alphahydro

almost forgot. my kids really liked the ziplining at that age, and me and my 12 yo daughter went into the hindu monastery and it was really awesome.

my personal opinion - i wouldn't go looking for good dining experiences in kauai. haven't been there in a few years, but feel like i tried all the high rated places and none of it was memorable, most of it a let down. most memorable food experience is grabbing groceries at living foods in poipu. stuff like a box of cereal was comically expensive. i def think of kauai as a pizza/shave ice/acai bowl destination with 10/12 year olds. ymmv speaking of kids keeping up with the hikes, took my kids here when they were about 12/13 and it's chill at first but gets super dicey. we turned back after a bit. they were fine to keep going, but i didn't trust them to not slip. views are insane tho. my kids at ~11/12 really liked sleeping giant, Kuilau Ridge, teh botanical gardens/chocolate tasting tour, and kipu ranch adventures. jack harter heli tour was a bit much for my 11 yo, fine for my 12 yo. just fyi.

anyway, just my thoughts - each of us have some insight into the dynamics of a sliver of the electorate. but it's hard to say which slice is going to be the deciding factor in 2024. if we knew today which demographic was going to be key in 2024 - and if we could parse the EV data by demographic, we could prolly draw some better conclusions. for me, if i had to guess, in my county, trump's numbers will be lower than they were in 2020 due to drop in enthusiasm among college educated whites increase in enthusiasm among women aging out of former elderly trump supporters and each of these trends are only important on the margins. if i could parse the EV data for my county by these demographics, i could prolly test my guess a bit. but i have no idea what's going on in the important swing counties. might come down to enthusiasm among evangelicals - which i have no insight into. reminds me of 2016. Jake Sullivan, who grew up in Minn., then a young upstart in Hillary's close circle, was begging Hillary to campaign in the upper midwest. He was def telling friends that she was gonna lose the election because the polling was wrong in teh upper midwest. everyone else in her inner circle thought he was wrong. RIP. he had some insight into the dynamics there that the other people in her close circle didn't, despite having tons of data and experience, etc. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/2016-presidential-election-10-moments-trump-clinton-214508/

fascinating stuff. obviously super anecdotal, but I voted by mail/early for the first time this year. only reason - waiting in line in 2020 was kind of a pain in the ass. i was probably more "enthusiastic" to vote in 2020 - willing to wait in line to make sure my vote wasn't lost in the mail (even though I live in a non-swing state). anyway, point is - very hard to read into early voting numbers. if everyone was like me, a surge in early voting numbers would actually signal a drop in enthusiasm. and, i think, for some demographics, that might be the case. and in other demographics, a surge in early voting signals the opposite. bottom line for me is we def don't know shit about fuck. my gut feeling/intuition about the election is almost certainly wrong. i'm surrounded by lots of white, college educated trump 2020 voters, and I can tell you that the enthusiasm among them has dropped considerably. but will that be a prominent factor in this election? idk.

yeah, i think the exact protocol for applying the rules isn't clear (the rules, as stated, are open to a couple different interpretations), so you have to go study the examples they post (which i haven't done, lol). i suspect the SEC's examples don't cover every single scenario. could be hilarious if GA steamrolls to top 2/3 finish 3 or 4 way tie that is not addressed explicitly in the examples GA gets left out if you apply the rules one way but not another. there was similar weirdness with the Big XII tiebreaker rules. IIRC, last season someone in the media was applying the rules in a way that made no sense if you studied them, but it turned out not to matter.

Maybe someone can read the regulations in more detail, but assuming there is a 4-way 7-1 tie, it seems to me the LSU/A&M or Texas/GA championship game depends on how you apply the tiebreaker rules in teh event of a multiple team tie. You have tiebreaker rules 1- 6 (quoted below). Method 1 - in case of a multiple team tie, you can only apply a tiebreaker rule if it resolves the tie across all tied teams. Method 2 - in case of a multiple team tie, if a higher-ordered rule resolves a tie between two teams, that rule will sort the two teams in question. Method 1 - Rules 1, 2, and 3 don't resolve the tie across all four tied teams, so you go to tiebreaker 4 and apply it to all 4 tied teams at once. LSU and A&M go to Conf. Championship. Method 2 - GA cannot be below Texas, and Texas cannot be below A&M due to rule 1. Texas cannot be below LSU due to rule 3. Therefore, you do not need to apply rule 4. The word "among" here is probably ambiguous w/r/t whether Method 1 or 2 is correct, but the regs might clear it up. I suspect Method 1 is what the SEC has in mind, but it leads to weird results. Imagine Texas, GA, and LSU have 1 loss. Imagine GA crushes rest of season and TX and LSU limp to close wins. Further imagine GA opps have the worst record by a small margin. GA beats Texas soundly at home and sits out. LSU's loss is a big loss against a team Texas beat, but they also go in ahead of GA. Anyway, my "math" could be wrong here, but you get my point.

nvm.

Gabriel, hold your horn a bit while we make these dirt burglars eat shit

hoping this one makes in on the broadcast smokey fires! now meth stained teeth drenched in salty mix of tears and semen

makes sense. small island. crazy tho.

definitely recommended.

yeah, they were trying to check out ice caves, which is pretty stupid. it's too early to walk through ice caves; that's something for later in the winter. i guess the tour operator that put that together was kinda rogue, and a lot of locals were shocked that someone would take tourists to ice caves in august. idk, but dumb and dangerous. we did a lava show in a town called vik. (the lava show company built some kinda super furnace that heats up volcanic rocks to their melting point, creating lava; during the show, they release a stream of lava into a room for tourists). they also give an interesting presentation about volcanos. apparently, there is a huge volcano topped by a glacier just up the road, and the town of vik sits in the valley below. every time the volcano goes off, it melts the glacier and the area suffers biblical floods, which basically destroy the town. the volcano is 50 years overdue for an eruption. Everyone who lives there has detailed evacuation plans for the next time the volcano erupts. I was like, damn, why do you guys live here? Icelandic ppl just built different, I guess.

Thanks! Just looking at the photos again made me daydream about going back already. have a good one.

Just got back from ~ a week in Iceland. rented a car and drove to Hofn and back, stopping basically at whatever spots had high ratings on google maps. I didn't really have the highest expectations for Iceland--it was supposed to be a just-in-case-we-had-flight-issues buffer for a trip to Greenland. but it was amazing. Photos don't do any of the locations justice. we went in late August, just rented a car and booked hotels and Airbnbs close to the main sights, so we could visit them before or after the tourbuses. we had pretty much all the popular locations to ourselves. HIGHLY recommend this approach. recommend sky lagoon on the way in our out to relax before or after the flight. also, if you are tempted to skip Gljufrabui or Kvernufoss, don't. Food we tried was just OK along the southern coast of Iceland, but had a surprisingly nice dinner at fosshotel glacier lagoon. If I had more time, I would have checked out the highlands and the NW.

thanks. you're too kind. I have to say, I'm not a huge outdoorsy/camping/national parks guy, but I thought Yellowstone was amazing. made me want to visit all the other top parks in the west and then revisit Yellowstone in 4-5 years. And we skirted the southern coast of Iceland for the first half of this trip (which was fantastic) - but even as awesome as iceland was just one week earlier, I was still blown away by Yellowstone. just realized most of my fav pics from the trip have my kids in them, so the one I already posted is def the best, but here are a few more. cheers. added some Teton pics. we flew into Bozeman, hit Yellowstone, then Tetons, then Jackson, and flew out of Jackson hole. worked really well for us. test shot with 8 or 9 shooting stars. tetons old faithful during the day grand prismatic son taking photos Starry night at Roosevelt Lodge wolf cub - super far away