#<— conti new is where i got the flag from

[velvetbow39]

inspired by a conversation in beloved iowacord

[aroworlds]

The Vampire Conundrum, Part One

When Rowan Ross is pressured into placing an aromantic pride mug on his desk, he doesn't know how to react when his co-workers don't notice it. Don't they realise he spent a weekend rehearsing answers for questions unasked? Then again, if nobody knows what aromanticism is, can't he display a growing collection of pride merch without a repeat of his coming out as trans? Be visible with impunity through their ignorance?

He can endure their thinking him a fan of archery, comic-book superheroes and glittery vampire movies. It's not like anyone in the office is an archer. (Are they?) But when a patch on his bag results in a massive misconception, correcting it means doing the one thing he most fears: making a scene.

After all, his name isn't Aro.

Contains: One trans, bisexual frayromantic alongside an office of well-meaning cis co-workers who think they're being supportive and inclusive.

Content Advisory: This story hinges on the way most cishet alloromantic people know nothing about aromanticism and the ways many trans-accepting cis people fail to best communicate their acceptance. In other words, expect a series of queer, trans and aro microaggressions. There are no depictions or mentions of sexual attraction beyond the words "allosexual" and "bisexual", but there are non-detailed references to Rowan's previous experiences with romance.

Length: 2, 951 words (part one of two).

Note: Posted for @aggressivelyarospec‘s AggressivelyArospectacular 2019.

What is pride merch for if not petty passive-aggression in response to allo folks’ amatonormativity?

Beset by dizzying anxiety, Rowan places a green mug, printed on one side with a five-striped flag, on his desk. Done. He exhales and takes another furtive glance around the poky ten-desk office, but only Shelby sits close and she’s too busy peering at her computer to notice him. There: mug at work! Right where people can see! He grabs his phone, snaps a quick photo to send as proof to Matt and then, before anyone can ask about the mug or Rowan’s behaviour, moves it beside his pen caddy, the handle angled to hide the stripes.

Why does he have to be this scared? Everyone knows he’s trans. Hormones aren’t yet magical enough to give Rowan cis-unquestioned masculinity; coming out felt less damaging than constant misgendering. At the same time, being trans is why he feels like to pass out from nervousness. The initial slew of queries, concerns and clarifications, followed by daily episodes of cissexism, isn’t something anyone should care to repeat!

Trans identity, after the passing of marriage equality, at least possesses the dubious state of being the new conservative-favourite punching bag. Before he sent Damien his “I accept the position, by the way I’m trans” email, few people here would have been ignorant of Rowan’s theoretical existence.

Aromanticism, by contrast, requires more than revelation: it requires conceptualisation.

He thought he was prepared, last time.

Rowan Ross, master of whiteboards and planners, came for his first day armed with a list of resources and print-outs of an article he wrote for his university’s student magazine. He’d written out answers to likely questions and rehearsed them at his mirror. He wasn’t going to have another panic attack when faced with questions he couldn’t answer. He was going to be fine.

Instead, he learnt again that one can’t prepare for all the shapes of cis ignorance.

Hesitating to mention his aromanticism because being out as trans already ramps up the difficulty of his working life shouldn’t be cowardly. Why can’t Matt see that?

He stares at the mug, dizzy. Damien may not notice the striped flag, but Shelby uses anything as an opportunity to provide unneeded reassurances. Melanie has enough enthusiastic, unrestrained curiosity for ten people!

I read that trans men bind their chests. Is it comfortable? Do you do it every day? Are you allowed to wear a bra when you don’t?

Rowan shudders. No. He’s survived her interrogations; can’t he survive this, too? He practiced a short explanatory speech, made an email-ready digital PDF booklet and packed printed versions inside his satchel. He rehearsed his responses to as many provocative and prying questions as possible, including the line I’d rather not answer that. Maybe it won’t be as bad, this time! Maybe they won’t notice immediately, giving him more time to prepare and anticipate. Melanie doesn’t come back until next month; perhaps this mug, so bright and green, will pass unremarked until then.

Does the want to return it to his bag make Matt right?

Rowan touches the handle for luck and wonders if this will go better should someone not Melanie ask first.

***

“Good morning, everyone!” Melanie breezes through the office in an aura of floral-with-vanilla perfume, making a beeline for Rowan’s desk. She’s small, curvy and grandmotherly-but-modern in appearance: coloured slacks and loose floral-print blouses worn with dangling gold pendants and stacks of bangles over freckle-dusted forearms. Aside from her pixie-cut grey hair, she looks to him like a walking Millers advertisement. “Rowan, can you tell me how to put the new logo in my email again? Please? I know you told me last time.”

Rowan doesn’t understand why people who send emails on a daily basis don’t take the time to learn these things, but he’s worked here long enough to accept this lack as a fundamental truth of the universe. He turns to face her, his flag mug held in his right hand. “Do you want the instruction PDF I wrote, or do you want me to just do it for you?”

A few months ago, caught up in a fit of hopefulness inspired by a new SSRI and the less-inspiring reality of being the youngest person in the office, he spent his spare time typing up Rowan Ross’s Ultimate Guide to Basic Office Computing—a guide languishing unread by anyone not Rowan.

“Just fix it for me now.” Melanie beams at him, paying his mug no attention. “Thanks, Rowan!”

What will it take for someone to notice? Pouring his coffee on their shoes? He swallows the dregs, stands and follows Melanie to her computer before setting his mug on her desk, flag facing outwards, to take up her mouse and open her email settings.

To think he worried about someone’s asking questions! Rowan didn’t consider the problem of a lack of interest, but he’s spent the last five weeks drinking from a flag mug without as much as a passing glance.

“You’re a doll, Rowan!” Melanie hesitates; Rowan holds back a sigh. Here it comes. “Wait. Is that offensive, even though there’s male dolls, like Ken? And gay men collect dolls, don’t they? But gay men like feminine things and you don’t when you’re trans-gender, do you? You’re a darling? I know! You’re a treasure.” Melanie grins, as though she didn’t make an easily-overlooked statement into a thing shaded with too many queer microaggressions for one bi trans man to untangle, and grasps his mug. “I’ll get you some more coffee! One sugar, a dash of milk! Thank you so much!”

Her pink-painted nails and beige hands cover the flag, only a small section of black and grey visible at the edge of her pinky finger.

Maybe she’ll notice when she fills the mug.

Maybe she’ll notice when she brings it back to him.

Maybe pigs will fly and she’ll stop placing that too-long pause between “trans” and “gender”, too.

This way, there’s no need to endure alloromantic absurdity or criticism. No suffering the pain of being unable to explain or correct, given how often cis people dismiss even small gender-related requests. He did what Matt demanded; he left the mug on his desk. How is it Rowan’s fault that nobody’s knowledgeable enough to express curiosity? That he forgot to factor in the remarkable cishet tendency to avoid anything suggestive of unknown queerness?

Going ignored, somehow, doesn’t feel like a victory.

***

When Rowan sees a mug online featuring a shield in aromantic colours behind a design of crossed arrows in pride colours for other aromantic-spectrum identities, he snatches one with frayromantic blues. He also buys an unneeded but matching pencil case followed by a journal covered with rows of arrows coloured in aro stripes.

If he needn’t fear curiosity or question, why not pride up his desk? At least he can gulp coffee from a frayro mug emblazoned with an aro shield every time Shelby asks him if he’s found a partner yet.

What is pride merch for if not petty passive-aggression in response to allo folks’ amatonormativity?

A fortnight later, he arranges his mugs on his desk, stashes his decorative paper clip collection in the pencil case and ponders, just for a moment, if anyone’s made a pride-themed whiteboard.

“Rowan!” Damien appears out of nowhere and claps his hand on Rowan’s shoulder. He’s a raw-boned giant of a man with an improbable ability for stealth; Rowan, cursed with a body that reacts to unknown stimuli as though lethal rather than first checking, still can’t keep himself from jumping out of his chair on Damien’s approach. “I’ve got this photo from last night I want for Facebook. Can you crop out an arm from the side for me? I just sent it to you.”

“Sure,” Rowan murmurs, once his heart stops threatening to burst from terror. “I’ll do it right now.”

“Thanks. I’ll get you a coffee.” Damien snatches up the new mug, tiny in his oversized hands. Rowan doesn’t care to imagine how much of Damien’s pay goes to custom tailoring, but his pinstripe suits are the living dapper embodiment of every How to Dress Like a Professional Man guide Rowan has read and failed to implement. “Huh. I didn’t know you were into archery. One sugar, little bit of milk?”

“Yeah. I … uh...” Rowan blinks, struggling to find an answer, but Damien heads for the hallway and the kitchenette they share with the rest of the floor. Archery? Surely none of the arrow designs are realistic enough for any archery enthusiast to regard them as an expression of interest for the sport? Not to mention the stripes?

How do cishets cultivate their air of continued obliviousness? They’ve all seen Rowan’s trans pride phone case and bi pride pin; nobody won’t have seen the rainbow flag in the news. Shouldn’t one of them catch on to the concept of pride flags?

Why complain when their ignorance is easier than their questions?

He shakes his head, opens his emails and finds the photo from yesterday’s event, complete with a stray arm on one side and a half an empty chair on the other. He crops out the arm and the chair before adjusting the contrast and colours, until the photo appears as though only maybe taken on a cheap phone, indoors, by a man with his back to the window.

“Hey, did you know that Rowan’s really into archery?”

Rowan looks up. Damien stands by the door, showing Melanie Rowan’s newest mug.

He should say something before he gets archery gear in the office Secret Santa. He should say something even though they’re on the other side of the room and a lifetime of good manners, parental expectation and disabling anxiety says one doesn’t intrude on someone else’s conversation. What if someone in the office secretly likes archery and asks him questions? But corrections mean doing the one thing Rowan hopes he can continue to avoid, so...

He slides his hands under his legs and inhales slowly in a vain attempt to head off the giddy anxiousness. Does this mistake desperately need fixing? Can’t he wait to see what happens first?

“Archery? How does anyone get into archery?” Melanie shakes her head. “You don’t do it in school. Is it a country thing? Or a rich kid thing?”

“I did. Year nine, I think? And my school wasn’t that fancy. I think kids do more of that stuff, now, than real sport.” Damien shrugs and heads towards Rowan’s computer, setting his mug down on the desk. “You fixed the lighting! I don’t suppose you can make my face less red? It isn’t that red in real life.”

It is, but that’s easier to fix than the burgeoning fear that this archery misconception won’t be a one-off incident.

***

Another awful conversation with his housemates pushes Rowan into getting out his sewing box, despite a Melanie-induced fear that showing himself to be good at a traditionally-female art will result in another expression of cis nonsense. Too many friends still ask why he buys plain T-shirts from the women’s section (better fit) or has lavender-scented shower gel on his shelf in the bathroom (he likes it). He’s a man to the not-completely-cissexist people in his life if he meets a boring, insecure definition of manhood. “Oh, great God of Trans Men,” he mutters, “please pardon me for the crime of unmasculinity, because everyone knows you don’t allow true men to embroider.”

How is cross-stitch not just analogue pixel art, anyway?

He flips off whomever it is Melanie thinks “allows” him to defy gender norms before sketching a pattern, struggling with the shape of the R. His embroidery floss stash doesn’t allow him to perfectly colour-match the greens, but after the best part of a weekend Rowan produces a patch reading “ARO” in aromantic stripes against a background of allo-aro yellow and gold. He needs another hour to stitch it to his satchel beside a cluster of badges (trans pride, pronouns, bisexual flag), but the finish is worth the late night and sore fingertips.

Surely this will tell people that those five stripes mean something more than a liking for archery or the colour green?

He fists his hands, lips trembling. What call does an allo cis gay like Matt have to mock the idea of coming out as aromantic when Rowan, who lost his home, his family and his dog to the mistakes he made in coming out, knows exactly what those words mean? Why did Matt have to say that “someone like Rowan” only put a lousy mug on his desk because he knew nobody will ask? Yes, he owns a collection of anxiety disorder diagnoses, illnesses fairly earnt, a disability unchosen. That doesn’t make him cowardly!

Matt doesn’t emerge from his bedroom before Rowan dashes to catch the train, so he lacks even the questionable satisfaction of seeing his housemate note the large patch on his bag. He’s just left with a mood bouncing between frustration, anger and the quieter, sickening fear that making the patch didn’t challenge Matt’s opinion as much as validate it. Should Rowan have done that? What else can he do?

Why does Matt have to be so damn allo?

By the time he arrives at the office, Rowan focuses just enough to concentrate on the distraction waiting for him in the kitchenette. The walls need painting and the air conditioning smells like mice, but sharing the floor with four other sub-governmental community projects meant everyone pitched in for a decent coffee machine without too many hassles. Damien needs to stop taking terrible work-related selfies, but he does enforce a cleaning rota so Rowan can enjoy avoiding the horrors of instant coffee.

“Aro?”

Groggy annoyance fades into a heart-pounding, palm-sweating, vibrant wakefulness. Rowan wheels to face Melanie; she peers at the satchel hanging off his hip. Matt’s wrong about Rowan. This will prove it!

“Uh, yeah,” he says, fighting to sound casual. “I’m aro.”

There. He said it!

“Oh, like the movie vampire?”

The movie vampire? What vampire? There’s no obviously-aromantic vampire in a well-known movie; someone online would have said so! “I’m sorry?”

“The Twilight movies! You know the ones the teenage girls liked, with the family of glittery, vegetarian vampires and the human girl? And it was supposed to be romantic somehow? My daughter had posters and a quilt cover and T-shirts and Barbie dolls.” Melanie pulls a face, her lips twisting. “But she loved them, and there’s a vampire called Aro.”

Belatedly, he remembers a joke that posts about a minor character used to turn up in aro hashtags. “I suppose? But it isn’t a name when—”

“Damien! Rowan’s called Aro now! Should we hold a meeting telling everyone? Or just send an email around?” Melanie looks out into the hallway dividing the floor into its suites of offices: Damien stands outside their door, his battered phone held to his ear. “I didn’t know trans people were allowed to change names twice! Although I don’t suppose there’s a limit, is there? If I married someone five times, I could change my last name five times, couldn’t I? Is it really that different?”

“It,” Rowan says into the barest break in sentences, “isn’t—”

“Damien! Stop gasbagging about golf or whatever … I swear, that man never listens when you want him. Always on the phone! Damien.” She bustles out into the hallway with the determined stride of a woman on a mission. “Rowan’s Aro now!”

Panic spurs him into running after her. “Melanie!”

“Aro!” Shelby grabs his forearm as Rowan skids into the hallway, her brow furrowed in concern. If Melanie seems like the plump, huggable sort of grandmother, Shelby looks like the muscular, marathon-running grandmother who hits the beach every morning. Salt-coarsened long hair in a single braid, a fashionable black blazer worn over a T-shirt, hiking boots. “Is that European? Don’t worry, we’ll all do our best to remember, and you’re allowed to growl when we don’t. We said there’d be no problem, and we meant it. You’re allowed to growl at us when we make mistakes, okay? Okay, Aro? Promise me that you will correct us!”

The self-appointed protector figure of the office, she was kind during Rowan’s first week. Kind in a way that draws unnecessary attention, given her inability to correct someone else’s misuse of pronouns without crafting a production of hushed voices and pointed nudges—followed by scathing lectures that never happen far enough outside his earshot.

Why are the only options complete stealth or queerness front and centre in a way that never lets him be just a different shape of normal? Where exists a blessed middle ground?

Melanie reaches Damien and stares up at him, waving one hand and tapping the opposite foot, until Damien lowers his phone.

“Uh … thank you, but my name isn’t—”

“You absolutely must correct us.” Shelby squeezes Rowan’s forearm in a firm grip. “We’re not used to all this, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try. Aro. Do you people usually choose unusual names like that? You know, you trans people? Promise me that you’ll correct us. You need to know that we don’t mind in the least, truly we don’t!”

“I’m not—”

“Anyway, how was your weekend? You didn’t stay at home, did you? It worries me that you haven’t found a girl yet. Or a boy!” Shelby clasps his hand between hers, looking into his eyes as though hoping to impress upon him the depth of her sincerity. “You do know, Aro, that any girl—or boy!—will be lucky to date a sweet boy like you, don’t you?”

What does it mean, Rowan wonders in irony-fuelled despair, that returning to Births, Deaths and Marriages now feels like the easiest option?

[dispatchesfrom2020]

2020

Week 45: November 2

This whole week is gonna be a mess so we’re just gonna take it a day or two at a time.

Afghanistan and Austria are hit with terrorist attacks. Militants open fire on the campus of Kabul University, killing 32 people. And, in Vienna, an Austrian man, commits a series of attacks, armed with a machete, handgun and rifle. He kills four and injures 23 others. He hit at a critical moment - as the city prepared for a new COVID curfew, many were enjoying a last pre-lockdown outing in the city’s bars and restaurants. ISIL claim responsibility for both attacks.

Ahead of tomorrow’s elections, Joe Biden is campaigning to shore up votes in Pennsylvania - a state that Democrats badly need to win in order to ease their road to victory in tomorrow’s polls. Trump, meanwhile, has set a course across the United States with stops in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. While predictions have narrowed in the days leading up to the election, Democrats are projected to take the White House, House of Congress and Senate in a clean sweep.

Lady Gaga headlined Biden’s final rally of the election cycle - a drive-in concert in Pittsburgh. She is wearing 10 inch heels in this photo and I’m not fucking kidding - Jim Watson/Getty Images

In the hotly contested state of Texas, Trump supporters surround a Biden-Harris campaign bus outside San Antonio. A large fleet of trucks, most flying Trump flags, veer around the bus, trying to force it off the road. The state has long been considered a Republican stronghold and an important keystone in conservatives’ path to the White House with its 38 electoral votes. But in recent years demographic shifts have put the state into play, especially during the 2018 mid-term election in which sitting Senator Ted Cruz narrowly held-off Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, a Congressman from El Paso. Campaign staff aboard the bus called in a police escort to help them safely reach their destination in Austin, but ultimately cancelled the day’s events citing safety concerns. Republicans have spent the last few years railing against “cancel culture” and “safe spaces” - but, at the same time, will use physical threats and endanger people’s lives to silence their opponents. Trump re-tweeted a video of the incident, saying “I Love Texas” and called the drivers patriots. 

The images of the Trump Train in Texas that rammed a campaign van and tried to stop the Biden-Harris bus all look they were taken on 2000s-era Nokia Sidekicks so, in its stead, here is a photo of Trump supporters blocking a bridge in New York, the weekend before the election - Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

The Supreme Court of Texas denied a motion by Republicans seeking to invalidate 120,000 votes already cast at drive-thru polls in Harris County, a region containing the left-leaning city of Houston. Republicans complain that polling locations were chosen to advantage Democratic voters.

Best I understand it, drive-thru voting in Texas works like this. Drivers motor on up to a line of extremely large tents or an underground parkade and a worker hands them a sanitized, portable voting machine. It’s an extension of curbside voting - which is actually already available at every polling station for voters with disabilities. People unable to enter a polling site - say, because the site is inaccessible - just roll up outside and honk until a pollworker brings them a paper ballot.

And in the sleepy New Hampshire hamlet of Dixville Notch, Biden sweeps the town’s 5 votes. A New Hampshire law allows towns of under 100 people to open their polls at midnight and close them after all voters have cast their ballots. It is one of three villages in the state where voters traditionally head to the polls on Midnight. The second, Millsfield, favoured Trump 16 votes to 5 and the third, Harts Location, cancelled the tradition because of COVID. Their 48 registered voters will have to wait until tomorrow morning, like most of the other voters in the country. These towns are the inspiration for Hartsfield Landing, a fictional town in the West Wing where, as Joshua Lyman describes it, townspeople open the polls at 12:01 and report their results by 12:07, giving the press something to talk about for the next 21 hours before the rest of the country’s results start rolling in.

Trump got bagel’d - Ashley L. Conti/Reuters

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition, Week in Ethereum News, April 19 issue

Here’s the most clicked for the week:

As I always say, the most clicked is determined by what people hadn’t already seen during the week.  

My thought is that the annotated edition tries to give people a more high-level overview.  If I were only reading a few things this week, I would read

Quarterly update from each EF team

Prysmatic launches the Topaz testnet, ready for multi-client testnet

Compound’s decentralized governance launches

Why so many South Americans are into DeFi: “when you believe and know in your heart that nothing is riskier than your government or a bank, any alternative becomes much more enticing”

7 reasons Eth2 will change the blockchain game

The quarterly update from each EF team is pretty down in the weeds, but some of those teams don’t do much communicating. They don’t have the same need to communicate as EF pays salaries, plus some of teams are low-level stuff where the audience is already quite small.  It’s at least worth skimming to get a general idea of what the EF teams are doing though.

Prysmatic launched their new testnet, which isn’t the multi-client testnet™ but is very close.   We should see that in the next few weeks.  The “7 reasons Eth2 changes the game” is certainly an Eth bullish post, but I suspect that the “eth2 skepticism trade” is going to start unwinding and it could have a big impact on the price of ETH.  In fact, I think the price of ETH would likely be higher right now if Eth2 didn’t exist, because crypto fund managers have all turned eth2 into “just a meme” and sold on skepticism.  Meanwhile literally zero Eth wannabes have yet to deliver anything scalable without trading off decentralization - and if you trade off decentralization, then you may as well just use SQL.

I suspect Compound’s governance will prove to be something that many projects copy.  Of course they didn’t come up with it all on their own, they certainly incorporated many elements from others (eg, Maker) but it’s a solid model for web3 apps to follow.

Finally Mariano Conti’s essay on why DeFi.   Contrary to Bitcoin’s “tHe DoLlAr iS aBoUt tO coLaPsE,” DeFi provides an alternative financial system to the folks whose fiat is actually on the verge of collapsing and who don’t want to hold volatile assets like ETH (or an unsustainable memecoin like BTC).  Of course it’s not perfect, and it’s risky but any Argentine has a pretty good sense that DeFi is less risky than their banking system or Argentina’s Peronist Peso Printer.  

That thing goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrr like no other.

Eth1

Geth v1.9.13, with dynamic state snapshots if you use the flag

Nethermind v.1.8.1 – receipts, bodies and state can be synced in parallel. WebSockets and HTTP run on same port

Latest core devs call. Beiko’s notes. Progress and discussion on EIPs for Berlin.

Quilt doc on account abstraction implementation plan

Most of this speaks for itself.  The clients continue to improve while things are being worked on for the next hard fork.  Meanwhile the longer-term stateless Ethereum continues to be worked on.

Eth2

Prysmatic launches the Topaz testnet, ready for multi-client testnet

Chainsafe’s Lodestar client in TypeScript releases initial audit report from Least Authority

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Latest eth2 call, lots of talk of API standardizations. Ben’s notes

Proto’s eth2fastspec, an optimization for transition speed to the spec

An update to add atomicity to cross-shard transfers at EE level

The Lodestar tooling has already proven to be really useful to devs and the code quality is quite high by all accounts.

Ben’s what’s new in eth2 is also a good high-level read, I just assume you already know that.

Layer2

When DeFi meets rollup, how rollup chains will work together

Arguably this could be in the “things you should read this week” above, as it’s a relatively high-level look at how rollups will work together, using Eth as the settlement layer. 

Stuff for developers

Writing your first zk proof with circom and snarkjs from Iden3

Brownie v1.7 – (python-based dev/testing framework). easy CLI github/EthPM package install. And a quick walkthrough of using OpenZeppelin contracts with Brownie

Remix online and desktop IDE v0.10 – more e2e tests, dev node in browser, plugin improvements, publish to IPFS, async/await for script execution

OpenZeppelin test environment v0.1.4

dshackle – Eth API load balancer

Flash mintable asset backed tokens

Upload to IPFS directly from ENS manager with Temporal

How MeTokens personalizes with 3Box Profiles

Loopring launches an API for their dex rollup

Patterns for access control in Solidity

money-legos: tool to build DeFi apps

I’ve been trying to provide more context in the links of the devs section, which means I have less to say here.   

That money-legos quickstarter for DeFi apps seems like it’s built for hackthons.

Security and ERC777 attacks

Sebastian Bürgel finds a bug cancelling the transaction in the Multis UI

Certora on a Synthetix reentrancy bug they found

Slither v0.6.11 – support for Solidity v0.6, auto-generate properties for unit tests and fuzzer

Curve found a vulnerability in the Curve sUSD code. Funds are safe.

Two ERC777 re-entrancy attacks this weekend. ERC777 is widely known to be vulnerable to reentrancy attacks, something ConsenSys Diligence highlighted in the Uniswap audit and on which OpenZepplin published an exploit on last summer

Thus a Uniswap market for imBTC (ERC777) got drained for ~1300 ETH with reentrancy and then lendFme also got drained for $25m USD by the attacker tricking the code into believing more had been deposited than actually had. Peckshield has a solid writeup. The losers are the liquidity providers, and dForce which had the entirety of its liquidity drained.

The dforce/lendfme attacker ended up giving back the money, apparently because he (i’ll use masculine probabalistically) used some front ends without covering his tracks, so he decided it was better to quit while still ahead.

ERC20 has some problems as a token standard, but auditors are generally quite skeptical of ERC777.  Could we see a better standard someday? We certainly could, but it seems unlikely to be 777.

Ecosystem

Quarterly update from each EF team

What is still lacking to replace WeChat with web3?

Transaction fees > uncle rewards for miners in March 2020. Obviously Black Thursday’s transaction fee spike contributed to this

Replacing all the different components to make a web3 WeChat is hard.  Even stuff like pictures is quite complicated.

Enterprise

EY releases OpsChain, v4, new SaaS model for public/private chains

Study of key management systems for enterprise

How the Baseline Protocol synchronizes between different systems of record

Using Baseline Protocol for medical tests

John Wolpert’s “mainnet as middleware” for a way of synchronizing different databases.   It’s not quite “global settlement layer” but it basically is settlement but without the finance aspect. 

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Compound’s decentralized governance launches

EIP2585: Minimal Native Meta Transaction Forwarder

Austin Williams mentions this 2002 Microsoft Research paper on Sybil resistance

Sybil resistance is quite hard, as we’ve found out with some Gitocin grants issues.  I don’t think anyone is surprised by the issues, it’s obviously not a 100% onchain trustless system yet.

Application layer

A guide to the shutdown of Maker’s SAI

Play short-deck hold’em with Phil Ivey is the new VirtuePoker promo

Ox opens the waitlist for Matcha, a “better way to swap tokens”

First RocketDAO loan using an ENS name as collateral

DeFi Saver’s vault protection product Automation v2 with flash loans and Maker’s next price

How MetaCoin is thinking about Nikolai’s Reflex Bonds idea for a stablecoin without pegs

dYdX crosses 1billion USD in originated loans

AtStake, an Eth-based competitor to OpenBazaar. Also: help test OpenBazaar with Eth

A writeup of PieDAO’s managed Balancer pools

AtomicLoans lets you lock up BTC for a Dai/USDC loan. (Get ~9% by lending your Dai/USDC)

Gnosis launches a dex protocol with ring trades in batch auctions every 5 mins. First app on the protocol is dxDAO’s Mesa, available through mesa.eth

Do dexes count as DeFi?  I’ll count them as a yes for my weekly metric, which - now that I’ve counted - is at 9/11.  

I didn’t count VirtuePoker as DeFi but I’ve seen some persuasive arguments that gambling has often historically served as a (rather inefficient) method of capital formation. 

It’s also interesting to see dexes evolve.  Exchange is so fundamental to web3 that I think it’s quite possible that we see a segmented market in the long-term, despite the fact that liquidity is a great barrier to entry.  There are simply niches that can be best served by certain tradeoffs, and Gnosis’s batched auction ring trades is an interesting look.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Another flippening: value transfer on Ethereum exceeds Bitcoin

7 reasons Eth2 will change the blockchain game

Swiss Financial Stability Board recommends heavy stablecoin regulation in response to G20 call for stablecoin comments

Coindesk reports that China’s Blockchain Service Network will incorporate Ethereum

Canada’s regulatory guidance for crypto exchanges

Bullionix: mint gold coin NFTs using DGX

HashCash v2 – personal token spam protection with auto-decreasing bond

me tokens, synthetic labor personal tokens on a bonding curve integrated with Moloch/Aragon from Chris Robison. Unfortunately I can’t read the blog post because Medium censored it.

DeFi Market Cap, neat way to compare what pools are popular inside of DeFi

Virtual gold coins is a pretty interesting bundle.  

Also cool to see some folks experimenting with personal tokens.  Until 2017 got out of control, the hope was to see more experiments (and no scams, ahem!) at small scale, rather than “here’s $100m in ETH, now it’s 1 billion in ETH....now you’re panic selling the bottom.”   Capital allocation in decentralized ecosystems has not been great.

General

MyCrypto and PhishFort get 49 malicious Chrome extensions removed

Etherscan’s ETHProtect, taint inference analysis

Shapeshift buys Portis, and will rebrand it as Shapeshift

Binance is planning a centralized (DPoS) EVM chain

SheFi, a DeFi education program aimed at women

Why so many South Americans are into DeFi: “when you believe and know in your heart that nothing is riskier than your government or a bank, any alternative becomes much more enticing”

The Eth logo made of Venezuelan bolivars

The Eth logo was made up of 3.71 million bolivars, so 0.16 ETH, or under $30 USD.  A sad commentary for a country that briefly had the same standard of living as the United States just a couple decades before I was born.  

Ultimately it is hard to retain the fruits of your labor if poor public policy choices are made by voters, and none was worse than electing an authoritarian dictator.

Finally, you might notice that below I added the sponsor and calendar section to the annotated edition for the first time.  

This newsletter is made possible by ConsenSys

I own 100% Week In Ethereum News. Editorial control has always been me.

If you’re wondering “why didn’t my post make it into Week in Ethereum News,” then here’s a hint: don’t email me. Do put it on Reddit.

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

Apr 21-23 – EY Global Blockchain Virtual Summit

Apr 24 – EthGlobal’s HackMoney virtual hackathon starts

Apr 24-26 – EthTurin

Apr 29-30 – SoliditySummit (Berlin)

May 8-9 – Ethereal Summit (NYC)

May 22-31 – Ethereum Madrid public health virtual hackathon

June 17 – EthBarcelona R&D workshop

Did you get forwarded this newsletter?  Sign up to receive it weekly

[fossadeileonixv]

Is Our Season Over Already?

So, our season hasn’t gotten off to the thunderous start we hoped, expected,needed and everyone is rightly pissed but just how bad is it? Are we right to be down in the dumps or are we being stereotypical overly dramatic calcio fans? Read on and find out....

So MLisi gave us breakdown of why last season wasnt all Rino’s fault and have to grudgingly agree to a point, it was just a bit of a gut punch to see us coast up to the 4th spot only to watch it sail away from us into the horizon. I still hold however that Rino shares a fair portion of the blame but also have to admit that had Rino got us a CL spot, he would have overachieved considering his own ability and the squad he had.  So how do we look this new season?

Coach

My mantra has loooong been that Milan need a coach with proven experience of reaching the top spots of a league repeatedly with some European competition experience being a must also. This was due not only to “taking us back to where we belong” but because I’m damned paranoid that the current owners will asset strip us in a fire sale and dump us into the lowest tiers of Calcio never to be seen or heard from again as a club if we need constant propping up or “Year Zeros”. Well, the last coach who did anything of significance with Milan was, well.......Allegri, who by all intent & purposes never took his previous club (Cagliari) anywhere near the summit of anything (unless you count a day trip to the Alps?) much less entertain the fans with showdowns in Europe. Of course, one of the reasons he landed the job was simply that he repeatedly overachieved with next to no resources at Cagliari and remembering where we were as a club back then (post 2007 CL hang over with a fast crumbling squad) well, you can see why the B&G Show would have been salivating at the idea of signing him.

Giampaolo

So doesnt that mean GMP qualifies under the same criteria? Well, maybe. Even though we could argue someone like Rino overachieved the one glaring deficiency was that he was repeatedly OUTCOACHED by wilier coaches who had been around the block far many more times than Rino. Now GMP might qualify due in part to his experience at several levels and various positions he’s held but still dont see him as the coach we need, hell, he aint even “half an Allegri” if I’m honest. The idea that GMP now suddenly needs to scrap his plans and go back to the drawing board I find ridiculous, he’s obviously not the diligent student of football philosophy that we had been led to believe. Either he gets the players he needs for his favoured formation or we get to watch him fumble with a patchwork of a squad for the rest of the season akin to a 13 year old virgin excitedly & unsuccessfully trying to undo a bra strap with one hand. As much as we know the deficiencies of our squad, GMP has in one simple game shown just how much of a factor a coach and his formation choices can alleviate or exacerbate a squad’s failings, talking of squad.....

Backline

So Donna & Roma are untouchable, the main issue for me is whether we have to watch Musa continue to regress or can Duerte hit the ground running? If not we need to Caldara to have some kind of breakout season! I’m expecting Calabria to find form with regular game time and with Conti pretty much back with Hernandez alongside him it should hopefully mean our RRod “problem” wont be something to worry about this season. So I’m ok with the backline.

Midfield

F##k, how hard is it, literally make up ANY combo of players utilising ONLY Bennacer, Biglia, Jack, Kessie, Paq, with guys like Borini & Cast as substitute utility players. Mlisi rightly flagged the mid as an issue in the season preview and looks like the stank of this problem is here to linger due to us not having shifted Suso or Hakan. We still have a misfield but worry that GMP might just amplify things with retarded choices. Make no mistake folks, just who gets to be in the mid and HOW the mid is employed this season is easily the biggest problem facing GMP right now.

Fowards

I’m happy with PTek9 alongside Silva/Leao as SS but for me this only really works if we dynamic players such as Paq or Jack who both want to attack directly and take play to the opponent helping pull the strings and initiate attacks. We stifle our own attack trying to let Suso & Hakan conduct the play IT. CLEARLY. DOESNT. WORK. and the club should already have noted this and advised GMP not to even bother trying.

In Summary

Our squad sure as hell aint the worst, not by a long shot. We can only hope that last week was GMP exposing the clubs decision not to punt some of the dregs like Suso & Hakan and maybe publicly airing that he was now going to do things his way from now on?? All I know was that his comments have caused alot of confusion and anger. I’m praying that he gets one or two last minute additions to the squad that suit him and that he figures out quickly how he’s using them otherwise he’s out at Xmas and we will have a caretaker manager from the Primavera (Giunti) which sees us limp to a 10th place finish. It’s not the end but I think along with Europe we are also sitting out of the league unless GMP brainstorms a solution!

AviA Out!

PS: I Love You 3000! :D

[onehundredandten-percent]

Luke Beveridge opens up on life, family, football and the wisdom of Willy Wonka

Mark Robinson, Herald Sun

February 23, 2017

WESTERN Bulldogs premiership coach Luke Beveridge sits down with Mark Robinson to talk life, family, footy and the wisdom of Willy Wonka.

Mark Robinson: I’m going to try discover the mystique of Luke Beveridge. Will I find what I’m looking for?

Luke Beveridge: I don’t think so. What you see is what you get with me.

MR : Do you laugh when people say “there’s something about Luke Beveridge”?

LB: I don’t know if I laugh, but I feel very fortunate because the reason why people ask that question is, as a coach, I’ve been fortunate to have success. I do wonder at times, with all the sliding doors along the way, why I’m so blessed. When those doors slide, a lot of times as a coach they have slid in my favour and our favour wherever I’ve been. Maybe I’m in the right place at the right time all the time.

MR: It’s got to be more than fortunate to be in the right place, right time as many times as you have been.

LB: People talk a lot about leadership. As a coach, we are a manager of people as much as a coach and I do that with a pretty strong conscience. Whether you’re a manager or a worker at the bottom of the hierarchy, if you do everything with a strong conscience and you influence other people, I think that becomes contagious and I think it reaches critical mass at a point where you can be a successful outfit. And I think that’s happened. I’ve been fortunate to work with people who have already got that base level of conscientiousness and we’ve worked together well. That’s the root of it all. How you implement that working environment is a challenge.

MR: Everyone asks about the influence your dad John (long-time St Kilda recruiter) had on your life. But what influence did your mum, Rosa, have on you?

LB: More than anyone else in my life. She taught me unconditional love. That it doesn’t matter what other people do who are close to you, as long as you love them. And if you want to nurture that, then you’ve got to think before you speak and think before you act. You know, growing up, we didn’t have a lot but what we did have was her love and guidance. She’s a strong lady, she was the rock.

MR: How many in the family?

LB: Four kids. I’m third in line. Yeah, Dad was interesting. I always think, for him, he had two kids too many. He could cope with two, three was too many and four tipped him over the edge. There was a real discipline in the way he fathered and that was important for me, but he had low tolerance.

MR: Are you intolerant?

LB: No. I’m the opposite. I probably got it from Mum.

MR: How much has that helped with your ability to be patient with people, find time for people and clearly have an ability to get in contact with a person’s soul, if that’s the right word?

LB: I have a genuine care and love for people. When I meet someone, I like them before anything. The only reason I would dislike someone is if they do something to me or against me unsolicited, where I haven’t deserved it and they had no right to do it. Then I’m probably like an elephant with a thorn in its foot, I remember it for a long time. But I start from a base level that I like you and you have to do something pretty wrong not to.

MR: You had a rage in you as a young bloke, an aggressive streak and it led to street fights. Did part of your character push you to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves?

LB: At the time it was that, but to put it simply, I try to stand up for what’s right. There was a time when I had to be physical a few times, actually quite a few times growing up. Normally it’s verbally these days and I hope that I never had to do that again. We grew up in what you consider a pretty docile suburb in East Bentleigh, but at the time there was a lot going on in the streets. There was even a drug culture around the place. There was a great rivalry amongst kids at different schools, different junior clubs and at times that manifested into some physical confrontation.

MR: Do you look back and think, ‘Gee I’m a role model now, that was not good’. Or do you look back and think you were a role model for sticking up for people who couldn’t stick up for themselves?

LB: I don’t regret it. Part of the time was sticking up for other people, but quite a few times it was just sticking up for me. I didn’t instigate things. There was tension, some friction and I’m not sure what it was borne out of. But there were confrontations where I had to stand my ground.

MR: Marcus Bontemeplli said recently you were a funny man. He said the coach thought he was funny, but that you were actually “awkward funny’. True?

LB: (Laughs). Am I funny? I’ve got a strong sense of humour. I love a gag. Actually we’ve got comedian Luke Heggie coming to a function shortly. I recently saw Luke on Foxtel and I thought he was really funny. And Peter Gordon asked me the other day have I got any recommendations and I said why don’t you try Luke Heggie, I reckon he would sensational. We have an unofficial season launch at the Gordons and Luke will be there and it’s all on me.

MR: From watching a late-night show on Foxtel.

LB: Yep. I ran out of jokes about the first six weeks of my tenure at the Dogs, so I have to rely on the boys to tell a gag here and there. Now I’ve become a joke critic and then that becomes funny at times. That’s maybe the awkwardness.

MR: You tell jokes to the players minutes before they leave the rooms to play don’t you?

LB: I lighten the mood at times. We all function in different ways and this new generation seems to function better with the edge off a little bit and you have to find a way to do that. I spend about 15 minutes with the players icing what our plans are for the day and we might start off with a lighter moment. Not always, but pretty regularly.

MR: And you once watched Will Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on a Friday night and incorporated it into your speech to the players the next day?

LB: You find yourself up late watching late-night movies. I don’t go to bed early, I rarely go to bed before midnight. What I’ll do at times is work and I might have the telly on.

MR: You like watching movies?

LB: I love watching movies.

MR: And you watched Willy Wonka and used it in the pre-match the next day?

LB: I did … it was about honesty.

MR: When Charlie gave back the gobstopper and no one knew?

LB: No, Slugworth knew.

MR: So, you asked who was going to be honest that day?

LB: It wasn’t a question, more validation. We had honesty in the room. Depending on how emotional you are and your range, that little scene in the movie is one of the most heart-wrenching moments I’ve ever seen on TV. It was such fantasy, such a fiction and I remember as a kid that it had an affect on me. When I think of our players and how honest they’ve been and are — and I don’t talk about myself as a storyteller — but when you start to tell the story, you’ve got to relate it to what you’re doing and your own group. Ultimately, the premise of that story was that we have a core of honesty and that’s why we’re on the right track.

MR: Clearly you’re an arm around a player far more than you are putting a player in a headlock to get your message across.

LB: I think it relates to the choices you make as a coach and as a decision-maker around players’ futures. Ultimately, they’re going to finish up in the game or not get a game and we make a choice whether or not we’re prepared to get close to them, because at some point we’re going to have to have a hard conversation. Will it be easier to have a hard conversation if you’ve distanced yourself from them? In many ways yes because you don’t feel like you’ve got that connection. I made the choice very early on, and it’s the way I am and it started at St Bede’s, that I would be close to my players. It’s up to them about how close they want to feel to me, but I feel close to them.

MR: How do you find time for so many individuals in your life?

LB: A big part of it is just staying out of their hair. A big part is not doing anything. They don’t want - I don’t believe - an overbearing personality. I’m not taking them out for coffee and having lunch with them every second day. I don’t do that. It’s just the connection when you see each other and the consistency in the your behaviour, that’s all you need. So, it doesn’t really have to be time consuming.

MR: An hour after you were on stage on Grand Final night singing “Western Bulldogs … at the weekend” with your great mates, I walked out with you and despite the Bulldogs winning their first flag since ‘54, all you wanted to talk about was our good mate Bruno Conti, who was the VAFA pres when St Bede’s won the three flags. I thought that was an example of you finding time for a person, which you are known for.

LB: I don’t see myself as any different to anyone else. People have asked have I refocused on this year, is there going to be a premiership hangover? But there’s internal and external. Internally, we’re working for the footy club and we’re on a new journey again. But when you and I were walking down Southbank that night, I was external. We were talking about life and who we knew and six degrees of separation and I love that sort of stuff. The only time it gets hard for me is if there’s a lot of people who need your time and I just haven’t got the time. But I love catching up with people talking about people, in this case Bruno.

MR: Do you remember Grand Final day vividly from the moment you woke up to the moment you hit the sack?

LB: I wouldn’t say vividly. My memory of most days isn’t that vivid. I’ve spoken to others and they don’t agree in their own world, but the game went fast. It was like time never stood still. It ticked by so quickly. That last seven minutes when we started to get a gap was the only time - and there was no respite - but it was the only time you could start to process what was actually happening.

MR: You told the players in the pre-game on Grand Final day to “bring their instruments”. What was the messaging there?

LB: It was two things. I related a story from when I worked for an auctioneer years ago, a receivership-liquidation house, which wasn’t always nice. When they knocked down the Southern Cross Hotel, the auction house I was working at pulled out a lot of the furniture they were going to sell. And the hotel still had the stars and the names on the doors from when the Beatles stayed (in 1964). All of them, John, Paul, Ringo and George. I remember thinking, I should buy one of these doors. And, to the players, I was talking about the Grand Final parade and there were so many people and they were there to see us. And as they walked up the race on Grand Final day, I said there’s going to be 100,000 people there ready to see them. And the only way they were going to perform and be creative is if they thought about their strengths, which is their instruments, and they needed to being them.

MR: And the players were the Beatles?

LB: The Beatles did go on some sort of parade down Melbourne’s streets and because it was foreign territory for me - I had never been on a Grand Final parade - I have to say I felt special. I was blown away. Because the Swans colours blended into ours, it was like everyone there was a Western Bulldogs sorority and fraternity. When we saw the masses down Wellington Parade to the MCG it was incredible. I told the players I imagined they probably felt like the Beatles. We virtually felt, in a sense, like rock stars because of all the support. What was there, 200,000 people? Amazing.

IN part two of Mark Robinson’s wide-ranging chat with Luke Beveridge, the Bulldogs’ premiership coach talks Brendan McCartney, season 2017, Donald Trump and alien life.

Mark Robinson: Does your ability to coach the technical side of football get underplayed because of your ability to get in the heads of players collectively and individually?

Luke Beveridge: I’m not sure if it gets underplayed. I read some commentary where people are quite complimentary about how we play. The 18-man defence and the 18-man offence and a total change in stoppage structure is your base point there. That’s the core of what we do. The emotional hooks have to complement that, but it’s only a small percentage. But I believe it’s important. It’s a hard part of coaching the game because it’s a challenge to stay original.

MR: Because those “hooks” can be accused of being gimmicks sometimes.

LB: Absolutely. You can tip it over the edge and maybe the gobstopper (story) was. I try not to take too big a risk in that regard. But you can’t under sell what held us in good stead last year. Even as lower scoring as we were, and I’m not a big quantitative guy, I’m all about the subjective side, but black and white we were second in inside 50 differential in the competition, which is a great indicator you’ve got method.

MR: But 15th on differential for scoring once inside 50.

LB: I know we had problems, but it’s too simple to say the Bulldogs can’t score. We used to scratch our heads, the players did too, and we tried not to show too much of it because it was frustrating. Just opportunity after opportunity missed when they should’ve been a soda goal. Getting back to your original question, the core of what we do we have a really firm hold of and the underpinning or overlaying of emotion is only small part, but a critical part. I think you’ve got to find a way to find inspiration from within and if you can’t, you’re going to find it hard to be a successful outfit. And we’ve found a way to do that pretty quickly.

Some of those internal inspirations came through wins, like the Sydney win in 2015, because that instils belief and it’s part of the storyline. And our camps have been quite crucial in our process, some of our team building has been a real catalyst for our momentum. Our players were able to establish things that are quite powerful that are unique to us which will go beyond 2017.

MR: You trust people until the trust is broken, yeah?

LB: I give people chances. There’s trust and there’s honesty. You can still make mistakes, we all do, but it’s when they are intentionally going against the greater good, you start to question.

MR: That’s a segue. Did the Michael Talia situation, where there was investigation into passing on of information from brother to brother, did that hurt your trust in a) Michael Talia and b) the AFL?

LB: (Pause) … I’d rather not go there. I don’t want to drum that part up again.

MR : By your answer, we got the answer anyway.

LB: Yeah. It was a significant learning curve for me. New to my role, new to my …

MR: Dealings with the AFL?

LB: Yep.

MR: Are you able to park that because if you don’t it will eat away at you?

LB: Yeah. I understand the landscape. I don’t agree with it sometimes. City Hall is an enormously powerful regulator and I understand that.

MR: Are you a politically curious person?

LB: No. I’d rather attach myself to leaders than political parties and out of great leaders come good policies. But I understand the politics of administration because I’ve worked for government agencies. I’ve seen it right in my face.

MR: That the brand is more important that everything?

LB: Yeah, there’s a bit of that. It’s also the power. The hierarchy of an organisation and whether or not there are controls in place in decision-making is always interesting to me. Where do they actually get made? You don’t understand at times the drivers behind certain change.

MR: You’re biting your tongue here aren’t you?

LB: Yeah. There’s too many others things that happened that are not related to what happened at the end of 2015 with us. Look at the rule changes. The third-up change. The only valid reason for change is it’s easier for the umpires to umpire the game. So many of us are still scratching our heads. But we find new ways to evolve.

MR: Tim Watson said you are potentially the greatest coach the game has produced. Did you hear that? How do you respond to that?

LB: Tim Watson said that? He’s put the mozz on me hasn’t he.

MR: You’ve coached for two years.

LB: I like to include my amateur days. It’s 10 years I’ve been coaching.

MR: And how many premierships again?

LB: Three at St Bede’s, one at Collingwood, two at Hawthorn and now one at the Dogs. Seven out of nine years … 2011, I was with amateur rep teams. As I said, I’ve been fortunate.

MR: Do you know Brendan McCartney very well?

LB: No. But I’ve met Brendan.

MR: Do you like it, agree with it, when it is said McCartney instilled a brand of football which helped the Dogs win the flag. Do you give him any credit?

LB: It’s interesting isn’t it that everyone wants to assign credit … as long as we don’t dilute the credit Joel Corey and Rohan Smith and Daniel Giansiracusa and all of our other people should get. There’s only 18 players left from 2014, but I think if you ask the players, Brendan would’ve had some positive influence. How you quantify that, I don’t know.

MR: Are you annoyed I asked that question?

LB: Not at all. I have great respect for Brendan, especially his Geelong days. A lot of Geelong players have been quite vocal about his impact on them. But there’s been so much change at our club, but ultimately you can’t be the best team in the competition if you’re not good at contested footy.

MR: Which was a strength of McCartney’s. And his stoppage beliefs.

LB: Were different to mine. The numbers game, very different.

MR : The outnumber?

LB: I’d rather not go into detail but you can safely say our whole stoppage structure changed at the end of 2014. That doesn’t mean your intent around the footy changes and it doesn’t mean at times you don’t put numbers through various mechanisms. But I think one of the critical choices coaches make is how many forwards they want forward of the stoppage and that’s a significant thing we changed with us.

MR: This might be simplistic, but more an offensive system.

LB: It gave us more a chance to score, yes.

MR: You won the flag, you went to America with the family — Dana and the two boys Kye, 18, and Noah, 16. Were you able to shut out footy?

LB: Yes. We went to New York. We were very fortunate to go there the year before, but there just wasn’t enough time to get around the Big Apple. We walked everywhere. The boys love NBA so we saw a bit of basketball, saw the Jets play the Bills on New Year’s Day, saw the Rangers - which is my team - beat the Ottawa Senators on the ice and the Rangers are Bulldogs colours. And we saw a couple of plays on Broadway.

MR: Recognised?

LB: It was funny. You’d have your beanie on and you’d get a tap on the shoulder and they say, ‘G’day, go Doggies’. It would’ve happened three or four times, say, walking down Seventh Ave. It was amazing. I loved it. And you’d stop for a chat and most often they weren’t Bulldogs supporters, they just loved the fact the Dogs won.

MR: On to football. What changes? How much does Cloke and Crameri change it up? Bob’s back. What have you changed, if anything?

LB: Initially you do your own SWAT analysis. What are your strengths, where can we improve, where are the opportunities, what are the threats and the opportunities is a big one for us. With the change in personnel, with Stu and Clokey and everyone being a year older.

MR: It might fix up that inside 50 differential.

LB: Who knows. I said a long time ago it will be the last piece of the puzzle. Strangely, in that last month we were able to be more efficient. This year, we see what the opportunities are. We’ve trained a certain way to be able to play the way that we do and we feel we’ve done some good work there. If you ask about our core method or core style, we feel we haven’t taken that to where it can go. And with Bob back, Matty Suckling back in the fold, it gives us options, gives us even more versatility.

MR: How important is versatility?

LB: Critical. We started last year with all those high defenders and at one point we didn’t have JJ, Suckers, Bob, so we had to change what we did. The low tide mark last year was probably that game against Geelong where they beat us down there. We played pretty good footy. Jack Macrae and Tom Liberatore had the responsibility of the main two Cats players and were sensational before they got injured. When we dropped that game, having lost Mitch Wallis and Jack Redpath the week before, and then losing Macrae and Libba that day, and knowing we were playing the Kangaroos the next week with our midfield so depleted and knowing they were going to go after Marcus Bontempelli … how we stood up for ourselves remained to be seen. That win against the Kangaroos was probably the high tide mark of the year to get us back on track.

MR: And the rest became history.

MR : Favourite movie?

LB: The Outsiders. Have you read the book? Susan Hinton, a 17-year-old wrote that book. Just a great story. It probably relates to the question you asked me about when I was young and confrontation. Just that socio-economic side of it. The Greasers and Socs.

MR : Favourite animated movie?

LB: Toy Story.

MR: Do you believe aliens exist?

LB: Alien life (yes). I don’t know in what form. All you need is water.

MR: Donald Trump?

LB: I’m concerned.

MR: Dinner with five people?

LB: Mark Occhilupo, my favourite surfer as a kid. Nelson Mandela.

MR: I would’ve thought being a leader you’d opt for leaders.

LB: Mine’s more heroes. Ben Roberts-Smith VC, Cathy Freeman … and my mum.

MR: Scared of dying?

LB: Not scared, but a long, long way from being ready.

MR: Skate-boarding or surfing?

LB: Surfing.

MR: Favourite animal?

LB: Lion.

MR: Smack children, yes or no.

LB: Preferably no.

MR: If you were reborn would do anything different.

LB: I’m happy, but there’s definitely things I would do differently. I wasn’t a great player, but as much as I survived, there are things I could’ve done to be a better player.

MR: If you died tomorrow, what would you regret not doing?

LB: There’s worldly things I want to do. I want to see the world. And I want to be a bit more charitable. In many ways it can be difficult because you’re seen as someone who can help with different causes, but you’re time poor, so you can’t do a lot. I think I’d like to do more.

MR: What makes you smile other than your bad jokes?

LB: Lots of things. I’m generally a happy person. Kids make me smile. My family. Mates who I grew up make me smile.

MR: If you had a year to live, what would you do?

LB: Spend as much time as I could with Dana, Kye and Noah. I would stop coaching.

MR: If you won $20 million tonight on Tattslotto, would you stop coaching?

LB: No. Because I’d let too many people down. I love the job and I love the connection I now have with the club that I didn’t have previously. And all the people who follow it and who work in the club. I have too much responsibility to walk away from that.

MR: What scares you?

LB: I’m not big on — and it’s ironic and sad right now — but light aircraft. Just those high-risk situations where you’ve got no control of and which can result in death. Sometimes if I’m sitting on the Westgate and it’s full of cars and trucks and it’s all banked up, I’m paranoid the bridge is going to fall down because of the weight. I’ve got no control over that. I lose faith in the bridge.

MR: Do you drink milk out of the carton?

LB: No.

MR: Happiest childhood memory?

LB: Holidays in Cronulla. Every year we’d stay three weeks and that’s where I first started surfing.

MR: What movie did you last cry watching.

LB: I cry all the time in movies. Just the other night … it was Balboa, which was Rocky 6 or 7. Don’t you love that monologue in that movie _ “Sometimes it’s not how hard you’re hit, it’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.’’ It’s an amazing monologue.

MR: Have you used it?

LB: No, you can’t use it. It’s Rocky’s. And it’s one of the best ever.

[oldguardaudio]

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rush-limbaugh @ Old Guard Audio

Mar 21, 2017

  RUSH: Floyd in Orlando, hey, we’re up to phones and it’s your turn. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Well, pretty good, Rush. I’m a longtime fan of yours. This is the first time I’ve gotten through.

RUSH: Well, I thank you very much and sincerely for that.

CALLER: I used to always go to lunch a 12:05 just so I could listen to your show.

RUSH: Man, I’m blown away. I appreciate that.

CALLER: My question was, if Trump and the Russians colluded in the election, then how did all the Republican senators and congressmen and governors win as well?

RUSH: Well, the Russian hacking was nationwide, they hacked into all the states and they did everything. They were in full anti-Democrat mode. I mean, once you start hacking, you can’t stop.

CALLER: (laughing) Yeah. I guess it’s a popular thing.

RUSH: It’s actually a great question. I’m answering facetiously, of course, ’cause it is a great question. Okay, if Trump won because the Russians and Trump colluded to beat Hillary, how did the Democrats also end up losing in all of these states? The Democrats have less power, in terms of holding elective seats, in Washington than they’ve had since the 1920s. Man, these Russians are good. We’ve gotta learn how they did this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, based on the brilliant comments of our previous caller, if the Russians hacked the election in order to damage Hillary, how do they explain all the Republican wins in the Senate and the House and all of the states? It’s a great question. There’s a story back on I think it was the 16th, five days ago, by guy named Brian Kennedy, Real Clear Politics. And he addressed the literal substance of the claim that the Russians wanted Trump to be president as opposed to Hillary.

And his point, that if the Russians were actually picking a president that they would prefer, the last person they would choose is Trump. And here’s a portion of his piece. He said: Never in the last 50 years have the Democrats believed that the Soviets and the Russians are even capable of doing bad things to the United States. Let me expand on that. I realize many of you are alternately new to the program or young and really don’t remember the history of the Cold War, United States versus the Soviet Union.

Your experience is with the Russians and Putin, but going back to the sixties, seventies, eighties, Cold War era where the Russians were the Soviets, the Soviet Union and Soviet expansionism, worldwide communism was the objective, you may not have any perspective on it. But back in those days, the Democrat Party was the biggest friend the Soviet Union had in the United States. And I’ll give you just one example, although there are countless.

The Soviets were attempting to establish a client state, Nicaragua, and they had their Soviet-sponsored communist leader there, a guy by the name of Daniel Ortega. And there were opponents in Nicaragua called the Contras. They were the modern equivalent of freedom fighters. They were attempting to prevent their country from going communist. Nobody in their right mind wanted communism anywhere. People died, walls were built to keep people in. There was no liberty. There were political prisons. It was poverty stricken.

No matter where you found communism, you found people living in poverty, living in fear, living with no liberty or freedom whatsoever. The biggest friend that Daniel Ortega had in his effort to establish a Soviet client state was the Democrat Party, and particularly in the House of Representatives. But it had a share of Senators too.

Now, one of the leaders of the House back then was a guy named Jones, and he was from Oklahoma, Democrat. He went on to run the American Stock Exchange in Chicago. I think his name was James Jones, but I don’t want to confuse him with Jim Jones of that cult that drank the purple Kool-Aid on their way to the mother ship. This guy and Fort Worthless Jim Wright, congressman from Texas, a guy named George, California guy. Keep forgetting his name now. But these people were all supportive of the Soviets and of Ortega.

Daniel Ortega would come to the United States and be escorted around Manhattan on a shopping spree by the trio Peter, Paul, and Mary. I remember a photo of Daniel Ortega being walked into a department store to buy sunglasses by Peter, Paul, and Mary. He was a popular figure much like Che Guevara was or Fidel Castro. And Reagan was supporting the Contras and doing everything he could to oppose the establishment of a Soviet client state in our hemisphere in Nicaragua.

Well, the short version of the story is that Ortega, after surviving a vote in Congress to defund the Contras, flew off to the Soviet Union one day. After a big win in Congress for him, he flew off to the Soviet Union trying to get $500 million to bring back, and the Democrats wrote him letters saying, “Don’t embarrass us like this anymore. You don’t let us vote for you and then immediately run off and palsy-wowsy with the Soviets.”

They were embarrassed. They were profoundly angry. George Miller was the guy from California. They sent Miller, John Kerry, a bunch of guys went down there to tell Ortega to clam it up, to hide their support for his communist state. So Mr. Kennedy here is right on the money. Never in the last 50 years have the Democrats believed that the Soviets or the Russians were even capable of doing bad things to the U.S.

The U.S. deserved it. The U.S. deserved what we got. The Soviet Union was the model of the future if they just could have gotten it right. It was gonna be utopia, equality, fairness, sameness and all of that. So given that the Democrat Party has no history of disliking the Soviet Union, the Democrat Party has no history of opposing the Soviet Union or Russia, “We are being asked now to believe that the Russians wished to influence a U.S. presidential election. This master stroke of statecraft by Putin was designed, however, to bring to power a man, Donald J. Trump, who has pledged to rebuild the United States militarily and economically.

“Trump has detailed his intent to build a national missile defense, modernize our strategic arsenal to match that of Russia and China, ensure our ability to dominate the high seas … guarantee our ability to project power with an improved air force, and have an intelligence and cyber capability second to none.” How in the world does that help the Russians?

Donald Trump wants to modernize the American military, grow the American military, make it an all-powerful defensive and offensive force. This is not what Putin wants. This is not what Putin would endorse.

“By contrast, Hillary Clinton, following the policies of Barack Obama, stated she would, by not building missile defenses … continue the policy of vulnerability to Russian, Chinese, and Iranian ballistic missiles; delay the upkeep and modernization of our nuclear weaponry; and, pursue a reduction of our conventional military forces.” She would gut the military. “On traditional strategic grounds, it defies logic that Putin would have preferred Trump to Clinton.”

In any normal day Hillary Clinton would have been a godsend to Putin. Somebody who thinks the United States military’s too big, has too much outreach, is too powerful, somebody who believes the United States has been the problem in the world and owes the world deference and apologies here and there, that would be right up Putin’s alley, somebody that’s gonna continue to dismantle and transform the United States away from superpower status. That’s what Putin would want.

Instead, we are led to believe that Vladimir Putin wants a guy who is a bigger strongman than even he is? And I thought that was well stated. Again, that’s Brian Kennedy, Real Clear Politics.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Gary driving through Idaho. Great to have you on the program, sir. How you doing?

CALLER: How you doing, Rush. Man, it’s been so long I’ve been trying to attempt to get in to you for years, ever since the beginning. I’m from Roseville, California.

RUSH: Roseville, California! Well, welcome. It’s great to have you here. What’s up?

CALLER: My point is, you know, I can remember when campaigning and, you know, in our natural elections it used to be a lot more wholesome and traditional, and, you know, life itself has become less wholesome and traditional in our values and stuff. And this whole thing about the collusion of the Russians, there’s no collusion. The only body colluding is the Democratic Party themselves. This is all they could come up with. Their strategy has just been nothing but fueled by hate.

And it’s just my point. They’ve strayed away from natural, you know, wholesome — I mean, back in the past, 30 years ago, we would have candidates might pitch something at their opponent, but it was just maybe on a difference of opinion on their policies or something like that to persuade their voters. But if it wasn’t for this, it’s gonna be something else and it will be because they’re fueled by hate, and they’re constantly gonna come up with something to shoot down the conservatives or the Republican Party.

That’s their motive. That’s their whole goal. And it’s just a prime example here what we have with the collusion, made-up propaganda that didn’t happen, never happened. And if it wasn’t for this issue, it’s gonna be something else, and when this blows over, there will be, I assure you, you know that and I do.

RUSH: Right. Okay. So what he was getting at here is that he thinks this is gonna bomb on the Democrats. He thinks people are fed up with this finally, it’s why Trump won. People are fed up with this stuff. They’re not falling for it anymore, that people that voted for Trump do not think that he worked with Putin and they’re insulted by all this and they’re fed up with it, and the Democrats are continuing to hurt themselves. I think that’s right.

Rush Limbaugh says -> But the Democrats Always Loved the Russians Rush Limbaugh says -> But the Democrats Always Loved the Russians Mar 21, 2017 RUSH: Floyd in Orlando, hey, we’re up to phones and it’s your turn.