demanded Monday that social media app TikTok produce materials as part of an investigation into its effect on young users’ mental health.
“We know that social media is taking a devastating toll on young people’s mental health and well-being, and through our investigation we are getting a clearer sense of TikTok’s role,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. https://www.voanews.com/a/attorneys-general-in-45-us-states-demand-tiktok-hand-over-information/6992870.html
Making sense of the link between diet and mental health requires new ways of thinking about nutrition. It involves the integration of gastroenterology, microbiology, immunology, neurology and psychology. It took years of PubMed searches to clarify, combine and distill these disparate lines of research into a working, evidence-based model that explains not only how food influences mood, but more importantly, a host of increasingly prevalent health issues. https://healthydebate.ca/2023/03/topic/food-mental-health/
The social media giant's lawyers appeared before the court this morning to argue it was not responsible for the impact of the Cambridge Analytica scandal on its Australian users.
Australia's privacy watchdog is seeking to prosecute Facebook for providing allegedly unlawful access to the personal data of almost 90 milllion Facebook users worldwide — including some Australians — almost a decade ago.
In 2014, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica helped develop software that went on to collect data from Facebook users without their knowledge or consent. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-07/high-court-dumps-facebooks-cambridge-analytica-challenge/102062516
According to the study’s results, the cheapest rates include buying direct traffic to a website, getting “likes” on Instagram or getting views on multimedia platforms. For example, 1000 “likes” on Instagram cost 1.3 euros, while 2 euros can get 1000 views on YouTube or 1000 plays on Spotify. Interestingly, several services are offered for free so customers can check their quality and thus be convinced to invest in different ones. This way, for less than 9 cents you can get 1000 views on TikTok, SoundCloud or Instagram/IGTV. Buying Instagram followers is more expensive: for 4.3 euros you can get 1000. And then there are other more expensive services because they involve some personalisation, such as reviews on Google or TripAdvisor, which range at around 1 euro per text.
As Narseo Vallina-Rodríguez, associate research lecturer at IMDEA Networks and another of the work’s authors, says, “potential consumers of this type of service can be anyone depending on the type of review: from influencers who want to promote their channels on social media to brands trying to promote the visibility of their products”. https://www.uc3m.es/ss/Satellite/UC3MInstitucional/en/Detalle/Comunicacion_C/1371353770494/1371215537949/A_study_analyses_fake_interaction_services_on_social_media
With more than 4.6 billion users worldwide, social media poses a promising opportunity to listen to patients’ voices directly and in real-time. While pharmaceutical companies have typically relied on gathering patient feedback in controlled settings, social media allows the capture of unfiltered, first-hand data about the patient experience in large volumes. https://www.labiotech.eu/opinion/pharma-social-media-drug-development/
today announced that it has joined LOT Network, the international, non-profit community of companies working together to protect themselves against litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs, also known as “patent trolls”). MyMD’s joining the LOT (License on Transfer) Network’s community of 2,800+ companies is intended to enable MyMD to protect the interests of the Company against patent assertion entities. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230308005213/en
Humans still have adaptations from prehistoric times that affect how we respond to food stimuli in modern times.
Johnson believes that initially this process was “reversible and meant to be beneficial,” but chronic and persistent fructose consumption “leads to progressive brain atrophy and neuron loss with all of the features of AD https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/sugar-in-processed-foods-and-drinks-linked-to-dementia-experts-explain-possible-reasons_5098104.html
and his team, investigated how plants are able to acquire long-lasting immunity against these stressors.
The findings, published in Nature Plants, explain a mechanism of how plants ‘remember’ the stress from a previous attack, and that this long-term memory is encoded in a family of 'junk DNA’ that can prime defence genes for several weeks against further attacks.
Dr Ton, a Professor of Plant Environmental Signalling from the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences and senior author of the study said the findings offer new opportunities to control plant immunity for sustainable crop protection, and reduce our reliance on damaging pesticides for food production. https://www.newswise.com/articles/stress-memory-in-plants-could-hold-key-to-growing-disease-resistant-crops
The NIH is currently in a bitter patent dispute with Moderna after the company purposefully excluded three NIAID researchers from the principal patent for the vaccine.
Bancel's comments are sure to rile critics. And they come just two weeks ahead of a Congressional hearing by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on the proposed price hike for the vaccine. The hearing, scheduled for March 22, is titled "Taxpayers Paid Billions For It: So Why Would Moderna Consider Quadrupling the Price of the COVID Vaccine?" Bancel has agreed to testify. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/moderna-ceo-says-private-investors-funded-covid-vaccine-not-billions-from-govt/
Results also showed the PFAS were capable of migrating from the fluorinated containers into food, resulting in a direct route of significant exposure to the hazardous chemicals, which have been linked to several health issues including prostate, kidney and testicular cancers, low birth weight, immunotoxicity and thyroid disease.
"Not only did we measure significant concentrations of PFAS in these containers, we can estimate the PFAS that were leaching off creating a direct path of exposure," said Graham Peaslee, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Notre Dame and an author of the study.
It's important to note that these types of containers are not intended for food storage, but there is nothing preventing them from being used for food storage at the moment. Although not all HDPE plastic is fluorinated, the researchers noted, it's often impossible for a consumer to know whether a container has had that treatment. And indeed, Peaslee added, if substances like pesticides are stored in these containers, and then are used on agricultural crops, these same PFAS will get into human food sources that way. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230307114431.htm
Walgreens won’t sell abortion pills in some states where they’re legal
Since the announcement, there have been widespread calls from activists and critics to boycott Walgreens and its roughly 9,000 retail stores across the United States. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said on Monday that the state will not do business with Walgreens or any company that “cowers to the extremists and puts women’s lives at risk.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/03/07/walgreens-abortion-pills-birth-control-history/
consumption changes, and restrictions on numerous aspects, most civilians complied. All civilians’ contributions to the war effort: men and women, old and young, played a massive role in the nation winning the war https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/4-ways-civilians-contributed-to-the-war-effort-during-world-war-ii/
Black Holes Will Eventually Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue
By Thomas Lewton
March 7, 2023
New calculations suggest that the event horizons around black holes will ‘decohere’ quantum possibilities — even those that are far away. https://www.quantamagazine.org/black-holes-will-destroy-all-quantum-states-researchers-argue-20230307/
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In an article for MIT Technology Review, Lisa-Maria Neudert, doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a researcher with the Computational Propaganda Project, suggests that the increasing sophistication of bot accounts – automated, AI-powered feeds masquerading as real people – means that worse is still to come.
It’s a straightforward process for nation states and political campaigns to build an army of bot accounts that will amplify certain viewpoints online.
And it’s not just about repetitively posting fake news or extremist opinions. It can be more subtle than that: sharing and Liking content from genuine accounts, adding to the pool of interactions, thereby gaming the algorithms and fanning the flames of controversy. https://internetofbusiness.com/propaganda-bots-social-media-manipulation/
The researchers said they reviewed surface-level plastic pollution data from 1979 to 2019, which covered 11,777 ocean stations in six major marine regions.
“We’ve found an alarming trend of exponential growth in microplastics in the global ocean since the millennium,” said Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Group.
Waterborne plastics often fragment into smaller pieces called microplastics through photo-degradation, mechanical degradation, and thermal degradation. https://www.theepochtimes.com/plastic-entering-oceans-could-nearly-triple-by-2040-if-left-unchecked_5107671.html
The strength of a relationship is measured less by two partners’ ability to avoid arguments and more by how you emerge as a couple after a conflict. Think of it like a controlled fire — the short-term damage allows for a healthier long-term ecosystem.
Here are three things to do to reconnect and recover after an argument with your partner. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2023/03/08/a-psychologist-discusses-3-ways-to-fall-back-in-love-after-a-fight/?sh=26cc4c62543c
After analyzing the samples, Kaufman, Faison and the rest of the Bakken team deciphered clear layers of sediment representing three key biotic crises known as the Annulata, Dasberg and Hangenberg events, with the last crisis associated with one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth history.
"We could see anoxic events distinctly marked by black shale and other geochemical deposits, which are likely linked to a series of rapid rises in sea level," Kaufman explained. "We suspect that sea levels may have risen during the pulsed events due to the melting ice sheets around the South Pole at this time." https://phys.org/news/2023-03-major-north-american-oil-source.html
What do you do if a South American weed is choking up your local Australian waterways? In the case of the cabomba plant, scientists are enlisting the help of the weed's natural South American enemy, the tiny cabomba weevil.
Cabomba (Cabomba caroliniana) originally came to Australia in 1967 as an aquarium plant, and has since spread throughout lakes and rivers along the country's east coast. https://newatlas.com/environment/australia-cabomba-weevil/
Simply exchanging a common insulinogenic bread for a low-insulin-stimulating bread demonstrates potential to induce weight loss in overweight persons, especially those at older age https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/5/1301
Not all wildfire smoke reaches the stratosphere, says David Peterson, a meteorologist at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California. But when an intense fire combines with moist air overhead, fire-driven thunderstorms form chimney-like clouds that pump the smoke high into the atmosphere. Understanding what causes some tall storm clouds to inject smoke all the way into the stratosphere will be crucial to figuring out how much of an impact fires will have on ozone recovery, he says. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00687-w
NASA and the Italian space agency Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) are partnering to build and launch the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) mission, an effort to investigate the health impacts of tiny airborne particles polluting some of the world’s most populous cities. MAIA marks the first NASA mission whose primary goal is to benefit societal health, as well as the first time epidemiologists and public health researchers have been directly involved in development of a satellite mission. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-and-italian-space-agency-join-forces-on-air-pollution-mission
Medieval Medicine Is Back: Maggot Therapy And Surgical Leeches On The RiseAn ancient set of medical practices have seen a renaissance in modern times. https://www.iflscience.com/medieval-medicine-is-back-maggot-therapy-and-surgical-leeches-on-the-rise-67879
While large platforms such as Facebook and Twitter could benefit from lock in, meaning having users who are dependent on or at least heavily invested in them, it’s not clear how many users will pay for these features. This is an area where the platforms’ profit motive is in conflict with the overall goal of the platform, which is to have a large enough community that people will continue using the platform because all of their social or business connections are there.
Economics of information security
Charging for identity protection raises the question of how much each person values privacy or security online. https://theconversation.com/should-you-pay-for-metas-and-twitters-verified-identity-subscriptions-a-social-media-researcher-explains-how-the-choice-you-face-affects-everyone-else-200692
Bluntly put, "current law allows plastics producers and shippers to discharge trillions of small pre-production plastic pellets directly into waters with little to no repercussions."
While there are no repercussions for the polluters, the same likely will not be the case for the people who eat the plastic-filled seafood https://www.salon.com/2023/03/08/microplastics-ocean-fish-seafood/
Code red today, Reddit doesn't like a website in this comment just watch your step..
However, according to one report, in California some distilleries and warehouses that age brandy have installed a system that collects the alcohol vapor and burns it off. Presumably this mitigation strategy would be extremely expensive to install, but it might be one solution that could bring the whiskey fungus war to a peaceful end. https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/biology-fields/whiskey-fungus.htm
Russian President Vladimir Putin has found support in an unlikely place: the U.S.
Specifically, Christian nationalists, a subsection of America's religious right, have flocked to the country's autocratic leader, according to new research from a team of social scientists, including Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, an assistant professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-christian-nationalists-enamored-putin-oppose.html
Both conservative and liberal Americans share fake news because they don't want to be ostracized from their social circles, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
"Conformity and social pressure are key motivators of the spread of fake news," said lead researcher Matthew Asher Lawson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of decision sciences at INSEAD, https://phys.org/news/2023-03-americans-fake-news-social-circles.html
Scientists use optical tweezers to play world's smallest game of catch with individual atoms
By Ben Turner
published 34 minutes ago
Scientists who have thrown a single atom from one pair of optical tweezers to another say that the feat could be used to build better quantum computers https://www.livescience.com/scientists-use-optical-tweezers-to-play-worlds-smallest-game-of-catch-with-individual-atoms
Patients who think they may have been affected by the 2023 breach can enroll in an Experian credit monitoring service provided by CHSPSC at no cost for 24 months, as required by state law.
For individuals who would like to enroll in these services or who have questions related to this incident, CHSPSC can be reached toll-free at .......... The deadline to enroll is June 30, 2023.
Community Health Services currently operates nine hospitals in Mississippi. https://www.govtech.com/security/mississippi-health-care-system-reports-data-breach
"We conclude by emphasizing that the discovery and spectroscopic analysis of a quiescent galaxy at redshift z=7.3 by our JADES collaboration ushers the era in which we can constrain theoretical feedback models using direct observations of the primordial universe. However, this is just the starting point for the JWST mission: upcoming and future observations will start the transition from the 'discovery' phase to the statistical characterization of the properties of the first quiescent galaxies," the researchers explained. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-quiescent-galaxy-jwst.html
scientists has identified and analyzed the steps by which immune cells “see” and respond to cancer cells. Their findings may lead to more personalized immunotherapies for patients whose immune systems do not appear to respond to treatment. https://www.genengnews.com/topics/cancenovel-insights-on-how-immune-cells-respond-to-cancer-cells-uncovered/
For folks who are adjusting their clocks, the body isn’t going to like getting up a whole hour earlier, so it’s best if you and your kids start adapting by going to bed and waking up 15 to 20 minutes earlier each day for four or more days before the change, experts say. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/09/daylight-saving-time-is-this-sunday-is-it-too-late-to-start-adjusting/
has turned fruit and plastic waste to create ultra-thin material for solar-powered water purification.
The material made from recycled fruit waste has exceptional light-to-heat conversion efficiency and can be used in equipment to purify dirty water. The scientist mainly used fruit waste like coconut husks and orange and banana peels to make Mxenes.
Mxenes are electrical-conducting compound that has similar properties to graphene https://www.techexplorist.com/turning-fruit-plastic-wastes-material-used-water-purifie57463/
“Parents today are regularly subject to messages about the dangers that might befall unsupervised children and the value of high achievement in school. But they hear little of the countervailing messages that if children are to grow up well-adjusted, they need ever-increasing opportunities for independent activity, including self-directed play and meaningful contributions to family and community life, which are signs that they are trusted, responsible, and capable. They need to feel they can deal effectively with the real world, not just the world of school,” said David F. Bjorklund, Ph.D., co-author and a professor in the Department of Psychology https://www.newswise.com/articles/all-work-no-independent-play-cause-of-children-s-declining-mental-health
has found a way to help reinforcement learning algorithms learn much faster by combining them with a language model that can read instruction manuals. Their approach, outlined in a pre-print published on arXiv, taught an AI to play a challenging Atari video game thousands of times faster than a state-of-the-art model developed by DeepMind. https://singularityhub.com/2023/03/10/an-ai-learned-to-play-atari-6000-times-faster-by-reading-the-instructions/
MIT professor to Congress: “We are at an inflection point” with AI
Aleksander Mądry urges lawmakers to ask rigorous questions about how AI tools are being used by corporations.
MIT Washington Office https://news.mit.edu/2023/mit-congress-inflection-point-ai-0310
While a layer of ozone in the upper atmosphere helps block harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from reaching Earth, at ground level it is a major component of the smog polluting most big cities. FILE PHOTO
PARIS, France - Ozone air pollution is linked to a higher rate of hospitalizations for heart diseases, according to a large study released Friday, the latest warning of the health dangers posed by greenhouse gases. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/scitech/science/863497/ozone-pollution-linked-to-increased-heart-disease-study/story/
; there is also some evidence to suggest that they may play a protective role during embryonic development. Overall, though, they remain largely mysterious relics of our genetic history.
A new study, from an international team led by researchers at Kobe University in Japan, has uncovered a possible role for ERVs in the development of autism. https://www.iflscience.com/ancient-viruses-could-be-drivers-of-autism-new-research-suggests-67924
Being able to take a quick walk to a nearby food retail store may be a significant factor in long-term weight loss after bariatric surgery, new research suggests.
That said, researchers found that simply living close to a food store isn’t an automatic key to sustained weight-loss – especially a market that carries mostly highly processed convenience foods.
Overall, the analysis of data from hundreds of bariatric surgery patients in central Ohio showed an association between close proximity to food stores and better weight loss two years after the surgery. https://news.osu.edu/nearby-food-stores-affect-results-after-weight-loss-surgery/?utm_campaign=omc_science-medicine_fy23&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit
The research team also tracked the growth of common crops including wheat, mung beans and broccoli in two separate demonstrations. One had a transparent glass roof with segments of inorganic solar cells, and the other had a roof made entirely from semi-transparent organic solar cells. The crops in the greenhouse with the organic solar roof grew more than the crops in a regular greenhouse. The scientists believe this is because the L-glutathione layer blocked ultraviolet rays, which can inhibit plant growth, and infrared rays, which can cause greenhouses to overheat and plants inside to require more water.
“We didn’t expect the organic solar cells to outperform a conventional glass-roof greenhouse,” said Yepin Zhao, the lead author of the research and a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in Yang’s lab. “But we repeated the experiments multiple times with the same results and after further research and analysis, we discovered that plants don’t need as much sunlight to grow as we’d originally thought. In fact, too much sun exposure can do more harm than good, especially in climates such as California’s, where sunlight is more abundant.” https://samueli.ucla.edu/ucla-engineers-design-solar-roofs-to-harvest-energy-for-greenhouses/
Comparison of Weight Reduction, Change in Parameters and Safety of a Very Low Carbohydrate Diet in Comparison to a Low Carbohydrate Diet in Obese Japanese Subjects with Metabolic Disorders https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/6/1342
A research team from Monell Chemical Senses Center recently showed that the smell test SCENTinel 1.1 can successfully discriminate between different types of smell disorders. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230309/Smell-test-SCENTinel-11-accurately-discriminates-between-different-types-of-smell-disorders.aspx
Lotus (Nelumbo) is an important aquatic ornamental plant, with high edible and medicinal value. It has been cultivated in China for more than 3,000 years. Antique Lotus is a special group of lotuses. It is formed by the germination of ancient lotus seeds buried underground for hundreds or even thousands of years. With its unique historical and cultural significance, Antique Lotus is favored by people all over the world, but little research has been done on its economic value. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-chinese-antique-lotus-ornamental.html
E-cigarettes may also cause harm but could still be recommended for the right people and the right reasons. E-cigarettes are being used to help people stop tobacco smoking. When we compare the chances of getting smoking-related diseases like COPD and cancer in people who smoke tobacco cigarettes compared with e-cigarettes, the rates are lower.
Using e-cigarettes to quit smoking seems like the right first step. Yet, as we don't know what problems might be caused by using e-cigarettes for long periods, this should not be the last step on the journey for smokers. Quitting nicotine altogether should be the end goal to ensure long-term health. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-lung-inflammation-worse-e-cigarette-users.html
They found this nascent solar system isn't simply flush with water; crucially, this distant water has the same distinct chemical markers as water in our solar system. It's billions of years old.
"This means that the water in our Solar System was formed long before the Sun, planets, and comets formed," Merel van ‘t Hoff, an astronomer at the University of Michigan who coauthored the new research https://mashable.com/article/solar-system-water-earth-space
Doctors Around the World Say It’s Time to Stop the Shots https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/doctors-around-the-world-say-its-time-to-stop-the-shots_5103024.html
US agencies debunk Florida surgeon general’s vaccine claims https://apnews.com/article/florida-surgeon-general-covid-vaccine-study-b3be9c2f22974176ae15d38025882335
A giant seaweed bloom that can be seen from space threatens beaches in Florida and Mexico https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/sargassum-seaweed-threatens-beaches-florida-mexico-rcna73862
Alaska... Volcanic ash is angular and sharp and has been used as an industrial abrasive. The powdered rock can cause a jet engine to shut down. https://apnews.com/article/alaska-volcano-ash-lava-earthquakes-be09841200afd3ed605d64fa440f477a
This isn't the first time Walgreens has faced a boycott. A movement started brewing in the summer of 2022 after reports surfaced that people were denied being sold contraceptives. https://www.salon.com/2023/03/10/a-nationwide-boycott-against-walgreens-is-brewing-heres-why/
"The Bell Curve." In short, the effect suggests that the human race grows smarter with each successive generation—the average intelligence quotient (IQ) increases. Prior research has bolstered this theory, finding that people from successive generations have scored ever higher on IQ tests—increasing by 3 to 5 points over the years 1932 to 2000.
But more recently, it appears things have changed. Over the past several years, multiple studies have shown that IQ scores are dropping in many European countries. And now, that appears to be the case with the U.S. as well. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html
For patients with primary care visits, shorter visit length is associated with potentially inappropriate prescribing decisions, according to a study published online March 10 in JAMA Health Forum. https://consumer.healthday.com/shorter-primary-care-visit-length-linked-to-inappropriate-prescribing-2659564345.html
Prenatal exposure to an anti-nausea drug commonly used in the 1960s and 1970s has been shown to increase risk of colorectal cancer in adult offspring, according to a study by researchers at UTHealth Houston. https://www.newswise.com/articles/prenatal-exposure-to-anti-nausea-drug-in-60s-70s-tied-to-increased-risk-of-colorectal-cancer
Facebook owner Meta is working on a new "text sharing" social media platform, it said Friday, in a project seen as a potential rival to embattled Twitter.
Since billionaire Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter in October, the influential website has suffered outages, layoffs and seen advertisers flee the platform over the lack of content moderation. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/scitech/technology/863508/meta-working-on-potential-twitter-rival/story/
Tourette’s bracelet reduces tics by more than a quarter ... The Neupulse, which emanates electrical pulses, could make a radical difference to the lives of sufferers https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2023/03/12/tourettes-bracelet-developed-british-scientists-reduces-tics/
All exercise is beneficial but for cell health, train longer... Endurance exercise improves metabolic health and prevents many age-related chronic diseases, but researchers have not been clear on why. ###
A new study suggests that the explanation may lie in specific cellular changes that give a 50-year-old a similar ageing profile to a 25-year-old. Longevity expert Professor Luigi Fontana was working at Washington University in St. Louis at the time, studying the effect of calorie restriction on cell senescence, which is the process where cells stop dividing but do not die. Instead, senescent cells secrete pro-cancer and pro-inflammatory proteins. As we age, we accumulate more of these cells, a process which is hastened by smoking, exposure to pollution, UV damage, alcohol, excessive calorie intake, and decreased physical activity.
https://www.watoday.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/all-exercise-is-beneficial-but-for-cell-health-train-longer-20230309-p5cqp6.html
the trick to measuring time in the quantum fog may come down to measuring the shape of the fog itself.
A group of researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden ran several experiments to test the theory. The main focus was to experiment on what scientists call the Rydberg State. By experimenting on it, they were able to find a novel new way to measure time that does not require you to have a very precise starting point – one of the biggest conundrums facing scientists before. https://bgr.com/science/scientists-discovered-a-totally-new-way-to-measure-time/
"You'd have to send somebody out to walk through that forest to do a manual count, or you send a drone overhead with an operator," he said.
"They will miss quite a few.
"What we've been able to do is design a system that is far more accurate and doesn't rely on human judgement."
He said his camera can more accurately pick out where the koalas are because it could "break the different types of camouflage" created by the dense branches and leaves.
"It can find animals hiding in forests, it can find all sorts of things that are camouflaged to regular camera views because it's able to look for, and enhance, the very subtle differences across different wavelengths of light."
Dr Malcolm Davis says we need robots to be able to understand their environment and make their own decisions. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-13/flinders-university-scientists-use-insect-biology-to-build-robot/102080380
"We've had very little sunshine, so the growth of grass is actually quite minimal this year compared to other seasons," she said.
"Normally in a regular wet season where we get rain, sun, rain, sun, the introduced species of grasses dominate.
"So it's going to be very interesting to see what the feeding of those native grasses brings in terms of your seed-eating birds and animals." Australia https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-03-13/biggest-wet-season-ever-transforms-cape-york-wildlife-sanctuary/102073942
and found that the water test used by the EPA is so limited in its scope — it only detects 30 types of PFAS compounds — that it likely misses high levels of PFAS pollutants. "There are so many PFAS that we don't know anything about, and if we don't know anything about them, how do we know they aren't hurting us?" Kyla Bennett, policy director at the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told The Guardian. "Why are we messing around?"
What are state officials doing? https://theweek.com/feature/briefing/1014970/briefing-on-pfas-aka-forever-chemicals
“The REINS Act would prevent agency rule-making from protecting the American public from corporate greed,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Texas) said, calling the bill “a move to strangle the federal government. In short, what the REIN Act does is put profit over people.”
It would replace a professional process with a political one and “harm the economy, safety, health and the environment,” said George Washington University Law School Professor Emily Hammond.
“Right now, America needs more protections, not less,” she said. “We see in East Palestine what an anti-regulatory environment will do—more people don’t make it home after work.” https://www.theepochtimes.com/house-republicans-deregulation-drive-could-be-derailed-by-spate-of-train-wrecks_5117456.html
“The government has not obtained any privileged communications between defendant Rehl and Moseley,” the government wrote in response to Roots’s contentions in a filing on Sunday. “As the government explained in a separate filing … Rehl and Moseley made a fully informed choice to communicate with one another over a monitored jail email system. In doing so, they waived any privilege.” https://www.theepochtimes.com/jan-6-attorney-alleges-fbi-criminally-altered-evidence-requests-special-master-review-of-leaked-messages_5117377.html
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a fast-acting nasal spray from Pfizer designed to treat migraines, the US pharmaceutical giant said Friday.
​Pfizer said it expected the drug, marketed under the name Zavzpret, to be available in pharmacies in July 2023. https://www.sciencealert.com/the-fda-just-approved-the-first-fast-acting-nasal-spray-for-migraines
He says because of their thick armour, thorny devils remain remarkably intact after being killed by a vehicle.
Dr Brennan has asked travellers to collect only deceased specimens, put them in a container or ziplock bag, and store them in an esky or fridge. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-13/thorny-devils-research-older-than-australian-deserts/102082904
Biden Administration Approves Huge Oil and Gas Project in AlaskaThe administration on Monday gave the green light for the Conoco Phillips-owned Willow Project.
Native groups living near the project have also been vocal about the impact Willow would have on their way of life and local ecosystems. A letter from local Native leaders, addressed to the Interior Department earlier this month, read: “Oil development paid for our utilities, our schools, and so many other advancements we have benefitted from. But providing these services is the responsibility of our governments, not private corporations. And we have a right to these services whether we agree to hosting an industrial wasteland in our backyard or not.” https://gizmodo.com/biden-approves-willow-project-oil-gas-drilling-alaska-1850219143
Climate models used by the UN's IPCC and others to project climate change are not accurately reflecting what the Arctic's future will be. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg argue that the rate of warming will be much faster than projected. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230313101127.htm
These early galaxies have thus far been impossible to observe due to the fact they are extremely faint and are located at great distances away. Astronomers have, however, seen closer dwarf galaxies in the process of merging but there has been no sign of black holes in those galaxies until now. https://www.space.com/black-holes-two-pairs-collision-courses-chandra
Support for new age beliefs – such as starseeds – is on the rise. It comes from a distrust of science and doubts about conventional perceptions of reality. Particularly, cynicism about modern society and an attempt to find meaning in life.
Fantasy v fiction
Certain personality characteristics may also incline some people to believe in the notion of starseeds. https://theconversation.com/starseeds-psychologists-on-why-some-people-think-theyre-aliens-living-on-earth-197291
Microorganisms live in or on almost every part of the human body and play an important role in the regulation of normal human processes. As a result, changes in the number or type of microorganisms, also known as the microbiome, can contribute to disease and altered responses to therapy, including cancer treatment. https://www.newswise.com/articles/gut-microbiome-influences-how-lymphoma-patients-respond-to-car-t-therapy
Nearly one-third of older people fall each year, most of them in their own homes. But it's possible to reduce those numbers by a quarter, according to a new study.
Five steps can cut the risk of falls by 26%, the researchers reported in the March 10 issue of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Those steps are: decluttering; reducing tripping hazards; improving lighting; and adding hand rails and non-slip strips to stairs. https://consumer.healthday.com/back-injury-from-fall-2659560930.html
The new year brought California a series of atmospheric rivers that poured record amounts of water onto drought-stricken lands. While the precipitation refreshed snowpacks and reservoirs, much of it washed away as soils oversaturated. Those flows carried sediment with them, creating swirls of brown and green along the coastline. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2023/03/sedimentation-after-flooding/?doing_wp_cron=1678722680.6834039688110351562500
converted mineral shells of algae into lead halide perovskites with tunable physical properties. The new perovskites have unique nano-architectures unachievable by conventional synthetic production. The method can be applied to the mass production of perovskites with tunable structural and electro-optical properties from single-celled organisms. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-scientists-algae-unique-functional-perovskites.html
Limiting Acetaminophen Dose in Combo Medications Beneficial
Limiting acetaminophen in prescription acetaminophen and opioid products linked to reduction in rate of hospitalization, proportion of acute liver failure cases https://consumer.healthday.com/limiting-acetaminophen-dose-in-combo-medications-beneficial-2659585017.html
Many native animals that disperse plant seeds on the island of Mauritius have gone extinct during the past centuries. This includes iconic species such as the dodo and giant tortoises, now replaced by non-native fruit-eating animal species that have been introduced to Mauritius. However, the newly introduced species are not able to replace the extinct seed dispersers, https://phys.org/news/2023-03-mauritius-lost-seed-dispersers.html
Lead study author Dr Elizabeth Dunford, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, said: 'Our research clearly shows that the proportion of ultra-processed foods with additives in Americans’ shopping carts increased significantly between 2001 and 2019.
'These findings give us reason for concern, given the growing evidence linking high consumption of processed foods with adverse health outcomes.' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11858251/Americas-junk-food-crisis-Record-60-foods-contain-additives-pizza-soda-worst.html
The choice of delegates who attended the two sessions demonstrate the importance of these technologies, say researchers. The heads of e-commerce company Alibaba and technology platform Tencent have attended previous meetings. But this year saw the appearance of leaders of the AI software company SenseTime, the semiconductor manufacturer Hua Hong Semiconductor and many representatives of chip design, automobile and battery companies. This reflects a “clear change of the focus of the country’s innovation policy”, says Zhang.
Downside of self-reliance
China’s emphasis on home-grown technology raises questions about its openness to collaboration, says researchers. Some are concerned that no country can achieve self-reliance in the current global economy https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00744-4

Niklas Hartweg (b.2000) became the first 2000+ to climb on a WC podium in Kontiolahti. But who's gonna be the first to win a race on the big stage ?
He's probably the most likely to achieve this feat, along with Tommaso Giacomel (2000) whose progression is scrutinized. We also have the likes of Eric Perrot (2001), who's not having the best performances of his life thus far, or Campbell Wright (2002), but they seem a bit lightweight to win a race at the moment. Other noteworthy inclusions are the Czechs, Tomas Mikyska (2000) and Jonas Mareček (2001), and Slovenians Anton Vidmar (2000) and Lovro Planko (2001). Then the Norwegians, Mats Øverby (2000), Vetle Paulsen (2000), Martin Uldal (2001) or Martin Nevland (2001), who're plainly hoping to even start in the WC, and it's no easy task.
For the women, Anna Gandler (2001) has been impressive for her maiden races, and Rebecca Passler (2001) is establishing herself as a regular. But could they snatch a win ? Swiss Amy Baserga (2000) and Lea Meier (2001) are here but probably not fast enough at the moment, same for Tereza Voborníková (2000). Paula Botet (2000) is fighting to be in the WC, like Mareike Braun (2000). Then we have some young exciting talents, dominant in IBU Cup, but how they would fare in the big pond is another question.
​
(Best results)
Men : 2000 : Hartweg (2), Giacomel (6), Cisar (25), Mikyska (29), Stefansson (34), Vidmar (35), Otto Invenius (43), Lombardot (81), Øverby (1 IBU), Paulsen (1 IBU) 2001 : Perrot (8), Uldal (20), Planko (31), Mareček (43), Germain (59), Nevland (4 IBU), Elia Zeni (16 IBU) 2002 : Wright (15), Gunka (65) 2003 : Frey 2004 : Heikkinen (6 IBU) 2005 : Legović (36 IBU)
Women : 2000 : Baserga (20), Voborníková (22), Botet (28), Camille Bened (1 IBU), Skrede (2 IBU), Braun (4 IBU), Spark (8 IBU) 2001 : Gandler (11), Passler (17), Sanita Bulina (32), Meier (41), Ziva Klemenćič (46) Auchentaller (47) Slettemark (53), Dokken (8 IBU), Bakken (9 IBU) 2002 : Zingerle (96, 1 IBU), Bertrand (4 IBU) Martina Trabucchi (9 IBU), Michelon (10 IBU) Paradis (16 IBU), Randby (17 IBU), Cloetens (18 IBU) 2003 : Kirkeeide (1 IBU), Andersson (2 IBU), Repinc (4 IBU), Sara Scattolo (35 IBU) 2004 : Grotian (1 IBU), Bondoux (13 IBU)

You'll be getting no list from me next weekend so enjoy this one! I will be back in two weeks.

Around Town:

• Sally & Tom (Guthrie Theater - All Weekend)
• Stuart Little (Stages Theatre - All Weekend)
• A Different Pond (Stages Theatre - All Weekend)
• Footloose (Chanhassen Dinner Theater - All Weekend)
• This Show is Cheaper Than Gas (Brave New Workshop - All Weekend)
• Real Women Have Curves (Lyric Arts - All Weekend)
• Twin Cities Harvest Festival & Maze (Brooklyn Park - All Weekend)
• Sever's Fall Festival and Corn Maze (Sever's Festival Grounds - All Weekend)
• Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular (Minnesota Zoo - All Weekend)
• Fire in the New World (Park Square Theatre - All Weekend)
• Every Brilliant Thing (Granada Theatre - All Weekend)
• The Haunting Experience (Hamlet Park - All Weekend)
• Tricks and Treats (Valleyfair - All Weekend)
• Zombie Rampage (Canterbury - All Weekend)
• Dead-End Hayride (Wyoming - All Weekend)
• Of Pigs and Pianos (Jungle Theater - All Weekend)
• Weathering (Penumbra Theatre - All Weekend)
• Fall Forward Festival (Cowles Center For Dance - All Weekend)
• 2022 Fall Flower Show (Como Park Zoo & Conservatory - All Weekend)
• Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend (Bell Museum - All Weekend)
• Seven Deadly Sins (Collide Dance Theater - All Weekend)
• Fall Festival (Anoka Fairgrounds - All Weekend)
• Dead Serious by Luis Fitch (Viewpoint Gallery - All Weekend)
• Twin Cities Film Fest (Showplace ICON - All Weekend)
• Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi (MIA - All Weekend)
• The Rocky Horror Show (Phoenix Theater - All Weekend)
• Spooky Science: Mysteries of the Deep (Bell Museum - All Weekend)
• Cats (Orpheum Theatre - All Weekend)
• ThinMen (Umbra - Fri & Sat)
• Mike Earley (ACME Comedy Club - Fri & Sat)
• Ganja White Night (The Armory - Fri & Sat)
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (Orchestra Hall - Fri & Sat)
• Wine-O-Ween (Saint Croix Vineyards - Sat & Sun)
• Northstay Fasion Exhibitors (St Paul RiverCentre - Sat & Sun)
• Twin Cities Bead Bazaar (Eisenhower Community Center - Sat & Sun)

Friday

• October Star Party (Bell Museum 9pm)
• Room 95 and Woodzen Halloween Party (Day Block Brewing 7pm)
• Dog Costume Contest (Lakes & Legends Brewing 6-8pm)
• AIGA Design Camp 2022 (MIA 9am)
• Durry (Fine Line 8pm)
• Junior H (The Fillmore 7pm)
• Nosferatu (Skyway Theatre 7pm)
• Spooky Trains (Twin City Model Railroad Museum 3-7pm)
• 'Haunted HalloWednesday' With D'Lakes, Mr. Zipp and Count Spookula (Palmer's Bar 8pm)
• Margo Cilker (Turf Club 7pm)
• June Star (Terminal Bar 7pm)
• Nightmare On Union Street (Union Rooftop 10pm)
• Hannah Berner (Varsity Theater 7pm)
• Hrishikesh Hirway and Jenny Owen Youngs (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 7pm)
• Sammy Rae & The Friends (First Avenue 7pm)
• The Milk Carton Kids (Dakota Jazz Club 7pm)
• flipturn (7th Street Entry 7pm)
• Witches and Wizards Goat Yoga (The Hayloft 6pm)
• Talking Volumes ft. Dani Shapiro (The Fitzgerald Theater 7pm)

Saturday

• Pickleball Havoc (Lucky Shots 6-11pm)
• Hallowhiskey Party (O'Shaughnessy Distilling 7pm)
• Ghosts of the Forest (Day Block Brewing 7pm)
• John Waters: End of the World (Parkway Theater 7pm)
• Unmasked (The Foshay 7pm)
• The Bull-Jean Experience (Pillsbury House Theatre 7pm)
• Altan (Dakota Jazz Club 7pm)
• Science in the Shadows (Bakken Museum 10-4pm)
• Monster Bash Parade (Cottage Grove 10am)
• Halloween Spooktacular (Minnesota Children's Museum)
• 5th Annual Halloween Bar Crawl (Pourhouse 1pm)
• Día De Muertos (Midtown Global Market 12-5pm)
• The Suburbs (Granada Theater 7pm)
• Joanne Shaw Taylor (Pantages Theatre 8pm)
• Noah Cyrus (Varsity Theater 7pm)
• Jellicle Ball (Jack Link's Legend Lounge 4:30pm)
• Home Show (Canterbury Park 10-4pm)
• Flip Phone XXL ⏤ Halloween ft. Pangina Heals (First Avenue 9pm)
• Community Hops Homebrew Fest & Contest (Community Hops 12-4:30pm)
• Halloween Paw-ty & Dog Costume Contest (Forgotten Star Brewing 1-4pm)
• Dwynell Roland (7th Street Entry 8pm)
• Doug Anderson and Lori Dokken (Dunesmore Jazz Room 5pm)
• Hoodie Allen (Fine Line 8pm)
• MnECO Fall 2022 Workshop (Breck School 9-2pm)
• Jeremy Messersmith and friends (The Fitzgerald Theater 7pm)
• Lamont Cranston (Crooners 6pm)
• Skalloween (Turf Club 7pm)
• Boo Bash Dash (Downtown Wayzata 9am)
• Echosmith (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 7pm)

Sunday

• Fall Fest 2022 (MLK Park 3-6pm)
• Spinning Wylde's Cotton Candy Cafe (Union Depot 2-6pm)
• Haunted Door (Can Can Wonderland 1-7pm)
• Moodie Black (7th Street Entry 7pm)
• Kreep for Cheap (Cedar Cultural Center 7pm)
• Sloppy Jane and Disq (Fine Line 7pm)
• Zombie Prom (Ties Lounge 8pm)
• Bret McKenzie (The Fitzgerald Theater 7pm)
• Jon McLaughlin (Parkway Theatre 6pm)
• Soccer Mommy (First Avenue 7pm)

Sports:

• Los Angeles AT Wolves (Friday 7pm)
• San Antonio VS Wolves (Sunday 6pm)
• Detroit VS Wild (Saturday 6pm)
• Chicago VS Wild (Sunday 6pm)
• Arizona AT Vikings (Sunday Noon)

I have had suggestions for a Patreon or something of the sort in the past. I do this because I like to provide whatever tiny help I can to the community. BUT I also like to raise money for Gillette's Children Hospital every year. So if you have some virtual loose change you can help me help dem kids here: https://www.extra-life.org/participant/482633

Links

• Reddit - Twin Cities Social meet-ups - https://www.reddit.com/twincitiessocial/
• Minneapolis Park Events - https://www.minneapolisparks.org/event-calenda
• Secrets of the city - http://www.secretsofthecity.com/
• MPLS Art Events - https://www.mplsart.com/calendaupcoming
• Minnesota Monthly Event Calendar - http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/Calenda
• MSP Magazine Event Calendar - http://mspmag.com/search/event/events-calenda#page=1
• Minneapolis Northwest Event Calendar - https://www.minneapolisnorthwest.com/events/
• Minneapolis.Org Event Calendar - https://www.minneapolis.org/calenda
• Family Fun Twin Cities - https://www.familyfuntwincities.com/family-fun-events-calenda
• Racket MN Event Calendar - https://racketmn.com/category/events/

Be da real MVP and add anything I missed below.

You'll be getting no list from me next weekend so enjoy this one! I will be back in two weeks.

Around Town:

• Sally & Tom (Guthrie Theater - All Weekend)
• Stuart Little (Stages Theatre - All Weekend)
• A Different Pond (Stages Theatre - All Weekend)
• Footloose (Chanhassen Dinner Theater - All Weekend)
• This Show is Cheaper Than Gas (Brave New Workshop - All Weekend)
• Real Women Have Curves (Lyric Arts - All Weekend)
• Twin Cities Harvest Festival & Maze (Brooklyn Park - All Weekend)
• Sever's Fall Festival and Corn Maze (Sever's Festival Grounds - All Weekend)
• Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular (Minnesota Zoo - All Weekend)
• Fire in the New World (Park Square Theatre - All Weekend)
• Every Brilliant Thing (Granada Theatre - All Weekend)
• The Haunting Experience (Hamlet Park - All Weekend)
• Tricks and Treats (Valleyfair - All Weekend)
• Zombie Rampage (Canterbury - All Weekend)
• Dead-End Hayride (Wyoming - All Weekend)
• Of Pigs and Pianos (Jungle Theater - All Weekend)
• Weathering (Penumbra Theatre - All Weekend)
• Fall Forward Festival (Cowles Center For Dance - All Weekend)
• 2022 Fall Flower Show (Como Park Zoo & Conservatory - All Weekend)
• Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend (Bell Museum - All Weekend)
• Seven Deadly Sins (Collide Dance Theater - All Weekend)
• Fall Festival (Anoka Fairgrounds - All Weekend)
• Dead Serious by Luis Fitch (Viewpoint Gallery - All Weekend)
• Twin Cities Film Fest (Showplace ICON - All Weekend)
• Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi (MIA - All Weekend)
• The Rocky Horror Show (Phoenix Theater - All Weekend)
• Spooky Science: Mysteries of the Deep (Bell Museum - All Weekend)
• Cats (Orpheum Theatre - All Weekend)
• ThinMen (Umbra - Fri & Sat)
• Mike Earley (ACME Comedy Club - Fri & Sat)
• Ganja White Night (The Armory - Fri & Sat)
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (Orchestra Hall - Fri & Sat)
• Wine-O-Ween (Saint Croix Vineyards - Sat & Sun)
• Northstay Fasion Exhibitors (St Paul RiverCentre - Sat & Sun)
• Twin Cities Bead Bazaar (Eisenhower Community Center - Sat & Sun)

Friday

• October Star Party (Bell Museum 9pm)
• Room 95 and Woodzen Halloween Party (Day Block Brewing 7pm)
• Dog Costume Contest (Lakes & Legends Brewing 6-8pm)
• AIGA Design Camp 2022 (MIA 9am)
• Durry (Fine Line 8pm)
• Junior H (The Fillmore 7pm)
• Nosferatu (Skyway Theatre 7pm)
• Spooky Trains (Twin City Model Railroad Museum 3-7pm)
• 'Haunted HalloWednesday' With D'Lakes, Mr. Zipp and Count Spookula (Palmer's Bar 8pm)
• Margo Cilker (Turf Club 7pm)
• June Star (Terminal Bar 7pm)
• Nightmare On Union Street (Union Rooftop 10pm)
• Hannah Berner (Varsity Theater 7pm)
• Hrishikesh Hirway and Jenny Owen Youngs (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 7pm)
• Sammy Rae & The Friends (First Avenue 7pm)
• The Milk Carton Kids (Dakota Jazz Club 7pm)
• flipturn (7th Street Entry 7pm)
• Witches and Wizards Goat Yoga (The Hayloft 6pm)
• Talking Volumes ft. Dani Shapiro (The Fitzgerald Theater 7pm)

Saturday

• Pickleball Havoc (Lucky Shots 6-11pm)
• Hallowhiskey Party (O'Shaughnessy Distilling 7pm)
• Ghosts of the Forest (Day Block Brewing 7pm)
• John Waters: End of the World (Parkway Theater 7pm)
• Unmasked (The Foshay 7pm)
• The Bull-Jean Experience (Pillsbury House Theatre 7pm)
• Altan (Dakota Jazz Club 7pm)
• Science in the Shadows (Bakken Museum 10-4pm)
• Monster Bash Parade (Cottage Grove 10am)
• Halloween Spooktacular (Minnesota Children's Museum)
• 5th Annual Halloween Bar Crawl (Pourhouse 1pm)
• Día De Muertos (Midtown Global Market 12-5pm)
• The Suburbs (Granada Theater 7pm)
• Joanne Shaw Taylor (Pantages Theatre 8pm)
• Noah Cyrus (Varsity Theater 7pm)
• Jellicle Ball (Jack Link's Legend Lounge 4:30pm)
• Home Show (Canterbury Park 10-4pm)
• Flip Phone XXL ⏤ Halloween ft. Pangina Heals (First Avenue 9pm)
• Community Hops Homebrew Fest & Contest (Community Hops 12-4:30pm)
• Halloween Paw-ty & Dog Costume Contest (Forgotten Star Brewing 1-4pm)
• Dwynell Roland (7th Street Entry 8pm)
• Doug Anderson and Lori Dokken (Dunesmore Jazz Room 5pm)
• Hoodie Allen (Fine Line 8pm)
• MnECO Fall 2022 Workshop (Breck School 9-2pm)
• Jeremy Messersmith and friends (The Fitzgerald Theater 7pm)
• Lamont Cranston (Crooners 6pm)
• Skalloween (Turf Club 7pm)
• Boo Bash Dash (Downtown Wayzata 9am)
• Echosmith (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 7pm)

Sunday

• Fall Fest 2022 (MLK Park 3-6pm)
• Spinning Wylde's Cotton Candy Cafe (Union Depot 2-6pm)
• Haunted Door (Can Can Wonderland 1-7pm)
• Moodie Black (7th Street Entry 7pm)
• Kreep for Cheap (Cedar Cultural Center 7pm)
• Sloppy Jane and Disq (Fine Line 7pm)
• Zombie Prom (Ties Lounge 8pm)
• Bret McKenzie (The Fitzgerald Theater 7pm)
• Jon McLaughlin (Parkway Theatre 6pm)
• Soccer Mommy (First Avenue 7pm)

Sports:

• Los Angeles AT Wolves (Friday 7pm)
• San Antonio VS Wolves (Sunday 6pm)
• Detroit VS Wild (Saturday 6pm)
• Chicago VS Wild (Sunday 6pm)
• Arizona AT Vikings (Sunday Noon)

I have had suggestions for a Patreon or something of the sort in the past. I do this because I like to provide whatever tiny help I can to the community. BUT I also like to raise money for Gillette's Children Hospital every year. So if you have some virtual loose change you can help me help dem kids here: https://www.extra-life.org/participant/482633

Links

• Reddit - Twin Cities Social meet-ups - https://www.reddit.com/twincitiessocial/
• Minneapolis Park Events - https://www.minneapolisparks.org/event-calenda
• Secrets of the city - http://www.secretsofthecity.com/
• MPLS Art Events - https://www.mplsart.com/calendaupcoming
• Minnesota Monthly Event Calendar - http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/Calenda
• MSP Magazine Event Calendar - http://mspmag.com/search/event/events-calenda#page=1
• Minneapolis Northwest Event Calendar - https://www.minneapolisnorthwest.com/events/
• Minneapolis.Org Event Calendar - https://www.minneapolis.org/calenda
• Family Fun Twin Cities - https://www.familyfuntwincities.com/family-fun-events-calenda
• Racket MN Event Calendar - https://racketmn.com/category/events/

Be da real MVP and add anything I missed below.

Yeah It be stupid to think of that. Kimura as Musashi interacting with characters played by the main series especially with a fight against Gorohachi Majima/Bakken Shishido would look awkward without Kiryu. Would it be like the Spider-Man PS4 & PS5 thing where the new version looks a bit too young while original looks better & fits? I haven't seen the Musashi show.

As I did last year, I translated the most notable commentary our commentator Peter had for the Flemish audience. I've left out the bits where Peter is just explaining the back stories of the songs or performers, since you already know this.
Feel free to share what you think of the commentary in Flanders and what the commentators of your own country had to share in SF2. Also, give an upvote if you liked me doing this and want to have one for the GF (not sure if I'll find time).
Please note that Peter is always very respectful to the entries. It's humour, no disrespect is meant usually. And when he's joking it doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't like it or something...
FINLAND
They always send a box of guitars to the contest. Jezebel is about a very bad Isabel. Independant and dangerous, but the kind you always want to have. A bit like Fabrizio (reality tv star, he featured in SF1 comments too). Singer Lauri still deserves a plume (literal translation of deserving praise) and then puts it in his hair. But he does run too much on stage which gets him out of breath. Maybe it's because of blowing up those balloons that are on stage. Balloons, you say? Yeah, you just wait a bit! They are already preparing for the Flemish holiday with lots of yellow and black, so they look like a bunch a singing traffic poles. Lauri also predicts it'll rain, because he wears a yellow K-Way (French brand of rain clothes). Special!
ISRAEL
They send a man with three first names: Michael Ben David. A very sympathetic guy (okay, that didn't age well) but he is A LOT. When he lets out a little fart, I assume you'll see a marvelouw glitter rainbow, an Israeli unicorn. And on stage a couple of dancing guys about to receive their First Communion in their white outfits. Shalom, baby!
SERBIA
Konstrakta has very dirty hands and has a bit of mysophobia. She washes them in innocence the whole time. Handjes draaien, koeken bakken vlaaien (children's nursery rhyme). Luckily with a few monks who are also servicing as lifeguard at Belgrado's swimming pool. After the act: very neat.
AZERBAIJAN
The land of fire, but this year they have sent some kind of a pale matchstick. There is more drama in his song than in ten years of the soap series Thuis (Flemish soap opera). Frank, Simonneke and Waldek times two. He also brought a kind of Efteling amusement park ride in the form of bleachers onto the stage that rupture open because of sheer misery. He also has hemorrhoids on his legs, that he nurses with peculiar pieces of fabric.
GEORGIA
And it's still allowed to laugh, they must have thought in Georgia because they are sending Circus Mircus. They say themselves that they are colouring outside of the musical lines. In their case, there are no lines any longer, and there also aren't any crayons left. The singer is some sort of Willy Wonka with glasses made from old the jam jar lids. You'll see that in Georgia flowers are growing on the beards of the guitarists. And the other ones look like they've taken drugs from the wrong container in the port of Antwerp or they might have eaten minced meat that's been three week past it's expiration date. After the act: (when Circus Mircus said: make love, not war) That'll be hard with that box and those lids on your eyes.
MALTA
This year they try to win with Emma Muscat. A surprisingly fresh wine grape. Wine Grape Emma is 22 and hails from a rich family. Her song is I Am What I Am, you can be whoever you like and that means you can also be a wine grape from Malta. She feels a bit like Vanessa Carlton behind her piano. I Am What I Am, she can be whoever she wants to be and that's why she's wearing a glitter dress with silver sneakers. Sam Gooris, but with mirrors (he used basketsloefkes for sneakers, which is a hit from singer Sam Gooris). After the act: she sang better in rehearsals.
SAN MARINO
30.000 inhabitants in San Marino, so it's like the city of Temse would join the Eurovision Song Contest. But wait, that would be most definitely work! They usually send someone from another country and this year it's the Italian glitter cowboy Achille Lauro. The Achille Lauro was a cruiseship that has caught fire four times, has been hijacked once and collided twice, a bit like the singer himself. Remarkable dude, he already has a bunch of hit songs. Bit like Maneskin from the Action (discount store). But let's be honest: Achille already had lots of success before Maneskin's fame began. He sings he's a stripper and that's just the beginning. He wears a panty hose over his entire body and he'll mount a mechanical bull who's wearing a red winter coat. Why does he do that? We don't know, the bull doesn't know either. Look for the two dancers he caught in his cage. Oh, and there also is a boa. We think he snorted up an entire pizza calzone through his nose. It's a party! After the act: yes, that wás a grown man sitting on a bull that used to be a couch. That really happened. Look at Mika, he can't cope...
AUSTRALIA
He wears a groomdress weighing 40 kilos filled with Swarovski crystals. How in God's name did that pass security at the airport with those iron filings. Also a party this one, because also the staircases will dance along like they are at the ball of King Joseph from Kulderzipken (iconic fairy tale children's tv show based on Turandot). And thank you Ella (he meant Elsa) from Frozen. She vomited all her icicles on Sheldon's face. Impressive singer! After the act: someone asked me who Ella from Frozen is, that's her naughty aunt with a drinking problem.
CYPRUS
We had Frozen already, now you'll see Andromecha as a little mermaid trapped in an angry Saint James shell. That shell also sucked Andromecha onto the stage with Crypriot honey. And her dancers also squirmingly try to get loose. Lots of ouzo.
IRELAND
Katy Perry on dope. She bought blue pants and long boots from the fishing sports department of Decathlon (large sport department store). Just in case she wants to catch shrimps from the large water tank in front of the stage. Her dancers on the other hand wear pink. It looks like a crazy gender reveal party. It's all very tiresome apparently, because already in the beginning, she needs to lie down a litte. After the act: she looks like Jamie-Lee Six (Flemish influencer).
NORTH MACEDONIA
Her mother didn't understand her dream of doing something with music, which made her depressed. Also a common thread here at the Eurovision: a lot of contestants had shitty childhoods. The singer: Andre-Ja (yes), well I think it's going to be Andre-Nee (no) for the grand final. She's all left alone and in black on stage. She looks unhappy. That lockdown destroyed a lot.
ESTONIA
It's a cowboy song. A bit The Good, The Bad and the Stefan. It could be a good western from Estonia, so basically an "estern". The song's called Hope and it's a bit all on a "hoop" (pun: meaning pile). For the MNM listeners (Flemish public radio station), kinda Hey Brother, kinda Lovers On The Sun from David Guetta, a bit the Marie-Louise (popular Flemish song from the late eighties featured a lot on weddings where you need to "dance" sitting on the floor doing a rowing boat routine), but also something that can do very well. Very peculiar: he does something with his guitar and then throws it around his back but the guitar keeps on playing by itself.
ROMANIA
Romania is the country of Dracula. This year they are sending us a friendly neck biter. WRS started out at the Romanian Samson show ballet (Samson is a children's tv programme running for 30 years now). He's a cross between Johnny Depp and Kurt Rogiers (tv host and actor), also two lovely galls who love our Samson. He wrote the song Llamamé during a hangover after a party evening. Look, that's the reason you just need to eat a lot of minced meat during a hangover an not write any songs. But I'll bet you'll sing along with Hola Mi Bebebe, lyrics that are deeper than the deepest sea (pun: referencing the song Diep by Get Ready! and also a postcard gag showing the seaside). He looks like a toreador and his dancers wear crop tops that have been washed on 670 degrees which make them look like airbags for the neck. Corona is obviously over, there is a lot of physical contact. Enjoy the entertaintment team of Romania's all in resort.
POLAND
Krystian Ochman now. Och man, och woman, och child. His song River is about, oh yes, a river! In a moment you'll land in some kind of Eurovision Horror Story with dancing wood trolls who drank too much holy water. There will be lightning and the camera crew is going to shake out of fear. It's a lot, but Och-Man, he can sing.
MONTENEGRO
Vladana, look, she likes to wear a toaster on her head in her spare time (postcard gag) to help her make some Monetenegrin croque monsieurs. She's on stage with a nervous ventilator behind her back that doesn't seem to want start. Maybe that's why's so angry looking sometimes. Luckily the christmas lights on her bustier do work.
BELGIUM
Like some said here: this beat hits harder than Will Smith during the Oscars.
SWEDEN
Cornelia Jakobs, her name sounds like a lacemaking grandma from Bruges, but she's from Sweden. Her song Hold Me Closer is about a broken relationship. Another break-up song, what's up with our young people nowadays, lots of break-up songs this year. Not too much compasion with our Cornelia because when you wrote the song she found herself a new partner! On stage it's quite sober. There's a moment when she's in front of an angry green parking disk. After the act: she can sing the numbers of the lottery for all I care and I'll still love it. What a marvelous voice.
CZECH REPUBLIC
I think they have a sponsor deal with a brand of construction worker's pants. Maybe this will go to the finals, maybe this will go back to the Czech construction site.Vladana, look, she likes to wear a toaster on her head in her spare time to help her make some Monetenegrin croque monsieurs. She's on stage with a nervous ventilator behind her back that doesn't seem to want start. Maybe that's why's so angry looking sometimes. Luckily the christmas lights on her bustier do work.

Visual League and Meta Data

​
Full Results: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/pioneer-league-2022-03-14

• 5C Humans: maxxattack
• Rakdos Anvil: MarcioMatthew
• Mono-Black Aggro: Roberto777
• Boros Burn: _ZNT_
• Mono-Red Burn: hyriuu
• Dimir Gearhulk Control: MrCafouillette
• Naya Winota: TheSandwichKing
• Esper Control (Yorion): bakkenal
• Mono-Blue Spirits: moon11
• Red Devotion: dubleve
• Izzet Delver: hauterho
• 4C Ascendancy: nicovenerio
• Jund Food (Korvold): _Batutinha_
• Orzhov Vampires: bingobaby22
• Jeskai Transmogrify (Yorion): McWinSauce
• Niv to Light: moon11 (duplicate pilot, link points to other list)
• Boros Feather: Gereffi
• Dimir Control: Viridianz
• Grixis Control: _Tutenji_
• UW Control (Yorion): yutya
• Mono-Green Planeswalkers: Venom1
• Izzet Phoenix: Dylan93
• Azorius Spirits: PsychoTitan
• UW Control: Quantumboy
• Jund Food (Karn): zkiihne
• Bant Spirits: goodluckfriend
• Rakdos Midrange: Coly2

Direct links courtesy of FereMiyJeenyus and their MTGO Results Scraper
​

Spice Corner

Rakdos Anvil: MarcioMatthew - Anvil got its favorite companion banned, but it turns out the deck wasn't monogamous and traded in Lurrus for a new companion in Jegantha. Meathook Massacre was the only card in the deck that wasn't compatible with Jegantha in the first place, and that was optimized by Lurrus in the companion slot anyway. This version runs four Cauldron Familiar and four Witch's Ovens instead of Voldaren Epicure and Bloodtithe Harvester.
Grixis Control: _Tutenji_ - Last week, Crim proved that there's no need to wait for the Triomes from New Capenna to print to play both versions of Nicol Bolas. The black March found a home here, as did Kaito and the blue channel land. Also, check out the Kotose, the Silent Spider in the sideboard.
Izzet Delver: hauterho - I almost accidentally marked this as Phoenix, as the spells are almost exactly the same. Instead, though, this deck takes advantage of spellslinging to trigger Young Pyromancer and flip Delver of Secrets. This deck will be featured in an article on PlayingPioneer.com this week and I will link it here when it's available.
Red Devotion: dubleve - A very aggressive shell featuring four Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Anax, Hardened in the Forge and Fanatic of Mogis is something we haven't seen in awhile. I'm not sure if Lurrus was holding this back or it has returned to deal with UW Control's current metashare (or both), but this is another great option for people looking to play aggressive red decks right now.
Esper Control (Yorion): bakkenal - Another deck that didn't want to wait around for the new Triomes to print, this is the blink enchantment-focused BW Yorion deck of yore going into blue for Omen of the Sea and the blue planeswalkers. [[Spirit-Sisters Call]] finally found a home in this deck, as did [[The Restoration of Eiganjo]].

Noteworthy

Rakdos Midrange: Coly2 - We're up to four Dreadbore to deal with green walkers and UW Control and a maindeck Angrath, the Flame-Chained.
Boros Feather: Gereffi - Feather, the Redeemed is back in the deck, as expected.
Niv to Light: moon11 - Niv is back to prey on the fast decks that are preying on UW Control. PlayingPioneer.com will have a gameplay/deck tech video on Niv today or tomorrow that I will link here when it's ready.
Orzhov Vampires: bingobaby22 - Whether bingo was expecting to run into Niv in this league or they just wanted to play vampires, it ended up working out, as it has a pretty good matchup against Niv to Light.
Mono-Black Aggro: Roberto777 - MBA is poised to make a comeback if the meta stays where it is for a bit. It goes under UW Control and can properly disrupt the larger midrange decks that usually keep aggro decks at bay.
​

Top-Played Cards

Fatal Push
Mystical Dispute
Thoughtseize
Consider
Narset, Parter of Veils
Portable Hole
Shark Typhoon
Go Blank
Expressive Iteration
March of Otherworldly Light

On December 9, 1973, the Atlanta Falcons hosted the St. Louis Cardinals in their penultimate game of the season. Stakes were high for Atlanta as they were in the playoff hunt, while the Cardinals were in the cellar and just playing for pride at this point. How did things go from there?
Things got ugly. Very ugly.

Race for the Wild Card

The 1973 season started strong for Falcons before seemingly falling apart. After trouncing the Saints 62–7 in their season opener, they lost their next three games, two by multiple scores. However, they did not lose hope as they rattled off seven straight wins to enter December with a record of 8–3.^[1]
Things once again took a turn when Atlanta lost 17–6 to O.J. Simpson and the 14-point underdog Bills. A Rams shutout win over the Bears that day clinched them the Western Division championship at 10–2, forcing Atlanta into a mad dash with Washington and Dallas for the NFC's lone wild card seed.^[2]
If this race happened today (but with the four-per-conference of back then), the wild card tiebreaker procedure is fairly simple even if all three teams finished the regular season with an identical record. The first tiebreaker would be the results of head-to-head games, though since neither team played each other, that is skipped in favor of conference record. This is followed by common games, strength of victory, strength of schedule, and so on.
However, these were not present in 1973 and would not be introduced until 1975. Instead, the main tiebreaker was a "point rating system", which took into account a team's ranking in points scored and points allowed in their conference; for example, if a team had a very nice combination of the #6 scoring offense and the #9 scoring defense, their rating would be 15. Much like golf, the lower your rating, the better your chances, so a team with the top offense and defense would have a score of 2. This tiebreaker is still around today, though it is one of the last ones before eventually reaching net points, touchdowns, and the coin toss.
In the case of the 1973 Falcons, they entered the Cardinals game with the NFC's #3 offense and #4 defense, giving them a rating of 7. The Redskins also had 7 (#5 offense and #2 defense), while the Cowboys trailed with 8 (#2 offense, #6 defense).^[3]
With this in mind, Atlanta did not just need to win against the Cardinals. They needed to beat the everloving shit out of them to boost their rankings and ensure the wild card spot is theirs.^[3]
Entering the game, a blowout win did not seem like too much to ask out of the Falcons. The Cardinals, 17.5-point underdogs and having the worst-ranked pass defense at 240 yards allowed per game, were marred by injuries throughout the year and were sitting at a paltry 3–8–1.^[4] Their last win had come against the Giants in October, and they were 0–4–1 since (the lone tie came against the Broncos in the first-ever meeting between the two teams; it would be the Cards' only non-loss to the Broncos until 2010).^[5]
Ron Hudspeth of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution wrote on game day:^[3]

Crush, pulverize, stampede, smash, slaughter, rout, massacre, maul, and even kill.
A 11 glorious, cliche words used by sportswriters to describe lopsided victory.
Normally, they are overstatements. Seldom does a team beat another 55-0 or 60-7 purposely. It simply happens that way.
It is taboo to run up the score on an opponent. To kick him when he's down. To add insult to injury.
But through ironic twist of the NFL rulebook the Falcons find themselves in such position today when they face the St. Louis Cardinals at 1 p.m. before a sellout crowd at the stadium.
The Falcons must try to do more than win. They must try to kick the living daylights out of the poor Cardinals, currently plagued with injury and struggling hrough a 3-8-1 season.
The Falcons may not need to be such savage hosts and score such a big win. But then again, they might.

Game Day

It might be unfair to say this was a true battle of #1 quarterbacks. While Bob Lee took the field for the Falcons as usual, Cardinals' first-year head coach Don Coryell was without his lieutenant Jim Hart, who hurt his elbow the previous week in Detroit. As a result, their QB for the game was Gary Keithley, a rookie out of UTEP who had seen limited action in three games earlier in the year and also served as their punter, and was set for his first career start under center.^[3]
The Falcons offense quickly sputtered with a three-and-out, but found life on a muffed punt return that set them back up deep within Cardinal territory. Nick Mike-Mayer scored the first points of the game on a 32-yard field goal.^[6]
With Keithley at the helm, the Cardinals switched to a run-heavy offense, a far cry from their usual system that had averaged 229 passing and 152 rushing yards across their first 12 games.^[4] It did not take long for the Cards to realize the efficacy of this strategy as one of Keithley's first-quarter throws was intercepted by Tom Hayes and returned 38 yards for a touchdown.^[6] Keithley would only pass ten times in the game, completing two to Jim McFarland and Mel Gray for a combined nine yards and a passer rating of 0.0. As Coryell remarked after the game, "The pass would have been suicidal with our rookie quarterback Gary Keithley doing the throwing."^[4]
Opting for the ground game, the Cards ran through the Falcons on their way to tie the game before halftime on Jim Bakken's 35-yard field goal and a one-yard TD run by Jim Otis. Despite fumbling five times (losing one), St. Louis would end the game with 252 rushing yards; running back Terry Metcalf had 100 yards on 18 carries.^[6] To add insult to injury to the Falcons, much of the Cards' offensive line had been ravaged by injuries; right guard Conrad Dobler missed the game entirely, right tackle Ernie McMillan exited early, and left guard Tom Banks had to snap the ball after both of their centers were knocked out. By the final whistle, only one lineman ended the game at his intended position.^[4]
Bakken, who was with the 1966 Cardinals when they were eliminated from the playoff hunt in Atlanta, was keen on returning the favor as the second half kicked off. The next five scores of the game would be FGs by Bakken: 46, 35, 31, 37, and 28 yards. The 20 total points enabled him to surpass 1,000 career points scored at 1,002, the fifth most in league history.^[7]
His lone blemish was a block before his final FG, though he was not "really sure what happened on that one. The ball felt good coming off my foot, but the trajectory might have been a little too low." Had it not been blocked, Bakken would have tied his own record for the most field goals made in a game at seven; he initially set the record against the Steelers in 1966.^[7] It would stand until Rob Bironas made eight in 2007.
"All in all, I'd have to admit this was a pretty satisfying afternoon," said a smiling Bakken in his post-game conference.^[7]
So the Falcons defense was able to at least keep the Cards out of the end zone. Was the offense living up to their end of the deal?
Well, no. "General" Lee, a five-year veteran of the league, looked more like a private as passes bounced off his receivers (who themselves were bounced by defenders), he was sacked four times, and he completed just 3 of 16 for 27 yards, two interceptions, and a goose egg for a passer rating.^[4]
"The Cardinals changed some of their coverages and personnel, but it wasn't that much," Lee explained. "They have a young club, but experienced and tough linebackers, especially those on the outside, and they don't make mistakes."^[8]
The General was eventually demoted in favor of 1971 Heisman Trophy winner Pat Sullivan for the rest of the game. As Sullivan prepared to go in, Lee had some words for him: relax and good luck.^[8] Sullivan may have needed a bit more than those as he completed 5 of 15 for 51 yards and was sacked once.^[4]
Other offensive miscues included a missed field goal, a fumble by Art Malone on his first carry in six weeks, another lost fumble by Ray Brown on a punt return for the second game in a row, and a third fumble from Sullivan while he was running.^[4] Like the Cards, the Falcons ended the game with five fumbles, but triple the number of lost balls.
St. Louis scored the game's final touchdown when RB Donnie Anderson, trying to set up Bakken for an eighth FG try, fumbled. McFarland scooped up the ball and ran it for a 32-yard score.^[4]
Final score: Cardinals 32, Falcons 10. Yeah, it was ugly.
"It was one of those Gettysburg days for Lee from the outset," wrote Atlanta Constitution sports editor Jesse Outlar, "and it was Waterloo for the Falcons at the end."^[9]
Colleague George Cunningham began his post-game recap as follows:^[4]

The scene at Appomattox Courthouse was replayed at Atlanta Stadium Sunday, but this time General Lee's Army surrendered without honor.
On perhaps the darkest day in a dark Falcon history, the injury-riddled St. Louis Cardinals, a 17 and a half point underdog, all but eliminated Atlanta from the NFL playoff picture with a 32-10 victory before 48,030 fans (10,820 no-shows) who started a mass exit with 12 minutes to go.
There will be much soul-searching during the off-season by a Falcon team that lost three of its first four games, then reeled off seven straight wins in the roughest part of their schedule only to choke in the clutch.
It was team dishonor without explanation and apparently shocked everybody except team owner Rankin Smith who hurried to the dressing room after the game and intercepted coach Norm Van Brocklin who was on his way to meet the press.
"Let's go back this way," said Smith, escorting Van Brocklin behind the closed doors of the coaching quarters.
"I told him to go into the press conference and answer all questions," Smith said later. "No, I didn't issue any ultimatums about next week's game. The coach didn't play today. The players played. I take that back. The players didn't play."
There was protection only in unanimity. How do you fire a whole team?

Aftermath

Despite the embarrassing loss, the Falcons were technically still alive. Washington would lose to Dallas in their game by 20, giving the Cowboys the Eastern Division lead and throwing the Redskins back into the wild card race.^[10] The Cowboys also leapfrogged the Rams for the #1 scoring offense, padding their cushion should their season finale go wrong.^[3] While the Cowboys could hypothetically fall out of first place if they lost the last game, it was against the Cardinals and ended as one might have expected: a 30–3 blowout win for Dallas. Keithley, once again the starter, completed 6 of 20 for 30 yards, no TDs, two INTs, and a passer rating of—you guessed it—0.0. Yup, he had a zero rating in each of his first two NFL starts.
With the wild card now the scene of a two-horse race, Atlanta needed to beat the Saints in the final game and for Washington to lose again to the Eagles. If this happened, both teams would be 9–5, forcing the point rating system to kick in. Although the Falcons fell from #4 to #6 in scoring defense, they were still the #3 offense for a score of 9. In contrast, the Redskins sank from #5 to #8 in offense and #2 to #3 in defense, giving them a score of 11.^[10]
So did it happen? Nope.
Although Atlanta edged out the Archie Manning-less Saints 14–10 to end their season at 9–5, Washington beat Philadelphia 38–20 to claim the wild card at 10–4.^[11]
While 9–5 is still a decent season (and the best record in team history up to that point), it probably goes without saying that Van Brocklin was not a happy coach. Afterwards, he said, "The last two weeks have been long. We haven't really played good since the Minnesota game."^[11]
To twist the knife some more, running back Dave Hampton fell three yards short of 1,000 rushing yards on the season; the previous year, he briefly crossed the mark before being dropped for a loss and finished with 995 yards.^[12] It would not be until 1975, a 4–10 season for the Falcons, that he finally reached that number.
Things looked bleak for Atlanta despite their winning record in 1973. As Cunningham wrote:^[13]

There is a pop song entitled "The Party Is Over," and that is what the Falcons should be singing and remembering as they head home for the holidays.
It is kindly to talk about the 9-5 record and say that the .643 percentage is the best ever recorded by a major Atlanta professional team. Far surpassed are the marks of .585 (48-34) posted by the Hawks when they won a divisional title and .574 (93-69) turned in by the Braves when they earned a divisional crown.
But the truth is the Falcons had their best shot and blew it. They had a 1973 schedule tailor-made for a title, the kind that comes along in the National Football League once about every 10 years. And thanks to the year's superior coaching job in Los Angeles, where first-year coach Chuck Knox took the Rams to a 12-2 record, it may be another eight years before Atlanta can dream again of making the playoffs.
The Falcons this season played only four games against winning teams. Now let's look at 1974.
They will meet five of the eight teams that qualified for this year's playoffs. On the schedule with Los Angeles and San Francisco are Dallas, Miami, Minnesota and Pittsburgh plus Green Bay, Baltimore, Chicago, New York Giants and New Orleans.
It gets worse in 1975 when the Falcons conceivably could be underdogs in 11 of their 14 games. In addition to the two games each against Los Angeles and San Francisco, they play Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota, Oakland and Washington.
So let's hear it one more time, gang. "The Party Is Over Now..." That caliber of opposition is not conducive to championship or wild card playoff hopes.
And especially by a team that gets nervous when it gets down to nitty-gritty time and folds on successive Sundays to foes it was favored by to whip by 14 to 17 points.
It is something for Falcon owner Rankin Smith to think about. He, more than anyone else, must do much thinking. No one has an explanation for those losses to Buffalo and St. Louis, but it is Smith's responsibility to find one and then solve it.
And only he has that power. It is not enough to say as he did Sunday, "we have the players to win, and we have the coaching staff to win."
Something is missing.

Whatever that missing thing was, they did not find. The 1974 Falcons would regress heavily to 3–11, scoring paltry 12 total touchdowns and never recording more than 17 points in any of the 14 games. Van Brocklin was fired midseason.^[14]
Lee was released after the 1974 season and signed with the Vikings.^[15] Keithley would never play another snap in the NFL after 1973 as Coryell traded for his former college QB Dennis Shaw to serve as Hart's backup, while he lost his punting duties to rookie Hal Roberts.^[16] He remained with the Cardinals until the end of 1975.

References

[1] 1973 Atlanta Falcons Statistics & Players, Pro-Football-Reference
[2] Simpson: Pay Me To Win Games Not To Set Records from the Associated Press, The Greenville News, December 3, 1973
[3] Falcons Must Rout to Stay Alive by Ron Hudspeth, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 9, 1973
[4] Falcons Die Again in December, 32-10 by George Cunningham, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 10, 1973
[5] 1973 St. Louis Cardinals Statistics & Players, Pro-Football-Reference
[6] Falcons' Wild-Card Hopes Jolted in Upset to Cards from the Associated Press, Tallahassee Democrat, December 10, 1973
[7] Bakken's Revenge by Tony Petrella, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 19, 1973
[8] Falcons—We'll Be Home for Christmas by Al Thomy, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 10, 1973
[9] The Last Shuffle by Jesse Outlar, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 10, 1973
[10] Falcon Playoff Hopes...If...If by George Cunningham, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 10, 1973
[11] 9-5 and No Tomorrow by George Cunningham, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 17, 1973
[12] The Scores Are Posted by Jesse Outlar, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 18, 1973
[13] Schedule Makers End Falcon Party by George Cunningham, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 18, 1973
[14] 1974 Atlanta Falcons Statistics & Players, Pro-Football-Reference
[15] Column by Sid Hartman, Minneapolis Tribune, September 1, 1975
[16] Lonely Sidelines by Bob Ingram, El Paso Herald-Post, September 24, 1974

By: Nicolas J S Davies - March 28, 2020
Read the article here: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/03/28/why-is-the-us-so-exceptionally-vulnerable-to-covid-19/
The United States has become the new center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 86,000 cases, more than China or Italy. More than a thousand Americans have already died, but this is surely only the very beginning of this deadly collision between the U.S.’s uniquely inadequate public healthcare system and a real pandemic.
On the other hand, China and South Korea, which both have universal public health systems that cover the bulk of their people’s healthcare needs, have already turned the tide on Covid-19 through targeted quarantines, mobilization of public healthcare resources and testing programs that quickly and efficiently test everyone who may have come into contact with the virus. China sent 40,000 doctors and medical staff, including 10,000 respiratory specialists, into Hubei province in the first month or two of the epidemic. It has now gone up to 3 days in a row with no new cases and is starting to lift social restrictions. South Korea quickly tested over 300,000 people, and only 131 of its people have died.
The WHO’s Bruce Aylward visited China at the end of February, and reported, “I think the key learning from China is speed… The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful you’re going to be… In China, they have set up a giant network of fever hospitals. In some areas, a team can go to you and swab you and have an answer for you in four to seven hours. But you’ve got to be set up — speed is everything.”
Researchers in Italy have experimentally confirmed that up to 3 out of 4 COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic and therefore undetectable by testing only people with symptoms. After a series of deadly missteps, the U.S., which had its first case on January 20th, the same day as South Korea, has over two months later only just begun widespread testing, when we already have the most cases and the 6th highest death toll in the world. Even now, the U.S. is mainly limiting testing to people with symptoms, not doing the targeted testing of new case contacts that was so effective in China. This ensures that otherwise healthy, asymptomatic carriers will unknowingly spread the virus and keep fueling its exponential growth.
So why is the United States so uniquely incapable of confronting this pandemic as efficiently or effectively as China, South Korea, Germany or other countries? The lack of a national, publicly-funded universal health system is a critical deficiency. But our persistent inability to set one up is itself the result of other dysfunctional aspects of American society, including the corruption of our political system by powerful commercial and class interests and the American “exceptionalism” that blinds us to what we can learn from other countries.
Also, the military occupation of the American mind has brainwashed Americans with strictly military concepts of “defense” and “security,” perverting federal spending priorities in the interest of war and militarism at the expense of all our country’s other vital needs, including the health of Americans.

Why can’t we just bomb the virus?

Of course this question is ridiculous. But this is how U.S. leaders respond to every danger we face, with massive diversions of our national resources to the military-industrial complex (MIC) that leave this otherwise wealthy country starved of resources to tackle problems our leaders can’t pretend to solve with weapons and war. Depending what is counted as “defense” spending, it accounts for up to two-thirds of federal discretionary spending. Even now, a bailout for Boeing, the 2nd largest U.S. weapons maker, is more important to Mr. Trump and many in Congress than helping American families get through this crisis.
At the end of the Cold War in 1989, senior officials told the Senate Budget Committee that the U.S. military budget could safely be cut by 50% over the next ten years. Committee chairman Jim Sasser hailed the moment as “the dawn of the primacy of domestic economics.” But by 2000, the influence of the military-industrial complex had shrunk the “peace dividend” to only a 22% reduction in military spending from 1990 (after adjusting for inflation).
Then, in 2001, the military-industrial complex seized on the crime of the new century by 19 mainly Saudi young men armed only with box-cutters to launch new wars and the most expensive U.S. military build-up since World War Two. As former Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz said at the time, this was not a legitimate response to the crimes of September 11th. “It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done,” Ferencz told NPR. “If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t approve of what has happened.” Despite the abject, bloody failure of the so-called “Global War on Terror,” the opportunistic military-build-up it served to justify still wins every budget battle in Washington. After adjusting for inflation, the 2020 U.S. military budget is 59% higher than in 2000, and 23% higher than it was in 1990.
Over the past 20 years (in 2020 dollars), the U.S. has allocated $4.7 trillion more to the Pentagon than if it had just maintained its budget at the same level since 2000. Even between 1998 and 2010, as Carl Conetta documented in his paper, An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending, actual war spending was matched dollar for dollar by unrelated additional military spending, mostly increased procurement spending to develop and buy very expensive new warships for the Navy, budget-busting warplanes like the F-35 fighter for the Air Force, and a wish-list of new weapons and equipment for every branch of the military.
Since 2010, this unprecedented diversion of our national resources to the military-industrial complex has outstripped actual war spending even further. Obama spent more on the military than Bush, and now Trump is spending even more. In addition to $4.7 trillion in extra Pentagon spending, U.S. wars and militarism have cost $1.3 trillion more for Veterans Affairs since 2000 (also adjusted for inflation), as Americans predictably come home from America’s wars needing levels of medical care that the U.S. does not otherwise provide to its people.
All that money is gone now, just as surely as if it had been heaped up somewhere in Afghanistan and incinerated by a few of the 80,000 bombs the U.S. has dropped on that poor country since 2001. So we do not have it to spend on public hospitals, ventilators, medical training, Covid-19 tests or any of the things we so desperately need in this distinctly non-military crisis.
Our $6 trillion have been utterly wasted—or worse. The U.S. war on terror did not defeat or end terrorism. It only fueled an endless spiral of violence and chaos across the world. The U.S. war machine has destroyed country after country: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen – but it has never rebuilt or brought peace to any of them. Meanwhile, Russia and China have built effective 21st century defenses against America’s obsolete war machine at a small fraction of its cost.
As countries around the world face the common danger of COVID-19, perhaps the most cynical response of all has been the U.S. government’s decision to impose even more brutal sanctions on Iran, one of the worst-hit countries, already deprived of life-saving medicines and other resources by existing U.S. sanctions.
United Nations’ Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate ceasefire in every war during this crisis, and for the U.S. to lift its deadly sanctions on all our neighbors around the world. That should include Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Syria; Venezuela; Zimbabwe; and not least Cuba, which is playing a courageous and active role in fighting the pandemic, rescuing the passengers of an infected British cruise ship that was refused entry by the U.S. and other countries, and sending medical teams to Italy and other infected countries around the world.

The 21st century command economy

The “command economy” was a derisive term used to criticize the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. But economist Eric Schutz used the 21st Century Command Economy as a subtitle for his 2001 book Markets and Power, in which he analyzed the effects of the dominant market power of monopolistic multinational corporations on the U.S. economy.
As Schutz explained, neoliberal (or neoclassical) economic theory ignores a critical factor in the “free” markets a generation of Americans have been taught to revere. This ignored factor is power. As more and more aspects of American life are entrusted to the mythical “invisible hand” of the market, the most powerful players in every market are free to use their market power to concentrate wealth and even greater market power in their own (not so invisible) hands, driving smaller competitors out of business and exploiting other stakeholders: customers; employees; suppliers; governments; and local communities.
Since 1980, every sector of the U.S. economy has been gradually taken over by fewer and fewer larger and larger corporations, with a predictably debilitating effect on American life: fewer opportunities for small business; diminishing investment in public infrastructure and services; shrinking or stagnant wages; rising rents; privatization of education and healthcare; the destruction of local communities; and the systematic corruption of politics. Critical decisions that affect all our lives are now made primarily at the bidding and in the interests of big banks, big pharma, big tech, big ag, big developers, the military-industrial complex and the wealthiest 1% of Americans.
The infamous revolving door through which senior officials move between the military, lobbying firms, corporate boards, Congress and the executive branch is duplicated in every sector of the economy. Liz Fowler, who wrote the “Affordable Care Act” as a Senate and White House staffer, was a senior executive at Wellpoint Health (now Anthem), the parent company of Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which now rakes in billions in federal subsidies under the law she wrote. She then returned to the “industry” as an executive at Johnson & Johnson – just as James “Mad Dog” Mattis returned to his seat on the board at General Dynamics to reap the rewards of his “public service” as Secretary of Defense.
Whatever mix of capitalism and socialism each American may favor as a model for the U.S. economy, very few Americans would pick this corrupt 21st century command economy as the system they would choose to live under. How many American politicians would win election if they honestly told voters that this is the system they believe in and plan to promote? We are living in a society in which everybody knows the deal is rotten, as the Leonard Cohen song goes, and yet we remain lost in a hall of mirrors, victims of a “divide and rule” strategy by which the wealthy and powerful control politics and the media along with every other sector of this 21st century command economy. Trump, Biden and Congressional leaders are just their latest figureheads, demonizing and arguing with each other as they and their paymasters laugh all the way to the bank.
There is a savage irony in the way the Democratic Party closed ranks around Biden just as COVID-19 appeared on the scene. A month ago, it seemed that 2020 might be the year Americans would finally blow away the well-funded smoke and mirrors of the for-profit U.S. health insurance industry and achieve universal publicly-funded healthcare. Instead, Democratic leaders appear to be settling for the lesser evil of another humiliating defeat and four more years of Trump over (to their minds) the greater danger of a Sanders presidency and universal healthcare.
But now this exceptionally dysfunctional society has run smack-bang into a real force of nature, a tiny virus that can kill millions of people. Other countries are rising to this exacting test of their healthcare and social systems more successfully than we are. So will we finally wake up from our American dream, open our eyes and start learning from our neighbors in other countries, including ones that have different political, economic and healthcare systems than ours? Our lives may depend on it.

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​

• Playing in front of the 140th consecutive sellout crowd at State Farm Stadium on Sunday, Arizona defeated Atlanta 34-33. With the victory, the Cardinals have taken a 16-15 lead in the all-time regular season series against the Falcons.
• Arizona improved to 10-2 at home against Atlanta during the regular season and is now 3-0 against the Falcons at State Farm Stadium.
• With the victory over Atlanta, the Cardinals improved to 2-3-1 under head coach Kliff Kingsbury. Among the eight first-year head coaches in 2019, only Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur has a better record than Kingsbury so far this season.

First-Year Head Coaches in 2019
Coach Team Record
Matt LaFleur Green Bay* 4-1
Kliff Kingsbury Arizona 2-3-1
Vic Fangio Denver 2-4
Freddie Kitchens Cleveland 2-4
Bruce Arians Tampa Bay 2-4
Adam Gase NY Jets 1-4
Brian Flores Miami 0-5
Zac Taylor Cincinnati 0-6\Play on MNF*
DRIVING FOR TOUCHDOWNS AGAINST THE FALCONS

• The Cardinals matched their season high with six scoring drives in the win over the Falcons, including a season-high four TDs. Arizona now has 28 scoring drives this season, tied for the fifth-highest total in the NFL. The Cardinals have as many scoring drives through six games in 2019 (28) as they had through 13 games in 2018 (28).

NFL Leaders – Scoring Drives
Rnk Team Drives
1 Baltimore 34
2t Kansas City 30
2t Carolina 30
4 Tampa Bay 29
5t Arizona 28
5t L.A. Rams 28
5t New England 28

• Sunday’s matchup against the Falcons marked the third time this season Arizona had six scoring drives in a game. The Cardinals had at least six scoring drives in a game three times in the previous two years (32 games between 2017-18) combined.
• Arizona scored on each of its first five offensive drives against the Falcons on Sunday (3 TD, 2 FG). Prior to yesterday, the last time the Cardinals scored on each their first five drives in a game was on 11/8/09 at Chicago (4 TD, 1 FG).

TURNOVER FREE FOOTBALL

• Sunday’s win over the Falcons marked the third game this season – and second in a row – in which the Cardinals did not commit a turnover. Through six games, Arizona has committed just four turnovers and has yet to lose a fumble.
• Arizona’s four turnovers in 2019 are tied for the lowest total in franchise history through the first six games of a season (also had four in 2014). The Cardinals four giveaways are tied for the fewest in the NFL in 2019.

NFL Leaders – Fewest Giveaways (2019)
Rnk Team GA INT Fum
1t Arizona 4 4 0
1t Chicago 4 4 0
1t Green Bay* 4 1 3
1t Tennessee 4 3 1
5t Indianapolis 5 3 2
5t New Orleans 5 4 1\Plays on MNF in Week 6*

• The 2019 season marks the first time in franchise history the Cardinals did not lose a fumble in the first six games of a season.Arizona and Chicago are the only teams in the NFL that have yet to lose a fumble this season.
• Sunday’s victory over Atlanta (442 total yards, 0 sacks, 0 turnovers) marks the first time in over 10 seasons – and just the sixth time since 1940 – the Cardinals had 400+ yards of offense with no sacks allowed and no turnovers in a game. Prior to yesterday, the last time that happened was on 11/15/09 vs. Seattle.

Franchise History – Games with 400+ Yards / 0 Sacks Allowed / 0 TurnoversDate Yds
10/13/19 vs. Atlanta 442
11/15/09 vs. Seattle 462
12/23/07 vs. Atlanta 437
9/9/84 vs. Buffalo 486
11/9/69 vs. NY Giants 403
10/22/67 vs. Philadelphia 416

• Dating back to 1940, there have been 376 instances in which a team ran at least 400 offensive plays in the first six games of a season. In only three of those instances – Arizona (4 in 2019), New England (4 in 2009) and NY Jets (4 in 1985) – has the team committed four or fewer turnovers.
• In his last three games, rookie QB Kyler Murray has 986 total yards (834 passing; 152 rushing), five TDs (3 passing, 2 rushing) and just one turnover in 126 combined pass/rush attempts.

ARIZONA GOES OVER 400 YARDS FOR SECOND STRAIGHT GAME – NOW IN TOP-10 IN TOTAL OFFENSE

• Arizona amassed 442 total net yards of offense in the victory over the Falcons, including 102 yards rushing and 340 net yards passing. Combined with their 514 total yards last week in Cincinnati, the Cardinals have back-to-back wins in which they totaled 400+ yards of offense for the first time since Games 9-10 of the 2015 season.
• After finishing the 2018 season with the NFL’s #32 ranked offense, Arizona currently has the NFL’s #10 ranked offense in 2019, averaging 376.8 net yards per game.

NFL Leaders – Total Offense (2019)
Rnk Team Y/G
1 Baltimore 450.7
2 Dallas 443.7
3 Kansas City 422.0
4 San Francisco 408.0
5 Seattle 399.0
6 Houston 396.8
7 Atlanta 391.3
8 Detroit* 387.5
9 New England 386.3
10 Arizona 376.8\Play on MNF*
THE JOHNSON-EDMONDS COMBO AGAIN MAKES ITS MARK

• The Cardinals RB tandem of David Johnson and Chase Edmonds combined for 169 yards (68 rushing, 101 receiving) and three TDs (1 rushing, 2 receiving) against the Falcons on Sunday. In the Cardinals last two games – both victories – Johnson and Edmonds have combined for 411 total yards (227 rushing, 184 receiving) and four TDs.
• In the last two games, Johnson and Edmonds have combined for six runs of 10+ yards and three receptions of 20+ yards.
• In the last two games, Edmonds (a second-year back out of Fordham) has 149 total yards and two TDs. In his first 20 career games combined, he had 399 total yards and two TDs.

MURRAY’S CAREER OUTING LEADS TO SECOND STRAIGHT WIN

• Rookie QB Kyler Murray had the best game of his young career in the Cardinals victory over the Falcons on Sunday. He completed 27-of-37 pass attempts (72.9%) for 340 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs and a 128.2 passer rating. His completion percentage, TD total and passer rating all set career highs.
• Murray became the first rookie QB in franchise history to throw for 300+ yards in a win. Prior to 2019, a rookie QB had thrown for 300+ yards in a game for the Cardinals just five times – and Arizona lost all five of those games. Murray is now 1-1-1 when throwing for 300+ yards this season.
• After throwing three TD passes against the Falcons on Sunday, Murray now has seven TD passes in 2019. That is tied for the most in franchise history in a player’s first six career games.

Franchise Record – TD Passes in 1st Six Career Games
Rnk Player (Year) TDs
1t Kyler Murray (2019)* 7
1t M.C. Reynolds (1958)* 7
1t John Roach (1959-60) 7
4 Jake Plummer (1997)* 6
5t 7 players tied 5\Rookie Season*

• Sunday’s game marked Murray’s third with multiple TD passes. Only two rookie QBs in franchise history had more games with multiple TD passes than Murray: Jake Plummer (4 times in 10 games played) and M.C. Reynolds (4 times in 11 games played)

Franchise Rookie Record – Games with Multiple TD Passes
Rnk Player (Year) Gms
1t Jake Plummer (1997) 4
1t M.C. Reynolds (1958) 4
3t Kyler Murray (2019) 3
3t Matt Leinart (2006) 3
5t Josh Rosen (2018) 2
5t Jim Root (1953) 2

• After throwing for 340 yards against the Falcons on Sunday, Murray has 1,664 passing yards on the season. Despite being just six games into his inaugural NFL campaign, Murray’s 1,664 passing yards represent the fourth-highest total in franchise history by a rookie.

Franchise Rookie Record – Passing Yards (Season)
Rnk Player (Year) Yds Gms
1 Matt Leinart (2006) 2,547 12
2 Josh Rosen (2018) 2,278 14
3 Jake Plummer (1997) 2,203 10
4 Kyler Murray (2019) 1,664 6
5 Neil Lomax (1981) 1,575 14

• Sunday’s game against Atlanta was Murray’s third 300-yard outing of the season. He is the first rookie in franchise history with at least three 300-yard performances. The only other rookie in franchise history with multiple 300-yard outings was Jake Plummer (2, 1997).

Franchise Rookie Record – Games with 300+ Passing Yards
Rnk Player (Year) Gms
1 Kyler Murray (2019) 3
2 Jake Plummer (1997) 2
3t Ryan Lindley (2012) 1
3t Matt Leinart (2006) 1
3t Pat Coffee (1937) 1

• Murray is one of just six players in NFL history with at least three 300-yard passing performances in their first six career games. He joins Cam Newton (3 in 2011) and Andrew Luck (3 in 2012) as the only rookies in NFL history to accomplish that feat.

NFL Record – Games with 300+ Passing Yards in 1st 6 Career Games
Rnk Player (Year) Gms
1 Patrick Mahomes (2018) 4
2t Kyler Murray (2019)* 3
2t Andrew Luck (2012)* 3
2t Cam Newton (2011)* 3
2t Marc Bulger (2002) 3
2t Kurt Warner (1999) 3\Rookie season*

• After completing 27 passes in the win on Sunday, Murray has established a new NFL record for completions in a player’s first six career games (153).

NFL History – Completions in 1st Six Games
Rnk Player (Year) Cmp Team
1 Kyler Murray (2019)* 153 Arizona
2 Marc Bulger (2002) 137 St. Louis
3 Austin Davis (2014) 135 St. Louis
4t Patrick Mahomes (2017-18) 134 Kansas City
4t Mike Glennon (2013)* 134 Tampa Bay
4t Andrew Luck (2012)* 134 Indianapolis
4t Cam Newton (2011)* 134 Carolina\Rookie Season*

• Murray is the first player in NFL history with 20+ completions in each of his first six career games.

NFL Record – Games w/ 20+ Completions in 1st Six Career Games
Rnk Player (Year) Gms Team
1 Kyler Murray (2019)* 6 Arizona
2t Patrick Mahomes (2017-18) 5 Kansas City
2t Baker Mayfield (2018)* 5 Cleveland
2t Marcus Mariota (2015)* 5 Tennessee
2t Andrew Luck (2012)* 5 Indianapolis
2t Marc Bulger (2002) 5 St. Louis\Rookie Season*
ANOTHER ALL-AROUND PEFORMANCE FOR DAVID JOHNSON

• RB David Johnson finished Sunday’s game against the Falcons with 102 total scrimmage yards (34 rushing, 68 receiving) and two TDs (1 rushing, 1 receiving). It marked the fourth time in six games this season (and third straight game) that Johnson has totaled 100+ scrimmage yards.
• His 613 total scrimmage yards this season rank 10th in the NFL.

NFL Leaders – Scrimmage Yards (2019)
Rnk Player (Team) Yds
1 RB Christian McCaffrey (Car) 923
2 RB Dalvin Cook (Min) 796
3 RB Leonard Fournette (Jax) 773
4 RB Nick Chubb (Cle) 735
5 WR Chris Godwin (TB) 662
6 RB Alvin Kamara (NO) 649
7 RB Chris Carson (Sea) 644
8 WR Michael Thomas (NO) 632
9 RB Ezekiel Elliott (Dal) 630
10 RB David Johnson (AZ) 613

• Johnson’s four games with 10+ scrimmage yards are tied for the most in the NFL in 2019.

NFL Leaders – Games with 100+ Scrimmage Yards (2019)
Rnk Player (Team) Gms
1t RB David Johnson (AZ) 4
1t RB Dalvin Cook (Min) 4
1t WR Cooper Kupp (LAR) 4
1t RB Christian McCaffrey (Car) 4
1t WR Chris Godwin (TB) 4

• Yesterday’s outing marked Johnson’s 28th career game with 100+ scrimmage yards. Dating back to his rookie season in 2015, only three players have more such performances.

NFL Leaders – Games with 100+ Scrimmage Yards (2015-19)
Rnk Player (Team) 100+ Gms
1 WR Julio Jones (Atl) 33 68
2 RB Ezekiel Elliott (Dal) 32 46
3 RB Todd Gurley (LAR) 29 63
4t RB David Johnson (AZ) 28 55
4t RB LeSean McCoy (KC) 28 63

• After scoring two TDs against the Falcons on Sunday, Johnson now has 48 TDs in 55 career games. Johnson’s 48 TDs are more than any other player in franchise history had in their first five seasons. He surpassed the previous record of 46, established by WR Larry Fitzgerald (2004-08).

Franchise Record - Touchdowns in 1st Five Seasons
Rnk Player (Years) TDs Gms
1 David Johnson (2015-19) 48 55
2 Larry Fitzgerald (2004-08) 46 76
3 Sonny Randle (1959-63) 44 64
4 John David Crow (1958-62) 43 53
5 Ollie Matson (1952; 54-57) 40 60

• Sunday’s game vs. Atlanta marked Johnson’s 14th career multi-TD performance. Despite missing virtually all of 2017, Johnson’s 14 multi-TD outings trail only Rams RB Todd Gurley (17) for the most in the NFL dating back to 2015.

NFL Leaders – Games with Multiple TDs (2015-19)
Rnk Player (Team) Games
1 Todd Gurley (LAR) 17 2 David Johnson (AZ) 14
3t Antonio Brown (FA) 11
3t Alvin Kamara (NO) 11
3t Mark Ingram (Bal) 11

• Johnson’s one-yard TD run in the second quarter was the 33rd rushing TD of his career. He is now tied with John David Crow (33) for third place on the Cardinals all-time list for career rushing TDs.

Franchise Record – Career Rushing TDs
Rnk Player (Years) TDs Games
1 Ottis Anderson (1979-86) 46 99
2 Wayne Morris (1976-83) 37 110
3t David Johnson (2015-) 33 55
3t John David Crow (1958-64) 33 69
5 Stump Mitchell (1981-89) 32 116

• Sunday’s game was Johnson’s fifth career outing with both a rushing and receiving TD. That is the most such performances in franchise history.

Franchise History – Games with Rush & Receiving TD
Rnk Player (Years) Gms
1 David Johnson (2015-) 5
2 John David Crow (1958-64) 4
3t Ottis Anderson (1979-86) 3
3t Terry Metcalf (1973-77) 3
3t Charley Trippi (1947-55) 3

• Dating back to Johnson’s rookie season in 2015, only Saints RB Alvin Kamara (6) and Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey (6) have more games with both a rushing and receiving TD.

NFL Leaders – Games with Rush & Receiving TD (2015-19)
Rnk Player (Team) Gms
1t Alvin Kamara (NO) 6
1t Christian McCaffrey (Car) 6
3 David Johnson (AZ) 5
4t Ezekiel Elliott (Dal) 4
4t Todd Gurley (LAR) 4
4t Kareem Hunt (Cle) 4
4t Lamar Miller (Hou) 4

• Johnson has 30 receptions for 315 yards and three TDs out of the backfield this season. Among NFL RBs his 30 receptions rank fifth, his 315 receiving yards rank second and his three TD catches are tied for first. His six receptions of 20+ yards this season lead all NFL RBs.

NFL Leaders – Receptions By RB
Rnk Player (Team) Rec
1 Austin Ekeler (LAC) 3702
2 David Johnson (AZ) 315
3 Christian McCaffrey (Car) 305
4t Chris Thompson (Was) 276
4t Alvin Kamara (NO) 276
NFL Leaders – Receiving Yds by RB
Rnk Player (Team) Yds
1 Austin Ekeler (LAC) 4
2 Christian McCaffrey (Car) 35
3 Alvin Kamara (NO) 33
4 James White (NE) 31
5 David Johnson (AZ) 30
NFL Leaders – TD Receptions By RB
Rnk Player (Team) TD
1t David Johnson (AZ) 3
1t Austin Ekeler (LAC) 3
1t Devonta Freeman (Atl) 3
4t Christian McCaffrey (Car) 2
4t James Conner (Pit) 2
4t Chris Carson (Sea) 2

• There are 27 players in the NFL that have at least six receptions of 20+ yards this season. That list includes 24 wide receivers, two tight ends and Johnson (6).

GONZALEZ ADDS TWO MORE FIELD GOALS – AND 10 MORE POINTS

• K Zane Gonzalez was perfect on six kicks against the Falcons, connecting on all four PATs and both FG attempts. Through the first six weeks of the 2019 season, Gonzalez leads the NFL with 16 made FGs. The Cardinals had 12 total FGs in all of 2018.

NFL Leaders – Made FGs (2019)
Rnk Player (Team) FGs
1 Zane Gonzalez (AZ) 16
2 Josh Lambo (Jax) 14
3t Wil Lutz (NO) 13
3t Justin Tucker (Bal) 13
3t Joey Slye (Car) 13
​

• After scoring 10 points on Sunday (4 PAT, 2 FG), Gonzalez now leads the NFL with 58 points in 2019.

NFL Scoring Leaders (2019)
Rnk Player (Team) Points
1 K Zane Gonzalez (AZ) 58
2t K Joey Slye (Car) 56
2t K Justin Tucker (Bal) 56
4 RB Christian McCaffrey (Car) 54
5 K Harrison Butker (KC) 52
​

• Gonzalez’s 58 points represent the fourth-highest total in franchise history through the first six games of a season.

Franchise Record – Points Through 1st Six Games
Rnk Player (Year) Points
1 K/HB Paddy Driscoll (1923) 74
2 K Jim Bakken (1967) 70
3 K Neil Rackers (2005) 66
4 K Zane Gonzalez (2019) 58
5t K Chandler Catanzaro (2014) 56
5t K Jim Bakken (1964) 56

(Read the previous part here)
The sharp pinch of cold air on my skin woke me.
Someone had thrown a black bag over my head. From what little I could make out through my blindfold, I was lying face down, in a shallow snowdrift. People were talking all around me.
“Warden wants this one brought in through the side-enterance. Apparently he’s wants this one on special measures.” Came one female voice.
“His Ghost?” Came a low, rumbling baritone of a voice.
“Restrained and taken inside already sir.”
Well, shit. That complicated things.
“I’ve got other business to attend to. You 3 make sure he gets what the boss orders.” Said the man with the low voice, walking away.
“You heard the man. Let’s get him inside.” Said the woman, as three sets of arms wrapped around my limbs.
The muscle relaxant must’ve worn off earlier than they expected.
“So...what’s the deal with this one? He’s not exactly Tess Vahaal is he?”
“Shush! That’s classified! We’re not supposed to talk about her!”
“I know. But who cares. He sure as hell ain’t listening.” One of the guards said, shaking my arm.
I tried to resist the temptation, but gave in nonetheless.
“You sure about that?” I said, throwing a blast of Void Light out through my right hand, throwing one guard off me. I couldn’t see the next blow, which came from behind. But I had one arm free.
I wrenched the hood off my head, and found myself in the shadow of the Bakken Prison.
One of the guards who’d been dragging me inside was sprawled out in the snow, face-down, unconscious. In a moment of shock, the other two guards dropped me. I ate a faceful of snow. My hands and feet were still bound.
A problem, but not one that could prove unsolvable.
Gliding up to my feet, I blasted away another one of the guards, who pinwheeled through the open air, and splayed out onto the rock of the wide valley.
The last guard fumbled for his gun, but I was faster. Gliding through the air, I pressed my hands on his chest, and pushed him from his feet. He smacked his head against the ground, and was rendered unconscious.
On my knees, I searched the last guard, before finding what I needed. An authenticated keycard. After a moment of fumbling about, I clicked it against my cuffs, freeing my hands, before again tapping it against my shackles on my feet.
Free, I took the Guard’s uniform, shackled one of his arms to the other guard’s leg, and then used this guard’s arm to finally shackle the last guard’s other leg. This tangled web of limbs would free me to enter the Prison.
It hadn’t gone exactly to plan, but eh, close enough.
The lack of a voice in my head reminded me, like a punch in the gut, that they had Ghast.
I had no healing factor, and no resurrection. Nor, I realized, any real armor, just the reinforced overcoat of the Guard uniform.
This was going to be tricky.
The Guard uniform came with a holster, and a sidearm, which I checked over. It was loaded with high diffusion, concussive rounds. Designed to break bones and knock out their victims over causing potentially fatal injuries.
Good. Most of the Guards housed in Bakken Prison were just following orders. They didn’t deserve to die. More work for me, but it was the right course.
The Guard’s belt also granted me access to a radio. If Drew and Wynne were in position, this was my way back into the plan. Pressing the ‘talk’ bottom, I spoke into the receiver.
“Control Room 3, go set-to-set on 5.”
I switched my receiver to the 5th channel.
With any luck, Drew was in the back-up control room, and was tuned into the comm systems. In a burst of static, a voice came through.
“Sarech?! How the hell did you..?”
“No time. They’ve got Ghast restrained somewhere in there. Can you figure out where they store them?”
“Let me check.” Drew said, tapping away on the control rooms touchscreens. “Ok. Ghost’s seem to be stored in the ‘Belongings’ section. Floor 0, Room 076.”
“076, got it.”
I walked up to the edge of the gigantic stone building, and look around for a door, or hatch.
Instead, an exposed air vent presented itself, and I crawled inside. Up through the steel reinforced arteries of the Bakken. A tight steel mesh blocked my path forward, but a small hatch had been built, secured with a keycard reader.
Using the card I had stolen, the hatch swung open, revealing another path forward. I crawled up through the hatch, which deposited me onto the stone grey floors of Bakken Prison. One of the many support corridors that formed the cage around the Light-suppressing Tank held in the center.
There were no cells in Bakken Prison. The rare door in the unending corridors lead to support rooms, or the interior of the superstructure.
The planning for the mission had turned up how the Prison labeled it’s floors. The landing pad indicated Floor 0. It was meant to be the only way in, but that was clearly not true.
I nodded to a passing patrol of two guards, who nodded back and continued on. Looking both ways, I dipped into a stairwell.
A few, old, fluorescent tube lights gave the stairwell a dim and weathered atmosphere. That and the rust forming on the handrails, and the build up of muck that been shuffled into the corners. The Warden clearly hadn’t thought to hire much in the way of a cleaning staff.
The big painted numbers ticked up as I approached Floor 0. As I rounded the stairs on floor -1, another Guard passed heading the other direction. I nodded, and as she passed, she stopped, turned, and faced me.
“Guard.”
I kept walking up the stairs, careful not to quicken my pace, indicating guilt.
“Maurice, isn’t it? I recognized your badge number.” The other guard said, as she turned around and followed me.
What do I do? I thought to myself.
OPTIONS AVAILABLE Came a loud voice from my left hand.
A yelp tried to escape my throat, but with great effort, it morphed into a whimper.
“You alright there Guard?”
“Yes, sorry.” I imitated a cough, “Red Sickness. Best to stay back.” I said, adding a growl to my vocal pattern.
“We should get you to the infirmary. Here, put your weight on me.”
“No no. I have duties to be getting on with.”
“Your health is more important than watching a bunch of inert prisoners in a grape bath.” She said with a sly chuckle.
Chuckling, I feigned the transition to a hacking cough. She did take a step back, but just one.
“Back away.” I growled.
“I’m calling medical.” She said, heading back towards Floor 0.
“It’s ok. I’ll be alright.”
“Yes, Mr.Dvol, I think you will.”
“I...wait what?”
The Guard grabbed her radio from her belt and pulled up to her face.
“All units, we have an intruder in Stairwell Number 1.” She spoke into it.
“You really shouldn’t have done that.” I said, forming Void in my fis†s.
At that moment, a surge of Arc energy seemed to permeate every molecule of air. It seemed to settle on the skin, and the fluorescent lights seemed to shine a little brighter. Everything seemed to have suddenly become electrified.
I allowed the Void energy to dissipate, and instead pulled in some of the Arc. My assailant smirked, and suddenly a whole cloud of transmat particles swirled around her, Guardian armor forming.
That armor I’d grown so used to seeing my enemies armored in, the armor of The Drifter's Crew, formed around her. The snakes that constricted her armor glowed a venomous red.
“Tess Vahaal?” I prodded.
The Titan, for her armor revealed her class, paused for a moment.
“Who?”
“So, you’re not the..”
She swung a fist of full of Arc Light over my head, cracking one wall of the stairwell. I grabbed the handset from my belt.
“DREW! We’re not the only Lightbearers here!”
“Uh…yeah. I’ll get right on that.” He said, a sharp panic in his voice. The distorted sounds of gunfire came through on my end.
“Well. This could be problematic.” I said, as the Titan threw another wide punch towards me. She again, missed, grunted, and this time tried to crack my chin on her knee.
I leaned back, and lost my footing. Off balance, my feet went skywards, as I fell back down the stairs, coming to rest against a wall. The Titan leaped into the air, and I raised my hands, allowing Arc Energy to course through me, and out through the charged air, straight into the Titan’s body.
Her momentum was cut, and as she screamed, her limp body bounced off the wall, and down to the ground. The collision had rendered her unconscious. With Lightbearers though, that wouldn’t last long.
I got to my feet, and felt my leg howl in discontent. No matter, Ghast would fix me...oh. Right.
Instead, I hobbled up the stairs, and opened the door to Floor 0. An entire armed squadron, kitted out in heavy armor, and holding substantial rifles, all pointed at my chest.
“Where’s the intruder?” One asked.
“Uh...she’s down a flight. Uh...my leg, I think it’s broken. Which way to the infirmary?” I asked, feigning a plea for help.
One of the squad pointed down the hall.
“Room 075.” He said, before shooing me out of the way.
Well, that was convenient. If I could just get one room beyond the infirmary, I’d be able to get Ghast. Goal number 1.
As more and more Guards piled up behind the team heading into the stairwell, I made my limp more pronounced than it actually was, and lowered my head. They were distracted by the call of an intruder in the stairwell.
072, 073, 074, I passed the double-wide doors of the infirmary and into the door labeled 076.
The Evidence lock-up was little more than a closet, with each wall racked with confiscated weapons. Mostly sidearms and submachine guns, but a smattering of scout rifles, snipers, two rocket launchers, and a strange sword.
It was shaped similar to the Quickfang, a sword Cayde had commissioned for his Hunters after the death of Ghaul and the end of the Red War. This sword, however, was long, the curve of it’s blade slowly bending backwards, and a complicated mechanical system of unknown purpose at it’s hilt.
Well...no one would mind too much if one measly sword went missing. Would they?
I grabbed it off the shelf it had been stored on, and had a look around for where they’d keep my Ghost. No where immediately grabbed my attention as Ghost Storage, until I noticed a cabinet, tucked away in the back of the room.
It was locked with a Keycard Authorisation.
No matter, I thought, tapping my stolen card against the pad.
The Cabinet did not open.
“Hmm. Requires a higher authorisation level.” I mumbled aloud, looking for other options.
Then i realized how much of a moron I’d been. My shiny black hand shimmered under the small light that shone into the closet.
Thinking the command ‘open’, my hand wreathed itself in orange datastreams, and five beams shot into the cabinet. The Golden Age decryption programmes began to worm their way into the Cabinet’s electronic locking mechanisms, disabling them one by one.
“SARECH!” Drew’s cry came over my radio.
“What?”
“Have you made it to 076?”
“Yeah, I’m in here right now. Why?”
“Your little fight has got a whole lot of’em bearing down on you right now.”
“Well, shit.”
As the last word left my mouth, the Cabinet opened, a rack of restrained Ghosts lay inside of it. Off a nearby table, I grabbed a spare knife, and cut the restraining bands of each of the Ghosts, and watched as all but one drifted off into puffs of transmat.
Ghast floated up to eye level, and bonked me in the forehead.
“Nice to see you.” I said, “Can I have my armor?”
Ghast nodded, and disappeared. I felt the weight of my armor settling onto one arm, before the transmat particles disappeared.
“Why’d you stop?”
The door to 076 burst open, and two auto rifles ripped into my back. Dropping to the floor seemed like a solid idea. With Ghast released, I could slowly feel myself healing. Rolling behind a weapons locker, Ghast transmatted my leg armor into place. The other arm, and my chestplate settled into place.
My reinforced breastplates slid into place, and locked in.
A grenade bounced off a wall, and rolled between my feet.
“FUCK!”
I glided into the air, but the force of the flashbang grenade threw me across the closet, and I collided with a weapons rack. My face wasn’t doing so hot. The grenade and subsequent collision had cracked my jaw, and dislocated it.
It weighed down my cheek skin, as I whirled on my attackers. The narrow space of 076 funneled them towards me one at a time, which reduced the challenge somewhat. A blast of Arc Energy from my closed fist dismissed the first, and his unconscious body dragged the other down to the floor.
Both grunted as I sprinted and jumped over them, kicking the next man in the chest with both heels, Arc Energy swirling into his chest.
He was thrown through the doorway and out into the corridor. Two more members of the Guard were thrown back, all collapsed.
I stepped out from the gunsmoke filled evidence locker, armored, save for my head.
“Helm.” I said.
Ghast obliged, and my vision was obscured, before I clicked the switch, which formed the sections together, and displayed my HUD. Automatically, I was hooked into my fireteam’s comms.
“Well, this has gone to shit, eh?”
“Sarech? You’re alive?” Wynne asked.
“As far as I can tell.”
“Have you got your Ghost back?”
“Yep.”
“I thought the Crew couldn’t go after him until after The Governor's met?” Drew asked, gunfire still echoing over his comms.
“Something tells me The Crew was expecting us to show up. They’re the beefed-up security.”
“How many have you seen?” Wynne asked.
“Only one, a Titan, wearing armor with red snakes all over it.”
“Definitely the Drifter’s then.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“AGH!” Drew yelled.
“What’s wrong?” Wynne asked, genuine worry in her voice.
“There’s two! There’s definitely two!” Drew called, his hand cannon still firing.
“Where are you?”
“First floor, room 105! GAHHH!” He moaned.
I turned and sprinted down the hallway, looking for an elevator or a stairwell. One door, labeled stairs, swung open to reveal a Warlock, dressed in armor glowing a sickly shade of yellow, with Drew slung over his shoulder.
The two of us stared at each other for a moment, before my eye fell to his hand. A Ghost, restraining band in place, lay dormant there.
He was quick on the draw, an SMG spring up on a cushion of Void, and settling into his palm. It spat Solar Rounds at me, and I barely had time to duck. The first 5 bullets all found their mark in my torso.
I yelled as a Ball of Lightning left my hand, and exploded in his chest. He fell back to the stairs, dropping Drew as he did so. My Hunter friend looked up at me.
“They’ve got my Ghost.” He said weakly.
“I know. I’ll get it back. I promise, but you…” I looked him over, “You need to get out of here.”
He nodded, accepting the reality that faced him.
“I’m getting you to the Landing Pad. Wynne? Meet us there.”
“Copy.” She said, the sound of a Sparrow revving it’s engines coming through her mic.
Drew wrapped his arm about my neck, and let his weight fall on my shoulder. His leg was broken, so together we slowly hobbled towards the blast doors that separated us from the landing pad.
A motion sensor tripped as we got close to the doors, and the huge slabs of stone began to rise, bright spring sunlight pouring into the dark.
Then, as they nearly reached their zenith, they stopped, and began to descend, much faster then it had risen.
“Shitshitshitshitshit!” I yelled, increasing my pace. Drew tried to keep up, but his leg was severely weighing him down.
Throwing myself to the floor, I used my weight as a lever, and propelled Drew beneath the door, just as it closed. The sunlight was gone, and the building went into lockdown. Every light suddenly flicked from white to red.
Bakken Prison was closed for business, and I was still inside. This, was going to be tricky.
Still, there was just one thing for it. Continue the mission, get Victor out. Otherwise, things might be getting significantly worse.
Anything entering or exiting The Tank had to do so through the intake system, located at the top of the Prison. All the stairwells and elevators would be locked down. So what was I to do?
The Yellow Warlock interrupted my pondering with a Handheld Supernova bouncing down the corridor. They exploded, throwing myself up to the ceiling, and falling hard down on my back.
He blinked towards me, closing 30 feet with every teleport. He was very close now. Another supernova building in his hand. There was still a lot of latent Arc Energy in the air, so I pulled some into myself, and forced a thick lightning bolt from each hand across the space with an eardrum-rupturing boom, into my opponent's chest.
He screamed, before the Arc Energy destroyed the bonds between the atoms that made up his body. He disintegrated on the spot.
“Well.” I said, staring at his ashes, which rapidly began to reform into the Warlock they had been.
Not giving him a chance, I turned and ran, sprinting down the hallway towards the turn. Still no idea how to get up several stories to the top of the prison.
Then, I noticed something, a tiny sliver of natural light shining into the blood-red hallway. A window, maybe a couple feet tall at most, but a window nonetheless. I summoned Arc Energy between my hands thrust it at the window.
The glass seemed to shudder and struggle to keep from fracturing as I poured electricity into it. There were footsteps behind me, moving quickly, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the window. I had to concentrate, ground myself.
I focused on nothing but the glass, and willed my Light to shatter it. The roar of electricity igniting the air around the circuit formed between my arms and the window. A Handheld Supernova was charging in his hand as he ran up behind me.
When the window finally shattered in a shower of glass fragments, which flew in every direction. The enemy Warlock charged up behind me, and I willed myself outwards, transforming into a ball of energy and then reforming myself, on the outside of the prison.
Looking back into the broken window, I watched the Warlock plow headfirst into the sill, his Handheld Supernova detonating, killing him instantly.
Well, at least I was outside the prison. Oh shit, I was outside the Prison, hanging off a man made cliff of stone. There was one small window in the corner of each floor, heading up to the top of the prison. There was a tiny windowsill beneath each.
I glided up to the next one, and the next, and the next without issue.
Then, as I reached for the next one, my grip slipped. I clawed for a handhold, but that would’ve been just as effective as slapping the wall repeatedly.
I caught the next windowsill, and felt my shoulder dislocate. My scream was carried across the flat valley on the wind. My fingers began to slip, as the muscles screamed and squealed.
Below me, I saw the Yellow Warlock crawl out through the broken window, a Scout Rifle in his grip, he began firing back up at me.
No other choice now. I had to climb. Putting as much pressure as I dared on my arm, before launching myself to the next window. Everything hurt as I launched myself for the roof, my fingers just barely grabbing the top of the roof.
Pulling myself over the top, I heaved a sigh of relief. My arm healed, and Ghast seemed to read my mind. My Chaperone dropped into my hand, as the enemy Warlock clambered onto the roof.
I chambered a round, and fired, but he leaped straight up, and teleported away in a puff of Void.
A Nova Warp. Now I was probably screwed.
He teleported up to me, and loosed a Void Explosion, which threw me across the rooftop, breaking both my legs on impact with a ventilator fan. The crack felt like a swarm of insects bit my shins, and the pain grew worse as I tried to stand and face my opponent.
He teleported behind me, and grabbed me by the neck,lifting me up and tossing me back the other way. He was behind me before I hit the ground. Another Void Blast, and I pirouetted through the air and crash landed.
He stalked towards me, and then suddenly, he ran out of super.
My healing factor kicked in quickly, and I jumped to my feet, sending a thunderstrike out, knocking him to the ground. I planted my foot on his chest as i raised Chaperone to his visor.
Without taking my eyes off him, I reached down to his belt, and plucked Drew’s Ghost from one loop. With a little Arc Energy, I overloaded the restraining band, and let it fly.
It buzzed away, seeking out it’s Guardian, who was hopefully far from here. Returning my gaze to the Warlock, I rested my finger next to the trigger. Wondering what he was gonna do next.
“Tell them to lift lockdown.”
“Piss off.”
In response to this, I fired a slug into his face, killing him instantly. Before he could respawn, i grabbed his corpse, and tugged him to the edge of the building, before unceremoniously booting him off the edge, and watching revive mid-flight, scream, and break his neck on the long fall down.
I still had to get back into the Prison to free Victor.
There was a maintenance door in a slightly elevated piece of roof, locked with yet another keycard pad.
I retrieved my stolen keycard from the pocket of my robes. The small metal box I tapped it against flashed red, and beeped angrily.
“God damn it.”
I was about sick of these stupid locking mechanisms.
A quick Arc blast overloaded every circuit, which sparked into a small electrical fire. This worked doubly well, as the fire systems unlocked all the maintenance doors. With this, I once again slipped inside.
The maintenance stairwell lead into the gap between The Tank and the superstructure. This was the first time I got a good look at it. The thing was absolutely massive. A huge tube filled with purple goo, encased in a reinforced glass cylinder.
Inside, shadows in the shapes of humans floated, suspended on black wires that looked as though they were the tentacles of some creature of the deep.
The Tank was capped in a stone room, a single hallway leading to it from the superstructure. Through the bulletproof glass of the corridor, I saw a Ghost floating between the levels of security.
It was Jabber.
Not only was Victor’s Ghost trying to single-handedly break him out, he had locked the security doors behind him, keeping the Guards locked in the superstructure.
“Clever Ghost.” I said aloud.
“Hey!” Ghast said in frustration.
“Sorry.” I said, running down the maintenance stairwell, trying to locate a door into the superstructure. Finding one, I kicked it open, and looped back on myself, heading for The Tank.
As I rounded the corner, the Guards pressed up against the first security door turned around and faced me.
“He’s locked us out! He’ll free one of the prisoners!” One of the junior ones said, not realizing I wasn’t one of the Guardians on their side.
“I do believe that’s the idea.” I said, and his face fell.
His compatriots opened fire, their bullets tearing at the fabric of my suit. I laid into them, dropping an Arc Web grenade a few feet in front of them, to lessen the impact.
They clutched their chests in agony, and fell to the floor. In pain, but noticeably and notably not dead. No deaths. That was still the plan.
I began hacking open the door with my hand, when I saw a shape emerge from round the corner. Red snakes slithered motionlessly over the edges of her armor.
It was the Titan.
“Oh come on!” I yelled.
She lowered her head, and charged at me, Arc Energy building around her ankles, before slowly rising through her body to her fists, which seemed to turn blue and glow with the power stored within.
I spread my arms, and calmed myself, pulling Arc Energy in from all sides, preparing for the first impact. She lunged towards me, one fist striking out before her, aimed at my helmet. Her feet left the ground, and the Arc energy in her body carried her forward like a missile.
A tactical misstep.
She gave me the opportunity, and I took it, ducking low enough that she would pass right over me. As her fist plunged into the stone floor behind me, I turned, Arc Energy in both hands already prepared.
She reared, and turned to face me, but two bolts of Lightning had already crossed the gao from me to her, and she was caught by surprise.
Staggering back, she tried to plant her foot back to steady herself, but it failed nonetheless, and she fell further and further back. She tried to raise her arms to defend her, but this too was futile. Instead, she tried the opposite approach.
With a bloodcurdling warcry, she charged headlong into the Arc storm that enveloped her. I was running out of steam, I wouldn’t be able to keep this up fro much longer.
Her step faltered, she seemed to be slowing, each of her steps turning into uneven and unsteady skips across the floor, before she fell, and her corpse skidded across the floor, coming to rest at my feet.
Simple enough. I thought, turning back to watch Jabber. The tenacious little Ghost had just cleared the final security door, and now was working on the console to raise Victor out of The Tank and back onto into the world.
This would take time. But it seemed to be working, I watched one of the black shapes start to ascend out of the goop, towards the exit system that Jabber was operating.
I tapped on the outermost security door, but Jabber took no notice.
The black shape disappeared from my view, and entered the final stretch to the top of the tank, and freedom. I watched as Jabber took a step back, and two metallic hands gripped the sides of the capsule. The tentacles released his fingers, and Victor-6 sat up, eyed himself over, then looked straight ahead.
He cocked his head to one side, and unsurely raised his hand, giving a meek wave in my direction.
I gave him a tiny wave, before something grabbed my leg, and dragged me to the ground. The Titan pounced on me, smashing hammer blows over my head.
The back of my head hit the floor, bounced up, and my face was battered back down by her fist. Over and over and over again, until the blood from my nose began to pull behind the bruise on the back of my head.
She kept at it, and when I raised my right hand to block a punch, the force shattered every bone in it.
“Agghhh!” I screamed, as the cracked ends of my phalanges splintered back through my knuckles, tearing open my skin.
The barrage of blows to my skull continued unabated, I could feel the brain cells falling out.
The last security door slid open, and a shadow crept over the Titan bashing my brains in.
She raised her fist to strike.
“Wait!” I shouted up at her. Her strike was halted. Victor didn’t wait another second, and plunged his knife through the back of her neck.
Blood sprayed all over my helmet, including over my eye sockets.
“Fuck, man. You know this crap doesn’t wash off easily.”
“Je suis désolé mon ami.” He said, throwing his cape over one shoulder with a flourish.
“Enough with the French!”
“Non.”
“Whatever, let’s get out of here.”
Victor nodded, and pulled his hand cannon from the holster of his armor.
Jabber had already transmatted his armor and weapons into place.
“No killing.”
“Right.” He said, pulling the trigger and firing a shot into the Titan’s skull.
Her Ghost appeared. Victor shrugged at my displeasure.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” He said, firing another shot into her already dead skull.
We turned to run, and passed into one of the elevators.
“What floor are we on?” Victor asked, leaning against the wall.
“Zero. We’re headed for the Landing Pad.”
“Much obliged.”
I turned my comms back on.
“I’ve got Victor.” I said.
“We’ve got a lot of problems.” Wynne said.
“Great. How many, and where?”
“A few dozen, on the Landing Pad.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, we’re kinda wading in it.”
“We’ll be there in a few moments.”
“Send my love.” Victor called out, spinning his hand cannon on his finger.
“Right.”
The elevator doors slid apart and we watched as the Guards sprinted past us, heading for the Landing Pad.
“That would be the correct direction.” Victor said helpfully.
“I’m aware.”
We followed the flow as they poured out of the doors and spilled onto the Landing Pad in neat orderly rows.
“Can you still jump?” I asked.
“Am I Hunter?”
“On your good days.”
“Shut up.”
“No you.”
Together we charged line, I glided over while Victor jumped and double jumped clear over them.
Under the ensuing hail of small arms fire, we charged across the Landing Pad. Towards our friends, both of whom were firing back at the line of Guards.
We ducked behind the crates Wynne and Drew were cowering behind.
“Some day huh?”
Wynne looked like she wanted to rip my head off.
“We’re pinned down.” Victor noted astutely.
“NO SHIT!” Wynne yelled, drawing two Submachine guns and standing up to return a volley of fire, before quickly ducking back down, her armor filled with brand new scorch marks.
“So what’s the plan?”
And just like that, all the gunfire ceased.
Victor nodded approvingly.
“Nice plan.”
“COME OUT!” Came a deep, booming voice.
“Says who??”
A loud thud. The sound of a glide deactivating.
I peeked my head up over the edge of the crate, and was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t blow my head off.
Pushing myself a little further, I raised myself all the way up.
The line of Guards hasn’t moved, and their weapons were still raised, three dozen barrels pointed at me.
“Up here!” The voice shouted.
On a balcony in the first floor, a large EXO stood with his hands gripped on the railing. He was flanked with the Titan and, to my surprise, the Warlock.
“I’m the Warden.” The EXO said, clapping his hands together.
“I can see that.”
“You have something I need.”
“Yep.”
“Give him back.”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“He’s out.”
“And?”
“What more do you want?”
“Him.”
“Why?”
“My benefactor wants him.”
“Why?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Fair enough. Still, I think we’ll keep him.”
“As you wish.”
The two Guardians jumped from the balcony, and began to march towards us.
There was a thunderous roar from above, as something small began to fall from the heavens.
As it came closer and closer to the ground, it grew bigger, and bigger and bigger. It looked to be a Cabal Thresher on a kamikaze course.
This Thresher was missing it’s wings however, and had substantially beefed up engines. This was a Thresher commandeered.
I turned my attention back to the Titan and Warlock who marched across the Pad towards me.
The roar of the ship’s massive air intakes was deafening as it dive bombed towards the launchpad.
It wasn’t stopping, and it certainly wasn’t friendly.
Just as the Titan and Warlock crossed the halfway mark between their line and our crate, the Thresher crashed into the pad, it’s folded metal edges skidding across, and squashing both Guardians beneath it’s mass.
My friends all poked their heads out from behind the crate to see what was going on.
A panel flew out, and from the dark interior of the craft, a single boot appeared, followed by a leg, followed by the rest of a female Hunter, wrapped in white snakes.
Her boot steps echoed out into the valley, as she elegantly walked towards me. As she did so, she pulled her helmet off, revealing her blue awoken features, sharp black hair, and glowing orange eyes.
Nova. Back from the Nine Realms.
“I...you...what?” I tried.
“Spare it deary.” She said, pulling a blade from her belt and stabbing it deep into my belly.
She pressed herself close, and whispered in my ear,
“You left me to die in that forsaken place.”
I grunted against the pain.
“Yeah, I suppose I did.”
She pressed the blade deeper into me.
“Oh, you thought I was unhinged before…”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
She chuckled at this.
“You’re right.”
She pulled the blade out, my entrails following in a long line, splayed across the flight deck.
“Oh.” Was all I said, before dropping to floor, feeling my insides leak out of me. A truly unsettling sensation, blood, bile, and stomach acid pooling under the gaping wound in my stomach.
A junior guard stepped out from behind the wreck of her Thresher, and raised his auto rifle towards her.
“The Warden of Bakken Prison wants him, alive. It is your sworn duty as a Guardian to deliver him to The Warden.”
This was the same Guard who’d mistaken me for a friend just a few minutes earlier. Junior, probably only a few months at the prison. Still wholeheartedly believing in doing the right thing.
I spied Lazarus crawl out of the Thresher, and begin walking towards me and her.
Without evening turning, Nova drew her Hand Cannon and shot the Guard, straight through his forehead. She never even saw his face. I had no choice but to watch as his body slumped to the flight deck.
Laz stopped, staring at her, as she calmly slid her gun back into it’s holster.
“He was a boy!” I tried.
“Like you care.” She said dismissively, kicking me in the side, and rolling me over, so I was staring skyward.
My wound closed up, just as she plunged the blade down again, in almost the same spot, a spurt of blood leaping up out of the wound.
I began to shake uncontrollably, my nervous system reacting to the wound as though I was a mortal. The more I writhed, the more pain shot through my system.
“L...La….La...Laz..” I muttered, trying to get the young Guardian’s attention.
He looked toward me, his expression hidden by his visor, but he stood stock still, as if paralysed by what she’d done.
Nova got up, relishing the earthen sunlight.
“I need a ship.” She announced. Strolling back around the other side to speak with the Warden.
Laz still stood, unmoving.
I gripped the knife in one hand, and pulled with all my force. Yanking it free.
Finally capable of healing, I staggered to my feet, and faced Laz.
“Do the right thing.”
He looked at me, then slowly nodded. Void Light gathered around him. He turned, and gripped the Thresher with it, before tossing it aside, sparks flying as the metal dragged along the concrete.
Laz yelled as he tossed the remains of the ship from the Pad.
The Warden’s eye fell upon the body of his dead guard.
“What did you do?” He boomed, voice filled with disbelief.
“Kid was annoying me.”
The Warden seethed with anger, and pointed one of his fingers dead at her.
“SHOOT HER.”
Victor obliged him. His bullet striking her in the back of the head.
She turned around, wide-eyed, as Laz turned away from her, and walked towards us.
(Read the Revelry Special here)
//That didn’t exactly go according to plan, but hey! Victor’s out! Laz might be on the right side now, and Nova is definitely in The Tank now. We shall see what happens next week for the Guardians at Home: Revelry Special. Until then!//
(Read the whole series here)

(Read the previous part here)
The time was set, 10pm the same day. Dress code was civilian. We were blending in.
I went home quickly, wary of anyone tailing me, and dipped into the lobby of my building. A young child was playing the piano, although playing may have been an overstatement. The dark-skinned child smashed his hands on the keys, as his parents looked on.
I pressed on, and headed into the elevator. Tapping my keycard against the control surface, the doors began to close.
“Hold the lift!” Came a shout across the lobby. A man, fresh in from the early spring chill, dashed with his wet boots screeching against the floors.
He ran into the lift, as the doors shut. The man was tall, and wearing a long black trench coat. I nodded as the lift travelled upwards.
“Which floor?” I asked.
“I..I’m sorry?” The man said, his bottom lip quivering.
“Which floor are you getting off on?” I said, flashing a fake smile.
“Ah...uh, 40...45?”
The building only had 40 floors.
“So, you’re visiting Mrs.Heeny?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What a bitch am I right?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” He said, even more uneasy.
“I didn’t know she had any children.”
“I’m her son.”
“Learn something new everyday.” I said, eyeing him.
“Yeah, I guess you do.” He laughed, a little more confident as we approached my floor.
We stood in silence for a moment.
“Well, we’re nearly at my floor. Good luck with Asphyxia.”
“Yeah, you too.” He said, his smile dropping, and his hand dropped into his coat. I could see his fingers wrap around the ends of a small object.
He was quick, and he quickly pulled a small cylinder out of his coat, and plunged it toward my neck. I ducked and rammed my weight into his midsection, slamming him against the wall of the elevator.
He grunted, as I quickly retreated, before he could hit me with the cylinder, which I now saw had a needle at one end. A syringe, loaded with something nasty.
The door opened, on my floor, and I rolled into my apartment. My Service Revolver sat on my coffee table, circular magazine standing on its end on the table. I lunged for it, but he was quick, drawing a club from his coat, and electrifying the end.
A suped-up cattle prod. Great.
He pushed the crackling end towards me, and I leaned to the side, allowing the end to pass me by. On my heel, I turned, and grabbed the end of my revolver, and the magazine.
Turning it over, I slid the magazine into place, before pushing it back into the body of the gun, and pulling back the hammer.
CRACK. I fired, a shot, which dug into my attackers leg. He grunted, shuddered, and he fell to the floor.
With my foot, I moved the cattle prod and the syringe out of his rich. With the void, I pulled the cattle-prod into my hand.
My attacker tried to get up, so I pressed the end of the prod into the spinal cord, just above his shoulders. He jerk upwards, and then flopped about on the floor for just a moment, before falling still.
Relieved, I pressed my fingers against his neck, to check for a pulse. There was one. Thank the Traveler.
Picking up the syringe, I held it out for Ghast to scan it.
“Chemical analysis shows it’s a powerful muscle relaxant. Like, Titan tranquilizer, strength, if not more.”
I knitted my eyebrows together.
“That’s not something you can buy at the corner shop.”
I rolled my assailant onto his back, and examined his bullet wound.
The bullet hadn’t hit any major arteries, but had lodged itself in his leg bone. He was in a lot of pain, sprawled out on my hardwood floors. I snapped my fingers, and Ghast popped out.
“I need cable ties, and some rope.”
By the time I’d strung my assailant up from one of my ceiling beams, the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon out of my window.
I dimmed my windows, almost to blackout, and slapped his cheek, in an attempt to wake him up. He blinked, and feebly opened his eyes. His eyes dropped to his leg, which I’d bandaged.
Feebly, he began to speak.
“Water.” He said weakly.
I picked up a cup, filled it, and pressed it to his lips.
“Who sent you?” I asked, surveying what I’d pulled out of his coat.
“Owl Sector.”
“See, that’s what I thought initially, but then I found this.” I said, raising a DataPod.
“I had my Ghost take a look at this, and he discovered that all the traffic coming to and from this DP is encrypted. That being said, I had a powerful friend of mine put a sniffer on it. You know what the Praxic Order found?”
Suspended by his arms, the assailant nodded.
“All the message data was streaming to and from the Annex, which leaves two possibilities. Either, you’re working for the Black Armory…”
I reached for his pistol, a shoddy little piece made by Hakke, but which clearly had not been properly looked after.
“Or..The Drifter...which i find way more likely.”
The man nodded, before trying to bite down on his lip. Blood flowed into his mouth.
“Why’re you doing that?! No no no no no!”
I rushed over, and pushed down his lip. At the base of one tooth, there was a tiny circuit board, which was now blinking. A tiny little tracker.
“Well, shit.”
I looked around, and realized that more of The Drifter’s Crew would be upon my apartment.
“Ghast, lock down all the systems, and prep the elevator.”
The doors to my roof elevator slid open. I cut the cable ties, and pulled the intruder over my shoulder. I tapped the up button, and we rose to the roof. As we ascended, I made sure his hands were still bound.
“We’re gonna go for a little walk.” I said, dragging up onto the transmat pad.
I tapped out instructions on the touchscreen on the end of the pad, and hit confirm. A wave of fuzziness washed over me, and I reformed on the communal transmat pad, just a few hundred meters from the bustling Overwatch Square.
He transmatted onto the pad, but was obscured by the masses transmatting down from The City’s airships, used for transport post-Red War.
I went with the flow of the crowd, which, at rush hour, was a mass of humanity pushing along the wide walkway towards the Square. It was covered with a vast glass covering, each piece of the glass cut and placed together to form a pattern, and to let in the light of the midday sun. But it was not midday, and the place was instead lit by floor lights that ran along streams of LEDs, guiding the people towards the Square.
I followed, as part of the crowd, allowing the tide to eventually dump me into the square.
Overwatch Square was a sight to behold. High rises on all sides, covered in huge screens hawking goods. At the far end from where I emerged, a squat building covered in blue and orange lighting sat, not drawing too much attention to itself.
Owl Sector Headquarters.
If the intruder was one of theirs, they’d send agents out the front door to bring him in.
I pushed my way across the square, and found a bar with outdoor seating, giving me a chance to look at the stairs leading down from the front entrance of Owl Sector. Sure enough, I watched as a couple of agents burst out of the front door, and ran into the crowd, dressed in the same black trench coats as my intruder.
Perhaps Owl Sector did have it out for me. I wasn’t sure.
Ghast told me I had a message, probably from Aunor.
“Our friend in high places has moved the meeting up.”
“To when?”
“Now.”
Someone took the table behind me, and as I turned to look, a pocket of Void energy pushed into my ribs.
“Don’t turn around.” Came the smooth, dark voice.
“Aunor, I presume.”
“Can’t be sure who’s listening.”
“Ah. So where are the others?”
“Near enough.” She said.
The Frame that was waiting the table walked straight over, and placed a single earbud on the table. I thumbed it, and placed it in my ear.
“Comm check.” Aunor said quietly.
“Five by Five on me.” Drew’s voice said.
“Same on me.” Wynne said.
“Now that we’re all here, and we’ve shaken our tails.” Aunor said, “We can get down to business. Owl Sector has been compromised. A few of their agents have been bribed by our favorite wayward Drifter, in order to ensure that any loyal Vanguard agents do not interfere in his business.”
That would explain the agent in my apartment.
“An agent, interrogated by the Praxic Order, has revealed the next play of the Crew. They want to spring a prisoner from Bakken Prison, and sway him to their cause. We believe they already have sway over the Warden, and the vast majority of the Guards within the Prison.”
“Which Prisoner?” Drew asked, but i already knew the answer before Aunor said it.
“Victor-6.”
There was quiet for a moment. Aunor muted her comms for a moment, and spoke just to me.
“I’ve picked up a new tail. Stay calm, or they’ll come after you to.”
She got up, unmuted her mic, and started walking back into the bar.
“So what’s the plan?”
“Spring him out first. My intelligence suggests that the Warden is planning on handing him over to a member of The Crew inside of a week. We need to get every Guardian we can on side, or we’re not going to win this.”
“Understood. But what’s stopping the Warden from springing him now?”
“The governors of the Prison are still in place, and are required to approve any prisoner releases or transfers. Their next meeting is in four days time, and it will take time for them to review the paper, before they authorize his supposed transfer to an in-City cell.”
“Then we have four days.”
“What’s the plan.”
“That, I leave up to you.” Aunor said, disconnecting from the short range comm channel.
“So how do we do this.”
“My place, twenty minutes.” I said, watching the Owl Sector agents drag their corrupt colleague back up the stairs, seemingly with little regard to his health.
I had some time. Not a lot, but some.
Calling the Frame over, I paid, and quickly left, heading over to the transmat paid, and utilising my Vanguard clearance to authorize a direct teleport to my apartment.
Drew and Wynne arrived at my door not long after.
“So, we all good with the plan?” I asked.
“Yeah. Ride up the valley to underneath the landing pad. I stay there, while you two get inside.” Wynne said, pointing on the holographic projection of Bakken’s ugly grey premises.
“Once we’re in, I make my way to one of the back-up control rooms, task Mullion to take control, and override what security layers we can from there.” Drew said.
“And, then I head up to the top of the tank, head through the 6 security doors, bring Victor up, and walk out the door.”
“How do you plan to do that.”
“I...uh...I’ll think of something. We’ll knockout a couple of guards on the Landing Pad, and use their uniforms. I think we’re gonna have to improvise a little bit here.”
“Agreed.”
There was knock on my virtual doorbell. Wynne and Drew turned to me.
“Expecting someone?” Drew asked, a blade dropping from the long sleeve of his jumper.
“Nope.”
“They’ve overridden security protocols, the elevators on it’s way up.” Ghast said.
“Drifter’s Boys.”
“Agreed. Ghast, can you take a look at the cameras in the lift?”
“Yeah, give me a second.”
A moment of silence.
“Yeah, I’ve got 4 agents, body armor, all armed with Auto Rifles.”
“ETA?”
“A couple of minutes.”
“Alright, what’ve we got?” Drew asked, twirling his knife between his fingertips.
“Wynne’s fists, your knives, I’ve got a silenced sidearm in the kitchen. So, we should be ok.”
“One minute.”
I opened a drawer in my kitchen, and drew an Omolon-made sidearm, an Etana SI4, and checked the magazine to ensure it was still loaded.
As the slide clicked back into place, the elevator door dinged. Wynne pushed herself up against the wall, so she’d have the drop on the intruders. A smoke canister flew out of the elevator, and exploded in the center of my floor.
A shadow moved out of the sepia-coloured light of the elevator, and Wynne swung at it. The first agent hit the ground, instantly unconscious. The other 3 in the elevator started firing hardpoint rounds that ricocheted off my bulletproof glass, one bullet hit Drew in the small of the back, who grunted.
He rolled out of it, and threw a knife straight through the smoke towards the elevator, where it embedded itself in the glass at the far end.
The three agents still on their feet had all disappeared into the smoke. Each of them seeking the three of us.
At least it was a fair fight in one sense.
There was a grunt from the direction of the bedroom, and I had but a second to duck, as a dark shape suddenly flew out of the fog and over my head. The man collided with the back of my sofa, and flipped over it. He was out cold.
That left two.
A burst of gunfire from my right led me to retaliate by firing my sidearm a few times in the direction the echoing noise had come from.
The auto rifle kept firing, straight up, until the magazine ran out.
One left. Now...where was was….
Something cold pressed against my neck, a syringe pressed into the vein running down my neck, and something that felt like ice ran into my bloodstream.
I flopped onto the floor, and felt myself get dragged away, into the elevator, and watched the doors close.
(Read the next part here)
//WOAH! A cliffhanger! I wonder what happens next week? All I shall say is this: LET’S GO TO PRISON!//
(Read the whole series here)

(Read the previous part here)
Wynne, Drew and I left the Drifter’s little cubby, his bank swirling with it’s ascendant energy.
“Victor, you comin’?” I called back. He was chatting with The Drifter, who slipped him a small silvery item, which he pocketed in his grey robes.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.” He said, ambling back towards us. Drew skipped up to the Transmat Pad, pulled out his Ghost, and quickly disappeared in a puff of transmat. Wynne followed him into nothingness.
That left Victor and I alone in the mini-hanger of The Annex.
“So, this game The Drifter wants us to play. Are you sure that it won’t trigger anything within you?” I asked.
Victor sighed, and leaned back on his feet.
“I’ve played Gambit, if there’s anyone who knows what to expect, it’s me.”
“That’s fair enough, but I’m concerned that this may not be good for you. If you want to get released from Bakken, permanently, and not be hunted down by the Praxic Order, then I suggest that you avoid doing anything that might make you look bad.”
“I appreciate the concern, me amigo, mais c’est ne rien. I’ll be fine.”
“You do realize that you switched languages 3 times in that sentence right?”
“Oui.”
The Colossus was shelling our position. Victor and I were crouched behind a red rock, with a dusting of snow on the top.
“You sure you’re ok?!” I shouted over the deafening roar.
“NO!!” He shouted back, peeking his head out of cover, and firing off a shot from his Hand Cannon. The bullet pinged pretty much harmlessly off the huge Cabal’s helmet.
“Just breathe, we’ve seen worse. Breathe. Breathe.” I said, trying to be reassuring.
“I DON’T HAVE LUNGS!” He yelled, stealing out of cover, and making a break for a ditch beneath the Colossus’ raised position in the Depot.
“Well, shit.” I said, “Drew! Where the hell are you two?”
“Hunting a High Value Target in the Cavern!” Drew’s transmitted voice came through my helmet.
“Great.” I said, looking over to Victor.
With the Colossus focused on me, Victor seized his moment, and bounced up into the Depot, one level below where the walking artillery platform was positioned.
He climbed onto a blast shield and threw himself up onto the same platform as the Colossus. I watched the huge turd turn to look at Victor. He opened up an opportunity. The ditch was spanned by a series of floating WarSat cartridges. I leaped onto one, grabbing onto the hull of the satellite.
Above me, Victor ducked between the yellow-clad legs of the Cabal, and stabbed him in the back. He whirled around, his back facing me. I glided up to the platform and positioned myself behind the Colossus. Victor saw me, nodded, and watched the giant space-rhino’s fist.
Just as the three fingered hand came crashing down, Victor jumped, out over the ditch and the conveyor. The Colossus was thrown off balance by the momentum of his heavy fist, and fell over the edge. He bounced off one of the floating cartridges, and landed in a pool of muddy red water at the bottom of the ditch.
Victor jumped on top of the Colossus, and plunged his knife into the weak neck armor, before using the plasteel blade as a lever, breaking the pressure seal on the armor. A spurt of Organogel flew from the breach, caking Victor in it’s black tar.
As the trooper died, 3 triangular motes popped up and fell to the ground. I hopped down to the ditch, and suddenly, a powerful desire to pick them up. Victor recoiled at the sight of them.
“Motes.” He said quiveringly.
I satiated my curiosity, and picked it up. It disappeared into my hands. I still felt as though I held its power within me. I ran over the other two, and they folded themselves into me as well.
The Drifter’s voice boomed over the comms.
“Bank, and you’ll summon a Primeval!” He yelled.
My eyes snapped to the small tank with 4 synthesizers attached to it that stood in the center of the clearing between the Cavern, the Gulch, and the Depot. A mysterious metal circle stood against one wall of red Martian rock.
I ran up the embankment, and crossed the clearing towards the bank, when a klaxon went off inside my helmet. I saw something glowing red out of the corner of my eye in the Gulch. I arrived at the bank, and pushed the collective energy of my 3 motes into my hand. A mote formed, and I was prepared to slam it into the receptor, when a shotgun shell collided with my helmet.
My grey matter was shredded, and I died instantly, the energy of my motes fading into nothingness. A few moments later, Victor revived me and dragged me to my feet.
“What the hell was that?”
“An Invader.” He said, as if that was a sufficient explanation.
“That’s not particularly helpful.”
“It’s the special sauce that gives Gambit it’s zest.”
I stared at him,
“That’s how the Drifter explained it to you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“So who is it?”
“The enemy team. Didn’t you know? Gambit is competitive too.”
“Mmm.” I looked over to see Drew and Wynne charging towards the bank. A siren went off inside my helmet.
“Another invader?!”
“Blockers!” Victor shouted, charging towards the two Taken Knights that had dropped in from above. I joined the fray, shotguns firing on all sides. Before the first Knight knew what hit him, he was destroyed and returned to the Ascendant Plane.
I ran up towards the second Knight, who whirled and planted his fist on my chest. I was slammed into the Martian dirt. All the wind rushed out of me, moisture condensing on my visor. My shotgun slid across the dirt. I reached out through the Void and grabbed the barrel and began to pull it towards me.
My right hand, pulsing with purple energy, called the gun towards it.
Just as the grip slipped into my palm, the Knight’s huge glowing foot fell on my arm. My ulna shattered instantaneously under the weight of darkness.
“Fuck!” I screamed.
I couldn’t feel my hand, and the Void energy dissipated. Victor slid on his knees, drawing his thickest blade, and slashing the Knight’s other leg. In response, the large blocker slapped him across the face. It hit him with a deafening crack, and his body twisted before falling for the dirt. With Victor pushed aside, the Knight slammed his other foot into my chest.
My ribs bowed like twigs, and without thinking my left hand grabbed the huge leg. The Knight growled and pushed down harder.
‘Emergency Conditions detected. Would you like to activate countermeasures?”
The voice was bouncing off the inside of skull.
“Oh. Um...yes?”
My left hand began to glow, before it flashed. The huge Knight lost it’s foot in a moment. It screamed, and I rolled out of the way, and grabbed my shotgun, firing straight up.
The Knight collapsed into a mini-ascendant portal. Hand punching the dirt, I pushed myself back to my feet. Victor revived, as Drew and Wynne slammed in their motes behind me.
“PRIMEVAL’S HERE!” Drifter yelled over out comms.
Then, everything disappeared, all the Taken evaporating almost as quickly as they’d arrived. The 4 of us stood in the centre of the clearing.
The Drifter transmatted onto the field, and swaggered towards us.
“Vanguard wanted you guys pulled out. They seem on edge these days.” He said with a knowing smile of fangs. “I wasn’t in a mood to argue, so I did what I was told for a change.”
He shrugged, flipping a coin over and over again in his hand.
Ghast popped out and buzzed round my head a couple times.
“Vanguard just sent you a message.” He said, before hovering in place, and starting the Hologram.
Commander Zavala appeared on the Martian surface before us, flickering.
“Dvol, we’ve decided that it’s of the utmost importance you receive this information immediately.”
There was a pause. He seemed to be thinking about something, before he looked up, staring dead into my eyes.
“Enroute to Bakken Prison, the rogue Guardians Nova and Lazarus, escaped Owl Sector custody and commandeered a Hawk equipped with and NLS Drive. It is the belief of the ISR Network that they will pursue with the intent to kill. The Hidden and the Praxic Order have both been deployed to apprehend the fugitives. That being said, we are extending you a warning.”
The message ended, and Zavala faded from existence.
“Hey, hey hey. Looks like you 4 are in a pickle.” The devilish trickster said, clicking his tongue.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got any way out?”
He smiled again.
“HE LET THEM FOLLOW US?!” Wynne shouted as Nova charged towards us.
“I think he opened the door.” I muttered, drawing my Auto Rifle, and raising the stock to my shoulder.
The spry huntress leaped into the air, Void Blades forming in her hands. She backflipped, and had vanished before she hit the bridge. Lazarus was standing among the corpses of his victims, keeping us from running back down the Bridge of Folly.
His arms crackled with Arc Light as I walked towards him. Void tendrils curled around my fingertips, and formed into balls of energy in my fists.
A low female voice rippled out across the plane.
“The Nine wish to observe what follows.” The disembodied voice said.
“Of course they do.”
Laz struck first, jabbing the air in front of him, sending a bolt of lightning towards me. He wanted to lure me into a drawn out fight. Give Nova the time she needed to decimate us.
I wasn’t going to take the bait. The Void Light within me surged out into the space around me. Laz was knocked from his feet, the Arc Energy fading as he slipped back a section of the bridge. He came to rest next to one of the blue cubes. He was unconscious, as far as I could make out. Potentially comatose considering how I hit…
Wynne grunted loudly behind me on the golden plate. Nova reappeared, her blade delivered a second slash across my Titan friend’s stomach. As quickly as she had appeared, the Huntress slipped back into the shadow.
Laz was getting back up, but I had to turn my attention to his comrade, who appeared above me and slashed downwards, the formless blade cutting through my shoulder. It hurt more than any physical blade, but before I had a chance to even respond, she was on me again.
She slashed both legs as she slid between them. I was on the ground. She spun around and stood, holding her purple blades against my neck.
Drew raised his Better Devils. He wasn’t about to let Nova win. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an invisible shape disturb and distort the light. During the fray, Victor had slipped away.
“You pull that trigger, and I’ll slash through his Ghost’s shell quicker than you can blink. Sweetie.” She intoned roughly.
Drew was unmoved, his weapon still raised. Not even a hint of reconsideration.
“You would RTL him?” Drew asked flatly. He was clearly stalling. “Is that a line you’d cross?”
Even Nova sensed his ‘play for time’ strategy, but she indulged him nonetheless.
“Oh sweetheart, you think that’s not a line I’ve already crossed?”
Behind his faceplate, I could tell he was grinning.
“No. I don’t think it is.”
I counted the seconds as Nova thought about her next move. After an eternity squeezed into half a minute, she chuckled.
“You’re right.” She said, her blades dropping a couple inches, “But there’s a first time for everything.”
“NOVA! WAIT!” Came a voice from behind.
She turned, and I moved my head so my jaw wasn’t fileted.
“You can’t….” Laz said, Arc energy swirling around his wrists.
“Oh...I definitely can.” She said, turning her head downwards towards me.
“It’s wrong.” Laz declared, firmly.
“Babycakes, you know what’s wrong?” She asked rhetorically, “What’s wrong is sticking people like us in a cage! We were chosen by a god, and that god absolves us of our sins. NOT the mortals we protect.”
Laz seemed to deflate slightly at least. She’d almost got him back under her thumb.
“You know...The Tank’s not all that bad once you get used it.” Victor said, appearing out of his invisibility. He held a very real knife to Laz’s throat.
Nova was at a tactical impasse, which is always a dangerous position to be in on the battlefield. Why is it dangerous, because your enemies will use it to their advantage. I did exactly that. In her moment of indecision, I grabbed her arm, and snapped it. The Void Blade in the same hand disappeared.
She swung high over my head, but Drew was quick. He fired a shot into Nova’s face. She yelled and staggered back. Laz tried to break free from Victor’s grip, but my friend only pressed his knife into the soft armor a little harder.
Wynne charged low, her shoulders colliding with Nova’s shins. They both loudly shattered as she ran into them. She threw her arms around the Hunteress’ thighs before charging to the edge of The Bridge and stopping suddenly. Her grip released, and the momentum carried Nova over the edge of the bridge and down towards the white plane far below.
I turned to Laz, but addressed Victor.
“Let him go.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Victor relented.
Laz stumbled forward a couple of steps and peered over the edge of the Bridge.
“The Nine are impressed with your performance.” The booming voice said.
We all disappeared in the fuzz of transmat, and reappeared at the foot of the huge triangular structure where we had first arrived within The Haul.
I put my hand on Laz’s shoulder.
“Thank you.”
The young Guardian seemed confused.
“For what? My friend nearly killed you.”
“And you stopped her. You saved my life.”
He shook his head.
“She won’t stop coming for you. And she’s right. You did try to put us in a cage.”
I sighed.
“Yes I did. But…” I thought about what I’d say, “It was the right thing to do. To protect the people from her plans.”
He inhaled a short raggedy breath.
“Yes. I guess you’re right. But she’s still my only friend.” He looked at me with a steel confidence, “I won’t give her up.”
“No. I didn’t suppose you would. But go careful. The Praxic Order is out for blood, and I think you’ve made a deal with the devil, young Warlock.”
He nodded,
“I think you might be right. But she’s treated me well. You’ve not yet done that.”
I chuckled.
“No, I haven’t been kind to you since you first kicked me in the face. How’s this for a start? I won’t turn you into the Order, and we’ll leave you be to find Nova out here.”
He nodded.
“It’s a start.” He said.
I tapped my index and middle finger against my Ritual Mask of Eimin-Tin in a mini-salute.
“I’ll see you around, Lazarus.” I said, before turning towards my friends, “Come on crew!”
“Let’s get out of here.” Drew said, pulling Wynne close.
“Allons-y!” Victor yelled jubilantly.
(Read the next part here)
//Back to back entries, and we’re back on form. Entries will return to a weekly schedule, and will be posted on Saturdays(For me in the UK at least). Next week, we begin a three week series titled: Adherence I’ll see you then. P.S. I’ve begun posting links to entries on my twitter account @GravitonLance. Feel free to head over there and say hi!//
(Read the whole series here)

Just wanted to get some advice from you guys on my situation:
​
I'm in my late 20s and am thinking about looking for some work again in the ND oil industry, but not quite sure how to go about it or even what I want.
I have a few months experience on frac sites as I went to the Bakken in the fall of 2014 and worked there for a few months into 2015, doing water transfer. I went out there with no job lined up and was easily able to find something (this was right before things really started to slow down). However, for various reasons I left the company I was with. They were pretty disorganized, things weren't going to well, and the industry was diving. I was young and figured, fuck it I'll just go back to the state I was from. I didn't leave on the best of terms, it wasn't that bad, I just didn't give them a full 2 weeks notice, only a few days. Point is, I'm not really confident in using them for a reference. So not sure how to go about saying I have experience in the oilfield if I'm not willing to give them a phone number to call. Any input?
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When I left, I went back home and finished up my degree. So I actually have a 4 year degree in mathematics now (I just like math, but prefer blue-collar type jobs and most of my jobs have been of that sort). After school I put my degree to use and started doing some computer-oriented work in an office for a bit, but I prefer more active jobs so I left that. I'm now a supervisor in a warehouse.
​
But I keep having this feeling that I want to go back to the oilfields and work there for a few good years, saving up enough money for a house (I'm almost done with student loans). I'm planning on applying online for a few months and not going out there until I have something lined up. I was a bit more gun-ho a few years ago and just did it, but I want to do this right and find a solid company to stay with for a few years.
​
As my degree isn't petroleum engineering or the like, I'm not sure how much of a chance I have at some of the jobs in the field that prefer degrees (field engineespecialist, etc.). Anyone have any input on this?
​
I wouldn't mind going for a job on a rig or in wireline either, I just want to work a lot and make a lot. Will my degree be looked upon oddly by HR or would it help? (i know in the actual job, the degree doesn't mean jackshit, but I'm wondering if it helps to get the foot in the door).
​
While I'd rather be more active, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a job that has some office work to it. But would these jobs pay as well as working on a rig or are they salaried at like 60-70k and you don't accrue the overtime as you would out on the frac site? Is there anything where I could utilize the degree but still make the big overtime money (leading to ~90k a year)?
​
Also, I don't have a CDL.
​
So I guess I'm just looking for some advice on peoples' opinion on how to get back into the oil industry for someone with a few months of water transfer experience in the Bakken (but probably can't get a reference from that experience) and a math degree, and what kinds of jobs someone might recommend.
​
Thanks

Text from Episode page:
DONALD TRUMP IS poised to make another lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. It is a grave injustice and is tantamount to a coup within the judicial branch of the U.S. government. This week on Intercepted: Jeremy Scahill makes the case for an inside-outside strategy for resisting Trump. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, 33, is running for governor of Michigan on a campaign of creating a single-payer health care system, raising the minimum wage to $15, legalizing marijuana, and a sweeping overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system. He discusses his campaign, his views on the Democratic Party, the Flint water catastrophe, and why he believes he can accomplish his agenda despite the powerful right-wing forces in Michigan politics, including the DeVos and Prince families. As the internment of immigrant families continues, we revisit Scahill’s 2017 conversation with educator and organizer Mariame Kaba. She retraces the evolution of the U.S. prison system, from convict leasing to three-strikes law, and the devastating generational impact these policies have disproportionately had on black and brown communities. Filmmaker Michelle Latimer discusses her new documentary “Nuuca,” a nuanced exploration of the brutal transformation that oil extraction brought to one North Dakotan community. The film follows three young indigenous women who struggle with an influx of men and rising rates of sexual abuse, rape, and kidnappings.
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Hero: Zach “Black Sky” Bakken
Age: 27
Occupation: Mercenary - assassin
Affiliation: Joined Blackwatch after Antonio Bartalotti’s death
Base of Operation: All around the world
Role: Offense
HP: 200
Pros: Having abilities for different situations, this character can single-handedly cause chaos within the enemy team, as well as helping out his own team with distracting the others.
Cons: Having those abilities leads to difficulty in using them correctly. The mechanics of this hero is easy to understand; yet difficult to master.

Abilities

Mobility

Black Sky moves at a speed of 6 meters / second, and increases the speed to 8.8 meters / second with his passive ability “Silent Runner” and to 7.5 meters / seconds with his ultimate “Invisible Strike”.

Passive – Silent Runner

After getting a double kill, Black Sky is filled with adrenaline and gets a 46.7% movement boost (8.8 meters / second). His adrenaline level decreases and nullifies if he takes an action other than moving

LMB – Dagger, weapon 1, stab mode

By sneaking up to someone unaware, Black Sky plunges his dagger into the body of an enemy and damages accordingly to where he hits. If he strikes behind an enemy, he deals 96 damage per second, and if he strikes in front, he deals 83 damage. He needs to be closer than 1.8 meters to successfully attack, and has a “rate of fire” of 0.8 seconds.

LMB – Dagger, weapon 2, slash mode

Jumping into a crowd, Black Sky swings his dagger in an arch and hurts several enemies at the same time. He damages 79 from behind enemies, and 68 in front (Per second). It has a rate of fire of 0.8 seconds.

RMB - Knives

Having 10 knives in his pocket, Black Sky throws them in an arch at an enemy dealing damage accordingly to how hard he throws. The damage will be somewhere between 20-120, and a speed from 26 m/s up to 90 m/s. It has a rate of fire of 0.4 seconds charging, and a 0.4 second delay between throws. Black Sky has 10 knives to begin with, and he needs to pick them up to refill (or die). The knives will light up slightly to make it easier for Black Sky to pick them up.

Shift - Decoy

Getting help from his Swedish associate Torbjörn Lindholm, Black Sky has learned how to quickly build a figure looking like someone. This decoy will move around aimlessly, and sometimes use abilities to further convince and distract the enemies. After setting it up, Black Sky is granted invisibility for 4 seconds. (Invisibility breaks if damaged). The decoy will have the same health and movement speed as the hero chosen, and will damage 30 when destroyed to players nearby (2.5 meters or closer). Black Sky’s movement speed decreases by 10% while setting it up, and he has 3 decoys stored. He can have a maximum of 3 decoys deployed, and each decoy requires 2 seconds to be casted. The cooldown is 13 seconds (To recover a single decoy), and Black Sky is granted invisibility for 4 seconds after setting it up.

E – Smoke Bomb

Getting help from his Blackwatch colleague Moira O’Deorain, Black Sky has gotten a supply of smoke bombs which he can use to get out of situations he would otherwise not survive. Combining with the skills from Torbjörn, Black Sky has created yet another distraction on the playing field by building a decoy (Not counted with the ability) in the middle of the smoke to absorb damage. The smoke has a duration of 4 seconds, and deals 10 damage every second to enemies who decide to walk into it. It has an area of effect of 2.5 meters radius, and a cooldown of 10 seconds. The decoy that is placed will stand still, and have 200 HP.

Q – Invisible Strike

Combining his earlier skills, Black Sky sharpens his dagger and turns invisible, and also raises his adrenaline level. If stabbing, he will deal 110 dmg/sec behind an enemy, and 95 dmg/sec in front of an enemy. If slashing, he will deal 90 dmg/sec from behind enemies, and 80 dmg/sec in front of enemies. Black Sky gets an movement speed of 7.5 m/s, and can stand a maximum of 2 meters away from his target. After activating Invisible Strike, he becomes invisible for 4 seconds, and the ultimate lasts for 8 seconds (Or after he’s attacked 6 times).

Lore

Backstory

Until Zach became a teenager, he was a typical, Norwegian boy who played in the forest and went fishing every other day. He learned to cut the fish properly, and had gotten knowledge of the fish’ anatomy. After showing interest in both anatomy and the human body, he combined them both and decided, at a young age, to become a doctor so he could save lives. His plans for the future quickly changed after the attack on Overwatch facilities in Oslo in 2068 – both of his parents’ death were caused by this attack. Seeking revenge, he investigated the area and used the clues to discover that none other than the corrupt businessman Antonio Bartalotti, a.k.a. Antonio Giordani, had conducted the attack. He researched and found out that his next destination would be Venice, Italy. He still had the dream of saving lives in his mind, but now he wants to save them before they are hurt.
In preparation for the flight, he had weeks of taekwondo training, and got help from several, professional parkour runners. He searched and found the best smiths Norway had to offer to create a comfortable weapon for Zach’s purpose, and the result was his beloved dagger. Using scarecrows and his knowledge of the human body’s anatomy, he analyzed the scarecrow and used it as a training dummy – training to know where to strike to deal the most damage in the most efficient way. When he finally believed he was ready to do what had to be done, he booked a flight to Italy.
While on the plane to Venice, the news channel had live images from the Blackwatch facility in Rome. The facility had blown up, leaving dozens of Blackwatch agents deceased. After arriving in Venice, Zach quickly started to find out exactly where Antonio’s headquarters was located. Once he was on the roof next to what he believed was his office, he could see Antonio’s body flying through the window in the office. Shortly after, red lights started flashing and the manor went on lockdown. Zach witnessed four shadows blowing up the wall on the other side of the office, and he quickly decided to help them with what he had trained for weeks in advance. He wanted to be discreet and didn’t want to attract too much attention from the four agents that only had hatred in their eyes. When he finally saw the helicopter coming in to save the four agents, he finished his stay in Venice and went out in the world to become stronger, better, more deadly. After a year he seeks what he desires – someone with the same mindset as himself. He locates Blackwatch, and gets accepted as a part of the team. Before Jesse McCree leaves Blackwatch in 2070, McCree and Zach has a final conversation. Rumors are told that McCree stated: “Zach, remember this. Never bring a knife to a gunfight”. Since Zach still uses his knives, it certainly looks like he rejected the tips; or just prefers the more silent solution.

Personality

Growing up as the only child of the parents, and then losing his parents at a young age, Black Sky has learned to live by himself. He’s had a rough time growing up by himself, and finally finds a family that helps him when he joins Blackwatch. The death of his parents raised his adrenaline, and he has learned that sometimes violence is the answer. Training for years, Black Sky knows how to fight both with and without his dagger, becoming a great fighter in all situations. Not having finished school, he lacks some knowledge regarding history and different subjects, but he makes up for it with his incredible understanding of the world around him.

Appearance

A Norwegian with the typical Caucasian skin color, light blue eyes and short, blonde hair. He’s small and agile, being only 1.6m / 5’3”. Having the dagger in his hand at all times, and his knives in his pocket, he’s ready to fight whenever the opportunity arises. Using black clothes, he easily camouflages in the darkness, having only the eyes revealed. He has scars all over the body after multiple fights, but he never gives up. Not interested in fashion, he also has a utility belt, in which he has everything he needs in any situation.

Team Urameshi

After Yusuke and Kuwabara saved the yuki-onna Yukina, Toguro, interested in how much their strength could grow, offered them a proposition; Gather a team of fighters and join the Dark Tournament hosted on Hanging Neck Island, or be killed along with everyone they hold dear. The Dark Tournament is a vile martial arts competition organized by greedy human crime lords, and draws the attention of some of the most wretched demons of Spirit World. According to Younger Toguro, wealthy human gamblers and businesses owners come to the tournament for betting and entertainment from the fights, while the demons enter for sake of blood and chance to wish for anything they want.
As indicated by Kurama, the idea of mercy has never been a part of the tournament, meaning any tactic to defeat the opponent goes. According to Hiei the only law of the competition is the strongest combatant prevails.
Ultimately they win the Dark Tournament, defeating Team Toguro in the finals. Due to the hosts of the tournament being killed, they are not granted their wishes for winning.
As the group's strength grows throughout the series, their individual feats will be listed by arc.
Y = Yusuke's Ordeal Arc
A = Artifacts of Darkness Arc
G = Genkai's Tournament Arc
B = The Beasts of Maze Castle Arc
R = Rescue Yukina Arc
D = Dark Tournament Arc
GD = Genkai's Death Arc
DF = Dark Tournament Finals Arc
C = Chapter Black Arc
I = Into the Makai Arc
In = Invitation Arc
M = Makai Unification Tournament Arc
H = Hostage Arc
Final Team Win/Loss Record: 5-0

• O Team Urameshi vs. Rokuyukai
  
• O Team Urameshi vs. Dr. Ichigaki
  
• O Team Urameshi vs. Team Masho
  
• O Team Urameshi vs. Team Uratogi
  
• O Team Urameshi vs. Team Toguro
  

Yusuke Urameshi

• Full Respect Thread

Final Win/Loss Record: 4-0-1

• O Chu (KO - Headbutt)
  
• O M1, M2, M3 (Forfeit)
  
• O Bakken (Ring Out)
  
• △ Jin (Double Ring Out)
  
• O Younger Toguro (KO - Spirit Gun)
  

Yusuke Urameshi is the main protagonist of the manga & anime series Yu Yu Hakusho. He is a Spirit Detective who is tasked with protecting Human World from various supernatural threats over the course of the series and his closest friends as well as greatest allies include Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei, Keiko, Genkai, Koenma and Botan. He is also the de facto leader of Team Urameshi and the general person to look to when the going gets tough.
At the start of the series, Yusuke is a teenage delinquent / street fighter with little to no positive qualities to his character. Over the course of the series, he starts becoming a better person, changing into an almost altruistic defender of the Human World.

• Uses a lit cigarette to keep track of Getsuno ^G
  
• Feels up an assassin while dodging his attack ^R
  
• Dodges strikes from Hiei and catches his blade ^D
  
• Smashes several thrown boulders ^C
  
• Repeatedly kicked and shot by Sensui ^C
  
• Knocks an entire block of demons away with a barrage of punches ^M. Earlier, it was stated there were over 100 competitors per block.
  
• Quickly defeats 3 A-Class demons and 1 S-Class ^In. A-Class demons are considered to be on par with religious figures and mythical beasts, and S-Classes are far stronger than that.
  

Spirit-Gun
This is Yusuke's signature move. He concentrates his Spirit Energy into his right index finger and releases it as a projectile. After channeling his energy, he pulls the trigger in his mind when he wants to fire the "bullet." The Spirit-Gun blast can range in size from a small shot (at this point it was only twice as strong as his punch), to a full-sized cannon blast, to a near atomic-explosion, as demonstrated in the demon world tournament.

• Blows away a distant mountain ^M

Spirit-Gun Mega
In his battle against the Younger Toguro, Yusuke uses up all his remaining energy to summon a gigantic energy bullet. Though unnamed in both the anime and manga, it is called such in the games.
Demon Gun Mega
An ultimate version of his Spirit Gun, where an intense concentration of energy is released to create a devastating energy attack capable of annihilating anything. He first uses this upon receiving Raizen's power, and kills Shinobu Sensui with it while under Raizen's control. It is unnamed in the manga and anime, but called Demonic Spirit Gun in the card game.
Spirit Shotgun
Yusuke gathers spirit energy into his fist to form a large blast of spirit energy from it to shoot out in less powerful but many blasts. While the technique is not as powerful as the Spirit Gun, a few advantages it has is that the shots are widespread, which makes it highly effective against quick or invisible opponents or large numbers of weak enemies. Yusuke first used this technique against a group of thugs, who were controlled by the Demon World Insects. It may not be the same technique, but Yusuke used a punch with multiple spirit gun blasts (used on Yomi but had no effect probably because spirit shotgun has weaker bullets.)

• Puts a spray of dents into a wall ^R

Spirit Wave
Yusuke uses it to turn his entire body into a catalyst for his Spirit Energy. Instead of using his index finger to focus energy, Yusuke uses his entire body for this attack. This makes for extremely-powerful close-range attacks that negate the opponent's attack, but it's extremely difficult and dangerous to use. This was first seen being used against Jin in the Dark Tournament Saga. He tried using this against Sensui, in the original Japanese version, but was kicked out of range before he could do anything. It also has some healing properties, as he is able to heal from the wounds Kazuya inflicted when he shot at him, close range. Not to be confused with Genkai's Fighting Style, or Genkai's purification technique, which all share the same name in the English

Kazuma Kuwabara

• Full Respect Thread

Final Win/Loss Record : 3-3

• X Vs. Rinku (Ring Out)
  
• O Vs. M1, M2, M3 (Forfeit)
  
• O Vs. Risho (Ring Out)
  
• X Vs. Shishiwakamaru (Ring Out)
  
• X Vs. Onji/Suzuki (Ring Out)
  
• O Vs. Elder Toguro (KO - Spirit Flyswatter)
  

Kuwabara is consistently described as being stupid and ugly. However, he is extremely loyal to his friends and has a very strict code of honor. He would do anything for his friends and for love. He can be clumsy, reckless, rude and is also stubborn, persistent, and also has a great sense of humor. He doesn't give up a fight, even if he's injured. He has a temper, but not as bad as Yusuke's. He has a kind heart (being considered the kindest of the four main characters) and an honest nature. Also, he dislikes fighting girls

• Takes a shot to the jaw from Byakko ^B. For reference, Byakko was able to smash a stone wall with his fists
  
• Takes out a group of gunmen with Yusuke ^R
  
• Follows an invisible assassin using his ability to sense Spiritual Energy ^R
  
• Smashes Ritsu out of his way after seeing Yukina ^D
  

Spirit Sword
This is Kuwabara's signature attack, where he creates a sword comprised only of his Spirit Energy. Its strength depends on how much energy Kuwabara focuses into it, and it has been known to break if Kuwabara holds back too much (such as during the anime-only battle against Gokumonki, where he was afraid he'd hit Botan who was being held hostage if he used too much power). It is first used in the Genkai Tournament when Kuwabara uses a piece of a special spiritually-powerful wooden sword used by Musashi, his first opponent. Without his even being aware of it, the broken piece allowed Kuwabara to channel his energy into it, causing the spirit sword to emerge for the first time. After the tournament is over, Kuwabara does some training and learns how to manifest it at will, no longer needing the broken swordpiece's focusing power as a medium. Since Kuwabara is not trained as a swordsman, he lacks the grace of Hiei's sword strikes, and swings rather clumsily.

• Can be used as a javelin ^B
  
• Can be activated at a distance ^DF
  
• Can be thrown like a dagger ^DF
  
• Breaks free of Itsuki's pocket dimension ^C
  

Hiei

• Full Respect Thread

Final Win/Loss Record: 4-0

• O Vs. Zeru (KO - Dragon of Darkness Flame)
  
• O Vs. Makintaro (KO - Sword through head)
  
• O Vs. Kuro Momotaro (KO - Sword of Darkness Flame)
  
• O Vs. Bui (Forfeit)
  

Hiei prefers to keep his distance from others, so he often comes across as aloof and elusive. He has a rather cynical and even misanthropic view of the world around him, often belittling and mocking humans and their emotions and the significance they place on friendship and life. And while he is relatively taciturn, he occasionally squabbles with and insults his teammates, especially Kuwabara. It is obvious that deep down he holds a certain amount of respect and kinship for his teammates, but seems to be closest to Kurama and Yusuke.
As a fighter, Hiei is very unbiased when it comes to his enemies. He shows the same degree of ruthlessness to his foes - regardless of age or gender.

• Dodges Yusuke's punch, saying he was "just strolling" ^A
  
• Hops right up after having a fist put through his abdomen and being set on fire ^D
  
• Creates a large crater with a punch ^D
  
• No sells punches from Bui ^DF. Bui is strong enough to swing a massive axe around and blow away a demon with a swing
  
• Saves Yusuke from a runaway truck and appears behind Sniper on an overlook before he realizes what happened ^C
  
• Cuts a statue in half with a casual swing ^In
  

Dragon of the Darkness Flame
Hiei uses his demon energy to lure the flames of Demon World and create a dragon from them. The dragon cannot be controlled, unless the user is capable of absorbing it, but it can be more or less directed at a target.
Initially, it damaged his arm horribly, but Hiei has surpassed that by discovering that in order to completely control the dragon's power, and have its power at his full disposal, he had to trap it within his own being. Because it composed entirely of black, demonic flames, it completely consumes all it devours. Essentially, it sends its targets to oblivion as a result. Hiei is the only demon to have ever mastered this technique, which is a form of summoning technique, harnessing both the elemental power of a rushing flame and the demonic power of evil.

• Destroys a large portion of the Dark Tournament arena when clashing with Bui ^DF

Fist of the Mortal Flame
Hiei can channel the less-powerful flames of Human World into one or both of his hands. He uses this technique to enhance his hand-to-hand combat abilities, and it also allows him to disintegrate objects merely by touch, as shown by Bui's axe. There seems to be some degree of difference in how the single-handed and two-handed versions of the attack work, since Kuro Momotaru had to gain immunity to both of them. In other media such as the video games, Hiei can channel either flames (human-realm or demon-realm) into this attack, and like when he first used it, the attack is often used as a rushing flurry of rapid punches engulfed with flame, with varying degrees of effect.
Sword of the Darkness Flame
Rather than sustain the damage to his arm after using the Dragon the first time, he instead channeled the flames of the Dragon into the hilt of his broken sword. In the English manga and Japanese version, the Dragon is not mentioned to be involved with this technique's creation, where instead Hiei uses the same type of demonic flame.

• The sword cleaves Kuro Momotaro in half easily, where Hiei's normal sword had broken against his transformed skin

Kurama

• Full Respect Thread

Final Win/Loss Record: 3-2

• O Vs. Gama (KO - Rose Whip)
  
• O Vs. Toya (KO - Death Seed)
  
• X Vs. Bakken (Ring Out)
  
• O Vs. Ura Urashima (Forfeit)
  
• X Vs. Karasu (KO - Unable to meet 10 count)
  

Kurama is a demon, a fox spirit who possessed a young child becoming influenced by his spirit to become kind and human-like, Kurama fights using a variety of plants from the demon world.

• Cuts Genbu into pieces ^B
  
• Dodges attacks despite being weighed down and having his spiritual energy sealed ^D
  
• Creates a wall of razor sharp flower petals ^D
  
• Summons a demon tree that absorbs whoever is caught in its life force, trapping them in an illusion forever ^C
  

Yoko Kurama
Kurama's true form, in this state he gains a massive power boost amplifying all of his stats, at first he requires a special juice in order to transform, and even then only for a limited amount of time, but from the end of Chapter Black to the end the series he can pretty much transform at will.

• Survives a massive explosion ^DF
  
• Instantly kills an S-Rank demon ^In
  

Genkai

• Full Respect Thread

Final Win/Loss Record: 3-0
O Vs. M1, M2, M3 (Forfeit)
O Vs. Shishiwakamaru (KO - Spirit Wave)
O Vs. Suzuki (KO - Punches)
Genkai was an old-fashioned woman with great strength and determination. She put her mind and body through extensive training to allow her to create and control the spirit wave orb, which contributed greatly to her rather cold and hard demeanor. She viewed Yusuke as a slacker at first, often putting him through grueling and life-threatening training regimens, but soon came to love him like the son she never had. Quite noticeably, she appears to be a pragmatist first and foremost, as when she told Kuroda the hitman that she didn't care what kind of profession the winner of the tournament was, seemingly unfazed by any moral shortcomings the candidates had. From this, it can be inferred that she was the type of person who will do almost anything she deems necessary to accomplish her goals. This mentality is what compelled her to push herself and others beyond their apparent limits.

• Blows away a pair of large monks with a shout ^G
  
• Defeats several demons without moving her arms from behind her back ^D
  
• Blows up a large rock with her Spirit Gun ^D
  
• Uses Shishiwakamaru's demonic energy against him
  
• Pummels Suzuka's face into a bloody, swollen mess ^D
  
• Revives a man Yusuke had killed ^C
  

Bad Poetry

Episode 2-3: “How Not to Haiku”
Hello again OCPoets! It's your friendly, neighborhood mod, u/actualnameisLana here, once again hosting my weekly webseries: Bad Poetry. In Series 1, we took a close look at some of the worst, most obvious, and most common mistakes that authors make in writing a poem. Series 2 will keep that overarching goal, but narrow our focus to one particular style, or form of poetry each week. So expect to read about many forms you may already be familiar with like limericks and haiku, as well as forms that might not be as familiar, like ghazals and rubaiyats.
This week, let's take a closer look at:

I. How to Haiku

I remember being ten, or maybe eleven, and exposed to the idea of haiku for the very first time. It was, unsurprisingly, my English teacher who did it, a voluminous woman with the unfortunate name of Mrs Borg (resistance is futile!) and as she stood in front of the whiteboard and wrote the word “haiku” and the numbers 5, 7, and 5, I remember thinking to my young self that this was bullshit.
What's so important about having 5 or 7 syllables per line, I wondered. Why not 6, or 13, or 398? Why 5? Why 7? What makes those numbers magical and “poetic” and not any other syllable-count?
And so began my tempestuous relationship with haiku. As I grew older, I began to read more of the great Japanese haiku artists: Bashô and Buson, Issa and Shiki. But these were only translations, not the real deal. I had the unnerving feeling that I was missing something important about haiku, something inherent in the original language, of which the English versions are but a poor copy.
Then, I discovered Ezra Pound, and read for the first time his seminal poem in haiku-like form, In a Station at the Metro, and suddenly the door was opened for me. Gone were the syllabic restrictions. Gone was the three lined format. And yet…
And yet, this poem, unlike so many apparently perfect and precise translations of true Japanese haiku, seemed to embody the aesthetic of haiku more perfectly, more profoundly, and more artistically. And I began studying and searching for the reason why.
I began by studying the Japanese aesthetic. And I discovered words like kigo, and wabi-sabi and kireji. And these were somewhat helpful, but only a partial explanation. Since I am not Japanese, I do not share the same unique cultural heritage and social values as those born in Japan – and yet the aesthetics of haiku are still accessible to me. I began to suspect that there must be a way to describe the aesthetic of haiku without resorting to discussing Japanese culture or tradition. This is not to deny the fact that the aesthetics of haiku originated in Japan, but our ability to discuss these aesthetic principles should not be limited to our familiarity with the nuances of Japanese vocabulary.
But what would this aesthetic look like? How would one describe it using the qualities and cultural values that I, and other native English speakers are familiar with? Some of the possibilities might include: simplicity, immediacy, non-intellectuality, freshness, effortlessness, sincerity, lightness, spontaneity, compassion, surprise, mystery, open-endedness, reverence, focus, wonder, the beauty of brokenness, or even the thrill of disorientation.
But for me, the one quality that stands out above all is understatement – and by that I mean a quality that encompasses many of the above terms at once, including the related ideals of silence, restraint, subtlety, and suggestiveness. Understatement feels essential to haiku, in a way that the syllabic count does not, nor even the existence of kigo or kireji. If you spend some time in Japan, you'll be confronted with understatement every day in the muted colors and patterns of clothing, the use of natural woods in architecture, and even in everyday communication which leaves so much unsaid and implied rather than spoken aloud. Bashō himself said “Other schools of poetry have their students create with colored paints. Mine draw in black ink.”
Let's go back to that Ezra Pound haiku once again, with these fresh eyes devoted to understanding the use of understatement.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

~”In a Station at the Metro” by Ezra Pound
Notice the complete lack of words such as “like”, or “as”. Pound could easily have written “...are like petals on a wet, black bough”. But this economy of words is one facet of understatement.
Notice the lack of overly specific or jargon-laden adjectives or descriptors. Pound describes the bough as merely “wet” and “black” instead of “aqueous”, “drizzling” or “soggy”, and “onyx”, “ebony”, or “stygian”. But this simplicity is another facet of understatement.
Notice the way nothing about the scene is explicitly stated. The shape and color and arrangement of the faces of the people on the train are hinted at, via the juxtaposition with the petals, but not said outright. This focus away from explicit comparison in favor of implicit suggestiveness is another facet of understatement.
Today, nearly 20 years after first reading Pound, I remain convinced that haiku as an art form is infinitely exportable, into any language, any culture, any nationality, using the quintessential nature of understatement as your guiding star.

II. How Not to Haiku

Bad haiku fail at being understated. They careen around corners, bumping into things, screaming at the top of their lungs. Bad haiku make a spectacle of themselves. They paint in bright neon pinks and hypercolor yellows instead of muted plums and pastel eggshells. They accomplish the superficial aspects of haiku without embodying the fundamental aesthetic of it.
And here is where we come back to our 5-7-5 from before. There is nothing – absolutely nothing special or magical about 5 or 7 syllables. They're simply a convenient framework to guide us toward understated text. It's possible to write a poem in a different syllable count which is haiku, just as it's equally possible to write text in perfect 5-7-5 syllables which is not.
These superficial examples of 5-7-5 are often called (somewhat pejoratively by Japanese purists) “zappai”. The word roughly means "miscellaneous poem", or “pseudo-haiku”. These zappai have all the look and shape of haiku without any of the depth of meaning, focus of purpose, or understated aesthetic. There is, sadly, no shortage of these anonymously penned pseudo-haikus.
For instance, this monstrosity:

Greasy toilet seats But they sure taste fantastic! With fantastic taste!

Or the banality of this one:

Killing mosquitoes Whilst defecating in the Outhouse is great fun.

Or this ridiculous absurdity:

I'm a nice guy. I don't fucking like you insult- ing me in your posts.

There is no subtlety here. No artistry. No understatement.

III. Critique This!

And that brings us to our weekly Critique This! This week, I've assembled several translations of a famous haiku by Bashô. Practice looking at these haiku with a critical eye toward the qualities of understatement, simplicity and subtlety. It's up to you to decide which poems more closely embody the unique aesthetic of haiku!
First, the original Japanese:

Furuike ya kaeru tobikomu mizunone

~by Matsuo Bashô
Translation 1:

Old pond — frogs jumped in — sound of water.

~Translated by Lafcadio Hearn
Translation 2:

A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps . . . Apart, unstirred by sound or motion . . . till Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps.

~Translated by Curtis Hidden Page
Translation 3:

old pond frog leaping splash

~Translated by Cid Corman
Translation 4:

Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water — A deep resonance.

~Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
Translation 5:

The old pond A frog jumped in, Kerplunk!

~Translated by Allen Ginsberg
Translation 6

Old dark sleepy pool quick unexpected frog goes plop! Watersplash.

~Translated by Peter Beilenson
Translation 7

dark old pond : a frog plunks in

~Translated by Dick Bakken
Translation 8

pond      frog           plop!

~Translated by James Kirkup
Translation 9

Listen! a frog Jumping into the stillness Of an ancient pond!

~Translated by Dorothy Britton
Signing off for now. Keep writing with heart!
-aniLana