mrv86

Our main celebration is on Christmas Day (25th December). Santa leaves presents under the tree and we open them on Christmas morning. We also have a huge feast on Christmas Day. We will have a starter (garlic mushrooms or soup with bread rolls), the main course (roast turkey, ham, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, loads of boiled and roasted vegetables).
At this point we also pull crackers and tell those silly jokes inside (which I love btw ) and wear party hats.
 
Then because we are so full, no one can look at dessert so we have that maybe 90 mins later. This year we have so many to choose from (Black Forest gateau, Chocolate Fudge cake, sticky toffee pudding, Christmas pudding with custard, and my personal choice will be banoffee pie ).
 
We will also eat lots of chocolate and pies and various treats throughout the day.
 
Today is Christmas Eve and this is also a very nice occasion. I will go into the fields to look for holly and decorate the house with it. Some of the food for tomorrow will be prepared and I will spend the day watching Christmas movies with my nephews (The Snowman movie) is a tradition.
Then one of my absolute favourite things about Christmas is the Midnight Mass in the cathedral on Christmas Eve.
It’s a beautiful occasion, seeing families reunited (remember Irish families have a lot of family members living abroad so coming home for Christmas is an exciting time for all). And the Christmas carols being played and the church organ blasting out the music. 
I look forward to hearing O Holy Night every year. They always do it so magically at Midnight Mass and it sends shivers down my spine it’s so good. So very much looking forward to that  

It´s december 24th. The Generous day and the main day of Christmas in Slovakia.
 
So I wish you Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it. May you have amazing and peaceful christmas in the circle of your families and beloved ones
 

 
 
also a special bonus for @Olympian1010 I know you love reading about foreign habits and traditions, I found for you this guy who is trying to make christmas in slovak way in the
 

 
 

Egypt won Squash Teams world Championship in USA after defeating England in the final 2-0 

so what ? that was really a stupid and irrelevant comment,
 
what does that mean ? Iran do not want to win medal in women's sport ? and who's Iran btw ?
 
how many Muslim countries have the same number of medals won by men and women ? maybe just 1 or 2, probably even nobody. this is more a cultural thing. even before the "Islamic Revolution" Iran never had any kind of achievement in women's sports. all of female Olympians almost finished last in their competitions. nowadays it's different girls are more interested in sports, but still it will take years to make up for those years being far behind, and there are also some limitations in some sports because of the dress code.
 
and Iran is not a "person" to cares about anything. it's a country. most people in the country care but some do not care and even do not believe in equality. but things don't improve overnight. it takes time (Iran already has better women's team in some sports) and off course the current situation doesn't help. improving women's sport is not a priority right now in the country, there are million other priorities right now. that's a lengthy topic and I'm not going to write more for you.
 
and apparently human right is a relative thing, people talk about it only when it's in their benefit to do so,

well, they are different...really different...
 
actually, purists (like me) don't consider milk nor white chocolate as true chocolate, but just another product with some chocolate in it...

In theory white chocolate should not be consider as chocolate because it contains cocoa butter but not cocoa paste, which essentially means that it has more or less good physical properties for cooking purposes (like melting point) but has not the same organolectic
properties of chocolate which contains also roasted cocoa seeds (read serotonine and other kinds of small acids, if I remember well).
Going back to my work, @phelps would have loved the 85% dark chocolate I used for shell and dark ganache 

I refuse. White chocolate doesn't count #DarkPower #FuckWhite
 
Gubai

Finally, they were ready!

6 different:
-milk chocolate ganache with vanilla;
-milk chocolate ganache and a nut;
-white chocolate ganache with cinnamon;
-dark chocolate ganache with coffee;
-milk chocolate ganache with Strega liquor (typical of my region);
-triple chocolate without filling (dark - milk - white)

Dear Lord, 6 pages or so overnight. Just before going to read everything: it's someone sucking Trump's dick vs someone who doesn't? Because if so, I can save myself the time of reading that  

Wrong anthem chapter 26643186
 
 
Moscow, Russia.
 
During the Ice Hockey Euro Hockey Tour match in Moscow the Russians played the wrong anthem for . For some reason they decided to play them the anthem, thankfully at least not the Potassium exporters one but the correct Kazahstans anthem.
 
funny enough, they didn´t found the right one so the fas had to sing it acapella
 
 
 

americans

Story on Brazil losing their dressage team
 
 
It's like I suspected all along. What a bunch of amateurs! Brazil had a long tradition of hosting 3* events, and this year they for whatever reason downgraded them to 2* events. It's the purest form of ignorance.

I heard that. Give it, now.

I'm not from South America, but I can tell you the following are quite good:
 
 Bandeja Paisa
 Ceviche & Lomo Saltado
 Churrasco
 Chivito
 Asado, Milanesa & Cordero al Palo
 Chorrillana

First Day quotas go to Australia, with Shixin LI winning men's 3m springboard and Nikita Hains winning women's 10m platform.

Oceania Championships will be live streamed.
 
Day 1
 

 
Day 2
 

For anyone interested, here's what my prediction model suggests on medal chances for each event in athletics. I may have to change to a hybrid model for long distance (5000m, 10000m, walks and marathon) events as quite often the pace/strategy is different in each race. The low number of competitions for some athletes caused a couple of weird results so hopefully they continue to compete in 2020. Below are the athletes with a greater than 50% chance at winning the gold medal in an event.
 
Caster Semenya - Women's 800m - 99.21%
Katarina Johnson-Thompson - Women's Heptathlon - 81.91%
Daniel Stahl - Men's Discus Throw - 79.45%
Kenenisa Bekele - Men's Marathon - 74.30%
Yulimar Rojas - Women's Triple Jump - 69.93%
Shaunae Miller-Uibo - Women's 400m - 69.11%
United States - Men's 4x400m Relay - 64.21%
Pawel Fajdek - Men's Hammer Throw - 62.18%
United States - Women's 4x400m Relay - 57.65%
Will Claye - Men's Triple Jump - 55.80%
Malaika Mohambo - Women's Long Jump - 55.50%
Brigid Kosgei - Women's Marathon - 52.18%
Shaunae Miller-Uibo - Women's 200m - 51.51%
Karsten Warholm - Men's 400m Hurdles - 50.75%
 

Time to smash those bulbs!

Apparently one sick man just killed 6 peoples in a hospital in Ostrava, Czech Republic He entered the waiting room of the Surgical department and started shooting to the patients sitting around, then ran away...
 
 
EDIT: The Police just announced the man in the picture they are showing since this morning in the whole country was not the suspect but a witness lol

Final Standings
 
 
1. South Africa       12
-------------------------------------
2. Belgium                9
3. Romania               9
4. Bulgaria                 8
5. Lithuania                6
6. Hong Kong            1
 
 
 
The following Nation have qualified for the Women's Ice Hockey IIHF Division II Group B World Championship 2021
 
South Africa  
The following Nations have qualified for the Women's Ice Hockey IIHF Division III World Championship 2021
 
Belgium Bulgaria Hong Kong Lithuania Romania  

Summing up the chances of each surfer in Pipeline.
 
 
 
Michel Bourez and Joan Duru are going to decide the last french quota. Duru needs to win the competition. There is no other way for him.
If Bourez finishes on 9th or better, Duru is automatically out.
 

 
Up this moment, John John Florence has the last American quota in his hands. If he finishes the event in 3rd or better, he'll get this officialy.
 
Kelly Slater can grab this quota:
 
if he wins the competition, and Florence finishes 5th or worse
if he finishes on 2nd place, and Florence finishes 9th or worse
if he finishes on 3rd place, and Florence finishes 17th or worse
if he finishes 5th place, and Florence finishes on 33rd
  Seth Moniz also has a small chance to get it. He needs at least the third place and bad results from Kelly and Florence to have a chance to qualify.     the fight fot the title will be, likely, between the Brazilians, and the Olympic quotas as well. The pontuation difference is
very small, because of that only one heat can make a huge change in their positions. So, Basically:   Ítalo has to finish the event on the same position, or better, than Medina or Toledo to qualify. Medina needs to finish the competition on the same position, or better, than Toledo Toledo needs to finish the competition in a better position than Ítalo and/or Medina(his first contender to the Olympic quota)   There are other possibilities, but we need to wait the waves, to check it up.
  The most complex competition for Olympic quotas. Six surfers for two spots. Owen Wright has a good pontuation, with 5.000 points ahead of Julian Wilson, the second Australian surfer in the ranking. He's in a comfortable position for his quota. As for the other five surfers, the situation is similar to the Brazilians, one heat can change everything.

South Africa performed well here, but I still think Romania will move up.

that someone is caight for doping only show you cant afford the best doctors or that your doctorn turned on you or ypur doctors is bad.

I was bored so I tried to see if I can come up with a better system for predicting medals. Places like GraceNote essentially take the top three contenders and give them gold, silver and bronze. That tends to cause situations where a nation with a 50% chance to win say 12 events would be predicted to win 12 medals, but in reality they would only win six. Usually this is masked by the overall medal count, but it becomes apparent if you look at the details for individual sports.
 
Currently my model is quite early in development, it doesn't take into account the maximum athletes per nation in a specific event or the chances of an athlete to fail (DNS/DSQ/DNF etc). It also only currently works for events where you can obtain a score/time/measurement (placing/head to head events will have to wait).
 
Here's a sample of the men's 100m (top 5) that I was using as my test data.
 
Men's 100m
Gold
- 76.4%
- 17.8%
- 1.9%
- 1.5%
- 0.9%
 
Silver
- 60.6%
- 17.8%
- 5.8%
- 4.4%
- 4.2%
 
Bronze
- 46.0%
- 14.7%
- 9.9%
- 7.7%
- 6.3%
 
 
As mentioned above, the United States is currently a bit inflated due to more than three athletes contributing to its chances (removing them manually and redistributing it would give them 73.3%, 53.5% and 38.6% chances respectively).