So, Liga MX and MLS have all their clubs participating in a mid-season tourney called the Leagues Cup. The reigning champions from each league get a bye to the round of 32 leaving 15 groups of three teams to compete across three matchdays for the remaining 30 KO round spots.

This does an interesting thing. The winner and runner-up from each group move on. That means the final matchday of the group stages determines second place in each group. It doesn't matter how poor the clubs in question are (and there are some stinkers in the mix), everyone playing on matchday three is playing for something meaningful.

Is the Leagues Cup title a serious thing in the big picture of global football? I have no clue. I'm really American. I'm pretty proud of myself for understanding the offside rule and knowing the difference between a 433 and 4231. What I do know is that from a spectator's perspective, elimination games are exciting. In home/away round robins like UEFA club tourney group stages, the fourth and first place teams might not have anything to play for on matchday six. In the Leagues Cup group stage, matchday three is already a knockout round.

Now, I'm not saying Leagues Cup is on par with CL/EL/ECL. It's definitely not. That's what makes its structure so important. The game theory baked into the way different competitions are organized can decide whether they are interesting enough to watch.

Say what you will about CONCACAF, but they understand and welcome chaos the way all North American sports do. I think the Leagues Cup structure will give fans a reason to tune in even if the results of the tourney mean almost nothing to 44 of the 47 clubs participating. I'm interested to see how TV ratings and ticket sales perform for this tourney compared to league matches.

I mentioned offhand in our introduction thread that I've never dated -- I wanted to hear people's experiences, since chatter online is very dominated by the male experience of mostly looking for casual hookups and struggling to get matches. I particularly want to hear from people who did not go in wanting a casual relationship

Some additional discussion questions: Did it go well or poorly? Did you run into mismatches in expectations? Did you end up in an unsafe situtation? How many people did you explore before you found someone long term?

Age for context would also be helpful, since I know many of you skew older.

Hey all!

(If this is the wrong place for this, please feel free to reassign)

During the winter months I can't get out to do much photography, but I love darkroom printing. Last winter I started buying antique photo negatives on ebay to have something to print.

It's been amazing! Many are from the 20's, 30's and 40's, with one set (of glass plates) having been manufactured pre-20th century!

I don't know how many I have, but it must be somewhere around 300-500 negatives. Currently they are stored in their original envelopes from the labs that developed them nearly 90 years ago, but that's not a good long term option. I love history, and I want to do this right, but I feel a bit overwhelmed with the volume.

Data I'd like to keep track of:

• The name of the person on the envelope the negative came from
• The date on the envelope
• The approximate date taken (if known)
• Ideally the specific envelope it came from

I'm going to try and store these in a binder of some sort, though that presents it's own challenges since it won't be possible to find sheets with sleeves that are the right size for the negatives. But that's a problem for me to solve haha. I've never had to index/catalog physical media before, so I'm pretty clueless on where to start.

More than anything it's really important to me to preserve this history in a safe way. For many of the people these pictures may be the only trace on earth that they ever existed, and I want to respect that.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

From what I can tell, this is a pretty hot debate in the open-source world. I've spent the last ~5 years or so investing into learning UNIX systems, particularly Linux. I just came across an article expounding the glories of OpenBSD as a system, and it made some valid points. Generally though, I don't want to dive deeper than I have to into learning new platforms for the sake of it. I do want to arrive at the simplest possible configuration for a digital system, and that involves choosing the best possible foundation. It should be noted that I am looking for a system that is effective as a personal computer / internet browser as well as a general purpose server.

For users of OpenBSD - What's your usecase? why did you switch? What did you miss? What did you appreciate?

For users of Linux who have tried other kernels - what was your experience? Was it worth trying? Why did you switch back?

I have a cavalier king charles spaniel that has had some unfortunate health issues for the past few years. The most pressing one that I haven't been able to nail down and fix is her GI issues. Every now and then, she has an all night bout of diarrhea even though the only food she has eaten is her hydrolyzed protein dog food. I remember reading about FMT years ago for people who had GI issues and I'm wondering what the results have been for dogs (and other animals). It seems counter intuitive to fight shit with more shit, but at this point I am willing to try most non-invasive treatments. While taking her to the dog park and asking other dog owners if my dog can eat their dog's poo would be the cheapest option, instead I found a site that purportedly has capsules available.

https://doggybiome.com/dog-products-for-diarrhea/

However, because it is difficult to find more information about this company and because I don't want imagine how this type of business (if it worked) could scale up as an industrial factory farm, I am skeptical.

Any thoughts on treating IBD in dogs for an allergy prone, and sensitive dog? She is already getting fiber and she sometimes gets probiotic with her food.

The first episode of the new season is out! What do you think of it?

I thought it was pretty okay. It was too self - referential for me. It kept making too many "we're back" jokes but they kind of did that the last time they were cancelled and brought back. They eased off those kind of jokes eventually the last time it happened.

I was worried about how they would handle references to more modern things as "Attack of the killer App" was really painful to watch. But it seems like they handled it pretty decently.

I'm slow, but it took me a while to realise that Scary Mirror as a replacement for Scary Door was a jab at Black Mirror.

I didn't think the episode was very funny, but it wasn't bad either. What was good about it shows promise, so I'm hopeful.

Even before the pandemic I've been struggling to keep up with stand-up comedy. Feels like there was a real sweet spot in the 2010s where you'd constantly find new and interesting acts on YouTube, comedy central, late shows and even a few American panel shows. But it's only gotten harder as most shows and streaming services only really push big or topical names.

It feels like in the States, the mainstream comedy is getting very one-note with the tone of rich people problems and call backs to older material; while the more up and coming stuff is needlessly provocative and vulgar. And there's a underlying obsession with the idea of cancel culture, almost like they're trying to bait themselves into the press.

I love British stuff too but big names are focusing on other projects. At least there's panel shows where they can showcase new material and comics.

And the global comedy space is interesting but a lot is lost in language and cultural translation.

Maybe theres a vibrant underground scene of weird, surrealist comedy and I'm just held back by the big streaming platforms? Or I've just become picky old man now?

So suggestions for interesting or new comedy that's worth a watch?

What have you all been playing this week?

My Saturday night games got cancelled by an impromptu family gathering, so I didn't play anything other than a couple of Unlock games with my daughter. We played the first two of Escape Adventures called The Formula and Squeek & Sausage. Definitely preferred S&S out of these two and a couple of the puzzles fitted the comic book styling very well.

Share your gaming sessions!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984322000583

Abstract

We submitted over 12,000 job applications, to over 4,000 job advertisements, to investigate hiring discrimination against six ethnic groups for leadership positions.

For leadership positions, applicants with English names received 26.8% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.3% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 57.4% fewer positive responses than applicants with English names for leadership positions despite identical resumes.

For non-leadership positions, applicants with English names received 21.2% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.6% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 45.3% fewer positive responses for non-leadership positions despite identical resumes.

Ethnic discrimination for leadership positions was even more pronounced when the advertised job required customer contact.