Keyrock

Meanwhile, off the coast of Newfoundland...

Skill Up tearing Redfall apart:

Yeah, Redfall's been getting dragged over the coals by reviewers. Not that long ago, Arkane was one of the most consistently celebrated devs but they've had a couple of stumbles lately.

How often does it get hot enough in your part of Sweden to warrant running AC?

I'm starting to suspect that Nikola Jokic might be good at basketball.

I think I'm going to do an Andy Sidaris-a-thon. I don't think I'm going to watch all... 11? 12? Of his so called "Girls With Guns" movies, but I'm definitely watching the first 4: Malibu Express, Hard Ticket To Hawaii, Picasso Trigger, and Savage Beach. His movies feature lots of gratuitous boobs and butts, terrible acting, cheesy lighthearted action, tongue in cheek dialogue, and absurd moments, but they are well shot. Andy Sidaris was an Emmy Award winning director for his coverage of the Olympics. Fun fact: That shot is sports coverage where the camera finds a cheerleader or an attractive lady in the crowd and zooms in tight on her (colloquially known as the "bimbo shot"), he invented that. Absolute ****ing legend! Anyway, this should be a good time.

Yeah, it sucks, the most fun team is already out of the playoffs. Oh well.

I started playing Strange Brigade. It's a rather fun 3rd person shooter, even just playing solo, though the game was clearly made for (up to) 4 person co-op. I don't particularly want to play with randos and I don't know anyone else who has the game off the top of my head, so who knows if I will ever get to try out co-op. Either way, I'm enjoying the Allan Quatermain vibe the game has going on. The game looks great and runs like a champ. I mean, it's a 5 year old game, I should hope it's well optimized by now.

I like to think that she's just a really thorough investigative journalist. She did the leg work. She went around and talked to many people, checked with her sources, and took extensive measurements, then cross-referenced those measurements against a database. It's this kind of in-depth analysis that's been missing. I mean, we get measurables such as 40 yard time, amount of bench press reps, vertical leap, and so on. Those are all well and good, but this dedicated reporter went above and beyond to give us the stat that we really care about.

The Nugs took game 1 against the Suns. It's interesting how Nikola Jokic has been putting on a clinic in the playoffs so far and nobody is talking about it. My dude quietly put up a 24-19-5 tonight. Just a casual 24-19-5, no big deal. Run of the mill, garden variety 24-19-5.

The character issues are a concern, but reportedly Jalen Carter has a big I feel that's a lot more important.

I dusted off the ol' bicycle and took advantage of the spectacular weather we have here in Cackalacky today. First bike ride in a few weeks so I wasn't sure what kind of riding form I would be in. I felt good out there and pushed the pace for the entirety of the roughly 1 hour ride. It was a good ride save for the one lady that damn near hit me. I don't know if she was blind or what her problem was, but there was no one coming the other way, she had all the room in the world to move over a foot or two while passing me, instead she came within an inch or two of making contact with me, and I was already as far to the side of the road as I could be.

I'm fairly happy with muh Boys draft so far. Nothing splashy, but they've all been solid, sensible picks. Had Dalton Kincaid, who seems to be the consensus best ball catching TE in the draft, been on the board, I'm fairly confident we would have taken him, but Buffalo snatched him up. Rather than reaching for another TE, or doing something risky like taking Will Levis, muh Boys took the best available player at DT in Mazi Smith then we got our TE in the second round with Luke Schoonmaker, who seems to be a solid overall prospect, not elite in any area, but capable in all the facets of the position like run blocking and pass catching. In the 3rd round we got LB DeMarvion Overshown. The word on him is that he may not be strong enough to hold up in trying to stop the run but should excel when dropping back into coverage as a former safety. I'm salty that the Iggles got Jalen Carter. If you remove the extracurricular stuff from the equation, he's the top prospect in the draft. There was no way he was going to fall all the way to 26, but did the f'n Iggles have to get him? *sigh*

I have no issue with the Falcons taking Bijan. Sure, running back is a deprecated position in today's NFL, but I think Bijan is special enough to warrant picking him that high. The Lions taking Jahmyr Gibbs at #12, I can't defend that.

Beam = Lit

The amount of mental gymnastics y'all are going through to convince yourselves of this ludicrous Russia blew up their own pipeline narrative is comical. I'm Polish, we have a long history with Russia and most of it is decidedly not friendly so my default state is to be distrustful of the Russian regime (I have nothing against the common people of Russia nor of any other country). Still, I do my best to be as objective as possible (it's impossible to be completely unbiased). If y'all want to live in the fantasy world where it's more likely that Russia blew up their own pipeline in a wacky plot to frame another party than the US, who has alluded to blowing up said pipeline and is financially benefitting from the blowing up of said pipeline, blew up the pipeline. What can I say? You do you I guess.

Thank you for proving my point. If Russia's goal was to put pressure on the EU, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that would be beneficial to them, it would make the most sense to be overt about it. Why would you hatch some amamie plan involving blowing up your own pipeline and attempting to frame another party for it if it would be a lot easier AND more effective to simply say "we're cutting you off from your energy supply unless you stop sending military aid to Ukraine. Oh, what's that, it's winter and people might freeze? Well that's just too ****ing bad now isn't it?" This has the added benefit of allowing them to simply flip a switch if they wanted to turn the pipeline back on in the future instead of having to make costly and time consuming repairs.

I'll tell you what, let me make a tin foil hat, then, just to be safe, I'll line the entire house with tin foil, don't want any mind control rays from the lizard people in the hollow moon to get through. Then I'll get in touch with Joe Rogan to get some DMT. Maybe then I'll be able to do the mental gymnastics necessary to have that conspiracy theory make sense in my mind. Seriously, I'm not saying the Shellenberger story is 100% for sure correct, but holy **** is it way more plausible than the Russians blew up their own pipeline to hoodwink everyone story. I'll go back to Occam's Razor. In the absence of a sure explanation, the explanation requiring the least amount of extra steps is the correct one. Examine each of the posited stories and ask yourself "which one requires the least amount of hoops to jump through?" I know my answer to that question.

I'm not going to pretend I watched much college football last season, but Mazi Smith was rated anywhere from the 2nd to 5th best DT prospect in the draft on various boards. Hopefully he's good. He's a fellow gun owner, so he gets bonus points from me.

He's been arrested in the past, he'll fit right in with our locker room.

Russia could do that without blowing up their own pipeline. They could just shut it off, it's their pipeline, they control it. If they wanted plausible deniability for seeming like they wanted to continue supplying energy to the EU but HAD TO stop, they could have feigned a malfunction or said they'd have to temporarily shut the pipeline down to retrofit parts of it because of safety concerns. There are so many ways they could have accomplished the same goal without blowing up their own pipeline. The amount of tin foil required for me to get anywhere near believing this ludicrous story is more than all the stores and warehouses within 100 mile radius of me hold. I don't know if any of the theories posited so far are true, but I find Michael Shellenberger's story to be BY FAR the most plausible.

The question remains, why would Russia blow up their own pipeline? Sure, you could do some mental gymnastics to make it work, but Occam's Razor says it's HIGHLY unlikely that Russia would blow up their own pipeline.

Jerry was tragically killed in a scuffle between a satanic cult leader married to a meth addicted quadrapalegic stripper and his brother whom she was cheating on him with.

Funniest potential draft stories: * After parting ways with Zeke and with Pollard on the roster, muh Boys move up and draft Bijan. * After parting ways with Ayahuasca enthusiast Aaron Rodgers, the Packers draft an elite wide receiver. * Texans decide not to get a QB at #2 and go after Lamar. They wind up not getting Lamar and are stuck with the wonder duo of Davis Mills and Case Keenum. Really, the funniest draft story already happened with Lovie Smith, knowing he was on the way out, screwing the Texans one last time in the final game of the season, costing them the #1 pick. What a legend!