Gromnir

"J" before the name is kinda a reflexive shorthand for folks in our previous line o' work. Justice. is fundamental different from judge. for years we mentioned we didn't hold j. thomas in particular high regard as a Justice, but we did believe him to be an admirable judge. while we wouldn't have included j. thomas on a list o' top 50 SCOTUS Justice greats, we nevertheless respected thomas' efforts since becoming a member of The Court. weren't until extreme recent we stopped affording thomas the cap J. HA! Good Fun! ps we never had much respect for alito, but... ain't an ideology thing neither as we had J. alito and J. Sotomayor fighting hard for our Worst Justice award.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/457/731 clinton were ordered to sit for a deposition in a criminal matter and then took a perjury charge 'cause he lied during that interview with the criminal prosecutor. a bunch o' lawyers for trump during his second impeachment argued he shouldn't be convicted by the senate 'cause the proper venue for the insurrection charges were criminal court. oh, and for f's sake, nixon was pardoned by President Ford. ford pardoned nixon even though there were no impeachment and senate conviction. the feds were bringing criminal charges against watergate coconspirators, had indicted nixon's co-conspirators and were about to indict the former President, so Ford pardoned... and absolutely nobody in 74 thought Ford's controversial pardon was pointless 'cause nixon were immune from prosecution. Ford ended any chance o' being elected in the next election by pardoning nixon, so am certain he woulda' been overjoyed to hear a pardon were unnecessary. a fed district court has already ruled against trump. an appeals court ruled 3-0 against trump. tribe is unquestioned the most quoted Constitutional scholar in the US. luttig is arguable the most respected living textualist (conservative.) this immunity argument is... stoopid. the Court taking the case is not so suspicious 'cause obvious there is much public confusion and a Court determination might convince a few folks who consume nothing but breitbart and fox news that Presidential immunity (save for in the civil context or while aa President is in office,) is utter unamerican and is so unconstitutional it should be decided almost immediate 9-0... save for fact J. Alito and j. thomas has both gone to a very dark and improbable place following the death o' J. Scalia. am having great difficulty explaining aa few recent alito and thomas opinions. J. Roberts, on the other hand... am suspecting he is doing everything possible not to hear this case. took 49 days to go from a district court opinion to SCOTUS hearing in the similar nixon situation. over 140 days for this Court to hear trump's immunity claims? SCOTUS granting cert is not shocking, but the delay from december to now is... curious. Presidential immunity would not have been a controversial issue... previous to trump. can offer more cites, but is just so stoopid. HA! Good Fun! ps keyboard's "a" is no longer trustworthy.

Florida surgeon general defies science amid measles outbreak Instead of following what he acknowledged was the “normal” recommendation that parents keep unvaccinated children home for up to 21 days — the incubation period for measles — Ladapo said the state health department “is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.” ... Because measles virus particles can linger in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected person leaves the area, up to 90 percent of people without immunity will contract measles if exposed. People who have been infected or received the full two doses of the MMR vaccine are 98 percent protected and very unlikely to contract the disease. That is why public health officials typically advocate for vaccination amid outbreaks. ... A drop below 95 percent vaccination coverage for measles can compromise herd immunity and allow a virus to spread more quickly. Florida’s state vaccination coverage is 90.6 percent, but statewide vaccination coverage does not identify pockets where there may be lower coverage.

Tax records reveal the lucrative world of covid misinformation Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone — eight times what it collected the year before the pandemic began — allowing it to expand its state-based lobbying operations to cover half the country. Another influential anti-vaccine group, Informed Consent Action Network, nearly quadrupled its revenue during that time to about $13.4 million in 2022, giving it the resources to finance lawsuits seeking to roll back vaccine requirements as Americans’ faith in vaccines drops. edit(for paywall material we keep the copy/paste minimal, but the following provides necessary context): As the groups’ coffers grew, so did the salaries of some top executives. Children’s Health Defense paid Kennedy, then chairman and chief legal counsel and now an independent candidate for president, more than $510,000 in 2022, double his 2019 salary, tax records show. Informed Consent Action Network paid Executive Director Del Bigtree $284,000 in 2022, a 22 percent increase from 2019. Bigtree now works as communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Some of the individuals behind the family foundations or trusts that fund the four groups also contributed the legal maximum in personal donations to Kennedy’s presidential bid, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. not unrelated Six cases of measles confirmed in outbreak at a Florida elementary school Florida surgeon general doesn't urge vaccinations amid measles outbreak for those unaware, measles ain't a childhood disease deserving a shrug and a reflexive qq response. measles is one o' the most readily communicable disease and there is a relative high rate o' hospitalization which accompanies infections. conspiracy theories have real human costs and people getting rich off o' the human cost makes it all the more contemptable. HA! Good Fun!

the "narrative" problems being described ain't real issues in star wars. honest, this is like the naruto run. star wars uses magic-- is not science. magic and imagination can fix almost any narrative issue you believe exist because o' ftl or light sabres or the force. such a recognition doesn't address all the other last jedi blunders related to character development and the plethora o' pointless plot threads. last jedi tried to rewrite star wars...much as chris avelone did with kotor 2 btw. swtor did to kotor2 what episode ix did to last jedi. let's assume once a vessel reaches ftl, it becomes immaterial insofar as real space... would kinda need be. 'course the star wars cartoons include a device which allows ftl ships to be pulled out o' the immaterium/warp/null space/etc as it were. why does such work? magic. wanna star wars sufficient answer? space ships appear to need leave orbit to ftl, so the death star problem is easily circumvented. state as if it were a fact that the ftl weaponization works only in the very short acceleration phase before a vessel true enters warp, or whatever is the nonsense term in star wars. however, because o' death star mass, you got a relativistic problem which would lead to the "accelerating" vessel disincorporating if it attempted to ftl close enough to do any damage to a death star. return o' the jedi mentioned capital ships couldn't get close to the death star w/o being obliterated. smaller ships would obvious *snort* suffer relativistic disincorporation if they attempted such a move. claim our explanation, made up off the cuff btw, is not sound science ignores fact it is at least as science sound as the whole ridiculous magic ftl o' star wars. naruto run. last jedi has problems. am not seeing weaponized ftl destroying canon as one 'o' em. @xzar_monty we did read against the day. 'pon reflection as the result o' you query, am convinced our appreciation o' against the day were only possible because we were reading as part o' a class. in all honesty, it is a terribly frustrating book which recycles pynchon themes and characters from other works. oh, and our talking heads reference in this post could work equal well for pynchon plot... most roads seeming lead to nowhere. nevertheless, 'cause o' the craftsmanship o' the author's prose, use o' humor, dialogue and unique imagery, coupled with the fact so much is happening in the novel beyond just the ted kaczynski technology boogeyman, a handful o' grad students hanging out in the university pub or a discussion group could spend many hours trying to glean new insights from against the day. ... am pretty sure an older Gromnir would roll his eyes at pynchon's repetitive and self-indulgent claptrap. HA! Good Fun! ps, since am kinda mentioning physics, am recalling we didn't post the 2023 edition o' the berkeley oppenheimer lecture. dunno how interesting it will be save for a few... content is maybe not as paradigm shifting as were the previous share with lenny susskind, but am admitting we only had vague awareness o' how sound waves travelling through stars could measure mass, distance and age. am kinda out-of-date on this-- we thought six-month parallax measurements were kinda the only method for distance.

thought the same thing when we first saw the galadriel temptation scene from lord of the rings. after thor: ragnarok and pinocchio, am accepting ms. blanchett takes herself less serious than does most o' her fans. ms. blanchett does the vo for spazzatura. HA! Good Fun!

the room were specific mentioned in the ed wood discussion we referenced in our previous post. in the pantheon o' so bad it's entertaining, the room is skyfather rank. people know the room. neil breen? in our experience, not so much... and am ok with that. HA! Good Fun!

in the past ten years, other than this board, we have heard neil breen mentioned in conversation exactly once; were a weird tangent from a comment about burton's ed wood. three o' the five people at the table didn't even get the neil breen reference. regardless, we suffer the same guilt from watching breen be breen as we do when we rubberneck when passing an accident on the highway. am self honest enough to admit am only looking to see the bloodshed... metaphorical in the case o' breen. the guy is a walking, talking, breathing cry for help, but in response we chortle and guffaw... or at least roll our eyes. watching breen only for the voyeuristic car crash quality makes us feel bad 'bout our self... if only a little. HA! Good Fun!

funny(ish), a couple days ago we also made short ribs--english, not flanken. we were dry aging a half dozen glorious hunks o' meat in the fridge. the thing is, we had a guest who saw the meat in our chill box and asked if we were gonna make the same short ribs meal we made for her on a previous visit. took us a half second to recollect which recipe she meant. dr. pepper braised short ribs. don't get us wrong, while am less a fan o' meat in sweat sauce, we enjoy the dr. pepper braised short ribs... but these were sooper fantastic short ribs dry aging for extra meat intensity which would kinda go unnoticed with a dr. pepper braise. we made the dr. pepper braised short ribs anyways, 'cause am having difficulty saying no to a guest about something relative trivial. ... got halfway through making the short ribs and it sudden occurred to us we didn't need use all six short ribs for the dr. pepper braise. coulda' used just one or two and made in our smallish dutch oven. we literal had never made less than four short ribs for the braise, so it just didn't occur to us to y'know, reduce the recipe amounts since we were cooking for only two people. idiot. HA! Good Fun!

camaraderie is busted. as we noted in a previous post, you always got credit for being next to at least one ally, and according to patch notes it seems the talent holder was counting themselves as an ally. now? am not sure how to explain the numbers post patch, but we sure ain't getting the described bonuses. edit: *eye roll* the error for camaraderie looks rather straightforward-- 'stead o' adding +1 for self as was the case pre patch, now the camaraderie math is shorting you by one. four adjacent allies counts as three. one adjacent ally counts as zero. HA! Good Fun!

Alabama Court Says IVF Embryos Are “Extrauterine Children” — And People Under The Law not paywall link at huffpost

late 80s Gromnir wished we had a suit that looked that good. HA! Good Fun!

new patch officer got nerfed bigley. most notable-- Bring It Down! can no longer be applied to the same ally more than once per round; Officers no longer generate Momentum multiple times a turn by giving bonus turns to their allies; edit: possible the most significant officer nerf is the finest hour iv change-- all non-attack powhaz o' the character targeted by finest hour now cost one less ap. previous, each kill resulted in a refund o' one ap and one mp (capped by the officer's fel bonus.) ... am so back to the drawing board on a few o' our builds. on the up side, lasting impression works after being patched and revel in slaughter provides described stacking bonuses. is an area of effect damage adjustment based on intelligence, but soldiers can take a talent which allows 'em to replace intelligence with their demolitions score for the aoe damage. luckily our melta guy went with demolitions, but... HA! Good Fun!

we spent almost a whole year in barcelona, so france were an easy side trip. we made it to marseille at least a half dozen times and we even did a touristy stop in paris. we enjoyed france and am certain we woulda' liked it a whole lot more if it weren't for all the french people living there. HA! Good Fun!

update: we watched the linked pbs documentary from our most recent post in this thread. better than fair. well researched. likely surprising to few, am more interested in the economic and legal aspects o' peonage and chattel slavery than the human angle (our subversive crt training showing through?) but in spite o' the lack o' a law focus, the documentary were an informative historical work. didn't feel like an hour and a half neither-- kept our attention throughout. almost no complaints. was worth viewing. HA! Good Fun!