East of Eden has gotten much buzz--especially given the connection with the original (Zoe Kazan's writing this for television series and her grandfather, Elia Kazan, directing the original). Maybe it was my depressed mood from the Phillies and Fever getting knocked out of post-season play and Scotts closing, but I found the characters so difficult and depressing to watch I gave up after a half-hour of EP1. In fact, the entire audience walked out with me.
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[Prefatory Note: What follows is not my insight. I learned it in a convo with my good friend, and a good friend of PTI, Booger McFarland. It tells me why others who have played or studied the sport know more than I do and why no one is hiring me as GM of any NFL football team]
To say the least, the Dallas Cowboy defense has been porous this season is to state the obvious truth. Much of the criticism has been aimed at their D-line, so when they traded this week they came under substantial criticism for trading for a cornerback Joey Porter, Jr. instead of for a D-lineman. Here's what Booger explained. If the defensive secondary is leaving receivers open, no D-line, no matter how good, is going to stop the opponent. If the defensive secondary is keeping receivers covered, no quarterback can succeed no matter how good his O-line. Given that Porter is one of the best cornerbacks in the league, if not the best, this was the right move for Dallas.
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From a piece by James Mackintosh: There’s a new story in stock markets: If you aren’t touched by AI, good luck. AI is sucking in capital and squeezing the rest of the market, where stocks face higher interest rates and oil prices without a sexy technology story to sell. The new pattern took hold in September, when Treasury yields skyrocketed—and it’s creating stress in other debt markets, too. In stocks, the headline indexes appeared remarkably resilient in the face of a 10-year Treasury yield jumping from 4.7% to 5.3%, with the S&P 500 only slightly down and the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100 gaining 3%. But under the surface, September’s stock-price moves show how narrow the market has become. Almost 80% of stocks in the S&P were down, the average stock was off 5% and only two out of 11 sectors were up, led by tech. The other gainer, communications services, was up only because tech giants Meta and Alphabet, not classified as tech stocks, outweighed losses for almost all the media and telecoms companies in the sector. Smaller stocks fared even worse, hitting hopes that they were on a firmer path after gains earlier in the year. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was down 5% in the month, while the top 50 stocks rose 2%. The same pattern shows up within the S&P 500: 41 of the largest 100 stocks rose, while only 10 of the smallest 100 constituents eked out a gain.
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This Noah Hawley article from The Atlantic is not just well-written, it is an insightful, compelling, and disturbing read. It focuses on a weekend gathering hosted by Bezos, as it tries to explain what makes our New Gilded Age barons different from the rest of us, and not in a good way.
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There was a post yesterday about changing a Firestick's DNS. It wasn't wrong but to implement the change, one has to go to an article referenced in the article cited in the post. We appreciate the matter being brought to our attention. The only thing we can say in defense of not making that clear and other recent errors on our part was the triple whammy of the Phillies and Indiana Fever getting knocked out of post-season play and Scotts closing.
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Trump is being besieged by criticism by the mainstream media for focusing his campaign efforts on his MAGA base. As the media sees it, Trump does not understand that he is unpopular and he cannot sway Dems or independents. Perhaps what Trump sees is that his only path to holding the House and perhaps the Senate is energizing the anger/hate felt by his base for the (mal) treatment of Trump and all he's "accomplished." At the same time, for the Dems to take the House and the Senate, they need to turn out not just their base (those who dislike Trump and like the Dems), but those who dislike all of government including the Dems. In this context, Trump's efforts might be what he should be doing to help the Reps avoid a catastrophe, while it's not clear what the Dems are doing to have voters that dislike them vote for them nonetheless.
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Traditional Reps have been known to favor tax cuts at every turn: Cut taxes when the economy has stalled to stimulate it and cut taxes when the economy is booming because lower tax rates can be afforded and will not add to the deficit. At the same time, environmentalists point to increasingly strong hurricanes as a result of climate change, and that the Atlantic Ocean in September broke a century-old record for the latest time of year without hurricanes, one of many consequences of a historic El Niño reshuffling global weather. Okay, this isn't a serious post or a dig at environmentalists. It's put here for the enjoyment of my bot followers.
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A recent Harvard study reports that people who walk more or walk faster live longer.
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As this XDA article explains, as surprising as it may sound, changing your Fire TV Stick's DNS, or even the one on your smart TV, improves connectivity and minimizes related issues. So, if you are looking to upgrade the streaming experience on your Fire TV Stick, switching DNS is one of the easier options.
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I've been setting my air fryer at 425 to do baked potatoes. They come out great with delicious crispy skins in just 22 minutes (11 minutes per side in the air fryer, after being softened in the microwave, and salt and oil is applied to the outside). As it turns out, setting the temperature at 400 makes them come out even better. Of course, oven temperatures can vary.
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