NearPup

Can’t wait for “innovative” Olympics formats, such as the Marathon being decided by a 100m sprint among the first 8 athletes to finish the Marathon.

I think it's mostly surprising that there is only one Protestant on the court vs. six Catholics, given that the majority of American Christians are some flavour of Protestant and given that there has only been a single Catholic president in American history (Joe Biden would, if elected, only be the second Catholic president). As for Asians on the high court, Trump seriously considered Amul Thapar and Obama seriously considered Sri Srinivasan (who is currently the DC Circuit Chief Judge, meaning he is the most senior member of the judiciary branch other than the Supreme Court justices). Jacqueline Nguyen had also been floated as a potential Obama pick for the Supreme Court. To be honest if Biden is elected and gets to appoint two Justices I wouldn't be surprised at all if he nominates Srinivasan (Ketanji Brown Jackson would be all but a lock to replace Breyer).

There is no stereotype of Catholics being particularly conservative in the US - Catholics are all over the ideological spectrum and Catholics vote roughly in line with Americans at large. This is very unlike some other religious groups in the US, such as Evangelicals, Mormons or Anglicans (overwhelmingly Republicans) or Unitarians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and non-religious voters (overwhelmingly Democrats) that have very clear political leanings.

Who did Ahn piss off at ITF?

On what planet is Feinstein a "Democratic Party hero"? It has long been a source of frustration among the base that the senior senator from California (of all states) is a centrist.

If you are trying to convince left leaning Americans that the Clinton welfare reforms were a disaster, or that Clinton was generally too conservative, you are selling way past the close.

The FIS has renamed the “mute grab” to the “Weddle grab”, following efforts from Tony Hawk to rename the trick to better honor it’s creator, Chris Weddle.

Lol what is this nonsense? The way Trump acts is a huge outlier within the US business world and a huge outlier in the world of old money. He’s famously a giant oddity within the NYC elite.

No he can absolutely nominate someone and get them confirmed even after the election. The only real leverage Democrats have is that the number of justices can be changed by simple legislation.

And this will further radicalize everybody.

Ah yes, this is obviously the most likely explaination.

Bouchard played the best tennis she's played in years last week. IIRC she won more matches in Istanbul last week than she did in all of 2019...

What an absolutely odd final. Made for compelling viewing, but in terms of quality of play it was... bad. First men to win their maiden grand slam singles title since Marin Cilic way back in 2014. Kind of wild.

There are (were, most are in Israel now) quite a few Jewish Ethiopians. About 2% of Israel’s population has recent Ethiopian ancestry.

Israel doesn’t have to shop around, they can just find people who are eligible for citizenship through the law of return.

That one was bad, IIRC the umpire required surgery.

17 seems way too old as a minimum age.

Very nice to see the Turkish GP temporarily return, it will be interesting to see if it’s still a good circuit given the current cars.

It’s the name of the party. It is just a generic centre-right party. The federal Canadian Conservative party also used to be called the Progressive Conservative party before it fused with the further-right Canadian Alliance party.

The Canadian province of New Brunswick (coincidentally my old stomping grounds) is holding snap elections on September 14th, the first election held in Canada during COVID-19. There is speculation that federal parties are looking at this election to see whether or not the ruling Progressive Conservatives are punished for calling an election before deciding whether or not to force a federal snap election this Fall.

Baseball can either implement a mercy rule or they can stop complaining about people running up the score for ever, please.

This is somehow both shocking and completely unsurprising. It feels like the conflict between the US allied Arab countries and Israel have been phony for a very long time. But the symbolism of this move is really striking.

There are a lot of people who get appointed to rando state boards or who are the district attorney for a large city. Very few of them make it to the top of California politics (governor of California or senator from California are among the hardest jobs to get in US politics - heck, being elected attorney general of California is in and of itself a feat) and all that happened well after her fling / sugar baby (call it what you want) relationship with Willie Brown, and well beyond where his power laid.

How to win the Olympics in a few easy steps: 1. Be rich and become a citizen of, say, Dominica. 2. Create the Dominican Curling association. 3. Recruit a bunch of elite Canadian players and pay for their citizenship. 4. Nominate yourself as the alternate on the Dominican Olympic curling team. 5. Don’t play (you don’t need to play a single end to be eligible for a medal). 6. Keep at it until Dominica finally wins gold. 7. Congrats?

There is actually also a skier / cyclist too (Georgia Simmerling has competed in alpine skiing, ski cross and track cycling, winning a bronze medal in the team pursuit)