Serak The Preparer

Can you be more specific about the cartoon characters being removed? I'm not sure if you're thinking of copyright owners voluntarily pulling them from circulation or something else. For example, Warner Brothers decided not to rerun cartoons with Speedy Gonzales. Disney doesn't reprint Song of the South. The Seuss family stopped printing a few books because of racial caricatures. Is this what you are referring to? Also, stating " We never had people fired for simply speaking out things that offended others. This is new" is just insane. How else would you describe the Red Scare and Hollywood blacklist of the 40's just to name one obvious example?

I do not have kids in college so I don't know what the athletic scene is like. As such I am 100% not trying to call you out on this, but how do you know they are trans athletes? I imagine there is not an asterisk in the program guide. Is it the sheer size that leads you to believe this, or just open word of mouth? Or is there explicit labelling somewhere? I ask because I do think the magnitude of the issue should inform the response. Again I know very little about this first-hand. My baseline hypothesis is similar to @Bama Chick's - that there there are very few individuals that undergo this process and then continue in women's NCAA sports but totally concede that it is not backed by anything.

Would you say this gentleman looks like a hamster by any chance?

Yes that was just added today.

If a young dude said it then I would also think it's stupid. Because there is no right or wrong about "New generations are known for killing the 1st amendment right". It's just wrong, unless you can tell me some of the many times that the government has limited the 1st amendment at the behest of the younger generation.

What a weasel. How can he claim "I misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage" when that was the explicit question? Here is the word-for-word question: REPORTER: "You would be okay with the Supreme Court leaving the issue of interracial marriage to the states?" SEN. MIKE BRAUN (R-IN): "Yes. If you are not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you are not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too." Any noted Republican scholars care to explain what was unclear about the question?

Ah. so your example of NOT being an internet warrior, of improving productive discourse, is claiming that I "hate free speech so much that you aren't even allowed to have an opinion about free speech". Got it.

Lol, if some old dude at a party states "New generations are known for killing the 1st amendment right" then you are goddamn right I'm going to say fuck you. That opinion is just as stupid as you thinking that somehow my "fuck you" is not allowing an opinion about free speech. Or are you somehow trying to stop my opinion about free speech?

Now do Ben Simmons. As a Rockets fan I think it'd be awesome for the Nets to miss the playoffs to help the draft, but just as an observer of the NBA I cannot wait to see if Ben actually plays in the playoffs if the Nets do make it (as they likely will).

I really love the optimism in your past tense. Shit ain't over unfortunately.

@Passive Aggressive Coach has successfully completed the first two steps of the three-step @Parliament. These steps are, of course: 1) Post something really inflammatory that is immediate shown to be bullshit and/or easily disproven. 2) Never reply to any of these statements. 3) Post over in DT about all the mean CR posters. I can't wait for the 3rd step!

While @TXSooner518 is by all counts a pretty good egg (for a Sooner), I have to confess that I am pulling for Saint Mary's just because I think it would be a special accomplishment to not break double digits for total score. He's sitting pretty right now at 7 with UCLA as his only live team.

I am far from an expert in this area, but the biggest criticism I have seen of this is not from a direct medical interaction but rather that this can encourage use of narcotics if there is a "safety blanket" available.

Great to see all of the champions of women in the NCAA transgender thread bringing up their daughters as reasons to be extra special concerned, then quickly turn around to call other women ugly for the sole crime of being a cheerleader.

A few quick facts - there were a total of 66 brackets. UCLA was in 67% of the brackets while Texas Tech was 2nd-most popular (53%). Iowa just barely missed the half-way mark with presence in 47% of the brackets. On the other end we have TCU and Montana St with each being in only 1 bracket. In all there are 49 teams - pretty good spread. Special shout-out to @Dutchrudder with picking only 1 and 2 seeds. If it goes pure chalk he's looking good!

Does that mean Surly is undefeated?

All entries are now in as of this post. We have 58 entries so far - come on people, I want some of @Wulaw Horn's filthy mortgage money, let's pump that to 100! Note: there are three teams that are on least half of all of the brackets submitted so far. There are also three teams that are on exactly one submitted bracket. Pickers of TCU, Duke, and Montana St - feel proud of yourselves for bucking the trend.

Because I am a giant dork and like playing with spreadsheets, I've made a public Google Sheets doc to simplify entry and result monitoring. I believe I have everyone's entry entered, at least as of this post, with two caveats: 1) I only am tracking by user name, so for those users who have submitted multiple brackets they are just listed under a single user name. If that user wins, up to them to allocate correctly. 2) I didn't bother tracking tie-breaker. In case that is relevant @Wulaw Horn or @Scipio can determine that by just looking at this thread. Here is a link to the document: Surly 2022 March Madness - Free Money Contest Right now the only fields that should be editable are the username and teams fields (columns B and C on the "Enter Picks Here" tab - please feel free to double-check that there was no error in entry. I had to clean the data some to make sure team names were consistent and it's always possible an error crept in. Also ignore the results that are already in - that was just for testing purposes, I'll clear that Thursday morning. At that point I'll also lock down the user entry fields. @Wulaw Horn can then easily post the top performing teams as well as teams with most potential points.

Submitting my entry: UCLA - 4 Iowa - 5 (tie breaker) Texas Tech - 3 Houston - 5 Tennessee - 3 Iowa St - 11 South Dakota St - 13 Arizona - 1 Also, like @Knoxtnhorn I'll be submitting another few brackets for my 8 kids, 3 moms, and a few stray cats in the neighborhood.

Or about being honest and accurately representing information.

@immamac - Granted nobody has ever accused me of being the smartest guy in the world but what is the point of being crowd-sourced if there is an explicit approval for simply re-registering? What purpose does it serve rather than simply having an increasing negative rep count? I get that permabans are not in place for merely shitty posting (thank the Lord!) but isn't it easier for the ignore list (which you are pushing) if there is no name change, since re-registering doesn't doesn't actually change posting?

Not sure if serious but I would not call Westbrook a bum during his OKC period. Hell if you want to talk about costing KD a title. I'd say Harden's awful finals performance was more detrimental than anything Westbrook did. KD certainly fell in Presti's lap but drafting Westbrook and Harden are not causes for insult IMO.

That's pretty amusing coming from you, considering your past arguments that people campaigning against CRT (when in fact what they are fighting against is not CRT) is ok, that CRT just means what people want it to mean.

I'm not sure this says what you think it does about what you respect.

Yeah a few headscratchers for sure. I can get Fresno since it's a college town, but Stockton, CA with 5% of homes over $1M? Seems a little odd to me.