SQUID GAME SEASON 2 BEGAN YESTERDAY ON NETFLIX

Winning $1.22 billion Mega Millions ticket sold in California

Someone in Northern California just got a $1.22 billion holiday gift in the form of a winning Mega Millions ticket. A single ticket purchased at Sunshine Food and Gas in Cottonwood — a community of around 6,000 people, south of Redding — matched all numbers in last night’s drawing. The jackpot, the fifth-largest in the history of the game, has been building since September.

The above from MSNBC. Further, here is a look back at the year's biggest stories through photos and illustrations. About this graphic, brain rot was selected as Oxford University Press' word of the year.

I first began watching Squid Game on Netflix a long time ago when it first came out in 2021. It went on to become the most-watched show of all time on Netflix. However, after two episodes, I abandoned the series, mostly because I was too busy, and there were better productions, I thought, on Prime and Netflix. I thus have several options.

Complete Season One and go on to Two.
Watch this recap of Season One and go on to Two.
Play Season One from Episode One and then watch Season Two.
Don't even bother with Squid Game anymore, after all, I still don't have much time, and there are at least two dozen other series on my watch list, many of them ranked near 100 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Got 14 Emmy nominations, and won five.
Squid Game only has 90/74 ratings. And, by the way, Season Two already has scores of 85/63.
So if my decision is go, might as well watch the entirety of Season One because it is rated higher, and I'll get a renewed sense of the whole picture.
However, if I watch both seasons, I will spend so many hours.

Season One: Just about nine hours over nine episodes.
Season Two: Just over 7 hours for 7 episodes.
And, yes, there will be a Season 3, which should take about as long. If 8 hours, then I would be spending 24 hours, a whole day, on 3 Seasons of Squid Game.

So let me analyze what I should do.

Squid Game knocks capitalism and wealth inequity.
It is dark and vicious, something I don't need or want. It is also a game of death, tempted by cash.

The winner, a good-hearted (yes, I now know who will be the champ in Season One, and because you're reading this, you too) Seong Gi-hun prevails at the cost of his basic belief in the goodness of humanity. That's him to the right.

In 2021, the 45.6 billion Korea Won (there are 456 contestants) was worth $32 million. Today, $31 million, so the exchange rate on a visit to South Korea has dropped, still not bad, as this amount would pay the annual average salaries for almost 1000 Korean workers.

Some other comparisons.

Jeff Bezos makes $1.9 million per hour, or roughly that same $45.6 billion won in a day.
Elon Musk passed Bezos as the wealthiest person, and the winner of the Squid Game would have to win this game over 12,700 times to accumulate the wealth of Musk.

If there were 456 contestants, with one winner, then 455 should have died in the game, right?

Well, yes and no. No because this video said at least 470 died. Why, watch the video.
I couldn't quite understand that video, so until I do, let this link serve as the official number of deaths: 455.

Well, in conclusion, wondering if I will gain any benefit from 3 Seasons of Squid Game, I don't know. 24 hours seem like a long time. And it took 27 hours to get home from Zurich, and that was an ordeal. Are there any redeeming virtues? Yes, I think so. Thus, I will go back to Episode 1 of Season One, and follow up with Seasons 2 and 3. And in the future, avoid prematurely telling you what happened.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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