#not really a baseball person but i can acknowledge the implications of leading in games played together of all time

[kdsburneraccount]

Tree said gay rights

[buffyverse-rewind]

Buffy – S1 Ep 3 – The Witch

I don’t think I’ve ever truly understand the concept of cheerleading. I mean, understand the inherent concept of attractive women in dressed in short skirts, jumping around, but for starters, applying this premise to high school age students is creepy for anyone not in high school. Watching this episode, it helps knowing that most of these so-called high school students who are trying out for the Sunnydale High cheer team are probably pushing 30, but it’s still creepy if you think about it.

Sure, there are college cheerleading teams and of course the professional cheerleaders for football, I think basketball. Oddly enough, not baseball, which can be so boring, it could probably stand to be livened up a little; the occasional mascot jumping around notwithstanding. But on the whole, I just don’t get the core concept of “cheer leading” – pumping up spectators; and I guess I chalk that up to my complete indifference to any type of spectator sport. I can’t say I ever had much school spirit; like, I didn’t actively want them to lose (except when they went to state during a play I was directing and all of the students wanted to ditch rehearsal so they could go watch the game…). I’m otherwise happy to hear any “home team” won, but otherwise I don’t give a shit. Some sports I don’t mind so much, but more so playing them; like the occasional pick-up game or basketball or baseball; and generally when it’s more casual and the teams are lopsided and no one is paying close attention to the score. The more competitive it is, the less I enjoy it; and sitting watching someone else play is boring. Which I guess someone, somewhere must have realized, thus we have cheerleaders to distract people from how boring the game is to watch; and how uncomfortable bleachers are to sit on. Despite all of that, I do get that there are people for him this is important and they take it very seriously. I’m fairly certain the cheer team at my school didn’t take it as seriously as the students at Sunnydale High, but I know it’s not necessarily that far off from other schools, then or now. And don’t get me wrong, I also understand that cheerleaders can put in a lot of work and move in ways that if I ever managed to achieve would strictly because I fell and hurt myself and would probably need medical assistance afterwards. I just don’t get cheerleading as an institution and think the level of competitiveness can go over the top; which I could say about most athletics. Bahahah – how have I never noticed Buffy peaking in the box with the fertility statue and saying, “Jeepers,” ostensibly in response to it being anatomically correct? Also, and this wondered before, why does Joyce always have crates of stuff from the gallery at her house? Does the gallery not have any storage space for this stuff? And she’s opening stuff in her dinning room; doesn’t she then have to seal it back up to haul to the gallery? Are we sure Joyce wasn’t secretly a smuggler? It would explain how she managed to get the house fixed up any time it got trashed by a monster of the week. This is probably my ignorance, on account of my indifference to sports or cheerleading, but would being an alternate really be on par with not making the cut at all? If they’re back-ups, doesn’t that mean they still need to attend practice and learn the routines, so they can fill in at a moment’s notice? I mean, I’m more of a theatre nerd, so my main point of reference would be an understudy; and yeah, it can suck being an understudy by virtue of the fact that you can put in a good portion of work on a part you may never get to play. Which is why, as a director, I try to avoid casting understudies, because it seems like a raw deal. I even had to fill in for a person at rehearsals for two weeks, while the person actually in that role was on vacation; I sincerely doubt I’d ever agree to do that again, but not because it felt like the equivalent of not making the cut. Just the opposite. It was a tremendous pain in the ass, because not only did I have to worry about doing my part during rehearsals, but someone’s else part; and all of my scenes were with the guy I was filling in for, which meant I spent a great deal of those rehearsals talking to myself and not doing as good of job learning my own part as I normally would have. And there was a virtually zero chance that I might even take on that other role; and the role I had was pretty shitty, so I came away from that production kind of wishing I hadn’t been cast at all. I felt more productive backstage helping work a pulley to raise and lower a curtain for certain scenes. It’s been so long since the first time I watched this show; and most of the first couple of seasons I didn’t catch until I had already seen later episode, so I can’t recall if there was ever any doubt that it was “Amy” or who the witch was supposed to be the first time watching this. I’m fairly certain I had missed everything to do with Amy, so her story might be the only one I actually saw in chronological order. The ultimate switch of Amy and her mom is clever. I could see there being some brief suspicion on Cordelia, right up until the curse was cast on her; and that conjures the image, so to speak, of some alternate version of the show where it was Cordelia and she took up witchcraft – which might have been an interesting direction for her. Not that I have any issue (mostly) with how the character was actually developed; Cordelia and Angel’s romantic story aside. What was their ship even called? Congel? Andelia? I’m not saying Joyce is definitely a smuggler, and even if she were, she wouldn’t necessarily be a drug smuggler, but if she was, she would definitely be worried that Buffy got into one of her shipments when she came downstairs with so much energy and bounce. One of the things that bugs about this scene is Buffy casually mentioning then glossing over that she’s a vampire slayer, which Joyce partly acknowledges; and it’s not because it happens, but because it reminds me Normal Again and how incongruent the retcon was, where Buffy says she actually told her parents when she first found out she was the Slayer and they had her committed for a couple of weeks. This statement should have done more than just puzzle Joyce and have her ask if Buffy was feeling well; her response should be, “Oh no, it’s happening again.” You know, this is the first episode that demonstrates Giles’ understanding and practice of magic; he performs the reversal spell so deftly, as he does with other spells later. Yet, Eyghon aside, they kind of downplay this side of his character to where you kind of take it for granted that he’s kind of a sorcerer. Even though it’s not the first time paying attention to Joyce and Buffy’s discussion at the end of the episode, where Joyce says she can’t understand what it’s like for Buffy to be 16, because she’s not 16; and Buffy asks if she’d want to be 16 again – I know I’ve watched/listened to this scenes many times before, but this is the first time it’s made me think about the implications two years later, when the enchanted band candy does make Joyce a teenager again. And it’s one of those things where you can’t help but wonder, with Joss being Joss, if might have had some iteration of that story in mind at that time; or if it’s just a happy coincidence. Even if it was just a coincidence, it’s a happy one, since it did in fact remind Joyce what it was like being a teenager; and help her understand Buffy better. You know, I like Amy; and I even kind of like her as a periodic antagonist later in the series, but I kind of like her more in this episode as a friend and ally to the Scoobies. I also feel like her later practicing magic and having a vindictive streak is incongruent with the real Amy we see at the end of this episode. Granted, it’s not impossible for that Amy to make some bad decisions and turn out that way, but it arguably seems more like at some point her mom managed to swap bodies again and it was really Catherine, by season 6 for sure and quite possibly before that; perhaps even as far back as her return appearance in season 2 when Xander catches her using magic. Catherine had no problems faking being Amy and should she manage to switch places again, and if she were smart, she’d reign herself in, at least around Buffy and the others so as not to make them suspect or interfere. On the flip side of that, I kind of feel like throughout this episode they were trying to suggest that Amy was sometimes actually Amy; where she appears to be legitimately surprised and even horrified when some of the curses happen. But this is somewhat refuted by the way that Catherine, as Amy, knew when Buffy spilled the potion on her, outing her as a witch. But there’s also a sense of familiarity between the real Amy and Buffy at the end of the episode that almost seems like it’s meant to be an extension of their earlier interaction at the start of the episode; even though by all accounts it was Catherine. It’s plausible that the switch occurred somewhere in between when the episode started and when Catherine/Amy comes home and makes the real Amy do her homework, but we’re not really given any indication of this; and I’m probably reading too much into it. I would add that, I think they waited too long to de-rat Amy later on in the series. While it served the immediate purpose at the time of providing Willow with a magical playmate who could enable Willow’s abuse of magic, I feel like the Amy they brought back is a few deviations different from the Amy that turned herself into a rat in season 3. While powerful in season 3, she appears to be much more advanced for someone who hadn’t practiced magic in three years; and conveniently already has connections with someone like Rack. No doubt high school students with connections to shady drug dealers, but everything about Amy after she comes back, from the level of magic she uses by that point, Rack and the mentality, short of it really being Catherine in Amy’s body again, doesn’t seem like it meshes with the 17 or 18 year old we saw before that.

[theabundanceofintention]

It seems like no matter how much I try and work on my own perceptions of mental illness, I’m still terrified of the implications of being honest with my partner about my depression. I am so so scared that one day my need for affirmation will be too clingy or too much and then they’ll leave. I’ve been feeling poorly today because I’ve been trying to work on my thesis, take care of my mom, watch my nephews, and like.. exist, and it’s too much for my brain, so sometimes my brain inserts really shitty things about how my partner doesn’t give a shit about me, and it cites bullshit things as evidence but it makes me feel awful.

 So I told him and I told him I loved him and that I wanted him to be home, (but not in the like, I want his time away to go quicker, because I don’t, I don’t want his trip to be over, I know he’s having a marvelous time and he deserves that), and that I made some stuff for him (mostly i got a zine printed and binded and I’ve been hand making other zines)  and he didn’t respond and my brain went on a JOURNEY and I felt selfish, selfish for telling someone I love who is having the time of his life that I didn’t feel good. 

Then it spiraled into the other ways I’ve been feeling insecure in this relationship as a result of my depression. 

See most of my trauma has existed within interpersonal relationships, so my depression uses my romantic relationships to fuck me up. 

For example, my brain uses intrusive thoughts a lot to make my success and management stutter. 

Some thoughts from this past week have been:

- he’s going to find someone better

-he’s already forgotten about you

-there’s someone else

- He’s going to come back and not love you anymore

ALL of them are bullshit, but they all require extra mental energy to combat which uses my energy faster than usual and leads me to burn out and feel like utter shit and worry about things like loving him too much. 

So I’ve been concerned about loving him too much and suffocating him. I’ve been so worried that one day the poetry is going to be too much or that the touches are going to be too much or just the words, in general, are going to drive him away. And I’m examining from every angle, and I can’t find anything that’s unhealthy, but I feel like I’m doing something wrong all the time and that hurts. And it’s fucking exhausting. 

He’s so different from me. He’s not the I wrote you ten odes and a zine type, which is GOOD, I don’t need someone like me I don’t love him because he’s like me, I love him because he’s him. But what it does is it allows my brain to determine that he finds all of the emotional shit I do annoying or that he just tolerates it and although he’s told me he likes it, my brain is ADAMANT that there’s a breaking point/boundary and that I’m regularly toeing the line. 

And every time I think of scaring him off I feel the weight of losing him and it is fucking horrifying, it’s absolutely petrifying. I would be utterly devastated. One of my tools for coping with my depression is acknowledging that I’ve been through some really horrifying stuff and that really nothing can really wreck me. Nothing. But god, that belief has faltered a little. I know it’s not true, like I know no matter how heart wrenchingly miserable I will feel, I know I will get better, but the fact that he feels so important that I put a question mark next to the power of my resilience says a lot, a lot more than I want to admit. 

And the fact of the matter is that I don’t feel that bad, like there have been times in previous relationships where a person has been gone and I felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest and hung up in the backyard. It doesn’t feel awful that he’s gone. I trust him and I trust our relationship.

I just think that he doesn’t communicate the love that I’m used to receiving well over the internet and I’m missing that feeling of being loved. And I’m trying to fish it out, but he’s not taking the bait and I’m too ashamed to go “can you say you love me please because my depressed brain is playing baseball with my feelings for you” I’ve been walking around with this ring of words all week and I changed my wallpaper on my phone and it makes me all feel awful (see above on loving him so much he runs away because im terrifying) 

I know my depression has helped make me the loving, compassionate person that I am. I know that it’s allowed me to learn what good healthy love is and reflect that in my relationships. But I am resentful, of the happy moments and feelings it deprives me and of the dark shadows it casts over beautiful things.

My relationship with him is a beautiful thing. It has brought out this side of me that is determined to be good and right and wonderful. It has brought me such comfort and peace. He is such a good man. He tries so hard to make me happy and he listens and he learns and he teaches me and forces me to grow. I hate feeling bad about this amazing light in my life. I’m not a fan of my depression and how it distorts my outlook. I deserve to accept this love that i have. I deserve to believe he loves me just as much or even if not as much, that he loves me enough. 

It makes me sad to feel bad about him. I’m so worried that it’ll seem like my sadness is about some shortcoming of his. When it’s not. I just want love and he gives me love, but right now that love isn’t prioritized and it shouldn’t be and my depression is utilizing the moment to play games. 

I hope I find a way to tackle this long before he gets back or it’s going to be a long couple of weeks. 

I know it's not my fault. Like I know that people who have experienced trauma have a constant or a more constant presence of cortisol and this means that my brain is more likely to react to threats (real and imagined) with a stress response. But still, I'm working on responding to these intrusive thoughts appropriately.

[worldupdatereviews2017-blog]

Your MN sports team misplaced once more? Blame taxes, professor says

New Post has been published on https://worldupdatereviews.com/your-mn-sports-team-misplaced-once-more-blame-taxes-professor-says/

Your MN sports team misplaced once more? Blame taxes, professor says

A University of Illinois at Chicago economics professor says Minnesota’s sports activities woes may be traced to excessive taxes.

The Washington Post today highlights the paintings of Dr. Erik Hembre, whose draft paper analyzes groups in the Country wide Basketball Association, Countrywide Football League, Countrywide Hockey League, and Important League Baseball over the past 40 years. When the body of workers is “cellular”, he writes, taxes are a large deal.

“Professional athletes are paid very well and therefore they have big incentives to recall the tax implications of the groups they pick to play for,” Hembre says.

The primary evaluation unearths that nearby earnings tax prices extensively impact group overall performance. For the reason that mid-1990s, a 10 percent factor growth in earnings tax quotes are related to between a 1.nine-three.zero percentage point decrease in winning percent.

Prior to the mid-Nineties, the effect changed into no longer statistically sizable. Estimating the earnings tax impact separately by the league, the effect is best within the NBA and smallest in the MLB. Estimating the effect one by one by league and yr, the value of the earnings tax effect has grown regularly over the past two decades inside the NBA while remaining incredibly regular in the NFL and NHL. The income tax impact is stronger While simplest state earnings taxes are thinking about, implying players can be capable of extra without problems prevent local profits taxes.

A placebo test the use of college sports, wherein gamers must now not reply to profits tax charges, as opposed to Expert sports unearths no evidence of an income tax on university group overall performance.

The income tax impact length is non-trivial. in the NBA, if a team moved from Minnesota (an excessive tax country) to Florida (a low tax kingdom) they may expect to win further 4.five games according to 12 months (out of 82). the use of the Wins Above Replacement Participant statistic evolved with the aid of Kevin Pelton, this is of a comparable value as adding a 2015 model of Marc Gasol or Draymond Inexperienced, each are all-famous person caliber games, in the region of a mediocre bench Player.3

Conversely, I find most effective small results of income taxes in the MLB, where a comparable area alternate could result in winning 1.6 fewer games per 12 months (out if 162). I provide evidence that these differential effects by using league are a direct reaction to a variant in common Participant salaries, payroll variant, and unfastened-corporation rules.

Further, I file that groups from higher income tax areas atone for their disadvantage via no longer competing as a great deal totally free-agents but rather focusing on early-profession gamers on confined contracts. As a capability ed81d2c1d705861968d8963ac974ba36 of this earnings tax effect, the NBA has the maximum disparity in inside- and across-season crew quality among Major sports leagues.

“You get a number of complaining about Professional sports in Minnesota, because this problem is specifically acute there,” Hembre tells the Put up. “People complain about, ‘Oh, we are able to get excellent free marketers. It genuinely hurts us.’”

He additionally compared university teams and observed there has been no evaluation of a nation’s tax coverage and the achievement of the team. He’s taking that as-as a minimum suggesting there’s a correlation because college athletes aren’t paid.

The impact of taxes on his theory is 5 times more for basketball teams than for baseball teams. He says baseball groups lose almost two video games 12 months more in excessive tax states. That’s especially thrilling locating for the reason that baseball with the aid of its very design is, unlike the 3 different Principal leagues, an unlevel gambling field wherein large markets can outspend children, and do with various results.

He acknowledges greater research is vital but also reaches a conclusion that many baseball groups have already followed: Build a team of gifted younger players who can’t pass everywhere and attempt to win at some stage in a totally small window earlier than they end up unfastened marketers and can head south.

“For the most part, country officers have to take [the data] as evidence that profits-tax fees don’t harm their exertions markets in widespread,” Hembre stated. “What you notice is that earnings taxes honestly hurt While a commercial enterprise isn’t capable of at once compensate their employees for that extra profits tax.”

Peak overall performance in sports activities in the sports area, Top performance in sports has usually been a much fashionable country with the aid of gamers and coaches of all levels. Whether or not the athletes are college boys soccer gamers or Olympians striving for his or her Gold medals, Peak overall performance in sports activities has always attracted athletes and coaches alike. In our modern-day age of sports, in which sports technological know-how is at a stratospheric level and growing, what are the factors that once applied efficiently can lead sports activities contributors to Peak performance in sports? Are there secrets to carrying excellence? Are those factors easily manipulated for the benefits of the athletes? This newsletter discusses the elements which can lead athletes and coaches to Height performance in sports activities.

There were many articles and books detailing concepts, applications, achievement factors and the like which can result in Top overall performance in sports. Many authors have written at duration approximately them and in many methods, the ideas and elements are well-known. The ideas of modern resistance, range, aim precise education, healing, and so on are all undisputed underlying reasons that permit athletes to attain Height performance in sports. This article goes a step In addition by exploring these ordinary factors in a specific light. within the technique, I’m hoping to give athletes and coaches alike a way to practically follow these standards and which can be the elements with better weight in phrases of reaching success and Height overall performance in sports.

The difficult paintings for any sports season begin with the preseason training which may be very in depth. No body likes this season because the paintings and schooling required are often very dull and painful. but this needs to be carried out for the athletes to be optimally prepared for the rigors of the competitive segment. The patience, power, pace and ability volumes should be accomplished. not just the volume of labor, but how plenty great is positioned into the guidance section is critical as well. Whilst gamers reduce corners and put in education at face cost without their heart and soul, it’s going to show up later in the competition as fatigue, injuries or loss of sharpness of their performance. Peak overall performance in sports can not be possible underneath such circumstances. The nice of preseason instruction is even more vital in children sports activities.

Very regularly in schools, the gambling seasons for many sports activities start almost without delay While the school year begins. With our youngsters away for long vacations, our athletes very regularly go back to highschool to stand competitions with very little schooling time. crew play, fitness constructing and intellectual coaching are supposed to be executed in 2-3 weeks, which in a sports activities global is sort of impossible and impractical. This sort of practice is likewise detrimental to the improvement of our children. beneath those situations, coaches, and teachers (and mother and father if possible) have a very important duty to ensure that our athletes are nicely organized for competition. schooling programs for sports activities should be drawn up and implemented at year’s quit previously. Our athletes need to remember the fact that their season correctly started While their examinations are over. With an education program started out, coaches and instructors can then train athletes approximately a holiday schooling program as nicely. Each athlete should have one whereby, they are able to do something to enhance their playing abilities throughout their wreck far from school. it could include such things as preserve a sure general of health via persistence sports like biking, going for walks or swimming, gambling capture and pitching inside the backyard with their siblings, or even individual practices to improve positive abilities. The principle component here is to keep and enhance what has been attained in the preceding season, in order that athletes do now not return lower back to high school and start from scratch. Really planning and education this way will ensure satisfactory instruction for the sports teams to attain Height overall performance in sports later.