shura

My guess is, they didn’t give much thought to why Sheldon wouldn’t know about the paper. Lorre’s depiction of academia is pretty unrealistic anyway (like the time on TBBT when a professor died and then everyone applied for tenure a few days later, just because). Normally, it is the corresponding author’s responsibility to contact all the other authors listed on the paper before submitting it so that they could know exactly what is being published, agree to be an author, make corrections, etc. The corresponding author is almost always a professor with a research group and funding for the research described in the paper, so, realistically, Sheldon would be ignoring the professor’s emails rather than Mei Tung’s. And then, when the paper gets submitted, the authors get an email from the journal too, asking them to verify that they have indeed authored this paper and to sign disclosures and whatnot. So Sheldon would have to have ignored correspondence from this prestigious journal as well.

He knew it had been written, he said “It’s the paper I wrote with Mei Tung.” I’m guessing it was a class paper that ended up being submitted for publication. Not sure why he did not know that it had been submitted. Nah, that wasn’t much of a storm. They didn’t even cancel flights.

Wikipedia says that airport has been operating since the 60s, he would probably know. He still needs to find a shuttle or a taxi with an empty seat somehow that is going to the right place, so there are some operational difficulties for him. He had a hard time navigating his own town, he can totally get lost in a different country that he only knows from brochures. What was that (retro-looking) burrito-smelling robot, by the way? I've never seen anything like that. No kidding, really weird place. "Oh, right. The arrow. I was murdered by a little girl." - "Where? In Sporting Goods?" Now there's an image! And they said it like it's a reasonable possibility. Nancy was crushing it. "Totally. I can't read, but same page." "If you cut me, do I not bleed? I mean, no, none of us do, but you know what I mean." "Cost Thor how? - You'll see. You'll see... (leaves, comes back) I actually need to go this way." And the clincher at the end, "I also slept with Pete's widow carol. - Me too." Flower is so sweet and understanding and compassionate. But I have to say, I agree with someone who said last week that they are not feeling the Flower-Thor romance. They are just saying lines to each other, I am not seeing any chemistry there. Maybe it's a conscious choice on the show's part? I mean, we've seen Flower's doubts about Thor, now she brings Nancy into the relationship...

It was awesome. First, Hetty’s and Alberta’s faces when Sass challenged Isaac to describe a bus. And then Isaac’s face when Sass moved on to keep talking to Pete. The thing about St. Lucia is that the airport is in the south of the island and the resorts are in the north. It’s an hour and a half drive between them. When I asked why, our cab driver said “There’s just no room for an airport up there. Plus it’s good for taxi business” :). Pete is going to have to figure it out. I figured Deal Mart is a warehouse club like Costco or BJ’s. They have a meat department, I can see (not sure that I want to) something happening to the butcher there. Here’s a thought though - only a small fraction of those who die stay on a ghosts. And we have two people who died on Black Friday is that particular store…

Linkletter: “You’ve outgrown us.” Sturgess: ”Me. Literally.” Beautiful.

Well, if I may (and I know I may not, because I have no degree in whatever field deals with this and I know nothing but four things about them, but here’s how these four things fit together). Amber grows up with a blue-collar welder father who is not the kind of person to cut her any slack, so she develops self-esteem issues. Then, at work, she meets this guy. Who is not the kind of person to cut her any slack. And she already knows how to love someone like that. This can work, no?

Right, you would just pick up the receiver and tell the operator to connect you to “4”. It was ghost Hetty, present-day, who said it. But does it mean she thought she had a phone that could only receive calls and not make them? Was that a thing? Why didn’t they get the top model, the one that could make calls too? “Has he called?” - “No, no one has called. Ever, I believe.”

Actually, it was Mark, the contractor, who used the word “concrete”. The rest of them are lay people who may not know the difference. If they wrote it like that on purpose, it’s pretty brilliant. Another point I’m wondering now is, did they write the bits with Carol and her candy to establish, on purpose, that ghosts can have contact with another ghost’s object as long as that other ghost is still in possession of it? Which allowed Flower to grab onto the cord as long as Hetty was one of the people pulling? I was wondering about that too. Maybe, since neither Elias nor Hetty have actually been convicted, there are no debts to inherit yet, in the legal sense? Still, it seems that, if he inherited the factory, he would be on the hook for restitutions. Also, had she been convicted, would that really mean that her school age son would be left penniless? Were the laws really that cruel in 1895 (we have the date for Hetty, btw!)? I mean, things were looking up for children, that’s what started the whole prosecution, right? (I liked how proud Hetty was that they were the biggest employer of children in six counties. “We are doing our part.”)

Why wouldn’t they have the right to ask for help and get upset when refused? It’s not rational, most people get upset when they don’t get what they want. I don’t know if it’s entitlement. Especially in a case like this - you see someone helping others, you ask for the same thing and to you they say no. You are probably going to feel excluded. It’s not a great feeling. As far as repaying for the help, it’s not obvious that Rod and Leticia are offering anything and yet they get helped. I think most people are doing exactly that, blaming the game for allowing this, rather than Danny. Although it did rub me the wrong way when he started demonstrating different cuts of meat to his allies like some kind of instructor in a classroom. This has got to be the first time ever that the words “not a very meat-related chef” were put together.

It’s ugly. But also - this cooperation means that, instead of watching eight different versions of someone trying to complete a task, we are watching what, four? I have to watch less material instead of more? For ninety minutes? Late at night? I am starting to think that maybe I’d rather sleep. The bubble soccer was cool. I liked how Cesar realized that being heavy gives him an advantage and he simply bump everybody out of the way. And how one of the girlfriend burst out laughing when her partner got smashed into and went flying. Weird that they even mentioned the fingerprinting option when nobody took it. What exactly was the point of that?

Yes, that’s exactly what it is. This is not friendship, it is a different kind of relationship. They are selfish burdens and she feels an obligation to take care of them and they love each other. It’s a parent-children relationship.

Which he absolutely did do. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was no reason for Jay to be sitting there all by himself, he was totally being a good sport and just providing alone time for Alberta and Saul. Probably alternating between being bored and resentful of the whole situation. I would not be so generous and good-hearted, no chance. I would go about my own business, if it works for you ghosts - great, if not - well, you will have to adjust to my needs. That’s an interesting thought. I am not sure I can remember Sam having a personal interaction with them, of the kind where you are just chatting with a friend because you find it rewarding. Has she done that? She seems to always just react to their demands and situations. Yes, the ghosts really are not Sam’s friends, are they? They are a burden she has to deal with, that’s pretty much it. I am not sure that understanding Sam’s situation and feeling for her means that what she is doing to Jay is OK. She may be miserable, yes, but should she be spreading this misery onto Jay or should she be making an effort to shield him from it?

He was all into it, wasn’t he? Just got up and did, dare I say, a great job there. Knew to ask Baxter for some music, too. I died when he threw in a “I'm making my way through university”. They all totally accepted it as a necessary part of lap dancing, Thor mentioned it later too, when he was explaining the concept to Isaac. Isaac’s stripper was something else too. The music, the lights, the dino noises (that must have been some very detailed stuffy dinosaur for him to ID so specifically). Not judging Sam whatsoever, even though she was the only client in that room as far as he knew. “You don’t have to explain. That’s what the money is for.”

Right? Btw, it’s not the symbol for ohm either. That would be the capital omega.

The way they describe the tasks to us viewers this season, who knows if it was part of the challenge or not. It wasn’t just about the look, the abuelas did taste the final dish. That’s how the cousins got turned back for having undercooked plantains. And I saw an interview with the twins this morning where they said that the cooking instructions were in Spanish and they couldn’t understand anything, so they might have just thought it all had to come out at the same time. Weird though, instructions in Spanish with, potentially, no chance for non-Spanish-speakers to complete the challenge? Sure, it’s arbitrary, and not a big deal at all. Anything we can eat is a dish, I suppose. It raises a bunch of weirdly philosophical questions though. If you have two different dishes and put them onto the same plate, do you still have two different dishes or is it now a different, third dish? What if you put them on the plate in a different ratio, is it a fourth dish? And making this Colombia’s national dish is kind of like saying “our national dish is going to be a bunch of different dishes served together”. I think I have that every time I’m in a buffet.

Sure, but it’s not really a dish, it’s a sampler platter, right? When you cook a dish, flavors get mixed and new ones get developed, but here everything was cooked separately. That was actually the problem that made the twins switch back - they had no idea when to cook what so that everything would be ready at the same time. Funny how it was edited as though they said they did not know what any of those things were. I was thinking, well, you can ask someone, they will explain (“Well, kids, those little white things are rice…”). But no, the challenge for them was the timing. Speaking of kids and basics, Danny has never cooked anything before, has he? That egg he was scraping off the frying pan looked exactly like my very first attempt, at the age of 8 or 9, at cooking something on my own. Then my younger sister produced the same dish a couple years later. It’s really not intuitive to know that you need to use butter there 😛. Colombians are really fun people. I still remember the exploding cornhole game that is their national sport (at least that’s what TAR claimed when they featured it). And now we have the Willys parade. At first I couldn’t understand, in what circumstances would you need to load your truck like that? Moving to a new city and need to load your chest of drawers, Jesus picture and the dish rack (with the dishes you’ve just finished washing, apparently)? And then you hang a few pineapples on your furniture because you need to move those too and this seems like a reasonable way to transport them? But then I got it - it’s modern art, that’s what this is. I loved it.

Can we really rule out that they would? Remember how they almost climbed the pole with the Voladores for no good reason? The anesthesiologists (or, rather, anesthetists)… Walked back and forth on a bridge, got lost and then go “oh, it’s under the bridge!” and proceed looking for Elizabeth Taylor’s house in the underpass. I also liked how seriously Vinny was explaining at one point how, in their work, “every heartbeat counts.” They tend to, yes.

If I read “find the string that’s different from the rest of them”, I would interpret it to mean that “the rest of them” are not different from each other. If they are all different, isn’t any of them “different from the rest of them” then? Or did they mean that there were several strings of most combinations and only a few that were unique (in which case it’s pretty evil to not just say ‘unique’)? Also, where in that description is any indication that you get a reference string that you have to find a matching one for? From the wording they gave us, any unique string should have done it. Geez, you edit this thing to 90 minutes and you cannot take fifteen seconds to explain the task better? In any case, the correct reaction to looking at this challenge is “Nope. The other one.”

Isaac said Rhode Island the first time, when Sam gave him the 10K. No, no, Delaware is small potatoes, Isaac can buy it twice already (not that he’d want to). Now that he has seen what Trevor can do with his money, it’s time to dream big. Virginia at least. And not the present-day rump either, the original one, from before they split it. Sass will probably suggest it next time he is bored. When did Hetty talk about buying a state? I cannot remember.

Oooh, I feel like Trevor is being maligned here somewhat unfairly . The sister thing was Trevor being in love, can’t hold it against him in good conscience. As for the money, whatever we think about Sam’s decision to give it to Isaac, she did give it to him and the money is Isaac’s now. And Trevor is Isaac’s financial advisor (whether self-appointed on the spot or they have a formal agreement I don’t know, but Isaac did not dispute it when Trevor said it and proceeded to listen to Trevor’s advice). So Trevor may technically have had the right to invest the money for his client there. That’s the job of a financial advisor though, to play with other people’s money, isn’t it? The part where he used Sam and Jay’s account and they would be on the hook for any losses is more than questionable, to be sure. Maybe they should find a way to open a separate account for Isaac somehow and let Trevor play with that, even for real. Then Isaac could feel really rich and dream of buying Virginia. That’s a fundamental issue though that going over the property line will not solve. Jay has to assume that there are always ghosts around watching him, just different sets of them in different locations. He needs to either never do anything he does not want seen or stop caring.

Not seeing Sheldon is a good thing. You don’t mess with a good thing. You don’t even ask questions.

That kid was a total boss, wasn’t he? This reminds me - someone upthread was wondering whether it would be easier to transport those horses uphill or downhill, and then uphill got one vote. I think going downhill should be easier - you only need to use enough force to slow down what the gravity is doing on its own. But when you drag it uphill, you not only need to cancel out gravity, but also provide even more force to move the horse in the opposite direction. As far as maps, I laughed when one team asked someone to show them where a certain plaza was, and the lady said “the plaza is there” and circled about half of the map with her finger. I liked Maya’s bucket hat, it said “ fierce competitor”. And Rohan did look like a naive George Santos.

I’m guessing her physical phone is in the bag found on the corpse, so she probably can’t use Verizon’s physical towers to call from the Great Beyond with the phone she has now. It is a cool idea though. Also bag-related, brought about by Sass and Hetty’s remarks about finding out what’s in Carol’s bag - can the ghosts stick their heads into another ghost’s closed bag the way they can into a living’s bag? Probably not, right? It would be like walking through another ghost, and I don’t think they can do that. Who, the people that gave $10K to a ghost? Oh yes, no doubt…

Would that still be illegal or is it a spousal privilege kind of thing? Btw, I forgot, are they getting married? Where does that stand? My favorite line was when Mary said that Jesus wants us to prosper and Connie goes “Is that why he huffed and puffed and blew my house down?”

In principle, yes. In practice, the ghosts want Sam to stay. If she is gone, they are back to watching ants and hearing about cod for the billionth time. The reason Sam did not walk away and move back to the city was that she didn’t want to deal with all the numerous, unfamiliar ghosts there and preferred to stay with the ghosts she knows and likes. Now, if these nice ghosts here start burning things and making it impossible for her and Jay to make a living or be happy, that equation changes. Leaving all this behind will become the better option and she will bolt. That’s if they had any money to invest. They are sinking all the money that comes their way into the B&B and the restaurant. They are supposed to be struggling, I’m pretty sure, but it doesn’t come across that way. Well, to Jay Isaac is not real. Outside of an occasional fart smell, Isaac is just someone his wife tells him about. Not much more real than Harry Potter, really. I guess Isaac can spend the money with Trevor’s help and purchase stuff, but what is he going to do when it gets delivered if Sam refuses to help? He absolutely needs her to be able to do anything with his money. On a related note, Sam and Jay really should make sure to secure their accounts. Jay can never know if Trevor is not watching him when he is typing in a password, but at least close the laptop and put your phone face down. Eric was smart enough to do that, but not these two geniuses.