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Hello everyone! Just a quick reminder that we’re on the NPR model here. If you have already upgraded, I truly appreciate your support and your partnership. Thank you so much! —Jeremy Upgrade to premium California has a new Covid-19 isolation guideline that differs from the CDC’s. Under its new policy, California residents with confirmed Covid-19 can end their isolation once they have not had a fever (without fever-reducing medication) for 24 hours and other symptoms are improving.

Oh boy, February had been A MONTH. With so many things going on in the world affecting my mental health significantly, work ramping up in preparation for events in California, and unexpected hurdles we’re jumping through, coming back to Substack felt like a sigh of relief. Anyway, I’m back from Los Angeles and it’s been a blast. For some reason, I’m feeling extremely exhausted working this show compared to other events, but it was also a lot of fun.

On October 18, the final installment of the Dreamer Trilogy, Greywaren, comes out (yay! whoo! etc!). It’s been a hot second since the first two books have come out and not everyone has time to reread 800 pages before October, so I’ll be posting recaps here. If you’d like to read recaps of the books in The Raven Cycle as well, you can find them on Recaptains. Without further ado, Call Down the Hawk.

Many years ago I happened upon “The Little Girl Who Was Forgotten,” a bleak little fairy tale by Katy Towell. This is not the kind of story people share with their kids, and that’s precisely what I liked about it. For it really was a fairy tale, the kind of story that very much used to be shared with kids, in some parts of the world at any rate. Towell’…

A note to Fight Freaks Unite readers: I created Fight Freaks Unite in January 2021 and eight months later it also became available for paid subscriptions for additional content — and as a way to help keep this newsletter going and for readers to support independent journalism. If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription please consider it. If you have already, I truly appreciate it! Also, consider a gift subscription for the Fight Freak in your life.

I have a random question for you reference floating neutral generators. I recently purchased a champion inverter generator for the purpose of off grid camping with an rv and powering some devices(tools and such) with it. Now I'm reading that I really shouldn't use this kind of generator(floating neutral) for my applications. I haven't used it yet but prefer not to get killed. Will the bonded neutral plugs like the one you invented not only just turn my generator into a bonded neutral generator, but also help keep me from getting shocked?

Today at The Messenger, we broke down the big picture of the AFC and NFC playoffs using our new Playoff Predictor model. You can read more about how it works here, but the TL;DR is that it’s a ridge regression-based model that adjusts for QB changes and gives more weight to recent performance. (Sorry, Eagles. 😬) Unsurprisingly, the Ravens and 49ers are heavy favorites in their respective conferences, but there are some interesting notes around teams that might be able to pull upsets and alter the playoff landscape.

This story is part of Repair Month, a series dedicated to taking better care of the stuff we already own instead of buying more of it. Join the discussion thread, here. This week, in anticipation of a visit to a cobbler, I paid extra close attention to my feet. The exercise confirmed two things: 1) I wear shoes a lot less than I did before the pandemic. As a freelancer who now works almost exclusively from home, there are admittedly some days when I’ll only put on shoes for a few hours, or not at all.

On Jan. 22, DePaul fired men’s basketball coach Tony Stubblefield 18 games into his third season at the school. The school’s announcement of the widely expected move read as many such announcements do. A generic photo of a basketball graced the top of the page. The folks in the university’s sports information department couched the language to say “a change in leadership” was made rather than simply stating he had been canned.