlessly wandering into weddings, giving ranting speeches about unfair contests and playing 18.

(Shoot, I would do that too, but I would complain about the NCAA tourney loss to Hawaii and Dave Barr's collarbone breaking)

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Trumpism will have some sway in the news cycles and polling, it will have less in the actual voting. It seems that a fair number of Trumpists only vote when he's on the ticket.

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The more relevant and concerning scenario is what if he doesn't drop dead?

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agreed

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[CNN]: Federal Judge gets a peek redacted DOJ documents because of a FOI Act request. She opines that William Barr had already decided to not prosecute Trump before he got any written advice to then steer the Mueller investigation to nowhere. I mean, we already knew this, but still...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/04/politics/william-barr-memo-trump-memo/index.html

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When you think about who was the most consequentially evil person in the trump administration (so many to choose from), it has to be Barr, not Miller, he's just the one you'd most like to punch in the face.

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Today in Covid-19

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they say that Pfizer vaccine for 12+ is days away from approval.

we are hoping/expecting that the younger one (14) can be fully vaccinated before heading off to summer sleepaway camp. while camp will still operate w/ coronavirus protocols, it will be a good peace-of-mind

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That's great!

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that would be good for peace of mind. My wife and daughters are heading back to Vermont this summer (the missus and older daughter as counselors, the younger daughter in her last year as a camper), and it's been a journey for the camps to come up with plans that are basically aligned to CDC guidance / will keep the state happy, and also remain somewhat camp-like. I think the fact that the counselors can all be vaccinated in time will act as a firewall for the campers, so it's mostly a question of riding out the arrival of kids and making sure they aren't infecting one another.

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Yes, there are Erin. Yes, there are. Also, we still have a stockpile of 63 million doses of HCQ.

https://twitter.com/ErinBrockovich/status/1389696505024598017

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A lot of them also drink cases of Diet Mountain Dew weekly without a hint of reluctance, but they’re *very concerned* about “what’s in the vaccine”

Face with raised eyebrow

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jfc.

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Other College

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Someone brought a gun to the UT zoom call about the racist choo-choo song

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/04/eyes-of-texas-ut-austin/

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jfc. this whole thing is going to end with either, a lawsuit that forces UT to stop with the song crap, or a mass shooting by a song enthusiast of people who leave the game before it gets played. and has the same affect.

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College football's top 25 future defense power rankings (ESPN) Cal is not in the Top 25 which is a bit of a snub to our defense

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31366880/college-football-post-spring-top-25-power-rankings

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USC at #13 seems awfully optimistic

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"I work at ESPN and are am deadline constrained after years of staff cuts, so here's a list of teams that did well last year because I can't possibly do that much research on the entire college football scene. I'm putting a bunch of teams here even though QB position is a major question mark like at Texas A&M, Washington, Ohio State, Clemson, Oregon, Florida, Wisconsin, Texas, and Penn State."

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Oregon, ASU, USC, Washington all ahead of us

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Cal

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Go Bears!!!

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Got an email today from an account exec at Cal Athletics asking me to re-up my season tickets. Obviously last season was a wash. Not sure if I'll just go through StubHub this season in lieu of the full package/donation.

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[BASE] Cal used five pitchers through four innings and fell behind 0-9. The Bears end up winning the game. That's one crazy-looking box score.

https://calbears.com/news/2021/5/4/baseball-tuesday-rally.aspx

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