Overdone? Naaah!
Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links. US HERE – WHY? This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc.. At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.
Funny. Eccles is so good, but this one is low hanging fruit!
But the magi have thrown themselves on the ground and they’re disrupting the liturgical procession! https://t.co/ygym3O8uy2
— Eccles (@BruvverEccles) January 5, 2025
Meanwhile… I read the book. Don’t read the stupid book. Don’t see the awful movie.
Thank you @megynkelly for using your platform to condemn what so many Catholics have helplessly accepted. Hollywood deals in the “last acceptable prejudice” as propagandists for liberalism. But as liberalism crumbles, the good news is that a reckoning is coming for Hollywood too. https://t.co/iYsDXIJAjH
— Chad Pecknold (@ccpecknold) January 5, 2025
The wonderful Benedictine monks in Norcia, Italy – birthplace of St. Benedict – make wonderful beer. They also recently completed the painting in the chapel of their monastic complex they are building. HERE I posted a tweet about this yesterday, but here is a large image. Right click for larger. Open in a new tab and prepare to be gob smacked.
Buy their great BEER! Right now!
In chessy news… HERE
White to move and mate in 6.
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White to move and mate in 6.
[NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.]
Magnus Carlsen tied the knot with a Norwegian American girl who lives in Singapore. Pretty girl. It seems that Magnus, in the wake of “jeansgate” at the NYC Rapid and Blitz championship, has scored a deal with a fashion company called G Star Raw, which sells – wait for it – jeans. HERE You can spend, it seems, a couple of Benjamins on pants that look like they were left for years in a wood-chipper. What a deal! Maybe I’ll put some black jeans on my wishlist. On the other hand, I don’t think “skinny jeans” is an option for me right now.
Due to his strong performance in New York, Fabiano Caruana won the FIDE Circuit 2024 and qualified for the 2026 Candidates Tournament. He is the first one to gain a spot.
There is a “Freestyle” tournament, one of a series of “Fischer Random” events, right now at the “play in” stage 4-8 Jan. Others will be in Germany, France, USA, India and S. Africa.
The Chess.com (I’m an affiliate – sign up with my link) is conducting its World Bughouse Championship. Bughouse is a variant that looks really fun. I’d like to try it sometime. Bughouse is played by two teams of two on two boards side by side with blitz time controls. Each team starts with white and with black. Standard rules are followed. However, if you capture an enemy piece on your board, you can give it to your partner who can use it right away on his board because it is his color or he can keep it in reserve for later. You can’t drop pawns on the 1st or 8th ranks. If you capture a promoting pawn, you capture the pawn, not the piece to which it promoted. In regular chess, you don’t talk to share ideas. In Bughouse, you should! In Bughouse, a game is over when one of the players is mated, flags (runs out of time), or resigns. A game can end in a draw. When the first player loses, the opposing team wins the match, even if the other game is still going on. When playing Bughouse OTB (over the board), if one board loses the players can decide
White is only one move away from being mated himself, so he has to keep Black’s King constantly in check. Thus:
1. Rd8+ Ng8 (His only move. 1. … Kh7 is met by 2. Ng5 mate.)
2. RxN+ KxR
3. Qd8+ Kh7 (This time, 3. … Kf7 results in 4. Ng5+ mate.)
4. Ng5+ Kh6
5. Qh8+ Rh7
6. QxR mate