Keyrock

The department of defense says a lot of things, I believe very few of them. I mean, if you take the DoD's story about poppy seeds at face value then I'm glad I got a hold of you because I have some important information about your car's expiring warranty...

I STRONGLY suspect that the amount of poppy seeds one would need to consume and the shortness of the period of time one would need to consume them in to fail a drug test is so absurd that it's effectively (but not theoretically) impossible. I base this on the fact that I have never, ever, EVER in my 47 years on this planet heard of, whether in a historical account, a police record, or even an anecdote in passing, anyone failing a drug test because of poppy seed consumption.

I'll be making makowiec tonight. I'm not looking forward to doing it because it's a lot of work and a lot of mess to clean up, there's a reason this is a dessert that's usually only made for special occasions, but, well, it's Xmas, I think this qualifies. I'm going all out with rum raisins, chopped walnuts as a topping, and a sugar glaze (mainly to stick the nuts to the makowiec). My kitchen is going to look like a disaster area.

I've been saying this for years, the true divide is establishment elites vs everybody else. All the other divisions, while not necessarily manufactured (some of them are flat out manufactured) are very purposely exacerbated by the ruling elites to keep the rest of us divided. This is no secret, it's been this way for the entire history of human civilization. While political and social systems may change what has always remained the same is the ruling elites exploiting the differences of the common folk to keep us divided, because we would be unstoppable if we could set aside our petty (petty in a relative sense, these divisions have merit but they pale in importance to establishment vs commoners) quarrels. As long as we're at each others' throats over this bull$#!+ or that bull$#!+ the establishment can keep us under their thumbs with relative ease. The main goal of the ruling elite is to maintain (or expand, depending on ambition) power. Everything else is secondary. Depending on how brazen their attempts at seizing, maintaining, or expanding power are we may label them dictators, although these days anyone who is a dissident is labeled as the next Hitler regardless of their political views or actions, so words like "fascist" and "dictator" have lost all meaning since they're used so liberally.

Okay, we can have the are the Iggles in trouble talk now. Unfortunately, we can also have the Cowboys are frauds talk too.

I'm a bit bummed that the Napoleon movie is apparently not great. I'm probably still going to watch it eventually just because I find the events around Napoleon to be so fascinating. It's the birth of the modern world... Well, modern Europe, anyway. Someone should make a miniseries covering the roughly century of time from Napoleon to WWI that shaped modern Europe. There's so much meat on that bone. Start out with a big 2-part special based around Napoleon, part 1 about the French Revolution and the rise of nationalism and part 2 about the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. There are the Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian Wars that create not exactly modern day Germany, but close enough, and establish it as the dominant power in central Europe. The continued decline (and eventual fall) of the Ottoman Empire, the Balkan Wars, and finishing off with a rather sloppy assassination plot in Sarajevo that, by all rights, should have had little chance of working, and yet it did. Somebody has probably already done this, I just need to do a bit of scouring around YouTube and such.

*fart noise* - That was the complete, unabridged description of muh Boys performance this previous Sunday. Also, that thing I wrote about the Packers still being in good position to make the playoffs following their loss to the Giants... Forget I wrote anything.

Not my favorite Robert Eggers movie (The Lighthouse), but probably his best.

I imagine Sarah's not going to like me much after the ruse is up and it's revealed that I'm actually working for the Crimson Fleet. She's way too prim and proper for my liking anyway. I need a woman that might murder me in my sleep. Hopefully she wouldn't, but the type that the possibility can't ever be completely discounted.

I finally joined the Crimson Fleet. I could have done it earlier but there are a lot of side quests that involve killing Crimson Fleet pirates so I wanted to knock a good number of those out before joining. Now that I'm a Crimson Fleet pirate myself I'm going to abstain from killing my brethren. Those dumbasses at SysDef (sounds like a bash console command) still think I'm "undercover" and working to feed them intel.

As promised, AMD just released the source code for FSR3.

I put the finishing touches on my Xmas shopping today with my customary trip to Frugal MacDoogal to get everyone the gift of booze. I spent entirely too much money but the deed is done.

If nothing else, David Lynch's Dune has the vastly superior Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

If nothing else, she'll get a lot of donor money. There are a lot of those in the donor class that very much want to bring back the Bush/Cheney neocon republican party and Nikki Haley seems to be exactly that, heck she might be even more of a war hawk than Cheney, if that's even possible. I suspect there's a significant rift between who the donors like and who the general people like, but I guess we'll see. For me, I can't get past her foreign policy and highly aggressive neocon rhetoric. Everything else is a non-starter because I detest neocons so much and find her rhetoric absolutely stomach-turning.

My favorite non-Cowboys thing that happened this week was also the most on-brand play of the week. It was Kadarius Toney erasing an awesome play that involved an impromptu lateral and costing his team the win by lining up damn near a yard off-side. The best part was Mahomes crying about it after the game when my man was so off-side that under normal circumstances that's how an artist would have drawn someone off-side to exaggerate for comedic effect. @BartimaeusEven with that terrible loss to Shinebox Tommy and the Giants, the Packers are still in decent position to make the playoffs. The more important piece of this is figuring out whether Jordan Love is the guy at QB.

I finally got around to starting my Starfield journey. To the game's credit, it let me make a fat guy with terrible complexion and a sweet combover, so points right off the bat for Bethesda. I did a bunch of the early Constellation stuff and have joined UC Vanguard, but only for the purposes of eventually going Crimson Fleet. I guess eventually UC Vanguard is going to have me "infiltrate' the Crimson Fleet except I'll be doing less infiltrating and more joining, but the UC doesn't need to know about that small, insignificant detail right now.

I would propose that Tyreek has had a profound effect on Tua's success (and Mahomes' for that matter). It's not a fair comparison because you have to go back to last season for it, given that Tyreek has been healthy, but Tua's stats when he has Tyreek to throw to and when he doesn't are night and day different. Look at Mahomes ever since they traded away Tyreek. They're still winning games, but the Chiefs are far more leaning on their D these days. I've seen Mahomes struggle to score and come up short more times this year alone than I watched him pretty much the entire time they had Tyreek on the Chiefs. This is just speculation on my part, but I think that if you take Tyreek out of the game and replace him with average WR that would have a greater negative effect on the Fins' fortunes than taking Tua out of the game and replacing him with average QB. For me, that's the measurement for MVP, what if you replaced said player with an average player of the same position, how much impact would that have on the game? As far as the Iggles suddenly being a bad team because muh Boys beat 'em up, I don't buy that. They lost to the 49ers and the Cowboys in back to back weeks, 2 of the league's best teams. It's not like they got punched in the mouth by the Cardinals or anything... The Iggles will be fine, they're not last season's Vikings who we all knew would crumble as soon as the playoffs started. I don't think they're as good as last year's Iggles, but they're still a contender even after we just put the boots to them. Now, if they lose again next week to the C-Hox (and the C-Hox will be playing for their playoff lives) then a) I will be happy b) we can have the are the Iggles in trouble talk then.

I would propose that a WR that is constantly getting wide open, or at least getting significant separation from the DB, is a lot easier to throw to than one that has a DB draped on him constantly. You pretty much always have to have over the top safety help against Tyreek because he is capable of burning your CB at any given moment and if there's no safety help, well, that's 6 points. Tyreek Hill changes the way defenses have to defend the field and STILL constantly finds ways to get open.

If Tyreek Hill doesn't win MVP this year then they might as well rename the award Best QB. No QB really stand out above all the others, Dak is as good a choice as any QB right now. Meanwhile, Tyreek Hill is having a historic season at WR.

How about dem Cowboys? 10-3. I still think the Iggles will win the division because they have an easy schedule. It feels good, though.

How about dem Cowboys? 10-3. I still think the Iggles will win the division because they have an easy schedule. It feels good, though.

I watched Indy 5 (2023). It's a'ight, I guess. It would have greatly benefited from trimming the fat. It starts out well with a 20 minute sequence on a train featuring CGI young(er) Harrison Ford. While I couldn't help but notice the overuse of CGI in the sequence, it still felt like a legitimately fun old skool Indiana Jones action setpiece. Then there's nearly 2 hours of mediocrity. Nothing offensively bad but nothing really good either. It's just 2 hours of occasionally mildly entertaining but often kind of boring stuff. Then the last 15 minutes happen and what is happening is so utterly ludicrous that I kind of love it. I don't love it enough to make me want to sit through the 2 middle hours of meh again, but that ending sequence is great, in a fun schlock sort of way. Trim that middle 2 hours down to about an hour and now we're talking.

I feel like that only applies because it's Kojima and he has a built-in cult following. If some random developer put... Whatever that was out we'd look at it weird then forget about it 20 minutes later.

Kojima gon Kojima. I'm not even going to attempt to speculate on whatever the **** that was. I have to admit, as a casual observer with no stake in this, I am curious to see how deep the madness takes him now that there's (seemingly) no one left to tell him no.