Quotulatiousness

August 20, 2019

Vikings beat Seattle 25-19 in second preseason game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Vikings’ preseason home opener went well enough, although neither team’s starters were able to score a touchdown during their respective series before the backups and long-shot hopefuls took the field. Vikings presumptive backup quarterback Sean Mannion had one of his passes picked off and run back for a defensive score, but other than that the Vikings quarterbacks did well. Recently acquired punter/kicker Kaare Vedvik did well in both punting (averaging 46 yards) and kicking (one made extra point and kickoffs). Embattled cornerback Holton Hill — who already faces an eight-game suspension — may have flushed his chances of sticking with the team after a couple of penalties culminating in an ejection from the game after a nasty helmet-to-helmet tackle of Seattle backup quarterback Paxton Lynch.

A view of the Minnesota Vikings’ new home stadium by “www78”
“Viking Stadium” by www78 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

As usual, Ted Glover posted his impressions of the game at the Daily Norseman fan site:

Buy: Duke Thomas strip. Thomas has had a rough camp and first preseason game, and he really needed to make a play. He did, forcing a fumble after a completed pass.

Sell: Duke Thomas premature celebration after the strip. But he celebrated a bit too early, and the Seahawks ended up recovering the football. Granted, he wasn’t really in position to jump on the ball, as momentum from the strip kind of moved him away from where the ball was bouncing. Still not a good look, though.

Buy: First team offensive line pass protection, kind of. There were a couple breakdowns, most notably when Kirk Cousins had to bail out of the pocket and throw the ball away just so he wasn’t murdered. But overall, Cousins had time to set up and make throws, and made some nice plays.

Sell: First team offensive line run blocking, kind of. Like last week, the first team offensive line had trouble opening holes for Mattison. I thought he had a little more room to run, but it wasn’t consistent, and the best run Mattison had with the first team unit was only five yards.

Buy: Sean Mannion-led TD drive at the end of the first half. After a pick six that gave Seattle the lead midway through the second quarter, the Vikings got the ball back with just under two minutes, down 10-3. Mannion led the offense 63 yards on seven plays, and it was capped by his three yard pass to Irv Smith for the game-tying score. I know it’s only preseason, but last year the Vikings just seemed to pack it in when a play went against them last year. I know the two aren’t related, but it was still nice to see.

Sell: Mannion pick-six. But Mannion’s interception was brutal. It looked like there was a miscommunication between him and Chad Beebe, so it could have been a wrong route that was run, but the ball should have never been thrown. Just a bad sequence all the way around,

Buy: Mike Boone is RB3. Mike Boone and Ameer Abdullah were locked in a pretty pitched battle for RB3, but it feels that after two preseason games, Boone has taken the lead. Abdullah didn’t play against Seattle, and Boone made the most of the opportunity. He had over 20 carries, and one reception for 45 yards. He’s looked very good so far this year, and is earning the RB3 spot.

Sell: Kyle Sloter is QB3. Sloter needs a serious look at QB2. He just plays football very well when the lights come on, and if nothing else, has earned a look with the rest of the second team.

Buy: Brandon Zylstra and Laquon Treadwell both flashed. Both Zylstra and Treadwell had good games. Zylstra had five catches, and Treadwell took over in the fourth quarter. Zylstra finished with five catches, 37 yards, and a touchdown. Treadwell had four catches for 47 yards, and led the team in receiving yards. And based on that alone, you would think there was a pitched battle for WR4 right now.

Sell: The Laquon Treadwell bandwagon. But if you thought Treadwell was making a final push to secure roster spot, you would be wrong, gentle reader. NAY! So, what was going on? Per Mike Zimmer, the team was showcasing Treadwell for other teams. I don’t know how you need any more clarity on that situation; Laquon Treadwell is as good as gone.

The Founding of Mexico – Aztec Myths – Extra Mythology

Filed under: Americas, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 19 Aug 2019

Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon

Huitzilopochtli, god of bloody victory, had promised the Mexica people a city. Before they would eventually settle down at Tenochtitlan, they wandered from place to place, inadvertently causing destruction on the orders of the violent god.

From the comments:

Extra Credits
2 days ago
A procession leads a woman up the steps of a great pyramid. The woman is to be the queen of the Mexica, a new tribe of migrants that have come from a faraway place. However, no wedding will take place. The Mexica’s patron god, Huitzilopochtli, has other intentions.

Jonathan Kay listened to the whole SNC-Lavalin report so you don’t have to…

Update: Apparently the Thread Reader App only picked up the first couple of entries (it worked fine when I queued it up for publication yesterday). Here’s the text version:

I just listened to the entire ethics commissioner’s report on the SNC-Lavalin scandal while driving back from Maine. I loaded up the text in my VoiceAloud app, hit play, and the audio kept me going for 3 hours, all the way into central New York State, along the I-90….

As with any narrative, you begin to identify with certain characters. In my case, it was @Puglaas. I found it especially maddening the way everyone around her kept babbling about finding a “solution,” which was their settled euphemism for bullying her into helping SNC…

The level of condescension exhibited by everyone in and around the PMO toward @Puglaas was breathtaking. These Liberal dudes always kept pretending that they just wanted to make sure she had enough “information,” as if she were a law student, not the AG of a G7 nation …

At the same time, it was breathtaking the way SNC Lavalin was essentially able to turn the entire PMO, and major ministries, into its personal lobbying operation. Texts, emails, calls, in-person visits… it was like SNC-Lavalin had Trudeau’s PMO on retainer, like a law firm ….

I hadn’t realized SNC was able to mobilize, or attempted to mobilize, not one, not two, but THREE former SC of Canada justices on its behalf. This is the sort of blurring between corporate & govt operations that u expect in banana republics (or in the Irvings’ New Brunswick)…

The fact trudeau & those around him still pretend this is about “jobs” is…I don’t even know the word for it. The ethics comm essentially called it a lie. This was about partisan politics. How can JT say he “accepts” the report without coming to terms with this core finding?

When this scandal & election is done, we need an inquiry that gets to the bottom of the larger issue here: how a single quebec corp, one heavily impugned by its own action, was able to essential create legislation to help itself, got trudeau to ram it thru on a budget omnibus…

And then spent weeks pulling every lever in ottawa to try to override our constitutional system of govt so they could get off the hook for alleged crimes, culminating in the actual reconstitution of cabinet. SNC turned our govt into a joke. And trudeau still sez it’s about “jobs”

If yr attitude is that u dont want to educate yourself about this scandal, bcuz the only thing that matters is hating @AndrewScheer (an attitude some ppl have candidly expressed) pls reconsider. Even if u vote Liberal, the scandal exposed problems in our system that need fixing

Conservative governments have no doubt been equally solicitous to big well-connected firms. Leftists *especially*, the same ones dismissing this scandal bcuz it interferes with their elxn narrative, should be horrified that corporations are treating @Bill_Morneau & PMO as puppets

The fact that all of these Libs can bleat “jobz jobz jobz” with a straight face isnt just a symptom of the amoral cynicism of politics (tho it is that). It reflect the fact that we canadians expect that big corps will get coddled like this. We need to end it

If youre @AndrewScheer or @theJagmeetSingh, it’s fine to rake the Libs over the coals for lying to us. But all politicians lie. Tell us how you’d fix the system structurally to ensure that the PMO isn’t acting as a pro bono hanger-on to a major corporation

And if you’re a progressive activist of a certain age, go back & look at all the things @NaomiAKlein @Sheila_Copps Judie Rebick etc warned us about during the free trade battles…corporations dictating terms to elected govts. Well, guess what ? That’s what’s on display here…

In fact, one of the most tragicomic subplots here is the Libs running around in full panic bcuz SNC was about to have a board meeting the next day… Yes, that’s right: Trudeau’s PMO prioritized important legal decisions on the basis of some company’s board meeting.
Because Jobz.

What’s more, the full-court press on @Puglaas in the shadow of these meetings was itself based on another lie: Libs knew SNC HQ couldnt abandon quebec (till 2024) bcuz of representations made to Caisse in regard to purchase of a UK sub. Bullshit layered on bullshit
#BecauseJobz

I keep coming back to @Puglaas, & how she must have felt. How many cdns have been in a job where yr boss & his minions tried to pressure u to find an unethical “solution,” to help the boss keep his own job? then when u did what was right, u get turfed 4 not being a “team player”

This isnt just about Trudeau. One galling episode described is a meeting in which @Bill_Morneau pontificates to @Puglaas about how she doesnt have enuf “information” about econ effects of possible SNC crim conviction. @Puglaas asks Morneau if he’s done a study on it. Answer: no.

We talk a lot about toxic workplaces for women. hard not to see how the dudes who Trudeau assigned to push @Puglaas around on this file aren’t guilty of this. Their strategy was to make her feel ignorant bcuz she did the right thing. The PMO gaslit their own justice minister

There are several female Liberal MPs whom I have come to know and respect, such as @juliedabrusin @cafreeland @JulieDzerowicz. It is mortifying to watch them being forced to line up in defence of this.

As for SNC itself, I don’t really blame it for doing what it did. If u were running a company and knew you could dictate terms to a govt, why not? The lesson to other CEOs would be that if youre accused of a crime, just threaten to lay ppl off and move your HQ. Problem solved.

final note…u can see y the Libs are going hard with demagoguery about @AndrewScheer being white supremacist-adjacent. A traditional leftist claim was that Tories would sell out to corporate interests. That’s a hard claim for Libs to make now. bcuz the Libs have already done it

It’s been a day since I wrote this thread, & some commenters are saying the SNC scandal shows Trudeau & the Libs are unscrupulous people. But I dont think that’s it. I have met some of these protagonists, and have found them to be *more* public-minded than the average citizen…

As noted in a response to @staceylnewman, the problem is that politics changes ppl. There’s a chilling quote in the report, from a meeting, where a Lib says to @Puglaas (paraphrasing here) “It doesn’t matter how great our policies are. We need to get re-elected to implement them”

To me, that sums everything up: The means justifies the ends, bcuz the ends (the “good” side wins power, & the “bad” side loses) are taken to have existential importance. That’s the myth that leads all politicians astray. If JT just admitted this, I bet many would forgive him

Mini Workbench (Extendable) – Scrapwood Challenge Ep18

Filed under: Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Pask Makes
Published on 17 Nov 2018

Plans for my Mini Workbench are now available here http://paskmakes.com/plans/

I’ve wanted to build a Mini Workbench for a long time and now I finally got around to it. Another project, hopefully in the near future is an outdoor workbench that will have no vices. That’s the reason I’ve built this Mini Extendable Workbench. I’ll be able to clamp it onto the outdoor bench and have lots of clamping options with the vice and dogs!

I didn’t go into too much detail with the vice build as I’ve already covered that in previous videos.

As always I’m happy to answer any questions.

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QotD: Autobiography

Filed under: Books, Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. However, even the most flagrantly dishonest book (Frank Harris‘s autobiographical writings are an example) can without intending it give a true picture of its author. Dali’s recently published [The Secret Life of Salvador Dali] comes under this heading. Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticised, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent ordinariness of everyday life has been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight. But as a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.

George Orwell, “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali”, Saturday Book for 1944, 1944.

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