Tywin et al.

Yeah, OKC are playing tight as fuck.

Oof, Lions be spending as much at the bar as they'll allow. Making Goff the second highest AAV QB is a bad idea.

Translated to Thibanese: Grind the starters to dust to get them ready for game 5.

Back to back years Detroit gets the fifth pick despite having the worst record. Yikes. Meanwhile, Pacers out here throwing haymakers.

Obviously relationship lol. I can't have sex with the car. Or can I? Wish I could remember the name of that ridiculous SNL/MadTV skit where you could buy a car you could do it with (and by extension also have sex with your neighbor's car).

There's the rub. I want the fast car, but as I mentioned before in the dating thread, she's horrified by some of the past racing stories I've told her and my antics in general. She's very much on team Accord lol.

I thought there was a thread dedicated to this, but it didn't come up in the search, so maybe we need a new one. Currently I'm debating between a newer safe Honda Accord or a little older Acura TL that's a monster. The latter is a good bit cheaper, but will probably need a lot of repairs over the next few years. The former looks nice, should be easy to resell in a few years, but is a bit boring to drive. Anyways, this should serve as a good space for advice and also be interesting to see what cars cost in different locations (and what's more desirable based on where you live). ¡Vamos!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/us/appeals-court-catholic-school-lonnie-billard/index.html

They've made that kind of agreement before and backed out of it as well. Also, Israel wants living people, Hamas has said an unspecified amount of those returned may be dead. So not exactly a real, full, release of hostages, which could have always shorted this conflict.

What have they actually agreed to that they'd be willing to do tomorrow if that meant a deal could reasonably be reached? I haven't seen much reporting that suggest they're really willing to enter the ballpark of Israel's demands. As far as talking in circles, it's pretty hard not to. Neither side has really offered anything substantial that could move the needle, so everything remains on the table.

Journalism, like claiming Jews got a heads up where attacks were going to happen on 9/11? Al Jazeera does not have the greatest record, but hey, maybe you think RT does some good journalism too. RT's coverage coverup of the atrocities at the WC and Olympics was pretty much in line with what AJ did for Qatar during the latest WC. Because journalism! They shouldn't do it, but they need to keep it on the table for negotiations. Problem is both sides want to play chicken and are happy dying instead of finding another path. I think that ship has sailed. I've said this entire time I doubt many more hostages will ever be returned alive (many are probably dead at this point). https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-says-33-hostages-to-be-freed-in-1st-phase-of-a-deal-not-all-necessarily-alive/ They can't even guarantee 33 living people.

This seems more true if it happened a few months ago. At this point I doubt there's a lot Israel can do to get much goodwill in the short term. Long term maybe, but that's with the assumption the fighting stops which we can guess probably won't happen even if there is a ceasefire for a few weeks. No, my position is Israel has no way to cleanly handle this situation, be it by force, international diplomatic bodies, internal political change or all of the above. Obviously Netanyahu needs to go, but that alone isn't going to change that much absent a giant political shift which in itself could be rather short lived. And again, this sidesteps the obvious fact that Israel can't be the only side expected to make serious concessions when they have the tactical advantage in the field. Hamas wants its cake and eat it too. That cannot be overlooked. Otherwise the wheel just keeps spinning.

The temporary ceasefire is pretty hallow. Some aid will get in, but Hamas seems pretty clear they're just going to use a lot of it to restock for more fighting down the road. There needs to be a real solution, not just a band-aid politicians can use to grandstand with while not actually doing very much.

I seriously doubt either side has a path to victory in the foreseeable future. They probably didn't before the war started and things are likely to get worse before they somewhat improve unless something drastic happens.

The overall rebounding gap wasn't that massive today. Offensive rebounding is a bit issue of an issue, but overall through three games OKC has actually snagged a few more boards. Their problem is more about scoring. Dallas has two elite scorers while OKC has one and he's the least experienced of the three. Chet's doing what he can, but the rest of the team needs to step up and if they do they can still make this a series.

I wouldn't be too worried about OKC if they lose a close game today. Dallas is so helter-skelter. They seem like a team that could beat anyone in a seven game series and also a team that could get swept by a lot of the other top teams as well. Gambling on them must be terrifying.

This simply isn't true and the article linked says as much. Sure, people in Israel are getting favorable coverage about what the government is doing and there's more sympathy for the victims of Oct 7th than for those in Gaza, but that's basically how every country would operate. That's a far cry from the people inside of Israel not knowing what's going on and not being able to protest it which happens all over the country daily.

It really shouldn't be that way though, especially with the leagues teaming up with gambling companies. The officiating has been bad for the last few years and it really needs to get cleaned up across sports. It's not loser BS to point out the refs were bad. The commentators were doing it all game on the feed I was watching. And I'm not saying anything close to what you said in your second sentence. Just that it's a known thing that league front offices want as many games as possible. They'll always want a 6 or 7 game series instead of a 4 or 5 game one. And everyone down the org chart knows this too.

I doubt the league office really cares that much who wins this series and my guess would be they'd probably prefer Minny given how they can sell Ant as the next great American player. That said, everyone knows, including the refs, that fewer games is bad for business.

And they'd be wrong. The first two games were called pretty evenly. I still think Denver wins tonight because the Wolves have missed too many open shots, but it's clear which team the zebras are backing tonight.

And just like that, another clear offensive foul and nothing which leads to an easy score. I bet most bigs could score at the rim if they were allowed to shove their defender away from them.

Not much you can do when the refs decide to officiate the game like this. Joker just committed three offensive fouls in about six seconds and nothing. He easily could have fouled out in the first quarter, but they're letting him slide on everything.

I'm surprised they're giving up on him so quickly.

Not sure there's much to tell really that you couldn't already guess. The chemistry was immediate. We both said we wanted to take it slow and that lasted for maybe 30-60 minutes. The next two weeks more or less went the same. Pretty sure I'm moving out there in the next few months assuming she agrees to relocate within a year or so (which she already said she would).

Sharks' bellies disagree.