unclevlad

PSA for those in the US...
 
Turkey Day, noon Eastern...NBC is televising the National Dog Show.  If you don't feel like becoming oversaturated, it offers up a change of pace from incessant football...especially Thanksgiving week.
 
And so many of the dogs are Just Plain Gorgeous!!!!

If he didn't know, then why bring up a Carter reference at all?

Ouch.
 
Wash St 28, Buffs 7, 20 minutes into the game.
 
Shedeur Sanders is heading back to the locker room, the kid's been taking a beating for several games now.
 
EDIT:  commentators are morons.  "It's not gonna be easy to come back" with Sanders in the locker room, and very likely out.  It's freaking 42-7 at halftime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
This isn't Captain Obvious, it's General Clueless.

EDIT 2:  Ice cream for everyone!  Double scoops!
(yeah, Wazoo just pulled off a second fumble returned for a TD...this is turning into a complete collapse.  56-7, 5 minutes left in the 3rd.)

This is a chilling, terrifying echo to the American present from the American past.
 
 

Well, there's this:
 
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/full-list-of-all-upcoming-marvel-movies/
 
Take with a lick's worth of salt, mind, but that brings FF in before Avengers, and plausibly sets up a team-up.  That list shows a LOT of peripheral projects for '24 and '25, tho.
 

It sounded like they were talking about this;  sounded like they had it, for a while, but switched back to getting it made in a lab.  Found this comparison:
https://mydentaladvocate.com/are-cerec-crowns-better-than-traditional-crowns-dentists-perspective/#:~:text=Zirconia tops CEREC with strength,the crown from falling off.
 
The crown's going on the first molar...way back in the back.  (The wisdom teeth are the 3rd molar.)  Appearance is thus a non-factor...but durability definitely *is*.  And hey, the replacement goes in Tuesday.  4 days?  No big deal.  Yeah, OK, being a gentleman of professional leisure, it's easy to schedule this in, so the extra visit is no big deal.
 
Another article pointed out another issue.  The machines needed for the one-trip crown are expensive, and for a smaller dental office, it can be hard to justify the cost for the limited number of crowns needed each week.  A dedicated lab can service many dentists, so the costs are more broadly distributed.  

How long would that have taken, and would the genre momentum go on that long?  How much would people care about Thanos' back story?  It's one thing to spend a few issues of the comic doing things;  it's quite another to do that with high-budget, scarce-release movies.
 
 

How long would that have taken, and would the genre momentum go on that long?  How much would people care about Thanos' back story?  It's one thing to spend a few issues of the comic doing things;  it's quite another to do that with high-budget, scarce-release movies.
 
 

Seems to me that this is grounds for terminating the teacher's contract, for exposing the student to emotional duress for being used in that manner.

Correlation is not the same as causation. Except that sometimes it is.
 
"You’re not the system; you’re the problem": Mavs Analyst Brian Dameris Delivers Strong Message to James Harden

It's kind of hard for me to imagine a speedster *not* using some martial maneuvers with FMove....  It's the only way to come close to building a comics-style speedster.

Padres owner Peter Seidler has died, age 63.  NYT reports he'd had 2 battles with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and had another procedure over the summer...no details.  
 
Condolences to the family.  Questions about how this will affect the Padres moving forward.

Not the place for rumors....and definitely not the place for known-false rumors.

She was not in the car and was not [edit]directly[/edit] targeted in any way. It was an unmarked Secret Service vehicle which three people were observed attempting to break into...in an area that has seen a 100% rise in car thefts over the past year.

Fans see, for example, what CJ Stroud has done...5 wins already, after 3 seasons with a combined 11?  Wow.  Josh Dobbs takes the Vikes to 2 straight wins, despite NO time with the offense.  Purdy, last season and with his weapons available, for the Niners.  Last year it was Hurts and the Eagles.  
 
The best Dr. Pepper ad this year is everyone going whacko..."I can't believe I fell for the preseason hype!" among other, with Sheriff Bosworth going "guys, it's only the first play of the game."  And the clincher..."maybe we overreacted...."
 
That's fans.  I don't think it's even a mild overstatement.  But I disagree that it's reflective of the politics, because overreaction has been the fundamental state of things for several years, at least.  I think it's gotten worse because
a)  no one's actually ready to play when the season starts.  Not even close.
b)  no one has depth.  Injuries WILL happen, and the drop-off is frequently substantial.  
c)  I think most coaching staffs overcomplicate.  There's too many things to take in, and to practice, so in many cases, 
d)  Poor mental training of athletes.  Got to be the star...force that ball in.  A pick gets lightly criticized, a miracle completion gets shouted to the stars.  AND gets you big fat contracts.

And the reticent, brusque, taciturn Belichick demeanor wears very thin, very quickly, when things fall apart this badly.  
 
The Barnwell article points out another factor...Belichick's notorious manner of benching players.  Again...when you're winning, players can accept a lot.  When you're not, players won't *stay* quiet.  
 
But yeah, the personnel misses have likely been the big issue.
 
 
Yeah, but there've been some underlying questions for a while with the team.  I agree a complete rebuild would be stupid, but hey, social media and AM radio talk shows are dominated by idiots.
 
Plus:  the way they lost the game last night is totally unforgivable.  The Broncos...you can argue the decision to take a knee and settle for a long kick in the weather, but with no more time outs and 30 seconds left, what kind of play do you want to run?  How many yards are they likely to gain?  They showed how to run the kicking team on...they were totally prepared, both there and at the end of the first half.  Beautiful stuff.  The Bills?
 
They have 12 men on the field.
 
They clearly WEREN'T ready for it.  1000000% on the coaches.  Multiple explanations are possible, but the end result is a loss that puts them 10th in the conference.  The big strike?  They're 2-5 in the conference.  The good news for them is, the AFC North will probably cannibalize itself.  Ravens, Steelers, and Browns are in right now;  Bengals are 8th.  (7 make the playoffs.)  Similarly, the AFC South will likely do the same.  Jags and Texans in;  Colts tied with the Bills and with a much better conference mark.  Oh, and the next 4 games for Buffalo...Jets (feisty as heck...should win, now must win), Chiefs, Eagles, Cowboys (might have that order wrong).  Oh dear...not a fun stretch.

Another reason to be...uncharitable with Michigan.
 
I'd forgotten this, but in Feb. '22...Juwan Howard, their men's basketball head coach, got suspended for 5 games for taking a swing at an opponent's assistant coach.
 
So, this is now the 3rd incident with either their most important coaches, or their most important teams.  In a pretty narrow span.  Reasonable minds may differ, but to me...that's lack of institutional control.

The Harden Effect is in full swing.
The Phillies are 8-1.
The Clippers have gone 0-4 in the games he's played.  +/- is a tricky stat, but...in those 4 games, he's been -18, -15, -6, and -28 tonight...against the bottom-dwelling Grizzlies, who get only their 2nd win of the season.

We've talked about this pretty extensively, and you'll get quite a few people who don't agree...at least, making a good character.  Yeah, OK, you probably buy DEX to the OCV and DCV you want, but SPD is still separate, and things like defenses, REC, END, and STUN...well, you might just take what figured gave ya, but that didn't mean it was any good.
 
I'll buy that keeping SPDs down, the figured characteristics could well be at least close to solid values.

Oh, the burn...
 
Tim Brando, as Fox goes to commercial..."Hey, history made tonight...a Trojan stop on defense!"

I go with Doc's last post.  Why complicate it?
 
Use the stats for whatever the weapon is.  Ditch Focus, keep Real Weapon.  Focus goes away because, as noted, it can't be disarmed.  Real Weapon stays, I believe, because that's the basis for the weight considerations.  If you don't have Real Weapon, don't you throw out the Min Weight, and therefore, the lower STR bonus to damage?
 
Since this is based on the Psionic Warrior's Psiblade from 3.0...I'd go further.  Skip real weapon.  Skip focus.  They're powers...period.  No weight.  Not breakable.  Not disarmable...which is also pointless, as Doc notes, if it can be recreated at a thought.
 
For the most part, I don't give a darn about whether it's a mace, hammer, or staff...altho the latter might have reach.  I ONLY care about
a)  normal or killing
b)  reach
c)  damage DCs, and possibly other effects.
 
The rest is just visual SFX.  So yeah...options to start with:
2 slot MP, one for normal, the other for killing.
3 slot MP, with the 3rd slot incorporating the reach weapon
Small VPP...you get a MAJOR limited powers bonus here (at least -1, for HAs and HKAs only).  This is looking ahead, to when you start adding the psiblade powers, which make things a llittle trickier.  The starting VPP might be pool size 20, control cost 10;  half phase to change powers (no reason to go to zero phase);  no skill roll to switch.  HAs, HKAs only is -1, so the control cost is 25 / 2 == 12 points.  As I say, this would only make sense if the plan is to allow a very versatile mindblade...AVAD, AVAD does body, AP, etc.  Otherwise, add slots to the MP. 
 
 
 

I have been pondering this a while and have come to the conclusion that if you add this into the game, it changes so much about when people take what actions in what order that it creates the need for a long and complex list of rules that have to be added to the way combat works.  I understand that if you do it simply it works well and easily -- Savage Worlds allows this for example, because it is a super, super simple combat system.  But with the flexibility of Hero and the combat maneuvers and the speed chart and DEX rank and all the rest, it becomes much more complex.
 
It starts to become, as I noted above, a system of who goes in what order, and how do you determine who interrupts what action and when do you move and how far, and what facing you have.  Which appeals to me in one sense -- it makes combat more dynamic and allows a lot of interesting things to be added in like bonking someone to stop them from doing something -- but it also would slow down combat massively, add another book of rules, and make things a lot less free wheeling and fun.
 
I played Aces & Eights, an award winning system.  They had some neat ideas like the shot clock and adding poker cards into the game and so on.  They break down combat into 1/10th second intervals in which you basically write down what you intend to do like Magic Realm, and then the clock very slowly unwinds as everyone tries to execute their actions at the same time.  This all sounds brilliant on paper but is  virtually unplayable in actual practice, and took freaking ages for a short gunfight.  The whole timing of events thing is a source of continual fighting, rule changing and frustration in games like Magic: the Gathering.
 
So, basically while it sounds kind of harmless I think it would avoid it.
 
 

Plus, as we've said, the notion built into Allocatable is a useful one...as long as it's used appropriately.  This definitely feels like such a use.

Mmm...keeping the bar pretty low there, I'd say..........
 
Note, tho, that the clip has applicability on both sides.  

Bronco fans do have to celebrate those small triumphs, given that substantial ones are not forthcoming...........

You need the *radioactive* vaccination.