Black Lightning is an American superhero drama television series, developed by Salim Akil, that premiered on The CW on January 16, 2018 and concluded on May 24, 2021. It is based on the character of the same name, created by Tony Isabella with Trevor Von Eeden, featured in publications of DC Comics. Cress Williams stars as the titular character alongside China Anne McClain, Nafessa Williams, Christine Adams, Marvin "Krondon" Jones III, Damon Gupton, James Remar, Jordan Calloway, and Chantal Thuy. The series sees the retired Black Lightning return to his life as a superhero and follows the effects of his vigilante activity on his professional and family life.
Having settled in the Philadelphia area 31 years ago, I can tell that many respondents have NEVER been here. It's a great area with a ton of history & REAL people. I'm sure those of you opining on it are going off biased media garbage like "They throw snowballs at Santa" thing. The same kind of generalization that would be parallel with "Cal-Berkeley is a bunch of lazy radical hippie nutjobs like that Mario Savio guy". Heaven knows I can own property here that would cost multi-millions of dollars for less than $400k. I grew up in the South Bay, was just back to take care of my mom. But I cannot imagine ever going back to live there...
Phoenix fun fact: My aunt owns the oldest Black restaurant in the city...Miss White's Golden Rule Cafe. My cousin, her son, owns Lolo's Chicken and Waffles.
I'm going to add it to the list. (i have a vague plan for Summer 2022 Mega Road Trip that will depend on covid, employment or non, and if the United States has collapsed into warring territories)
At least Philly has some history....Phoenix has nothing.
However, both are brutal...a dreadful woman known as the former Mrs. Jimmy Chitwood is from just outside Philly, and used to live in Phoenix...none are high on my list....
The Philly part is odd, because it's got a compact core and lots of "local color" that hasn't been redeveloped yet, but it's a hostile place and it's where northeastern "goombah" racism takes over from the more southern bigotry of the mid-Atlantic... not that I'm saying either is better, it's just jarring (must be atrocious if you're not white)
I think it's because for each of them (and Phoenix) the city proper is this large sprawling thing but the urban core isn't that impressive. For San Antonio there isn't much of a metro area beyond the city itself. San Jose is, of course, folded into the larger Bay Area of which San Francisco is the real centerpiece.
Boston is a pretty small city unto itself, but the larger Boston area is massive.
Exactly. PHX is the fastest growing metro area in America and it grows out, not up. So outward expansion and capital appreciation are inevitable. I saw that trend and invested in four different plots of sun-blasted dirt out in the Western part of the greater Phoenix area.
About a decade ago, I woke up to a sharp pain on my lip. I reached up to my face with my hand, and was met with the furious skittering, sharp tanged legs of a cockroach. I yelped a MOTHERFUCKER!!! that awoke my wife, clasped the struggling hard-shelled biter, bolted upright, and flung it across the room. I chased it down and smashed it with a shoe. I fucking hated cockroaches before this and have sworn them to be my mortal enemy.
this fella was super chill but I really want to understand, not how it got in the house (that seems straightforward enough if a door was left open) but how it got up the stairs and onto the bed, so as to hop onto my face
When I was in school - as probably some of the more well aged alums - Black Lightning was the name of the ASUC note taking service. I just googled online and apparently very soon after I left there was a bunch of drama where the manager of the service resigned the day before the semester THEN opened her own note taking service and taking a bunch of the staff with her.
Apparently there are no longer note services at Cal?
Yeah. The notes were fantastic, but they were only available for the big classes. They were far better at taking notes than I was, so you could skip class. One of my great regrets is that I did just that - relied on Black Lightning and skipped class. If I were to do it all over again, I would not skip class and listen for content/learning knowing that the notes would be there. I was an immature dumbass.
Same here! While I abused the service to skip classes, there were some classes where I really struggled to keep up writing notes and didn't ingest much of what I was writing, so just an unpleasant experience.. But unfortunately they weren't available in those cases when I could have honestly used them.
not I! I did record my lectures last year and make them available online for students, but I don't think I'll ever do that again unless there's something preventing either me or my students from coming to class. Participation plummeted and students who watched recordings (or at least claimed to) did substantially worse on homeworks and exams than those who attended class either in-person or via Zoom
Minari (19/19, WB). I watched it on the plane. Went in with no expectations and, dang, it was so good. Subtle. Sometimes predictable. Sometimes surprised me. Some great themes about being a minority in the US without hitting you over the head with them - but mostly themes about life in general regardless of background. The entire cast (except for the daughter) took turns stealing scenes. It's an A24 film, so it's left a bit of a weight on my heart well after seeing it.
Started watching Letterkenny on Hulu... that show kills me. I am sure I am missing some of the humor due to my lack of Canadian-ness but overall, I never fail to have multiple laughs per episode
oh it's SO GOOD. Second to last season got pretty repetitive, but the most recent season redeems it. I think it takes a season hit its stride, but glad you enjoy it!!! Looking forward to discussing.
Finally got to watch Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain - I gave it 4 stars on Letterboxd but I’m now wondering if I only gave it four stars because of my fondness for Bourdain and not the documentary part of it.
The first two parts of the movie deal with the period right around Kitchen Confidential and then his rise in global fame - through the start and middle parts of Parts Unknown. If you’ve kept track of the man’s career (and I’ve been watching and reading since Kitchen Confidential - through Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover etc) none of this is a surprise but it was nice to see a lot of the BTS clips from his film crews.
It’s a bit eerie how much Bourdain narrates his own life; but I suppose so much of his tv output was autobiographical. The AI voiceover is pretty seamless to be honest, because he talks so much about his own end of life and makes so many jokes about suicide.
One weird thing is Morgan Neville - almost ignores the drug addict part of Bourdain’s life- except as a shorthand explainer that he just switched addictions - from heroin to travel . . . to Asia Argento.
Now I don’t know much about Argento, except for the various gossip mags and blind items that popped up in the wake of his death pointing the finger directly at her for his state of mind in the last year of his life. So I came into the film with some lingering bias against her.
And man, the filmmaker makes it clear that his friends and colleagues do not like her.
I do think point of view aside, not giving her the opportunity to answer her critics - or even a screenshot that she declined an interview - is there something missing in the documentary?
Hasn't this been blasted for the fake voice-overs? I haven't, and probably won't watch it;about 15 years ago I used to run into him at Market Hall in Rockridge getting coffee in the morning.
In fact, I talked about it in the review above Cugel!
"It’s a bit eerie how much Bourdain narrates his own life; but I suppose so much of his tv output was autobiographical. The AI voiceover is pretty seamless to be honest, because he talks so much about his own end of life and makes so many jokes about suicide."
Additional note: what he said to Dave Chang was absolutely brutal. It adds a lot to understanding why Chang was so broken up after the suicide - because it now leaves this pain point between them unresolved.
I find it amazing that in all the bleating about the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (Come Taliban, tally me banana....), NO ONE has recalled the lessons of the failed Soviet invasion and occupation that lasted 10 years. It's as if it NEVER happened.
Dunces. The lot of 'em, especially the American military. Dunces.
Agreed; intervention in Afghanistan was always doomed to ultimate failure.
Vietnam should have been a very apt comparison in that the US supported (propped up) national government that had no internal cohesion or impetus to to truly take on the responsibilities of training and sustaining a military capable of fighting off and defeating the insurgents (the Viet Cong or the Taliban).
But of course, all the cheerleading in the US in the wake of 9-11 for an invasion obscured that invading Afghanistan should have had limited objectives to begin with.
"Vietnam should have been a very apt comparison in that the US supported"
Gonna have to disagree with this: A) I have ALWAYS hated this "No more Vietnam wars in X country!" Wars are always different, South Vietnam was not Afghanistan, and did have a functioning democracy, entirely different than what we encountered in Afghanistan. Sure failure from the outside looks the same, but the causes are different.
The U.S. military bullshiting about what was going on however, yes THAT is the same.
You miss the point - South Vietnam's democratically elected government was only functioning as long as the US was around to prop it up. Same thing with Afghanistan's government.
I agree with South Vietnam and Vietnam in general being very different than Afghanistan for a variety of reasons, it’s just that the “endings” look comparable.
South and North Vietnam were established countries/governments that fought a war about unification and which government and governing ideology was to govern, each backed by two super powers.
The objective always SHOULD have been to find those responsible for 9/11, kill them or capture them, and then get out. The Bush neocons got greedy and left us all with this mess.
I can't remember which single or collection of documentaries that I was watching, but one of the key points I remember was that Afghanistan is not a country - but a geographic location in which there are thousands of iron-age villages that have survived millennia by being loyal to nobody, flexing to the winds of power change, and taking advantage of whatever situation presents itself. Nobody over there was ever on "our side". Central government, national defense, patriotism, and other Western concepts are seeds that will never sprout in that soil. The key concept that exists everywhere there is religion - which gets used as a tool of power.
While everyone is pointing fingers at what went wrong, I can only say that it doesn't matter because it was doomed from the beginning. Thousands of Afghans will die. Millions of women and children will become chattel. Misery will be everywhere. And it only took us two decades, 2,500 American lives, and more than $800 billion dollars to take that round trip lesson.
Yeah, I think there are fair arguments that we should have had a better plan for getting our own people/allies out, but the military leaders (once again) badly underestimated how quickly the Taliban would advance. And also that Biden and the administration should have just leveled with the public from the start rather than pretending this wouldn't be the end result.
But none of that would have changed the end result, which does seem inevitable to me. Our "nation building" never worked, because the regime the US was propping up was no better than the Taliban: corrupt, brutal, and with no popular support. Hopefully we can finally learn our lesson that we don't know what we're doing in Middle Eastern politics.
It has never worked for any outside power for any length of time. And a number of at the time world posers who were not resource deficient have tried. There should be a lesson learned there.
We should have waited until winter. The winter snow, rain and muddy roads would have provided a bigger barrier and resistance to the Taliban taking Kabul so quickly than the Afghan army.
With the country falling in a matter of days, it really makes you wonder what we were doing with those billions of dollars, countless lives, and two decades...
There was maybe a chance to get out in 2002 after the Taliban had been defeated and we left the country to its new government. The longer we stayed the more we had to conduct military operations against insurgents (meaning lots of collateral damage), and the more our money got funneled into corrupt schemes that didn't actually help the country. The result is that the locals didn't see anything worth defending in the current US-backed government.
I think the blame tree starts with the british, then the russians, then bush /Cheney then Obama's surge then Pompeo and Trump's deal with the Taliban. It's blame all the way down.
True - for more than 2,000 years it has been a crossroad of empires but never held for long. When Alexander the Great conquered the territory it became a Greek possession for a few hundred years. After he died the satrap of the area proclaimed himself great king known as Basileos Megas and the area was unified for a time as the kingdom of Bactria, with a Macedonian ruling elite. However, with the rise of the Parthians to the west Bactria collapsed but neither they nor their successors the Sassanids were able to hold the territory. Later on the Ghaznavids, Mongols, and Safavids were unable to conquer it, nor was it part of the Ottoman empire. The Russians and British both had colonial plans for the area starting in the 18th century but neither was able to establish rule there until the 20th century despite several attempts to militarily pacify it. The British called it the Northwest frontier province (as viewed from British India). US efforts to control the territory have been as unsuccessful as the two British adventurers depicted in the film the Man Who Would be King based on Kipling's story.
National food stamp program permanently raised. On average, SNAP recipients now get $157/month, up 30%. More than one in eight Americans receive food stamps. As usual, the NYT does a nice job covering the story - but it's a sad read.
because i turned 50 last year i went to get my shingles vaccine.
but it is a 2 dose thing separated by 2-6 months.
however it is possible that i cant get a coronavirus booster in between my 2 shots, so i just have to hope that the 2 months + 2 weeks is over before any booster shots is approved and available for people like me.
Championship is back and that means a return to Mitro scoring goals and looking like a Bond villain again. He was so lost in the soft finesse Premier League where things like "skill" are valued and "being an Eastern European hard man with a knack for the goal" are not quite as valuable.
Everton actually came from a goal down to beat Southampton 3 - 1, thanks to tactical changes from Rafa Benitez, and the whole thing left me with mixed feelings. Only game I watched this weekend.
What a difference two weeks makes. At the trade deadline the Nats were 2 1/2 games behind the now first place Braves. But they traded almost all their veterans and have lost twelve of thirteen games and are totally out of the race. I understand why they did it and it probably needed to be done but it's hard not to second guess it a bit.
Also, Oakland's own Joe Ross has a partially torn UCL and may be looking at a second Tommy John surgery.
The Oakland A’s went to Arlington looking to build on their hot streak, and instead lost two out of three games to the last-place Texas Rangers. The finale Sunday ended with a 7-4 defeat, with the Rangers in control for the entire afternoon.
Texas jumped all over A’s starter Sean Manaea, with a combination of legit hard contact and also plenty of luck, and the 1st inning offered examples of both factors.
After a pair of tight, one-run, extra-inning affairs in the first two games at Citi Field, the Dodgers finally exhaled on Sunday, hitting five home runs in a sweep-finishing 14-4 rout of the Mets.
Justin Turner, limited by a groin injury to two at-bats and eight defensive outs in the field over the previous seven days, welcomed himself back into the lineup with a two-run home run in the first inning to open the scoring. The long ball scored Trea Turner, giving the Dodgers their first Turner-Turner run(s). Justin Turner later walked twice and singled in his first start in a week.
Will Smith followed with a solo shot, his third straight day with a home run in New York, and his eighth home run in 23 games since the All-Star break. Smith also has 27 runs batted in during that stretch, including a two-run single in the eighth.
Bold prediction: On September 13th, Cal will have more votes than Washington and UCLA and nearly as many points as Oregon after the duck get smashed by Ohio State in Columbus.
ICYMI: The Atlantic noted that Big X, Pac-12, and ACC (but not the Big XII) are in discussion to have an alliance (rather than a merger). It would primarily be a way to have a majority voting block to essentially outvote the SEC in the NCAA when it comes to reorganize. On a secondary basis, it would consolidate OOC scheduling. This is important because it stop everyone from trying to poach other members, designates the remnants of the Big XII as the losers, and set up a counter-balance to the SEC so they don't become the Champions League.
But getting to “league average” from the O and special teams have been an issue under Wilcox’s entire tenure so I understand the reluctance to take Cal serious.
Totally agreed, but the national media was all over Cal before the dog-schitt COVID season, and now has abandoned them based on the results, of which few conclusions are hard to draw.
I'm not incredibly confident Cal can reach league-average on either front...however, it's not an entirely insurmountable hill to climb....
Yes. Went to TN with dreams of greatness as the Vols had Guarantano as their junior QB going into 2019 and then looking to compete against Brian Maurer once he graduates after the 2020 season. Shrout redshirt in 2019, but plays the max 4 games in 2019 - with mediocre results. The next season, Maurer struggles with mental health - so drops back in the competition. However, Shrout is beat out for the 2nd string by freshman Harrison Bailey and had questionable decision making in garbage time to warrant being anything but 2nd string in 2021. So Shrout transfers to CU.
CU is now left with Brendon Lewis (RS-Freshman), a mediocre QB transfer from Northern CO, a mediocre transfer from D2 Western CO, and a no star walk-on who wasn't very good in HS. CU should take a massive step back this season.
FYI: The TCU tailgate vendor hasn't finalized their catering offerings, so my sale of tickets to it is delayed until they nail that down. I've got a call into them. Also, I am inclined to keep this year's tailgate down to a small size because a) I want to minimize it being a super-spreader activity and b) I'm not hiring dedicated staff so can't go big. Max will be 60 people, but I'm thinking of keeping it 20 or 40. Watch the DBD for announcements.
Tickets for the Cal game go on sale through the TCU ticket office on the 21st at 8am Central. Not sure how folks are getting tix but me and golden oso are figuring out numbers if we all want to sit together. If interested, poke me or him.
Thanks for the info g.oso....Newellbany & I will keep an eye out on the 21st...BUT...we have 8 in our group alone, so we're almost halfway to the 20 ppl already...if people want to join groups, we'll hit 20+ pretty quick.
Every time we go to Berkeley, I see a lot of blue and gold stripes. Have to say it looks pretty good' certainly unique. Zero confusion about who you are looking at.
Philly is no longer America's fifth largest city after NY, LA, Chicago, & Houston.
https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/the-us-has-a-new-5th-largest-city-can-you-guess-it/
Having settled in the Philadelphia area 31 years ago, I can tell that many respondents have NEVER been here. It's a great area with a ton of history & REAL people. I'm sure those of you opining on it are going off biased media garbage like "They throw snowballs at Santa" thing. The same kind of generalization that would be parallel with "Cal-Berkeley is a bunch of lazy radical hippie nutjobs like that Mario Savio guy". Heaven knows I can own property here that would cost multi-millions of dollars for less than $400k. I grew up in the South Bay, was just back to take care of my mom. But I cannot imagine ever going back to live there...
I don't care for either Philly or Phoenix, so no net change for me, and that's the relevant measure here.
Phoenix fun fact: My aunt owns the oldest Black restaurant in the city...Miss White's Golden Rule Cafe. My cousin, her son, owns Lolo's Chicken and Waffles.
that is a fun fact!
I'm going to add it to the list. (i have a vague plan for Summer 2022 Mega Road Trip that will depend on covid, employment or non, and if the United States has collapsed into warring territories)
Nice. I will put on my list to try and hit in a few weeks - spending a couple nights with fam on the drive to Ft Worth...
At least Philly has some history....Phoenix has nothing.
However, both are brutal...a dreadful woman known as the former Mrs. Jimmy Chitwood is from just outside Philly, and used to live in Phoenix...none are high on my list....
Lots of good Mexican food. Goes well with lots of heat.
au contraire . . .the 2018 Cheez-It Bowl was played in Phoenix.
Seems reasonable to me.
The Philly part is odd, because it's got a compact core and lots of "local color" that hasn't been redeveloped yet, but it's a hostile place and it's where northeastern "goombah" racism takes over from the more southern bigotry of the mid-Atlantic... not that I'm saying either is better, it's just jarring (must be atrocious if you're not white)
I have not been to the state of Pennsylvania since 1977, but I plan to rectify that next summer.
It's pretty likely that I will be driving through PA tomorrow - not Philly though.
I'm always surprised at how populous San Antonio and San Jose are because of their second-tier name recognition
It's because SJ is suburbia without a real downtown/central region.
I think it's because for each of them (and Phoenix) the city proper is this large sprawling thing but the urban core isn't that impressive. For San Antonio there isn't much of a metro area beyond the city itself. San Jose is, of course, folded into the larger Bay Area of which San Francisco is the real centerpiece.
Boston is a pretty small city unto itself, but the larger Boston area is massive.
Exactly. PHX is the fastest growing metro area in America and it grows out, not up. So outward expansion and capital appreciation are inevitable. I saw that trend and invested in four different plots of sun-blasted dirt out in the Western part of the greater Phoenix area.
Pre-development land; bold move my friend.
I've already got offers on two of the plots. I'm holding out for more and so that I can make it beyond a year for LTCG.
would any development have municipal water? I'm guessing wells would have to dig pretty deep out there
ICYMI: I met a frog
https://twitter.com/dmoneyfor3/status/1426030994029748224
A frog just like that one lives on my deck (usually under the grill cover during the day). It hasn't made it into the house yet...
FFFRRRROOGGGGGYYYYYY!
Probably trying to make it into your throat
As a mouth breather this would be one of my fears.
About a decade ago, I woke up to a sharp pain on my lip. I reached up to my face with my hand, and was met with the furious skittering, sharp tanged legs of a cockroach. I yelped a MOTHERFUCKER!!! that awoke my wife, clasped the struggling hard-shelled biter, bolted upright, and flung it across the room. I chased it down and smashed it with a shoe. I fucking hated cockroaches before this and have sworn them to be my mortal enemy.
this fella was super chill but I really want to understand, not how it got in the house (that seems straightforward enough if a door was left open) but how it got up the stairs and onto the bed, so as to hop onto my face
I really want it to be that d-honey laid out a bunch of flies up the stairs, onto the bed, and on your body to lead the frog onto your face.
pqtm
Black Lightning
I never used that, I had my own issues (mainly procrastinating about writing papers) but not attending class wasn't my issue.
When I was in school - as probably some of the more well aged alums - Black Lightning was the name of the ASUC note taking service. I just googled online and apparently very soon after I left there was a bunch of drama where the manager of the service resigned the day before the semester THEN opened her own note taking service and taking a bunch of the staff with her.
Apparently there are no longer note services at Cal?
What's a note taking service? Someone takes notes for you so that you don't have to attend lectures?
Yeah. The notes were fantastic, but they were only available for the big classes. They were far better at taking notes than I was, so you could skip class. One of my great regrets is that I did just that - relied on Black Lightning and skipped class. If I were to do it all over again, I would not skip class and listen for content/learning knowing that the notes would be there. I was an immature dumbass.
Same here! While I abused the service to skip classes, there were some classes where I really struggled to keep up writing notes and didn't ingest much of what I was writing, so just an unpleasant experience.. But unfortunately they weren't available in those cases when I could have honestly used them.
Did you guys use it for GE? or classes related to your major?
both
Did you have to pay for the service?
yeah but it was only like 20 bucks per course for the whole semester (in the early 2000's at least)
i see.
I have no idea if there is a service now. I would guess not, as so much lecture type material is digital now, not chalkboard scribbles.
not I! I did record my lectures last year and make them available online for students, but I don't think I'll ever do that again unless there's something preventing either me or my students from coming to class. Participation plummeted and students who watched recordings (or at least claimed to) did substantially worse on homeworks and exams than those who attended class either in-person or via Zoom
I was going to reply to the original DBD saying FOR SURE Black Lightning is a superhero because that's the only way I made it through school.
Ha! :)
There was some note taking service when I was a student, but I don't recall the name. I think it went out of business.
My slow weak memories says they were called Fybates.
My big sister worked there in the 80's while at Cal.
DBD AV Club
Minari (19/19, WB). I watched it on the plane. Went in with no expectations and, dang, it was so good. Subtle. Sometimes predictable. Sometimes surprised me. Some great themes about being a minority in the US without hitting you over the head with them - but mostly themes about life in general regardless of background. The entire cast (except for the daughter) took turns stealing scenes. It's an A24 film, so it's left a bit of a weight on my heart well after seeing it.
White Lotus finished last night.
I want those 6 hours of my life back.
LOL I'm only 2 hours in but I'm going to finish it.
Same, I’m 2 hours in and am enjoying it so and plan to finish.
Definitely finish...I look forward to your thoughts upon completion.
Started watching Letterkenny on Hulu... that show kills me. I am sure I am missing some of the humor due to my lack of Canadian-ness but overall, I never fail to have multiple laughs per episode
oh it's SO GOOD. Second to last season got pretty repetitive, but the most recent season redeems it. I think it takes a season hit its stride, but glad you enjoy it!!! Looking forward to discussing.
Finally got to watch Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain - I gave it 4 stars on Letterboxd but I’m now wondering if I only gave it four stars because of my fondness for Bourdain and not the documentary part of it.
The first two parts of the movie deal with the period right around Kitchen Confidential and then his rise in global fame - through the start and middle parts of Parts Unknown. If you’ve kept track of the man’s career (and I’ve been watching and reading since Kitchen Confidential - through Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover etc) none of this is a surprise but it was nice to see a lot of the BTS clips from his film crews.
It’s a bit eerie how much Bourdain narrates his own life; but I suppose so much of his tv output was autobiographical. The AI voiceover is pretty seamless to be honest, because he talks so much about his own end of life and makes so many jokes about suicide.
One weird thing is Morgan Neville - almost ignores the drug addict part of Bourdain’s life- except as a shorthand explainer that he just switched addictions - from heroin to travel . . . to Asia Argento.
Now I don’t know much about Argento, except for the various gossip mags and blind items that popped up in the wake of his death pointing the finger directly at her for his state of mind in the last year of his life. So I came into the film with some lingering bias against her.
And man, the filmmaker makes it clear that his friends and colleagues do not like her.
I do think point of view aside, not giving her the opportunity to answer her critics - or even a screenshot that she declined an interview - is there something missing in the documentary?
I’m not sure but it feels like it.
Hasn't this been blasted for the fake voice-overs? I haven't, and probably won't watch it;about 15 years ago I used to run into him at Market Hall in Rockridge getting coffee in the morning.
There's one small AI snippet where he "reads" something he wrote, but the rest is all real clips of him speaking as far as I am aware.
Hmmmm... I only know what I've read, have you watched it?
I have. Here's an article about the 45 seconds/three sentences of AI voice. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/movies/anthony-bourdain-ai-voice.html
In fact, I talked about it in the review above Cugel!
"It’s a bit eerie how much Bourdain narrates his own life; but I suppose so much of his tv output was autobiographical. The AI voiceover is pretty seamless to be honest, because he talks so much about his own end of life and makes so many jokes about suicide."
Additional note: what he said to Dave Chang was absolutely brutal. It adds a lot to understanding why Chang was so broken up after the suicide - because it now leaves this pain point between them unresolved.
DBD Test Kitchen
Afghanistan
This photo is Afghanistan's equivalent to the last copter out of Saigon.
https://www.defenseone.com/media/ckeditor-uploads/2021/08/16/IMG_0084.jpg
One more thing -
Afghanistan banana stand.
See: The Hot Rock
I find it amazing that in all the bleating about the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (Come Taliban, tally me banana....), NO ONE has recalled the lessons of the failed Soviet invasion and occupation that lasted 10 years. It's as if it NEVER happened.
Dunces. The lot of 'em, especially the American military. Dunces.
But that was the Soviet’s and this is America and American exceptionalism is better than communism so of course we would succeed.
I imagine that was one thought and belief.
The Brits and the Mongols and the ancient Greeks didn't have much luck trying to hold Afghanistan either.
or Vietnam. It was ALWAYS going to end this way.
Agreed; intervention in Afghanistan was always doomed to ultimate failure.
Vietnam should have been a very apt comparison in that the US supported (propped up) national government that had no internal cohesion or impetus to to truly take on the responsibilities of training and sustaining a military capable of fighting off and defeating the insurgents (the Viet Cong or the Taliban).
But of course, all the cheerleading in the US in the wake of 9-11 for an invasion obscured that invading Afghanistan should have had limited objectives to begin with.
"Vietnam should have been a very apt comparison in that the US supported"
Gonna have to disagree with this: A) I have ALWAYS hated this "No more Vietnam wars in X country!" Wars are always different, South Vietnam was not Afghanistan, and did have a functioning democracy, entirely different than what we encountered in Afghanistan. Sure failure from the outside looks the same, but the causes are different.
The U.S. military bullshiting about what was going on however, yes THAT is the same.
You miss the point - South Vietnam's democratically elected government was only functioning as long as the US was around to prop it up. Same thing with Afghanistan's government.
South Vietnam's democratically elected government was only functioning as long as the US was around to prop it up.
This is far from the whole truth.
I agree with South Vietnam and Vietnam in general being very different than Afghanistan for a variety of reasons, it’s just that the “endings” look comparable.
South and North Vietnam were established countries/governments that fought a war about unification and which government and governing ideology was to govern, each backed by two super powers.
The objective always SHOULD have been to find those responsible for 9/11, kill them or capture them, and then get out. The Bush neocons got greedy and left us all with this mess.
Yeah, all of this is what we should have done.
^^this^^
Yes, we like to get riled up about things and go off in the wrong direction.
A picture worth a thousand words...
https://twitter.com/LNajafizada/status/1426852794175270915
More like $2 trillion
I can't remember which single or collection of documentaries that I was watching, but one of the key points I remember was that Afghanistan is not a country - but a geographic location in which there are thousands of iron-age villages that have survived millennia by being loyal to nobody, flexing to the winds of power change, and taking advantage of whatever situation presents itself. Nobody over there was ever on "our side". Central government, national defense, patriotism, and other Western concepts are seeds that will never sprout in that soil. The key concept that exists everywhere there is religion - which gets used as a tool of power.
While everyone is pointing fingers at what went wrong, I can only say that it doesn't matter because it was doomed from the beginning. Thousands of Afghans will die. Millions of women and children will become chattel. Misery will be everywhere. And it only took us two decades, 2,500 American lives, and more than $800 billion dollars to take that round trip lesson.
Yeah, I think there are fair arguments that we should have had a better plan for getting our own people/allies out, but the military leaders (once again) badly underestimated how quickly the Taliban would advance. And also that Biden and the administration should have just leveled with the public from the start rather than pretending this wouldn't be the end result.
But none of that would have changed the end result, which does seem inevitable to me. Our "nation building" never worked, because the regime the US was propping up was no better than the Taliban: corrupt, brutal, and with no popular support. Hopefully we can finally learn our lesson that we don't know what we're doing in Middle Eastern politics.
It has never worked for any outside power for any length of time. And a number of at the time world posers who were not resource deficient have tried. There should be a lesson learned there.
For Afghanistan? Sure, has worked in other countries however.
We should have waited until winter. The winter snow, rain and muddy roads would have provided a bigger barrier and resistance to the Taliban taking Kabul so quickly than the Afghan army.
We could have had this result in 2002, fucking Bush, should have declared victory and left.
With the country falling in a matter of days, it really makes you wonder what we were doing with those billions of dollars, countless lives, and two decades...
true, but seems like we just defended them and teaching them to defend themselves was beyond hope.
I found this article useful: https://www.juancole.com/2021/08/washington-afghanistan-crashing.html
There was maybe a chance to get out in 2002 after the Taliban had been defeated and we left the country to its new government. The longer we stayed the more we had to conduct military operations against insurgents (meaning lots of collateral damage), and the more our money got funneled into corrupt schemes that didn't actually help the country. The result is that the locals didn't see anything worth defending in the current US-backed government.
I think the blame tree starts with the british, then the russians, then bush /Cheney then Obama's surge then Pompeo and Trump's deal with the Taliban. It's blame all the way down.
90% is Cheney/bush - as far as our involvement went.
True - for more than 2,000 years it has been a crossroad of empires but never held for long. When Alexander the Great conquered the territory it became a Greek possession for a few hundred years. After he died the satrap of the area proclaimed himself great king known as Basileos Megas and the area was unified for a time as the kingdom of Bactria, with a Macedonian ruling elite. However, with the rise of the Parthians to the west Bactria collapsed but neither they nor their successors the Sassanids were able to hold the territory. Later on the Ghaznavids, Mongols, and Safavids were unable to conquer it, nor was it part of the Ottoman empire. The Russians and British both had colonial plans for the area starting in the 18th century but neither was able to establish rule there until the 20th century despite several attempts to militarily pacify it. The British called it the Northwest frontier province (as viewed from British India). US efforts to control the territory have been as unsuccessful as the two British adventurers depicted in the film the Man Who Would be King based on Kipling's story.
They don't call it the Graveyard of Empires for nothing.
Our Crumbling Democracy
Did I miss it? Did Trump become president again last Friday?
You didn’t notice and celebrates Reinstatement day?!?! It was glorious.
I wonder how the Q's are reacting to it?
They didn’t realize reinstatement day meant the Taliban coming back to power and are now jealous.
bwahhahahahaahahahhahaha
So, it was reinstatement day, from a certain point of view....
National food stamp program permanently raised. On average, SNAP recipients now get $157/month, up 30%. More than one in eight Americans receive food stamps. As usual, the NYT does a nice job covering the story - but it's a sad read.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/us/politics/biden-food-stamps.html
Today in Covid 19
booster shot?
because i turned 50 last year i went to get my shingles vaccine.
but it is a 2 dose thing separated by 2-6 months.
however it is possible that i cant get a coronavirus booster in between my 2 shots, so i just have to hope that the 2 months + 2 weeks is over before any booster shots is approved and available for people like me.
Pro
Premier league is back! Now it really feels like summer is coming to an end.
Championship is back and that means a return to Mitro scoring goals and looking like a Bond villain again. He was so lost in the soft finesse Premier League where things like "skill" are valued and "being an Eastern European hard man with a knack for the goal" are not quite as valuable.
Man U crushed Leeds :(
Everton actually came from a goal down to beat Southampton 3 - 1, thanks to tactical changes from Rafa Benitez, and the whole thing left me with mixed feelings. Only game I watched this weekend.
What a difference two weeks makes. At the trade deadline the Nats were 2 1/2 games behind the now first place Braves. But they traded almost all their veterans and have lost twelve of thirteen games and are totally out of the race. I understand why they did it and it probably needed to be done but it's hard not to second guess it a bit.
Also, Oakland's own Joe Ross has a partially torn UCL and may be looking at a second Tommy John surgery.
Game #118: A’s outslugged by Rangers in 7-4 loss
https://www.athleticsnation.com/2021/8/15/22626310/oakland-as-game-118-texas-rangers-score-result
Don’t mess with Texas, apparently.
The Oakland A’s went to Arlington looking to build on their hot streak, and instead lost two out of three games to the last-place Texas Rangers. The finale Sunday ended with a 7-4 defeat, with the Rangers in control for the entire afternoon.
Texas jumped all over A’s starter Sean Manaea, with a combination of legit hard contact and also plenty of luck, and the 1st inning offered examples of both factors.
A's just don't seem to have the magic, at least right now...
Canha is in a funk and hurting them at the top of the lineup.
Giants beat the Rockies 5-2
Dodgers’ best defense is a great offense to sweep Mets
https://www.truebluela.com/2021/8/15/22626378/dodgers-home-runs-max-muncy-max-scherzer-mets-sweep
After a pair of tight, one-run, extra-inning affairs in the first two games at Citi Field, the Dodgers finally exhaled on Sunday, hitting five home runs in a sweep-finishing 14-4 rout of the Mets.
Justin Turner, limited by a groin injury to two at-bats and eight defensive outs in the field over the previous seven days, welcomed himself back into the lineup with a two-run home run in the first inning to open the scoring. The long ball scored Trea Turner, giving the Dodgers their first Turner-Turner run(s). Justin Turner later walked twice and singled in his first start in a week.
Will Smith followed with a solo shot, his third straight day with a home run in New York, and his eighth home run in 23 games since the All-Star break. Smith also has 27 runs batted in during that stretch, including a two-run single in the eighth.
GBBR
GBBR
Other College
Nevada football is relocating their fall camp to Stanfurd to avoid poor air quality.
https://twitter.com/JeffFaraudo/status/1427426517596860466
AP Pre-season poll out:
https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll
Oregon #11
USC #15
Washington #20
Utah #24
ASU #25
UCLA gets 2 votes
Cal, Stanfurd, and CU get zero votes. Note: TCU is #28.
Bold prediction: On September 13th, Cal will have more votes than Washington and UCLA and nearly as many points as Oregon after the duck get smashed by Ohio State in Columbus.
that seems fairly rational actually.
Gonna have to handle the heat in Ft Worth....all of us!
Austin a few years back for the Texas game was pretty brutal
went for a morning run with a few of the DBDers on gameday and I got queasy from the heat and humidity
I was on the Big Island for that game and remember being queasy that morning as well, tho for entirely different reasons. What a fun win tho....
FIRE MARK EMMERT
ICYMI: The Atlantic noted that Big X, Pac-12, and ACC (but not the Big XII) are in discussion to have an alliance (rather than a merger). It would primarily be a way to have a majority voting block to essentially outvote the SEC in the NCAA when it comes to reorganize. On a secondary basis, it would consolidate OOC scheduling. This is important because it stop everyone from trying to poach other members, designates the remnants of the Big XII as the losers, and set up a counter-balance to the SEC so they don't become the Champions League.
https://theathletic.com/2772414/2021/08/16/staples-why-would-the-big-ten-form-an-alliance-with-the-acc-and-pac-12-its-all-about-tvs-four-million-club/
*The Athletic, not Atlantic
Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek takes cleat to the face at practice and then makes a Bobby Petrino/motorcycle joke
https://twitter.com/HunterYurachek/status/1426711804202438658
CU's potential starting QB JT Shrout injured
https://www.denverpost.com/2021/08/14/injury-to-qb-jt-shrout-mars-cu-buffs-scrimmage/
Colorado getting media-love Cal should be getting as a dark horse player in the P12 given matchups with UO, SC, UW...
National media sleeping on Cal. With even league-average play from the O & special teams, this team makes noise.
But getting to “league average” from the O and special teams have been an issue under Wilcox’s entire tenure so I understand the reluctance to take Cal serious.
Totally agreed, but the national media was all over Cal before the dog-schitt COVID season, and now has abandoned them based on the results, of which few conclusions are hard to draw.
I'm not incredibly confident Cal can reach league-average on either front...however, it's not an entirely insurmountable hill to climb....
Wasn’t he a one time Cal commit, who ended up at Tennessee and transferred to Colorado?
Yes. Went to TN with dreams of greatness as the Vols had Guarantano as their junior QB going into 2019 and then looking to compete against Brian Maurer once he graduates after the 2020 season. Shrout redshirt in 2019, but plays the max 4 games in 2019 - with mediocre results. The next season, Maurer struggles with mental health - so drops back in the competition. However, Shrout is beat out for the 2nd string by freshman Harrison Bailey and had questionable decision making in garbage time to warrant being anything but 2nd string in 2021. So Shrout transfers to CU.
CU is now left with Brendon Lewis (RS-Freshman), a mediocre QB transfer from Northern CO, a mediocre transfer from D2 Western CO, and a no star walk-on who wasn't very good in HS. CU should take a massive step back this season.
Cal
FYI: The TCU tailgate vendor hasn't finalized their catering offerings, so my sale of tickets to it is delayed until they nail that down. I've got a call into them. Also, I am inclined to keep this year's tailgate down to a small size because a) I want to minimize it being a super-spreader activity and b) I'm not hiring dedicated staff so can't go big. Max will be 60 people, but I'm thinking of keeping it 20 or 40. Watch the DBD for announcements.
Tickets for the Cal game go on sale through the TCU ticket office on the 21st at 8am Central. Not sure how folks are getting tix but me and golden oso are figuring out numbers if we all want to sit together. If interested, poke me or him.
What sections are the tickets?
$25 group tickets (minimum 20 ppl) through the TCU site or $45 ea through the Cal ATO. Visitor sections are 226-229 and 312-316.
https://www.amoncarterstadium.com/seating-chart/
Thanks for the info g.oso....Newellbany & I will keep an eye out on the 21st...BUT...we have 8 in our group alone, so we're almost halfway to the 20 ppl already...if people want to join groups, we'll hit 20+ pretty quick.
Any interest?
Me & my son
HSB and I each need one.
Do we remember how many DBDers are going? I don't remember which DBD had the count.
Newellbany & I are the only DBDers in our group.
if we were still on Cal Golden Blogs i could have searched the database to figure out which one it was ..
You can always go back and add a DBD Fanpost!
I see the first 10k attendees get a swirler flag. That seems like a nicer version of the towel, which always seemed funny to me.
I want one!
And theyre doing a "Gold Out". I wonder when was the last time a color theme actually worked at Memorial, or at least not backfired?
Only works when they give away t-shirts; which works pretty good at Haas, not so much at CMS.
They should learn that most people don't wear gold (yellow) and should do a Blue Out
Every time we go to Berkeley, I see a lot of blue and gold stripes. Have to say it looks pretty good' certainly unique. Zero confusion about who you are looking at.
The late 40's/early 50's when everyone wore a white button down in the student section.
^^this^^ maybe even as late as '62 or so.
Go Bears!!!
Happy Move In Day
https://twitter.com/CalAthletics/status/1427406663737217025