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Today in Covid

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Taiwan/Republic of China begins rollout of Moderna this week.

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Seeing the numbers go down in the US has been great, but this report is converning. But perhaps Pfizer & Moderna is more effective than AZ preventing the infection of Delta variant.

"Britain has had one of the world’s most successful Covid-19 responses in recent months.

Unlike the European Union, the British government understood that quickly obtaining vaccine doses mattered more than negotiating the lowest price. Unlike the United States, Britain was willing to impose nationwide restrictions again late last year to reduce caseloads. British officials also chose to maximize first vaccine shots and delay second shots, recognizing that the strategy could more quickly reduce Covid cases.

Thanks to these moves, Covid has retreated more quickly in Britain than in almost any other country. Fewer than 10 Britons per day have been dying in recent weeks, down from 1,200 a day in late January. On a per-capita basis, Britain’s death rate last month was less than one-tenth the U.S. rate.

Despite this success, Britain is now coping with a rise in Covid cases. The main cause appears to be the highly infectious virus variant known as Delta, which was first detected in India. Britain’s recent moves to reopen society also likely play a role.

The increase is a reminder that progress against the pandemic — even extreme progress — does not equal ultimate victory. Britain’s experience also suggests that cases may soon rise in the United States. “What we’re seeing in U.K. is very likely to show up in other Western countries soon,” The Financial Times’s John Burn-Murdoch wrote."

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weekend DIY

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we had a bunch of fail old fluorescent lights in the garage.

replaced them w/ LED shop lights. pretty easy install. wife is happy(er)

they are twice as bright for half the real estate. ordered a bunch more for the workout/basement storage room

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L456V2Q

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My lights were OK, but I wanted more efficiency and longer life, so replace with these LED tubes

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00W13FEXW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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I got similar ones when they were on sale at Costco. They make the garage much more bright.

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we have such old wiring in our 100 yr old house that it is never clear what meets code, what you can do DIY, etc

we are going to have an electrician install a electric car charger, but it is not clear how hard that would really be.

for overhead lights i just had to generously use electrical tape to deal w/ some old fraying wires.

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I needed to install two new 30amp fuses on our 200amp panel for our charger, seems like it would be pretty straight forward from youtube, but I'm scared of frying myself, so we had a professional do it. Took about 3hrs about was $800. Totally worth it though because my charging went from 5mi per hour to 35-40mi per hour. I almost never visit superchargers, unless I'm doing a longer drive.

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Old fraying wires?!?!?!?! Yikes!

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so the shielding or insulation on the wires is almost like some sort of woven cloth. i am not sure if there is a technical word for it.

https://www.whittinspections.com/homeowner-resources/cloth-wiring/

WHAT IS CLOTH WIRING?

As the name suggests, cloth wiring is a type of electrical wiring that was used before thermoplastic-coated wiring became commonplace. It was usually used in homes that were built before 1960, and it was very common because it was inexpensive, and this rubberized-cloth was the standard method of insulating wires before plastics became widespread and affordable.

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yeah our house in Louisville had knob and tubing in the ceilings and I think had romex in the walls and the renovated 3rd floor. I guess they didn't want to deal with the ceiling boxes.

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Oh, I'm familiar with it, prior to that there's the Knob and tube wiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring

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Johnson: [Noticing Dr. Evil's spaceship on radar] Colonel, you better have a look at this radar.

Colonel: What is it, son?

Johnson: I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant--

Jet Pilot: Dick.

Dick: Yeah?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CP0MSOqnYEo/

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DBD AV Club

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Banged through the first season of Imposters on Netflix...it was a lot of fun, especially if you like grifters and con movies with twists. After Mare of Easttown, it was a delightful follow up.

Hacks is also pretty funny, esp. if you like Jean Smart.

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The Bad Batch has severely underwhelmed to this point. Omega, for me, is the worst star wars character since young anakin in the phantom menace.

(Ok, ok, I just don't like children as lead characters. They add nothing)

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i rather like it. but it is not that different than the Mandalorian storyline of special warrior(s) protecting special child

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At least baby yoda doesn’t speak.

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*at least he doesn't speak with a terrible aussie accent

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i agree, he just eats everything in sight.

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although it is not even clear what gender(s) baby yoda's even come in

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Watching 30 Rock reruns on Prime. It's still roar-out-loud funny even though I've seen it all before. Last night, it was "Ludachristmas" (S2 9), which included the dirtiest joke to get past the FCC. Do yourself a favor and look it up on Urban Dictionary rather than googling it.

https://twitter.com/seanoconnz/status/1215114382436261888

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Lemonparty led me to goatse and tubgirl so thank you? I need booze and its not even noon...shudder

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Sounds like you may need a hand, maybe from Mr. Hands?

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Wet markets

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Another name for liquor stores?

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I'm not that into fresh meats.

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An interesting article about life as a migrant oil & gas field worker

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/06/boomtown-oil-williston-north-dakota

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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US Rep. Mo Brooks (R, AL-5), who sits on the Armed Forces Subcommittee on "Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems" just posted his pin numbers and gmail account & password.

https://twitter.com/RepMoBrooks/status/1401595174220861453

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looks like he took it down. I wonder if he get hacked before he realized they were up.

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Governor Reeves (R-MS) said we know a lot more about fetal development since Roe v Wade in 1973 like a fetus is viable at 15 weeks. Never mind that a 15-week-old fetus is the size of a lemon and won't be viable for another 11 weeks - dumbass.

https://www.politicususa.com/2021/06/06/watch-mississippi-governor-says-fetuses-could-live-outside-womb-at-only-15-weeks.html

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and still don't know that the bible says life begins 'at the first breath'.

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Arcata

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Why isn't it the Bangs House?

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Arcata seems nice, Eureka on the other hand was my least favorite stop on our tour of California by water last summer. Bad marinas (with incorrect tide tables, that may or may not have led to us running aground as we backed out of our slip), felt dangerous walking around during the day, not to mention that we were by the marina staff to not tie our dinghy up to the city dock because "it will be stolen". Very unfortunate because the city has a rich history and tons of beautiful architecture. Just a very sad state for a CA city.

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hmmm . . . glad I skipped my plan to stop there when I drove to Portland a few years ago.

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Crescent City is a nice place to stop for the fish and chips at the harbor. iirc it's about 5hrs from Portland.

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I was very surprised by high difficult the 5 gets around the Oregon/California border. I had thought it was just one straight shot all the way up, but it was not.

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Wow, I did not get that vibe at Eureka when we were there +/- 12 years ago.

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Apparently it's gotten progressively worse over the past decade. But I can only speak to my experiences there

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Apparently Cugel wasn't looking for crystal meth...

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There seems to be a big problem with crystal meth in Eureka...

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From my brief observations: Problems with meth, heroin and an underserved homeless population that struggles with mental illness and drug addiction.

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This describes an alarming number of communities these days.

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Gavin Newsome proposes to raise the UC and Cal State system budgets by 5%, including programs to reduce housing costs. This is certainly a positive. As part of that proposed budget, he wants to upgrade Humboldt State to a third Cal Poly. The push is to make Humboldt State more attractive because it is under-utilized compared to the rest of the Cal State system.

https://edsource.org/2021/gov-newsom-to-make-major-investments-in-higher-ed/654709

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it's under-utilized because it's far from civilization, and has a reputation as a place to learn about growing pot, but not in class.

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I wonder the same thing about UC Merced. Are students clamoring to go? How is there reputation? (I suppose I could look all this up, but I was hoping someone knew)

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I guess it's UC vs CSU. We hoped No 3 would choose UCSC over CSU Fullerton, which he eventually did. He kinda wanted Fullerton because they have club baseball and UCSC doesn't. And it has Kinesiology and at UCSC he's doing Human Bio on the way to being a physical Therapist.

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Queen Anne (and other Queens)

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Elanor of Aquitaine, Queen Consort of France, Queen Consort of England, Duke (Duchess) of Aquitaine. Mother of Richard (the Lionheart), and John (king who was forced into the Magna Carta).

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And the greatx24th grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II

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DBD Test Kitchen

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I made steak au poivre (from Molly Baz's recipe) https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/strip-steak-au-poivre - check my insta for results!

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Oh that looks phenomenal. I'll save this one.

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I oversalted it a little bit - but instead of dressing my salad, I just dumped my salad onto the plate and mopped up the sauce with salad greens.

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My daughter has gone gluten-free. Was brainstorming how to make a roux without flour. I took some dried mushrooms and threw them in a food processor with some dried spices, then added that to some melted butter. Best roux I ever made. Then added to an herb mushroom sauce that went over a pork tenderloin.

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rice flour should work?

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I had pan-seared skirt steak with roasted vegetables for my birthday last night, it was nice!

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HBD Atoms!

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Happy Birthday!

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Happy Birthday!

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hbd atoms!

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Happy Birthday!!

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Thank you!!

I was telling Cugel that I haven't actually been avoiding the DBD, it's really more that my routine changed. And also Cal sports hasn't really been interesting for many months so there's less other stuff to stay on top of here.

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Aww...we all know Cal Sports is like 10% of the DBD...

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I know, but without it I'm just less likely to log onto the blog in the first place

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We had friends over for the first time since 3-14-20; Cugelwife made chicken verde & pork belly tacos and we watched the US game, and drank two different Ridge Zins. My daughter made and amazing lemon tart - and for some reason salt cod was a topic of conversation.

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Forgot to say that my daughter also made the tortillas for the tacos.

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paella tonight with chicken, chorizo and green beans.

we have a half of a tortilla espanol leftover from the weekend farmers market and i just picked up a hunk of manchego ...

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the tortilla has already been allocated to a weekday breakfast by the kids "breakfast-lunch list" so i guess we cant use it for dinner.

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Chicken cacciatore last night -- chicken, tomatoes, mushrooms and artichoke hearts. It's my favorite meal from growing up.

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NICE is artichoke hearts as standard ingredient?

a good cacciatore is one of my favorites too

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They are in my family. There are as many cacciatore recipes as there are Italians, artichokes seem to be in only a small percentage of them.

I think what makes ours great is that we brown the chicken breasts using the oily marinade rather than straight oil, and it just gives the whole dish a nice zing.

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Mine is chicken breast halves (recipe calls for bone-in/skin on but I go skinless/boneless), dredged in seasonedflour and browned in the artichoke marinade and a Tbs or so of oil. Remove the chicken once browned, toss in a few cloves of minced garlic, cook until softened, deglaze with a bit of white wine, and toss in a few handfuls of thickly sliced mushrooms, the artichoke hearts, and a big can of san marzano tomatoes. Break up the tomatoes into sizable chunks as the veggies cook for a few minutes. Add basil, oregano, salt and pepper (and Accent! and any other herbs you like) to taste. Nestle the chicken breasts back in, and stick in a 375 oven for 45 minutes or so. We serve over rice, but would be equally delicious over pasta.

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I figured you would just serve it over more artichokes.

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Not my kitchen, but yesterday was the lady friend's bday and we went to dinner at the Morris in SF. Charcuteire with cheese, Chartreuse slushies, mushroom profiteroles, salt cod rillette, charred broccoli with squid, grilled abalone, spot prawns, NY steak with lobster bernaise and asparagus, chocolate puddin', and grilled apricot crumble with almond ice cream. It's worth mentioning it's owned by a close friend so we got the hook up last night.

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I am interested in the salt cod rillete and the mushroom profiteroles.

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I'm assuming this means that Atoms = Golden Oso's ladyfriend...which explains why Atoms was bragging so much about being coupled up.

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I could do a lot worse tbh

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pltm

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Good date for a birthday

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happy belated atoms.

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Thanks, man 😊

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that sounds incredible.

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this

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I was going to say...we almost went there Thursday night and that's a significant departure from what's currently on the menu! Sounds amazing though.

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the spot prawns and abalone were weekend specials, but everything else was on the menu.

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abalone is hard to find. i have only ever had it once in a little town near Half Moon Bay called Pescadero

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any nicer cantonese seafood place will have some of it.

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An old coworker used to go abalone diving. I think he said you had to hold your breath and were limited to getting two per day. He sliced and pounded them thin, breaded them, and brought them into work and deep fried them. They were really good.

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I was going to make homemade biscuits and gravy this morning since No 1 and No 3 are here. Then I realized last night I needed a couple of things, namely breakfast sausage and whole milk. So I'm putting it off. I've made the biscuit recipe before and I know they're good but I haven't made sausage gravy before so we'll see if the recipe I found works.

Doing homemade pizza tonight. One will be pep, hot Italian sausage, and spinach, No 1 also requested anchovies, and then one will be pesto, grilled chicken, and sun dried tomatoes. not sure what I'll do for the 4th.

I looked up Ooni pizza ovens last night and saw that there are now many other companies making them. Just waiting for Ooni to go on sale.

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Roccbox also makes a good pie, but I think it's the same price as the Ooni.

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really? Maybe I'll look into this. I was just thinking Ooni because that was the first one I noticed during Covid. Not sure if these other ones came after or I just never noticed them.

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No 3 had his HS graduation on Sat and we ended up just going to the Benicia Grill after. Very low key.

No 2 left at the end of May for his research job back at Vandy so we had the real graduation lunch the previous Sat at East Ocean in Emeryville for Dim Sum the day before he left.

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were you able to go to a legit dim sum place in person? that sounds so nice

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yeah restaurants here are open. Definitely better eating it fresh than taking out.

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Grilled salmon last night, slathered with butter and minced garlic...

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We had grilled salmon too (along with scallops and bacon-wrapped asparagus). Lately we've been doing wood plank-grilled salmon. It imparts a bit more smokiness to the salmon than ordinary grilling, but it requires much more attention to the grill's temperature to ensure that it doesn't get hot enough to ignite the plank. However, I've discovered that letting the plank catch fire in the final couple minutes gives the salmon a pleasant bit of smokiness and light char...

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happy to report ... the velveted beef stir fry w/ snow peas turned out great.

thx everyone for the suggestions. next time need to use flank steak. but otherwise the crowd of discerning eaters were pleased.

not that the stir fry wasnt good, but it helped that their mom had made nearly uneatable food during the week 2 nights in a row.

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I tried the velveting technique over the weekend too with a Japanese chicken teriyaki stir. It worked out especially great with onions. Like, it's a major game changer.

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Architecture

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Wurster Hall

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Julia Morgan

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Berkeley

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Yu Tse

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You See

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Farms

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Bowl

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US vs Mexico

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Such a great game... El Tri fans are trash.

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yes and yes

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VAR makes everything take forever, but ultimately the result seems fair (US and Mexico both got questionable penalty shots in extra time, but the US made theirs).

It's an encouraging result for a young USA squad. It's been a while since they've beaten Mexico.

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They lost, the US won. The University of California was established 20 years later.

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Pro

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NBA

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Atlanta looked unreal when jumping out to that near-30-point lead in the first half. Makes me feel a little less bad about the Knicks getting torched by them.

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Nets dominate Bucks in Game 1 . . . but James Harden is injured and ruled out for Game 2.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/31578841/brooklyn-nets-james-harden-ruled-game-2-hamstring-tightness

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Giants lose on Sunday, but still take 3 of 4 from Cubs. Expectations are now raised.

https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/giants/giants-disappointing-cubs-loss-shows-how-high-expectations-are

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Man, both he and Krukow have health stuff going on. That's rough.

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Some of you write about cycling. Yesterday there was a pro race near me - one hundred laps of a one K loop. Each loop had five turns so hard to get too much momentum. The race started at noon and the heat index was in the mid 90s. Not that I didn't already know it, but those riders are tough. The guy who won thought he was done one lap early and raised his hands prematurely. Fortunately he had a ten second lead so was able to get it back together and still win. Finished in about two hours twenty minutes.

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Crits are TOUGH. Not only the distance but the close in racing is a lot like roller derby. Southern California and New York are the traditional homes of crit racing in the US.

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That must have been grueling, especially if they were in the direct sun. I did a two hour ride yesterday, with most of it under the forest canopy, and that was pretty toasty.

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My run was a little over two hours but I was at least out by 8AM and much of it was in Rock Creek Park so mostly shaded and some on trails.

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cool. there use to a be a race like that in lower Manhattan that included some of the old cobblestone streets. the time that we watched a friend of mine from Cal who was on cycling team (Tim Larkin) was in the lead breakaway group for a good fraction of the 50x laps. in the end a one of the stronger riders (Chris Horner) caught up and won the race.

to be fair, Chris Horner ended up racing in Europe and

>> He won the Vuelta a España in 2013, becoming the oldest winner of any of cycling's grand tours in the process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Horner

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I recognized his name from his broadcasting career.

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John Rahm - the world's #3 golfer - set a 54 hole course record and had a six-stroke lead to win $1.7m. Watch as he gets told that he forfeits that money as he tested positive for Covid, which requires his withdrawal from the tournament. Rahm's vaccine status is unknown, but it is known that tournament rules do not require testing for fully vaccinated players and Rahm was tested daily.

https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1401305252062715907

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That's a lot to lose over not bothering to swing by the drug store to get vaccinated.

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He was also tested daily because of a close contact earlier in the week (Monday I believe) so that is why he was on strict testing. I think if that doesn't happen then we don't really know what his normal testing routine would be.

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That put Morikawa into a tie for the lead. He was still tied after 72 holes but lost the playoff. Max Homa also in the top ten.

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Brandon Hagy, a Cal alum, also made the cut and finished at +5, shooting 70 in the final round.

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Cal

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Go Bears!!!

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CBS Sports take on the Bears...

Long shot -- California (+4000): Either there is a concerning amount of delusion within Cal's program or the odds here are a miscalculation by Las Vegas, because the Bears believe they have a serious opportunity to make the Rose Bowl. Don't believe me? Go watch their spring game and listen to the interviews and the broadcast, and you'll quickly realize what the standard is this season. This squad bore the brunt of COVID-19 regulations last season during an abbreviated 1-3 campaign that fell well short of lofty expectations, and it feels like those expectations have simply rolled over to this season for those within the program. The defense has been solid under Justin Wilcox and returns some proven veterans in key positions. If the offense can click under second-year coordinator Bill Musgrave, watch out.

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Go Bears!! After watching the bike race yesterday I saw a young woman with a Cal Volleyball t-shirt on. Gave her a Go Bears and got an immediate Go Bears in reply.

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so what happened next?

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Nothing. We were going opposite directions and with friends so it was a quick greeting in passing.

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i have a Cal cycling bike jersey that i still wear on occasion.

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The Tour ride I rode last Sunday (62km) there was a guy wearing full Cal Triathlon kit. I gave him a Go Bears and took his photo for the Cal alumni wechat group.

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