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smokebomb

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Posts posted by smokebomb

  1. On 11/11/2022 at 6:08 PM, billfromlaketravis said:

    What’s the best/cheapest app for the audiobooks?  I’m out of free rope after Book 3. I listened to The World of Ice and Fire as well. 

    I’d like to read Book 4 and 5. Fire and Blood, and A Knight of the Season Kingdoms. I’ve knocking out about one audiobook a month. 

    Heads up - here is a list of chapters and corresponding POV characters for book 4:

    Spoiler

    The chapters in this book are divided up as follows (not in order of progression)

    Aeron (Damphair) Greyjoy (2)
    Asha Greyjoy (1)
    Victarion Greyjoy (2)

    Areo Hotha, captain of the prince of Dorne's guards (1)
    Arianne Martell, Princess of Dorne (2)
    Ser Arys Oakheart, Kingsgaurdman in Dorne (1)

    Cersei Lannister, Queen Regent (10)
    Jamie Lannister, Captain of the Kingsgaurd (7)

    Brienne, Maid of Tarth (8)

    Arya Stark/Cat of the canals (3)
    Sansa Stark/Alayne (3)

    Samwell Tarly (5)
     

    Just wanted to give you a warning since you might be expecting all of the previous series characters to have a chapter in the book but they do not. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. 8 hours ago, UTPhil2006 said:

    Don’t know anything about Flyhomes but am curious as to what scenario you’re looking at a bridge loan for. May be better options 

    The scenario that Neonmoon describes what we are looking for. I would like to move quickly on buying a new home if we see something we really like instead of waiting for ours to hit the market & sell. I also like the idea of moving into the new home before putting the old on the market & not have to deal with the hassle of showing the house & the rush to get out of it when it does close. 

    7 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

    We've partnered with Ribbon before. 

    It's a good solution for certain rich buyers that need to sell a home before can afford buying new one, but don't want to do that and don't want a bridge loan.  Downside is it costs 2% fee

    1. Get Pre-Approved First

    2. Cash Offer on Home you want to buy. No appraisal. Close fast. 

    3. Rent New Home from Ribbon until you sell old home

    4. Buy Home Back from Ribbon at same price after you sell the home. 

     

    Thanks - that’s exactly what I was seeing with Fly but I didn’t realize the steep fee. Outside of costs, are there any gotaches? The reviews for Fly seem overwhelming good but you know how those can be manipulated. My understanding is that you typically use your own mortgage company - is that also correct?

    Thanks for the insight!

  3. https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-repeatedly-discussing-marjorie-taylor-greene-running-mate-2022-10
     

    Quote

    For months, Trump has 'repeatedly' discussed choosing Marjorie Taylor Greene as his 2024 running mate  

    Joshua Zitser  

    5 hours ago

    Donald Trump has "repeatedly" discussed choosing Marjorie Taylor Greene as his running mate, a journalist said.

    He's been discussing it since February, NYT magazine reporter Robert Draper told the Daily Beast.

    Trump is considering Greene because of her unflagging loyalty to him, Draper said.

    Former President Donald Trump has "repeatedly" discussed choosing Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as his 2024 running mate, The New York Times Magazine journalist Robert Draper told the Daily Beast.

    Speaking on this week's episode of the Daily Beast's "The New Abnormal" podcast, Draper claimed the discussions have been ongoing for months.

    Draper, the author of "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind," told the podcast that Trump has toyed with the idea of selecting Greene to join his ticket since February of this year.

    "It's been discussed repeatedly," he said, per the Daily Beast. "Now, to be fair, I mean, how many of these conversations has Trump had with other people?"

    Draper said that Greene is being considered by Trump because she has been "unflaggingly loyal" to him throughout. "What is Trump concerned about most of all in a VP after the Mike Pence experience? Loyalty?" he added.

    Trump has previously said he wouldn't pick former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate again because he "committed political suicide" when he refused to intervene in the election certification process.

    The former president needs somebody who will "fight for him to overturn a presidential election," Draper continued. "He has every reason to expect that Greene would be by his side and would be his proximate warrior," the journalist added.

    Earlier this week, Greene told Draper that she's discussed with Trump the possibility of serving as his running mate.She said she would be "honored" to serve, but added that the GOP establishment would not want it.

    "I think the last person that the RNC or the national party wants is me as his running mate," she told Draper in an excerpt of his forthcoming book, which was published in The New York Times magazine.

    Despite being stripped of her committee assignments in February 2021, Greene is one of the best-known conservative firebrands in US politics.

    Rolling Stone reported that Trump is interested in giving Greene a job in his administration if he wins in 2024.

    Trump has not formally announced that he will run for president again in 2024, but those in his orbit have predicted that he would like to announce it within weeks.

     

     

  4. 12 hours ago, trauma babe said:

    The Chess.com Hans Report

    Oof this kid. Some of the email exchanges are painful to read.

    (It's 72 pages, but the tl;dr is that there's no concrete OTB evidence he cheated, but he cheated online a lot more than he confessed to, and his OTB play needs closer look)

    Article about the report: 

    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/04/hans-niemann-chess-com-cheating-investigation-magnus-carlsen

     

    Quote

    Hans Niemann probably cheated in more than 100 chess games, investigation finds

    Chess.com investigation contradicts Niemann’s denials

    American likely cheated in more than 100 games, probe says

    Bryan Armen Graham

    @bryanagraham

    Tue 4 Oct 2022 18.52 EDT

    The latest bombshell in the scandal that has rocked the chess world to its foundation dropped on Tuesday when an investigation into the games of Hans Niemann found the American grandmaster has cheated far more frequently than previously disclosed.

    The 72-page report, conducted by Chess.com and initially reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, found that Niemann “likely received illegal assistance in more than 100 online games” as recently as 2020, including in events where prize money was at stake.

    The suspicions around Niemann, a 19-year-old who has made a meteoric ascent into the world’s top 50 over the past four years, were initially amplified last month when the world champion Magnus Carlsen first suggested, then outright declared, the American was winning through illegitimate means.

    Niemann has mounted a vigorous denial of the allegations, though he did confess to violating the rules of fair play at least twice in the past by using the assistance of chess engines: first as a 12-year-old in an online tournament, and then as a 16-year-old playing unrated games while streaming.

    But the Chess.com report, which relied on cheating-detection tools including a comparison of a player’s moves to those recommended by powerful supercomputers, has offered compelling data-driven evidence that dramatically contradicts those statements. The investigation made no conclusions regarding Niemann’s over-the-board games, but did flag contests from six of his stronger in-person events, stating they “merit further investigation based on the data”.

    The full investigation, which was made public on Tuesday evening, stated that Niemann privately confessed to the allegations, and that he was subsequently banned from for a period of time from Chess.com, the world’s most popular chess platform.

    The scandal erupted in September when Niemann beat Carlsen while playing with the black pieces at the $500,000 (£433,000) Sinquefield Cup in St Louis, ending the current world champion’s 53-game unbeaten streak in classical over-the-board games. The shocking defeat and Carlsen’s withdrawal ignited a maelstrom of comments and allegations that Niemann was cheating including from Hikaru Nakamura, the American grandmaster once ranked No 2 in the world.

    Unsatisfied by Niemann’s explanation that he had somehow guessed what opening the Norwegian would play, Carlsen abruptly withdrew from the tournament, a virtually unprecedented decision for a sitting world champion that was interpreted as an act of protest. “If I speak I am in big trouble,” Carlsen tweeted, making a strong allusion to impropriety on his opponent’s side.

    The controversy redoubled two weeks later when Carlsen and Niemann met again in the sixth round of the online Julius Baer Generation Cup and the world No 1 sensationally resignedafter making just one move. Carlsen finally clarified his cryptic allusions with an official statement one week after, saying he was unwilling to “play against people that have cheated repeatedly in the past” and that he believed Niemann had cheated “more than he has admitted”.

    “When Niemann was invited last minute to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event,” Carlsen said. “I ultimately chose to play. I believe that Niemann has cheated more – and more recently – than he has publicly admitted.

    “His over-the-board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I only think a handful of players can do. This game contributed to changing my perspective.”

    The Chess.com report backed up Carlsen’s assessment of Niemann’s uncommonly rapid climb up Fide’s world ratings – a gain of 350 Elo points in four years and an astonishing surge from 2,500 to 2,600 in just three months – describing his rise as “statistically extraordinary” while stopping short of concluding that he’s cheated in any over-the-board games.

    “Outside his online play, Hans is the fastest rising top player in Classical [over-the-board] chess in modern history,” the report said. “Looking purely at rating, Hans should be classified as a member of this group of top young players. While we don’t doubt that Hans is a talented player, we note that his results are statistically extraordinary.”

    The report further explains the methodology behind Chess.com’s cheat-detection tools, which include: “analytics that compare moves to those recommended by chess engines; studies of a player’s past performance and strength profile; monitoring behavior such as players opening up other browsers while playing; and input from grandmaster fair play analysts”. Notably, it revealed that “dozens” of grandmasters have been caught cheating on Chess.com, including some of the world’s current top 100, all of whom confessed.

    It also addressed Niemann’s curious postgame analysis of his stunning win over Carlsen in St Louis, which top players at the time characterised as “at odds with the level of preparation that Hans claimed was at play in the game and the level of analysis needed to defeat the World Chess Champion”.

    Niemann has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing at any point in recent years, stating one day after his win over Carlsen at the Sinquefield Cup that he’d only cheated twice in the past.

    “I cheated on random games on Chess.com,” Niemann said. “I was confronted. I confessed. And this is the single biggest mistake of my life. And I am completely ashamed. I am telling the world because I don’t want misrepresentations and I don’t want rumours. I have never cheated in an over-the-board game. And other than when I was 12 years old I have never cheated in a tournament with prize money.”

    Fide, the sport’s world governing body, issued a statement last week saying it will convene its own three-person panel to look into the allegations.

    “The focus of the investigation would be twofold: checking the world champion’s claims of alleged cheating by Niemann and Niemann’s self-statement regarding online cheating,” it read. “The panel will ensure a fair ruling, protecting the rights of both parties during the investigation.”

     

  5. No way Cheney runs in the General election as an independent. She despises Trump and wouldn’t want to give him the election by taking votes away from Biden. She might have an ego & be ultra-conservative but she won’t do anything to help Trump win.

    Either she wins the GOP nomination & faces Biden in November or she loses & attacks Trump via the Lincoln Project, etc. 

    My guess is she is hoping that come ‘24, Trump won’t be able to run or will be severely weakened due to the mountain of issues he will be facing. If that is the case, she will be one of the early front runners in the GOP primary.

     

    • Hook 'Em 2
  6. SIAP but I found this video interviewing folks living in Clarksville before Mopac was built:

     

     

    A couple notes:

    1. The crosstown expressway they mention throughout the film never got built. It was going to connect Mopac & I-35 via Enfield/15th street.

    2. Seymour Washington, the blacksmith, was also featured in the segment with Townes Van Zandt in the documentary Heartworn Highways (trailer).

    3. Apparently East Austin was still pretty rough in the 70s. 

     

    • Like 1
  7. Bezos trying to one-up Musk in one space related  thing:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-to-be-on-blue-origins-first-human-space-flight-11623066174

     

    Quote

    Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos to Be on Blue Origin’s First Human Space Flight 

    The New Shepard spacecraft is scheduled for launch from West Texas on July 20

    Jeff Bezos has invested heavily in Blue Origin, contributing as much as roughly $1 billion to his space-travel company in some years.

    Matt Grossman

    Updated June 7, 2021 8:23 am ET

    Jeff Bezos plans to travel to space next month as one of the first passengers carried by Blue Origin, the Amazon.com Inc. founder’s space-travel company.

    Mr. Bezos said in an Instagram post on Monday that he will be one of the inaugural travelers on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, during a flight scheduled for launch from West Texas on July 20. Mr. Bezos said that his brother, Mark Bezos, will also be part of the crew.

    “I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life,” Mr. Bezos said in a video posted to Instagram. “It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.” 

    Mr. Bezos, who is stepping down as Amazon’s chief executive July 5 after leading the company for more than two decades, has invested heavily in Blue Origin, contributing as much as roughly $1 billion in some years. Mr. Bezos, who already serves as Amazon’s chairman, will hold the title executive chairman after his lieutenant Andy Jassy becomes CEO.

    Blue Origin has said it aims to support widespread commercial activity in space in the future. In addition to its space-tourism efforts, Blue Origin is also working on rockets that could launch payloads for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

    The passenger list for Blue Origin’s July flight is also set to include the winner of a charity auction that will conclude this month. The auction has had nearly 6,000 participants and the highest bid is at $2.8 million, Blue Origin said Monday.

    Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule, seen here in this undated illustration, has room for six people and is fully autonomous.

    The New Shepard capsule has room for six people and is fully autonomous. The craft is designed to rise briefly above the Karman Line—an imaginary boundary about 62 miles above sea level that is considered the beginning of space—before returning to the ground beneath a parachute 10 minutes after launch.

    Blue Origin’s efforts to commercialize spaceflight parallel those of SpaceX, the spaceflight company led by Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk. SpaceX last year became the first company to launch NASA astronauts into space.

    Both companies competed to design a new capsule that could land astronauts on the moon before NASA awarded the contract to SpaceXin April. Blue Origin has filed a petition challenging the contract award. 

    Billionaire Richard Branson has also invested in commercial spaceflight. Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., a company he founded that also plans to offer space tourism, went public in a 2019 merger with a blank-check company. 

     

     

  8. Interesting info on mortgages this year:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mortgage-boom-is-fading-11620552780

    Quote

    The Mortgage Boom Is Fading

    A decline in demand is fueling price wars across the mortgage industry, pushing down profits

    May 9, 2021 5:33 am ET

    The housing market is as hot as ever. The mortgage market, though, is losing steam.

    Homes are selling at a blistering pace unseen since before the financial crisis, pushing up home values in nearly every U.S. ZIP Code. Yet lenders are preparing for mortgage demand to cool in the coming months, the result of rising interest rates that make refinancing less attractive for a huge chunk of borrowers.

    The anticipated decline in mortgage volume is setting off price wars across the industry. That is driving down profit margins and spooking the shareholders of mortgage firms that went public closer to the height of the lending boom.

    Rocket RKT -4.84% Cos., the parent of Quicken Loans, said last week that it expects its gain-on-sale margin, a measure of how much lenders earn when they sell loans, to decline in the second quarter. The profit margin would be the company’s narrowest since before the mortgage boom. The forecast drove shares of several nonbank lenders to double-digit losses last week, analysts said.

    “The message from all the companies that have reported financials publicly is that competition has increased significantly,” said Guy Cecala, chief executive of Inside Mortgage Finance.

    Last year was a banner one for the mortgage business. Lenders originated a record $3.83 trillion in home loans in 2020, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

    Mortgage rates that dipped below 3% for the first time and changes in the ways Americans work and live pushed up demand for both refinancings and purchase loans to levels that strained many lenders. To stem the influx of applications, lenders raised rates. But their own borrowing costs stood still. Profit margins rose sharply.

    This year, total originations are expected to fall to $3.3 trillion, a 14.2% decline. Still, at that level, 2021 would rank among the best years on record.

    “This year is still expected to be a great year, probably the second-best year in history,” said KBW analyst Bose George. “But it’s just that directionally, [mortgage volume] is going down.”

    A drop in refinancing activity is a big reason why. With the 30-year mortgage rate near 2.97%, about 14.5 million Americans could lower their monthly mortgage payments through a refinancing, according to mortgage-data firm Black Knight Inc. That is down from 18.7 million near the start of the year, when mortgage rates reached a record low of 2.65%.

    Still, the good news for borrowers is that lenders are now vying for customers by lowering the rates they charge.

    That translates into lower profits for lenders. When lenders make mortgages cheaper, the gap between the rate they charge for the loan and how much it costs them to make it shrinks. Loans with smaller gaps are worth less when sold to investors in the secondary market. That reduces the gain-on-sale margin, or the amount lenders earn on each loan they sell.

    Competition among lenders in the wholesale mortgage channel, where borrowers secure loans through individual mortgage brokers instead of banks or nonbank mortgage lenders directly, is driving much of the decline in lending margins, analysts said.

    Lenders that extend mortgages directly to borrowers are under less pressure. Lenders in the retail channel, as it is known, tend to have higher margins than their wholesale counterparts because they don’t share the gains with brokers.

    Rocket reported a margin of 3.74% in the first three months of the year, down from 4.41% in the fourth quarter of 2020. It also said it expects the measure to fall to a range between 2.65% and 2.95% in the second quarter.

    “We’re kind of back to some of the historical longer-term margins that we’ve experienced, which on our platform are still very profitable,” Rocket Chief Executive Jay Farner said during a call with analysts.

    Rocket’s stock price fell nearly 17% to $19.01 the day after the company’s earnings report.

    Shares of UWM Holdings Corp. closed at a record low last week after Rocket’s earnings. UWM, the country’s largest wholesale lender, reports first-quarter results Monday.

    Home Point Capital Inc. shares fell close to 18% Thursday after the company said its wholesale-lending business broke even in April. HomePoint acquires most of its loans through wholesale lending.

     

  9. 17 hours ago, Doc Reeves said:

    Welp.


    Scientists Claim to Spot Fungus Growing on Mars in NASA Rover Photos

    The hunt for life on Mars continues, with NASA’s latest rover Perseverance using its scientific instrumentation to scan the Jezero Crater, an area believed to be a dried up ancient lake, for any signs of ancient microbial life.

    But according to an international team of researchers, the space agencies other rovers may have already found signs of relatively advanced life — in the form of “fungus-like Martian specimens,” according to a new paper published in the journal Advances in Microbiology.

    The team, which includes researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and George Mason University, believes they have found photographic evidence of a variety of fungus-like organisms, some resembling the shape of puffballs, a round cloud-like fungus found in abundance back here on Earth, on the Red Planet…..

     

    https://futurism.com/scientists-fungus-growing-mars

    Article from two years ago questioning that paper: 

    https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-the-truth-about-that-photo-of-mushrooms-growing-on-mars

    Quote

    Here's The Truth About That Photo of 'Mushrooms' Growing on Mars

     

    CARLY CASSELLA

    29 MARCH 2019

     

    A peculiar new paper, published in a little-known scientific journal, has the tabloids stirred up about the possibility of life on Mars.

    According to this paper, an international team of scientists are now claiming to have found evidence of 'mushrooms' growing on the surface of the Red Planet.

    The 'evidence' is primarily based on images, taken by NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, which capture a birds-eye-view of what look like, well, mushrooms.

    The pictures have the internet freaking out, as stories like this usually do, but some folks online remain justifiably skeptical. 

    It's often said that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you can partially judge a scientific paper by its journal. Just one glance at the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science website, and it's pretty clear to see that this isn't a sophisticated outlet for high-impact science.

    On its website, the journal seeks research papers on topics like "Protecting Earth From Martian Organisms" so that it can present "all points of view" on the biology of Mars.

    In regards to the mushroom paper - mysteriously entitled "Evidence of Life on Mars?" -  the editorial board claims that it recognised the "controversial implications", and so it had six independent scientists and eight senior editors peer review it.

    Three of these reviewers rejected the paper outright, and one editor was so vehemently opposed to the paper, that he apparently still wanted to get rid of it even after majority approval.

    Nevertheless, the paper was ultimately published and the journal's press release is unusually kind, asking simply, "Why the opposition to publishing evidence?". It also alludes to religious motivations as a source of such "irrational opposition".

    But don't be fooled by this seemingly harmless question. This paper is not jam-packed with irrefutable evidence and watertight reasoning. Despite admitting that "similarities in morphology are not proof of life" and that their evidence is "circumstantial and unverified", the authors claim that the answer to their paper's title is a "resounding yes".

    "We admit," says co-author Regina Dass, a mycologist at Pondicherry University in India, "we don't have a smoking gun. No photos of cells or cellular structure. There is no definitive proof, only a lot of evidence which shouts: Biology."

    (In a particularly ironic side note, Dass answered a question on Research Gate recently by warning: "It is not a very good idea to decide just by observing macromorphological features.")

    While NASA itself hasn't responded to these new claims, its scientists have already researched the phenomenon you can see in the photo above.

    Instead of mushrooms, NASA calls them 'blueberries', but unlike the authors of this new paper, no one at the space agency actually thinks these tiny spheres are a sign of life, let alone a growing fruit or vegetable.

    In 2004, the Opportunity rover discovered millions of these 'blueberries', and upon analysis they were determined to be composed of the iron oxide, hematite.

    About three centimetres across (1.2 inches), these balls of solidified hematite were unlike anything ever seen on Mars before. Embedded in the Martian rock, like blueberries in a muffin, NASA explains that these spheres of hematite were solidified in the presence of water and then slowly released by erosion.

    "We are not disagreeing with NASA. NASA has some of the greatest scientists and engineers in the world," says co-author Vincenzo Rizzo, a biogeologist working for the National Research Council.

    "However, hematite is also a product of biological activity. Just as stromatolites are fashioned together via the action of cyanobacteria, fungi and bacteria also help to cement terrestrial hematite together. We should expect that the same biological processes helped fashion hematite on Mars."

    Whatever the authors might say, it certainly seems as though they do not see eye-to-eye with the world's leading experts. Hence, many on Reddit have been quick to dismiss the study, saying it appears to be "vanity" published, without many standards at all.

    One user, by the name of Zeeblecroid, was brutally succinct in their criticism:

    "The journal and article are both garbage. There's a community of self-proclaimed astrobiologists who use the same crackpot tricks (mostly misrepresenting mundane photos of basic geological features as hard evidence of life) and have been for decades. They've been pounding that drum since at least the mid-1990s."

    The truth is, humans are notoriously irrational when it comes to seeing Mars as it truly is.

    In 2014, NASA was actually sued by a self-proclaimed "astrobiologist" for not investigating what he clearly saw as a mushroom-like fungus on the surface of Mars. It turned out to be nothing more than a rock.

    By the looks of things, this newest paper is just another thump on the same hollow notion.

     

     

  10. Quote

    US recommends ‘pause’ for J&J vaccine over clot reports

    By ZEKE MILLER

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is recommending a “pause” in administration of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of potentially dangerous blood clots.

    In a joint statement Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said they were investigating clots in six women that occurred in the days after vaccination. The clots were observed along with reduced platelet counts — making the usual treatment for blood clots, the blood thinner heparin, potentially “dangerous.”

    More than 6.8 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been administered in the U.S., the vast majority with no or mild side effects.

    U.S. federal distribution channels, including mass vaccination sites, will pause the use of the J&J shot, and states and other providers are expected to follow. The other two authorized vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer, are not affected by the pause.

    CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet Wednesday to discuss the cases and the FDA has also launched an investigation into the cause of the clots and low platelet counts.

    “Until that process is complete, we are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC and Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said in a joint statement.

    They are recommending that people who were given the J&J vaccine who are experiencing severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks after receiving the shot contact their health care provider.

    Officials say they also want to educate vaccine providers and health professionals about the “unique treatment” required for this type of clot.

    The J&J vaccine received emergency use authorization from the FDA in late February with great fanfare, with hopes that its single-dose and relatively simple storage requirements would speed vaccinations across the country. Yet the shot only makes up a small fraction of the doses administered in the U.S. as J&J has been plagued by production delays and manufacturing errors at the Baltimore plant of a contractor.

    Last week the drugmaker took over the facility to scale up production in hopes of meeting its commitment to the U.S. government of providing about 100 million doses by the end of May.

    Until now concern about the unusual blood clots has centered on the vaccine from AstraZeneca, which has not yet received authorization in the U.S. Last week, European regulators said they found a possible link between the shots and a very rare type of blood clot that occurs together with low blood platelets, one that seems to occur more in younger people.

    The European Medicines Agency stressed that the benefits of receiving the vaccine outweigh the risks for most people. But several countries have imposed limits on who can receive the vaccine; Britain recommended that people under 30 be offered alternatives.


    But the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines are made with the same technology. Leading COVID-19 vaccines train the body to recognize the spike protein that coats the outer surface of the coronavirus. But the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines use a cold virus, called an adenovirus, to carry the spike gene into the body. J&J uses a human adenovirus to create its vaccine while AstraZeneca uses a chimpanzee version.

    The announcement hit U.S. stock markets immediately, with Dow futures falling almost 200 points just over two hours before the opening bell. Shares of Johnson & Johnson dropped almost 3%

    https://apnews.com/article/politics-immunizations-coronavirus-pandemic-2dde2aacf486bab59844ef907a28cbce

    Shit. 

  11. He is never finishing the GoT series...

    https://www.npr.org/2021/03/29/982364793/george-r-r-martin-signs-new-five-year-deal-with-hbo-and-hbo-max
     

    Quote

    George R.R. Martin Signs New Five Year Deal With HBO And HBO Max

    March 29, 20212:53 PM ET

    JEANNETTE MUHAMMAD

    George R.R. Martin has entered into a five year deal with HBO to develop content for both HBO and HBO Max, the network said in a statement on Monday. 

    The best-selling fantasy author and four-time Emmy award winner, best known for his book series A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation Game of Thrones, is attached to multiple projects in the pipeline for the media company and streaming service. 

    The Game of Thrones television series followed powerful families aiming for the iron throne in the continent of Westeros. It ran for eight years on HBO, with the final season wrapping in 2019.

    Martin has a new drama series in the works, House of the Dragon, which is based on his Fire & Blood book. The Game of Thrones prequel follows House Targaryen and is set 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones. 

    The show has been given a ten episode order. Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith, and Emma D'Arcy have joined the series, with additional cast members to be announced. 

    The show is co-created by Martin and Ryan Condal, whose prior work includes Colony, Rampage, and Hercules. Condal and Miguel Sapochnik (Game of Thrones, Altered Carbon) serve as showrunners and producers with Martin and Vince Gerardis (Game of Thrones).

    Martin is also set to executive produce HBO's Who Fears Death, a fantasy post-apocalyptic series with Tessa Thompson attached to star and adapted from the novel by Nnedi Okorafor; and Roadmarks, an adaptation of the sci-fi novel from Roger Zelazny.

     

  12. An overview of the recent drama happening on the Court of Master Sommeliers:

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/epd954/inside-the-court-of-master-sommeliers-wine-exam-cheating-scandal

    TL;DR - People got unrequested help on the final Master's exam, whole test for that block is invalidated, bunch of people lose their Master's level, Court covers it up. 

    I always felt the Sommelier leveling system was a bit contrived and cliquish, so I am not surprised at how its being handled.  

    Quote

    Inside the Wine World’s Most Mysterious Cheating Scandal
    Internal division, a public reckoning, and cheating allegations have left the Court of Master Sommeliers in pieces. Some want to look past it. Others want it all to burn.

    By Adam Elder
    BROOKLYN, US
    March 4, 2021, 6:00am


    One morning two years ago, Elton Nichols woke up in the Four Seasons Hotel in St. Louis, ready to finally pass the test that would change his life. Already among the country’s top wine experts, he would be taking the Master Sommelier exam in a few hours. He’d sat for it several times before, and, like nearly everyone else who attempts it, hadn’t yet passed. Nichols and the 140 other candidates had each dedicated years of their lives and well north of a hundred thousand dollars traveling, learning, testing, and studying at the feet of respected Master Somms—and splurging on a lot of expensive wine to taste. All this to become one of less than 300 Master Sommeliers on earth and join the Court of Master Sommeliers, the world’s most prestigious wine organization.

    Instead, Nichols’ life—and those of his fellow students—changed in ways they never could have predicted. As he prepared for a morning run the day of the test, he felt his Apple Watch buzz on his wrist. It was an email from Reggie Narito, a kind and well-liked mentor who was a board member at the Court and a proctor for the exam. Nichols had only known Narito vaguely, having flown down for the day from Seattle to Narito’s home in the Bay Area to taste wine with him several times in the summer, which isn’t terribly unusual for an aspiring Master Sommelier. Why would he, of all people, be emailing Nichols on the morning of the big test?

    “Heads up” was the subject line; “PG” and “CndP” was all the body of it said. But Nichols understood exactly what this meant. He couldn’t unsee it, and he sure as hell didn’t like it. The Tasting exam is the notorious, most difficult portion of the Master Sommelier test, and these were two of the six varieties of wine (pinot grigio and Châteauneuf-du-Pape) he’d be asked to identify on the test. Narito was inexplicably slipping Nichols the answers.

    “I thought, ‘I don’t want this, I don’t need this, I didn’t ask for this,’” Nichols recalled to VICE.

    He panicked. If one of the exam proctors was engaged in cheating, to whom could Nichols possibly go? He deleted the email, went for that run to clear his mind, and then passed the exam that day, along with 23 others, earning the Court of Master Sommeliers’ coveted little red oval lapel pin. Nichols said he didn't use Narito's answers—in fact, he got one of those wines wrong on the exam. So at first, that unwelcome email didn’t seem to matter.

    For about a month following that test in September 2018, Nichols and 23 other new Master Sommeliers had their best lives materialize before them. Upon reaching the summit of the wine world, they began fielding job offers, salary raises, and promotions from wineries, distributors, and Michelin-starred restaurants. Strangers and distant acquaintances sent them untold notes of congratulations, event invitations, and bottles of expensive wine. Life had become a euphoric blur punctuated by the frequent clinking of Riedel for these new stars of the wine and hospitality world.

    But then a month later, the Court took away everyone’s hard-won titles. It turned out that Narito had emailed two others in addition to Nichols—one of whom didn’t pass the test. The Court did this in the name of “integrity,” it said, yet the organization conducted no outside investigation and didn’t give anyone a chance to demonstrate their innocence—even those who were never emailed. To this day, the Court has treated them as criminals rather than colleagues. What did the world’s most reputable wine organization have to hide? And who exactly were they protecting?

    A little over a year ago, I began contacting dozens of sommeliers about the 2018 cheating scandal that had turned into a cold case. Eventually, a common thread emerged: Cheating had likely happened before, and it appeared the Court was going to great lengths—disqualifying everyone who’d passed that year—in order to cover up past alleged cheating incidents, during which its chairman and other board members had themselves passed the test.

    The apparent cheating wasn’t the end of it. In the past year, the Court of Master Sommeliers has had some of the most shocking institutional norms and legacies of its 43-year history publicly exposed. In October, the New York Times published a report in which multiple women accused former board members and influential members of the Court of unwanted sexual advances, sexual assault, and rape. Twenty-two women eventually came forward, one of them doing so because, according to the Times, “she did not trust the board’s ability to investigate itself.” It wasn’t just quid pro quo—Master Sommeliers have the power to make or break people’s careers.

    Following the allegations, the Court’s entire board resigned, and some of its most senior members forfeited their titles or had them suspended; over the summer, several well-regarded Master Sommeliers relinquished their titles after the Court delayed making any public statements supporting the Black Lives Matter movement because of internal hesitancy, and then only did so after social media outcries and bad press. “It took them three weeks to do that, and it took them three days to annul an exam without an investigation,” Richard Betts, a respected former Master Sommelier who gave up his title in the wake of it all, told VICE last summer. “That tells you where their priorities are.” 

    Though the Court has faced an unusually public reckoning lately for some of its sins, the very integrity of its legendary exams remains in question ever since that 2018 scandal when one of their own was caught giving answers none of the students had asked for. Some students who had their title taken away just want to be able to market themselves as Master Sommeliers again and hope the Court will restore their credentials. Longtime sommeliers I talked to are split about their feelings for the Court’s future. Some prefer to look past the old board and the rotten apples and focus on the good, educational elements of the organization. Others want to help it rehabilitate its fallen reputation. And then there are those who see the Court as irredeemable and want to watch it burn.

    The American branch of the Court of Master Sommeliers is more than four decades old, but the original was started in Great Britain even earlier by several trade associations that sought highly educated members of the service industry who could better sell their products. As much as the public thinks of a Master Sommelier, they probably conjure images of suited-down men with esoteric lapel pins, Grantchester-knotted ties, and sparkly tastevins around their necks—hospitable gentlemen who stalk the mahogany wine cellars and white-tablecloth dining rooms of steakhouses and Michelin-starred restaurants across the land enlisted to gently upsell America’s upper crust as they peruse the wine list. 

    The sommelier’s world is much larger, though. Sure, many work at the world’s top restaurants. But others endorse and hawk product for top wineries; they earn lucrative consulting fees; they buy for gourmet supermarkets; or, working for distributors, they use their cachet to sell wine to such places (most importantly the subpar swill, since the best wine sells itself). Sommeliers, in other words, are conscripted to serve a clientele that demands the best things. That’s why surveys show that a Master Sommelier’s salary is double that of an Advanced Sommelier’s salary (the next level down): about $160,000 per year versus around $80,000. And so aside from the prestige, the promise of becoming a Master Sommelier—there are only 269 of them in the world—is that all that time and money invested will pay off for a few of the thousands of people who put in the work.

    So how does one become a Master Sommelier? It isn’t totally unlike becoming a Shaolin warrior monk. The 2012 documentary Somm highlighted the demanding lifestyle—and drew thousands of aspiring sommeliers into the Court of Master Sommeliers’ lucrative certification programs in the past decade. In order to simply have a chance of passing, candidates must constantly drink, discuss, and study wine with others to the detriment of outside relationships; they toil in restaurants while their friends go off to med school or fancy offices; they spend big every year on wine, travel, and entry-level exams, then endure years of failing the Masters Exam until a few finally pass its three legendarily difficult portions. 

    “It requires a level of dedication that’s almost a sickness.”

    There’s Theory, a 50-minute oral exam, which is a bit like the most intense wine category ever on Jeopardy! Then there’s Service, a mock restaurant-floor test in which students must display impeccable knowledge, manners, and sangfroid while serving tables of Master Somms posing as nightmare dining customers. Finally, there’s Tasting, which many succinctly describe as “a mindfuck”: It’s a sampling of six unidentified glasses (three white, three red) over 25 stressful minutes in which the candidate must identify each wine’s region, vintage, and varietal aloud using deductive reasoning—enumerating each wine’s clarity, viscosity, bouquet, and all its tasting notes. Adding to both the mystique and opacity of it all, the correct answers are never officially revealed.

    “It requires a level of dedication that’s almost a sickness,” explained one prominent Master Sommelier, who wished to remain nameless. “You see people’s obsessiveness and the drive to get through it. If you fall into that type of personality, it’s almost the perfect exam for you.”

    Passing the Tasting portion requires experience and a freakishly calibrated tongue, but also a savvy knowledge of which lingo to use before the judges. Aspiring candidates spend many days and late nights studying flashcards with fellow students and flying around the country to taste wine alongside Master Sommeliers. The dynamic between mentors and students is typically fraternal: Certain Masters spend many hours every year teaching classes at all levels, tasting wine with candidates, and grading the exams. 

    A month after that 2018 Theory exam, a woman who received Narito’s email yet failed the test came forward to the Court of Master Sommeliers through a lawyer, email in hand. The board hastily arranged a meeting; and on the following Monday, the Court broke the news that because of a breach, all test-takers who passed were, as of that moment, no longer considered Master Sommeliers. Narito’s cheating wasn’t widespread. In total, only three people received his email, and they hardly knew each other; so as the remaining new Master Sommeliers scrambled for clarification, they wondered why this otherwise hospitable organization, stuffy and maybe sycophantic as it is, would kick the entire class to the curb.

    The Court said little about its decision publicly. But when it released a statement, one comment from then-chairman Devon Broglie stood out. “Maintaining the integrity of the examination process must be our highest priority, lest we risk diminishing the value of, and the respect earned from, becoming a Master Sommelier,” Broglie wrote.

    Narito swiftly departed from the Court but little else happened. Under the apparent guidance of a crisis management company called Kith, the Court conducted no independent investigation, nor gave its newest members much of a chance to exonerate themselves. A printout of the minutes from the board meeting, obtained by Newsy, is blacked out as if it were a CIA document.

    These behind-the-scenes machinations with little to no transparency appear to have been standard procedure at the Court, where power players exercised authority for their own depraved ends. As the saying goes about absolute power, these board members appeared determined to hold onto it. While the wine industry celebrates the astonishingly few sommeliers who become Masters, there’s a large, overlooked network of sommeliers across the country who didn’t quite make it. One of them was a character with little to lose who knew that something untoward had happened at the Masters Exam in 2009.

    Short, solid, tattooed, and with a man-bun up top, Arthur Black doesn’t cut the figure of an ordinary sommelier. He endearingly describes his upbringing in Indiana as “a stone’s throw away from white trash.” He travels to the Himalayas for spiritual retreats, and once to Southeast Asia to drink a grain-based spirit made with the corpse of a jackal. Black is also a wine savant who confidently passed Theory exams with minimal effort and won sommelier competitions. He could be confrontational, many knew, and his disdain for pretentiousness did not always mesh well among Master Sommeliers. Despite Black’s talents and his work for the Court, it did not welcome him with open arms.

    From his backyard in Indianapolis one afternoon, Black explained how Masters who’d known him for years still ordered him to wear a name tag around them at official events, simply for not being a Master himself. One year, Black sat down for a Tasting exam only to be told that the test, full of inscrutable wines poured seemingly just for him, “was designed to teach you a lesson.” Another year, Black received a letter in the mail from the Court congratulating him for passing the test. Was it an error or a joke? Neither would have surprised him. (The Court apologized for it).

    Black took the Theory exam in 2009. Back in those days, the Court didn’t sequester students or take their phones during the exam. It was a tradition for students to rush out of it and write down all the questions they remembered, as a study guide for their colleagues in the future. But that year, someone who’d taken the test in the morning emailed the questions to friends who were scheduled to take the test later that day. Black had heard whispers about it and even was forwarded the email days later.

    That evening, after the test, Black played billiards with a high-ranking board member he won’t name. “What do you know about the breach of Theory knowledge on the exam?” the board member asked Black. It was a strange question. It meant the board likely knew that day about cheating and yet they never went on to void the results or penalize anybody, like in 2018. (Tellingly, the Court began sequestering students following Theory exams starting in 2010.) Since some who passed this exam went on to become board members and the chairman who presided over Narito’s email scandal, wouldn’t they have been determined to cover up the 2009 exam at any cost? Any outside investigation into Narito’s exam cheating would have likely uncovered this often-whispered-about cheating in 2009. And anyway, Narito had so many students over the years and thus a potentially very deep rabbit hole. Numerous Master Sommeliers would be under suspicion.

    Faced with the potential of a nuclear-grade fallout, it was in the Court’s best interest as an organization to simply cut ties with Narito and move far, far away from such a visible cheating incident, no matter the consequences. Indeed, the 2018 students who had their titles indefinitely suspended were flippantly described by one Master Sommelier to another as a “casualty of war.”

    When the Court unilaterally suspended the Master Sommelier titles for the class of 2018 because of Narito’s email, the students got on a conference call, started an email thread, and got organized to try to appeal the decision as a group. Nichols was still on these emails, and it was killing him inside. After several sleepless nights, he decided he’d turn himself in. Nichols submitted a statement to the Court, and after thanking him, the board made a curious request: Don’t tell anyone you received the email.

    Nichols wanted to tell the owners of the restaurant he worked at so that they could distance themselves from the scandal. And he wanted to tell the rest of the group. But he was beaten to it when someone connected to the Court approached a member of the email thread named Dan Pilkey, whispering that there was one person in Pilkey’s group who hadn’t come clean. Only in hindsight did the group suspect the Court orchestrated this in order to divide and conquer.

    “I emailed everyone and I said, ‘I learned that one of you was compromised and I know who it is,’ when I didn’t. ‘And I’m going to go ahead and give you 24 hours to come forward,’” Pilkey said.

    As others chimed in, the walls were quickly closing in on Nichols, who told them everything—including that the Court told him to keep quiet. It did not go down well. 

    “You can’t open the email, dude, and look at it and then go take the test,” Pilkey told VICE. “You just can’t. You go to the grocery store and you buy a beer and the guy gives you $50 or $100 back for the change, what do you do? Do you put it in your pocket or do you say, ‘Hey man, you got the wrong change here’?”

    This group found it especially shocking that the Court would strip everyone’s titles without evidence simply because the candidates theoretically could have shared Narito’s answers to the Tasting exam among themselves. Nevertheless, this group of suspended Master Sommeliers offered to have their phones examined for forensic evidence, to take polygraph exams, or to simply remove the two compromised wines from the scoring. They urged the Court to launch an independent investigation. The Court did none of it. Narito had sent the emails from his work account, and his former boss offered all of his emails to the Court’s board as evidence, but the Court refused them. The Court then banned Nichols and one other man who received the email from Narito from the organization for five years. For the rest, the Court only offered them a chance to retake the exam at no charge—which is a bit like summiting Mount Everest, returning to base camp, then being told to do it all over again. Some retook it and got their titles back. Pilkey and others failed.

    “The board refused to look at evidence that could exonerate individuals,” Pilkey said. “They were unwilling to work with [Narito’s former CEO], who has said explicitly that he has Narito’s emails from the exam dates—and he has more emails that might be of value. However, the Court never investigated these options. They turned a blind eye to finding out what happened and if something like this occurred previously.”

    Why did Narito share answers that, by all accounts, no one asked for? What would drive a generous man whose life was wine, mentorship, and affiliation with the Court to do something like this?

    For this original group of 24, those early job offers and promotions got rescinded. They were suddenly seen by the wine industry as guilty by association, no matter if they’d gotten that email they didn’t ask for—or indeed, had ever even met Narito. Among those I spoke to, some sought therapy. Some sank into a deep depression. Old friends in the group became enemies. All went on to exist in a sort of purgatory in the wine world: They’d actually passed one of the world’s hardest tests but weren’t allowed to be recognized for it.

    Soon after the retest, things got worse for Pilkey. The Court ordered him to remove his “M.S.” title from his social media accounts. Pilkey, angry about it all, dug in.

    “Go ahead and sue me,” he said he told the Court. “Bring it.”

    The Court did just that in June 2019, suing him in an actual court—a federal one in California—for intellectual property and trademark infringement. Pilkey’s lawyer, found and paid for by a group of respected Master Sommeliers who’d become critical of the Court’s handling of this whole mess, got the case swiftly dismissed on a technicality: The judge ruled that the Court of Master Sommeliers’ legal eagles had sued Pilkey—who lives and works in Chicago—in the wrong jurisdiction.

    That September, the Court sent its members an updated code of ethics to sign. Some saw it as a loyalty oath: it gave the Court the ability to revoke a Master Sommelier’s title if they publicly criticized the organization.

    Following The New York Times’ sexual-assault story, the board was forced to resign and a new board was elected in December with a mandate to eliminate the toxic sexual power dynamics and to be more inclusive. The board has been conducting periodic listening sessions in an effort to be more open, but it hasn’t yet addressed the 2018 cheating scandal.

    The Court denied an interview request for this story; a representative said the body had nothing new to say about the email cheating scandal. Narito has kept a low profile since the 2018 test, and he did not respond to several interview requests. In their silence, meanwhile, questions persist. Why did Narito share answers that, by all accounts, no one asked for? What would drive a generous man whose life was wine, mentorship, and affiliation with the Court to do something like this? No one else seems to know. But there are plenty of theories.

    Given that Narito sold wine for a distributor, some speculated that it’d be good for business if he’d helped would-be M.S.’s along since those he helped pass would supposedly feel obligated to buy wine from him. But people who knew Narito don’t buy that theory. Others say that perhaps he gamely competed against other mentors for which of them could help the most candidates become Masters and got carried away. But given that mentors don’t appear to have been keeping tally—and that the patriarch of the Court (a man named Fred Dame, whose Master Sommelier title was suspended in the wake of the New York Times story) was not only the most respected mentor but also reportedly Narito’s mentor—this doesn’t seem especially likely.

    One sommelier who wished to remain nameless out of fear of professional retribution knew Narito personally and has a more nuanced, complimentary take. From past conversations, he suspects Narito became jaded with the Court’s selective manner of admittance and might’ve gone rogue, deciding to help students whom Narito felt truly belonged in the Court finally get over the line. In other words, it was a charitable but ill-considered gesture that went horribly wrong.

    Others wonder whether Narito was taking orders from someone on the board. One former board member was in a relationship with the original whistleblower who received Narito’s email yet didn’t pass the test, and came forward. According to this theory, it would follow that when caught, Narito became the fall guy for it all.

    Regardless of why Narito cheated, many people VICE spoke to were astonished that he’d sent those answers to the test from his work email account. To them, this carelessness suggests it might not have been the first time he’d done it, or that he was at least comfortable doing so.

    If the Court’s new board is interested in ever letting the entire 2018 group wear their red lapel pins again, it isn’t saying so. And after the Machiavellian maneuvering, the snake’s lair of sexual aggression revealed in the Court, and that delay by the Court last summer in affirming its support for Black Lives Matter, several in the 2018 group no longer seem particularly interested in being Master Sommeliers.

    Nichols won’t entertain the idea, but he’d still like for things to be made right for the others. “Now that there’s a new board of directors, I’m hoping some traction can be made in making things right for the people who didn’t get the email back in 2018,” he said recently.

    Pilkey is conflicted himself. “All I want is for someone to look at it and say, ‘Y’all didn’t cheat, you passed, that’s why we gave you a pin. And if you want to come back in, you can, but that’s your choice to make,’” he said. “That’s what I want to hear.”

    “I always justified the years of waiting tables and taking shit restaurant jobs by saying to myself, ‘One day, it’s gonna be worth it,’” Pilkey explained. “I really wanted to be a part of it, but then they showed their true colors by being aloof and evil to their own people. So at the end of the day, it’s like, why do I want to go back?”

     

  13. Don't think it has been mentioned here, but I installed the Octoshop Chrome extension yesterday and was able to get a PS5 bundle at Gamestop today.

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/octoshop-in-stock-alerts/ahajkaoongodcmoohkcceoklokapadfh?hl=en-US

    You tell it what product you want and what stores to monitor and it dings to let you know when inventory is available. 

    I'm not normally a fan of these products since they could scrape all your browsing data but it was worth it and I deleted it after i was done. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Like 1
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