Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

We still have time to mess this up!

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans in disarray!

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

This blog will pay for itself.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Tokyo 2020 Open Thread: Snippets from the Asterisk Games

Tokyo 2020 Open Thread: Snippets from the Asterisk Games

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Tokyo 2020 Open Thread: Snippets from the Asterisk Games

(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)
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Disclaimer: I am not much of a sports fan, but I read a lot of news media. I figure anybody who wants coverage or results from the endless stream of events will find them elsewhere (h/t NotMax for the link), so mine will be a random series of links for those human interest and WTF stories that might otherwise slip under your radar.


SRSLY —

Reuters correspondent Mari Saito’s twitter feed is well worth following:

The Tokyo Olympics open Friday and predicting the overall medal count will be more difficult than usual because of the pandemic and the absence of many qualifying events over the last year.

In one forecast done by Gracenote, which supplies statistical analysis to sports leagues around the world, the United States is picked to win the most overall medals. The Americans are also picked to win the most gold medals. After that, the picking gets more difficult.

China is probably the next choice but many athletes from the country have appeared in few international events since the pandemic. This makes predictions difficult since Gracenote’s calculations are based on the most recent performances in top level events like world championships and so forth.

A team from Russia, host nation Japan and Britain are expected to be among the top five…

Gracenote has projected the United States to win 96 overall medals. This is down from the 121 the Untied States won five years ago in Rio de Janeiro. Gracenote has the United States winning 40 gold medals, 27 silver and 29 bronze…

Just yesterday!

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    It was a brown bear? the report I saw said it was an Asian black bear.

    In 2020, bear sightings reached their highest point in five years, with more than 13,600 reported sightings across the country from April to September.
    At the time, experts said the increase could be linked to the coronavirus pandemic, which saw residents confined to their homes in an effort to beat back the illness — leading to the animals venturing out into spaces to search for food that would usually be populated with humans.
    “Bears might have expanded their areas of activities after not seeing humans around during spring and early summer season,” Shinsuke Koike, an associate professor of ecology, told Bloomberg Green.
    In June, authorities confirmed that hunters shot and killed a brown bear in the city of Sapporo after it went on a rampage through residential streets and stormed a military base, wounding four people.

    I did not know there were brown bears in Japan

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    Tokyo Olympics.

    Where we find out what happens when five rings are simultaneously thrown into Mount Doom.

  3. 3.

    HumboldtBlue

    Radioactive plague-ridden feral bears roaming the countryside? You don’t say. We’re gonna soon learn Godzilla was ursine in lineage and not an awkward looking dinosaur thing.

    Normally I’d be all over the Olympics, particularly summer, but I haven’t watched a second. The games should not have gone on.

  4. 4.

    Mathguy

    The predictions for the medals is amusing. Two sports I actually know something about, track and field and cycling, have some very lazy picks for medals.

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @HumboldtBlue You don’t say. We’re gonna soon learn Godzilla was ursine in lineage and not an awkward looking dinosaur thing.

    I really want to watch that movie

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: I may finally have found my path to Hollywood!

    Bearzilla, Bearnado, BearZombies, The Bearbadook, Child’s Play 2021: The Bearening.

    A whole Bear Terror Network. Underwritten by Stephen Colbert.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    I am not a super sports fan, but hell, I went to the 84 games in Los Angeles.

    I can’t get interested in the Tokyo games. Really wish they had delayed them.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    We demand the right to endanger children not our own seems to be trending.

    Two parent advocacy organizations announced Thursday afternoon that they are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s top health officials over the statewide mandate that children wear masks to school regardless of their vaccination status.

    The lawsuit, filed by Let Them Breathe and Reopen California Schools in San Diego County Superior Court, names Newsom, Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, Public Health Director Tomás Aragón of the Department of Public Health, and Dr. Naomi Bardach of Safe Schools for All as defendants.

    “It’s clear that (the health the department) has chosen to ignore the overwhelming evidence that show children are at a very low risk from being infected with COVID-19, transmitting it to others, or becoming seriously ill from COVID-19,” Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson of Roseville said in a statement. “A return to a normal school year is crucial to the mental and physical health recovery for students across California who have endured months of isolation and a majority of who spent last school year entirely in distance learning.”
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article252967063.html#storylink=cpy

  16. 16.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  The brown bears would be in Hokkaido (as is Sapporo).  The second largest island is  north of the main island and mostly rural with rugged terrain.  Did I mention that it is also cold in the winter?

  22. 22.

    Jay

    The plan today, was to go to the Chehalis, watch the water run, fill our heads with river song.

    Didn’t happen. Fire alarm tests in our building, followed by an injury to one of the testers, so a new team had to be brought in, so 6 hours flushed, with constant annoying alarm sounds.

    Instead, we ran up Pipeline Road to the Coquitlam River.

    It’s become a bit of a dumping ground, Covid party zone, but it was still nice to watch the birbs, dragonflies, and hear the river song.

    After lunch, and a rest time, we decided to walk up the road a ways and check out the access points. There was an SUV parked at one of the points, guy inside, windows down, pointed towards the river, enjoying some of BC’s finest. We got within 20 feet, and she said, “that’s a big dog”. As it’s butt passed behind the SUV, I said, “no, that’s a Bear”. Just after I said it, the bear fully reared up to see where the voices were coming from, right by the drivers side front windshield. Taller than the SUV.

    So we carefully backed up all the way to the truck.

    Drove up to the gate, dude was still toking with all the windows down. I don’t think he ever saw the bear.

    Nice day though.

  24. 24.

    CaseyL

    Lots of bears, and bear stories, tonight.

    My neighbors, spending the weekend at their place in Ocean Shores, had a black bear come wandering by their back yard, along the canal.  Ray took photos, and said at one point the bear stood up right outside the sliding glass door.  The bear then continued his/her stroll along back yards the rest of the way up the block.

    There’s still a fair bit of wilderness in that area, and I’d heard there were bears about, but this is the first time someone I know saw one.

  27. 27.

    JWR

    Probably already mentioned, (posted yesterday), but what the heck, it’s kinda slow tonight, and this fits:

    Man rescued after weeklong struggle with bear at Alaska camp, writing ‘SOS’ on shack

    An injured man was rescued Friday after reportedly fending off a bear for a week at a remote mining camp in Alaska, officials said.

    The man, who was not identified, was spotted waving his hands in distress as a helicopter crew from the Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak passed overhead, according to a statement from the Coast Guard on Tuesday.

    Yeah, he bearly made it out alive.

  29. 29.

    JWR

    Today’s Background Briefing with Ian Masters was quite good:

    McCarthy and the “Political Terrorist” Jim Jordan’s Trolling of the January 6 Select Committee – with James Thurber
    Already Fox’s Tucker Carlson Has Slandered Tuesday’s First Witness – with Eric Schickler,
    Michael Bender on Frankly We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost​

  30. 30.

    sab

    @Major Major Major Major: Your grey kitty is more gorgeous than my grey kitty, who I used to think was the prettiest kitty I had ever seen.

    ETA We have six cats. Others are nicer cats, but Shadow is the best looking.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    Whatever happened to the Overton Window? I used to hear about it all the time. Was there a recall?

  37. 37.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    the thing is overton’s window failed. it was designed to manufacture public consent to privatize Social Security in 2005. Yet it got into the orange blood stream and for awhile you couldn’t hear the end of it.

  39. 39.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @trollhattan: ​#WhalesMoarTenderThanBear

    Ever had whale?

    In August 2000 above the Arctic Circle in Tromsø, Norway, I’d wandered down to where an Irish festival[1] was in progress, and as I stood just inside the entrance to the tent where food was being cooked, a fellow pushed a plate toward me and said, Try this.

    I looked at what looked like thumbsize pieces of well-done sauteed round steak. What is it?
    Whale, he replied.

    I figured, Wayull[2], s/he’s already dead and cooked, so what the hval[3]…

    It was just like well-done sauteed round steak – if said meat had been soaking in a vat of cod liver oil for a week.

    I picked up a pamphlet with a couple dozen recipes for cetacean cookery (just as a bizarre souvenir), bought a beer, moved toward the band and started singing along[4] while thinking of bumperstickers for Norwegian autos:

    HVAL – IT’S HVAT’S FOR DINNER

    FRY WILLY

    Etc.

    [1] Anyone know the Norwegian for “go figger”? I’ll take it in either bokmal or nynorsk…[2] Pronounced, per my WV cousins, i.e., “whale”.[3] In at least one version of Norwegian, “whale.”[4] The songs were the same classic Oyrish choons I’d learned in years hanging out in the Hibernian pubs of Baltimore. At the break I discovered the band members were all Norwegian – when I expressed surprise they said they just liked the music. [Insert Norwegian for “Go figger” here.]​​​

    (ETA: Have I beeched recently about what a PITA it is to have to edit a post in Text mode, which jams all the paragraphs into one? Grrrr….)

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