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Recent Comments

Date Title Body
Agree that we shouldn’t rely…

Agree that we shouldn’t rely too much on narratives.  A lot of them simply reflect that the better teams usually win + plus a bit of randomness.  

51-7 just like opening day…

51-7 just like opening day last year

Born and raised in AA, lived…

Born and raised in AA, lived in Berkeley and/or the Bay for last 10+ years.  Just going to chime in with everyone else to say you're completely wrong.  One of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen and a wonderful city to live in.  

The problem is the helmet…

The problem is the helmet. Maize jerseys makes the wings blend into the background rather than being the focal point/contrast.

UM 20 to Iowa 17.  Emotional…

UM 20 to Iowa 17.  Emotional hangover but they get the job done.

Crowd chant holding on every…

Crowd chant holding on every play.  We need a big flag to stop a drive and keep the OL uncomfortable. 

For me this season is a…

For me this season is a success no matter the outcome of the next games.  We've won at least 10 games. We're going to have maximum 3 losses and a rose bowl appearance. We're going to have attained a top 5 ranking for at least a week.

I personally don't think you have to measure every season on whether we beat OSU. Basketball still counts successful seasons if we make the elite eight. I think the team deserves to have fun and enjoy themselves like they did tonight without constant "but what about ohio" nagging. The coaches looked to be enjoying themselves and they coached loose and the team played loose. Everybody loves to make fun of UM because we take ourselves way too seriously. Congrats Harbaugh and the players on an awesome and fun season.

We won in 2016 and no one…

We won in 2016 and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

Remember in 2016 when…

Remember in 2016 when somebody put together a graphic showing Michigan was like statistically the most pressures with the least holding penalties or something?  And then in the next game we got a ton of calls. But we wasted it on Rutgers or something.

 

Somebody smarter than me should do some analysis on how often Hutchinson is held and get us some juice for this one.  Or maybe save it for OSU...

Exactly.  Running against…

Exactly.  Running against Wisconsin is another level. Analytics in smashing vs super smashing weak competition only tells you so much.

Same. The foul call = no…

Same. The foul call = no basket and ball out is what I grew up with in Ann Arbor and also how we played in Connecticut.  When I moved to California I was so confused because you can call "and1" where you get either the foul if you miss or the bucket if you make it like BlueinGeorgia describes.  Got some weird looks when I tried to explain "and1" isn't a call and they had to take the ball out.

Based on FSU I'm guessing Florida is an "and1" state like California.  Never played there though.

I like ball out better too.  And1 lets those annoying kids who call chippy fouls abuse much harder.  I wonder if this is part of why Big Ten ball is more physical. Kids grew up playing through more contact. Probably not a big difference since these are playing AAU for years not primarily pickup, but it's a fun idea.

 

Good point.  And the time…

Good point.  And the time zone switch doesn't seem to have hurt P12 teams much.  Seems like a non factor.

It's pretty easy to contest…

It's pretty easy to contest a jumper without a possibility of fouling.  Hard to block, but easy to contest.

One of the oddest box scores…

One of the oddest box scores I've seen.  Two of their players took almost as many shots (46) as our entire team (52).  They got their 17 extra shots that you need to make that game plan work. We just flamed them for 86 points on 53% shooting.  

Agreed. We're still Kenpom …

Agreed. We're still Kenpom #2, reg season champ of #1 conference, and 20-4.  Without livers maybe we're truly the strength of a 2 or 3 seed, but we've earned the 1. And it's not 100% livers will be out if we go deep.

 

 

Tampa Bay has 222 points at…

Tampa Bay has 222 points at the end of this week, most in the league.

The fatality risk from flu…

The fatality risk from flu is ~.1% not 1%.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

 

I understand what you're…

I understand what you're getting at for sure.  There are costs/benefits to different types of interventions. Washing hands is basically no cost, some benefit, and one of the few things we have control over ourselves.  Self imposed travel restriction (like the team is doing) is another measure. Nationally enforced travel restrictions have a whole different set of difficult considerations. 

All countermeasures have to be weighed based on their costs and their potential to delay and reduce transmission, aka save lives.  There's a great thread on this here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1231425805898657795.html  

 

So travel restrictions…

So travel restrictions simultaneously incite panic, make people feel safe, and do nothing. Got it. 

Epidemiologist MPH here (for…

Epidemiologist MPH here (for what that's worth), this is the first correct take in the thread so far.  Why I expected better hawt-takes about coronavirus than about basketball here I don't know but thank you Maize and Blue AF for restoring my faith a bit haha.

Turnovers though

Turnovers though

Awesome. Saw this live and…

Awesome. Saw this live and it was incredible. 

No actually just fuck this…

No actually just fuck this guy. Here's why the hate.

I don't know if you've ever gone through cancer or had someone close to you go through it but all of us who have are well aware of the unscientific food and diet voodoo people. It's insufferable. I had my girlfriend go through ovarian cancer at 25 and I can't tell you how many times I watched her politely thank some well-wishing friend telling them her about how eating cranberries or avoiding bread or a million other random ideas like the one above could save her life.  

I'm not as nice as her so if wasn't there I'd usually just stop them and ask them to give any shred of evidence from a credible scientific paper -- to which the answer is inevitably crickets.  If you go find a scientific paper that shows a statistically meaningful impact of drinking nothing but water on leukemia I'll go eat twice as many lemons as WD ever has.

Giving random people wrong medical advice is super fucked. People actually die due to not receiving the care they need because they start believing in that stuff.  Not only that, it also implies that 1) something like leukemia which is completely not the fault of the patient was somehow due to them eating the wrong thing. It was not their fault. They did nothing wrong. 2) It also trivializes the massive pain and struggles that cancer patients go through in treatment. You mean I didn't have to go through all this nausea, shave my head, etc? I could just eat some avocados or just drink water?? If only I knew that before...thanks so much random guy.  

At least most people are nice about their wacky advice which I can understand as a misguided attempt at wanting to be able to do something to help in a situation where we are mostly helpless.  But he's just being an asshole about it and deserves to be ridiculed. 

As to the OP's original question: IMO supportive text messages just saying you care about the person/love them or like handwritten card from you and a bunch of your friends or funny pictures you think they'd like or anything that shows that you care about them but doesn't take a lot of effort on their part. Visiting in person should probably be done only if agreed to and set up with the person/friends/family.  In some situations it's great, but there is also a time and place where they need to be with immediate family only.  So sorry to hear about your friend and fuck cancer.  

Best team he's had by far?

I know right. Best team he's had by far? How quickly the winds change from all the talking heads calling us done in this game. I guess we have that championship locked up now...  

Yeah I think you're right if

Yeah I think you're right if you grab the rim/net to help you with a block it's a goaltend.  Still a pretty crazy block though.

I think this was the moment

I think this was the moment where I went from -- nice A&M maybe is alright and could win and give us an easier game -- to HOLY crap who are these monsters:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw2mKSPk6UU&feature=onebox&t=28

If we're as cold from outside as UNC was then we're just as doomed.  Nothing will be easy down low.  Don't think we'll go 6-31 from long range though so I'm cautiously optimistic. Another slugfest in the making.

If you want some better

If you want some better examples for the proof of authority why not go Ray Dalio?  He called it a speculative bubble in the short term and has less conflict on interest than Dimon. Doesn't say anything bad about crypto tech long term though - because he's smart.  You could go Krugman with his recent NYT article but then again he said by 1995 the internet  would be no more important than the fax machine sooooo yeah.  And you really put more faith in Dimon or Buffet than Andreessen when talking tech innovation?  Yeesh. 

Ah you snuck in some edits

Ah you snuck in some edits before I made my post... Darn. Shame to know that I've lost all credibility...  Wonder what the ~3 other people reading this will think? I'm guessing there will be a wide generational gap in sentiment.   

You might want to pause for a

You might want to pause for a moment on those assumptions about who I am and what I know/don't know. Michigan's connections to startups and silicon valley? You're talking about me buddy :)  Plenty of insider knowledge here, usually just hang around for the football.

And I couldn't agree more with your advice not to be one those stupid people who take out debt or morgage their houses to go all in on Bitcoin.  DYOR and don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

Appeals to authority are cheap. However, we're still at that early stage of the conversation where they're useful (I'm happy to refute your specific points as well and will do so). But I also can't resist hitting on your references because yours made me laugh too.

I've read and listened to every word both Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffet have said on crypto.  Warren Buffet openly admits he doesn't understand it -- from CNBC:

Buffet said he would not take a short positiion on bitcoin futures. "We don't own any, we're not short any, we'll never have a position in them" he said. "I get into enough trouble with things I think I know something about," he added. "Why in the world should I take a long or short position in somehitng I don't know anything about."

Jamie Dimon is a more complicated case because he actually understands crypto quite well.  This is where we actually are getting into some of the conflict of interests you mentioned because JP Morgan is building Quorum (a private enterprise version of Ethereum) which is one of private "competitors" to public crypto blockchains.  So just note that Jamie has a large vested interest in the "Blockchain not Bitcoin" idea. This is complicated too but cryptocurrencies are essentially the accounting layer for processing transactions and are essential to core of decentralized blockchain technology. It's hard to grasp And a lot of his argument goes along some of the lines you've been mentioning talking about government regulation's impact on the open chains and that they'll surely shut it down before they gets too big.  These are complicated and valid challenges to a nascent technology, which smart people can disagree on. The only real thing we can be sure of is that no one knows exactly how governments are going to respond to this potentially very disruptive force in global trade.  My perspective is that governments and regulators have a lot less ability to control this than they may think; cryptocurrency networks are inherently global and dencentralized networks (think tor rather than napster) and thus the major point of regulation is really the onramps from fiat currencies into crypto. There are already countries positioning themselves as crypto & innovation friendly in the desire to attract an absolutely massive number of talented developers and new companies.  So people who like to ban things *cough* *cough* China...  will simply see the technology move to other more friendly countries and the opportuniy to regulatory arbitrage across countries is very real.   

There was a recent committee before congress with the heads of the CFTC & SEC. On the whole the sentiment was mixed but from some important regulators it was -- yes there are scammy things going on which we need to stop but that the technology has great potential and the U.S. is pro innovation: https://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=D8EC44B1-F1…

There is quite clearly SEC scrutiny on ICOs that Jay Clayton kept referring to. There was also quite clearly no current intention to go after the larger currencies or platforms like BTC, ETH.  

As far as the price manipulation, yes we're all very aware.  That is the price you pay for solving the byzantine generals problem for the first time in history and creating a new currency uncontrolled by any government or regulation.  I think what we usually say about this is "zoom out" haha. 

Hacks are a really nuanced and complicated issue to understand here.  So yes there have been and continue to be a number of high profile exchange hacks as well as constant level of individual hacks of persons that don't get any press.  The reasons for this are multiple.  First off the nature of cryptocurrencies is that you and you alone own control over the abillity to move your money. Nobody (no bank, no government) is even able to rollback(DAO aside -- it is possible for the devs/community in certain catastrophic circumstances to the network as a whole) if you lose your keys or if someone takes them from you currently.  This means if you're smart and know what you're doing it's very very secure and if you're your own bank and you are bad at being your own bank it is not secure. Or if you trust an exchange to be your bank and they are a bad bank then you are not secure.  By the way the Winklevii are pretty smart dudes and run one of these crypto exchanges, just sayin.  But in some very important ways Bitcoin is actually the most secure financial network in history. The Bitcoin blockchain itself, (besides a very small PGP bug for like $19k in the very early days), has run 24/7 with 0 downtime for 9+ years without ever being hacked.  And the security mechanisms of these networks is only getting better and more professional over time (especially if you know who to trust).  I would advocate for any crypto enthusiasts out there to take a hard look at how much they keep on exchanges and how credible and professional those exchanges are.  This is probably one of the riskiest areas for the "newbies" and requires significant effort and understanding to properly secure yourself.  But it is very possible to do so.  

Ready for some insider knowledge? VCs are taking a variety of approaches to the space.  One of the most common is simply investing in a crypto hedge fund like polychain capital, metastable, etc -- and the crypto fund invests directly in cryptocurrencies.  There are also things like SAFT and SAFTE, (similar to SAFE notes for those in the startup know) where VCs are buying options to either tokens or equity in the companies producing the tokens.  There are also a significant number of "pre-sales" in which the VCs are still getting in earlier than the general public.  However one of the extremely positive developments of crypto has been the accesibility of intrusments of the lay person to invest in very early stage "startups" aka crypto networks.  1000x gains sound too good to be true to the normal investor fishies because it is in the current regulatory climate where you have to be an accredited investor ($1M in assets minus house or stable $200k income), but in the VC world this happens fairly regularly.  You're talking about early investors selling out and dumping on the little guy and I'm sorry but it just aint that simple or straightforward in the crypto world or in traditional startup world.    

And finally to your implied question -- "What am I investing in when I invest in a crypto?":

Depending on which ones you choose it is different, these assets defy traditional categorization and have components of different asset classes. In many ways yes you actually are investing in a technology startup for a lot of these - they have development roadmaps in which they are building various blockchain technologies which hold potential to solve problems in the future, from base layer protocols tackling scaling, to projects working on decentralized database or file storage, computational marketplaces etc.  And the way you invest in many of these is exactly "buying some random cryptocurrency".  If the technology being developed proves useful then the crypto token used on the network will have demand and appreciate in price.  Token mechanisms are difficult and poorly understood even by many building these technologies, and currently the vast majority of the current price of many techs is based on speculation. That doesn't make them worthless. I'd argue that Bitcoin has already developed sufficient technology to be digital gold aka a store of value and thus already fulfils a useful function as well as continualling proving the resilience of crypto in general. Other blockchain techs like Ethereum and those building off of them are tackling essentially a complete rebuild of the internet technology stack from the ground up.  Aka this has the potential to be the "new internet" and possibly much more impactful than the internet.  

So what is the best way to invest?  First off, just seperate your misgivings on the tech for a second and if I told you that I know of a stock or bundle of stocks which are ultra high risk (say 95% chance of failure) but the returns will be 1000x gains if they succeed how would you treat that stock?  Obviously you would not morgage your house and go all in!  Don't be greedy or stupid.  But just ignoring assets with these characteristics is in my opinion poor financial decision making. Cryptoasset have a place in any balanced portfolio at around 1-10% depending on your financial situation and your age and ability to recover from losses. Invest in a diversified mix of the top "blue chip" cryptos. Don't invest in the smaller ones until you've done an absolute minimum of 100 hours of research (and I don't mean watching youtube videos of idiots who are shiling coins they don't understand, I mean read everything in that reading list, read the top50 whitepapers, read everything by Andreas, Vitalik, Nival, etc).  Just wait, your info sources will be telling you the same thing at some point in the next 5-10 years.  Now I'm going to make some assumptions about you -- if you can't wait that long for returns then maybe it's best you wait on the sidelines and let the younger generation take the reins.  

CBOE and CME futures are cash

CBOE and CME futures are cash settled: http://www.cmegroup.com/education/cme-bitcoin-futures-frequently-asked-…

I'd be careful with TRX:

I'd be careful with TRX: https://twitter.com/juanbenet/status/950142785373405184.

 

 

And I'm not even saying go

And I'm not even saying go buy any specific crypto or any crypto at all. Just generally good practice to be at least mildly informed about an asset class before giving investment advice about it to strangers.

You have no idea what you're talking about

Oh really? You should probably tell Marc Andressen, Naval Ravikant, Albert Wenger, T+C Winklevoss, Peter Thiel, Chris Dixon, and countless other VCs and tech leaders investing heavily in cryptos that they are worthless.  I'm sure they didn't realize and will pull their investments out asap...

Frankly, it's irresponsible to act like you know what you're talking about saying completely made up things like "large institutions already have a more stable option being rolled out".  If you want to go educate yourself here's a reading list Andressen Horowitz just put together: https://a16z.com/2018/02/10/crypto-readings-resources/

Want advice on investing in cutting edge tech? You should probably listen to the people who, you know, make fortunes investing in cutting edge technologies. Or you can go back to whatever uninformed news source you got your current information from. Enjoy your bonds.  

 

We're very trained to see

We're very trained to see things that go up too fast as "too good to be true". However In my opinion that's just because the average joe investor has been completely locked out of the high risk investing world by the SEC.  The land of venture capital often sees returns with huge multipliers that you and I would never ever in a million years see on the public stock market.  It's true that much of the value is based on speculation at this point - but doesn't neccesitate that there is a bubble.  Speculative value is based on often estimation of future value.  Very big players like deloitte and accenture predict blockchain techonologies to be worth trillions in the coming years. 

 

Wow it's amazing to see other

Wow it's amazing to see other IOTA backers here.  Couldn't agree more my friend.  

Antshares has been rebranded

Antshares has been rebranded to NEO.

This is a good point. You've

This is a good point. You've definitely hit upon one of the concerns especially with bitcoin. The "re-centralization" forces at work due to ASIC mining of bitcoin gives a lot of control over the future of bitcoin to those miners.  There is also a power struggle based on disagreement over upgrades to the protocol for scalability (mainly block size increase) that resulted in the hard for called bitcoin cash.

 This is actually a positive outcome for the community in my opinion as those who hold differing beliefs on what is best for the future of the coin to follow their specific coin of choice.  This is made possible by the open source nature of blockchains such that anyone can "fork" or create a new coin from an existing coin but change or adapt it in any way they want.  Then the free market can essentially decide what coin they think is most valuable.  

Additionally other coins have chosen alternate consensus mechanisms to the standard proof of work established by bitcoin.  Ethereum will likely start the transition to proof of stake next year which will eliminate the need for computational mining and replace it with a staking procedure whereby you lock up your funds for a specificed period of time.  

It's an absolutely fascinating and evolving world out there and there are tons of really smart people attacking all of these problems.

And people made a lot of

And people made a lot of money investing in apple, amazon, and facebook.

Some people thought the

Some people thought the internet was tulips.

https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-buy-books-ne…

If blockchain were truley

If blockchain were truley without utility then I would agree with you. I'm not interested in price changes for price changes sake.  However I personally believe decentralized distributed ledger technology will have extremely high real utility in the future.  In the same way it was difficult(and still is difficult for many) to perceive how a bunch of websites like facebook and twitter could be so valueable it is similarly difficult to grasp such the potential of cutting edge new technologies like ethereum or IOTA or even the simpler bitcoin.  

There's a pretty high knowledge barrier required to really "get it" -- maybe a few days of research depending on how quickly you pick these things up.  And of coruse an army of naysayers guaranteeing you that its all vaporware (even though they all also say they don't really understand it -- I've never seen any knowledgeable nasayers).    

My advice is to do your own research with an open mind about THE most exciting technological advancement going on right now (machine learning, VR, etc look boring in comparison to me now).  And if you're as inspired as I was then maybe make an investment while understanding the inherent high risk nature of the asset.  1-5% of your portfolio in digital currencies could easily end up being the best investment you've ever made. It has been for me.  It's ok if you don't want to invest though old timers something has to transition the monopoly of wealth from the high age brackets back down to us youngin's saddled with student loan debt. 

 

And the commentators are

And the commentators are joking about it even after they show the replay where its clearly goaltending

That 8-0 run was comprised of

That 8-0 run was comprised of a prayer 3 ball where we played great defense, a nice Wilson drive where he got tripped with no call and they hit a three off it in transition. Then the absolutely blown call on the wagner cleanest steal of the tournament.  In what world is that Beileins fault because he took Walton out?

Clearly you don't just want

Clearly you don't just want to see us "contend" because then you wouldn't be complaining about us under-achieving this year.  In what world did we not contend this year...

is it just me or are old

is it just me or are old posts impossible to find?

im gunna upvote you above 200

im gunna upvote you above 200 and then neg you for lying. just you wait.

And make them watch like 5

And make them watch like 5 hours of high school assembly

which is so silly compared to

which is so silly compared to the emotional investment in a bunch of 19 year olds we've never met playing some game with a ball...

in some ways our lack of

in some ways our lack of bagmen (at least we like to think) actually biases us towards high character kids

who learned from the best...

who learned from the best...

today i learned that you lose

today i learned that you lose a point when you neg. wow.  sorry rule 1...