16 Americans are about to begin the adventure of a lifetime in the scorching deserts of Kenya in eastern Africa. They are about to be abandoned in the heart of one of the most diverse and dangerous collections of animals anywhere on the planet. Zebras, giraffes, elephants, lions, just a sampling of the animals that call this place home. Temperatures here can reach 120 degrees. Water is scarce. It is a land virtually untouched by the modern world. For the next 39 days these 16 strangers will be left to fend for themselves. Forced to create a new society while battling the elements and each other. They must learn to adapt or they’ll be voted out of the tribe. In the end only one will remain to claim the million dollar prize. 39 days, 16 people, 1 survivor! This is Marooned: Africa!
INTRO
The Cast
Boran Tribe:

Albert “Al” Meida, 28, Art Director
- Al likes to compete, especially when he wins. Growing up in a successful family, he adapted to his family’s way of thinking of always pushing yourself to be #1. Whether if it’s in sports, academics or other activities, Al always desires to be the one to come out on top. Survivor will be his greatest challenge yet and he’s ready to come out on top.
Alix Colburn, 22, Zookeeper
- lex has never been quite sure how to feel about himself. While he's biologically male, he actually wants to be female. His parents have conflicting feelings about it, and barely anyone treated him with respect as a kid. Nowadays, he's feeling better. He works at a zoo due to his love for animals and he wants to raise awareness on the show before he fully transitions.
Katrina MacQuoid, 58, Prosthodontist
- Katrina’s parents we’re performers in Kentucky. They lived and breathed theater and expected their daughter to be the same. Though Katrina loved being the center of attention, and still does, she never loved the stage the way her parents did. Her parents wanted her to continue to pursue something arts related, and she became an advertising adjective, but never felt satisfied. When she learned that Kentucky was looking for jobs in the dental field, she felt it would be a perfect field to enter. She always found teeth interesting, I mean, are they bones? But they fall out? So weird. She returned to school at age 35 and became a Prosthodontist at age 43. She’s worked as a Prosthodontist since then and (While not at the level of Peter) has a firm understanding of the most important hole in the human body, the mouth. While she’s liked by many people because of her fun personality, she has trouble forming 1 on 1 bonds and has never found the special one. As a child she often got in trouble for anger issues with her parents, so she began to hold in her anger and let it out in huge, uncontrollable fits when her parents weren't around. This holding in of anger until she can’t contain it is a habit she continues to have, blaming her rages on “Hurricane Katrina” as a sort of justification of her actions. She’s never left Kentucky and while she’s very book smart, she can often be very ignorant on other subjects.
Kiara Phoenix, 28, Novel Writer
- Kiara is socially generous and shy, but inside she behaves pessimistically about herself. Kiara can be a leader but sometimes she have difficulty giving orders correctly, but she still tries. Kiara's family is doing well, being the only daughter of her parents, but sadly she lost her mother on July 19 this year to heart attack. Kiara and her father kept on doing what they like to do; her father, Damian, working as a furniture maker and Kiara in a hobby that is writing novels and drawing, DeviantArt, but then she changed to Tumblr because of problems in the page, but months later she is recognized by her book "The Dark of Fantasy" and now she works mostly as a Novel Writer.
Marilyn Yung, 21, Aspiring Broadway Singer
- Growing up Marilyn’s Parents always told her she would be a star. unfortunately Marilyn took what they said to fat and would beg her parents to let her audition for a Broadway show each show she auditioned for she was rejected the directors always found her annoying and didn’t like her singing style this led Marilyn to audition for a lot of things one of them being the show “Survivor” Marilyn wants to use the show to Promote her Broadway Career and possible gain fame.
Raymond “Ray” Franks, 21, Student
- Ray grew up in a very conservative town where he couldn’t express himself openly. After getting accepted into college, he decided that he would leave his family and friends behind and live how he wanted to. He’s still attending college, and is hoping to get accepted into a top tier medical school where he can pursue a career that helps others. Ray is planning on using the money to pay for his student loans and living expenses. He is currently living with his roommate and only “loved one” Troy.
Tonette “Toni” Madison, 36, Jazz Singer
- Toni’s parents were both musicians, hence her name Tonette. She has always wanted to follow in her parent’s footsteps, except better. She succeeded in doing that, and now wants to win the million not for herself, but for her parents, as they were struggling musicians, whereas she is successful, and she feels as if she owes them a big thank you.
Wallace Buchanan, 26, Barber
- Wallace is a very reserved guy. He lives his life for his work and weekend activities at his home on Lake Michigan. There he does his carpentry, listens to his heavy rock, practices his meditation with his girlfriend, in short, a life away from everything and everyone. He has few friends, but the ones he chose are very loyal and important to him.

Samburu Tribe

Crystal “Cris” Brook, 26, Singer
- Cris has always been a shy person. However, she was also naturally gifted in singing. All throughout high school the friends that she did have wanted her to perform in her school's talent show. She was finally convinced in senior year, and she won the talent show and became an overnight sensation. Since she has gotten famous, she has made plenty of albums, and is known as "The Geek of Pop." However, Cris loves to exercise and it's actually a coping method for her and helps her be confident in herself.
Jeremy McPherson, 32, Firefighter
- Growing up he was saved by a firefighter while their house are burning, he is thankful for them, and growing up he wants to be a Firefighter, and now his dreams come true he have saved so many life as a firefighter.
Kathy Mayfield, 26, Aspiring Actress
- Ever since Kathy was a child, she always dreamed to be BIG. She always wanted to be an actress in Hollywood. Unfortunately for her, after 26 years of life the biggest role she got was an extra in a commercial. So she plans to go on Marooned, where she can show all her talents as an actress, she can manipulate and charm her way to the top, and maybe she can finally have her dream come true.
Kaylee Robinson, 27, Self Defense Instructor
- Kaylee wasn't always this loud and proud, being from the dangerous part of town, Kaylee and her sister were jumped by a street gang called the king's court. Kaylee barely escaped with her life. The same can not be said for her sister Liana, who was shot 12 times in the chest after protecting her sister from the shots. This traumatized Kaylee who finally came out of her shell after this tragic accident. Ever since that day, Kaylee taught herself self Defense until she was a master at it. Kaylee now teaches Self Defense to women all across Oregon.
Leo Johnson, 34, Pro Wrestler
- Ever since Leo was young he has wanted to be a wrestler. Now at 34 years old he’s living the dream being a pro wrestler but a part of him still doesn’t feel complete. He’s coming to Marooned to go on an adventure that will hopefully help him feel more complete and accomplished.
Matt Kristoffson, 19, College Athlete
- Matt takes the "strong, silent type" to the extreme. Ever since he was young, he would very rarely talk to others, and mostly kept to himself throughout his teenage years. Now in college, he is a key member of his college's football team. Not wanting to be seen as a dumb jock, Matt also takes his academics very seriously, and is a very smart guy. He may be an introvert, but he thinks he has what it takes to win Marooned.
Natalia “Talia” Grey, 24, Audio Mixer
- Talia has never been confident in herself since she was a child, as she had two workaholic parents who showered her with unattainable expectations in Middle and High School, both wanting her to become a scientist, while she always had a dream to pursue music. Her parents never approved, and scoffed at her every time she tried to show them something, so she spent long nights in her room honing her craft, and never showing anyone over fear of what they would think. One of her only friends, and eventual boyfriend stumbled upon some of her mixes of songs, and sent it to a few music colleges without her knowing, and she was shocked to receive a scholarship to a huge music school in LA in the mail, which she immediately took to go follow her passion. Now fresh out of college, she may know what her career path will be, but she lacks the social connections to get employed in the industry, so she hopes she can play Marooned to get her name out there and hopefully gain some confidence around others.
Ryan Brown, 27, Software Engineer
- He was adopted at birth and was raised with 5 other siblings. He is extremely grateful towards his adoptive family and wants to thank them by winning. Unfortunately, he faced a lot of racism growing up due to being raised by a white family in a very conservatively white city, but he managed to impress most of his tormentors with his intelligence. Though very smart, Ryan is pretty reserved and wants to use this as an experience to test his social skills

THE SEASON
*I apologize to u/swoldow for misspelling their character’s name in the sim.
Episode 1: After making a long trek through the savannah both tribes reach their tribe campsite and begin setting up camp. On the Boran tribe the building of the tribe camp is mostly harmonious although Toni and Ray do start butting heads a little. Meanwhile on the Samburu tribe there is a clear power struggle between Leo and Jeremy. Both think that they have what it takes to be the leader of the tribe and neither is willing to back down from that position. Crystal and Kaylee both side with Leo thinking that he should be the tribe leader while Matt and Kathy side with Jeremy and think that he should be the tribe leader. Ryan and Talia both dislike the conflict going on in the tribe and decide to stay neutral. At the immunity challenge Samburu manages to win despite the tension they have at camp. When Boran gets back from the immunity challenge Ray accuses Toni of being the reason that they lost the challenge. Toni does not take this well and begins screaming at Ray. Ray does not back down and soon they are in the middle of a huge argument. Right before things get physical Al and Wallace step in and separate the two. It is clear that for the sake of the tribe either Toni or Ray need to go and because Toni is perceived to be weaker than Ray in challenges she is seen as less valuable so at tribal council Toni is unanimously voted out of the tribe.
Episode 2: Without Toni Boran is once again harmonious and this causes them to go into the next immunity as strong as ever and win. Over on Samburu Leo and Jeremy’s battle for dominance leads them to target each other. Leo still has Cris and Kaylee on his side and the two of them agree to vote for Jeremy. Matt still has Kathy and Matt on his side and the two of them agree to vote for Leo. This leaves Ryan and Talia in the middle and forces them to end their neutrality by picking a side. The two of them decide to do what they believe will keep the tribe strong so they decide to keep Leo the pro wrestler and vote out Jeremy. At tribal council Jeremy is voted out in a 5-3 vote.
Episode 3: After the last vote Kathy and Matt are clearly at the bottom of the Samburu tribe. At the immunity challenge Boran wins, sending Samburu to their second tribal council. Back at camp it seems clear that either Kathy or Matt will be the next person voted out. The new majority alliance of Leo, Ryan, Kaylee, Cris, and Talia come together to discuss whether they should vote out Kathy or Matt first. They come to the conclusion that they should vote out Matt first because he seems like more of a fighter and they know that he has the potential to stir up trouble in the future if he’s still around. After that conversation the vote seems obvious but Kaylee didn’t come to Marooned to play an obvious game. She views Kathy and Matt as people who she could potentially work with down the line. Talia on the other hand is someone who Kaylee doesn’t trust at all. Kaylee tries to convince Cris and Leo to go along with her new plan and blindside Talia. At first they think that Kaylee’s new plan is crazy but they slowly realize that she’s right. Talia is the type of person who will flip on them as soon as the merge comes so at tribal council they turn on her and Talia is blindsided in a 5-2 vote.
Episode 4: Ryan is shocked and out of the loop after the last tribal council. He recognises that he’s going to have to step up his game or he’s going to end up blindsided just like Natalia. At the immunity challenge the Boron tribe wins for the third time in a row sending Samburu back to tribal council. Ryan knows that he could be in trouble because he was left out of the loop on the last vote but luckily his social connections on the tribe are strong enough that nobody bothers targeting him. Instead Leo decides to target Matt because he thinks that Matt poses the biggest threat to his leadership role. Leo is easily able to get Ryan and Kaylee on board with the plan. In addition Kathy realizes that her alliance with Matt is a sinking ship and decides to get on board with Leo and vote for Matt. Cris on the other hand doesn’t want to vote out Matt. She would rather keep the tribe strong and vote out Kathy. Unfortunately she is not able to get anyone else on board with her plan and at tribal council Matt is voted out in a 4-2 vote.
Episode 5: In the biggest twist in the history of Marooned each tribe is told to select 3 tribe members to represent their tribe. Katrina, Kiara, and Wallace all volunteer to be the representatives for Boron. Samburu decides to have their 3 women represent their tribe. These 6 people are given new buffs and forced to switch tribes. At the immunity challenge the Boron tribe wins the first immunity challenge as new tribes. Back at Samburu Ryan and Leo know that they are in trouble being outnumbered by the original Boron people 3-2. Ryan decides to fight to stay in the game so he tells the Boron people about how Leo is the leader of the Samburu people and is a huge threat moving forward. Kiara doesn’t like the way that Ryan ratted out his tribe by giving away their information and thinks that they should give him some Karma and vote him out but Wallace and Katrina are more focused on getting rid of a big threat and want to vote out Leo so at tribal council Leo is voted out in a 3-2 vote.
Episode 6: On the Samburu tribe Ryan is the clear underdog being the only original Samburu person left on his tribe but there is clear dissension between Katrina and Kiara giving him some hope that he may be able to survive if they don’t win the next immunity challenge. At the immunity challenge Samburu finally wins immunity for the first time since day 3 sending Boran to tribal council. Over on Boran the three Samburu girls appear to be outnumbered by the original Boran people and therefore you would expect them to be on the bottom of the tribe but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality Al and Ray haven’t been getting along for the past 10 days and want to take eachother out. Marilyn is in an alliance with Al and Alix is in an alliance with Ray leaving the Samburu girls in the middle acting as swing votes. In the end the Samburu girls like Ray better than Al so at tribal council they all vote for Al and Al is voted out of the game in a 5-2 vote.
Episode 7: The two tribes finally come together and merge into one tribe called Moto Maji. At the immunity challenge Ray wins the first individual immunity challenge of the season guaranteeing himself a spot at the final 9. Back at camp Wallace, Katrina, and Marilyn want all of the original Boran people to put their differences aside and work together to pick off the original Samburu people one by one starting with Cris but Ray, Kiara, and Alix have zero intentions of sticking with the original Boran people and instead form a new 7 person alliance with the original Samburu people and at the first tribal council of the merge this 7 person alliance works together and blindsides Marilyn putting Ray in a power position.
Episode 8: Katrina and Wallace are pissed at the rest of the original Boran people for not sticking with them and going Boran strong for the rest of the game. At the immunity challenge Alix wins individual immunity. Back at camp Ray feels like he has full control of the tribe and decides that he wants to vote out Cris so he tells everyone to vote for Cris. Most people are on board with this plan but Wallace and Katrina are still angry at Ray for betraying them at the last tribal council and are gunning for him hard. They pull in Cris in order to have 3 votes for Ray but they still need at least 2 more people to vote with them. Cris has a talk with Ryan during which she learns that Ryan doesn’t like Ray so she is able to convince him to join them and vote for Ray. They still need one more vote but aren’t sure who they can trust. They don’t want word of their plans to get back to Ray and are worried that Kaylee or Kathy might spill the beans so they decide to try to convince Ray’s close ally Kiara to flip and help them blindside Ray. Katrina has a long talk with Kiara and is able to convince her that if she works with them to blindside Ray she’ll take her to the final 2. Kiara really likes this plan so at tribal council she decides to work with them and in the biggest blindside of the season Ray is voted out in a 5-4 vote.
Episode 9: After the last tribal council everyone is shocked that Kiara flipped on her closest ally Ray and everyone starts calling her a snake. At the immunity challenge Kaylee wins individual immunity ensuring her safety at the next tribal council. After the intense past two tribal councils nobody wants to deal with anymore crazy scrambling and instead everyone wants to go with an easy vote. As it turns out the easy vote is voting out Kiara due to the fact that everyone considers her to be a snake. Everyone quickly jumps on board the vote out Kiara band wagon and when Kiara finds out about this she is furious at Katrina for going back on her word and not taking her to final 2 like Katrina said she would so at tribal council Kiara votes for Katrina but everyone else votes for Kiara and Kiara becomes the second member of the jury.
Episode 10: For the first time since the merge the original Samburu people have the numbers and the four of them decide that they are going to take advantage of this. At the immunity challenge Wallace wins immunity. Back at camp the four original Samburu people come together and decide to vote out Katrina. Alex decides to join them and vote for Katrina too because he doesn’t like Wallace or Katrina. Wallace and Katrina find out what's going on and try to convince Ryan and Cris to flip back to their side and help them blindside Kathy but Ryan and Cris decide to stick with the Samburu people and at tribal council Katrina is voted out.
Episode 11: After the last tribal council Wallace has no allies left in the game but he talks about how he’s going to keep on fighting and won’t give up any time soon. At the immunity challenge Wallace does everything he can to win but falls short and Ryan wins individual immunity. Back at camp Wallace starts talking to people about what a big threat Kylee is. When Alix hears about this he realizes that he doesn’t want to get stuck sitting next to Kylee at the final tribal council so he agrees to vote for her. Wallace then attempts to convince Ryan and Cris to jump on board with him and blindside Kylee. Ryan is totally on board with this but Cris isn’t and Cris convinces Ryan to stick with the Samburu so at tribal council Wallace is voted out in a 4-2 vote.
Episode 12: Alix shot himself in the foot at the last tribal council by voting with Wallace and is now clearly on the bottom of the tribe. At the immunity challenge Kylee wins immunity securing herself a spot in the finale. Back at camp it seems clear that the 4 Samburu people are going to work together to vote out Alix but Kylee is worried that if it’s the four Samburu people are sitting in the final four it would become Cris and Ryan vs her and Kathy. If that were the case and Cris won immunity then her and Ryan would be able to vote Kaylee out because Ryan doesn’t have any previous votes cast against him and Kaylee has 2. Because she is trying to avoid this Kaylee decides to make a new final 3 alliance with herself, Kathy, and Alix. At tribal council this new 3 person alliance pulls off another huge blindside when they vote out Ryan in a 3-2 vote.
Finale Part 1: After the last tribal council’s blindside Cris knows that she needs to win immunity in order to stay in the game but at the immunity challenge Alex wins immunity essentially sealing Cris’s fate. Back at camp Cris makes one last attempt to stay in the game. She explains to Alix that if he goes to the final 3 with Kaylee and Kathy and he doesn’t win immunity he will 100% be voted out of the game. Unfortunately Alex is in denial and still believes that he has a shot at being brought to the end by Kathy or Kaylee and at tribal council Cris is voted out in a 3-1 vote.
Finale Part 2: Kaylee wins the final immunity challenge. For her the decision of who to take to the end is easy. Her and Kathy have been close allies ever since the swap so at tribal council she votes out Alix.
Final Tribal Council: At the final tribal council most of the jury respects both of the girl’s games and believes that they are both very deserving of being in the final two however, they can’t deny that Kaylee played a much more well rounded game. Whereas Kathy only really played the social game Kaylee played a great physical, strategic, and social game. This leads to Kaylee winning in a 4-3 vote.
**My Thoughts:**>! I LOVED this season. From start to end the season was entertaining and full of great blindsides. The Ray blindside was probably the highlight of the season but I also loved the Ryan blindside, the Talia blindside, and the rivalry between Jeremy and Leo. The cast of this season was also top notch and I found almost every single person on it to be memorable in some way. Kaylee is another fantastic winner who played an extraordinary game. Her taking out Ryan at the final 5 was really smart and I would definitely consider that to be her signature move though her blindsiding Talia in episode three was also pretty iconic. There are so many people in this cast who I would love to see return for all stars and I’m betting that at least a couple of people on this cast are going to become legends.!<
Potential All Stars: Ryan, Kaylee, Katrina, Ray, Wallace, Kiara
Potential Second Chancers: Cris, Jeremy, Leo, Alix, Talia
Past Seasons:Borneo
The Australian Outback
Stay tuned for the next season of Marooned, Marooned: Marquesas
I’d love to hear what you guys thought about the season in the comments!

Chicago Cubs Name DraftKings Their First Official and Exclusive SportsBetting And Daily Fantasy Partner.

Predicting Lions Games || 2020-21 Season || Prologue and Methodology

Hey, everyone! It's your favorite robit ("favorite" in this case being defined as "something you probably didn't remember and/or didn't like"), here to predict the next season of Detroit Lions football!!
Last season, I attempted to predict the outcome of Lions games using 12 different methods, ranging from logical to inane. I had to abandon the article series before the end of the season due to other priorities. In other words, I had wedding planning to do and this just wasn't as important. For the record, the wedding was fantastic, with mistletoe, a hot chocolate buffet, and a dream team jazz quartet of musicians that I greatly respect.
This year, I'm stepping things up a bit. For one thing, I'm up to 18 prediction methods. Beyond that, some of the newcomers stem from questions I was asking last year, such as, "this QB Rating is an ESPN metric...I wonder how it compares to the NFL's own Passer Rating". As such, 16 of the 18 methods are paired off into direct rivalries! We'll still see who the best overall predictors are by the end of the year, but now each of those 16 has a more direct point of comparison as well. The two methods without a rival are Honolulu Blue Kool-Aid and A Literal Coin Flip, which will be up against everybody. And remember, there are two final picks at the end of each article! One for whichever team has the most picks, and one for the team with the most weighted picks, with weights assigned based on the method's performance so far (1 × [# correct predictions / # total predictions]).
I also plan to submit these posts to the subreddit of each game's opponent this year (as subreddit rules allow, anyway). I'd also thought about submitting to /nfl, but they've got a dense rulebook that appears to disallow this sort of content (or perhaps only allow it with prior approval that I do not have). Maybe I'll link to it in the comments of their game threads. Their comment rules are a lot lighter.
Sadly, this year we wave goodbye to Smash Bros Ultimate Mascot Fight. For one thing, I couldn't find a suitable rival for it, nor did it make sense to have it on its own. However, the larger reason is that, while it was a lot of fun to create the mascot Mii fighters, the writeups never came out sounding very interesting. It got a bit dull to just write down the order of stock losses each week, ya dig? To make that method more interesting, it would really deserve a video with accompanying commentary audio track, and I'm just not up for making one prediction method that much more labor-intensive.
Now, finally, let's actually get into the methodology of each pick!

Rivalry A: 'Cause I Ain't No Quartaback Girl

Rivalry Basis: Nobody can deny the impact of a good quarterback. It won’t save a garbage roster, but a strong player under center can elevate a bad team to modest success, and a good team to greatness. On the other hand, a bad quarterback can drag down the entire team, such is the position’s importance.

Prediction Method 1: Higher QB Rating

Why: I could simply decide on my own which quarterback I think is better. That's not subjective enough for this highly scientific and rational exercise, however. Therefore, I will use ESPN's QB Rating as a metric for, well, Rating each teams Quarterback.
How: I’ll be comparing the regular season QB Rating for each team’s starting quarterback, as posted on ESPN's website. I will use the current season rating as of the time of the writeup each week. For Week 1, I will compare QB Ratings from the 2019 regular season. In the unlikely event that both starters share a rating, this method will favor the home team.

Prediction Method 2: Higher Passer Rating

Why: I could simply decide on my own which quarterback I think is better. That's not subjective enough for this highly scientific and rational exercise, however. Therefore, I will use the NFL's Passer Rating as a metric for, well, Rating each teams Passer.
How: Last year's QB Rating predictions have invited a challenger from the greater NFL body itself. I will compare the Passer Rating of each team's starting quarterback, with the higher rating getting the prediction nod. As with the QB Rating, I'll take the Passer Rating as of that point in the season, using the 2019 regular season for Week 1. If each Passer Rating is the same, this method will favor the home team. I will source this data from...ESPN's website? Let's see if ESPN's data availability engineers their own downfall against their NFL rival.

Rivalry B: As, Of Course, Is Tradition

Rivalry Basis: There are some things that we're simply always told "win football games". I've decided to put a couple of these to the test here. Which is better? Are either good? Let's find out!

Prediction Method 3: Better Turnover Differential

Why: We’ve all heard it. “Turnovers win/cost games!” It’s a tired line, but there’s likely some truth to it; I want to see how well it holds water for detecting a winner in advance.
How: I’ll contrast each team’s regular season turnover differential as reported by The Football Database, current to the week of the writeup. The higher differential (that is, more takeaways and fewer giveaways) gets the pick. For Week 1, I will compare turnover differentials from the 2019 regular season. If both teams have the same differential, this method will favor the home team.

Prediction Method 4: Average Points Per Game

Why: Ahh, that good old John Madden crumb of wisdom. What you really want to do is score more points than the other team, and then you'll win your football game. Store dat away for a rainy day.
How: Pretty simple on this one. Average out the points per game of each team up to that point in the season. As is typical, for Week 1 I'll be using the average points per game of the entire 2019 regular season.

Rivalry C: Every Now and Then

Rivalry Basis: What's more important, current quality or true legacy? Wait, why are you waiting for me to tell you? I certainly don't know. That's why I was asking you!

Prediction Method 5: Best 2019 Record

Why: There are circumstances where a good team unexpectedly tanks, or a bad team becomes shockingly good in a short span of time. That isn’t the norm, though. In general, a team performs at least similarly to how they did the previous season.
How: I’ll be putting each team’s record from the 2019 season up against one another. I don't expect this one to swing for Detroit very often - the Lions went 3-12-1. If Detroit is up against another team with the same record, this method will favor the home team.

Prediction Method 6: Best Team History Record

Why: Then again, there's something to be said for legacy. Even in bad droughts of success, there are some teams that are just always expected to have a chance at contending. Could it be that a team's history is able to give an ailing squad the push they need, or help a robust unit keep themselves on track?
How: I'll measure this with each team's regular season win/loss percentage across that team's entire record, including 2020 as it happens. A tied percentage will favor the home team.

Rivalry D: Upper Management vs The Union

Rivalry Basis: Coaches run games, but it's the star players who really turn heads. I'd like to see which ends up proving more important.

Prediction Method 7: More Experienced Coaching Staff

Why: I feel the need to justify this one a little. I could have gone with a coaching win/loss record or something, but I was finding it tricky to reconcile each member of a coaching staff having coached a different number of games. Beyond that, I like this better as a predictor anyway. After all, bad coaches don't stay in their positions for very long, so an experienced staff should also indicate a decent staff, yeah?
How: I'll be adding up the number of years that each member of each coaching staff (head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coordinator) has been in that position in the NFL. Not necessarily with that particular team, but, for example, I'll only be counting Matt Patricia's years as a head coach. I won't consider his position coaching or coordinator history, because "head coach" is the level of responsibility he has for determining game outcomes this season. I don't want to allow the Peter principle to warp any ratings based on that coach having been really good at their previous job. In the event of a tie, the pick goes to the home team.

Prediction Method 8: More NFL Top 100 Players

Why: There are loads of ways to determine which football players are better than others, but if it was easy, we wouldn't still have playground debates about it. In light of that, I'd rather trust the players themselves.
How: Conveniently enough, the NFL's players vote in an offseason poll covering just this subject. Even more conveniently, the poll only includes voting on players who will not be retired for the coming season, so I don't have to worry about some retiring legend who isn't actually relevant for this test bumping people off the bottom of the list that would be relevant. If the count is equal, the home team is favored.

Rivalry E: It's Just A Game

Rivalry Basis: This one was already a rivalry of sorts last year. Which produces better simulations...state of the art ~~physics engines~~ animation sequences, or rudimentary programming from 1991? I'd like to continue this debate this year.

Prediction Method 9: Madden 19 21 Simulation

Why: EA has a massive budget, and they put out a product featuring the full NFL roster. That said, there are several questions raised as to how much effort actually goes into these games (including but not limited to the actual in-game proceedings). For a studio with “Arts” in the name, it is definitely run as a business first, artful developer second. I want to see if their simulations of the teams have any legitimacy.
How: Using Madden 19 with its most up-to-date roster patch available, I will run a CPU-controlled exhibition game featuring Detroit and their opponent. Settings will be adjusted to Simulation mode, with the default 6-minute quarters. Winner earns this pick. A rare tie would favor the home team. I'm using Madden 19 because it's the first Madden game that I'd bought in years, and you're unhinged if you think I'm giving EA any more money until they make a substantial update. Scratch that, Pride of Detroit is simulating the game each week in Madden 21 so I can use that for a more up-to-date simulation basis

Prediction Method 10: Tecmo Super Bowl Simulation

Why: Would you believe that there are people that update the teams and rosters in ROMs of Tecmo Super Bowl every year to keep them current? It’s honestly pretty awesome. I’d like to see how good of a job these 8-bit simulations do with their modern rosters.
How: Last year I used Goji's NFL Tecmo Super Bowl LIV Week 1 (v10, Juiced Plus) for this. Unfortunately, the website that hosted all of this appears to have shut its door in late July of 2020. Its community is a bit scattered at the moment, but I've found Tecmonster's Tecmo Super Bowl among the pieces. I will use this ROM to run a CPU-controlled exhibition game mirroring the week’s matchup. Winner gets the pick. Note that this is Tecmo Super Bowl, not Tecmo Bowl. Tecmo Super Bowl is superior across the board, don’t @ me.

Rivalry F: Going To The Dogs

Prediction Method 11: Fen's Pick

Why: This is our dog, Fenchurch. She is adorable, silly, and incredibly affectionate and loving. She may also have phenomenal cosmic powers, given to her by the universe as a reward for existing as such a pure being. These powers may or may not include psychic divinations of the future.
How: Before each game, I will set out two treats (broken in half because the little turd is too impatient to chew her food). Each will be the same flavor, and placed in front of a note card with the name of a competing team written on it. The away team will go on the left, the home team on the right. Fen will be held a short distance away, equidistant from each treat, with both of them directly in her field of vision. Whichever treat Fen decides to eat first receives the pick. Then she gets to eat the other treat as well for being the goodest girl and being such a big help.

Prediction Method 12: Elena's Pick

Why: OH GOSH YOU GUYS FEN HAS A SISTER NOW. Elena's favorite thing is the world is Fen. Fen's favorite thing in the world is time away from her incredibly energetic sister Elena. Could Elena annoy Fen even more by usurping her? Or will she defer to her favorite sibling and allow Fen to continue being the psychic pet? Only time (and treats) will tell.
How: Same as with Fen, just with a different doggo. And Elena is simultaneously the goodest girl, and yes they can coexist as such thank-you-very-much.

Rivalry G: This Was A Terrible Idea

Rivalry Basis: Put simply, this is my wife vs my mother. Despite they jokey name of this rivalry, they actually get along great! One of the things they have in common is that they don't follow any of the minutiae of football, so they're on pretty even footing here.

Prediction Method 13: My Wife's Pick

Why: My wife knows a bit about football. More than my mom, certainly; she's even in our fantasy football league. But unless she does some research specifically for these picks (which would be allowed for either her or my mom), her knowledge is mostly rooted in broad-stroke stuff or what she happens to hear me ranting about. She won't typically have insight into which team has an injured receiver or is on a backslide or is really close to taking the lead in their division. So while she's a very real fan, she's a high-level fan who just has fun watching football.
How: I ask her who she thinks is going to win. What did you expect?

Prediction Method 14: My Mother’s Pick

Why: My mom knows next to nothing about football. When we yell at the screen, she just asks which color jersey we’re supporting, and then roots for them too. If she can call these correctly, or at least better than the competing methods, she may be a savant of some kind.
How: In the week leading up to each game, I’m going to call (or text if necessary) my mother and ask who she thinks is going to win. That’s all there is to it.

Rivalry H: Money, Meet Mouth

Rivalry Basis: Time to put my own credibility on the line. We're bumping up my own opinions against those of the experts!

Prediction Method 15: OddsShark Forecast

Why: People take things seriously when there’s money on the line, and nowhere is more money on the line than in Vegas. Institutions that are hosting sports bets want their predicted outcomes to be as good as possible, so that the odds that they give reflect reality as best they can.
How: Rather than trying to shift gears and pick some bookie off of a random list of which I know nothing, I'm going to stay the course from last year. Therefore, I’ll be looking to OddsShark for their anticipated score (and by extension, winner).

Prediction Method 16: My Pick

Why: I want to see how I stack up. Despite my best efforts, I am by all accounts an amateur. I want to try my hand at this fight, and see how well I can hold my own.
How: Before each game, I will simply use my best judgment of all known factors to write my thoughts about the outcome that I expect. I’ll try to be as objective as I can in my assessment, which means I’ll probably just agonize over how it feels like I’ve picked the Lions too often.

Unrivaled Methods

Prediction Method 17: A Literal Coin Flip

Why No Rivalry: Consider this a control. If any other methods fall below an unbiased random guess, then maybe they aren’t worth putting any faith in.
Why: A coin is unbiased, and I certainly don't know how to choose the outcome of a flip. True randomness.
How: I will be using a Highland Mint NFL 100th anniversary Detroit Lions coin. I will flip it, catch it, open my palm, and set it down on the coffee table without turning it. Lions side chooses Detroit, NFL side chooses Detroit's opponent.

Prediction Method 18: Honolulu Blue Kool-Aid

Why No Rivalry: BECAUSE IT'S DETROIT VS EVERYBODY, BABY
Why: FUCK YOU
How: I DON’T GIVE HALF A DAMN WHAT YOU THINK, DETROIT IS THE BEST GODDAMN TEAM IN THE GODDAMN NFL. I’M GOING TO CHOOSE THEM TO WIN EVERY GAME THEY’RE IN BECAUSE YOU’D BE A WEAPONS-GRADE DIPSHIT TO PICK AGAINST THEM. WHO THE FUCK THINKS THEY’RE BEATING US?? BRING YOUR BEST PEOPLE, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. MATTHEW STAFFORD, KENNY GOLLADAY, AND THE MASTERFUL MATT PRATER. THOSE THREE GUYS COULD TAKE ON YOUR ENTIRE TEAM WITHOUT FLINCHING, AND WE’VE GOT MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM.
DETROIT WINS. KISS MY DICK.

And there we have it. We're ready to roll for the 2019-20 season. Expect my posts on gameday morning. It's football time, people!

Understanding an Arbitrage in Sports Betting

{The Flesh Reaper} (Sequel to The Meat Locusts) - Part Two

Stepping out of the cabin for the first time in days felt like an act of pure freedom, as if I’d been given an extension on my lifespan. That feeling faded quickly as I took in the shadowed land. The pale moonlight lit up the treetops but it mostly created more dark spots than it dispelled. Theo had stepped out with me, totally at ease with circumstances despite the fact that we were very clearly all alone. I then picked up on a distant whining sound coming from above us. I looked about and spotted a green light centered within a dark insectile silhouette. Theo pointed to it and said, “Third Eye. It’s keeping watch on us. It’s how I know we’re safe for now.”
So we had a drone escorting us. I can’t say I was happy about that. I’d rather have a dozen soldiers keeping us safe than a drone that did nothing but watch us. Still, considering that someone had bothered to show up at all, griping felt like an act of ingratitude.
Theo began leading us through the gloom of the forest, flashlights on and probing the woods around us, heading steadily downward toward what I hoped was a throng of well-armed Locust-killing badasses. I knew the drill – follow his lead, no talking. I couldn’t help but feel anxious as we passed large patches of bramble and thick copses of trees. Yet the night air did smell wonderful and felt even better after all that time cooped up. After a time my anxiety diminished to a dull fear, where every step we made took me further away from the nightmare my life had become. After walking for close to an hour without any incidents, I gave myself permission to feel something like hope again.
That was also the point when I spotted lights through the foliage. Theo pointed to them and said, “Just through those trees.” I was picturing something out of the TV show M.A.S.H., a sea of green military tents and combat vehicles with men marching about. Why else had the MLs taken off if not out of fear of an army?
Then we came through the trees and… M.A.S.H. it was not. It was no army camp, that was for sure. There was a solitary vehicle parked on a dirt road that I would have classified as the offspring of a large RV and an armored personnel carrier, surrounded by a ring of blue-tingled floodlights. Clearly designed as an all-terrain vehicle, it was fashioned with six huge tires that came up to my chest. I got the impression that this thing was designed to take all the trappings of modern living with you while you went sightseeing in war zones and wastelands.
“So… no soldiers?” I remarked, unable to contain my disappointment any longer.
Theo stopped and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, we’re not exactly the cavalry. But trust me when I say that this is the safest place for miles around.” Oh, I definitely trusted him about that, but I still wanted a platoon standing between the monsters and me.
Our drone tagalong settled into a slow circle around the vehicle as we approached the camp. There were no guards to greet us, just the omnipresent blue glow enveloping the site. Theo walked right up a nearby metal ramp and knocked three times on a steel door on the side of the vehicle. The door unlatched and opened, and a man of light skin and light build greeted him, a tired expression on his face. This new man gave Theo a quick hello and then looked at me, scratching his shaggy brown hair as he scrutinized me.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. Then he looked at Theo. “You owe me fifty bucks.”
“I know, man,” replied Theo. “You’ll have to wait ‘till payday, though. Too many wild nights.”
This apparently struck them as funny as they laughed and gave each other a quick fist bump. Theo looked back at me and pointed at the other guy. “This is Abbott. If he gives you a hard time, let me know and I’ll set him straight.”
Theo moved past him and into the vehicle. Theo came out to greet me with a handshake. Unlike Theo, he was wearing civilian clothing, and his Hawaiian shirt was especially loud and colorful. “I guess you were expecting a more professional outfit, huh?”
“I… was expecting a lot of things,” I said.
Abbott had a disarming smile, and despite the lack of firepower around me I felt oddly at ease. “Welcome to the Oasis,” he said, waving at the vehicle. “It’s 100% Locust-proof, even when parked. The lights are just our first line of defense. But just in case, let’s continue this conversation inside.”
The interior continued the theme of some wild engineer’s fantasy to combine living quarters with military preparedness. The back half contained a cramped kitchen, bunk-bed section, and lockers for supplies and personal effects. I figured a bathroom was somewhere in there too. The front half was full of logistical equipment, the crown jewel being the desk with six separate LCD monitors sporting all kinds of video footage, charts, tables, and graphs. Most of the gear was bolted down in one fashion or another. No wasted space and no windows, and little in the way of decoration. I started to feel like I had traded on survivalist shelter for another. I immediately missed the cold air of the outside, and there was a certain pervasive odor wrinkling my nose, the kind of sweat stink that comes from perspiring people stuck together in close quarters for a long time. Complaints aside, I did feel safe again, and considering that I hadn’t felt that way in days it was the best gift this group could’ve given me.
Abbott was busy sealing the main door while Theo relaxed in the kitchen area, putting up his feet and downing a bottle of water. I was about to ask if there was only the two of them when I almost stepped on the third member of their team, lying prone on the floor halfway into a compartment positioned under the computer desk. At first I could only see green pants and a pair of boots, but the body quickly crawled back out. She didn’t notice me as she moved to stand, holding what appeared to be a mousetrap with a very-dead mouse stuck to it. She also shared Abbott’s disdain for uniforms as she wore a blue tank top and a multicolored beaded necklace, topped off with long brown hair streaked with bright strands of lavender.
“Third one in a week,” she said absently, her pleasant voice unable to mask her disgust at the dead thing in her hands. “You’d think a vehicle that’s Locust-proof would be rodent-proof as well.” She then noticed me at last with a start, and I realized how young she really was, no more than twenty. Thanks to Madison, I had carried this idea that Wranglers were old veterans with scars and wrinkles. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be younger blood in the ranks.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I knew you were coming, but I didn’t think you’d get here this quickly.” She walked over to a sealed metal garbage can, opened it, and deposited the dead rat. I caught a whiff of strong decay from the container – it was where the rodent corpses abided.
Abbott came to my side and pointed at the third member of their party. “This is Lazlo. She takes care of tech and pests.”
“Still can’t get rid of you, though,” Lazlo joked at Abbott, resealing the can. She made to shake my hand, then realized it was the hand that had been holding the mouse, so she detoured to get a sanitation wipe.
“So, up for a debriefing?” Abbott asked me. “Any information you could give us might be helpful here.”
“Abbott, give the guy a break,” chimed in Theo. “He’s been stuck in a basement for two weeks.”
Abbott frowned and looked Theo’s way. “We don’t have time for him to detox, Theo.”
“You can give him hospitality, though,” said Lazlo. She held a water bottle and a protein bar and offered them my way. I took the water bottle and drank deeply of it.
“I’m up for it,” I said. That wasn’t bravado on my part. I was too wound up by my rescue to sleep. “Do I get to ask questions too?”
“In time,” Abbott said, and then glanced at Lazlo. “What’s Third Eye saying?”
“Pack’s still in the trees,” she replied. “When they come out, we’ll lock on again, but it’s been three hours since they went in there. We’ll need to send a replacement soon for Voyeur Two.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but thankfully Lazlo noticed my confusion. “Third Eye is our drone system specially tailored to monitor Meat Locusts,” she explained. “The bastards don’t have much of a thermal reading, so we use a program designed to detect their shape and movement style. It’s a good thing they’re so identical.”
Abbott frowned at her. “Laz, it’s my job to spill our secrets. Go monitor the situation and tell me if anything changes.” She rolled her eyes and sat down at the computer desk with exaggerated exasperation.
Abbott turned to me and motioned at a pair of folding chairs. As we took our seats, Theo came over and leaned on a wall near us. He must have wanted to hear my tale. Lazlo was also sneaking glances my direction.
“Forgive me, and us, if we’re a little rusty on interpersonal skills,” said Abbott. “We’ve been doing our own thing for some time.”
“No problem,” I said. “I must admit, I thought all you Wranglers were the lone wolf hunter types.”
“Many are,” he admitted. “Some of us do things different.”
“We fight monsters with science,” Lazlo commented in a singsong voice.
“Pretty much true,” Abbott confirmed. “I think you deserve to know that we weren’t here for you specifically, Hector. I did make a promise to Madison that if the opportunity availed us we would search the area you were last seen in, but only if it didn’t jeopardize our bigger priorities. It just so happens that the pack we’re pursuing came your direction. For what it’s worth, Madison painted you as a potential survivor, which is why I made my bet with Theo.”
“I usually win these bets,” chimed in Theo.
“Madison saved my ass,” I told them. “I’m no survivalist.”
Abbott showed a thin smile. “Hector, the MLs dine on survivalists regularly. Nobody does well against these things unless they’re willing to change paradigms. You did, and here you are.”
There was definitely charm to the guy, and he made me feel like one of the gang despite the fact that I’d just met them. “So how is Madison? She’s okay, right?
Lazlo practically flew over to us as I finished my question, holding an I-Pad in front of me as she scrolled through a series of pictures at lightning speed. With a wide smile she finally stopped at a photo showing a hospital room with a supremely annoyed occupant in a hospital bed looking at the camera and scowling. I found myself laughing, mostly out of relief, with Lazlo joining me in the mirth of the moment.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a person more angry at getting photographed than Madison,” said Lazlo. “This picture is from three days ago.”
“She suffered a pretty bad abdominal wound and major blood loss,” added Abbott. “She’s a tough one, though. Always has been. Doctors want her in the hospital for another week. We’ll see who wins that battle.”
“Sounds like you know here pretty well,” I said.
Abbott shrugged. “We have… conferences of sorts. Meetings where Wranglers get together to share data and techniques. We’ve talked. Can’t say we see eye-to-eye on much. She’s old-school and I’m the opposite. But she did contact me after she regained consciousness. By then, Crusoe was almost a week into its ML infestation.”
“God damn monsters,” spat out Theo.
“The MLs?” I asked.
“The government,” he clarified. “They should’ve contacted us on Day One. They let this thing go on for six days before they got other Wranglers involved.”
“How many of you are here?” I asked.
“Besides us three, there’s two others back in town,” Theo replied. “They’re in an advisory role, making sure the police and the National Guard know what they’re up against.”
I didn’t really want to know the answer to the question I was about to ask, but I asked it nonetheless. “So how bad is it?”
The three of them exchanged looks, probably trying to decide who gets to tell me the news. Abbott was ultimately overpowered by the stares of the other two. After all, he was the one in charge. He sighed helplessly.
“I’ll make you a deal, Hector,” he said. “We do have a ongoing situation, and I need your intel more than you need mine. You give me your gory story, and I’ll answer every Locust-related question you want to ask afterwards.”
“He means it, too,” said Lazlo. “He loves the sound of his voice.”
“It’s the only voice here that doesn’t give me a headache,” he joked back. The others laughed, and I admit that I laughed with them. I certainly could think of worse fates than being stuck with these three. At least we all knew how to laugh. I don’t know if laughter is, in fact, the best medicine, but it does help to shield one from the horrors.
*****
So I told them all of it. My stupid and heroic trek to save my ex-girlfriend, the horror and carnage I encountered, my fateful meeting with Madison, and our ensuing attempt to reach safety. I half-expected to bore my listeners, considering how much more massive their experience was to mine concerning the Meat Locusts, but all three of them seemed attentive to my story. Perhaps they were starved of alternative viewpoints – I would learn later that all three of them had spent a rather inordinate amount of time together in distant locations, bereft of human culture and contact. They might have been socially starved. Then again, it might have been intelligence gathering. Lazlo zeroed in on the effectiveness of the flash balls, while Theo critiqued Madison’s hunting strategy. Abbott just took it all in, never giving away any preference or interest in any one piece of data I reported.
I talked for a long time, and when I was done I felt drained, as if telling my story had released all the tension bottled up inside me. Despite my growing fatigue, I resisted asking for a bunk. I told Abbott to start in on his part of the deal. Abbott happily obliged. Abbott asked me where I wanted to start, and I told him to tell me about his group. In particular, how was it that Madison was so starved for support and equipment while Abbott’s team seemed to have Batman levels of tech and preparation. Abbott confessed that he was, in fact, cheating when it came to funding. In fact, what he was doing was technically illegal. Abbott was actually a professor; Doctor Ben Abbott from Yale, out on a very long sabbatical. Some funding came from the college, which Abbott routinely fed extremely long and detailed research reports that would eventually be publicly disclosed once the government could no longer keep the MLs a secret… which, considering recent events, was about to occur. He also had a business deal with a gun manufacturer who fed Abbott money through a few off-shore accounts, on the grounds that once the MLs went public, they’d be positioned to sell specialized equipment to a now-paranoid public and, pardon the pun, make a killing. Abbott figured that at least a few government officials knew about his alternate funding arrangements, but as long as he produced results and didn’t cross any lines they looked the other way. I can’t say I approved of all that under-the-table dealing, but as Abbott put it, having the funding to properly study the MLs was paying off in spades. His group’s research was helping other Wranglers track and kill MLs far more effectively than before, which meant more lives getting saved in the process.
Yes, Abbott’s group was mostly about research. Before Crusoe, they were stationed in the Midwest, following packs that kept to the flyover parts of America. With fewer people in harm’s way, the team had more time to track and monitor the monsters’ behavior and patterns. The isolation also helped to keep their work hidden from prying eyes and social media. Abbott and Lazlo did most of the scientific work, while Theo was in charge of defense and hunting.
“Don’t you get bored working with researchers?” I asked Theo at one point.
He laughed lightly at my question and said, “Pal, keeping these two alive is a full-time job. Boredom doesn’t enter into it.”
Indeed, researching the MLs meant getting uncomfortably close to them frequently. The team also took out packs heading for human habitations. Theo boasted that they had one of the highest kill rates of any Wrangler team, though he grudgingly confessed that Madison had the highest individual total.
“That’s why were out here and not on defense,” Abbott told me. “The behavior we’re seeing now from the MLs is… well, I think word unprecedented gets way overused these days, but it’s definitely appropriate here. They’ve got enough guns for Crusoe. What they need is intelligence. That’s where we come in.”
And just like that, we had segued into the Crusoe infestation. An infestation is what Wranglers called it when a pack of MLs takes an interest in a particular human settlement. Most of the time it was a small town or village, sometimes a campground or resort. The little monsters would attack people on the very outskirts, slaughtering a group of campers or an entire household in the wilderness, then run off to expand their numbers. When enough humans were present, MLs had a tendency to get into a feeding frenzy and lose any sense of cover and furtiveness. It made them easy to pinpoint – just follow the carnage and you’d find them eventually. Infestations rarely got past the remote-kill stage before a Wrangler caught wind of their killings and went in to clean things up.
This time was different. They were using hit-and-run tactics against one or two individuals, dragging the victims away instead of eating them right then and there. They were letting their victims call for help before killing them, causing family members, friends, and would-be rescuers such as the police to go out and find them, only for some of them to go missing or become victims themselves. It had gotten bad enough that the state government was now frantically urging people to not leave Crusoe’s city limits, and that anyone who did was on their own. The current casualty total was at twenty-seven dead and forty-seven missing, some of whom were police and emergency responders.
“That’s just the ones we know about,” Lazlo had commented. “People on vacation, loggers and road workers, transients and homeless folks, thrill seekers wanting to see the mess for themselves – I’m sure there’s more than a few of them that have become Locust chow.”
“Every person the MLs take down can feed at least eight of them,” said Abbott. “We used to take it for granted that they were too sloppy and impatient to pull off a more methodical strategy, but here they are, doing it. They’re avoiding armed confrontation, choosing to pick off the weaker elements of the town and then run off to bud. I think you see the problem, Hector.”
I nodded, and the certainty of that realization hit me like a sledgehammer. “They’re growing an army,” I said.
“They’re well on their way to doing it, too,” said Abbott. “Our best estimate is there was at least three hundred MLs in the area now. They’ve taken losses from our defenses, but the only thing that is slowing down their growth rate is the government lockdown order. Fewer people moving around means fewer lunches.”
“So what’s the game plan?” I asked. “Why isn’t the military involved now?”
Theo grunted at my question. “I’m in touch with a few military contacts. Being ex-Navy does have its perks. Trust me, they would get involved, but the current administration still wants to keep their part of the cover-up under wraps. Military involvement would all but ensure that the MLs go public. So they won’t support military action unless we start seeing a serious increase in deaths. God knows what that threshold looks like.”
“As for our game plan,” answered Abbott, “we’re still working on that. Our main focus is to figure out why the MLs have changed tactics.”
“That’s why you’re up here, then,” I said. “Not to find survivors, but to study the MLs.” My words came out colder than I meant them to be. I surely did appreciate my rescuers, but shouldn’t saving lives be the priority and not studying the newest antics from a bunch of murder-monsters?
“We were searching homes for any survivors as we went, Hector,” defended Lazlo, “but we didn’t expect to find any. You’ve seen how the Locusts work. It’s why we’re frankly amazed you survived out there. The odds of your average layperson encountering a pack and living to tell the tale is… well, let’s just say you’re better off going up against lightning.”
I gave her a grim nod. I did understand the logic, but I doubt anyone likes to hear how little the world cares about their welfare. The politicians looking out for their careers, the military putting a carnage number to their intervention, the people of Crusoe hunkering down while hoping for salvation, and I get saved by a team of wandering researchers.
Lazlo must have decided that her words had been less than reassuring as she then found a reason to avoid eye contact with me by glancing at her monitors. Abbott motioned at me to come with him toward the back of the vehicle while Theo headed for the kitchen nook. Sharing time had just come to an end.
“You’ll have to forgive Lazlo for her bluntness,” Abbott explained, gesturing to an empty bunk that I could use during my stay. “We don’t get to comfort survivors very often.”
“No big deal,” I replied. “She’s better at it than Madison.”
Abbott laughed at my statement. “In any case, you should probably get some sleep while things are quiet. I can’t promise you that we can head back to Crusoe soon, but if you stay with us you’ll be just fine.”
I went and sat on the bottom bunk, testing out the mattress. It was definitely better than the cement floor I’d been sleeping on for the last two weeks. “Do you have any idea why the pack around my house left like it did?”
Abbott shook his head. “That’s the mystery, isn’t it? We were following another pack going this direction, which was unusual in and of itself because it’s away from the feeding grounds of Crusoe. I figured if a pack would willingly give up on their hunting, they had to have another objective in mind. That’s when we saw them merge with the pack surrounding your cabin. Hours after that, they all just left. They went into a large copse of trees and… they’re still in there. They haven’t eaten anyone since we locked onto them with Third Eye three days ago, so I’m pretty sure they’re not budding in there.”
Abbott then told me that I could eat or drink anything in storage, he showed me the bathroom, and he reminded me not to leave the vehicle without running it by him first. Finally, he told me that while I was free to roam for now, this was technically a military team and if I attempted to interfere with their operations or endanger the team in any way, they did have a brig of sorts in the very back. Namely, it was a closet and it was very cramped, but it did have air holes.
He left me to get what sleep I could. I wondered if the others were ever going to sleep, but I didn’t wonder for long because as soon as my head hit the mattress all that weariness that I had struggled against for days on end finally won the battle and sleep took me. For the first time in what felt like forever, I felt safe.
It’s a shame that feeling safe and being safe are two separate aspects of life. When we confuse the two, bad things always happen.

Only Trump could lose to a dead man - The Nation

https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/

It’s July 2020 and I’m about to turn 76, which, as far as I’m concerned, officially makes me an old man. So put up with my aging, wandering brain here, since (I swear) I wasn’t going to start this piece with Donald J. Trump, no matter his latest wild claims or bizarre statements, increasingly white nationalist and pro-Confederate positions (right down to the saving of the rebel Stars and Bars), not to speak of the Covid-19 slaughter of Americans he’s helped facilitate. But then I read about his demand for a “National Garden of American Heroes,” described as “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live” and, honestly, though this piece is officially about something else, I just can’t help myself. I had to start there.
Yes, everyone undoubtedly understands why Gen. George Patton (a Trump obsession) is to be in that garden, not to speak—given the president’s reelection politics—of evangelist Billy Graham, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and former president Ronald Reagan. Still, my guess is that most of you won’t have the faintest idea why Davy Crockett is included. I’m talking about the frontiersman and Indian killer who died at the Alamo. Given my age, though, I get Trump on this one and it gave me a rare laugh in a distinctly grim moment. That’s why I can’t resist explaining it, even though I guarantee you that the real subject of this piece is Osama bin Laden’s revenge.
After all, The Donald and I grew up in the 1950s in different parts of the same bustling city, New York. We both had TVs, just then flooding into homes nationwide, and I guarantee you that we both were riveted by the same hit show), TV’s first miniseries, Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, starring the actor Fess Parker. Its pop theme song swept the country. (“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free… Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three… Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”) The show also launched a kids’ craze for coonskin caps. (Who among us didn’t have, or at least yearn, for one?) So how could a statue of Fess Parker not be in the Garden of American Heroes?
And since Donald Trump is himself the essence of a bad novel (though he’s also become our reality), I just wonder: What about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, especially since there are no plans for Native Americans in his garden-to-be? They were a crew obviously put on Earth to be wiped out by white colonists, cowboys, and the cavalry in the kinds of Westerns both of us trooped to local movie theaters to see back then.
Or how about Hopalong Cassidy (Hoppy!), that other TV cowboy hero of our childhood? Doesn’t he deserve to ride in that garden next to another Trump military fixation, Gen. Douglas MacArthur? After all, I know that Hoppy was real and this is how: When I was seven or eight, my father had a friend who worked for Pathé News and I rode in front of the tripod of his camera on the roof of that company’s station wagon in a Macy’s Day Parade in my hometown. (I still have the photos.) Somewhere along the route, Hoppy himself—I kid you not!—rode by on his white horse Topper and, since I was atop that station wagon and we were at about the same height, he shook my hand!
And here’s what makes Cassidy especially appropriate for The Donald’s garden landscape: In the 1950s, he was the only cowboy hero who dressed all in black right up to his hat (normally, a sign of the bad guy) and, in the process, created a kid’s craze for black shirts (his version of a coonskin cap), breaking its past association with either Italian fascism or mourning and bringing it back into the culture big time. Tell me honestly, then, don’t you think a garden of “heroes” in the age of Trump should have a few black shirts and an increasingly Mussolini-ish look to it?
AN AMERICAN GARDEN OF BLOOD
So Donald Trump and I both lived through the same TV world in our childhoods and youth. We also lived through 9/11, still in the same city, although unlike him, I wasn’t practically a “first responder” at the site of those two downed towers, nor did I see all the Muslims celebrating across the river in Jersey City (as he claimed he did). Still, of one thing I’m convinced: Donald Trump is Osama bin Laden’s revenge.
Of course, that was all so long ago. The new century had barely begun. I was only 57 and The Donald 55 when those two hijacked planes suddenly slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in our hometown, a third one plunged into the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth (probably heading for the White House or the Capitol) crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers fought back. Ever since, all you have to do is write “9/11” and everyone knows (or thinks they know) what it stands for. But on 9/11, there was, of course, no 9/11.
It was a breathtakingly unexpected event (although, to be fair, the CIA had previously briefed President George W. Bush on Osama bin Laden’s desire to hijack commercial planes for possible terror operations… oh, and there was that FBI agent in Phoenix who urged headquarters “to investigate Middle Eastern men enrolled in American flight schools”). Still, the downing of those towers and part of the headquarters of the singularly victorious military of the ultimate superpower of the Cold War, the one already being called “indispensable” and “exceptional” in 2001, was beyond shocking.
Admittedly, there’s history to be remembered here. After all, it wasn’t actually that military or that Pentagon that downed the Soviet Union. In fact, when the American military fought the Soviets in major proxy wars on a planet where nuclear catastrophe was always just around the corner, it found itself remarkably stalemated in Korea and dismally on the losing side in Vietnam.
No, if you want to give credit where it’s due, offer it to the CIA and Washington’s Saudi allies, who invested staggering effort from 1979 to 1989 in funding, supporting, and training the Taliban’s predecessors, groups of Afghan Islamic extremists, to take down the Red Army in their country. Supporting them as well (though, as far as is known, probably not actually funded by the United States) was a rich young Saudi militant named, believe it or not, Osama bin Laden who, before that war even ended, had founded a group called “the Base” or Al Qaeda, and would, in 1996, declare “war” on the United States. Oh yes, and though it’s seldom mentioned now, when charges are flying fast and furious about the possible recent Russian funding of Taliban militants to kill at most a few Americans in Afghanistan, in those years the United States poured billions of dollars into… well, not to put it too subtly, empowering Islamic extremists to kill the soldiers of that other superpower by the thousands in… yes, Afghanistan. How’s that for shocking?
In 1989, the defeated Red Army finally limped home from what the Soviet Union’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had taken to calling “the bleeding wound.” Only two years later, his country imploded and the United States was left alone, officially victorious, on Planet Earth (despite future fantasies of a horrific “axis of evil” to be faced), the first country in endless centuries of imperial rivalry to find itself so.
And what exactly did that triumphantly indispensable, exceptional superpower do but, a decade later, get dive-bombed by 19—just 19!—largely Saudi hijackers in the service of tiny Al Qaeda and that wizard of terror Osama bin Laden, whose urge was then to provoke Washington into a genuine war in the Muslim world and so create yet more Islamic extremists. And did he succeed? You bet—and in a fashion even he undoubtedly hadn’t conceived of in his wildest dreams. Think of 9/11, in fact, as the greatest example of “shock and awe” in this century.
Here’s a feeling I still remember from the weeks after the 9/11 attacks when I saw where the administration of President George W. Bush was heading toward the invasion of Afghanistan and then, God save us, Iraq; when I watched our mainstream media narrow its focus to this country as the most victimized yet dominating and exceptional place on Earth and Osama bin Laden as the ultimate evil on this planet; when I watched the never-ending memorial ceremonies begin and what soon came to be called “the war on terror” be launched with up to 60 (count ’em: 60!) countries in its gunsights, even if I didn’t yet know that, on 9/11 in the damaged Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had turned to an aide and said, “Go Massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not,” with a future invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq clearly in mind, though the Iraqi autocrat had no relation whatsoever to Al Qaeda (something you wouldn’t have known from the top officials in that administration in those years)—when, in short (though I didn’t yet think of it that way), I watched my own country become a “bleeding wound” that has never stopped flowing and, in Donald Trump’s Covid-19 moment, has turned into an American Garden of Blood.
Back in late September 2001, despite having been deeply involved decades earlier in the nightmare of the Vietnam War (and opposition to it), I could already sense war coming, and it occurred to me that this was going to be the worst period I had ever experienced. Now that we’re in Donald Trump’s America, with hundreds of Americans dying daily of a disease that a reasonably responsible president and administration could have brought under control, the 3,000 deaths of 9/11 are beginning to look like a drop in the casualty bucket. (By the beginning of April 2020, Covid-19 deaths in New York City alone had already surpassed those of 9/11 by 1,000.)
And I wasn’t wrong in that hunch about this being the worst period, was I? Mind you, it was just a gut feeling then, no more—even though it would soon enough lead, almost inexorably, to the creation of my website, TomDispatch, and its focus on what turned out to be America’s never-ending wars of this century.
A PASSPORT TO NOWHERE
Let’s get one thing straight, though. If, at that moment, you had told me that this country was going to launch a series of forever wars across what would turn out to be a significant part of the planet and fight them hopelessly for almost two decades or that, the more success proved absent in those same years, the more one administration after another would pour taxpayer dollars into the US military, the 17 “intelligence” agencies, and the rest of the national security state; that what’s still known, with no accuracy whatsoever, as the “defense budget” would years ago have become larger than those of the next seven best-funded military powers on the planet combined and, by 2020, the next 10, and would still be rising; that domestic investment, from infrastructure to pandemic preparedness, would be starved for money in those same years, and that just about no one would protest any of this in the halls of Congress or the streets of America, I would have thought you a madman—or rather, the world’s best writer of dystopian fiction.
If you had told me that, in those very years, of the two great powers of this century, China and the United States—one rising, the other ever more clearly falling—the latter would lose approximately 7,000 military personnel (and at least another 8,000 military contractors) and many more wounded, not to speak of those who came home with PTSD or, under the pressure of repeated deployments to the sorriest of conflicts, committed suicide, while the former, as The New York Times reported recently in the wake of a bloody (but not weaponized) clash on China’s disputed Himalayan border with India, would have lost next to none, I wouldn’t have believed you. (“In four decades,” as the Times wrote, “the People’s Liberation Army had lost just three soldiers to fighting abroad—troops who were killed in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Mali and South Sudan in 2016.”)
If you had told me that, facing a devastating virus, the leader of one would largely suppress it—admittedly using the most authoritarian of methods—while, in his search for reelection, the leader of the other, officially still the greatest power on the planet, would ignore it, open the economy, churches, schools, and institutions of every sort and watch it run wild without a plan in sight; if you had told me that fewer than 5,000 people would die in the first of those countries and more than 134,000 (and still counting) in the other, leaving the American dead of 9/11 and the bloody wars of this century in the shade, and that it was all only getting worse, I wouldn’t have believed you. Not for a second.
And if, above all, you had told me that, deep into those years of bleeding abroad and increasingly at home, a near majority of Americans would vote to (as I wrote during election campaign 2016) send a suicide bomber into the White House, I would have told you that, though Osama bin Laden had been killed by SEAL Team Six in Pakistan and buried in the briny deep in 2011, Donald Trump was his living revenge, and that bin Laden had won twice—once thanks to those ludicrous, murderous forever wars across much of the Muslim world, and the second time thanks to the pandemic from hell and the president from the same place.
It’s July 2020 and I’m about to turn 76, which, as far as I’m concerned, officially makes me an old man. So put up with my aging, wandering brain here, since (I swear) I wasn’t going to start this piece with Donald J. Trump, no matter his latest wild claims or bizarre statements, increasingly white nationalist and pro-Confederate positions (right down to the saving of the rebel Stars and Bars), not to speak of the Covid-19 slaughter of Americans he’s helped facilitate. But then I read about his demand for a “National Garden of American Heroes,” described as “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live” and, honestly, though this piece is officially about something else, I just can’t help myself. I had to start there.
Yes, everyone undoubtedly understands why Gen. George Patton (a Trump obsession) is to be in that garden, not to speak—given the president’s reelection politics—of evangelist Billy Graham, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and former president Ronald Reagan. Still, my guess is that most of you won’t have the faintest idea why Davy Crockett is included. I’m talking about the frontiersman and Indian killer who died at the Alamo. Given my age, though, I get Trump on this one and it gave me a rare laugh in a distinctly grim moment. That’s why I can’t resist explaining it, even though I guarantee you that the real subject of this piece is Osama bin Laden’s revenge.
After all, The Donald and I grew up in the 1950s in different parts of the same bustling city, New York. We both had TVs, just then flooding into homes nationwide, and I guarantee you that we both were riveted by the same hit show), TV’s first miniseries, Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, starring the actor Fess Parker. Its pop theme song swept the country. (“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free… Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three… Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”) The show also launched a kids’ craze for coonskin caps. (Who among us didn’t have, or at least yearn, for one?) So how could a statue of Fess Parker not be in the Garden of American Heroes?
And since Donald Trump is himself the essence of a bad novel (though he’s also become our reality), I just wonder: What about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, especially since there are no plans for Native Americans in his garden-to-be? They were a crew obviously put on Earth to be wiped out by white colonists, cowboys, and the cavalry in the kinds of Westerns both of us trooped to local movie theaters to see back then.
Or how about Hopalong Cassidy (Hoppy!), that other TV cowboy hero of our childhood? Doesn’t he deserve to ride in that garden next to another Trump military fixation, Gen. Douglas MacArthur? After all, I know that Hoppy was real and this is how: When I was seven or eight, my father had a friend who worked for Pathé News and I rode in front of the tripod of his camera on the roof of that company’s station wagon in a Macy’s Day Parade in my hometown. (I still have the photos.) Somewhere along the route, Hoppy himself—I kid you not!—rode by on his white horse Topper and, since I was atop that station wagon and we were at about the same height, he shook my hand!
And here’s what makes Cassidy especially appropriate for The Donald’s garden landscape: In the 1950s, he was the only cowboy hero who dressed all in black right up to his hat (normally, a sign of the bad guy) and, in the process, created a kid’s craze for black shirts (his version of a coonskin cap), breaking its past association with either Italian fascism or mourning and bringing it back into the culture big time. Tell me honestly, then, don’t you think a garden of “heroes” in the age of Trump should have a few black shirts and an increasingly Mussolini-ish look to it?
AN AMERICAN GARDEN OF BLOOD
So Donald Trump and I both lived through the same TV world in our childhoods and youth. We also lived through 9/11, still in the same city, although unlike him, I wasn’t practically a “first responder” at the site of those two downed towers, nor did I see all the Muslims celebrating across the river in Jersey City (as he claimed he did). Still, of one thing I’m convinced: Donald Trump is Osama bin Laden’s revenge.
Of course, that was all so long ago. The new century had barely begun. I was only 57 and The Donald 55 when those two hijacked planes suddenly slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in our hometown, a third one plunged into the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth (probably heading for the White House or the Capitol) crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers fought back. Ever since, all you have to do is write “9/11” and everyone knows (or thinks they know) what it stands for. But on 9/11, there was, of course, no 9/11.
It was a breathtakingly unexpected event (although, to be fair, the CIA had previously briefed President George W. Bush on Osama bin Laden’s desire to hijack commercial planes for possible terror operations… oh, and there was that FBI agent in Phoenix who urged headquarters “to investigate Middle Eastern men enrolled in American flight schools”). Still, the downing of those towers and part of the headquarters of the singularly victorious military of the ultimate superpower of the Cold War, the one already being called “indispensable” and “exceptional” in 2001, was beyond shocking.
Admittedly, there’s history to be remembered here. After all, it wasn’t actually that military or that Pentagon that downed the Soviet Union. In fact, when the American military fought the Soviets in major proxy wars on a planet where nuclear catastrophe was always just around the corner, it found itself remarkably stalemated in Korea and dismally on the losing side in Vietnam.
No, if you want to give credit where it’s due, offer it to the CIA and Washington’s Saudi allies, who invested staggering effort from 1979 to 1989 in funding, supporting, and training the Taliban’s predecessors, groups of Afghan Islamic extremists, to take down the Red Army in their country. Supporting them as well (though, as far as is known, probably not actually funded by the United States) was a rich young Saudi militant named, believe it or not, Osama bin Laden who, before that war even ended, had founded a group called “the Base” or Al Qaeda, and would, in 1996, declare “war” on the United States. Oh yes, and though it’s seldom mentioned now, when charges are flying fast and furious about the possible recent Russian funding of Taliban militants to kill at most a few Americans in Afghanistan, in those years the United States poured billions of dollars into… well, not to put it too subtly, empowering Islamic extremists to kill the soldiers of that other superpower by the thousands in… yes, Afghanistan. How’s that for shocking?
In 1989, the defeated Red Army finally limped home from what the Soviet Union’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had taken to calling “the bleeding wound.” Only two years later, his country imploded and the United States was left alone, officially victorious, on Planet Earth (despite future fantasies of a horrific “axis of evil” to be faced), the first country in endless centuries of imperial rivalry to find itself so.
And what exactly did that triumphantly indispensable, exceptional superpower do but, a decade later, get dive-bombed by 19—just 19!—largely Saudi hijackers in the service of tiny Al Qaeda and that wizard of terror Osama bin Laden, whose urge was then to provoke Washington into a genuine war in the Muslim world and so create yet more Islamic extremists. And did he succeed? You bet—and in a fashion even he undoubtedly hadn’t conceived of in his wildest dreams. Think of 9/11, in fact, as the greatest example of “shock and awe” in this century.
Here’s a feeling I still remember from the weeks after the 9/11 attacks when I saw where the administration of President George W. Bush was heading toward the invasion of Afghanistan and then, God save us, Iraq; when I watched our mainstream media narrow its focus to this country as the most victimized yet dominating and exceptional place on Earth and Osama bin Laden as the ultimate evil on this planet; when I watched the never-ending memorial ceremonies begin and what soon came to be called “the war on terror” be launched with up to 60 (count ’em: 60!) countries in its gunsights, even if I didn’t yet know that, on 9/11 in the damaged Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had turned to an aide and said, “Go Massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not,” with a future invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq clearly in mind, though the Iraqi autocrat had no relation whatsoever to Al Qaeda (something you wouldn’t have known from the top officials in that administration in those years)—when, in short (though I didn’t yet think of it that way), I watched my own country become a “bleeding wound” that has never stopped flowing and, in Donald Trump’s Covid-19 moment, has turned into an American Garden of Blood.
Back in late September 2001, despite having been deeply involved decades earlier in the nightmare of the Vietnam War (and opposition to it), I could already sense war coming, and it occurred to me that this was going to be the worst period I had ever experienced. Now that we’re in Donald Trump’s America, with hundreds of Americans dying daily of a disease that a reasonably responsible president and administration could have brought under control, the 3,000 deaths of 9/11 are beginning to look like a drop in the casualty bucket. (By the beginning of April 2020, Covid-19 deaths in New York City alone had already surpassed those of 9/11 by 1,000.)
And I wasn’t wrong in that hunch about this being the worst period, was I? Mind you, it was just a gut feeling then, no more—even though it would soon enough lead, almost inexorably, to the creation of my website, TomDispatch, and its focus on what turned out to be America’s never-ending wars of this century.
A PASSPORT TO NOWHERE
Let’s get one thing straight, though. If, at that moment, you had told me that this country was going to launch a series of forever wars across what would turn out to be a significant part of the planet and fight them hopelessly for almost two decades or that, the more success proved absent in those same years, the more one administration after another would pour taxpayer dollars into the US military, the 17 “intelligence” agencies, and the rest of the national security state; that what’s still known, with no accuracy whatsoever, as the “defense budget” would years ago have become larger than those of the next seven best-funded military powers on the planet combined and, by 2020, the next 10, and would still be rising; that domestic investment, from infrastructure to pandemic preparedness, would be starved for money in those same years, and that just about no one would protest any of this in the halls of Congress or the streets of America, I would have thought you a madman—or rather, the world’s best writer of dystopian fiction.
If you had told me that, in those very years, of the two great powers of this century, China and the United States—one rising, the other ever more clearly falling—the latter would lose approximately 7,000 military personnel (and at least another 8,000 military contractors) and many more wounded, not to speak of those who came home with PTSD or, under the pressure of repeated deployments to the sorriest of conflicts, committed suicide, while the former, as The New York Times reported recently in the wake of a bloody (but not weaponized) clash on China’s disputed Himalayan border with India, would have lost next to none, I wouldn’t have believed you. (“In four decades,” as the Times wrote, “the People’s Liberation Army had lost just three soldiers to fighting abroad—troops who were killed in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Mali and South Sudan in 2016.”)
If you had told me that, facing a devastating virus, the leader of one would largely suppress it—admittedly using the most authoritarian of methods—while, in his search for reelection, the leader of the other, officially still the greatest power on the planet, would ignore it, open the economy, churches, schools, and institutions of every sort and watch it run wild without a plan in sight; if you had told me that fewer than 5,000 people would die in the first of those countries and more than 134,000 (and still counting) in the other, leaving the American dead of 9/11 and the bloody wars of this century in the shade, and that it was all only getting worse, I wouldn’t have believed you. Not for a second.
And if, above all, you had told me that, deep into those years of bleeding abroad and increasingly at home, a near majority of Americans would vote to (as I wrote during election campaign 2016) send a suicide bomber into the White House, I would have told you that, though Osama bin Laden had been killed by SEAL Team Six in Pakistan and buried in the briny deep in 2011, Donald Trump was his living revenge, and that bin Laden had won twice—once thanks to those ludicrous, murderous forever wars across much of the Muslim world, and the second time thanks to the pandemic from hell and the president from the same place.
Imagine if, in 1991 when the Soviet Union imploded, I had told you that in 2020, not quite three decades distant, an American passport would be, more or less literally, a document for a trip to nowhere. Talk about a bleeding, or even hemorrhaging, wound! In the years to come, I think it will be ever more obvious that Donald Trump was, in fact, proof of Osama bin Laden’s success, of the fact that 9/11 and those 19 hijackers were all that was needed to produce the world of his dreams and the wounds that went with it.
And if, by the way, you wondered why I wrote this piece with the longest sentences I could possibly create, the answer is simple enough: two decades into the 21st century, I think it should be obvious that Americans have been given an exceptionally, perhaps even indispensably long sentence without parole on a planet already heating to the boiling point, 94,000,000 miles from the sun.
No, this truly won’t be “the American century,” but I doubt it will be the Chinese one either. By the time this crew is done, it may be nobody’s century. Thanks a heap, Osama! This is your bleeding wound, too.

No, Skyrim is NOT a children's game

Sorry if my formatting is off, my laptop is acting up. Anyway, this might be a pinch uncharacteristic of me. I try my best to be extremely nice on Reddit, considering how much negativity we see all the time. I do my best to include smiley faces, and a positive note on a negative comment, because a little kindness on the internet can go a long way. Sometimes, I can be a bit timid, and a people-pleaser. I know sometimes I try a little too hard to make everyone happy. That's why the rest of this post is probably going to shock some of you.

The following subject has achieved quite the feat - it's tested my patience, to the point where I'm just going to be more blunt about this. I have been consulting several subreddits about various aspects of dialogue, and every time I do, I keep getting messages that go something like this: "Your little brother is too young to be learning about this through Skyrim!"

TO BE FAIR, AND THIS IS A VALID DISCLAIMER: Some of these concerns I felt were valid. 100% absolutely, sometimes it really is on ME. This is because I can be a little too "clinical/objective" in my dialogue, and it can create some uncomfortable moments where I go into a little too much detail than necessary. This is exactly why I am consulting others to begin with.

HOWEVER, now I'm just getting a bunch of heat for trying to discuss the main topics in Skyrim because "Skyrim is a game for all ages, and you're being weird and inappropriate by talking about those things."

No, listen. You're wrong. Skyrim is NOT a children's game.

Skyrim has never advertised itself as a children's game, and has always sported a "MATURE" Rating. This problem happens far too often - a well-informed parent decides to allow their child to be exposed to a mature media (movie, video game, etc...), in this case, Skyrim. The child loves it, and talks about it to their friends. Then the friends talk to their parents about it, and some of the parents just think "Oh! It's a fun game about killing dragons! Okay!" Without any real research or consideration into the content they are exposing their children to.

Then when the game is revealed to be mature, there's all sorts of fury and controversy for exposing innocent children to such disturbing content - when it was THE PARENT'S failure to monitor what their child was being exposed to. This is why when Deadpool came out, there were so many advertisements that said straight up: This is an adult movie, leave your kids at home. And there were STILL parents who took their kid to see it and were appalled by the adult nature of the film.

I refuse to be held responsible for your failure to do your research into the true nature of Skyrim. I will not tolerate yet another inquiry into why I am even * gasp * saying the word "sex", or exploring the extremely dark themes of the game with him - as if I am being somehow emotionally incestuous, when I am literally only discussing themes that exist in the game already.

Repeat After Me:

Skyrim is NOT a children's game.
Skyrim is NOT a children's game.
Skyrim is NOT a children's game.

I cannot stress this enough. It is rated mature for many reasons. If it were a movie, it would be rated R without a doubt.
My parents have allowed my little brother to play Skyrim, and they did so after heavily researching the game. His folks and I discussed some of the quests when my little brother, eleven at the time, first asked if he could play it. I told them straight up "It's not a kid's game, and here's why." They did not allow him to play it. Now he is at an age where he is allowed to play it, and he is allowed to watch Game of Thrones. He has frequent talks with his parents about the philosophical themes in these far more mature pieces of media. I am merely carrying on that tradition.

To Be Clear: HIS PARENTS HAVE ALLOWED HIM TO BE EXPOSED TO THIS CONTENT, I AM MERELY TALKING ABOUT IT WITH HIM IN A WAY TO ENCOURAGE CRITICAL THINKING.

But How Is An Innocent Games About Dragons So Inappropriate???

Let's discuss this further, to avoid someone trying to refute me like they have in my messages. Since we want to pin me for your discomfort with Skyrim, I will go ahead and do the research you should be doing for you. If you are a parent/adult that is agitated with me because I am exposing my little brother to dark concepts instead of "letting him fight dragons and be in the fantasy of Skyrim" - you need to read this especially.

Skyrim, without ANY mods contains:

Extreme violence
Dark topics and rewarded immorality
Deranged and disturbing individuals
Heavy rape references
Sexually explicit concepts and commentary

Extreme Violence

Not even five minutes into the game, and you witness a beheading.
I am willing to bet Bethesda did that for a reason - to make it clear, under no uncertain terms, this was not a "family-friendly" video game. Perhaps it was even a safeguard against kids who lie to their parents about the rating of a video game. Sometimes kids can convince parents "but it's not all that bad" when yes, yes it is that bad. It's kind of hard to keep up this lie when the first game scene involves a beheading. That was my first thought during my first play through.

There is gore both in presentation, and in spirit
Enemy deaths are sometimes zoomed in, with cut scenes of the player slicing a throat, stabbing someone in their sleep, blasting them back with lightning, etc... You hear their screams, and see the blood splatter. This isn't like Legend of Zelda where the enemies just go "poof!" in a cloud of smoke. They die in violent manners, you can loot their corpses, and even drag/hide them. Some quests even require you to loot and drag a corpse. You can leave their bodies in the dirt. The one non-gory aspect to it, is that the "nakedness" is underwear. But in-game, it is acknowledged as a stripped corpse.

This is where we get into what I'm just calling "gore in spirit."
Let's look at Windhelm's Blood on the Ice quest, where a deranged serial killer has murdered several women, and left their bodies for the guards to find the next day. The first victim the player is introduced to, is Susanna the Wicked, who is only in an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow bikini, and covered in scars and burns while laying at the feet of the guards.

Don't let the fact that Susanna's lady bits are covered with a yellow cloth fool you into thinking that the NPC's of the game don't view her as a naked and mutilated corpse in Windhelm's snow. Allowing the argument "But they're covered up!" as a means of justifying how it's different is just laziness on your end.

Sorry if that's harsh, but that's the truth of it. THE PLAYER sees a scarred up woman in a bikini in the snow, but in the actual STORY, the citizens of Windhelm are looking at a naked corpse, and talk about it like it's a naked corpse.

Descriptions of Violent Events are more detailed
"Ill Met By Moonlight" starts at the funeral of a nine year old little girl who was torn apart by Sinding. Sinding's description of what happened is dark and uncomfortable.

When I saw the little girl, I was just... I could feel it coming on. I could taste the... I needed to hunt. But this pitiful, limited body wasn't meant for hunting. Slow. No claws. Weak, mashing teeth for chewing cud. I held in my rage as long as I could. But it boiled inside of me. She looked so fragile. Helpless prey. And then... ... I feel terrible about what happened.

This alone makes it perfectly clear that this is not a game for children whose innocence you are trying to preserve. If this bothers you, don't let your children play the game. If my in-detail discussion on the pre-existing dark themes bothers you, then don't let your children read my posts. My kid little brother has been approved already, you don't need to worry about him. And yes, I am going to be saying this a lot to drive the point home.

Dark Topics and Rewarded Immorality

Dark Topics in General
You assist an old orc in committing suicide, you fight enemies that have looted the corpses of bodies they've killed, you find dungeons with torture chambers and skeletons inside them, and much, much more. I talk about the morality and deeper life themes within these side-quests and dungeon details with him.

Rewarded Immorality
The Quests for the Daedric Princes: Mephala, Boetheia, Clavicus Vile, Hircine, Boethea, Vaermina, Namira, Molag Bal, and Mehrunes Dagon all include rewards that are reliant on inflicting suffering on an innocent person.

You kill a dog to get an axe, Sacrifice a good friend to start Boethea's quest , torture someone with a rusty mace for Molag Bal, kill a Priest of Mara who only sought redemption for Vaermina, betray a werewolf and skin his hide for Hircine, kill a man who wanted to start a museum for Mehrunes Dagon, and cannibalize someone who thought you were a friend for Namira.

However, I think Mephala's questline especially touches on the extremely dark concept of being rewarded for immorality. You charge her ebony blade by killing people you've befriended, and she constantly praises you for each person you kill with lines like: "I can feel their heartbreak swelling in my blade."

You do HAVE the option to do the right thing, but you see no punishment if you decide to do otherwise. The immoral choice is a valid and rewarded option in this game.

Dark Brotherhood
The Dark Brotherhood quest line is when you join a cult of assassins. The first kill is certainly deserved, but then you kill people like:

a woman on her wedding day
a grieving twin sister
a mentally handicapped homeless person

More than that, YOU ARE REWARDED FOR IT. You are praised, and rise up in social and monetary rank. You eventually become essentially the head person, and face no further consequences for murdering people after completing the main quest line. Sometimes someone will send a hired thug after you, but you kill that thug too. This is a game that is designed to force you into dark decisions, and it removes the comfortable notion of "karma."

The Thieves Guild
Thieves Guild removes the comfort of "karma" even moreso. Your first assignment is to frame an innocent shopkeeper of a crime to ruin his life and business. Then you rise in social and monetary ranks. The Thieves Guild is especially dark, because you HAVE to interact with them IF you want to complete the main dragon's quest. Unless you're skilled enough to convince Brynjolf otherwise, you HAVE to ruin an innocent man's life.

I talk to my little brother about the choices he is faced, and encourage him to think through each decision carefully. I do not oppose him if he goes the darker route - I simply ask him why he chose that. The game is rewarding immorality already, I am merely wanting him to think about the quests he's participating in, rather than go "Ooh! A shiny staff!" One of my favorite things about Skyrim, is that it challenges your critical thinking skills. I am trying to help him cognitively capitalize on that.

If my in-detail discussion on the pre-existing dark themes bothers you, then don't let your children read my posts. My kid little brother has been approved already, you don't need to worry about him.

Deranged and Disturbing Individuals

Look, I'm tired. I've been working on this mod development for the past week. I'm just going to leave a bit of Ingun Black-Briar's Dialogue here, and a note that there is a quest where you can assist her in her extremely dark endeavors, and use console commands to even marry her.

It's exhilarating to observe the effects of my potions on the body. Watching the heart stop... the eyes go blind. We're made up of thousands of parts with thousands of different functions all working in tandem to keep us alive. Yet if only a single part of our imperfect machine fails, life fails. It makes one realize how fragile... how flawed we are. You ask why I'm so fascinated? The irony... the irony that the same world that gave us life provides us the means to die."

Ehh... let me give you another one for good measure.

You were young when you first tasted human flesh, weren't you? A brother or sister had died? An accident, of course. Then the hunger set in. Curiosity. What's the harm in just one bite? It's okay, now. You've found a friend who understands you. You can let go of your guilt."

^ This is Eola, a follower and devotee to Namira, the Lady of Decay. You find her when investigating a matter where several bodies in Markarth's Hall of the Dead are desecrated/cannibalized.

I talk to the dragonborn about their choices to help or hinder these people. I don't encourage them one way or another - I simply explore the deeper themes within the concept of the game. If my in-detail discussion on the pre-existing dark themes bothers you, then don't let your children read my posts. My kid little brother has been approved already, you don't need to worry about him.

Heavy Rape References

Vampires in Skyrim came to be, because the Daedric Prince of Domination and Rape - Molag Bal, raped a virgin Priestess of Arkay to death and then revived her as the undead. It is never shied away from, nor it is it just a fan theory given off of an implication. There is a book called "Opusculus Lamae Bal" that you can find and read in Skyrim. Here's an excerpt from it:

Bal set upon Nirn to best death.
Tamriel was still young, and filled with danger and wondrous magick when Bal walked in the aspect of a man and took a virgin, Lamae Beolfag, from the Nedic Peoples. Savage and loveless, Bal profaned her body, and her screams became the Shrieking Winds, which still haunt certain winding fjords of Skyrim. Shedding a lone droplet of blood on her brow, Bal left Nirn, having sown his wrath.
Violated and comatose, Lamae was found by nomads, and cared for. A fortnight hence, the nomad wyrd-woman enshrouded Lamae in pall for she had passed into death. In their way, the nomads built a bonfire to immolate the husk. That night, Lamae rose from her funeral pyre, and set upon the coven, still aflame. She ripped the throats of the women, ate the eyes of the children, and raped their men as cruelly as Bal had ravished her.

Now, unlike the other situations, where my character remains impartial, this triggers a conversation on consent. This mod tries to make this really dark topic a little easier to grasp. To understand the themes surrounding this game. This is no different than doing an interactive book review.
However, like I keep saying - If my in-detail discussion on the pre-existing dark themes bothers you, then don't let your children read my posts. My kid little brother has been approved already, you don't need to worry about him.

Sexually Explicit Comments and Commentary

Haelga's Bunkhouse is the center of a sexual scandal
A devotee to Dibella is sleeping with an unhappily married man, while the private investigator he hired tells him that his wife is sleeping with another man. Halega's bedroom has shackles, "The Lusty Argonian Maid," sultry love letters, and honey. Now, the honey is relevant because of one line where she says:

Oh, Bolli you silly man. You weren't saying that when you were licking that honey off my..." [it ends here]

Haelga's promiscuity is a major piece of a sidequest - the quest is designed to embarrass her for being promiscuous. I make a point to challenge the theme of an existing quest. It is challenging the notion that promiscuity is shameful.

And while I'm on it. One of the raunchiest things I encountered in both vanilla and modded Skyrim was an NPC comment, on * gasp * the basic vanilla game:

"Your typical Solitude wench is like the city itself. Stormy exterior, but ah the charms that lie within..."

I laughed my ass off, but I also wondered if parents who were letting their kids play the game were aware this line existed.

So... to summarize everything, repeat after me one more time:

Skyrim is NOT a children's game.
Skyrim is NOT a children's game.
Skyrim is NOT a children's game.

If any of these themes bother you, then don't let your children play the game. If my in-detail discussion on the pre-existing dark themes bothers you, then don't let your children read my posts. My kid little brother has been approved already, you don't need to worry about him.

THE END.

I am about to post the 3000 most common words in the English lexicon. Wish me luck...

a abandon ability able abortion about above abroad absence absolute absolutely absorb abuse academic accept access accident accompany accomplish according account accurate accuse achieve achievement acid acknowledge acquire across act action active activist activity actor actress actual actually ad adapt add addition additional address adequate adjust adjustment administration administrator admire admission admit adolescent adopt adult advance advanced advantage adventure advertising advice advise adviser advocate affair affect afford afraid African African-American after afternoon again against age agency agenda agent aggressive ago agree agreement agricultural ah ahead aid aide AIDS aim air aircraft airline airport album alcohol alive all alliance allow ally almost alone along already also alter alternative although always AM amazing American among amount analysis analyst analyze ancient and anger angle angry animal anniversary announce annual another answer anticipate anxiety any anybody anymore anyone anything anyway anywhere apart apartment apparent apparently appeal appear appearance apple application apply appoint appointment appreciate approach appropriate approval approve approximately Arab architect area argue argument arise arm armed army around arrange arrangement arrest arrival arrive art article artist artistic as Asian aside ask asleep aspect assault assert assess assessment asset assign assignment assist assistance assistant associate association assume assumption assure at athlete athletic atmosphere attach attack attempt attend attention attitude attorney attract attractive attribute audience author authority auto available average avoid award aware awareness away awful baby back background bad badly bag bake balance ball ban band bank bar barely barrel barrier base baseball basic basically basis basket basketball bathroom battery battle be beach bean bear beat beautiful beauty because become bed bedroom beer before begin beginning behavior behind being belief believe bell belong below belt bench bend beneath benefit beside besides best bet better between beyond Bible big bike bill billion bind biological bird birth birthday bit bite black blade blame blanket blind block blood blow blue board boat body bomb bombing bond bone book boom boot border born borrow boss both bother bottle bottom boundary bowl box boy boyfriend brain branch brand bread break breakfast breast breath breathe brick bridge brief briefly bright brilliant bring British broad broken brother brown brush buck budget build building bullet bunch burden burn bury bus business busy but butter button buy buyer by cabin cabinet cable cake calculate call camera camp campaign campus can Canadian cancer candidate cap capability capable capacity capital captain capture car carbon card care career careful carefully carrier carry case cash cast cat catch category Catholic cause ceiling celebrate celebration celebrity cell center central century CEO ceremony certain certainly chain chair chairman challenge chamber champion championship chance change changing channel chapter character characteristic characterize charge charity chart chase cheap check cheek cheese chef chemical chest chicken chief child childhood Chinese chip chocolate choice cholesterol choose Christian Christmas church cigarette circle circumstance cite citizen city civil civilian claim class classic classroom clean clear clearly client climate climb clinic clinical clock close closely closer clothes clothing cloud club clue cluster coach coal coalition coast coat code coffee cognitive cold collapse colleague collect collection collective college colonial color column combination combine come comedy comfort comfortable command commander comment commercial commission commit commitment committee common communicate communication community company compare comparison compete competition competitive competitor complain complaint complete completely complex complicated component compose composition comprehensive computer concentrate concentration concept concern concerned concert conclude conclusion concrete condition conduct conference confidence confident confirm conflict confront confusion Congress congressional connect connection consciousness consensus consequence conservative consider considerable consideration consist consistent constant constantly constitute constitutional construct construction consultant consume consumer consumption contact contain container contemporary content contest context continue continued contract contrast contribute contribution control controversial controversy convention conventional conversation convert conviction convince cook cookie cooking cool cooperation cop cope copy core corn corner corporate corporation correct correspondent cost cotton couch could council counselor count counter country county couple courage course court cousin cover coverage cow crack craft crash crazy cream create creation creative creature credit crew crime criminal crisis criteria critic critical criticism criticize crop cross crowd crucial cry cultural culture cup curious current currently curriculum custom customer cut cycle dad daily damage dance danger dangerous dare dark darkness data date daughter day dead deal dealer dear death debate debt decade decide decision deck declare decline decrease deep deeply deer defeat defend defendant defense defensive deficit define definitely definition degree delay deliver delivery demand democracy Democrat democratic demonstrate demonstration deny department depend dependent depending depict depression depth deputy derive describe description desert deserve design designer desire desk desperate despite destroy destruction detail detailed detect determine develop developing development device devote dialogue die diet differ difference different differently difficult difficulty dig digital dimension dining dinner direct direction directly director dirt dirty disability disagree disappear disaster discipline discourse discover discovery discrimination discuss discussion disease dish dismiss disorder display dispute distance distant distinct distinction distinguish distribute distribution district diverse diversity divide division divorce DNA do doctor document dog domestic dominant dominate door double doubt down downtown dozen draft drag drama dramatic dramatically draw drawing dream dress drink drive driver drop drug dry due during dust duty each eager ear early earn earnings earth ease easily east eastern easy eat economic economics economist economy edge edition editor educate education educational educator effect effective effectively efficiency efficient effort egg eight either elderly elect election electric electricity electronic element elementary eliminate elite else elsewhere e-mail embrace emerge emergency emission emotion emotional emphasis emphasize employ employee employer employment empty enable encounter encourage end enemy energy enforcement engage engine engineer engineering English enhance enjoy enormous enough ensure enter enterprise entertainment entire entirely entrance entry environment environmental episode equal equally equipment era error escape especially essay essential essentially establish establishment estate estimate etc ethics ethnic European evaluate evaluation even evening event eventually ever every everybody everyday everyone everything everywhere evidence evolution evolve exact exactly examination examine example exceed excellent except exception exchange exciting executive exercise exhibit exhibition exist existence existing expand expansion expect expectation expense expensive experience experiment expert explain explanation explode explore explosion expose exposure express expression extend extension extensive extent external extra extraordinary extreme extremely eye fabric face facility fact factor factory faculty fade fail failure fair fairly faith fall false familiar family famous fan fantasy far farm farmer fashion fast fat fate father fault favor favorite fear feature federal fee feed feel feeling fellow female fence few fewer fiber fiction field fifteen fifth fifty fight fighter fighting figure file fill film final finally finance financial find finding fine finger finish fire firm first fish fishing fit fitness five fix flag flame flat flavor flee flesh flight float floor flow flower fly focus folk follow following food foot football for force foreign forest forever forget form formal formation former formula forth fortune forward found foundation founder four fourth frame framework free freedom freeze French frequency frequent frequently fresh friend friendly friendship from front fruit frustration fuel full fully fun function fund fundamental funding funeral funny furniture furthermore future gain galaxy gallery game gang gap garage garden garlic gas gate gather gay gaze gear gender gene general generally generate generation genetic gentleman gently German gesture get ghost giant gift gifted girl girlfriend give given glad glance glass global glove go goal God gold golden golf good government governor grab grade gradually graduate grain grand grandfather grandmother grant grass grave gray great greatest green grocery ground group grow growing growth guarantee guard guess guest guide guideline guilty gun guy habit habitat hair half hall hand handful handle hang happen happy hard hardly hat hate have he head headline headquarters health healthy hear hearing heart heat heaven heavily heavy heel height helicopter hell hello help helpful her here heritage hero herself hey hi hide high highlight highly highway hill him himself hip hire his historian historic historical history hit hold hole holiday holy home homeless honest honey honor hope horizon horror horse hospital host hot hotel hour house household housing how however huge human humor hundred hungry hunter hunting hurt husband hypothesis I ice idea ideal identification identify identity ie if ignore ill illegal illness illustrate image imagination imagine immediate immediately immigrant immigration impact implement implication imply importance important impose impossible impress impression impressive improve improvement in incentive incident include including income incorporate increase increased increasing increasingly incredible indeed independence independent index Indian indicate indication individual industrial industry infant infection inflation influence inform information ingredient initial initially initiative injury inner innocent inquiry inside insight insist inspire install instance instead institution institutional instruction instructor instrument insurance intellectual intelligence intend intense intensity intention interaction interest interested interesting internal international Internet interpret interpretation intervention interview into introduce introduction invasion invest investigate investigation investigator investment investor invite involve involved involvement Iraqi Irish iron Islamic island Israeli issue it Italian item its itself jacket jail Japanese jet Jew Jewish job join joint joke journal journalist journey joy judge judgment juice jump junior jury just justice justify keep key kick kid kill killer killing kind king kiss kitchen knee knife knock know knowledge lab label labor laboratory lack lady lake land landscape language lap large largely last late later Latin latter laugh launch law lawn lawsuit lawyer lay layer lead leader leadership leading leaf league lean learn learning least leather leave left leg legacy legal legend legislation legitimate lemon length less lesson let letter level liberal library license lie life lifestyle lifetime lift light like likely limit limitation limited line link lip list listen literally literary literature little live living load loan local locate location lock long long-term look loose lose loss lost lot lots loud love lovely lover low lower luck lucky lunch lung machine mad magazine mail main mainly maintain maintenance major majority make maker makeup male mall man manage management manager manner manufacturer manufacturing many map margin mark market marketing marriage married marry mask mass massive master match material math matter may maybe mayor me meal mean meaning meanwhile measure measurement meat mechanism media medical medication medicine medium meet meeting member membership memory mental mention menu mere merely mess message metal meter method Mexican middle might military milk million mind mine minister minor minority minute miracle mirror miss missile mission mistake mix mixture mm-hmm mode model moderate modern modest mom moment money monitor month mood moon moral more moreover morning mortgage most mostly mother motion motivation motor mount mountain mouse mouth move movement movie Mr Mrs Ms much multiple murder muscle museum music musical musician Muslim must mutual my myself mystery myth naked name narrative narrow nation national native natural naturally nature near nearby nearly necessarily necessary neck need negative negotiate negotiation neighbor neighborhood neither nerve nervous net network never nevertheless new newly news newspaper next nice night nine no nobody nod noise nomination none nonetheless nor normal normally north northern nose not note nothing notice notion novel now nowhere n't nuclear number numerous nurse nut object objective obligation observation observe observer obtain obvious obviously occasion occasionally occupation occupy occur ocean odd odds of off offense offensive offer office officer official often oh oil ok okay old Olympic on once one ongoing onion online only onto open opening operate operating operation operator opinion opponent opportunity oppose opposite opposition option or orange order ordinary organic organization organize orientation origin original originally other others otherwise ought our ourselves out outcome outside oven over overall overcome overlook owe own owner pace pack package page pain painful paint painter painting pair pale Palestinian palm pan panel pant paper parent park parking part participant participate participation particular particularly partly partner partnership party pass passage passenger passion past patch path patient pattern pause pay payment PC peace peak peer penalty people pepper per perceive percentage perception perfect perfectly perform performance perhaps period permanent permission permit person personal personality personally personnel perspective persuade pet phase phenomenon philosophy phone photo photograph photographer phrase physical physically physician piano pick picture pie piece pile pilot pine pink pipe pitch place plan plane planet planning plant plastic plate platform play player please pleasure plenty plot plus PM pocket poem poet poetry point pole police policy political politically politician politics poll pollution pool poor pop popular population porch port portion portrait portray pose position positive possess possibility possible possibly post pot potato potential potentially pound pour poverty powder power powerful practical practice pray prayer precisely predict prefer preference pregnancy pregnant preparation prepare prescription presence present presentation preserve president presidential press pressure pretend pretty prevent previous previously price pride priest primarily primary prime principal principle print prior priority prison prisoner privacy private probably problem procedure proceed process produce producer product production profession professional professor profile profit program progress project prominent promise promote prompt proof proper properly property proportion proposal propose proposed prosecutor prospect protect protection protein protest proud prove provide provider province provision psychological psychologist psychology public publication publicly publish publisher pull punishment purchase pure purpose pursue push put qualify quality quarter quarterback question quick quickly quiet quietly quit quite quote race racial radical radio rail rain raise range rank rapid rapidly rare rarely rate rather rating ratio raw reach react reaction read reader reading ready real reality realize really reason reasonable recall receive recent recently recipe recognition recognize recommend recommendation record recording recover recovery recruit red reduce reduction refer reference reflect reflection reform refugee refuse regard regarding regardless regime region regional register regular regularly regulate regulation reinforce reject relate relation relationship relative relatively relax release relevant relief religion religious rely remain remaining remarkable remember remind remote remove repeat repeatedly replace reply report reporter represent representation representative Republican reputation request require requirement research researcher resemble reservation resident resist resistance resolution resolve resort resource respect respond respondent response responsibility responsible rest restaurant restore restriction result retain retire retirement return reveal revenue review revolution rhythm rice rich rid ride rifle right ring rise risk river road rock role roll romantic roof room root rope rose rough roughly round route routine row rub rule run running rural rush Russian sacred sad safe safety sake salad salary sale sales salt same sample sanction sand satellite satisfaction satisfy sauce save saving say scale scandal scared scenario scene schedule scheme scholar scholarship school science scientific scientist scope score scream screen script sea search season seat second secret secretary section sector secure security see seed seek seem segment seize select selection self sell Senate senator send senior sense sensitive sentence separate sequence series serious seriously serve service session set setting settle settlement seven several severe sex sexual shade shadow shake shall shape share sharp she sheet shelf shell shelter shift shine ship shirt shit shock shoe shoot shooting shop shopping shore short shortly shot should shoulder shout show shower shrug shut sick side sigh sight sign signal significance significant significantly silence silent silver similar similarly simple simply sin since sing singer single sink sir sister sit site situation six size ski skill skin sky slave sleep slice slide slight slightly slip slow slowly small smart smell smile smoke smooth snap snow so so-called soccer social society soft software soil solar soldier solid solution solve some somebody somehow someone something sometimes somewhat somewhere son song soon sophisticated sorry sort soul sound soup source south southern Soviet space Spanish speak speaker special specialist species specific specifically speech speed spend spending spin spirit spiritual split spokesman sport spot spread spring square squeeze stability stable staff stage stair stake stand standard standing star stare start state statement station statistics status stay steady steal steel step stick still stir stock stomach stone stop storage store storm story straight strange stranger strategic strategy stream street strength strengthen stress stretch strike string strip stroke strong strongly structure struggle student studio study stuff stupid style subject submit subsequent substance substantial succeed success successful successfully such sudden suddenly sue suffer sufficient sugar suggest suggestion suicide suit summer summit sun super supply support supporter suppose supposed Supreme sure surely surface surgery surprise surprised surprising surprisingly surround survey survival survive survivor suspect sustain swear sweep sweet swim swing switch symbol symptom system table tablespoon tactic tail take tale talent talk tall tank tap tape target task taste tax taxpayer tea teach teacher teaching team tear teaspoon technical technique technology teen teenager telephone telescope television tell temperature temporary ten tend tendency tennis tension tent term terms terrible territory terror terrorism terrorist test testify testimony testing text than thank thanks that the theater their them theme themselves then theory therapy there therefore these they thick thin thing think thinking third thirty this those though thought thousand threat threaten three throat through throughout throw thus ticket tie tight time tiny tip tire tired tissue title to tobacco today toe together tomato tomorrow tone tongue tonight too tool tooth top topic toss total totally touch tough tour tourist tournament toward towards tower town toy trace track trade tradition traditional traffic tragedy trail train training transfer transform transformation transition translate transportation travel treat treatment treaty tree tremendous trend trial tribe trick trip troop trouble truck true truly trust truth try tube tunnel turn TV twelve twenty twice twin two type typical typically ugly ultimate ultimately unable uncle under undergo understand understanding unfortunately uniform union unique unit United universal universe university unknown unless unlike unlikely until unusual up upon upper urban urge us use used useful user usual usually utility vacation valley valuable value variable variation variety various vary vast vegetable vehicle venture version versus very vessel veteran via victim victory video view viewer village violate violation violence violent virtually virtue virus visible vision visit visitor visual vital voice volume volunteer vote voter vs vulnerable wage wait wake walk wall wander want war warm warn warning wash waste watch water wave way we weak wealth wealthy weapon wear weather wedding week weekend weekly weigh weight welcome welfare well west western wet what whatever wheel when whenever where whereas whether which while whisper white who whole whom whose why wide widely widespread wife wild will willing win wind window wine wing winner winter wipe wire wisdom wise wish with withdraw within without witness woman wonder wonderful wood wooden word work worker working works workshop world worried worry worth would wound wrap write writer writing wrong yard yeah year yell yellow yes yesterday yet yield you young your yours yourself youth zone

Fantasy sports contests have been declared illegal in at least one state, but the issue appears far from resolved. Although the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld a lower court ruling that fantasy sports contests violate that state’s constitutional ban on gambling, ABA Section of Litigation leaders believe further litigation is inevitable in New York and elsewhere. The Senate approved a 15.5-percent tax on fantasy sports betting along with Martiny’s last-ditch amendment Tuesday, but Henry and Talbot, the bill’s author, vehemently opposed adding real ... The Tennessee state legislature approved a sports betting bill in the spring of 2019 that will only allow betting online and on mobile apps. The state expects to launch its gambling operations no ... Forty-seven of the 64 parishes approved it. Sen. Troy Carter. When fantasy sports betting was legalized, legislators said that it could not take effect unless it was taxed. The enactment of this ... The Sports Wagering and Paid Fantasy Sports Division is responsible for administering and regulating sports wagering and paid fantasy sports in Indiana. Paid fantasy sports was established by Senate Enrolled Act 339-2016 and is contained within Indiana Code § 4-33-24. Sports Wagering is established ...

Michigan Senate expected to approve sports betting, online gambling bills

PLEASE LIKE & SUBSCRIBE! ~~~~TIMESTAMPS~~~~ 1:03 Injury News 2:44 Waiver Wire 4:58 Jumper and Dumper 14:25 Buy, Sell or Hold? ASPIRE ENTERPRISE LLC A... What provides the bigger edge? Fantasy sports or betting on sports and why? Follow me on Twitter: @BrianJSeymour. If approved, the bill will head to Gov. Whitmer's desk. ... The Deep End: Inside the World of Daily Fantasy Sports - Duration: 18:42. ... Sports betting set to become legal - Duration: 3:17. Click ... Benny Ricciardi of Weehawken earns a living writing about and betting on daily fantasy sports sites like FanDuel and Draft Kings. And while his wife works du... In today's video we will learn whether online fantasy sports are legal or not? What, How & Why about OFS, online gambling and lottery? Copyright Disclaimer U...

Maryland Question 2, Sports Betting Measure (2020 ...

The poison of this condition.The lack of desire to get rid of it. The comfort zone of normalizing and encouraging it that sadly this sub seems to have become.

The Chicago Cubs Name DraftKings Their First Official and Exclusive Sports Betting And Daily Fantasy Partner Chicago Cubs and DraftKings Also Plan to Pursue Flagship Retail Sportsbook at Wrigley Field

[S] Marooned: Africa (Complete)