unclevlad

Creme Brulee

Zweihander New category: desserts.

I hesitate to post this a bit, because it's still preliminary, but what may have been the shooter's motive, from NBC News:

One can dislike Dan Gilbert for several things we need not address here, but...this is still sad news. https://apnews.com/article/nick-gilbert-cavaliers-b7dd01d5e2d29929d793dd6e15cf874d

Haven't had a chance to catch the Orioles yet, until today...NBC and Peacock are doing early start time telecasts on Sunday. So this is the first time I've heard of Yennier Cano, a pitcher for Baltimore. OH MY...talk about a GREAT!!!!!!! start to your season. Counting today...12 appearances. 16 innings. 19 strikeouts. 0 walks. 2 hits. 0 runs. He's from Cuba; this is only his 2nd year in MLB, and last year he was...underwhelming. But so far? Darn near perfect.

UV lasers

Quantum torpedoes

I'm generally against most of what you're considering. Some of these might work for a computer game, but not for a tabletop game. They're too complex. Have you looked at the ripple effects? What's the cost for STR, how does that fit into the massively rescaled points? More generally, what's the cost for 1d6 of normal damage, and how does that fit into your overall points/costing structure? There are 4 principle characteristics that connect to skill rolls: DEX, EGO, INT, and PRE. What happens to their cost, how does this impact the costs for CON or BODY? Perception is an important aspect. Perception moves the game forward without needing the GM to play too many tricks, or make things seem too contrived. 14- PER succeeds 90% of the time, and that's pretty easy to reach at a reasonable cost. With a huge "belly" where +1 to a roll doesn't really change things much...that super-granular approach...then how expensive will this become?

That's one of the 2 aspects that make me sick to my stomach on a personal level...the other being that I can't help but say that Texas does this to themselves. Feeling that makes me NOT LIKE MYSELF...but I can't stop it, either. I think I'm going to light a couple tea lights I still have from Yule...and pour myself a double. Good night, everyone. At least for us.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/06/us/allen-texas-mall-shooter-reports/index.html

It's a kind of magic, Logan.

Gerard Gallant gets canned as coach of the NY Rangers, after blowing a 2-0 lead and losing to the NJ Devils in the first round. Man, this one smacks of many themes... --"What have you done for me lately???" The Rangers made the conference finals last year, in his first season. --Impossible expectations. The Rangers signed 2 big-name players at the deadline...both of whom will be free agents. --In most industries, getting fired repeatedly is a Bad Thing. Not in coaching. From ESPN.com: So...Stanley Cup final in year 1 in Vegas, then first round elimination. Conference finals in year 1 in NY, then first round elimination. 5 years, then 4, then 3...there's a pattern there. Now 2 years, continuing the pattern. Plus, the ESPN story also notes that the player end-of-season exit meetings didn't cast Gallant in a very good light.

Yeah, was just gonna post this. 2 more today. CNN noted that a trainer has also been suspended as a result of 2 "highly unusual" deaths. Just due to the timing, this is possibly bigger than the crisis at Santa Anita in 2019, particularly with 2 more deaths on Derby Day itself.

Unified Power is cleaner. Elemental controls have funky aspects, like implicitly 0 END powers can't be but into an EC...but a power with 0 END can be. A big structural difference between 5E and 6E comes into play: in 5E, Force Field is a basic defense. It costs END, so it's fine in an EC...even though, if you're gonna toss on, say, Hardened, it's *cheaper* than Armor because of the math of advantages. 8/8 Armor is 24 points, Hardened --> 30. 8/8 Force Field is 16 points; 0 END, Hardened --> 28. OTOH, Unified Power can run into the nuances of limitations math...they always have diminishing returns. In 6E, Force Field is gone; Armor is just Resistant Protection, and costs 0 END normally. Same with Damage Negation and Damage Reduction...so basically, the entire class of defense powers can't be put into an elemental control without tweaking. OTOH, they can all take Unified Power. The other structural aspect is that the most efficient EC has all powers within a pretty narrow range of active points. Plus, they share an issue with multipowers: limitations specific to individual powers in the framework, are generally worth less. In an MP, this doesn't have to be the case...if the MP is sized to support multiple powers at once, rather than one power at a time. The other thing to remember is that VPPs are decoupled; pool size and control cost are no longer related. This allows for exceptional flexibility. Say you want a 3-aspect VPP...attack, defense, and movement. You can mix and match, you can include stuff like STUN Only on your Negation or Damage Reduction, and Limited Range on your attacks, and these let you reduce the pool size...while maintaining the campaign guideline for the active points of most powers. Slap on Unified Power where possible, and it helps reduce the control cost AND the pool size.

If not UMA, then HSMA. The maneuvers in HD are a direct port from HSMA pages 6 and 7.

Sports gambling problems rise up again. Alabama's baseball coach has been fired. https://www.espn.com/college-baseball/story/_/id/37409279/alabama-fires-baseball-coach-brad-bohannon-amid-betting-probe It appears that the coach passed on the fact that his pitcher was going to be scratched, and substantial wagers were made based on that information. Those bets won. There's direct evidence connecting the coach to the bettors, as the bet was being made. Boom......

Yeah, pro sports' model overall is "what have you done for me lately?" Exhibit A...Mike Budenholzer got canned today by the Bucks. Regular season wins just failed to translate well enough in the postseason.

The estate of Marvin Gaye sued Ed Sheeran for plaigirism, because the chords in a Sheeran song are similar to one of Gaye's hits. Sheeran argued the chords were common musical building blocks. Sheeran won, which is good news. My take on most of these cases has been that they've had no merit. They've been successful enough times, tho, to have notable impacts on songwriters...they have to look over their shoulders, or at least the popular ones do. So I'm glad this one failed.

My gosh, baseball players are morons. Tigers 2, Mets 0. Top 9, Mets trying to salvage a single game in the series. Brandon Nimmo gets a sinking line drive to drop in from of the left fielder to get the tying run to the plate. Then he tries to steal second. And is thrown out. Huh, apparently one of those games in St. Louis today...pitching optional games, that is. 11-7 Angels in the bottom of the 6th.

The A's cannot catch a break. Playing Seattle, for once their pitching does just fine. 1 run through 8 innings, can't ask for more. Up 2-1, going into the 9th. Solo HR ties the ball game. 10th inning. Walk, so now runners on 1st and 2nd. Out. Out. One more to go...and the roof caves in. 3 run homer. Double. Walk. Walk. 2 run single. 7-2 Mariners. A's are now 6-25, so back below the Mendoza line. Still giving up a just a bit under 8 runs a game. Just about at the 20% of the season mark...they're 11 1/2 out of the *wild card* already. Getting out of that stadium can't come fast enough.

Oh my. Yes, that last point is MOST amusing. Yeah...a correlation of less than 0.1 is probably well within the statistical variance, given the coarseness of all the numerics involved. No, they can't be called metrics, that gives them a status (for those of us who do this sort of thing) they don't deserve. And the small sample size. But hey, you know what they say. Russell Wilson, the gift that keeps on giving......... EDIT: just noted, the reader comments on the story are also interesting. Quite the surprise there.....

Passed away on Monday, in a Toronto hospital. He was 84. https://apnews.com/article/gordon-lightfoot-folk-music-dead-4c5f0763797da6a5f3ea8c90947352fc He had...gee, thinking back...not a great voice, but he used it superbly to tell stories. If you're of a certain generation, it's almost impossible not to remember The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

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.