Hurlshort

Oh, there is a terrible amount of fund mismanagement in education, to be sure. I did not mean to imply that it isn't funded. It just isn't ending up in the classrooms with the teachers. One example is the $25 million LAUSD was paying to the LAPD. California also lags when it comes to per pupil spending.

Regis Philbin is no longer live.

Hey, it was put out by an ice cream company, what do you expect?

It does explain some things. Years ago I didn't really understand the whole anti-police mentality. From my perspective, they were just people doing a job that paid modestly for serving the community and putting them in harms way. Outside of their uniforms, they weren't really any better or worse than any other neighbor, run buddy, or dance dad that I normally encountered. In fact, growing up I always thought it would be a great job. Much like with teaching, it had that unpredictable nature that I thrive in, and I felt the opportunity to have a positive impact was rich. Not to sound too sappy, but I love being in the classroom. It is a very rewarding job. My opinion on law enforcement has shifted dramatically over the last couple of years. I actually have a co-worker who is a good friend who was a cop for 1 year. He is an excellent teacher, just amazing with the kids and good at connecting with them. I never understood why he didn't thrive as a cop. He is empathetic, patient, and quick witted. I would think those would be ideal traits. But he didn't even like to talk about his year of law enforcement, so I never pried. Then I took part in a community outreach program that our local PD was holding. It was 12 weeks of classes held by officers talking about their protocols and training. At the end, you could apply to be a volunteer with the police department to help with community outreach. That was interesting to me on week 1, but by week 12 I was aghast. I think I've told this part of the story a few times before, but the training they were undergoing made no sense to me. It was way more heavily focused on pseudo-military responses to situations than serving the community. De-escalation was barely a thing. Counseling, education, and outreach were all insignificant compared to aggressive tactics and military grade tech. Most of our cops live in the community and are pretty friendly, but they are trained in a way that I simply cannot condone. It suddenly made sense why my teaching buddy cut and ran after a year on the job. So after that I had a pretty good shift in my way of thinking about the police. 1. I definitely was looking at it from a place of privilege. I was seeing the police as my out of uniform buddies, but the reality is in uniform they are trained to pull a gun on me at the slightest provocation. They have the right to do some terrible things to me with very little cause. That is terrifying. 2. They are extremely well-funded. Much better than education. They have the latest and the greatest in technology. They have tanks, special forces military gear, and better utility belts than Batman. So when people say defund the police, I'm on board. They could run waaaaay leaner. Here is a nice graphic than Ben & Jerry's created.

I know about a dozen cops, and I rarely even remember they are police when we are hanging out. They are just normal people. Except for the former marine turned Sheriff. He's a bit intense.

I'm not sure if arming protesters is going to de-escalate the situation.

AC games go on sale once a month, it feels like.

It is much worse from the inside.

I don't think it is clear that it is only first person at this point. The Outer Worlds was a fairly small project and that was the explanation given for why they didn't include a 3rd person camera. This is hopefully a bigger project with MS funding, so it may be 3rd person as well. Hard to judge based on a short announcement trailer. edit: Although the website does firmly say first person RPG, so what do I know?

The Grounded trailer was funny. It looks like it could be a nice family friendly alternative to all the survival games out there. Hopefully it will also have a decent story to follow through. That is what sets Conan Exiles and Subnautica apart for me. I like harvesting resources and making a base, but I need to have some sort of narrative thread to follow. Avowed looks great and I am sure I will grab it day 1. Given that PoE2 did not sell well, I am glad they are continuing to use the Eora setting. People keep mentioning this as a Skyrim clone. That sounds great. Just like Fallout: NV was better than the Bethesda games, I expect this could be better than the Elder Scroll games. Realistically though I expect it to be a well written game in a universe that I enjoy. That's really all I need. There will probably even be memorable NPC's! Gorgon looks like a solid new planet for Outer Worlds and gives me a good reason to pick the game up again.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-ad-police-officer-attacked-2014-ukraine-protests-2020-7?utmSource=twitter&utmContent=referral&utmTerm=topbar&referrer=twitter&fbclid=IwAR1zGdkyQTl6Qi7bTNqJgRg2xF5g9hodGQ59cSOK8JvwFSpZ-JHmpvFNVVI Sooooo stupid.

None of the AC games are hack and slash games. They are all open world parkour exploration games. If you like to explore historical settings and climb stuff, then they all have something to offer. They've also all had RPG aspects, but Origins was the first to introduce levels. It actually made it a bit more grindy and combat orientated, so I'm not sure I loved it, but to each their own. I haven't played Odyssey. Honestly I'd just choose the game with the setting that intrigues you the most.

I watched the A's and Giants the last two nights. So happy to have it back. I think the fan cutouts are great. Therr are going the be some good shenanigans with those things.

The glory days of fmv!

A lottery ticket is a pretty inexpensive way to fantasize about striking it rich.

Yes? No? I'm not sure. I've played a lot of ESO, and I do like that my one character can experience pretty much everything. But I do feel it lacks the build up and anticipation of some other games. Honestly I have the same issue with Skyrim. I get really into one storyline, but once I finish it, I have trouble starting a new one from scratch. It's just a different feel.

ESO is a bit weird about endgame, since everything is scaled. When you finish the storyline for one of the 3 factions, you just start playing through the next faction storyline. Then you play through the expansion areas. Or you can go in whatever order you want. It's weird. There is a lot of content, but the sense of progression is a bit off for me. Not like LotRO, where you slowly progress your way towards Mordor. Which is like a 10 year quest.

My wife went through the same thing! Apparently pancreatitis is associated with heavy drinking of drug use, so some doctors just assume that is the cause. I wrote a letter of complaint about one ER doctor that treated her with hostility during one attack. The doctor was convinced she was just there for morphine, when really we were there to get specific tests done that her gastroenterologist had requested. It seems like it has become more common in recent years. We still don't know what caused it, but as long as she takes the enzyme, she avoids becoming diabetic. Good luck with the regimen, hopefully it will get better. Things also seems to get better when she got her gall bladder out.

I'm not sure how being a veteran should endear you to Biden or Trump. Neither served. Trump's kids didn't serve. Biden's son served, so I guess that is a plus.

Sorry to hear that, LC. My wife has pancreatitis. She takes an enzyme called creon with food to help her process. Did they take it out? She says the pain was worse than child birth. She has had a few flare ups over the years.

Life is a gamble.

One can always hope...

Hah, no. He'll do whatever the wealthy people that control the purse strings want him to do. Just like every politician.

Here is an example of defunding the police: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/07/01/lausd-board-votes-to-slash-school-police-budget-by-25m/ Now people are mostly in 2 camps on this. You have the one side that is like "F the police". Then you have the other side that is like "School shootings are going to happen!" Meanwhile I'm like, why the heck does the school district pay 25 million dollars to the police department? WTF?

Education is being defunded and no one seems too worried about that at the White House.