It's my wife's birthday this weekend so we're going out with a bunch of friends. This is extra special because we scored a babysitter for our one-year-old, and we haven't really been out together much since he's been born. We're gonna go hard.

That, and Helldivers II, if the servers will let me in.

...though sources say that even before Majors’ conviction, the studio was making moves to minimize the character after Quantumania underperformed, grossing $476 million

Jonathan Majors-related stuff aside, this sentence makes me shake my head.

Why does it seem like Hollywood always takes the wrong lesson from box office results? Quantumania isn't well received, and instead of assuming it's because of the bad script or bad story or rushed CGI, their impulse is to retool their entire franchise to minimize a character? Especially a character who people were generally into (at that time, at least...again, Majors stuff aside).

People disliked Quantamania not because of Kang, people disliked it because it wasn't a good movie. Maybe if you tie good stories and good filmmaking to your multi-billion dollar franchise and stop plopping out half thought out turds, then people will go see your movie.

I wish they had left the head football coach's name blank, that way they could just keep giving it to each new hire and the joke could continue.

The buyout will get all the headlines here, understandably so because of how big it is. But the payout is structured as x% over a certain number of years (I'm too lazy to google it right now), so it really shouldn't have too much of an impact overall. A&M's boosters have famously deep pockets.

My postmortem take is that while it's earlier than I expected, it feels like the right call. A&M paid a ton of money for essentially no improvement over our previous coach (Jimbo's SEC record was 56%, Kevin Sumlin's SEC record was 52%). Too many times I was watching games this season and I had to remind myself that this was Year 6 in Jimbo's tenure, not Year 1 or 2...every season feels like a rebuilding season, every game feels like we're playing for the moral victory, and the mantra always feels like we're waiting for next year. Those that follow the A&M program know this is the same old story it's always been, and Jimbo was hired specifically to change that and he hasn't. Sure we've had bad luck with injuries and other teams in our division are good, but at some point those excuses have to start going away if you want to be a good football program.

We've got some really talented players that I'm sure are disappointed and frustrated right now. It will be interesting to see how many of them light up the transfer portal and how many stick it out. Either way, we're probably stuck in rebuilding seasons again for the foreseeable future.

These are usually clever, but this one absolutely nails it.

Paying them with an education is a good start, but it's a pittance compared to the amount of money they are bringing in for other people. Arguing that their education is the only compensation they should be getting is akin to saying "we don't need to pay the staff at our restaurant because we give them a free lunch during their shift."

I don't know what the answer is, but continuing to just offer them a scholarship while the adults in charge make money off their labor definitely isn't it.

My poll this week. Computer poll, resume-based, so your name don't matter, your "advanced stats" don't matter, only thing that matters is who you beat and who they beat:

1. Oklahoma Sooners (LW: 1)
2. Florida State Seminoles (LW: 5)
3. Washington Huskies (LW: 6)
4. North Carolina Tar Heels (LW: 9)
5. Texas Longhorns (LW: 4)
6. Michigan Wolverines (LW: 8)
7. Ohio State Buckeyes (LW: 2)
8. Penn State Nittany Lions (LW: 3)
9. James Madison Dukes (LW: 18)
10. Iowa Hawkeyes (LW: 23)
11. Alabama Crimson Tide (LW: 7)
12. Ole Miss Rebels (LW: 19)
13. Liberty Flames (LW: 22)
14. Air Force Falcons (LW: NR)
15. Oregon State Beavers (LW: NR)
16. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (LW: NR)
17. Utah Utes (LW: 15)
18. Georgia Bulldogs (LW: 11)
19. Missouri Tigers (LW: NR)
20. Louisville Cardinals (LW: 10)
21. Duke Blue Devils (LW: NR)
22. LSU Tigers (LW: 24)
23. Wisconsin Badgers (LW: 13)
24. USC Trojans (LW: 17)
25. Oregon Ducks (LW: 12)

I think the rule is worded really badly in a way that makes it more confusing that it needs to be.

As for the rule itself, my table usually hand waves it and lets you cast whatever you want with your bonus action and action, provided you have the slots to do it. We haven't had any issues with that feeling game breaking for us yet.

Which rules about bonus action spells are you referring to?

I've been running a ranking formula for a few years, but this is my first season voting in a poll. I admit this week before voting I tweaked the results because I felt they were too weird. But then the poll comes out and my formula results line up fairly close(ish) with the poll results.

All that to say, I'll be trusting my formula more moving forward.

Also, regarding UGA and USC: my formula is strongly resume based, so they don't get ranked higher until they stop playin' nobody, pawwwl.

I feel like every week we hear about some huge breakthrough that is supposed to revolutionize clean drinking water technology and save the world, but nothing ever comes of it.

I know this stuff takes time to develop, and not every idea is going to work, but it would be nice if one of these things actually did pan out and start being useful to solve our drinking water issues.

This is 3 seasons in a row we've lost our starting QB early on the season...2021 Haynes King in game 2, 2022 Max Johnson in game 5, now now Connor in game 4.

At least Max came out ready to play against Auburn. Hopefully that keeps up.