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956 Worldwide

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Everything posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. Fall getting close and a decently not-sweaty weekend so….old school red sauce simmered four hours with short ribs, pork, and sausage with a parm rind and chunks of carrots to off-set the acid. Served, as God intended, with a simple green salad, white bread and garlic butter, and red table wine.
  2. Most already mentioned: Beast of Burden Midnight Rambler Tumbling Dice (Just love Keith’s work here) Brown Sugar/Honly Tonk Women A favorite of mine that doesn’t come near most lists of top Stones songs is “Don’t Stop” from their 2002 album. Just a jam that hits me.
  3. I think there’s usually a big jumble of teams starting at around 15 and ending around 30 or 35 that are usually a lot closer to each other than they seem even at the end of the year. There’s a often lot of luck and chance that goes into finishing with 3 losses vice 5. My only point here is that accurately assessimg the relative goodness of sports teams is wicked hard. There’s a whole billion dollar industry that takes money away from people who fail to appreciate how hard it is. All told, the polls do a fairly decent job within the confines of the possible.
  4. Nope, not even a little bit. Like I said, in 2024 8/12 CFP teams started in the top 15. The eventual champion started at 2. In 2023, all 4 CFP teams started in the top 12 and the champion started at 2. In 2022 3/4 CFP teams started in the top 10 (TCU was the big miss) and the eventual champ started at 3. There will always be misses and it’s inexact but it’s for sure better than the methods of “no bias.”
  5. My hot take is that mediocre, connected white people are among the biggest beneficiaries of DEI. The fact is that there will always be spots for lukewarm nepobabies and brahmin class failsons in every elite institutions from preschool to Ivies to Wall Street. Their spots are secure, they are not actually competing for anything with minority applicants. The middle class, public school, whip-smart white kid is directionally correct feeling like the deck is stacked against him or her. They are correct to chafe at the idea that because of their skin color, they are equally privileged as the legacy Andover chode who has had private tutors and a building with his last name on campus. The mistake is getting angry at minority applicants instead of the legacy or connected mediocrities who actually are getting favorable, unearned treatment.
  6. Now that we have the CFP, polls are significantly less important to the outcome. They are a way for followers of the sport who can’t watch every game to have a good idea of who to keep an eye on and what games might be really interesting. And in fact, preseason polls are often pretty good. 6/12 in the 2024 top 12 finished in the playoffs and 8/12 were inside the top 15. They whiffed on Arizona State, Boise, Indiana, and SMU. The blind system above is significantly worse at telling college football watchers roughly where teams fall relative to each other than the “biased polls.”
  7. The Denver rebrand in the 1990s was not the worst-executed, but it spawned a lot of terrible, worse executed sameness.
  8. Not really a good analogy per the text of the EO. What the EO does is declare that the entry of aliens in this class is detrimental to the United States under 212(f) of the immigration act: So although reported as a fee and in effect it may be a fee, it is in fact a “restriction deemed appropriate.” Or that’s the argument they will make in any case. The fight here will be about application of the INA more than inappropriate rule making for fees. What will be interesting if it holds is when it’s collected: as a prerequisite for an approved petition or as a prerequisite to approve the visa following the approved petition; which is a very different step.
  9. Off-shoring and H1B are complementary. Almost half visas are not given to high-skilled, innovative tech companies. They’re given to IT outsourcing firms, which then strategically transition knowledge and operations overseas. After Amazon the biggest recipients of H1Bs are companies like Tata, Infosys, etc. Indian firms sponsoring visas for Indian workers to come get trained to then bring the work back to the HQ in India. You’re supposed to advertise to Americans first but they will print ads in actual print and the applications go to their “Global Mobility” teams and not even HR. Truly insane system and at odds with how it was envisioned, and the numbers involved and workload mean you can’t effectively police it. This method is dubiously legal and might not stand up in court but H1B as it was conceived has nothing in common with what’s going on and the whole thing did need to be blown up. It’s the type of things Dems who care about the middle class should have tackled.
  10. Este. Between the “body shops” and the on-shore outsourcing (bring someone on the H1B to train them to go back overseas and set up the off-shore shop) I’d easily estimate that the majority of H1Bs are either abusive or outright fraudulent. Broken beyond any real repair IMO. Mass layoffs of tech workers, stagnant IT wages, shriveled market for American grads are a fact; big tech has been selling a lot of bullshit about tech labor shortages. It’s more likely that depressing wages via H1B is causing an American stem crisis rather than solving it.
  11. They haven’t made it since 1970 and never have since moving to the Europe region, so yeah this is pure meaningless posturing, like threatening to boycott the CFP if UMass makes it in.
  12. I cannot imagine the hate and personal danger she’d subject herself to if she didn’t vote for it. Of all the people in the House I can forgive this one the most.
  13. I’d be fine with all Dems agreeing to vote present on shit like this. “We showed up and they wasted our time with this bullshit” would be the talker.
  14. Pats: Isn’t this great? Everyone: Hell yeah! One of the best logos and helmets of all time! Can we always have it? Pats: No, just one game a year LOL.
  15. Welch was extremely competent, well-liked, and high-character. It’s a big loss and I’m furious about this whole bullshit.
  16. And taught them how to lay out a camp so not everyone would get dysentery and diphtheria. Someone should do a big pop history of the marching camp and its effect on fighting power from the Romans to modern day.
  17. Also fun fact: Von Steuben was at the siege of Prague during the war of the Austrian Succession and there is still a Prussian cannonball lodged in the wall of the oldest church still extant (St. Martin). Photo my own, you can barely make it out next to the window on the right.
  18. Von Steuben and while he is sadly not taught, I would not call his contributions small. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Wilhelm_von_Steuben
  19. America’s Ground Proximity Warning is screaming at us.
  20. Chosen deliberately to encompass all forms of 45-47 falsity that extend beyond just lying (plenty of that too of course).
  21. There is really nothing the CR can say that is more sacrilegious than what CK’s fans are doing at the moment.
  22. I always hate it when through some weird set of incidents a dismembered corpse ends up in the trunk of a car I abandoned. Really awkward.
  23. Grew up in a Tech household before going to A&M and have some great memories of this game in person from both sides. I would really like it to come back as an individual. It’s a hard one (although playoffs ease some concerns) to justify on a regular basis for A&M. The first couple will get big attention but after that it’s a regional rivalry that is easy for the national networks to pre-empt. You get little credit for beating Tech but losing is a problem. And Tech will always be dangerous in that game. If you’re on the cusp of an at large bid you’d rather have an early season loss to a helmet school than Tech in most cases. You’re not getting a recruiting boost, you’re not really satisfying nation-wide alums by going to Lubbock and that market. This is not a new problem for Tech. They used to have to schedule one season matches against name schools under Spike because the road trip to Lubbock wasn’t worth the squeeze. Like I said, I do wish it would come back but it’s hard to see the upside in the cutthroat environment. I’d like to see one home-home series scheduled at least though.
  24. I won’t be surprised if it’s much worse than the spread. Small chance that this is a rally the troops, save Billy effort but more likely I think the team has given up.
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