A fox of the same species was found in a much older grave in another part of Argentina nearly a decade ago. It may also have been a pet but its diet was not analysed.

As usual, it’s more the article (and especially the headline) than the science. Here is the Abstract of the study.

It’s much more about the specific burial and the inferences that can be reasonably drawn about South America before the introduction of dogs from the north 5k years ago. It references multiple burials with non-dog canids from across time periods in S.A., including at least one from about 4k years ago, as well as many other remains scattered in with human burials. It seems to build on existing theorizing that pre-Columbian practices might have changed more slowly than post. Then there are the statistical arguments. If you occasionally find a fox in human burials, based on the number of human burials you didn’t find, you can feel pretty confident that there were more foxes buried with humans.

I’m kinda sad to see it enshittify, for gamers and for those who find it fits their actual collaboration use case, but I also really hate the number forum-format communities that Discord has displaced or prevented from coalescing. Discoverability on Discord is terrible, as is having help available long term, as well as older advice and other content that helps newbies get the culture of a community. Even where the functionality exists, the general “real time” transitory feel of it reduces the quality of content and encourages people to be dicks, since it will all scroll by or be forgotten (if streaming) in a few moments anyway.

Horses for courses, and my old-ass X-ennial self thinks Discord has been pressed into service on a lot of courses where it’s terrible.

This all feels a lot like any low- or mid-range CAD suite that gets acquired by Autodesk, Siemens, or PTC. Promise enough to avoid a revolt, but start eroding with the next release.

The educational licensing for lock-in is also par for the course. It can be done well (Rhino 3D is legendary for letting small-shop designers use their cheap edu license forever, even commercially), but generally it’s just there to maintain the supply of baby drafters and get subscriptions from employers.

Anything that results in less Dabo Swinney in the world is probably not entirely bad.

Wake me when they REALLY get back to their roots.

Girl on the right probably killed a Spanish swordsmith back in the day.

When you’re trying to get into DPs, the outside can be slippery and the screw part can be tight! Very dangerous for the workplace.

I thought I had NSFW turned off… 🤣

Are we allowed to politely disagree and move on??!! I am happy to go into my thoughts as to why ROTS can’t overcome its shortcomings, but a lot of comes down to what hit me as a kid watching the OT and how the PT was such a drastic departure. Certain of those choices were rolled back in the ST, so I’m fonder of it than most, though I’ve been holding a torch for TLJ so long…

My very first “design” was cord wrangler that fit the exact number of things I needed to charge and was the exact thickness for my no-name pressboard nightstand with a gap that matched an opening in the back. It was exactly what I needed.

Imagine thinking 3 is worse than whatever fucking mess phantom menace was.

Want to know why Qui Gon dies from a stab when no one else ever does? The man was fucking exhausted from carrying the entire film. Liam Neeson single-handedly elevates TPM above the other two prequels.

7 was 4 but worse.

You’re not wrong, but four was that good

TLJ is flawed but great and would be higher if TROS weren’t such a cowardly backtracking shitshow of a movie.

ROTS is very nearly as hard to watch as AOTC, though it has some higher highs. I will personally never forgive it for forcing the most brain-twisting mental gymnastics ever to retcon ROTJ’s Luke-Leia “real mother” scene in the Ewok village.

Everything that’s annoying about AOTC is there in spades in ROTS.

ROTS just had few better parts.

(postlogue?)

epilogue

5, 4, 6, 8, 7, R1, Solo, 1, 3, 9, 2

So, maybe I’ll backpedal a bit. I used to argue vigorously against pro/rel for CFB, and I still don’t think it works particularly well for the American mindset and not at all if you have rosters that have (1) players early in their development curves, (2) limited player movement and (3) literally every player cycling out of the “league” in 5 years. In the older system, it causes the exact problem, competitive imbalance, it meant was invented to combat, because what is more classic than a team of seniors overachieving or one full of freshmen taking their lumps and learning on the job?

In the old days, annual Euro stlye pro/rel would be a disaster for any “interesting” newly promoted teams and an unsatisfying romp for many relegated ones. You’d eventually settle into yoyo clubs but to an even less satisfying degree than in England now. Latin America style rolling performance relegation could work, but it rarely goes smoothly in practice, and is basically dead (or at least in a coma) in Mexico. Hell, the Superleague is rearing its head again in Europe, because Real Madrid and Juventus have somehow decided that a world where they can’t outspend their opponents is the same thing as soccer “dying.” We might see the end of pro/rel in Europe before we see a large US organization adopt it.

Still, In the new world order of CFB? Who the heck knows. Pro/rel could work. Playoffs aren’t going away, so base playoff participation (but not seeding) at least 75% on conference performance, ban contracts for advance OOC scheduling (it’s sports… the “need” to schedule 10-12 years out is overstated), let players go part-time and hang around for 7-8 years if they don’t have an NFL future. Rework the TV deals with parachute payments and revenue sharing. You could craft a scenario where it works, and it could be an antitrust dodge the biggest schools are willing to stomach. I don’t THINK SO, but nothing makes sense anymore anyway, LOL.

I don’t think the big dogs will stop coming after the studs from teams like USF.

While I don’t think pro/rel is the solution in CFB, at all, I do think professional soccer has it right in how they handle similar roster pressures with nominally “equal” clubs on obviously uneven financial ground. If you pay players for a 3-4 year commitment, there is control with compensation. Big teams buy the contracts of players from smaller teams, and they pay training compensation to the teams where players first developed, and some non-negligible fees go to the players as well. Players still move, but in doing so they keep their old clubs financially healthy, the costs throw some grit into the flow from small to large, so not every player moves after every good year, and players are incentivized to maximize their value where they are. Something roughly analogous could happen in a professionalized CFB, though obviously compressed with most of the players moving on after 3-5 years.

Though, as I wander off on a tangent, admittedly the length of contracts is another wrinkle in professionalizing, and the powers that be do have their work cut out for them finding the right way to maintain a connection to the schools to keep product differentiation (i.e. how to keep it “college” football). A “lower” league can be vibrant and have passionate fans, but it needs something to make it unique and to have its rewards valued by stakeholders; in England for instance, history and community ties are enough to keep 100+ clubs culturally relevant. A “minor” league, on the other hand, is ultimately practice with uniforms and has a natural cap on how much enthusiasm it can generate.

We’re just getting closer to admitting that truth and paying the athletes for their work in the minor leagues, er, I mean college.

I mean, good. I want the college teams to have some essential nexus with the schools, but there are more ways to do that than the current or the prior model. The fiction that they’re just regular ol’ students who work out and practice and play for the love of “good ol’ 'varsity” is ridiculous to the point of being insulting, and now we’re in the worst of all worlds where the schools STILL pretend and therefore also won’t pay the players directly to commit to them for 3-4 years, but the money is there so the players all (reasonably) follow it. Even the guys who have accepted that the NFL isn’t an option (and among upperclassman starters I bet that’s not very many) likely love the experience and lifestyle of playing football and/or getting a no-cost degree+NIL more than they love their specific schools.

Well shoot, now I need to make a COWABUNGA novelty keycap.

No need to go crazy with the first one. That first step from laptop keyboard or membrane pack-in is the biggest jump you’ll ever make in typing experience. a brown-switch gamer board with the RBG turned off and some cheap Amazon “CSA” style keycaps might be all you’d ever need. Of course, even that type of thinking can lead to certain… rabbit holes.