lostrune2 comments

Has no business being a diplomat

If ya don't know how to do it

Shops have always had the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" policy - just add "no mask"

Shops don't want to be known as a spreader of the virus - they'd lose some workers and customers to sickness or death; workers and potential customers wouldn't want to go there; they may even be quarantined and temporarily close

So the last thing they want is an infected individual getting other people infected within their premises - that's business suicide

What mature, healthy, well-adjusted adult is into gaming?

Roger Federer and Sachin Tendulkar

https://inshorts.com/en/news/i-choose-roger-roger-chooses-sachin-in-video-games-sachin-1500522331356

Former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar has said he and Wimbledon champion Roger Federer connect over PlayStation. "Roger follows cricket... When he is playing video games, he prefers Sachin and when I am playing any racquet game, I prefer to be Roger," said Sachin.

5 people died in South Korea last week after getting a "safe and approved" flu vaccine.

Imagine hurrying a vaccine without doing due process

Russia take note

how does the MLB do it?

Limited contacts, constant testing, and serious consequences

Whose that bald fellow?

The NBA Commish with a Halloween mask

At least the US is willing to go after their own in anti-trust

Name other countries that do

Are they eventually gonna include Asian companies?

And let's see if it happens for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Whether these activities happen for which Olympics lets ya know who these actors really are

Did these activities also happen for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics?

That could shed some light because if these activities vanished for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.................

The winner will give its city a 2-1 advantage in major U.S. sports league titles during the novel coronavirus pandemic following championships by the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning on Sept. 28 and the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers on Oct. 11.

Because of the condensed sports schedule, one city would celebrate 2 championships in mere weeks

Tampa Bay, among the major leagues’ poorest draws

But this time that helped them do well since they're used to playing with hardly any fans, while as visitors they don't have to worry about opposing fans

Los Angeles had a $95.6 million payroll on Aug. 1, according to figures compiled by MLB. Tampa Bay was 28th at $28.9 million, ahead of only Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The Rays eliminated the Yankees ($83.7 million) and Houston ($81.4 million) during the AL playoffs.

Baseball is very volatile this way - that the poorer teams have a good chance to win a championship year-in and year-out (may not be the same teams every year, but they're always there)

World Series? It should be the called the MLB Series ...!

It's been called the World Series since 1903 when the top baseball world consisted only of the US - before any other country had top baseball leagues. They ain't gonna change that tradition just because the rest of the world was late to the party

Gotta take care of the body as well as the mind

I stated 50%. My mistake, TV figures shows the NBA has lost 70% of its audience compared to last year. Now the players can have a 70% wage cut or Keep Politics Out Of Sport. Go Woke, Go Broke!

Btw, it's not 70% - it's down 27% from last season

"Falling TV ratings across most sports? Here are four reasons to explain drop during pandemic"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/media/2020/10/08/pandemic-why-tv-ratings-sports-have-been-down-since-returning/5913720002/

After coronavirus halted the NBA’s regular season, the association formatted a bubble template to resume the conclusion of the regular season, playoffs, and finals. By the end of the first round of the playoffs, ratings were reportedly down 27 percent from last season.

Stanley Cup Final: -61% to 13-year low

U.S. Open (golf) final round: -56% to all-time low

Kentucky Derby: -43% to all-time low

Indy 500: -32% to all-time low

All of them May and June events moved to August and September.

The U.S. Open tennis tournament viewership fell sharply on ESPN, down 45% from the year before. The French Open is down 57% so far on NBC.

In other words, the pattern is clear. And it should lead us to examine what’s really going on. 

There are four factors contributing to that.

(1) There’s a certain level of cannibalization on the calendar. [The delays caused by Covid-19 have condensed the sports calendar, so now sports are all competing against each other at the same time, when before they're separated into their own seasons. People can't watch everything, so they have to pick and choose which to spend their hours in a day - leaving many sports unwatched.]

(2) It’s not part of our natural cycle to be watching sports on weekday afternoons or NBA Finals games in October or Triple Crown races on a college football Saturday. “We get used to watching certain things or having particular sports be part of our lives at certain times of the year,” said Dennis Deninger, a former ESPN production executive, who is now a professor in sports communications at Syracuse University’s Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. “If you move sports from their natural positions to places that they’re unfamiliar, they’re competing with sports that are traditionally seen in those time periods and everyone suffers a little bit.”

(3) Lack of fans in the stands is a psychological cue that these games don’t mean as much. “The crowd going crazy is part of the allure of watching sports on TV,” Karp said. “Crowd goes wild is an expression for a reason.”

(4) There’s a presidential election going on in a highly charged political climate, which echoes some of the data Karp saw from 2016 when some news and commentary shows were up 30%. “Viewership in cable news networks is up significantly, and right now, especially once the president got COVID, that’s all anyone was watching,” Karp said. "It affected college football numbers (last weekend). It affected everything.”

I stated 50%. My mistake, TV figures shows the NBA has lost 70% of its audience compared to last year. Now the players can have a 70% wage cut or Keep Politics Out Of Sport. Go Woke, Go Broke!

ALL sports ratings are down due to Covid-19 restrictions

"Sports Ratings Have Tanked Across the Board While Cable News Thrives"

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/10/14/sports-cable-news-ratings-2020

A lot has been written about ratings for the NFL and NBA. The NBA is coming off record lows for the Finals, while the NFL's numbers are down a little bit across the board.

Everyone is twisting themselves into a pretzel to explain the lower numbers when it comes to these two leagues because they are the most popular in this country. But the truth is that almost every league has faced plummeting ratings. In many cases, leagues have experienced record lows over the past few months.

The one exception has been the WNBA. According to ESPN, its coverage of the Seattle Storm’s championship-clinching win in Game 3 of the Finals was up 34% year-over-year over Game 3 of the 2019 WNBA Finals and up 27% over the Washington Mystics’ Game 5 championship win last year.

The Finals between Seattle and the Las Vegas Aces averaged 440,000 viewers for the three-game series, up 15% over the WNBA Finals.

That's about it for the good news when it comes to sports ratings in 2020. Everything else is a disaster.

Except for the WNBA - a league that had their basketball court decorated:

"WNBA unveils 2020 court, which features two Black Lives Matter signs"

https://sports.yahoo.com/wnba-unveils-2020-court-which-features-two-black-lives-matter-signs-142634533.html

Go ahead and explain that one

Trump vs. antivax people

Some countries do business with no conscience - they don't care where the money goes, whether to warlords who use it to buy more weapons, or corrupt officials who enslave their people to work for peanuts, etc.

Feeding this racket is akin to paying ransom

He's charging quite a bit for his election merchandise and clothing wear - at a time when many people don't have much money due to Covid

That's quite a business for this campaign

China has to learn - it's not always about you

This is about North Korea

If anything, it's China's fault for siding with North Korea - who started the war by invading South Korea first

They'll get over it and will then move on and no longer need to wear a mask.

a) Who other people they may have passed the virus onto in the meantime is the important part. One spreads to people, and those people spread to more people - that's how clusters form

b) Nobody knows for sure yet how/if immunity to Covid-19 works - there are reports that some people got re-infected in just a matter of weeks. Not all immunity is long-term. The virus is just too new for any conclusive study. Moral of the story - do not assume

What happens to the "worm's eye view" POV camera photos?

Congrats to Ukraine for beating Spain and keeping Germany's hopes alive

Keep Politics Out Of Sport! No one wants to hear Marxist propaganda!

"Trump calls on Big Ten Conference to play fall football"

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-calls-big-ten-conference-170310143.html

Meantime, Apple is being investigated regarding antitrust in the US Congress

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-arcade-xbox-stadia-blocked-gaming-services-iphone-app-store-2020-10

A previous head of the App Store told the US House of Representatives that Apple rejects subscription game services because they compete with Apple Arcade.

Shoemaker, who was senior director of Apple's App Store Review team from March 2009 to April 2016 and had nothing to do with the Apple Arcade decision, nor the recent rules revision about game streaming services said that it is also untrue that Apple will not favor its own apps over those of competitors. He said that Apple Arcade was a type of app that was "consistently disallowed from the store," if submitted by a third-party.

As the dispute between Apple and Epic Games continues, a former App Store manager has claimed that Apple does reject apps that compete with its own services. Questioned by the US House of Representatives in its antitrust investigation, Philip Shoemaker said that the App Store had been used to protect Apple's interests.

"[Apple] was not being honest," he said when asked about the company's claim that it treats all developers the same. Calling the App Store rules both "arbitrary" and "arguable," he said that, "Apple has struggled with using the App Store as a weapon against competitors."

The reason, according to former Apple App Store director Phil Shoemaker, is because "apps that compete against Apple’s services have a track record of problems getting through the App Store’s review process," a new House antitrust report said.

"Apple’s gaming service, Apple Arcade, is a type of app that was 'consistently disallowed from the store,' when offered by third-party developers," the report said, "but Apple allowed its own app in the store 'even though it violates existing [App Store] guidelines.'”

Congrats. For a coincidence, LeBron won his 4th championship in the same city where the late great Kobe Bryant also won his 4th championship - Orlando, Florida

By the stroke of luck however, the Lakers didn't go thru the other top 2 contenders for the title (Bucks, Clippers)

Judo is like how Bob Knight (of the NCAA basketball fame) coached his team

quercetum said "Taiwan is democratic and elects its own leaders. "

You never been in Taiwan, have you ? What a joke "elects its own leaders". No, that is false. You have no right to elect you own leaders, you are only provided with a few people chosen by parties.

Like all the democratic nations

As have already been famously said:

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" (including China's)

point them straight at China is a good start.

As long as China does the same thing

Doing things haphazardly with no planning is worse

He's just saying this for the election; he's not even thinking of the logistics

This is not the first time, however, that Trump has upended military policies or troop withdrawal plans with an abrupt tweet, only to be persuaded to adjust his thinking or give the military more time to execute a more deliberate approach.

McKenzie and other military officials have also said that the drawdown must be done responsibly, and that moving faster will make it more difficult to get sensitive and critical American military equipment out of Afghanistan.

“We’re not going to leave anything behind that somebody could use against us in another time and another place. So that’s actually a huge logistics effort and it is continuing now,” McKenzie said last month.

It's a venue for amateur sports

Olympics haven't been amateur since 1992

One only needs to look at the recent NBA finals in the United States. There was a heavy price to pay for the NBA going woke.

All the US major sports in 2020 are down due to Covid restrictions, including NASCAR and college football

Name one that's not

Konosuba - the request made the heroine go commando instead