unclevlad

There's likely a jurisdiction problem, for a federal crime. That said, they could contact ATF, who does have jurisdiction. But I agree that calling in the feds...ANY of them...doesn't seem likely to happen in Texas, for a gun violation. But, what does Texas law say? In a sane jurisdiction, this would violate state laws. OK, we're talking Texas, so the gun laws aren't sane, but... OK, research time. https://www.atf.gov/firearms/identify-prohibited-persons -- 5th bullet: illegal aliens. So, yes, it's a violation of federal law. https://giffords.org/lawcenter/state-laws/firearm-prohibitions-in-texas/ So it doesn't appear to be a problem in Texas. Yet they complain about illegal immigrants all the time. Hey, how about closing a loophole that wouldn't impact your citizens in the slightest? And how about helping enforce laws ON the books, even if they're federal??? EDIT: wait. It's possible ATF would want local assistance...they may well not have the manpower to check each individual potential violation, their mandate tends to be on a larger scale, like the DEA's mandate isn't the street-corner dealer. It's not hard to see how this would fall apart, with nothing being done. Oh, and another thought: was the shooter run through the system? Cuz you'd THINK his illegal status should pop up...and INS may well sweep him up more readily. (Again, tho...possibly with local assistance that might be a problem here.) What a freaking mess.

That probably works for 1 power. What if the character has 5 of these? But there's something similar you can do. HD doesn't allow -5 END, for -1 point. But, you CAN do a Custom Power that does it. So the powers that work this way, get built as a compound power, with the custom power of -X END as the other part. Another option in HD...a custom adder. List as -X END, and price as per normal END costs. I do this for weapons with Reach...+1 point as an adder, for +1m Reach. THAT behaves properly. A custom adder in HD *can* have a negative value. The difference would be that an adder adjusts the base cost, which is then modified by advantages and limitations. Odds are...NOT by much, and it's a lot neater. Compound powers clutter up character sheets QUICKLY. (EDIT: for a mental entangle, I also do additional Mental Def this way, with a custom adder. Probably 1 or 2 others not immediately coming to mind. It's a handy approach in HD.) This isn't worth a limitation, as that scales with the active points...and END is far, far too cheap for that.

In the "coming out of nowhere" / "taking advantage of your opportunity" in Madrid at the ATP Masters 1000... Zhizhen Zhang entered the event at #99 in the world. Aslan Karatsev started at #121. Both have made the quarter finals by winning today. Zhang beat #10 Fritz...big surprise. Karatsev took out Medvedev, prompting an article whether Medvedev will ever manage to adjust to clay. Wins put Zhang at 66 and Karatsev at 90 in the live rankings. And now they play each other for a spot in the semis...and another 180 ranking points...and about $160K additional prize money. For Karatsev...he's been top 20, but on a terrible streak for multiple months. Zhang, OTOH, has only made a bit under $800K on tour, in 10 years. So this is huge. If Karatsev wins, he jumps all the way back to about #50. If Zhang wins, he'll reach the low 40s. It's always cool to me to see unknowns suddenly vaulting up SO much. It's become possible because Fed, Nadal, and Djokovic aren't swatting them away. The women's draw saw massive upsets ALL the time, for the last, oh, gee, 6-7 years at least. But in the last couple years, it's been happening much more often on the men's side.

If the man's comments are accurate...and dispatch logs should reflect those calls...then that police department's response would seem likely to come under serious review.

Wow. Boston sports fans haven't felt this poleaxed since Super Bowl 52. Last night as noted, the Bruins have an all-time, epic collapse. Tonight...the Celtics drop game 1 to the Sixers. At home. With Embiid sitting out after an awkward fall against the Nets. Harden has a mammoth, career-defining 45, including the go-ahead bucket with 8 seconds left. Now we get an interesting game...Denver rolled on the Suns, but they also shot the lights out. So now we get the first in-series adjustments, and we'll see if Denver can stay hot.

Hey, I'd pay to watch you try that. I'd make sure to have a rescue harness on you, too.

Jell-o

This is also showing problems with electing the judges to the state Supreme Court...it makes that body just as political as the legislature. Not only did they reverse themselves on the gerrymandering, but also on a photo ID law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Supreme_Court All the justices serve staggered 8 year terms. Mind...I rather suspect that every method of determining supreme court justices will run afoul of some problem or another, because the entire political process in this country is so grossly polarized.

You forget that the first Harry Potter flick was filmed in 2000. Not just Ryan Reynolds. Celebrity booze seems to be a Thing...Casamigos was founded with George Clooney was one of the partners. (It's owned now by massive, massive booze mega-corp Diageo, the 3rd largest liquor comglomerate in the world, behind only a Chinese company that's partly state-owned, and AB Inbev.)

WOW............... The 2nd case of the top regular season team falling in the first round. First it was the Bucks losing to the Heat. Now...the Boston Bruins have a lead in the 3rd...give up a tying goal, and lose in OT. After setting records for most points and most wins in a season. Shades of the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won 116 in the regular season, but lost in the ALCS decisively. (This was when there were only 4 teams from each league, so they beat only the Indians...and had to take the last 2 to do that.) Or the 2005 Colts...went 14-2, and lost in their first playoff game. Not only that, but the Bruins were up 3-1 in the series. Hockey is a funky game...the nominal underdog wins more often than in most sports. Still...a 3-1 series lead means you win a bit over 90% of the time. Couple that with nominally being a record-setting team, and this is arguably the biggest collapse in North American pro sports history.

etch-a-sketch yes, it's still made...

Bouncy balls

Hoo boy... Just learned that earlier this month, 2 players are suing the former NMSU basketball coach, an assistant, and the University Regents for the actions that led to the program shutting down mid-season. Not surprising in the least. Also heard that the last player from the team entered the transfer portal today. Also not surprising, really...but AFAIF unprecedented. The new coach is going to have his hands full to be even remotely competitive in the fall.

Kickers (and punters) don't often get drafted. It's just as easy to give them tryouts, sign them as free agents, and let them try to make the team during training camp. Yeah, using ESPN's draft tools...3 kickers, 3 punters. That's it. And don't worry, Logan. Your bubble will burst soon enough; the point of interest is the order of bursting between you, Mr. P, and Fuzzy Wuzzy.

I'd worry about burnout in that scheme. I'd also say...not a little more. More like double. Figure...the home plate ump makes 90+% of the borderline calls, with most of the rest going to the first place ump. The home plate ump gets hammered with pitches and foul tips a fair bit. Secondary consideration...in the tennis world, an issue with electronic line calling is that being a linesman is the entry into the world of tennis officiating. If the pool of home plate umps is kept rigidly under wraps, how do we decide when a) an existing HPU needs to be downgraded b) a base ump is good enough to be elevated That said, something like that for the playoffs sounds more practical. Another option might be that a good base ump with a good sense of the game...but a shaky grasp of the strike zone...never gets put behind the plate. At the least, the notion of rotating the assigned umps as if they're all equal, is CLEARLY nothing more than inertia at work. To a point, one can figure that the bad umps don't get in. For grins, I'm looking up the worst of the worst: C B Bucknor. He's done...2 ASGs (including '21), a wild card game, and 5 division series...07-09, 13, and 20. So he *doesn't get a postseason assignment A LOT. Nor does that show how many games where he was the home plate ump. OTOH, the consensus AWFUL umpire is Angel Hernandez...and he's gotten at least division series games, even recently. I suspect some of this is MLB doesn't want its dirty laundry exposed too much. Umpiring is HARD, too, so too much oversight, or what might be viewed as discriminatory assessment like "he's not a Home Plate Umpire" might make recruiting even harder. I can also see serious pushback from the umpires' union. That said, the fact that they haven't fired a Bucknor or Hernandez says they're gunshy about it. Hernandez has sued the league for not making him a crew chief...which gets more pay...and it's *clear* that partitioning the umpire pool into "base umps" versus "home plate umps" would guarantee litigation and hard feelings.

I don't think it was that game, but I remember another recent game that was similar. Wasn't paying a lot of attention, but the broadcast team said much the same. Many, many absurdly bad calls by the home plate ump. STUPID, LAME blackout rules are shutting down the Giants and Padres broadcast from Mexico City...which was gonna be fun. The ball park is at 7300 feet....yeah, 2000 feet higher than Denver...so the ball's gonna FLY. The run total over/under was 15.5 (!!!). It's the San Diego cable system...WHY????? Utterly lame. MLB is looking at it, but it'll be a royal mess because there are so many disparate players in the game. And of course the fans are never represented. BTW, Umpire Scorecards has the umpire stats. Granted that there aren't many games in the books yet, but.... The HP ump in that game was Scott Barry. He has the lowest accuracy score, the lowest maximum accuracy score (meaning he never has a good game), and the 6th worst average consistency, among all umpires. https://umpscorecards.com/umpires/

When it's guns being shot off, I agree. BUT... My area has a dog ownership problem...in that, quite a few dog owners don't train their dogs and/or leave them alone and outside. Periodically on the Nextdoor neighborhood app, people will post about it. It's VERY common to have others say "go talk to them first." They call that being a good neighbor, and calling the cops is being a bad guy. But shooting a gun, yeah, that's already at an unacceptable level for trying to talk to the neighbor. First shot...I'm going WTF.... Second, I'm calling, and far as I'm concerned, this is worth a call to 911. (Come to think, there was one instance where I thought I heard a gunshot...and called 911. They didn't find anything but they didn't mind in the least. And this was...good gosh...30 years ago maybe. Much less now.) Look, I don't know...and honestly, I'm not inclined to find out...if the shots are just shooting into the air...or something else. I DARN sure, as others are saying, am NOT!!!!! stepping outside, potentially to make myself a target. Still, they didn't deserve to get killed for their action. The <bleep> who did it, deserves to fry tho.

Considering what I was thinking, I figured that might've motivated your comment.

You put that diplomatically, sir.

Next thing you know, Food Network will use a Domino's Pizza as a required or special secret ingredient, a la Chopped or Iron Chef America.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out why a team's so bad. Sometimes it's not. Royals at Twins. 3-2 Twins, bottom 4th, 1 out, runner on 3rd. Royals have all the infielders drawn it, at the cut of the grass, trying to cut the run off. Batter bunts the ball...safety squeeze. The runner at third has been waltzing down the line....the ball hasn't bounced a second time before he's about to score. (The rules about throwing to the bases could be a factor on that. This might be something to address.) That's not the problem. ALL the infielders crash. It's a good bunt, and the first baseman's massively out of position. The batter can waltz down to first. NOW we get to the worst part. The batter does the mild right turn, to go into foul ground...but the ball's still live, as he's just done that. He looks...the second baseman had crashed, the shortstop had crashed, and second base is COMPLETELY uncovered!!! So, he says Thank You Very Much...and runs down several steps ahead of any fielder. The ball travels 20 feet from home plate...and the only sensible scoring is a double, since neither mental nor team errors are acknowledged in the scoring. Absolutely terrible defensive play, but hey, the Royals are 6-20. Only the utterly, disastrously inept A's are worse...and they're only 1 game worse. (A's staff ERA is 8. Let me repeat that...8. That wouldn't be a record if it holds up, but it might be a non-Colorado record. The 2012 Rockies had a 10.5 team ERA...in a total launching pad at the time. Were this soccer, 3 teams in the AL...A's, Royals, and White Sox...would be on pace. All 3 are on pace to lose 110+ games. That's not likely to last throughout the season; the D'backs had a similar start and a (near-?) record losing streak, but from, IIRC, mid-June on, played decent ball.

Where do I sign up? (and if you say it's at the Colonial Defense Force recruiting station...........I'll pass....)

That goes without saying. The Chiefs are in Missouri, tho. Yeah, someone really needs to tell the city to change its name, it's confusing. HOWEVER, the kid apparently is a native of KC, MO, so...ok. Even the end of the first round is still, IIRC, fully guaranteed, and quite good, money.

The real winner of the draft tonight..... The Georgia Bulldogs. EDIT: I suppose there may be significant logistical issues waiting so long, but having the draft held in the Super Bowl champ's city is working out very nicely.

Oh yeah, the Saints went for Carr...and didn't pick a QB. So Levis falls to round 2, looks like. And the long night's journey to the dawn is going to be over soon....