Chicago Redshirt

Everything we have been shown of Bruce suggests that he thinks he is a far better player than he in fact is, so I have 10,000 quatloos that say that he in fact thought he coulda been a contenda, he could have been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what he is. h/t to On The Waterfront. He seemingly was angling for a third bite of the apple in his exit interview. Please, Survivor PTB, do not cast him in an all-star season. Random thought that came up this episode: once Katurah talked about how she had been estranged from her mother, I kind of wanted Bruce to hook up with Mama Katurah and continue her grudge after the game. **Yes, I know Bruce is married to someone who is going to confirm for him that he's not at all patronizing or overbearing, no matter what pretty much every contestant said. There are other ways to hook up besides hooking up.

Has Survivor ever used popular music like they did in this episode's bro'ing out segment? I can't remember any, but I've missed a bunch of seasons and also have a non-encyclopedic memory of things.

The reason for the lie would be to get the Rebas to put 100 percent of their votes on him, meaning that he, Jake and Katurah would likely dictate who goes home if they were a solid bloc (which they obviously were not). Lulling the Rebas into a false sense that he was 100 percent vulnerable isn't a crazy plan. If the Rebas act on the information/belief that Bruce has an idol, the can either put all their firepower on Jake or someone else hoping for a flush of Bruce's idol, or they can try to engineer a vote split where Bruce loses if he doesn't play the idol but the other person they target goes home. The Rebas had the numbers for the latter, since Bruce had zero allies. If the Rebas act on the belief that Bruce is idol-less, they might not think to split their votes. But again, for the plan to work, he has to actually play his idol and nullify all those Reba votes. It seems like he abandoned the plan of trying to fool them, because everyone knew he had an idol and he lied about it having gone home with Kellie. But he should have known he had a target for the reasons you said and played it anyway.

Bruce, clueless to the end, expected Katurah to be his ally. If she was and she kept the lie to herself, it wouldn't be a problem. Alas, Bruce apparently can't read the visceral hatred Katurah has for Bruce well enough to know that of course she's going to blow up his spot. So I have to modify my comment earlier. Bruce did make a half-hearted attempt this episode to get a Reba out. But the way he did it was super-incompetent. If he had been, "Look, Katurah, I know I rub you the wrong way sometimes, but it's best for your game if we get one of the Rebas out. And Mama J its the bill. We can do it if we have you me and Jake, and they put all the votes on me. They can't risk a vote split if they have four plus Emily if we are three strong. Because if they pick wrong, they lose 3-2, and even if they pick wrong, they could lose on revote. If you vote with the Rebas, you can't be more than 5th. If you go with this plan, you could get to the FTC." maybe it would have worked. Bruce also had to at that later point admit to Jake that he'd lied.

The thing that makes it even more so irritating is that the old Belo folks didn't even seem to realize that Reba-strong was a thing, or consider being Belo-strong or Belo+Lulu strong in retaliation/self-defense. They systematically ate each other as much as allowed the Rebas to pick them off. Might be wrong, but there has never been as far as we have been shown a serious effort to get a Reba out since the merge. They squandered their 5-4-2 numbers advantage over petty BS and blew up their own spot to the point it's 2-4-1. Now I don't see what the 3 non-Rebas have to offer any of the Rebas to flip, even if they see the danger of the situation they're in. And we haven't seen any signs that they realize they're being systematically eliminated or attempts to play for anything above 5th.

The Reba 4 plus Emily were in on it. Jake could have been looped in, too, but they didn't need his vote so they might not have told them. The plan was to split the vote so that if Bruce played his idol, Jake goes home. Jake either on his own or with prompting from the rest of the tribe votes Bruce. Three of the rest vote Bruce, three of the rest vote Jake, Bruce votes whoever. What I don't understand is that Bruce spent time trying to fool people into thinking he no longer had an idol in an effort to get people to focus on him so that he and whoever he hoovered up could dictate who goes. Contrary to what Katurah said, not a bad plan. It's sort of basic. But the problem with it is you have to commit to it. Once you do, you can't not play your idol. Better to have the idol flushed than to have it be a pocket idol. What will fill these 1.5 hour episodes without the many Katurah THs about "I hate Bruce with the heat of 10,000 suns"?

I don't think it's "obvious." Again, I have the luxury of being able to think about the situation while being well-fed, not being televised, and having no stakes. I just think it's not so baffling a puzzle that it should take the average person more than an hour to figure it out. I don't think it's a right-brain, left-brain sort of thing. Heck, even Brandon from earlier this season would be able to beat it, given that sort of time frame. A mix of trial and error, logic, luck and/or intuitively understanding some of the things that I articulated in my earlier post without coming to the conclusions through logic. It simply can't be 987+ for the reason that I said earlier: there's no way to reduce the total to 100 starting that high with only one minus sign in the mix and having to put two additional plus signs. 987+6-543+2+1 is obviously way more than 100. I think trial and error would quickly reveal that you can't have more than one single digit number in the mix: 9+8+(7654321) for instance, shows that only having two more operators, you are going to have at least a triple digit number, which will put you way over 100, or way under if it's a negative. Just brute forcing it starts you with four categories of possibilities: 9+(87654321) Starting with 9 as a single digit means there needs to be an operation sign between each of the remaining two digit combos. The only question is which gets the minus. As far as I can see, there are only the following combos starting with 9+: 9+87-65+43+21 9+87+65-43+21 9+87+65+43-21 9-(87654321) 9-87+65+43+21 is the only possibility here that I can see, once you factor in that there can't be any triple-digit numbers and that you have to have all the operational signs you have to have. 9-87 is -78, then you get to -13, then 30, then 51. 98+(7654321) 98-(7654321) I think trial and error would/should soon reveal that 98+X is starting too close to 100 to land exactly there. 98-7+65+43+21 is obviously going to be way over 100. Maybe I am overly optimistic about people's math/logic skills and their intuition, but I think taking 5-10 minutes to think about the problem and then just starting working through the equations in any systematic (or at least non-mathphobic) way shouldn't take the average person more than an hour.

As with anything having to do with the legal system in a TV show or movie, there has to be a fair amount of handwaving. But in a normal lawsuit, there is a process called discovery where each side gets to ask questions of witnesses for the other side and to demand that they produce documents, subpoena documents from third parties, etc. Against this background, Holden's firm should have certainly asked for some of the documents that Al managed to steal and obviously did not get them. Failing to turn over documents can be punished in a lot of ways, and at least hypothetically could lead a judge to allow otherwise admissible documents to be considered. The impropriety of stealing the documents could hypothetically be considered lower than withholding them. Putting that aside, as others have said, Holden's hands were supposedly clean as to the documents and it was not established in what we saw in court that they were not legitimately obtained from a whistleblower. The show glossed over exactly what the documents were and what they said, just basically that they are a terabyte of sketchiness that purportedly came from Karina. So they may show that Freeyond didn't ever plan on uploading anyone, they may not. (Again, Our Heroes should have been able to point out that Freeyond did not have the infrastructure to do any uploading because they knew that before Al's document dump, and Holden should have been able to follow up on that to make at least some connection as to why Freeyond was operating as such a scam). We don't get to see Horizen checking with Karina to see if she went whistleblower or if she was the victim of a hack or what. But they presumably could confirm that the documents are genuine. Even if they brought a motion to suppress the evidence at trial and succeeded, they may have reasoned it was a better bargain to settle with the plaintiffs in the class action and lock them under a confidentiality clause in the settlement. As you pointed out, this in no way should make the problem of these documents go away. Al and co still have access to the terabyte of sketchiness and can duplicate it as many times as they want and send it to whoever they want. Fighting for the rights of uploads in the court would be an attempt to change the law, in addition to having Congress pass new laws. It would seemingly be an uphill one. The uploads and/or their families signed contracts that they were entirely the property of Big Upload. There presumably has been precedent allowing Big Load to operate the way it has for a while. To the extent the Upload universe is basically supposed to be our universe with higher tech in the not-so-distant future, the U.S. Supreme Court is not particularly likely to side against Big Upload, even if the pro-upload rights side march out Nathan as an appealing white male poster child. But even assuming for argument's sake that there would be a shot to win a such a court victory, it's clear Holden and co. aren't particularly interested in being the ones to do it. They go where the money is. And it would cost a lot of money to fight this hypothetical court challenge, and it would take a long time. Even if you were guaranteed a victory, which you obviously wouldn't be, getting uploads declared as sentient beings doesn't easily translate into money for them or for the firm. Which is why Holden's firm has zero interest in trying to pursue such a route.

Ingrid is presumably able to maintain some level of the upkeep on keeping Nathan going through one of several ways: a) having prepaid for a bunch of it when she had access to family money b) blackmailing the one angel to sneak her stuff and c) her job. I'm willing to consider that being a VR Suit rental clerk pays better than minimum wage, as VR Suits are more of a luxury good. Presumably the doctor's admission that he had sabotaged the first human download means that as a corollary he and others were setting up pigeons to die after being download recipients. Luke was telling Karina about all the hacks that he was doing to scam Horizen, one of which was accessing a premium version of Lakeview for free. Karina was basically passing along every one of his hacks to the consulting team that Ingrid-as-Nora was on and shutting them down. So that's why the next morning Luke realized his free premium Lakeview had been shut down and came to the conclusion that Karina was truly evil for having closed up the loopholes he told her about.

My understanding: There are various companies in the business of uploading people, of which Horizen is the biggest. As Verizon is for cell phones, Horizen is for uploading people and creating virtual spaces for people to visit simulations of their loved ones. Freeyond was set up as an alleged rivals to all the fancy and expensive upload companies even though it was in reality a sham that was being used by the expensive upload companies. Lakeview has been presented as Horizen's own upload community. By implication, the other upload companies have set up their own servers and their own upload communities. It may be that Horizen has other communities beyond Lakeview, but we haven't been shown any separate ones. The 2 Gigs are on a plan where you only have limited access to the uploads and the uploads only have limited ability to do things. They are in the virtual basement of Lakeview. Presumably, Horizen sells different parts of Lakeview and different packages based on what they can afford. Got $1000 a month you're willing to pay (say)? You can go for the Horizen 2G platform and visit virtual nana in black and white one time a month, and know that she has the chance to do basic things that don't take up that much bandwidth, like read books or hang out with other 2Gs. Or if you want to pay a million a year, you get the full country club experience where your simulated loved one will have an attentive staff at your beck and participate in all sorts of experiences not allowed in the real world. As for going from one plan to the other, it seems likely that for some people, they may start off only able o afford 2G and then get enough money or drive to afford a better package, or vice-versa.

So here's my attempt to explain what was at stake in the trial. Apologies if I get anything wrong: Holden and her firm filed a class-action suit against Horizen for the disaster in which people coming for free uploads at Freeyond were lost in a supposed Luddite attack. Freeyond was set up as a more democratic and economically affordable alternative to Big Upload, and was setting up stores in major cities across the country. In reality, Big Upload (Horizen and a couple other competing yet collaborating firms in the same space) organized Freeyond, and deliberately sabotaged the uploads of people to shift voting patterns in the hopes that a bill allowing Uploads to work would pass, which would make them all mega-super-rich instead of just merely rich, because when you have basically an army of VR slaves who owe their continued existence to you, what can't you get them to do? And how much could you sell their labor for? So Holden was attempting to show that Horizen/Big Upload was truly behind the disastrous Freeyond that led to what were presumably hundreds if not thousands of deaths. Anyway, though our heroes know this conspiracy to be true, they can't use any of the direct proof they have toward it. Both Nathan 1.0 and Backup Nathan are the intellectual property of Horizen and apparently can't be used against it. (Which is some hand-wavy BS IMO because the discovery process would allow to seek records from the company, even those that are covered by intellectual property protection. They could just ask for access to Nathan 1.0's file and get him to testify that way.). But the same thing goes for David Choak, I can't think of a very good reason why a competent investigative team knowing what Our Heroes know and with access to scan the entirety of David Choak's memory could not determine many, many legit ways to show the conspiracy that existed. Yes, the one doctor that they found as a witness got blown up real good, for instance. But there is presumably a whole chain of evidence that having talked to him would have opened up. But for show purposes, the only connection that they can make is having Ingrid testify that she knows that her father was in cahoots with Smoak, thus linking the software that Nathan developed to Big Upload. Ingrid is of course a very shaky foundation on which to build a case. As much as we have seen the show humanize her, she is a) not the smartest person in the room b) a chronic liar, including having been pretending she was dead for a substantial period of time to fool her boyfriend c) at odds with her family after having been cut off financially, giving her a potential motive to strike back at them by lying d) a VR addict. What Nora tells Ingrid is basically: this case could lead to the Uploads getting recognized as having rights. Right now your boyfriend is a bunch of code that Horizen can do what it wants with, and he won't be free, and you won't really be free to be with him until we stick it to Horizen. Instead of cross-examining Ingrid on any of the above weaknesses, the Big Upload lawyer seizes on Ingrid inadvertently letting it slip that there are two Nathans. I'm not really sure why this would be an effective trial technique but whatever. So it comes down to Al, who hacks her girlfriend Katrina and is able to come up with a terabyte of sketchiness that they are able to send to the plaintiffs' lawyers under the theory that Karina sent it as a whistleblower. Obviously she did not, and presumably if this were a real trial, Holden would have to explain where she got these records from, Karina would be able to say that these records were stolen, fake or whatever. But the Horizen decides to settle for what, it seems to me, is pretty much chump change. A class action lawsuit in which (I think) 140ish families clear $1 million each is pretty small ball. The thing I don't like in addition to Holden acting like this is a great settlement for her clients when (presumably) they have some level of evidence of Horizen deliberately killing people to sway the results of an election is that Our Heroes are like "Man, sorry this lawsuit didn't expose what corruption there is with Horizen." They still have the terabyte of sketchiness that Horizen was up to. And even if Holden agreed to a confidentiality order, it couldn't possibly stop Al or others from not shipping that terrabyte of information to journalists, the Internet, government regulators, etc.

In Kellie's defense, what she said was his winning immunity is the reason why she is a juror. And that's seemingly true. If there had been the option to vote Bruce out last time around, pretty much everyone but Bruce would have voted for him. She had a sour tone about it, but facts are facts. Let's see...he's a condescending, patronizing mansplainer who has been acting as though the 12ish hours of playing Survivor more than the other contestants makes him more skilled and more worthy than them and a celebrity in his own mind. He tries to browbeat people about everything in a game where being too bossy is typically the kiss of death. He doesn't seem to have cultivated a single actual ally, and has had little awareness of how the game is progressing around him. Other than winning these two immunities, he seemingly has done nothing to make him worthy of being the Sole Survivor. But other than THAT, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln? I don't claim to think that I would have gotten it in 3 minutes, especially under the same conditions of the Survivors. But hours seems a little much, given the parameters It's the numbers 9-1 in sequential descending order and exactly 3 pluses and a single minus must be added. In less than an hour and probably less than 30 minutes, you should be able to come up with most of the relevant permutations of that. For instance, it seems unlikely that you can go more than two digits without a symbol since it seems like that would either put you way over or way under 100. Starting off 987 means you will never get back down to near 100 with only one minus symbol in the equation 987-654+3+2+1, for instance. And even +321 means that you're not likely to get in the vicinity of 100 with just one minus sign. 9+8+7-654+321 is going to be a negative number. Once you figure out that you can't go more than two digits without an operation, you should quickly figure out it can't be 98+X because pretty much anywhere you put the two additional plus signs will not make it work.98+76 is obviously going to be too big a starting point to get to exactly 100 with two more additions to put in the mix. 98+7-65+43+21 Once you realize it starts off 98- and you can't go more than 2 digits without a new sign, it's not that tough. 98-76=22, 22+54=76+3+21=100. 98-76+5+43+21 doesn't get you there (91), nor does 98-76+54+32+1 (109). I assume the opposite and he only read what was shown. A savvy player might realize that by saying "That's four, that's enough" means that there might be/are additional votes. I do not know if it is customary for him to read off every vote beyond what is necessary to vote someone off.

I mean, Ny has participated in two pretty undeniable and unbelievable shows of power: she brought a whole bunch of people back from the dead (or mostly dead) when the fake Dragon was running roughshod over them and she (with the help of Eg and a few other channellers wiped out a whole Trolloc army at the end of last season. It seems like the main downside is she is largely incapable of originating these uses of power just at will but needs to be in a heavily emotional state. She seemingly can't even do simple things. Once she gets through whatever mental/emotional block she has (presumably something having to do with her hating/distrusting Aes Sedai), it seems like she will be formidable.

It seems like they have been a F3 for most of the recent seasons of Survivor. There is an immunity challenge at 4, and the winner guarantees one person to make it to the F3, and the other two have a race to build fire to get to the F3. I suppose nothing would stop them from changing things up and doing a F5-F2. But in a vacuum, no reason to think that they will switch it up. I think her quote was she'd prefer to be either first out or the winner, rather than a prediction that she'd be one of the two. Since that was back when I thought she was a terrible person, I too was hoping that she makes it to the F3 and goes voteless. Now that I've warmed up to her some, I would be fine with her winning. I'd also be fine with her becoming a super bitter juror too. It's interesting...it seems to me that there are very few entries so far on anyone's Survivor resumes in general. Dee and Bruce have an immunity win apiece, Bruce has an idol, Austin has two idols...not sure if anyone else has anything. Emily has the "I'm an underdog" story she can tell. Started off on a tribe that was full of losers and went to tribal council more than anyone remaining in the game. Despite having no connections originally with Reba or Belo, and despite her only fellow Lulu getting kicked off just after the merge, if she manages to survive to the end, that could be an appealing story. Bruce has the "I came back from the heartbreak of being medavaced last season to compete this one, and I showed my stuff and kept the tribe's spirits high with dad jokes and good advice" argument. Drew and Austin have the "We are very strategic players who maximized all the advantages we earned" argument. Jake now has the "I convinced you to get rid of Kellie instead of me, and I survived despite medical issues" argument. Aside from the "I won an immunity with my freakish feet," I am not sure what Dee has. I'm not sure what Julie, Katurah or Kendra have to say for themselves.

I went to HK when I was in Vegas a few months back. I think there is next to no chance that Jason wins this season, but even if he does, and even assuming he actually is running things when you're there (as opposed to either having just a nominal role or being quietly kicked to the curb), I think you should still go. That said, I think the odds are you won't have to worry about it too much. I'll be surprised if Jason makes it even to the black jackets. My prediction for who those are: Dahmere Ryan Jonathan Sammi Donya. I expect they'll go in roughly that order too. I thought of you when watching this...I was like, "She's not going to be impressed with her Oirish boo." I think the idea was to emphasize communication by having the brigade tell one member how to juggle what was necessary for those 5-10 minutes of their dishes. But like people said, that seems to be tailor-made to be a terrible job for Sandra. Dahmere's supporting of Atoye seemed to me telegraphing his eventual win. I actually think that it's likely that the chefs did take Gordon's platitudes to heart. And it is also possible in his (say) 10 minute one-on-ones he said more personalized things to each but HK didn't opt to show them.

I don't think the leader's actions will actually result in killing off Allen. Also, even if they do, the existence of a multiverse means that we may yet get more Allen. We haven't been told/shown enough about the Coalition of Planets to explain why/how the Viltrumites don't just wipe them off the board. If three Viltrumites could just make such short work of Allen one would have to imagine that a concerted effort by the Viltrumites would make the Coalition of Planets irrelevant. So one possibility that occurs to me is that the Viltrumites allow a token resistance to exist for reasons. Another possibility is that the entity who seems to be turning down Allen's life support is not the actual leader. Shapeshifting/"glamours" were shown to exist in this universe with Seance Dog and the Shapesmith. So it could be that the leader has been subbed out.

Nothing will ever top the blindside of Edgardo in my book. In case you haven't seen it, here it is:

Assuming the comparison is between the two mini-tribes and a traditional 1 person gets voted off this week scenario, I think you have things reversed. Kaleb would have had virtually no chance at convincing 5 of the 11 others to side with him in the wake of a vote where all the votes were originally for him. At best, it seems to me, he could have gotten Jake, Emily and maybe one random person on board. It was the split tribes that created a small opening that if they did flip Katurah and convince her to stay firm, maybe Austin would have folded and voted for their target instead of Caleb and risking rocks. I don't see a very good argument for Bruce being the target if it had been all 12 in one tribal council. Even putting aside that the tribe had already spoken and Kaleb was the easy vote, there's incentive to stay Belo strong for the five people who were originally on that tribe to stand up to the Rebas. As much as Katurah and others might not like him at this point, it would be silly for them to undermine their alliance. As for the Rebas targeting him and trying to pull in Emily and Kaleb to get the numbers, the info is out there that Bruce has an idol. Yes, there could be a move to blindside him, but it would be risky. No clue if any from OG Reba knows about it.

I may be giving Kaleb too much credit...he strikes to me least likely to be bitter about being booted and most likely to reward good game play. Which. like I said, I don't know if Bruce will actually bring to the table.

We don't really know how much gameplay Bruce has in him, because if memory/glancing at Wikipedia serves, he hasn't been on a tribe that has gone to TC before this one. And we don't know how much people have enjoyed being with Bruce. We at home assume "not much," because we are given that impression by the weekly THs from Katurah. And in this latest episode, Kellie and Kaleb dissed him. Are the opinions of those three representative of the whole? I imagine that there's no realistic circumstance under which Katurah would vote for Bruce to get a million dollars. It would take something like Satan and Hitler being the other members of the Final 3 somehow. But even if they dislike Bruce, I could see Kaleb and Kellie potentially voting for him. We do know Bruce has enough social juice that he could get a bunch of his buddies to cover for him as he idol-hunted. That's not nothing.

The point isn't to suggest that the two played similar games. It's to say that it's hard to predict what the actual jury might do. The conventional wisdom would (IMO) suggest that Survivors who are too bossy, too inflexible, too annoying have no shot. But all those things might make this particular group of Survivors have Bruce go to the FTC. And if he gets there, there's some chance that he is a dark horse winner rather than a goat.

So does Quentin Tarantino. :)

Do they know? I'm sitting at home with a full belly and I can't keep straight who has what advantages without the help of other posters/chyrons. Goodness knows being in the middle of the craziness while starving and being run ragged, they might be forgiven for thinking that there was more than one idol floating around, and that Sifu somehow accessed an unexpected one.

Dumb gimmick, maybe. But doing the two-random tribe split, two TCs at this point shakes things up in a couple ways: 1. By having two immunity winners, it increases the possibility that a disfavored person like Kaleb can go a little further. Instead of outplaying 10 people, he only had to outplay 4. 2. It (sometimes) forces people to have to scramble who would otherwise be safe. If you have 4 decent allies, you can rest (relatively) easy that you wouldn't be voted out at 10 or 11. (Or at least, that you will have enough time to do damage control). It is much harder to survive being one of five eligible for elimination than one of 10-11. Even if you are in the majority overall, you may not have any/many allies on your mini-tribe. 3. It sometimes allows for an increased possibility of safety. If there was a tribal council with all players, there seemingly would be no way for Kaleb to survive minus immunity. The split meant a small chance that Boston Not-Rob could have pulled off his scheme to try and protect Kaleb. Even though you're down (say) 5-4-2 overall, on the mini-tribe, you might have the numbers 4-1-1 or something. 4. At least in theory, twice the Tribal Councils may mean an uptick in all the idol/advantage play or (preferably from my perspective) pocket idols. There would have been little chance to blindside Bruce with 11 players casting votes, but the mini-tribe could have gotten him. 5. You create the chance for five people who probably haven't had much chance to interact to bond over filling their bellies, to share info, create new bonds, to lie, etc.

A few natural questions arise: 1. What does Congresswoman Neuman do with the samples of the anti-Supe virus that she got? Will anyone make any progress to connecting her to the head-exploder with her latest killing? Will Marie be able/willing to expose Neuman as a Supe? 2. Who will join the Seven? Currently they are just three (Homelander, the Deep and A-Train) so there are four slots up for grabs. It could be both Sam and Cate join, along with two others. 3. How much does Butcher learn about what really went down at God U, and what does he do with that knowledge? In addition to the virus, the season introduced a new anti-supe toy of sonics for him to play with. 4. How does Vought recover from its latest public relations nightmare? Between Soldier Boy going berserk and now two times in a short period people at God U supposedly doing so, it seems like a lot to clean up. And given that Ashley had her life at risk, it might change her perspective on things.