I also saw a kid in the judging line with this project, which I thought was so cool that I had to snap a picture; yes, that is in fact a Famicom made out of Legos! Once again, click for a larger version:
WuFlu Redux
Like clockwork, the Establishment wants unlimited mail-in ballots again-- so of course they are trying to resuscitate the WuFlu, coincidentally just in time for another election year. The rumors of an imminent revival of medical totalitarianism, as chronicled here, started with Alex Jones as so many things do. And naturally, he was correct once again as leaks from other alphabet soup agencies, universities, and elsewhere began to emerge over the following couple of days.
As before, I will one hundred percent refuse to comply: I didn't put on a Wuflu Burqa even once during the first scamdemic, and I won't do it this time either. And this time I live in a community where most people will also not obey! I won't be isolated again. After all, the Wuflu was part of the reason I fled Murderapolis in the first place: my reasoning was that if those urban city dwellers could be so easily snookered once, what was to stop them from going full retard again?
Remember: a critical mass of them wanted me to lose my job, my children, my bank account, be forbidden from leaving my home, be forcefully injected with an experimental cocktail against my wishes, while some of them even proposed I should be forcefully taken from my home at gun-point and be held in a barbed-wire FEMA camp. To say I don't trust people from the Twin Cities, or modern Democrats-at-large, is an understatement, and there isn't a day which goes by where I'm not relieved to have put some meaningful distance between myself and them.
The only thing which could pose somewhat of a dilemma for me where I reside now is if the Bishop of my diocese decides to put in a face diaper mandate for Mass, like his predecessor did. He was at my parish this past weekend and gave the homily: oh dear, how he admired the great Pope Francis! And climate change is such a huge threat, oh dear! His demeanor was also as artificial as a three dollar bill. During the last mandate, my parish's priest was a hero and refused to enforce it: "Jesus never would have turned anyone away." But he has since retired, and I have no clue regarding the stance of the new priest.
But if this worst-case scenario did emerge, I'd simply stop going to Mass. And it wouldn't just be me: they'd lose half the parish, and be forced to renege. As a Catholic, I take my weekly obligation very seriously-- but I obviously also believe that non-Catholic Christians, who of course don't go to Catholic Mass, go to heaven! Hopefully things won't come to that, but if they do I have already made up my mind on how to resolve the uncomfortable conflict. God knows what is in my heart.
Lazio at the Weekend
A couple of things struck me. First, big thumbs up for Daichi Kamada: being a brand new player for us, I watched every single off-the-ball movement and on-the-ball touch he had the whole time he was on the pitch, and I think my hypothesis about him from my previous post is going to be absolutely true.
Kamada is not in top physical condition at the moment: he clearly wasn't playing full-speed, and was taken off around the 52nd minute mark. But other than missing a trademark "Sarriball layoff" in the opening thirty seconds and playing a poor airborne pass at one juncture, he hardly put a foot wrong. In the flow of the game, he was making all of the right "mezzala" movements: he made himself available for lateral and backwards passes at just the right moments, and then would spring forward and find gaps in more advanced areas. More impressively, he repeatedly made darting runs into the area, in a way that reminded me a lot of Marco Parolo or, more recently, Milinkovic-Savic.
So far, so good with Kamada! Isaksen was more of a mixed bag: he seemed to grasp defensive duty, and was-- annoyingly for the Lecce defense, I'm sure-- constantly making himself available off the last man for balls aimed near the corner flag. But the couple of times he was sprung, he made rather a meal of it trying to dribble his opponent, or play a meaningful ball into the area. Maybe he was just nervous and trying too hard, which would be perfectly understandable. Personally, I would have rather had Jesper Karlsson, who I now read is perhaps going to Bologna-- but Isaksen is a few years younger, and arguably has a higher ceiling if he can develop. We'll see.
My final observation is that every time something goes wrong this season, such as this opening-day loss, the lazy-ass punditry is going to blame it on Sergej having left-- they are already doing this, in spite of the fact the equivalent match last season played out almost identically, with Sergej! Beyond that, Sergej wasn't some kind of irreplaceable football god: in fact, the recurring and demonstrably justifiable criticism of him was how inconsistent he was not just across the course of a season, but how he would totally disappear for long stretches within individual matches!
I'm not saying that Sergej leaving isn't a loss-- but lazy "journalists" are going to use him as an automatic thesis generator the entire season, for anything that befalls us, and it's going to get really old.
Assorted Items
Here is Mish Shedlock with a superb break-down of the issues with "EeeVees"-- and they are legion. I quite enjoyed this take-down of "Linus Tech Tips"; I've never been able to stand that guy's soy-infused breath and cuckface thumbnails, and his employees all look like they have mange-- I wouldn't trust them with mowing my lawn, much less providing me with benchmark results. Here is yet another proof that in the Establishment's dictionary, the word "Democracy" doesn't mean what it does to the plebes. Finally, I saw that Microsoft instituted a points-based punishment system for "Xbox Live", and on their scale saying the definition of the word "woman" is punishable by three times more points than cheating.