A Horse Named Stranger

He's a known quantity. So they don't really need to look at how he does. He's been an elite Blitz-player since the 2.000 or early 2010s (there was more or less an argument to be made who was best Blitz player then, him or Grischuk). He was #2 on the rating list at some point with 2.800+. However even back then his fellow professionals didn't really rate him. When asked about Nakamura's chances to become WC, Kramnik (a bit dickish) response was something like this: sure, if all us retired. Ok, Kramnik actually retired and went off the deep end, but I think his assessment is still kinda valid.

Old thread was way past the 20 page mark. Anyway, was here to say, we have the official list for the Grand Prix.The wild cards went to: Daniil Dubov (Organizer) and Nakamura (FIDE). I must admit Nakamura's wildcard caught me by surprise. He hasn't played a tournament game since 2019 and has turned inactive on the Rating List. Apparently being an active and popular streamer is enough these days. Anyway full list of participants. Grigoriy OparinGrand Swiss (3rd)2681 Yu Yangyi Grand Swiss (4th)2713 Vincent KeymerGrand Swiss (5th)2664 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave Grand Swiss (6th)2761 Alexandr Predke Grand Swiss (7th)2682 Alexei Shirov Grand Swiss (8th)2704 Daniil Dubov Organizer's nominee2720 Hikaru Nakamura Presidential nominee2736 Ding Liren Rating list (3rd)2799 Levon Aronian Rating list (6th)2772 Anish Giri Rating list (7th)2772 Wesley So Rating list (8th)2772 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov Rating list (9th)2767 Alexander Grischuk Rating list (10th)2764 Richárd Rapport Rating list (11th)2763 Leinier Domínguez Rating list (15th)2752 Nikita Vitiugov Rating list (19th)2731 Wei YiRating list (21st)2729 Dmitry Andreikin Rating list (23rd)2724 Vladimir Fedoseev World Cup (4th)2704 Vidit Gujrathi World Cup (5th-8th)2727 Sam Shankland World Cup (5th-8th)2708 Amin Tabatabaei World Cup (5th-8th)2643 Étienne Bacrot World Cup (5th-8th)2642 Notable absentee: Anand

I'd take a guess here, and say that the NHL will need to play through the Olympics, if they want to finish their league on schedule.

I am genuinely unsure about that being true. The insane rural communites (depending on your definition of sanity) in the east is voting for the New Nazi Party. Why would the vote for the slightly more sane CDU? My gut feeling is, he wll be taking votes of the FDP. I won't shed a single tear, if they fall below 5% again. Nobody in their right mind will. Otherwise for whom is he gonna be appealing? He was a major cunt in the 1990s, and he hasn't changed much. If they find a time machine to take them back into the 1950s he could do alright I guess. Otherwise, best ignore him.

“Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometres away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, 'love' is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and strangely enough, not many meatbags would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose... against statistically long odds...” HK 47, KOTOR II Gamer Nostalgia.

So Lauterbach gives a statement which says, that he considers fine for the unvaxxinated to be inevitable. I don't have a twitter account, and never will, but I really couldn't resist looking on twitter for that Bußgelder für impfverweigerer trending thing, and to look for some delicious anti-vax tears. More, more give me MORE! My washing machine is powered by your outrage, and my clothes shall be washed in your tears (and washing powder obviously). MORE!

Toni Hofreiter probably disagrees about it being a plus. I am still not over the fact, that Özdemir (yes, Cem fucking Bonus Miles Özdemir) is getting a cabinet post over the way more qualified Hofreiter. Side note. Surprised Lauterbach got his Health Ministry afterall. Like I said, usually there're different regions wanting to be represented. Also Scholz promised that the cabinet would have at least 50% women in it. He failed on that note. Overall it's 8 women and 9 men (including Scholz) in the cabinet. The SPD ministries are equally distributed among the sexes. With the Greens have an odd number of ministries, so that's +1 for the women. The FDP was just not that much into equality. 3 men v. 1 woman, and she ofc got the least important one. Personally if I were an actual member of the Green party I would've voted down the coalition treaty as sufficient.

Looks like vaxx mandate is coming next year (Februrary is atm teh current reporting). Let's see how Linder's clown posse will vote on this issue. Semi-related note. Anybody seen Arakan lately? I mean he was our main (or only) defender of Wagenknecht and even tried to open a thread based on her nonsense book about the Hipster or Lifestyle left. The petty part of me is kinda curious how he feels about that true left Icon now going off the rails wrt vaccines, too. I mean her latest gig apears to be I say it out loud and I am unvaxxed and proud - or stupid, I always get those two state of minds mixed up.

Spon thinks the Green cabinet posts will be Habek (Economy + climate) Baerbock (Foreign) Lemke (Enviroment) Spiegel (Family) Özdemir (Farming) Hofreiter would lose out under this scenario. I have no idea, why Özdemir should be in charge of farming (or any other department). His expertise is foreign policy and defense. Foreign office is taken by Baerbock, and defense is in SPD hands.

She beat out Habeck for the candidacy. She is by all accounts a very well versed politicians, who is well versed in different areas of policies. She is just bad at selling policies and thus on the campaign trail, where she visibly felt uncomfortable - why she actually wanted candidacy, that's a question only she could answer. Anyway, she should be very well equipped for the foreign office (or any other position). Habeck is kinda the reverse. Details? Details are boring, he is more into the bigger picture and selling a vision/ideas. Personally I find him with his flowery language a bit tiresome, but that's my personal opinion. The 15% could've been much more. At least 1% was lost in that Saarland debacle, which had little to do with her. Otherwise a lot of non-issues got blown out of proportions - all part of the game, she wanted the job, that's part of the job. But there were a whole lot of unforced and thus avoidable errors on the campaign trail. I reiterate what I said in the old thread. That election was winnable. She did not run against Willy Brandt or Konrad Adenauer. She lost to Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet. Two distinctively uninspiring and weak candidates. I have very little doubt that Habeck would've delivered a better result.

Well, Habeck will be vice-chancellor, if the reports are to be believed. So that'd heavily point towards a shift inside the party, too. Yes, Baerbock has good connections within the party, but the botched campaign had cost her quite a bit of political capital. And yes, botched campaign is the dominant (and imo correct) reading.

Center of power had somewhat shifted after the election. At least that was my reading from the outside. Habeck appeared to have taken charge of things, while Baerbock appeared to be more sidelined. My reading might off, but that was very much the impression one got from looking at things from the outside. Anyway, there was also one nice win on the position front for the Greens. They get to pick the next German member of the EU commission. And that's not nothing.

It used to be a high profile post during the cold war era well into the 1990s. It's become increasingly irrelevant and less glamorous over the past eight years or so. Ministry of finances is the new Prestigious Office. You could see how the foreign office was a nice and important post during the cold war days. You travel around the world, sign treaties (basically bribe foreign goverments, but that's another story). But a lot of that outsourced to the EU nowadays. The cold war, where you do stuff in the name of freedumb is also over. I don't think the Greens actually fought that hard to get it. They wanted Finance, but didn't get it. I don't think the FDP really wanted that office either. But truth be told, at least that's one less office for Maas to mess up. Somehow I think he might end up with Defense. Hofreiter Enviroment makes sense. Göring-Eckardt family, also makes sense. I don't have a strong opinion on Lemke. With other parties there's traditionally also some sort of regional pissing contest involved in terms of representation - that's the reason Hubertus Heil and Maas suddenly ended up in cabinet positions; and why I think the SPD will inflict Heiko Maas upon us again (despite his awfulness). So somebody from the West (likesay NRW) might want to have a word about it. As for the SPD like I said, territorial pissing contest between the different state parties, on who gets a cabinet position. In a sane world Lauterbach should get the health ministry. Politics and sanity do not necessarily mix. Lauterbach is from NRW, so is Schulze. So that might be a problem. They need to give a post to somebody from the south and somebody from the east. I don't think Scholz counts as Eastern German, despite his residence being in Potsdam.

So we have a list of who gets what ministry. FDP finance SPD Chancellor (d'uh) Head of chancellory Homeland Defense Ministry for construction and lease (new one) Work and Social Health Economic cooperation (I assume that's the new name for foreign aid and development) Grüne Economics and Climate Foreign Office Family Farming Enviroment FDP Finances Justice Traffic (infrastructure/logistics) Education and Research Would've preferred to see finance in Green hands, alternatively they should've tried to get the traffic. In combination with Farming and Economics they would've had a hand on the key ministries to combat the climate crisis, and undo some of the idiocies left behind by those Bavarian oafs.

*sigh* Ideen des Merz statt den Iden des März. Yes, he will run. And I think as required by law some tune for that non-news.

How on earth did you get your pepper seeds to grow. Serious question. Thought those are cooled for transport, and thus the seeds become dead.

Yeah, but is 50% Eichel worth 100% of a 10m p.a. contract/cap hit?

Long term injury, and dispute between him and Sabres how to treat it. Remains to be seen, whether and hwo much he will play before the start of the play-offs.

Booze and birds.

Yeah, but hard to see how Quenneville was unaware of the situation. At best he turned a blind eye towards it. If Quenneville had pushed for the dismissal of the scout, it's hard to see the franchise picking the scout over their headcoach.

Didn't follow the story that closeley (not really headline news around this part of the world). But Bowman's (probably self serving) side of the story didn't make sound like he's the main culprit. I was in the job for 2 months, when I heard about it. I felt I wasn't long enough at the franchise at that moment to appropriately deal with it. So I passed it on to the board. They told me they'd take care of things. Of course, he obviously should've kept on the ball and asked for updates from his superiors, but Quenneville had been at the Hawks longer, and he had direct contact with the scout and the players. So he shouldn't get off easy on this one either.

I am more curious how on earth the enxt goverment is supposed to accomplish anything with the Lindner's Tax Taliban involved. Investments in infrastructure and climate policies are needed. But those fiscal fuckwits insist on not raising any taxes, and also not taking out any new loans to finance stuff. Oh, yeah, also there should be tax breaks for high income households. God I hate those motherfuckers so much. Who on earth votes for those useless twits, and thinks that Lindner would make competent (we are not talking good by stretch here) finance minister. It's quite frankly way beyond me, and the pale to be frank.

Well, the best news is, there are apparently just a handful of players, who refused to get vaccinated. Of course, that was probably in no small part down to Canadian health policies making life difficult for players on US teams, who would've lost quite a bit of their salary if they were inelligible due to their refusal to vaxxed.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, already one legal drug alcohol, something, something, gateway drug for youngsters. That's about it.

Tho, I think they meant it as in, a charimastic leader is all it takes for them to regain their strength. Deutsche Führerkomplex. Kinda funny that they turn to Austria again, historically speaking. Moving on from the tragic-comic relief south of the border. Our own right wing nutjobs have made news. Meuthen has thrown in the towel, and won't ne running for party chair of our beloved Neo-Nazi party. One of his predecessors, Petry, has been convicted of fraud. And the Police Union is whining about the parties involved in the coalition talks contemplating the legalization of cannabis.