AeroHorn

Spiller is pretty much their whole offense.

I don't think Fresno State played shitass today. They were clearly better in the second half and overcame two turnovers.

Great game! Pac loses a lot by having their games so late.

American Labor Party

There is an improved version of the imperialism map that is more than a static image. https://werdna63.shinyapps.io/ncaa-football-imperialism/ There is also a map of undefeated teams. Closest Undefeated Team to Each US County (Week 1, 2021) - Imgur (I guess we can't embed Imgur files?)

I agree that the decision doesn't make sense (he was leaning back and snap kicked with his front leg and not roundhouse kicked with full force, the opponent was unlucky to get knocked out and it's not kickers fault), but how does it indicate uncompetitive nature of Olympics? We can say that the referee/committee decision is wrong, but how does it apply to the whole Olympics?

This topic has been very well researched. Solar, wind and nuclear are about an order of magnitude lower in terms of Carbon footprint/Green house gas emissions compared to coal and natural gas over their respective lifetimes (from mining and manufacturing to usage and disposal). NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) has conducted comprehensive studies (to name one of many orgs) where they have gone over thousands of scientific/industry publications and prepared the data. https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/life-cycle-assessment.html Summary table is below.

I prefer the rivals + 2-3 year rotation of all teams hybrid, without specifically dividing into two divisions. In this case of no divisions, the CCG participants will be the two having the best conference records, right? Hopefully, not winners of two pseudo-divisions.

Selfishly from Texas perspective, this is a good move. But overall, I am afraid college football is losing the "college" aspect. By relegating dozens of P5 and more outside of P5 to secondary status outside of SEC and whatever BIG decides to do, the college following along with the fanfare associated with football at each college suffers a severe setback. If there is no kinship and association to college football, SEC-BIG slugfest is just a junior NFL that is relevant to only a couple of dozen colleges. 100+ other campuses may just tune out. Keeping the changing landscape in mind, I wish the bigwigs (Texas/OU (B12), ND, SEC, BIG, PAC, etc.) had got together and worked out what is best for college football rather than focusing on how to grab a bigger slice of the pie for themselves. I am afraid that the pie may lose its flavor in the long run.

Alex on Autos: No nonsense reviews, thorough, his preferences match mine.

I drove Honda Clarity Fuel Cell for 3 years and returned the it when the lease was up in April. I was sorely tempted to buy the new Mirai Fuel Cell, basically a shortened Lexus LS platform. About 22k including taxes after Toyota (20k) and federal (7.5k)/state (4.5k) rebates. In addition, a 15k card to buy Hydrogen, which pays for about 65k miles of driving. The only reason I didn't buy it was because of Hydrogen supply. Half the time, there is no Hydrogen and when it is available, you have to be vigilant because it runs out within a few hours. I developed a PTSD with always worried about not having the fuel. When the fuel is available, the cars are great. If they can fix the Hydrogen production, I would go back to Hydrogen cars.

Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries avoid these metals (Nickel and Cobalt-free) but have a bit lower power densities due to lower operating voltage. They are safe and long lasting, and are being implemented in cars. I hope this chemistry gets a bit more efficient, which will solve the mining problem. Lithium itself is very widespread and is usually close to the surface.

But the actual one comes with 17,000mph tangential speed, which this one didn't. An important distinction.

Yeah, most of it is just a plane ride. The rocket ride up and down to the plane elevation was about 5 minutes (?) with the zero gravity (just falling with style) was for about a minute; about the same duration as an amusement park ride. Probably parachuting is more thrilling than that brief tumble inside a tube.

I agree with financial cause being the main driver. A big chunk of the population is living on the edge; rising prices and disappearing jobs over the next 10 years would cause theft and general lawlessness to increase. Combine this with a compromised police force, and we can quickly devolve to a lawless society. The way we are armed and polarized, this could lead to some ugly scenarios.

From my limited experience, some people are severely overestimating religious organizations' reach and moolah. The organizations I am aware of, the salaried employees (usually less than 3) are paid at a rate of about $30-40/hour, which is barely manageable in the bay area. And these people usually have an MA and likely a PhD equivalent. They are primarily providing services to the congregation itself and managing outreach activities. Dozens of volunteers do the work, whether it is free clinic, hot meals, winter clothes, legal advice, temporary shelter, etc. Most of the fundraising is for these activities and 100% of it reaches the intended audience. The congregation takes the salaries, etc. as something they owe and covers it through the (voluntary) monthly donations. Needless to say, there are no profits, but real curtailing/shutting down of services due to shortfalls in fundraising. I bet all the real estate tax of all the churches/synagogues/mosques/temples/gurudwaras in the bay area doesn't compare to one Stanford University Tax Compliance at Stanford. All this handwringing regarding tax exemption of religious structures is absurd. As far as propaganda is concerned (the main reason behind this discussion), the amount of messaging I get from non-religious sources is >100x that of religious sources on a daily basis, ranging from consumerism and hedonism to philosophical and cultural appropriation. Those who say religion is evil, I agree that "religious" people have committed atrocities, but the biggest atrocity going on right now is being committed by Chinese atheists against Uighur Muslims. But because it is not religious people doing it, it is business as usual.

I don't understand this desire to play aggy. I can understand us reluctantly agreeing to listen to them if they are clamoring for it. But aggy is not interested. I doubt the game day would be any better when playing aggy when compared to any other P5 OOC we have on schedule. For multiple reasons, it would be just a distraction with almost no benefit. Let aggy be content with the second tier SEC status. We can continue to focus on our OOC approach of playing schools from across the nation.

I have seen them being driven around the bay area by their test team. I have seen only from the the outside. It looks quite plain with maybe a slightly better front than Model S, but overall Model S looks better, imo. It also looks a bit smaller than Model S. Their interior, based on the pictures, is more conventional luxury than the spartan European design that Tesla does, which most people prefer I think. As an aside, the test engineers driving the vehicles stick to the speed limit, most likely being their company policy. They stick out like sore thumbs since everyone else is going at 75-80mph. Also, they are a new company and will face growing pains. The price matches Model S. This will make it hard from them to scale quickly.

wild finish! Great to see a defense play win the game.

Us sub-millionaires pay anywhere in the range 30-40% when federal, state (CA), real estate and sales taxes are added, not including Medicare/Social Security payments. The biggest hit I see is from vesting of RSUs that are part of the overall compensation and paying ordinary income taxes on them. Since dividends are taxed at a lower rate, do these rich guys create their own "fund" consisting of their RSUs that are traded by the fund and it pays "dividend" to the owner thereby hiding the ordinary tax due when these people have millions of dollars worth of RSUs vesting? Does this happen?

1997. I was a poor grad student (at UT) with research assistantship (20hr/week + insurance). Didn't sign up my newly wed wife for insurance and she got pregnant. Got to add her during yearly signup 3 months before due date. All the visits including child birth and post checkups over 5 months or so cost me a grand total of 0 dollars. Not a typo. The fortunate thing is that only one of the many insurance plans that UT offered didn't have a pre-existing condition clause, which I thankfully signed up for. That was Prudential. Now, all work plans cost $500+ in monthly premiums and take $30-50 just for walking into a medical place.

Modi's government is the most fascist while in the garb of democracy. Trump could have only dreamt of what Modi has achieved, from complete take over of the supreme court and the election commission to police forces and media outlets. He has only two motives, oppress Muslims and make it the only election platform to get elected, and loot India by wholesale takeover of all resources through his select few billionaires (the Ambanis). He has taken over media and weaponized Whatsapp/Facebook. He hasn't held a press conference since 2014 and many of his elected party members (state and central) are murderers and criminals, who openly call of genocide and terrorize various communities. He has successfully bribed/threatened multiple whole state elected governing parties to switch to his party (imagine Trump bribing/threatening multiple blue states elected ruling representatives/government to become Republican overnight and bow down to him). His party is completely anti-science with cow-worship as the most visible of many weird practices where people drink cow urine and cover themselves in cow dung thinking it will cure them of many diseases. He famously led ringing of the bells and clanging of pots to scare away covid when pressed to address the pandemic last year. The less said about their take on caste system, the better. He has destroyed India, which was a multi-faceted jewel with hundreds of religious, cultural, linguistic and ethnic hues with thousands of years of history. Indians have traditionally been peaceful people that know how to live cheek by jowl with people that are very different from each other, and if this hate filled campaign doesn't end, the outcome will be worse than what happened in Germany during 30s and 40s; and it won't just effect Muslims, but also many of traditional lower castes.

Good points. My experience is entirely on the tech side, especially as a small (<1000 people) R&D company in the semiconductor industry. Patents are essentially ignored in the decision making process, with cost and performance as the primary drivers. Even if a big tech company licenses the patent portfolio and had tech transfer contract, they will stop royalty payments within couple of years because from their perspective, the years-long legal process and the eventual settlement is still cheaper to potentially a lot cheaper than continuing the royalty payments. Due to rapid changes in the tech field, the goal is to settle/license/monetize now because the landscape may change in 3-5 years, whereas the timescale is longer in pharma and hence makes sense to go for injunction rather than settle, as you mentioned.

Patent licensing is a very small portion of designing and delivering a high volume product. When a company wants do something, they will do it regardless of others having patented it or not. They will claim that their method is different. The patent holder sues, they go back and forth and settle. Look up Apple-Qualcomm, Apple-Samsung and many others. These companies know how to design and build stuff, but may not have been the first to do it, hence the legal wrangling to get that fixed. At the end, the patents are invalidated or the patent holder gets couple of percent of the revenue as royalty. Qualcomm didn't have to implement their CDMA tech in Apple's design centers/factories as part of the deal; Apple knew how to do that and just wanted Qualcomm to not bother them. There is the threat of Qualcomm having courts block Apple products, but the court typically nudges the parties to settle for a fair licensing deal. Of course, the above board approach is to talk to the patent holder, get a license beforehand, and it may include technology transfer contract too where the patent holder teaches the licensee how to implement it in their factories including equipment, processes, etc. Same thing in big pharma, I suspect. Nothing stops Johnson & Johnson from implementing what Moderna is doing as long as they don't expect Moderna to come teach them. If they can do it and want to, they will and let the lawyers deal with the aftermath. If they can't, then patents are not really the issue.

Or 30 years back, but who is counting. (old man mumbles)