Back in March, @fireballdeath and I made our annual MLB regular and post-season predictions.  With a little over a week left in the regular season, I’m going to revisit my regular season predictions, originally posted HERE.

AL EAST

Well, I did pretty well here.  Who could’ve predicted the Red Sox would fall so far from the top after a run to a World Series title in 2018?  Well, probably more than a few.  World Series hangovers are definitely a thing, and they definitely had one this year.  Score:  4/5

AL Central

This was the one division I remember talking the most about with @fireballdeath.  I picked the Twins to upset the pitching-heavy Indians this year, and it looks like it’s gonna happen (Indians elimination # is at 6 as of today).  Again, I only made one mistake here, as I picked the Tigers to come in at 4th when they instead turned out to be the worst team in baseball.  Score:  4/5

AL West

In the best coast division of the AL I again made only one mistake.  I thought the Rangers would be trash with their pitching, which actually turned out to be a strength for them (Minor, Lynn and later in the season post-hype prospect Kolby Allard).  I should have known (Angles owner) Art Moreno would do nothing to surround Mike Trout with enough talent to even sniff a wild card spot…  Score:  4/5

NL East

Ok, so my Phillies phandom may have weighed a little heavy into my predictions here, as I had them winning the East.  Instead they’re greatly underachieved and disappointed me (and I’m sure owner John Middleton, who shelled out $330 million for Bryce Harper).  I did correctly pick the Nats to slot into second place, where they’ll likely finish with enough wins to host the NL wild card game, unless my Phillies and former Nat Harper can play spoiler.  Score:  2/3 (Mets and Phillies are currently separated by just 1/2 game so 3rd+4th place are too close to call)

NL Central

It barely feels worth it to even give myself a score here yet as everything is so close.  Heading into the weekend, St. Louis and Milwaukee are tied atop the division standings, with the Cubs only a game back of both.  What I did miss terribly here was the mediocrity and futility of the bottom two teams; I transposed the sorry Buccos with the home run-candidate (Eugenio Suarez and his 48 bombs) carrying yet still sub-.500 Red legs.  Score:  0/2

NL West

Uh. What the hell was I thinking!?  Being contrarian I guess in picking the Rockies to win the West.  This has been and will continue to be the Dodgers’ division for the foreseeable future.  They have a Cy-young candidate (Ryu), an MVP-candidate (Bellinger), and a couple of top prospects (Gavin Lux and Will Smith) as the prime for yet another deep postseason run.    I doubt many people saw the D’Backs coming in at over .500.  Wait… so I got zero picks right in this division? Yikes.  Score:  0/5

 

I’ll check back in October with my postseason predictions…

And we’re back! — now with a new projector that gives us a much clearer image.  We decided to try a new map- “famous places”- to get back into the groove.  We virtually visited Stonehenge, a castle in southern France (and one in Spain), an Italian palazzo, and the Space Needle in Seattle.  For some reason it feels like Stonehenge should be north of London… but it’s actually south and west! 

A score of 13,000+ was both above average and felt pretty solid for our first round back after summer.  My goal for our team is to bring our round average up to 18,000 this year (we are at 17,153 now).

Til next week!

Few things in Geoguessr are as frustrating as a round with an image too blurry to make out any signs, and we got two of them in this week’s U.S. locations map.  Despite this, we still almost doubled the average score (approximately 9,900) for a U.S. map, and at least one of our guesses was based purely on the ecosystem we found ourselves in.  If it wasn’t for a South Dakota misstep (actual location:  SE Washington state), we would have probably checked in at 20,000+ points.  

Thanks to @theanchor, @hugo, @sunday, @fireballdeath for joining this week!

@hugo suggested that we try a random map this week, and our second roll of the dice brought us to “US City locations.”  The algorithm started us off with a softball- a Brooklyn location that I knew because I used to play baseball at the nearby “Boys and Girls” high school.  Our second location was in St. Paul Minnesota, which we figured out when we saw a police car that netted us a near perfect 4,997 points.  Next up was Chicago, which was an easy 4,990+ with two recognizable cross streets.  Atlanta took us a little while to figure out, but a trash can eventually led us to another near perfect score.  Finally, we wrapped up our 24,990+ session with a Las Vegas location that was recognizable almost immediately due to the iconic billboards.  Not bad for a day’s work (about 50mins) of guessing.

We decided to try a new gimmicky type of map this week- “Movie Locations.”

Luckily @theanchor knew all 5 movies our locations were associated with, so it made our guesses a lot easier.  The only one we didn’t nail spot on was from Pride and Prejudice… couldn’t find that pesky mansion on the map.  We did, however get a perfect or near perfect score on set locations from Indiana Jones (Jordan), Amelie (Paris), Royal Tenenbaums (NYC), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Montauk, LI, NY).  Check out that final score (24,000+)!

One of the weirdest RNG quirks that’s happened to us this year in Geoguessr is our inability to escape U.S. based locations.  We often chose a world map, only to be dropped in multiple U.S. locations… and this week it was the first 3 in a row!  At least they balanced us out with an interesting (and rare) Malaysian location, and one in Russia.

  18,042 … not too shabby.

We tried a random map this week- places that start with “e.”  There was a learning curve on the first location as we weren’t sure if “places” meant countries or cities/towns that begin with “e.”  After an errant Estonia guess on our first location we figured out that it did indeed mean the cities/towns.

 We nailed two locations in Peru and Kenya after our initial mistake, but were then thwarted again when we mistook Mongolia for a Baltic country (we should’ve known they would have razed old Soviet propaganda in Cyrillic).  The final Canadian location was a dart throw, which is tough to do in such a huge country.  12468 is not a great score compared to our usual average, but was well above the average (9K) score for this map.

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

 

What does it mean!?  Is Rey a Skywalker?  Does Anakin rise again?  Is Luke not dead?

 

There are so many questions… here are a few observations:

Rey looks to have a blue lightsaber in the opening scene of the trailer, and it appears to look exactly like Anakin’s (which was broken in her battle with/against Kylo in Ep. 8)… It looks like she was able to rebuild it, or recreate it.  In this scene we don’t have confirmation that Kylo is in the Tie-interceptor like ship, but the gloves we see sure look like his.  It looks like he will modify/get a new helmet as well.

Lando is back!  And he brought his old laugh!

There is a scene with a pair of hands (I think Leia’s) holding a medal… probably Han’s from the Battle of Yavin.

The skiff scene is definitely reminiscent of ROTJ- but is it Tatooine or Jaku?

The superlaser dish from a Death Star makes an appearance on a world that sort of looks like Ahch-to… but that’s doubtful. Given that we hear Palpatine’s laugh right after this, I think it’s more likely to be Endor (the planet) given that I just read on Wookiepedia that its forest moon of the same name is only 8% water.

Palpatine’s laugh could mean many things, ranging from a legends-inspired throwback to the Emperor cloning himself before his death, to him just showing up as a force ghost.  I think the later is the more likely, as it has been established in cannon that Sith usually persist as Force entities after death only when tied to a physical location, i.e. Darth Bane.

 

I’m too excited and overwhelmed to say more now, but needless to say this teaser has stoked my Star Wars nerdom to high levels.  Christmas can’t come soon enough.

 

 

 

 

It’s always sort of weird/disappointing to get three locations in the U.S. when you specifically select a “world” map for a little variety.  The past two week’s we’ve done U.S.-only maps, and so this week we took on a world challenge.  We did quite well within our homeland, and recognized Japanese text with the help of @douglasawesome that garnered us approximately 3K points for a point on Hokkaido.  It was the Big Stone Cree Reservation in Alberta that did us in… Chuck found a Cree reservation in Manitoba, so we dropped a pin there. It turns out that Big Stone is a lot further west… oh well, live and learn and remember Canada is huge.

It’s almost time… with only a few weeks left until opening day, @fireballdeath and I made our annual MLB predictions today… I’ll post regular season picks this week, and update playoffs next week:

AL East

Yankees

Red Sox*

Rays*

Blue Jays

Orioles

AL Central

Twins

Indians

White Sox

Tigers

Royals

AL West

Astros

A’s

Angels

Mariners

Rangers

NL East

Phillies

Nationals*

Braves

Mets

Marlins

NL Central

Brewers

Cardinals

Cubs

Pirates

Reds

NL West

Rockies

Dodgers*

Padres

Giants

D-Backs