wild_turkey

Going to Mexico (Tulum) for the weekend. Since I will be gone less than 3 days, can I get a COVID test here prior to departure and then use that for re-entry, as long as it’s within 72 hours? Googling hasn’t been helpful in answering this.

I would appreciate this as well. It’s on my short list of places to go but I’m always deterred by the long travel and logistics. It would help to see your trip reports.

Sure, but you could say all of those same things about professional sports, yet they are carrying on despite the scheduling headaches and risks of last minute cancellations. People are motivated by money and the music industry is no exception. As restrictions continue to ease across the U.S., I think the financial risk-reward analysis will lean in favor of resuming concerts.

Well fwiw, the Texas Rangers are planning to open the baseball season with full attendance of 40k+ fans. Many people, myself included, disagree with that plan, but it is happening. That’s clearly an outlier at present, but by mid-summer that may be the norm in most states, assuming widespread vaccine access and new cases/deaths at reasonably low levels. So I could easily see there being large concerts in stadiums and I think that’s likely to happen before big music festivals like ACL resume.

Can we rename this thread “NCAA tourney all games”? I don’t see the point in making a qualifier for Texas since we haven’t shown up for the tourney since 2014.

Can Charlie Strong coach basketball? Maybe get Ted Lasso?

RIP. I miss that place quite a bit.

No

For some reason the ESPN site created a second bracket for me called “wild_turkey 2” where all of my picks were made. Problem is that I’m entered in the surly pool under “wild_turkey” which has no picks at all. No idea how or why this happened, because I used the link in the OP and password to create my picks and this is the only pool I’m a part of. Any way I can get that switched to still participate? I paid and everything.

Iceland reopened its borders to vaccinated travelers as of March 18, which includes the U.S. They are not accepting Chinese or Russian vaccines, but I think the other big vaccines are all good. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-iceland-border-idUSKBN2B91BE I’d really like to go to Croatia in August or September, but Iceland has also been on my list and would be a great backup plan.

For as much as the U.S. has been a laughingstock throughout the pandemic, and despite our political obstacles and our imperfect vaccine rollout, we currently look pretty good compared to much of the EU. When you look at new COVID cases per 100,000 people, the U.S. is around 17, compared to France (40), Italy (37), and Germany (16). We are trending down and those other countries are all trending up. Also interesting that the EU has no current plans to include the U.K. in their COVID passport. The U.K. has all of us beat right now.

I thought the goal was this: 2021 - Artemis 1 (unmanned) 2023 - Artemis 2 (manned, lunar orbit but no landing) 2024 - Artemis 3 (manned, boots on the moon) So it would best case scenario be ready for humans in 2-3 years.

Anyone have a rec for a landscape company? I need a new sprinkler system and sod put in. I’ve called a few already but it’s impossible to get them to call back or come give me an estimate.

Just joined and paid up. I watched a lot of college basketball this year so you guys are basically competing for 2nd and 3rd.

Agree with your spoiler prediction. I thought we were gonna see it with Tracey in this episode.

Someone help me out a bit here. I realize that for many applications, NFTs depend on subjective value. Why is an NBA Top Shot highlight clip worth money when someone can watch the same highlight on Youtube for free? It's the exact reason a Mickey Mantle baseball card (picture of Mickey Mantle printed on a small piece of cardstock with stats) is worth money when someone can look at the same picture on Google for free. There's perceived value in being the owner of something that is limited and that a large enough group of people has also determined holds value. If everyone suddenly lost interest (remember Pogs?) then the value would plummet. I'm struggling a little bit more with NFTs when it comes to digital art. A painting by Picasso is incredibly valuable even though a likeness of the same painting can be purchased from a website like art.com for a low price, then framed and hung on a wall in your house. However, there's a massive physical perceivable difference between the actual Picasso painting vs. a print of the same painting. The painting has brushstrokes, weight, imperfections. The print is a print. The owner of the Picasso painting physically possesses something that no one else in the world can possess, unless possibly you consider a very good forgery. There's a tangible difference. When someone sells a digital piece of art as an NFT, that digital file could have countless replica files that are physically indistinguishable. I've heard talk of NFT picture frames that would allow someone to display their NFT artwork in their home. If someone else displayed a copy of the same digital artwork file, would they literally be displaying the exact same .jpg image with the only difference being that one person owns a "certificate of authenticity" and one person does not? Although there is more value for the true owner, it seems like the value differential is much lower compared to a physical piece of art. Moreover, what stops someone like Beeple from later releasing a new NFT of the same piece of art? He just sold "The First 5000 Days" for $69MM. Since anyone can create a new NFT at any time, is there anything that stops Beeple from releasing a new NFT of the same file in a couple of years? Maybe as the buyer of a $69MM piece of digital art you are just taking it in good faith that he won't do that and devalue his entire art collection. However, the owner of "Le Reve" never has to worry about Pablo Picasso painting a second copy of "Le Reve". It's one of a kind and always will be. Curious what other people think. I'm still trying to sort all of this out and maybe the world doesn't even know these answers yet. I definitely think NFTs have a place in this world, just trying to understand what that will be in the long run.

From what I've read, it seems like NFTs will become a pretty big deal over the next few years. It's finally given digital artists a way to create value for their work. With regards to NBA Top Shots, do you buy them directly with USD (credit card?) or do you need to purchase ETH first and then buy the Top Shots with ETH? I'm assuming the Dapper account acts as your ETH wallet and lets the process occur seamlessly? Just trying to figure out the mechanics.

How is there not more discussion of this show? I think it’s great.

Watched this over the past week and really enjoyed it. Great timing to finish last night with S2 starting today. Somewhere upthread I was critical of Joel Kinnaman but he’s actually decent in this. Ed wasn’t necessarily my favorite character, but I think he played the part well. I loved the scenes on the moon, especially the stand off with the Soviet cosmonaut. Lots of great tension. My only minor gripe is that some of the NASA scenes at Mission Control seemed a bit unrealistic for the sake of TV drama. For instance, I don’t think that during the intensity of trying to sync Apollo 25 with Ed Baldwin they would suddenly pause to welcome the returning Apollo 24 astronauts into the Mission Control room and distract everyone from the highly critical task at hand, or have a room full of family members and a bartender with no security clearance watching. But that’s a minor gripe and not a big detractor.

Stupid newb question time... Last week was my initial deposit. I got 400 tickets and assigned 300 to the Surly pool and kept 100 individual. When I look back at the results, I won $0.90 based on 9 tickets that won $0.10 each. I take it based on the breakdown that each of these were my individual tickets and none of them came from the Surly pool? Is that because the Surly pool didn’t win anything (seems unlikely for a pool that had over 5,000 tickets to win nothing and my individual tickets to win 9 times) or because I entered the pool mid-week and that means I didn’t get a cut of that week’s pool winnings? It looks like based on active tickets for this week, there are ~32 pool tickets with 2 correct matches. I’m assuming those are pool tickets because they have an ‘S’ to the left side with the people icon. And since I have 300 of the 5,421 active pool tickets, I would get 5.534% of the pool’s winnings? I made another deposit and assigned all 400 tickets to the Surly pool which I assume takes effect next week.

That assumes that doses are not spoiled by lack of refrigeration during the power outages. It would be nice if major cities could implement regional collection efforts to round up vaccines that are at risk and move them to hospitals or wherever. Maybe that’s already happening or maybe refrigeration failure isn’t actually a problem right now.

I'm curious what effect this winter storm is having on vaccine efforts. Hopefully there aren't a lot of doses going to waste due to interruptions in supply change, storage, clinic schedules, etc.

Also in 76107, lost power for ~2 hours overnight, everything is good since then. Has anyone been out? What are the main city streets looking like around town?

We binged this over the past week and loved it. I was skeptical about watching it for a long time but it had overwhelmingly positive reviews and it lived up to the hype. All of the characters are great but I particularly loved Nate, Roy Kent, and Beard. It’s also a much needed breath of fresh air with its general positive and uplifting tone.