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There are areas of the US that are exceeding their ICU capacity, and as we’re reopening, many cities’ hospital admissions are spiking again. Due to the fragmented nature of the US’s COVID-19 response, it’s probably more useful to look at our data on a state-by-state basis. Some states are doing well, some are on the brink of a crisis. @yuzuangel Fortunately, I live in an area with high testing levels, low prevalence, and aggressive contact tracing. My rink has limited the number of skaters allowed on ice at any time. I was a bit apprehensive about going at first, but it really does seem to be relatively safe for the time being. Obviously, if our cases start spiking, I’ll stop going... but until then, it was such a relief to get back on the ice for a bit.

Looks like the base values and GOE changes for next season are on hold, according to the new ISU communication. "...based on feedback received from ISU Members..." So what they're saying is that nobody thought having loop, flip, and lutz worth the same base value and adding yet another degree of under-rotation call to an already overly-complex and overly-subjective scoring system was a good idea?

I managed to get an hour of ice time yesterday. I didn't even try to jump or spin, just worked on moves for the full hour to re-familiarize myself with the ice. Turns out skating involves some serious muscles. I am so sore today after not being able to skate for three months and then trying to pick things back up where I left off. (Also, my rink is currently doing all levels at the same time, as opposed to the usual low-level sessions I skate, and it was my first experience dodging people working on getting their triples back after the lockdown. Slightly terrifying.)

It wasn't as exciting as you'd think, to be honest. The novelty wore off after a few minutes. When he's off the ice and not trying to be the center of attention, he's human like anyone else.

Fans generally tend to leave him alone on planes from what I’ve heard. I’ve been on a flight with him once (and sat quite close to him, actually) and nobody bothered him. And he was sitting next to one of the people he travels with, so no worries about him having to sit next to a fan. He’s got the travel situation managed pretty well, it seems.

Hello and welcome! I think a lot of us fell down the Youtube rabbit hole one day and never came back. The glossary does need an update in some important ways, though. Yuzu finally got his 4CC gold and had his season’s best score at Skate Canada - seems like 19-20 was the season for curse breaking!

Is everyone forgetting about the Xylitol outfits? I hope they pay him a truly mind-boggling amount of money to wear those in public. (And then they always photoshop him within an inch of his life, to add insult to injury. How they expect to improve on perfection, I don’t know.)

I ran into one of the directors of my skating club the other day at the grocery store - rumor has it my rink may be reopening some freestyle sessions in the next week or two, max of 10 on the ice. My skates and I are ready whenever they do finally get to reopen. But will I actually remember how to do anything?

Dermatologists would also probably say not to wipe your face with the same towel that you just wiped your skate blades with, but apparently Yuzu is just exempt from all of these rules. It’s not fair.

Good timing on reviving the thread! I had a dream recently that I was sitting in the arena while skaters were testing their music (but not during an official practice session???), and Yuzu came over and asked me if I could hear his music okay from my seat. Then we chatted about the sound quality in the arena for a bit. Some of the conversation was in Japanese, so I guess my brain was just working on reinforcing some grammar points I learned recently? I mean, it's a solid 8/10 for realism, I suppose. (Yuzu is a huge audiophile, after all, and we all know how much he cares about sound quality.) But maybe not terribly interesting...

We just added mandatory face shields for all patient contact. Universal masking has been required for quite some time in the hospital. But naturally, until masks were mandatory, anyone wearing one by choice was reprimanded. It scared the patients and might cause our patient satisfaction rates to go down. (In case you didn't know, a portion of American hospital reimbursement is based on our patient satisfaction scores.) At least now we have enough N95 masks to get a new one every 5 shifts, or if you wore it around a COVID-19 positive or suspected positive patient, and we get a new procedure mask every day. Of course, outside the hospital, I'd say only 20% or so of people in my town are wearing masks. I live in a high-rise apartment building and they haven't even made masks mandatory in the elevators. It's unsettling, to say the least. But of course, my state is reopening, even though we don't meet CDC criteria to do so. Well, logic is the basis of mathematics. I had to take a semester-long course on formal logic as part of my math degree. It was a prerequisite for any upper-division math classes. Those of us on the pure mathematics side of the department (as opposed to the applied mathematicians or statisticians) always thought that we fit in better with the philosophy department than with the science departments!

Sure - it could be the solo quad. (Or in the combo, but the thought of that... ) The risk of doing that is that it needs to be very stable to avoid having invalid jumps. If he pops to a single Axel, he gets no points for it, much like at 2019 Worlds when he popped his solo quad to a double. Popping it to a 3A would then make his solo 3A invalid (I think?) due to it being a repeated jump, or force him to do a 2A instead for his planned Axel (and use the 3A as a solo triple) which he apparently can no longer do. (Edit: or I suppose he could YOLO a different solo quad where he has the 3A planned.) He could pop it to a 2A and it wouldn’t cause any layout issues, but it would be a huge decrease in BV. (But oh, the irony if he did that.) Overall, unless the 4A gets incredibly stable, it probably won’t be worth the risk to have it in the short, IMO.

Plus, he knows that he has to keep the 3A in good shape too. Senior men have to have either a 2A or 3A in their short program. Yuzu’s smart, he knows better than to put that gorgeous 3A of his at risk.

It's never happened, actually. This is not an exhaustive list of mistakes each has made in competition against the other, just at least one from each comp. Yuzu's going to be overrepresented here, because I know a lot of his without having to look them up. 2019-2020 GPF: Yuzu missed his SP combo 2018-2019 WC: Yuzu popped his SP 4S to a 2S 2017-2018: Olympics: Nathan had that disaster of an SP (missed combo, messy landings) Rostelecom: Yuzu fell on his SP combo 2016-2017: WC: Nathan fell twice in his FS 4CC: Yuzu popped his SP combo 4S to a 2S GPF: Nathan fell on his SP 4F NHK: Nathan fell on his SP 4Lz WTT: Yuzu had a messy SP (popped 4Lo, fall on the combo) I'd love to see them go clean head-to-head someday. It would be amazing.

Oh, trust me, this is the HILY performance I’m referencing any time I talk about how much I like this program. I found the video on a Youtube search one day not long after PC (thinking “hey, I liked that guy who won! I wonder what other programs he’s done...”) and it had an embarrassingly large part to play in me becoming a Yuzu fan. I was shocked that this is the same skater that gave us Ballade.