This is the 7th Lions v ABs series I've watched ('66, '71, '77, '83, '93, '05, '17) and I think this is probably the tightest my sphincter has been since the 4th test match in 1971. My ticker might not be able to handle this one. I get anxiety attacks even opening this bloody thread. If I don't have a paramedic on standby I might have to go into an isolation tank until the game is over and then look for the result. I thought this was supposed to be fun?!

Terry Jones: Monty Python star dies aged 77

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51209197

Dementia, a rare form. Hits close to home. Very sad.
Rest In Peace, Terry.

@Chris-B. said in All Blacks vs. B&I Lions test #1:

@dogmeat As they used to shout on the Basil Brush Show...."Who's that?"

Love that guy.

Boom-boom!

An all-time great as a player and skipper, obviously, by my memory after the Cavalier debacle in ‘86 was that Lochore was the guy who held the fern closest to his chest and helped rescue the ABs, much like Jock did a decade later. People forget how divisive the early-to-mid 80s were, when politics got in the way and supporters were turning their backs on rugby. Lochore was a great servant to the game and the union. And of course, I always loved how he remembered everybody in the Wairarapa, I remember being with family in Masterton in the late 80s and he knew everybody, a national hero who was at heart a smalltown heartland lad. RIP.

@MN5 said in Christchurch Gunman in Mosque:

The gunman ( and I still don't know his name without googling ) ...

I’ve been wondering the past two weeks whether this is by design. I suspect it is, mostly because of the idea that we don’t want to give the sickfuck psychopath “infamy and notoriety” or something. Maybe there are other explanations.

But burying his name seems to me irresponsible and inadequate. It’s a way of absolving him of some of the blame and spreading it far-and-wide onto “toxic white masculinity and privilege,” especially, which let’s face it means a lot of us here. Like, we did it. That’s why we keep seeing fingers pointed at ourselves with far too many confessional white-guilt op-eds telling us “we’re to blame,” etc. Am I being defensive? Maybe I am. But that’s what happens when people start fingerpointing and throwing around blame. And I suspect this is exactly the sort of highly emotional and divisive effect that the dickwad terrorist was banking on.

No, we and society are not to blame. Sure, there are a lot of factors you can pull outta your bunghole if you want to absolve the sicko. But he’s the shitforbrains who planned and executed this appalling crime. His name is Brenton Harrison Tarrant, and he ALONE is responsible for it. Certainly we can all do better as a culture and society making sure everybody feels included. But we are ALL individuals responsible for our own actions, and fingers don’t need to be pointed anywhere other than the sickfuck who planned the assault and pulled the triggers.

He’s not wrong.

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code

@ACT-Crusader said in FIFA Womens World Cup:

There’s some pretty brutal footage from international women’s football games. The hair pulling, kicking, biting, elbows.

“I went to a NHL game and a womens soccer match broke out.”

@Tim

Re: "There are no easy answers, etc." Of course. But Scott Adams has an interesting hot take. I like it. "Change the frame."

Helping The Terrorists Recruit

There is more terrorism in the news, this time in London. So how do the British politicians respond?

They do a recruitment ad for more terrorists.

They start by giving the terrorists cool labels, such as “Islamic extremists.” Do you know what sounds like an awesome club for an angry young Muslim to join? I’m thinking “Islamic Extremist” sound about right. That branding should be great for recruitment.

The media also helps terror recruitment with their wall-to-wall news about the terrorists’ successes. Every time they mention the body count, the bad guys cheer.

A better approach for the media, if they want to be helpful, might involve inviting a continuous line of Muslim scholars and critics to talk about how these “gullible losers” were duped by ISIS to kill themselves and spend eternity in Hell. And we need lots of visual and other persuasion about Hell. I want Photoshopped images of the terrorists burning for eternity. I want descriptions of the smells, tastes, and sounds they are experiencing, so the next “lone wolf” has something to contrast with the 72 virgin story. Let’s put some doubt into that mix. Fear is a good persuader.

I also wonder why the families of terrorists are not being flooded with condolence messages from Muslim clerics saying they are sorry about their kid burning in Hell for eternity. Be sincere about it. Include some digital representation of Hell in those cards and letters.

Change the frame.

—

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/161427038341/helping-the-terrorists-recruit

@Nepia I honestly don’t know. I think a team carries two (starter and backup) (or maybe three?) goalies on the road, and then there’s some sort of procedure for an “emergency backup” in the unlikely event the team loses all their available goalies. This 42-year-old guy has been a Zamboni driver and is apparently an emergency backup for a minor league team that plays in the arena. He’s not on the Carolina Hurricanes roster. Incredibly, both the Canes and the Leafs are in hot playoff pursuits, they need every point right now to make it, and this backup goalie’s home team was the Leafs. Pretty amazing their fans were pulling for the hometown guy playing for the Enemy.

@MiketheSnow
“The highest level he’d ever played was Junior B.”

That’s for 16 & 17 year olds, which would have been 25 years ago, and a level where players seldom-if-ever graduate even to Junior A.

The Zamboni driver for the Win!

Final lap of the Dayton 500, America’s Great Race, just concluded.

Race-leader Ryan Newman crosses the finish-line in 4th place, upside-down and flaming.

“A map created by Southampton University researchers shows how 60,000 out of a total of five million people who have traveled out of Wuhan since the beginning of the outbreak and before the city was fully locked down have crisscrossed the globe.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7989071/Coronavirus-death-toll-surpasses-1-000-100-people-died-China-one-day.html

Looks bloody. Hell, it looks like the elevator scene in The Shining ffs!

Re: Roger Stone; just as I thought, Nancy Pelosi and cohort calling for impeachment again. See, speaking up against injustice is now the same thing as “obstruction of justice.”

@Cyclops said in MLB thread:

I know nothing about MLB. Why are pitchers workloads so carefully managed?

Money. The game has fundamentally not changed much in over a century, they’ve played over 200,000 official recorded games and kept individual statistics on every single one of them. There is so much money involved in guaranteed salary (you sign a seven-year $300-million dollar contract and blow your elbow three games into the life of that contract and never play ball again, you get to keep ALL that money) and they have to protect their investments. With the use of computers and super-slo-mo video they’ve gotten down to what they believe is a science. They know how many innings an arm on a style of a pitcher at a certain age can play and pitch counts and days between starts and innings, etc., whether the mechanics of a pitcher can handle a long season; whether that pitcher is best suited to a starter role (long games and usually on a five-man rotation) or specialist middle-relievers and closers (usually you’ll carry a 5 man starter rotation, ideally include at least one lefty, a couple who throw smoke, and maybe a junkball pitcher or curveball specialist to mix up 3-4 game series’ and get batters off balance; and then specialist short relievers). The best starters and closers are now routinely topping out over 100 MPH, even some middle-relievers which was unheard of a decade ago. Nolan Ryan was a freak in the 1970s. Now there are a number who throw with his heat, consistently like we’ve never seen before. So they probably do have a lot of it down to science, the physics, the mechanics, the biology and kinesiology. It’s huge business.

They’ve pretty muchI only know cricket where bowlers seemingly have a much higher workload without the same management as pitchers seem to have.

Is it because they don't operate in overs so they never get a break? Is the pitching action more strenuous than bowling? Is it not as common to have relief pitchers as it seems to someone who only glances as MLB news from time to time?

Watch the elbows, and see some money evaporate:

Doc from three years ago. If you haven’t seen, now would be a very good time to get acquainted.

Funniest part of trailer is who he’s toasting champagne with the day after Trump’s election triumph.

I will withhold judgment until I’ve lived through a season of it.

But I want Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame.

“It’s Time.”

I don’t understand the physics or design of these things, but i saw a similar silo demolition 30+ years ago. I thought it was going to topple over like a tree, but it disintegrated in a wave that made me think you could surf down it. Quick and mesmerizing.

agohttps://m.