#it's not even losing but it should be winning by a wider margin

[cctinsleybaxter]

these polls are making me evil

[growingnerves]

Trying to find a nice way to put this… what Norman said on that podcast was not okay. Insulting fans and admitting to being responsible for writers losing their jobs with such nonchalance, is downright disrespectful- although I’m thankful the truth didn’t stay buried. It’s careless behavior and it doesn’t reflect well on AMC considering this is a repeated offense.

Not everyone involved in television has to be an excellent public speaker but there should be someone at the helm who understands how to conduct themselves in interviews. Every show needs a spokesperson to be a direct link to the audience: for promoting the show, and making the fans feel included as well as appreciated. As a fan I’ve never wanted creatives to bend to the whim of every loudmouth on social media. Shallow fan service has never benefited any show. However, fair criticism and honest feedback should be welcome. Serving the self-interest of a man with an ego the size of the Eiffel Tower won’t do the show any favors either. AMC, like any other network, presumably wants someone as the face of their series who reflects positively on their brand. I’m hoping we will see some significant changes going forward to win back the trust of the fans. And I believe Melissa McBride’s input is essential to do so.

Viewers are considering ethics when it comes to their TV watching habits now more than ever. We are becoming aware of the optics of the media we consume. We can examine what we know of the practices at individual studios and networks in an effort to support shows that most closely align with our own values. We don’t need to compromise our high standards when there are endless other options. To stay in line with the audience, TV has to evolve alongside us. If AMC can’t keep up with the demand for a diverse cast and writer’s room, I’m not subscribing and I suspect other viewers will gravitate elsewhere too, as they have been.

Women’s voices are valuable even if historically they’ve been taken for granted. Women tend to have a wider outreach in their storytelling than the repetitive POV that is often seen from male showrunners. Men have not been faced with the same obstacles. They haven’t had to contort themselves into a million different shapes to be taken seriously.

Men’s voices were the only ones heard for a long time in film and television. Male protagonists were given autonomy and multifaceted stories, while women’s representation was not prioritized. Women only existed in relation to their male counterparts- and the damsel in distress just isn’t that interesting to watch. Because of this, women have projected themselves into the considerably more compelling male characters, delving into the minutiae to find some semblance of relatability in typically masculine portrayals. This has been a challenge to other marginalized groups on an even larger scale. How long have POC been sorely underrepresented, having to find ways to see themselves in white stories? And the LGBTQ+ community has been limited to watching primarily straight cis romances. The representation we do get is often times minimized to tokenism. The absence of diversity impacts everyone who doesn’t fit the same generic prototype. There are countless experiences and lifestyles that take on a wide range of forms which have not yet been in the spotlight. We don’t need another lone ranger on a motorcycle. Another mysterious brooding male antihero, yawwwwn.

Marginalized individuals have been prompted to work a creative muscle that the everyday man has not- to both suspend our disbelief and also dig into the details to uncover the inherit humanity in stories where we don’t necessarily identify with the protagonist.

These are the voices who are going to be the best conduits for fresh stories because they’ve already had to do the work to investigate human complexity to find themselves on screen, within characters who don’t necessarily look or act like they do. Not only can they build on already existing material but they can introduce original concepts. Television has been oversaturated with the straight white man running his mouth unchecked for too long. We don’t have to settle for that anymore when we can switch over to another show, one that better represents us.

[krsonmar]

Another point on this: if a race is a close call, it's so much easier to contest or delegitimize the results. The voter rights/suppression and "elections integrity" bills that have been passed or proposed in the past 20 years all pretty much come back to the 2000 POTUS election. That mess, where the Supreme Court had to get involved, happened because the results were close enough that a couple hundred votes were going to decide who got Florida's electoral votes and they had to do re-counts. If the margin of difference in votes had been greater, it never would have been an issue. If Al Gore had gotten, say, 54 percent of the vote to George W Bush's 46, that would have been indisputable. But Gore was considered boring and personality-less, and swing voters or those on only the slight left of the center weren't "excited" or "inspired" by him...so they stayed home. Which means American politics has unfortunately never been boring or even seemed "low-stakes" since. Boring and uneventful should be the goal, not hanging on for the next four years until we get another chance, if we get one.

Boring and uneventful mean stable, and that means a better ability to push the progress we want to make forward instead of having to desperately defend what we already have from being taken and putting out fires on too many fronts at once. Boring and uneventful means we're not spread thin, we have less activist burnout, more donations per cause because there are fewer battles to be fought, less "compassion fatigue" because the world's not on fire, and extremists aren't emboldened to see what else they can try next.

Close races mean disputed results. Close races mean SCOTUS gets involved. Close races mean people try to attack Congress so the election results can't be certified because people are used to questioning the legitimacy of elections now. Close races mean "we'll get you next election!!😡" every election, "noble lost causes" that dog the political landscape for decades, and more voter disenfranchisement bills and "citizen poll-watchers" with guns at polling places. Close races mean elected leaders can have the legitimacy of their position in office constantly challenged and they have to put energy toward that instead of getting anything done. Close races mean we win the White House but not Congress, so practically speaking, we'll be deadlocked for at least two years and nothing can get done anyway.

Showing up means wider margins. Wider margins hedge our bets and net us political capital for after the election. Wider margins show that yeah, this is the people's mandate and we have the numbers to make x thing happen.

I am not a registered Democrat. I don't love any of the candidates in this race, and if the ones I vote for get elected, I will be making sure, with my calls and e-mails over the next four years, that they keep to what they say right now that they'll do, and if they do something I don't like, they will hear about it then too, because voting is not the only step in the political process. But if they don't get elected, the Trump administration delighted in doing things because they were cruel, because we begged them not to, and that's what I mean by fearing losing my political voice. The Democrats suck but they're more likely to listen. Getting more of them into Congress and state governor and legislature offices makes our work not only infinitely easier but possible in the first place.

It's strategy, y'all. We're playing for the mid-range future here so we don't have to survive minute-to-minute. If we stabilize our position, we can then be in a place to get momentum behind a progressive agenda for the long-run. Set up the pieces into the positions you need them in early in the chess game, and you can sweep the endgame. Play turn-by-turn and you lose.

[siyamsiddiqe]

Dominate the Markets: Best Forex Risk Management Tools You Must Use!

In the dynamic and often unpredictable world of forex trading, risk management isn't just a strategy — it's survival. Without the right tools and discipline, even the most promising trades can spiral into losses. Fortunately, seasoned traders like Sangram Mohanta, a respected forex expert with over seven years of live trading experience, emphasize that Forex Risk Management Tools can be the difference between consistent success and devastating failure.

If you’re serious about trading smart and scaling your profits while minimizing losses, mastering these tools is non-negotiable. Here’s everything you need to know.

Why Risk Management Is Crucial in Forex Trading

Forex markets move fast — sometimes in fractions of a second. While high volatility presents huge profit opportunities, it equally exposes traders to significant risks.

Sangram Mohanta explains:

In my early days of trading, I quickly learned that predicting the market perfectly is impossible. Instead of trying to be right every time, I focused on controlling my risk — and that’s when real profits started flowing.

Proper risk management ensures that no single loss will destroy your account, allowing you to stay in the game long enough to realize your trading edge.

Essential Forex Risk Management Tools You Must Use

1. Stop-Loss Orders

The foundation of every risk management strategy. A stop-loss automatically closes your trade once the price hits a certain unfavorable level. It ensures you never lose more than you’re willing to on any trade.

Tip from Sangram:

Always place your stop-loss based on logical technical levels, not emotions.

2. Take-Profit Order

Equally important, a take-profit locks in your gains automatically when the market moves in your favor. It helps traders stick to their plan without getting greedy or second-guessing themselves.

3. Position Size Calculators

Knowing how much of your account to risk per trade is critical. Position size calculators use your stop-loss size, risk tolerance (e.g., risking 1-2% per trade), and account size to calculate the precise number of lots or units to trade.

Many top brokers listed on Top Forex Brokers Review offer integrated position size calculators on their platforms.

4. Risk-Reward Ratio Analyzers

A good trade setup should offer at least a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio. Risk-reward calculators help you ensure your potential profits outweigh your potential losses, setting you up for long-term profitability.

5. Volatility Indicators

Tools like the Average True Range (ATR) help you measure market volatility and adjust your stop-loss/take-profit levels accordingly. Highly volatile pairs require wider stops; calm markets allow tighter stops.

6. Trailing Stops

A trailing stop moves your stop-loss along with the market as it moves favorably. This way, you protect profits while giving your trade enough room to breathe.

7. Hedging Tools

Advanced traders often use hedging strategies to protect open positions. Certain brokers — especially ones reviewed on Top Forex Brokers Review — offer specialized accounts or options that support smart hedging.

Top Forex Brokers Offering Advanced Risk Management Tools

Choosing the right broker can massively impact your ability to manage risk effectively. Based on expert research and real trader feedback from Top Forex Brokers Review, here are five brokers known for their superior risk management features:

Broker | Key Risk Management Features FP Markets | Tight spreads, guaranteed stop-loss orders, negative balance protection IC Markets | Deep liquidity, smart order routing, low slippage execution XM | Negative balance protection, transparent margin calls FxPro | Advanced MT4/MT5 features, low-latency trade execution BlackBull Markets | Customizable risk parameters, superior trade execution speed

Real-Life Trading Success Story: Risk Management Wins

Meet Alex T., a 31-year-old retail trader from Canada. Before mastering risk management, Alex often wiped out weeks of profits with just one bad trade. His trading account took a dramatic turn after attending an online webinar by Sangram Mohanta and implementing a strict 1% risk rule using stop-losses and position-sizing calculators.

In three months, I went from barely breaking even to consistently growing my account by 5-8% monthly. Risk management tools changed everything. Now, even when I lose, it’s just a small setback, not a disaster. — Alex T.

How to Start Using Forex Risk Management Tools Today

Here’s a simple 3-step action plan:

Choose a Broker with Proper Risk Controls (Preferably one from Top Forex Brokers Review.)

Use Calculators and Set Clear Risk Parameters Never enter a trade without knowing your stop-loss, position size, and target.

Stay Disciplined, No Matter What Trust your tools. Don’t override your stop-loss in hopes of a "bounce."

FAQs About Forex Risk Management Tools

Q1: Can risk management tools guarantee profits? No, but they can drastically reduce losses and protect your capital, setting the foundation for long-term success.

Q2: Are Forex Risk Management Tools expensive? Most are free or integrated into top trading platforms, especially those vetted by Top Forex Brokers Review.

Q3: Is manual risk management better than automated tools? Both have advantages. Combining them often yields the best results.

Final Thoughts: Dominate the Markets Smartly

If you truly want to dominate the forex markets, understanding the markets is important — but mastering Forex Risk Management Tools is vital. As Sangram Mohanta wisely puts it:

Risk management isn't just a protective shield; it's the engine that powers real trading success.

Ready to level up? Visit Top Forex Brokers Review to find the best brokers equipped with cutting-edge risk management features, trusted by thousands of traders worldwide.

Trade smart. Win big. Protect your future.

[emmiedisuza]

The Future of Betting: Exploring the Power of Betting Exchange Software Development

The Advantages and Benefits of Utilizing Betting Exchange Software for Operators and Punters

Betting exchange software has become increasingly popular in online gambling and sports betting. Betting exchange platforms like Betfair have revolutionised the industry by letting users bet against each other rather than against a bookmaker. This approach offers several advantages and benefits for operators. Here are some of the critical advantages of utilising betting exchange software:

Increased Profit Margins: Betting exchange platforms typically charge a commission on winning bets, a significant revenue source for operators. This commission design can result in higher profit margins than traditional bookmaking, where the bookmaker risks losing money on specific outcomes.

Liquidity and Market Depth: Betting exchanges attract users who place bets against each other. This creates deep and liquid markets with a wide range of betting options, making it attractive for casual and professional bettors. Operators can offer a wider variety of betting markets, leading to increased betting activity and revenue.

Risk Management: Operators can manage risk more on a betting exchange platform. Since bets are matched between users, the operator’s exposure to potential losses is reduced. That allows operators to balance their books and minimize risk, particularly for heavily favored outcomes.

Transparency and Fairness: Betting exchanges are often praised for their clarity. Users can see the odds, bet sizes, and the number of bets placed, providing transparency that builds trust and credibility. This can be a significant selling point for operators seeking to attract customers.

User Engagement and Interaction: Betting exchange software encourages user interaction and engagement. Users can lay bets, back bets, and even trade positions during an event. This adds extra excitement and strategy to sports betting, making it more interactive and enjoyable.

Lower Operational Costs: A betting exchange can be more cost-effective than running a traditional sportsbook. With fewer risks and a commission-based revenue model, operators can reduce operational costs and offer better odds to customers.

In-Play Betting: Betting exchanges excel in providing in-play betting options. Users can place bets during live events, taking advantage of shifting odds and unique betting opportunities. This real-time betting feature can boost operator revenues during live events.

Access to API Integration: Many betting exchange software providers offer API integration, allowing operators to connect their platform with third-party services, data providers, and payment gateways. This flexibility enables operators to customise their platform and offer a more comprehensive betting experience.

Mobile Compatibility: Betting exchange software can be optimised for mobile devices, catering to the growing demand for mobile betting. Mobile compatibility ensures that users can place bets on the go, essential in today’s fast-paced world.

Global Reach: Betting exchanges can attract users from around the world, allowing operators to tap into international markets and expand their customer base.

When choosing a betting exchange software development company or solution provider, it’s essential to consider several key features and characteristics to ensure that you partner with a reliable and capable provider. Here are the key elements to look for:

Experience and Reputation: Look for a company with a proven track record in developing betting exchange software. Check their client portfolio and seek references or reviews from previous clients to gauge their reputation.

Licensing and Regulation: Ensure that the company complies with relevant licensing and regulatory requirements in their jurisdictions. That is crucial for legality and credibility.

Scalability: The software should be scalable to accommodate growth. As your platform attracts more users, it should handle increased traffic and betting activity without performance issues.

Security: Security is paramount in the gambling industry. The software should include robust security measures to protect user data, transactions, and the integrity of the betting exchange. Look for features like encryption, firewall protection, and regular security audits.

Customization Options: A good software provider should offer customization options to match your brand and unique requirements. That includes white-label solutions and the ability to adapt the platform to your specific needs.

User-Friendly Interface: The user interface should be intuitive and user-friendly for operators and bettors. That ensures a smooth user experience and can lead to increased engagement and retention.

Comprehensive Betting Markets: Look for a solution that supports a wide range of betting markets, including sports, casino games, and other events. The more diverse the offering, the better it is for attracting users.

In-Play Betting: In-play or live betting is a popular feature. Ensure the software supports real-time betting options, allowing users to place bets during live events.

Risk Management Tools: Effective risk management tools help operators balance their books and reduce exposure to significant losses. These tools should be an integral part of the software.

Liquidity Management: A robust betting exchange should offer practical tools and mechanisms to manage liquidity. That includes features to match bets, provide odds, and ensure a fluid betting environment.

API Integration: Integrating with third-party services, such as payment gateways, data providers, and other gaming products, is essential for expanding your platform’s capabilities.

Customer Support and Training: A reliable provider should offer excellent customer support and training. Operators need assistance managing the platform and addressing user concerns, so responsive support is critical.

Upgrades and Maintenance: The software provider should offer regular promotions and maintenance to keep the platform updated with technological advancements, security fixes, and new features.

Compliance and Responsible Gambling Tools: Ensure the software is designed to support responsible gambling features and comply with regulatory requirements for responsible gaming.

Reporting and Analytics: Comprehensive reporting and analytics tools are crucial for operators to assess the platform’s performance, monitor user activity, and make informed business decisions.

Mobile Compatibility: With the increasing demand for mobile betting, the software should be compatible with various mobile devices and operating systems.

Data Feeds: Access to high-quality sports data feeds is essential for setting accurate odds and providing real-time information to users. The provider should have partnerships or systems in place to source reliable data.

Transparent Pricing: The pricing structure should be transparent and competitive, with no hidden fees or costs that could impact your bottom line.

The Future Outlook: Anticipating Technological Advancements in Betting Exchange Software Development

The future of betting exchange software development is poised to be shaped by several technological advancements, trends, and innovations. Here’s an overview of the anticipated technological advances in this field:

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Integration:

Blockchain technology can enhance security, transparency, and trust in betting exchanges. It can be used for transparent record-keeping, intelligent contracts for bets, and cryptocurrency payments, reducing the need for traditional banking systems.

AI and Machine Learning:

AI algorithms can analyze user behavior, predict market trends, and offer personalized recommendations to users. Machine learning can improve odds calculation and risk management, making exchanges more efficient and responsive to user needs.

Quantitative Analysis and Data Analytics:

Advanced data analytics tools will enable better market insights, including understanding user behaviour, market sentiment, and risk assessment. That can help operators refine their offerings.

Augmented and Virtual Reality:

Immersive technologies can create a more engaging and interactive user experience. Virtual reality platforms might enable users to attend live events and interact in a virtual betting environment.

IoT Integration:

The Internet of Things can offer real-time data feeds from various sports events, making odds and market information even more up-to-date and accurate.

Mobile-First Development:

As mobile usage continues to rise, mobile-first development will be crucial. Mobile apps with responsive design will become the norm, providing users with a seamless smartphone betting experience.

Data Privacy and Security:

As data privacy and security concerns grow, betting exchange software will need to incorporate advanced encryption, biometrics, and other security measures to protect user data and financial information.

Regulatory Compliance and Licensing:

As the industry matures, regulatory authorities may impose stricter compliance requirements. Software development will need to adapt to changing legal landscapes.

Social Betting and Community Features:

Betting exchanges may incorporate more social elements, such as chat features, leaderboards, and forums, to enhance user engagement and foster a sense of community among users.

E-sports Betting:

The growth of esports presents new opportunities for betting exchanges. Software development will need to accommodate this emerging and prevalent category.

Globalization and Localization:

Betting exchanges will expand to different regions, necessitating multilingual and multi-currency support. Localization efforts will be vital for success in diverse markets.

Enhanced Payment Solutions:

With the continued growth of digital wallets, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finance (DeFi), betting exchange software must adapt to offer users various payment options.

VR and AR Betting Experiences:

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can provide immersive betting experiences. Users can place bets in a virtual stadium or track in AR environments.

Environmental Responsibility:

As environmental concerns grow, sustainable and eco-friendly practices in data centres and software infrastructure will become increasingly important.

Enhanced Customer Support:

AI-powered chatbots and customer service tools will offer 24/7 support, resolving user queries and issues more efficiently.

The future of betting exchange software development will revolve around improving user experience, data analytics, security, and compliance while integrating emerging technologies to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving industry. Adaptability and the ability to anticipate and meet user demands will be essential for software developers in this field.

About Youbets:

As a top-rated betting exchange software development company, we’re committed to delivering cutting-edge solutions that meet and exceed your expectations. Whether you’re an established operator looking to enhance your platform or an entrepreneur embarking on a new venture in the dynamic online gambling world, YouBets is your trusted partner in success.

Our Expertise:

YouBets brings a wealth of experience and expertise in betting exchange software development. With a team of experienced professionals at the forefront of the industry’s evolution, we possess the knowledge, skills, and innovative spirit to create solutions that are second to none.

Conclusion:

Embrace the Power of Betting Exchange Software to Stay Ahead in the Competitive Gambling Industry

Embracing the power of betting exchange software is a strategic move for operators looking to stay ahead in the highly competitive gambling industry.

In conclusion, betting exchange software offers a dynamic and innovative solution to the evolving needs of both operators and bettors in the gambling industry. By adopting this technology, operators can differentiate themselves, offer unique and engaging betting experiences, and better position themselves to compete effectively in the market. To stay ahead in the competitive gambling industry, operators should consider adopting betting exchange software as a strategic imperative.

[vierschanzentournee]

Ski Jumping Survey 2020/21 - The Results

So, 2020/21 was… a season. It’s certainly had its ups and downs, but I’m grateful that we were able to have the majority of a season, including the world championships, despite whatever the hell has been going on the in the wider world!

Luckily, there’s no reason that coronavirus should have an impact on my third end-of-season survey — in fact, I got an absolutely awesome 103 responses this year! For reference, last year I got 68, and the year before that I got 66. I don’t know whether my survey just reached more people this year, or whether the ski jumping family on Tumblr has grown, but either way I’m super happy.

The results for overall favourite jumpers were scored the same way as usual: a vote for favourite was worth 3 points, a vote for second favourite was worth 2, and a vote for third favourite was worth 1. The jumpers were ranked based on their total number of points, which meant that the most popular World Cup ski jumpers this year were…

Maren Lundby & Daniel-André Tande

I always knew this season would be an interesting one for my survey (...and yes, I do start thinking about it quite a bit in advance), because the male winner of the previous two years, Stephan Leyhe, wouldn’t be an option due to his injury. Daniel, however, wasn’t a completely unexpected winner — he came second to Stephan last year. I do wonder whether Daniel got an extra little boost because of his terrible fall in Planica at the end of the season, which meant he was very much at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but I’ve got no way to confirm or deny that! The full results for the men are below - if two jumpers had the same number of points, ranking was based on who had the highest number of votes for favourite (if that was identical, it then went down to who had the highest number of votes for second favourite). If two jumpers share a ranking, it means they had the exact same distribution of votes.

1. Tande (78 points)

2. Stoch (57)

3. Geiger (57)

4. Granerud (51)

5. Eisenbichler (38)

6. Boyd-Clowes (31)

7. Schlierenzauer (30)

8. P Prevc (27)

9. Lindvik (26)

10. Wellinger (22)

11. R Kobayashi (18)

12. Stekala (16)

13. D Prevc (15)

14. Y Sato (15)

15. Lanisek (12)

16. Pavlovcic (12)

17. Freund (10)

18. Freitag (8)

19. Hayboeck (8)

20. Wolny (7)

21. Aalto (7)

22. Nakamura (6)

23. D Huber (6)

24. Hamann (6)

25. Kubacki & Kraft (5)

26. Schmid (5)

27. Johansson (5)

28. C Prevc & Jelar & Semenic (4)

29. Fettner (4)

30. Kot (3)

31. Klimov (3)

32. Paschke (2)

33. Forfang (2)

34. Kytosaho & Aigro & Markeng & Aschenwald (1)

Karl Geiger defends his third place from last year, while Kamil Stoch jumps a few places from 5th to second (perhaps courtesy of his third Four Hills victory this year?). Obviously, the biggest winner here is Halvor Egner Granerud, who has gone from only 2 points last year (when he struggled immensely in the World Cup and finished with only a few points) to finishing fourth with 8.28% of the vote (Tande had 12.66%, while Stoch and Geiger had 9.25% each). Others who have moved up include Eisenbichler (from 10th to 5th) and Stekala (who I believe did not compete in the World Cup last year and so wasn’t available as an option, but has clearly won a lot of hearts this season). Conversely, there are also a few who seem to have lost out — Marius Lindvik fell from 4th place to 9th, while Andreas Wellinger, who wasn’t an option last year due to his injury but dominated the non-World Cup vote, could only manage 10th in comparison to his second place in 2019.

The women saw another season of dominance from Maren Lundby in this survey, although not so much on the hill. The full results for the women are:

1. Lundby (103 points)

2. Takanashi (85)

3. Kramer (62)

4. Althaus (57)

5. Kriznar (52)

6. Opseth (50)

7. Freitag (19)

8. Klinec & Pinkelnig (15)

9. Vogt (13)

10. Hoelzl (13)

11. Rogelj (12)

12. Iraschko-Stolz (11)

13. Voros (11)

14. Rupprecht (9)

15. Karpiel (8)

16. Bjoerseth (7)

17. Pagnier (6)

18. Twardosz (4)

19. Rajda (4)

20. Avvakumova & Stroem & Haralambie (3)

21. Maruyama (2)

22. L Malsiner & Strate (2)

23. Kvandal & Ito & Eder & Seyfarth & Iwabuchi & Brecl (1)

Although Lundby has secured the win yet again, her share of the vote is a little lower this time at 16.74%, compared to 21.27% in 2020. Sara Takanashi has overtaken Katharina Althaus for second place, but undoubtedly the highest climber is Sara Marita Kramer, who received no votes at all last year (despite ranking 9th in the overall World Cup), but this year won 10.06% of the women’s vote. Many other results were largely stable — Kriznar, Opseth, and Freitag are in the same area of the rankings as they were last year — but Ema Klinec made some gains, moving up from 15th to 8th.

The votes for favourite teams were simply added up, and the team with the most votes won. For the men, the rankings were:

1. Norway (34 votes)

2. Poland & Germany (23)

3. Slovenia (9)

4. Austria (7)

5. Japan (4)

6. Finland (1)

7. France (1)

Interestingly, the Norwegians have overtaken the Germans — possibly this has something to do with the Germans essentially losing their two most popular jumpers, Wellinger and Leyhe, while the Norwegians saw excellent results from Halvor Egner Granerud. Poland have also overtaken Slovenia, by a significant margin, which I’m not entirely sure I can explain!

For the women, the rankings were:

1. Norway (28 votes)

2. Slovenia (24)

3. Germany (19)

4. Austria (12)

5. Japan (9)

6. Poland (3)

7. Russia (2)

8. France (1)

Again, Norway have taken the lead from Germany. Slovenia have jumped from fourth to second, leapfrogging both Austria and Germany, while Japan are steadily catching up to Austria too. 2020/21 was a strong season for the Slovenian women on the whole, with Nika Kriznar winning the overall and Ema Klinec becoming a world champion, which perhaps explains why they’ve been on people’s minds more often.

The vote for favourite male athlete who didn’t compete in the World Cup this season wasn’t actually quite as much of a slaughter as I’d thought it would be — the winner was exactly who you think it is, but others mounted a strong challenge!

1. Leyhe (29 votes)

2. Fannemel (12)

3. Gangnes (9)

4. Bickner (8)

5. Morgenstern (6)

6. Kasai (5)

7. Pedersen & Peier (3)

8. Hautamaki (2)

9. Stjernen & Schmitt & Ahonen & Malysz & Raimund & S Huber & Larinto & Hannawald & Descombes Sevoie & Kranjec & Aune & Hilde (1)

There was a far greater variety of answers this year, probably thanks to the much larger sample size - so while roughly a third of respondents were still missing Stephan, plenty of people also found room in their hearts for long-time absentees like Fannemel, recent retirees like Gangnes and Kranjec, those relegated to the Continental Cup or below like Kasai and Pedersen, or those who have long since retired but whom we still miss, like Morgenstern, Schmitt, and Malysz.

The same question didn’t get a huge amount of responses for the women:

1. Hendrickson (8 votes)

2. Seifreidsberger (3)

3. N Prevc & Wuerth (2)

4. Sagen & Straub & Van & Iakovleva & M Malsiner (1)

Sarah Hendrickson, one of the first legends of women’s ski jumping who announced her retirement at the end of this season, was at the front of many respondents’ minds — others were looking towards the future with Nika Prevc, the younger sister of Peter, Cene, and Domen.

It’s a little bit difficult to compare the results for favourite tournament each year, as 2 out of the 3 years I’ve run the survey have seen the cancellation of various tournaments. The one consistent, however, has been the Four Hills Tournament, which still remains the favourite of most of the fanbase:

1. Four Hills Tournament (75 votes)

2. Planica7 (14)

3. Willingen Six (13)

I didn’t ask about favourite podiums this year, as the headache it caused me last year was not worth repeating, no matter how interesting the comparisons might be!

One of my favourite elements of this survey is the predictions. The most popular predictions for the winners of season 19/20 were correct; the predictions for 20/21, however, were much less accurate — no one at all saw Granerud coming, and only one person correctly predicted that Nika Kriznar would win the women’s World Cup. The most popular predictions to win this season were Geiger (who finished 6th, after a busy season which involved catching Covid-19, welcoming a baby daughter, and winning a variety of ski flying and world championship medals) and Lundby (who finished 8th, struggling to find her best form in early World Cup competitions but hitting a groove towards the end of the season and winning several world championship medals). Inspired by this rather topsy-turvy season, we’ve got a wide variety of predictions for next year:

1. Geiger (29 votes)

2. R Kobayashi (17)

3. Eisenbichler (12)

4. Lanisek (8)

5. Pavlovcic (5)

6. Lindvik (5)

7. Stoch & Granerud & D Huber (4)

8. D Prevc (3)

9. Boyd-Clowes (2)

10. Y Sato & Zajc & Fannemel & P Prevc & Schlierenzauer & Kubacki (1)

Interestingly, not many people seem to think Granerud can do it twice in a row — this certainly fits the pattern we’ve seen over the past few decades, with the last male jumper to win two consecutive titles being Janne Ahonen in 2003/04 and 2004/05. Despite his failure to deliver on the overall title this year, Karl Geiger has again received a vote of confidence, while his teammate Eisenbichler is being seriously considered for the title for the first time. There’s also a lot of support here for jumpers who haven’t even had a World Cup victory: Lanisek, Pavlovcik, Huber, and Boyd-Clowes have never won a competition. There are a few other long shots here too, considering that Fannemel has been out for three consecutive seasons (and isn’t even confirmed to be jumping next season), and Schlierenzauer finished 65th in the World Cup this season (although it’s of course worth noting that Granerud was 61st last season, and we all know that Gregor knows how to win!)

There’s far less variety to be found among the women:

1. Kramer (49 votes)

2. Takanashi (13)

3. Lundby (11)

4. Opseth (6)

5. Kriznar (3)

6. Klinec (2)

Again, not many people think Kriznar can do it twice in a row — instead, all eyes are on Sara Marita Kramer, who came within touching distance of the crystal globe this year but was stymied by various cancelled competitions. This is the first year that Lundby hasn’t been the fandom’s top prediction, and it seems that when it rains for her, it pours, because she’s not even the second choice. That title goes to Sara Takanashi, who hasn’t won an overall title since 2016/17 but who finished second to Kriznar this season.

Sadly, only one of the jumpers tipped for a first victory last year actually managed to achieve one this season — Nika Kriznar. Many of the other favourite picks, such as Constantin Schmid, Philipp Aschenwald, and Ziga Jelar instead suffered something of a downturn in form, while others like Anze Lanisek and Silje Opseth have performed well, but not quite well enough for a win. This year’s votes are:

1. Lanisek (21 votes)

2. Stekala (20)

3. Pavlovcic (17)

4. Opseth (9)

5. Boyd-Clowes (6)

6. Schmid (3)

7. Bjoerseth (2)

8. Jelar & Nakamura & C Prevc & Pedersen (1)

Towards the end of the season, Pavlovcic in particular seemed to be knocking on the door of victory; Lanisek was a consistent top 10 finisher; and Stekala achieved his very first podium. It’ll be interesting to see where these jumpers go next year, and I hope that it’s not quite as much of a curse as it was last year!

As ever, the final part of the survey was focused on demographics — who are the ski jumping family?

According to this year’s survey, the average ski jumping fan on Tumblr is 21.6 years old, a German-speaker who is from and lives in Germany, and has been watching ski jumping for slightly over 7 years!

I put together charts showing the data collected about respondents’ country of origin, country of residence, age, languages, and time watching ski jumping:

So, all there’s left to do now is thank everyone who took the survey for their invaluable contributions to “science” — thank you to @telemarcs @queen-maren @na-woke-i-nakamura​ @damn-d4niel @louddreaming @skiijumpingg @hill-record @june-skijumping @ificouldflyhigh @flautist10 @blueplastichairbrush @vixmise @skijumping-is-my-aesthetics @startgate13 @lewanarta @oneoutof @sportschaos @sparflamme @anagraves @turquoiseheart1 @jumpingtodreams @entropuff @paringeverywhere @omi-om @blueberryfriday @rpntws @jokkeblobfish @reindeersonmytshirt @ski-jumper-stan @cryingismyonlyhobby @itsloveit @mlledevoltaire @prinshoppmarius @skiijumpinng @czarnewino @ski-schlieri @badlandings @one-more-jump @ilovenearlyeverything @iliketheusual @lipasworld @jensontodd @scandinavianbyheartt @ryoyuftw @sarcasticlilkid @moon-ascendant @eksperimentgaj @damnconfused @flegm-a @witchsdog @byeseefeld @stephanleyhes @anttiaaltostan @magioghvitetekopper @merlex93, the person who gave me an Instagram username when asked for a Tumblr username, and, last but not least, the person who replied “wouldnt you like to know weatherboy” when asked for a URL. I will never know who you are, but I love you.

[random-thought-depository]

@multiheaded1793, continuing from my response to this, I wrote up some alternate history scenarios for the 2020 election to illustrate to you how I think this sort of discourse would be happening in multiple very different scenarios. I think there’s only one scenario that centrist liberals wouldn’t interpret as vindication of their beliefs, and that’s a huge Dem win with a leftist like Sanders at the top of the ticket (a resounding democratic leftist victory is the one experience that’s incompatible with their beliefs about politics!).

It would have been more elegant to just tag you about this, but for some reason I can’t.

These aren’t “proper” alternate history scenarios, e.g. the Sanders victory scenario is “worked backward” to give a final result that’s basically just like OTL, cause the “joke” of the scenario is that the result is basically exactly the same but it’s interpreted differently because it’s Sanders at the top of the ticket instead of Biden. I think “realistically” a Sanders victory scenario would be more different. Or maybe not; one possible interpretation of the 2020 election is elections are very deterministic and it basically doesn’t matter who the candidates are, in which case if we could see a Sanders victory world we might indeed be shocked by how similar their election results maps are to ours.

I hope I didn’t make any silly mistakes. It’s hard to remember and keep track of the twists and turns of this election and the complexities of the United States’s kludgey spaghetti-coded election system! This is why I prefer writing science fiction: there’s less of a chance of getting something wrong!

Anyway, I hope you’ll find these entertaining if nothing else. Warning, this is kind of long.

Resounding Biden victory world:

The point of divergence that leads to this world is obscure. Perhaps it happened decades or centuries or even millennia ago. Whatever the differences are, for a long time they remained hidden in the vast but subtle sociological forces that do more to shape history than all the politicians, generals, philosophers, and prophets. It was only on November 3rd 2020 that these differences produced a manifestation on the flashy surface of politics, as a volcanic eruption might alert humanity to vast slow movements happening in the hot darkness deep within the Earth. On November 3rd 2020 the Democrats get the resounding victory and resounding repudiation of Donald Trump that they were hoping for.

The differences become obvious on election night. As in our world, there is a “red mirage” created by in-person voters favoring Republicans while mail voters favored Democrats, and this briefly creates the impression that the Republicans are doing surprisingly well, but with a much more lopsided vote this “red mirage” lifts much more quickly than in our world. Wisconsin and Michigan flip blue relatively early on election night, while swing state after swing state goes into the Biden-lead column: Arizona, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania ... Texas. Not long into election night Texas flips blue for the first time in two generations; when the news goes out on the TV a hundred million liberals cheer and a hundred million conservatives groan as it becomes obvious that the Republican Party is headed not merely toward defeat but toward a historic once-in-a-generation disempowerment and humiliation. Trump reacts predictably, going on TV to make baseless allegations that he is only losing because of massive voter fraud, but against the background of such a monumental defeat it seems more comical and pathetic than anything else. By the time the sun rises over the CONUS Atlantic coast on November 4th the election is basically all over except for the formalities.

In this world Joe Biden wins all the states he won in our world, and he also wins North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. He also wins one of Nebraska’s electoral votes (as in our world), and wins all four of Maine’s electoral votes (in our world he only won three of Maine’s four electoral votes). Trump still wins Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri, but they’re thin squeaker victories, instead of the comfortable margins of victory he enjoyed in those states in our world. The final electoral college count is Biden 389, Trump 149 (in our world it’s Biden 306, Trump 232). In the popular vote the election is a spectacular landslide blow-out, with over 85 million people voting for Biden while only a little over 50 million people voted for Trump (as of the count on 11/25/2020); Biden’s huge popular vote margin of victory doesn’t make any difference legally but it’s a nice solid symbolic repudiation of Trump.

The picture elsewhere is somewhat less spectacularly rosy for Democrats, the big story of this election being more repulsion toward Trump than repulsion toward Republicans in general. Still, the overall picture is very good for Democrats.

Doug Jones loses his seat in Alabama as he did in our world, but in this world Democrats pick up Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Maine (in our world only Arizona and Colorado flipped to the Democrats). This gives the Democrats a net gain of four seats and a 51 seat majority, with a strong possibility of picking up the other Georgia Senate seat in the run-off election in January 2021. It’s a very thin majority, leaving them vulnerable to conservadem defections, but it’s probably about as good as could realistically be expected under the circumstances. In the House of Representatives the Democrats increase their majority to 243 seats (it was 235 seats after the 2018 “blue wave”); it wasn’t needed, but it’s nice to have. Democrat governors are elected in Vermont and New Hampshire (unlike in our world, where Republicans won those races). Perhaps best of all, the Democrats do well in the state legislature races, and that means they will control much of the next round of redistricting; the consequences of that may profoundly shape the political landscape in the future.

The most obvious discourse implication of this result is an apparent vindication of the Biden strategy of inoffensiveness and reaching out to affluent suburban centrist swing voters. The “Bernie can’t win, we need an electable moderate to take down Trump” people are feeling totally vindicated and credibly claiming credit for this huge victory and drawing lessons for the future that basically amount to “the strategy we advocated was clearly the correct one and we should keep doing it”; they think that if it had been Sanders at the top of the ticket the Democratic victory would have been much narrower or not happened at all. The 2020 election result map also suggests a new geography for the Democratic Party. While the blue wall held this time, in the context of this resounding Democrat victory it looks kind of Trumpy: Trump still won Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa (barely), the Democrat candidate lost the Senate race in Iowa, and Biden’s margins of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania aren’t overwhelming. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has made huge inroads into the south on the strength of southern blacks, Latino/as, and highly educated affluent suburban white swing voters. Political analysts observe that Biden could have lost the Blue Wall and Texas and still narrowly won (with 304 electoral votes). The “recipe” for the huge Biden win was to get lots of non-white votes while peeling off suburban moderates. This strategy is likely to get more effective in the future as the non-white population grows and the country becomes increasingly educated. Put together, this suggests that the Democrat faction in the ascendance will the the moderate “identity politics” faction that wants the Democratic Party to be an economically centrist and institutionally moderate-reformist minority advocate party (think: the sort of people who unironically see “more black lesbian CEOs” as a significant metric of social improvement). On the uglier fringes, this shades into the idea that the Democratic Party doesn’t need those Trumpy culturally conservative poor white people and should just leave them to vote for Republican politicians and rot.

On the left flank, response is divided. Some think that Trump was so bad a potted plant with a smiley face could have won a huge victory against him so the actually existing huge Democratic victory means very little; they think a more leftist party with somebody like Sanders at the top of the ticket would have done even better (a favorite argument of theirs is to paint the mere 51 seat Democrat Senate majority as pathetic). Others think the moderates are probably right about their strategy being the most effective one; it’s hard to argue with spectacular tangible success.

On the Republican side of the aisle, Trump and his hard-core supporters are digging in their heels and claiming with no evidence that the Democrats only won because they cheated. In the other parts of the Republican party, there’s a lot of soul-searching and distancing themselves from Trump and rats fleeing the sinking ship. A decisive repudiation of Trump-style politics within the Republican Party seems likely.

The version of me that exists in this world really enjoyed election night. He bought a nice dinner for himself to celebrate and sat back and enjoyed watching the Republicans get what was coming to them. He has a fond memory of joyously yelling “HE’S BODIED! HE’S FIRED!” as Texas flipped blue. He was in a good mood for days after the election. He feels kind of conflicted about the wider implications of this election though. It sure will be nice to have Trump gone, and the decisive repudiation of Trumpism sure is nice, but... Joe Biden will have most of what he needs to be the next F.D.R., but will he want to be that? Probably not. He still wistfully thinks it would have been better if Sanders or Warren was up there: they might really do something with a once-in-a-century opportunity like this! He expects Biden and his centrist faction to more-or-less squander it. And he’s very much aware of what factions within the Democratic Party will reap a huge PR win from this victory, and he doesn’t enjoy thinking about it. He’s not looking forward to watching Kamala Harris’s inauguration speech in 2024. Still, this will be an opportunity for the left to build. Maybe if A.O.C. can primary Harris in 2024... And if it was Sanders or Warren at the top of the ticket they might have lost, so maybe this is the best that could realistically be hoped for. He’s decided that for now he’s just going to enjoy the beautiful knowledge that Donald Trump’s Presidency will end on January 20th 2021; the future can be worried about when it comes.

Narrow Sanders victory world:

The primaries:

Perhaps this world too was subtly different from ours long before the differences effected the flashy surface of politics, but the obvious point of divergence between this world and ours is Joe Biden unknowingly accidentally eating some contaminated food on February 23rd 2020 (the day after the Nevada caucuses). On the evening of February 23rd he becomes violently ill and is taken to a hospital, where he is diagnosed with a very serious case of food poisoning. His symptoms are severe and there is a tense period when his doctors are not sure he’ll survive. There’s a miscommunication somewhere along the line, and on the night of February 23rd a member of Biden’s staff tells a reporter he’s ready to leak a huge scoop: Joe Biden is dying. By the morning of February 24th the story has hit the presses.

Reports of Joe Biden’s imminent demise prove greatly exaggerated. Though Biden’s illness is severe, it passes quickly: by late morning on February 25th Biden has more-or-less recovered and is out of the hospital and being driven to an airplane that will take him to South Carolina, where he will hit the campaign trail, trying for that win he needs to save his floundering campaign. Still, the incident raises concerns about his health and age at the worst possible time. On February 29th Joe Biden gets the big win he needs in the South Carolina primary, but it’s not quite as big as in our world; the delegate count from South Carolina is this world is Biden 37, Sanders 17 (in our world it was Biden 39, Sanders 15). It is a portent of things to come. With the food poisoning incident raising concerns about Biden’s age and health, different political calculations are made, and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar don’t sacrifice their Presidency ambitions to give Biden a clear shot at the nomination.

With Buttigieg and Klobuchar still in the race super-Tuesday is a bit of a muddle, instead of the clear Biden victory it was in our world. Sanders wins the west, manages a narrow plurality win in Texas, and manages a strong second or third place in many other states. The super-Tuesday map is rich with southern states where Biden’s conservative reputation and connections with the black community serve him well, and Biden does well. If Democratic primaries were winner-take-all Biden would have managed the sort of resounding victory he had in our world, but they are proportional, so Buttigieg and Klobuchar cut deep into his delegate share and he’s unable to top Sanders the way he did in our world. Amy Klobuchar gets a plurality win in her home state of Minnesota, and Klobuchar and Buttigieg do well in the northeastern states, allowing Sanders to claim plurality wins in all of them. After throwing an obscene mountain of money at the primaries, Michael Bloomberg performs disappointingly. Elizabeth Warren also performs disappointingly. Political analysts in this world see the big winners of super-Tuesday as Sanders and Biden. Biden has gone from floundering to being the clear front-runner among the moderates. Sanders doesn’t really perform all that much better than in our world, but with the moderate vote split he comes out of super-Tuesday the biggest winner, with a solid delegate lead and a good enough performance to look like a strong candidate.

A few days after super-Tuesday Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren drop out of the race and Elizabeth Warren endorses Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the biggest winner from this, as the left flank of the Democratic Party now fully consolidates around him while the moderates remain divided.

The next round of primaries is March 10th. It’s again a muddle, which ultimately favors Sanders. Joe Biden wins big in Mississippi, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg do fairly well, and Sanders wins in Washington and manages a solid second or third place in most other places, which given the proportional nature of Democratic primaries means he continues to build a plurality delegate lead.

The Democrat machine politicians can see where this is going and don’t like it. They well remember what happened to their Republican counterparts in 2016, when a divided field helped their insufficiently house-trained disruptive outsider candidate win the nomination and ultimately the Presidency. They have no intention of letting the same story play out on the opposite side of the aisle in 2020. Having proved himself with his good performance on super-Tuesday, Joe Biden has re-established himself as the Democrat establishment’s favored candidate, and pressure is brought on Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to drop out. In mid-March Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suspend their campaigns and endorse Joe Biden.

Sanders and Biden head into their first one-on-one round on March 17. Biden wins big in Florida, while Sanders gets a modest majority of the vote in Illinois and consolidates his dominance of the west by winning in Arizona.

Meanwhile, COVID19 has been spreading as in our world. By mid-March cities all over the country are under shelter-in-place orders and the Democrats are scrambling to try to figure out how to manage a still very competitive primary election in the middle of a once-in-a-century plague year. Then, in late May, the next punch comes; George Floyd dies as he did in our world, and as in our world his death catalyzes a huge eruption of protest and civil unrest.

The whole thing feels queasily mystical. It is as if someone Upstairs thought the Donald Trump Presidency wasn’t as exciting as they’d hoped it would be and tweaked the parameters of the simulation to make 2020 an Interesting Times speed run. Donald Trump seems to only become more vicious and delusional as he presides over a country increasingly riven with civil unrest and fully under the power of the coronavirus. The streets are eerily quiet, like tombs, when they are not increasingly filled with protest and rage and violence. Bernie Sanders is claiming dominion over the Democratic Party and seems poised to do for the left what Donald Trump did for the right. Opinions are divided about exactly how that last thing feels queasily mystical. Is it the light rising to challenge the growing darkness? Or is the horseman of socialism riding with the horseman of plague and the horseman of civil strife? Whatever value judgments one makes about what’s happening, it seems that the old order is being pummeled from many directions simultaneously and is being driven to its knees. Or perhaps it is dying in the way an AIDS patient might die; killed by half a dozen secondary infections that are all fundamentally consequences of the same disease.

With Klobuchar and Buttigieg out of the race Biden surges. In the later one-on-one primaries against Sanders, Biden usually either wins or comes in a strong second. Biden is particularly strong in the south; he wins big in almost every southern state. Many are surprised by the strength of Biden, who many had previously dismissed as an uncharismatic doddering old man who seemed to struggle to string together coherent sentences. However, unlike in our world, in this world Sanders looks like a winner, so many fence-sitters who voted for Biden in our world vote for Sanders in this world, so Biden is unable to dominate the later primaries the way he did in our world.

The final Democratic primary debate in April looks much like it did in our world: two old men in a mostly empty room; an elbow-bump instead of a handshake because they don’t want to risk coronavirus infection by getting close to each other. It’s a test of how well the notoriously gaffe-prone Biden will do in a one-on-one debate, and he passes that test fairly well, allaying fears that he may have some sort of age-related cognitive decline. Biden’s promise to choose a woman as his Vice President is a clever bit of political maneuvering; Sanders is clearly unprepared for it and struggles to respond gracefully. The only big difference is the mostly unstated background knowledge of who is winning and who is losing. In this world Sanders comes into the April debate fresh from an unspectacular but fairly solid win in the Wisconsin primary.

With neither candidate able to dominate the race the Democratic primary remains competitive into June in this world. Biden gains on Sanders, but is unable to overtake him. Political pundits speculate that Sanders has an unfair advantage: he has an ally in the coronavirus: Biden’s vulnerable older supporters stay home in fear of the coronavirus, while Sanders’s younger and less vulnerable supporters go to the polls without fear.

In early June, Joe Biden and Democrat machine politicians face a choice. Biden can stay in the race to the bitter end. Maybe he can overtake Sanders, reach the magic 1,991 delegates, and go into the Democratic convention the unquestionably fair-and-square winner with a clear majority. Or if he can’t do that, he can still try to win on the conventional floor. Klobuchar’s and Buttigieg’s state-level delegates will be proportionately redistributed between him and Sanders, but their district delegates will be in free play and, with the blessings of Klobuchar and Buttigieg, will almost certainly back Biden. Biden can likewise probably expect the superdelegates to side with him. If it comes to convention floor politics Biden will probably easily crush Sanders. It will all be perfectly legally correct. It can even be credibly argued to be the will of the people; everyone knows Sanders is only winning because the moderate vote was split. But does the Democrat establishment dare alienate Sanders’s supporters this way, when they are going into one of the greatest political fights of the twenty-first century against Donald Trump? A long, bruising primary that drags into July may harm the party in the general election. And they know that inside Sanders’s clothing there is more than a man: there is the human mascot and spear-tip of a movement. Biden gaining the nomination through convention floor political maneuvers may be perfectly legally correct, but it takes no great political genius to see Sanders’s supporters will not see it that way; they will see it as their hero being undemocratically cheated out of his victory by a dirty trick. There is a great fear that if this course of action is taken Joe Biden’s 2020 nomination will go down in history as the twenty-first century equivalent of Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 nomination. And there’s also a real fear that a Sanders defeat by convention floor political maneuvers might trigger an eruption of violence as Sanders’s fanatical supporters respond by violently rioting in the streets. The fact that Sanders is so popular with the young, relevantly with fighting age men, starts to assume an ominous dimension in these speculations.

The last competitive primary happens on June 9th. Biden wins big in Georgia, while Sanders gets a surprisingly big win in West Virginia. The day after that, Joe Biden and top-level Democrat machine politicians make a decision. It is perhaps the most important decision of Joe Biden’s life. They will make a sacrifice for party unity in the face of Donald Trump. On June 11th 2020, Joe Biden goes on TV, announces that he is suspending his campaign, endorses Bernie Sanders, and urges party unity in the face of Trump. Immediately afterward, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg also endorse Bernie Sanders.

The general election:

In August, it is announced that Elizabeth Warren has been chosen to be Sanders’s Vice President if he wins. There is speculation that there was a deal made to get her to drop out and endorse Sanders in March and this was the reward she was promised, though she is a logical choice in important ways. She has name recognition, has similar politics to Sanders while being somewhat younger than him (unusually important in this election because Sanders is so old and is an “outsider” candidate; he will need somebody who can pick up the torch from him if he dies in office, or in 2024 when he’ll be in his 80s), has a cooler and more analytical intelligence that compliments Sanders’s charisma, and may be attractive to some voters who are less enthusiastic about Sanders.

On August 17-20 the Democratic National Convention formally nominates Bernie Sanders as the Democratic Presidential candidate for 2020.

The mood among liberals going into the general election is tenser and less confident than in our world. Sanders has a lead over Trump in most polls, but the polls don’t look as good for the Democrats as they did in our world. And Sanders, a man who openly calls himself a socialist, a man who said something nice about something Fidel Castro did and dug in his heels when called in it, is a candidate who naturally inspires electability worries. Many liberals are convinced the Democratic Party has collectively made a terrible mistake, and hope they are wrong.

The first Sanders-Trump debate is on September 29th, and it’s the same kind of spectacle the first Biden-Trump debate was in our world. The highlight (or perhaps lowlight) is Trump making a “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” statement which many interpret as a call to stand ready to act as brownshirts on his behalf. Some moderates have a vague idea that a Biden-Trump debate might have been somehow more dignified and Presidential, some leftists chuckle about how if it was Biden up there he’d probably have soiled his pants in the middle of the debate or something, the general sentiment among everyone to the left of Mitt Romney is simply that Trump lived down to their worst expectations.

The Vice Presidential debate between Mike Pence and Elizabeth Warren on October 7th is a note of normality: they actually sound like normal politicians instead of like two old men having a Thanksgiving table argument about politics while the rest of the family wishes they’d quiet down. There’s a 2020 touch when a fly rests on Mike Pence’s head for a few minutes.

In the final Sanders-Trump debate they put in a mute button to stop Trump from interrupting so much, and it’s actually a huge favor to Trump, disciplining him into actually being an actually not bad debater.

Election night and after:

The mood among liberals going into election night is tenser and less optimistic than in our world. There’s no confident expectation of a big blue wave and a resounding repudiation of Trumpism, and there’s a lot of fear that Sanders is simply unelectable and he will drag down the down-ballot with him.

Election night seems to confirm the worst. Swing state after swing state goes into the Trump-lead column, and aside from a couple of wins in the west the Senate race picture looks bleak for the Democrats. It looks like Trump will win Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. Sanders’s margins of victory in crucial swing states are mostly tighter, so it takes longer for the “red mirage” to lift. One of the few bright spots for the Democrats is Arizona, which is a sour note for Donald Trump; at this point he’s mostly confident of victory, but losing Arizona is a humiliation, and Donald Trump hates being humiliated. Late in election night, Donald Trump goes on TV and makes a confident victory speech. He has some worries about the red mirage though, so in typical Trump fashion he follows his confident declaration of victory by claiming that the Democrats are committing voter fraud on a massive scale and trying to steal the election, and he says that the vote counts should stop. A defiant Sanders goes on TV and reassures his supporters that there are many voters yet to be counted, and then goes on the attack, saying Trump is blatantly trying to steal the election. He also says something that some interpret as a call for his supporters to riot if his victory is stolen from him, giving the left its own version of Trump’s “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” scandal.

There’s a lot of tension in a lot of mixed-generation liberal households on election night, as older, more cautious and moderate liberals quietly or not so quietly blame the youngsters for the disaster they believe is unfolding in front of them. “This wouldn’t have happened with Biden or Mayor Pete or Klobuchar,” they think, “How did you expect middle America to react to a guy who calls himself a socialist and defends Fidel Castro? We told you this would happen!” The election picture most liberals go to bed with that night is bleak.

In the last dark pre-dawn hours of November 4th the red mirage finally begins to lift. Wisconsin flips to Sanders-lead. By late morning on November 4th Michigan has also flips to Sanders-lead. Millions of older liberals who went to bed blaming the Berniebros for four more years of Donald Trump check the news and breathe a sigh of surprised relief: it’s not much but maybe Bernie did have what it takes after all; he managed something he needed to do, something Hillary Clinton failed to do: he held the blue wall! All eyes now turn to Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania actually flips somewhat earlier than in our world, to the absolute jubilant delight of young liberal “Berniebros,” the cautious relief of their liberal elders, and the disappointment or outrage or terror of a hundred million conservatives. Not long afterward, a surprise: Georgia flips to Sanders-lead too. It’s a real squeaker, even tighter than Biden’s Georgia win in our world, and Sanders would have won without it, but it’s a pleasant surprise for liberals.

With the election basically all over but the formalities Sanders makes his formal victory speech, with raucous cheers from enthusiastic supporters. In contrast to the almost therapeutic victory speech Biden gave in our world, Sanders’s victory speech is darker, angrier. The speech has its hopeful and conciliatory notes, but the general thrust of its message is that Sanders intends to fight for the ordinary American and his fight has just begun.

Sanders’s victory is greeted with an outpouring of joy and celebration by his often young supporters. Most liberals are happy just to get rid of Trump. Many moderate liberals aren’t really looking forward to what they see as another four years of an obnoxious angry extremist in the White House, but at least Sanders isn’t evil. On the right the mood ranges from grumpy disappointment to ... dark. There’s a significant number of people who are under the sincere impression that Sanders is basically Lenin and the relationship between him and Antifa is similar to the relationship between Hitler and the Blackshirts.

So far the much-feared Trumpist brownshirts seem to be a paper tiger; there have been some rowdy protests but no serious violence. Lots of people are very fervently hoping things stay that way.

Somewhere there’s an immigrant from China who’s old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution and is very, very frightened. She doesn’t follow politics much but she’s heard that Bernie Sanders is a communist and she’s got just the right mix of garbled information about him filtered through her Fox News watching neighbors to be very alarmed. It’s starting here too! It’s all starting again! She’s trying to give her family a crash-course in how to survive in a communist dictatorship, but they’ve never known anything but freedom and don’t seem to be taking her very seriously, which is frustrating and heartbreaking to her; “they don’t realize these things will soon be matters of life and death!”

Comparing the election results in our world and in this world, most people would be struck by how similar they look, how little difference the top of the ticket made.

Compared to Biden, Sanders did better in the west but worse in the south. He did worse with affluent moderates and center-rightists and better with liberals and poor people. He did worse with blacks but better with Latino/as. He actually has a bigger popular vote win than Biden, mostly because he creates greater enthusiasm in liberal areas such as California, but his margins of victory in swing states are mostly tighter. Sanders didn’t poll as well as Biden in the lead-up to the election, but he also did not underperform expectations in the same way; Sanders supporters tend to be the sort of people who don’t answer polls much. Compared to Biden, Sanders’s success relied less on peeling off swing voters and more on bringing in politically disengaged people; the sort of people who don’t answer polls much, don’t trust or like the talking heads on TV, usually don’t vote, and are usually poorer and less formally educated than the conventional electorate. In short, the “dark horse” Sanders voter looks a lot like the “dark horse” Trump voter.

In short, compared to Biden, Sanders has a rather Trumpy profile, and his winning strategy looks kind of like a sort of left-wing mirror of Trump’s 2016 winning strategy: super-charge the base, draw in some politically disengaged people, rely on partisan tribalism to fill in the gaps, with this build the sort of narrow winning coalition that can just manage to defy conventional political wisdom and propel an “extreme, outsider” normally “unelectable” candidate into office.

Sanders won the same states Biden won in our world. His margins of victory are bigger in Arizona and Pennsylvania but smaller in Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. Sanders didn’t win that one electoral college vote in Nebraska, which in this world went solidly to Trump, so his electoral college total is slightly smaller than Biden’s.

In the Senate, the picture is broadly similar to our world, though with some differences. Warren and Sanders were both Senators from states with Republican governors who would have the responsibility of appointing their replacements if Sanders became President. The governor of Vermont agrees to appoint a Democrat-aligned independent to replace Sanders if he wins (much as he did in our world), but the governor of Massachusetts intends to appoint a Republican to replace Warren. However, the Democrats did get one stroke of luck in this world that they didn’t get in ours: the Democrat Senate candidate won in Iowa; this saves Warren from going down in history as having cost the Democrats a Senate majority by accepting the Vice Presidency post. Other than this the Senate picture looks basically just like in our world. This puts the Democrats in a somewhat better position than in our world, as there will be a special election for Warren’s Senate seat in 2021 that is likely to elect a Democrat, but the Senate majority is going to come down to two run-off races in Georgia, just like in our world. The House races went a little worse for the Democrats than in our world: as of 11/25/2020 the Cook Political Report calls the House as 220 Democrats, 213 Republicans, and 2 uncalled races (in our world it’s 222 Democrats, 210 Republicans, and 3 uncalled races). Likewise, the governor’s races went the same way they went in our world, except that the Republican also won the governor’s race in North Carolina (in our world, the Democrat won that race). And the state legislature races are the same depressing picture as in our world, so Republicans will control much of the next round of redistricting.

The post-election discourse:

Of course, people in this world cannot compare their election results with ours and see how similar they are. They can only speculate about what our world might look like, just as I can only speculate about what their world might look like. And speculate they do.

Many centrist, moderate, and “pragmatist” Democrats think they know exactly who’s to blame for the Democrat’s disappointing performance: Sanders, and by extension the primary voters who put him at the top of the ticket. How could a President be as bad as Trump was, get 250,000 U.S. citizens killed through incompetence, and then come so close to winning? How could so many people vote for such a person and for the politicians who did nothing to stop him and aided him? Well, maybe if the opposition party did something incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid, like putting at the top of the ticket a guy who openly calls himself a socialist and who defends Fidel Castro... They are convinced that the election results look the way they do because Sanders turned off huge numbers of persuadable voters. They think the Berniebros took the perfect storm of conditions for a once-in-a-century huge Democrat victory that was 2020 and used it to get an ordinarily unelectable extremist into the White House, at an enormous opportunity cost to the rest of the party (and a little less luck and they’d have blown their own goal too and gotten everyone four more years of Trump!). They are convinced that if it were Biden or Klobuchar or Buttigieg at the top of the ticket the party would not be in this mess. Many of them are sure that the Democratic Party would have surged magnificently to crushing dominance of the Presidency and both branches of Congress, if only the Berniebros hadn’t insisted on burdening the party with a toxic albatross.

The predictable tweets and thinkpieces blaming the disappointing election results on Sanders have been written. The disappointing results in the south are blamed on Sanders’s inability to reach out to black people and persuadable white moderates. Somebody looks at exit polls, notices Trump seems to have improved his performance with everyone except white men (a pattern that exists in our world too), and multiple high-profile articles and blog posts are written blaming this on Sanders’s “class reductionism” and supposed insensitivity to the problems of everyone who isn’t a working class white man. The election map represents the Democratic Party turning away from its vibrant diverse future and doubling down on its decaying past as the party of “white working class” Midwesterners. The fact that non-white people still overwhelmingly voted Democrat and Sanders has many female and minority supporters is, of course, quietly soft-peddled in such analysis. The disappointing election results are blamed on the Democratic Party’s embrace of socialism, of Medicare For All, of “defund the police,” of BLM. Criticism that paints Sanders as “class reductionist” and insufficiently sensitive to the needs of women and minorities coexists happily with criticism that castigates the Democratic Party for embracing anything that makes affluent culturally conservative suburban white people uncomfortable.

Many leftists are, of course, convinced that the moderates have it all backwards and the Democrats would have gone down in epic humiliating defeat under Klobuchar or Buttigieg or, God, can you imagine; Biden. The closeness of the election just shows how badly the Democrats needed a leader like Sanders who could inspire people and had something real to offer; without him the Republicans would have wiped the floor with them; he saved the party from total defeat and ingratitude and backstabbing is his predictable reward, because liberals would rather lose to fascists than win with leftists. It just shows electoral politics is a waste of time anyway, watch 2024 when Warren gets primaried by Mayo Pete who then loses to Tom Cotton.

The version of me that exists in this world had a tense election night, breathed a cautious sigh of relief when he opened his computer and saw Wisconsin had flipped blue in the morning, breathed a bigger sigh of relief when Michigan followed it, and spent a week feeling good when Pennsylvania finally flipped for Sanders. It’s a far from ideal election result, of course, with Sanders’s power likely to be sharply constrained, but still, there’s a President who might really do some good! If nothing else, he thinks Sanders will be good at using the soft power of the Presidency to shift the Overton Window. He’s very excited that Sanders will be going to the White House.

[coldasyou]

I'm *still* quite confused about the electoral college? Like.... the popular vote votes for the people who make up for the electoral college, who vote for the president? But then why would a democrat electoral college member vote for Trump? Or how did he possible win if Hilary won the popular vote? Idk, maybe none of this is accurate, I'm still so confused (also, I'm not US) (also, I have tried to google it but I need someone to explain it to me like I'm 5)

anon I’m american, practically have my BA in history, and I still don’t fully understand it! it is...insanely confusing and I hate it but I’ll try and do my best to explain it. 

when the united states founders were first framing the constitution (yes we have to go back this far for context) there was a lot of disagreement over the role of big states vs small states. you can see this with the debate over whether or not states representation in congress should be equal across the board (the new jeresey plan) or based on the population (virginia plan). a compromise was reached and that’s why in the US we have two branches in congress; the senate (where each state gets two senators no matter the size) and the house of representatives (where the number of reps a state has is determined by population). 

that same anxiety surrounding how much power big states would have is one of the reasons we have the electoral college. another reason is a lot of the founders just genuinely didn’t trust average citizens to be smart enough to vote (remember, originally only white, property owning men could vote) and didn’t want a pure popular vote to decide a winner but we don’t like to talk about that in this country! so the electoral college is basically a process that works like this: each state gets a certain number of electors, determined by their total representation in congress (the number of reps + the two senators. for example, ohio has 18 votes, 16 for our representatives, 2 for our senators. DC also gets 3 electoral votes despite not actually being a state.). there are currently 538 electors in total and a candidate needs 270 to win. what qualifies a person to be an elector varies by state (bc this process needs to be MORE convoluted) but in general it’s high ranking members of the specific candidates political party. when you vote for a specific candidate, you’re actually voting for their electors (either democrat, or republican).to take 2016 as an example, both trump and clinton had their own set of electors chosen by their respective parties, but the only ones who actually got to vote where the electors of the party that won the state (so in california, the democratic electors picked clinton bc she won the most votes, in texas, the republican electors picked trump bc he won the most votes). every state besides maine and nebraska has a “winner take all” system, where whichever candidate gets the most votes in the state gets all of the electors. this is supposed to be kind of an “honor code thing.” technically, an elector could vote for whoever they want (and some do, they’re called faithless electors) but like 99% of electors vote for their parties candidate.  (source, source)

normally, the electoral college matches up with what the popular vote was (so the candidate with the most electors also got the most votes) but there have been five elections in US history where a candidate who got the MOST votes lost bc they still didn’t get the MOST electors. the first 3 were in the 19th century but it has happened twice in the past 20 years already; bush vs gore in 2000 and trump vs clinton in 2016. this can happen bc of the winner take all system: to quote pew research, “This mismatch between the electoral and popular votes came about because Trump won several large states (such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) by very narrow margins, gaining all their electoral votes in the process, even as Clinton claimed other large states (such as California, Illinois and New York) by much wider margins.” (source) and to quote the times: “Today, in every state except Nebraska and Maine, whichever candidate wins the most votes in a state wins all the electors from that state, no matter what the margin of victory. Just look at the impact this system had on the 2016 race: Donald Trump won Pennsylvania and Florida by a combined margin of about 200,000 votes to earn 49 electoral votes. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, won Massachusetts by almost a million votes but earned only 11 electoral votes.” (source). on average, states with a high population and high urban density (where democrats are more popular) are underrepresented in the electoral college, while more rural states with a lower population  (where republicans are more popular) are over represented in the electoral college, and that’s why we’ve seen two democrats win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote in the past two decades.

swing states (states that historically have gone both republican and democrat) also come in to play. they can change based on political trends, but generally include most of the midwest as well as flordia, nevada, pennsylvania, and virginia. one of the reasons trump was able to win the electoral college is he did REALLY well in swing states, particularly in the midwest and rust belt, and he was able to grab a lot of electors from there. 

confusing? yes. personally, I am very anti electoral college for reasons that are summarized a lot better here and here and also bc I LIVE in a swing state and the constant political attack ads are horrible. 

finally, here’s a graphic that really helps me understand how the divide between popular and electoral vote can occur. (source)

[schraubd]

Massachusetts Primary Results and Lessons

Massachusetts had its congressional primaries yesterday. I put down some predictions, and I'm decently pleased with my performance. I nailed Markey/Kennedy (I said Markey would win by around 10 points, and he won by a 55/45 margin). I got the winners right in the MA-01 and -08 races, but I thought both might be closer than they were. Rep. Richard Neal beat Alex Morse by a 59-41 margin (essentially the same spread as Ilhan Omar over Antoine Melton-Meaux a few weeks ago), and Rep. Stephen Lynch beat challenger Robbie Goldstein 67-33. So what did we learn? Begin with the Senate race. From what I saw, Markey overperformed in college-educated, relatively affluent and disproportionately White suburban centers while Kennedy's base was in working class and minority areas of the state. That actually isn't that surprising, given how progressive politics has been playing out over the past few years, but it does clash with some of the self-image of the progressive left which very much sees itself as being the voice of the most down-trodden. Take from that what you will. Likewise, I'm beginning to see at least a few progressive activists say that their support of Ed Markey is proof that they're not purity-obsessed compromise-averse zealots, since, after all, Markey had his share of heresies in his history (the Iraq War vote being a major one). But he was improving, and he courted their support, and it was important that this sort of behavior be rewarded even if wasn't perfect. And I agree! That's a great lesson and one I hope the left internalizes! But for now, it still seems to be a lesson that is at best inconsistently applied. There's an alternative universe, after all, where Ed Markey -- forty year congressional veteran, backed by Chuck Schumer, Mike Bloomberg, and the DSCC, Iraq War supporoter -- is very much viewed as the quintessential "establishment" candidate who leveraged his insider advantages against the youthful upstart promising to shake things up and harken back to old school Great Society liberalism. Indeed, at the very start of the race that was the narrative Joe Kennedy was very much trying to push. It is to Markey's credit as a campaigner that he managed to turn this story on its head. But the fact is that Kennedy and Markey really don't have that different voting records from one another; and there are countless examples where "voting history akin to Ed Markey's" + "support from Michael Bloomberg" = "irrefutable proof of being part of the Deep Establishment". There's more than a bit of arbitrariness that Markey managed to avoid that label. Perhaps the best thing Markey had going for him was that, orthodox Democratic voting record notwithstanding, he was warm and welcoming of the progressive wing of the party. There's a good lesson there too: being nice works! People like it when you're nice to them. That may seem banal, but there's a branch of progressive political activism that is very committed to the view that the only way to gain and wield political power is via incessant attacks and ruthless "shoot the hostage" bargaining ("the corrupt neoliberal Democratic Party won't listen to us unless we stop voting for them"). In reality, another good way to curry influence is to build good relationships with those you want to influence; and a good way to lose influence is to be openly antipathic to your nominal targets. This is why the Sanders strategy of "running against the Democratic Party in a Democratic primary" was doomed to fail. Markey, by contrast, built positive relationships both with the Green New Deal and "Squad" types, as well as plenty of more "establishment" oriented politicians. That paid off, big time. But once again, the lesson isn't being internalized -- check out the replies to Elizabeth Warren (who endorsed Markey) uttering some generic boilerplate niceties to Joe Kennedy after his defeat. One would think "having already won, there's no reason to actively antagonize a perfectly decent politician who just got 45% in her own state's primary" wouldn't be controversial. But you'd be wrong. Finally, with respect to Kennedy himself, I stand by my initial assessment that his challenge was needless fratricide. Kennedy isn't a bad guy, and his record as a congressperson is perfectly solid. But there wasn't any clear reason for his campaign other than "I want to be a bigger deal than I am now", and that's not a good basis for a primary challenge. Once again, there should be a very strong presumption that Democratic Party energies are better spent fighting Republicans than other Democrats. Kennedy violated that presumption and so I'm glad he lost. Over on the House side, I said that I thought Morse's "scandal" probably helped him more than it hurt him, but that this prediction wasn't really falsifiable. That remains true, but I think his wider-than-anticipated defeat does emphasize that the progressive-insurgent model really is struggling to gain traction outside dense urban districts. There's a good case that Stephen Lynch -- who's probably more conservative than Richard Neal and represents a far more urbanized district -- would make for a better target of progressive energies. The fact that Lynch didn't do that much better than Neal (taking 67% versus 59%) despite facing a far lower-profile candidate suggests there might be more room to run in the former district. Lastly, there was one race, the 4th district primary (to replace Joe Kennedy) where I didn't venture a prediction because the field was a giant 9-way cluster**** and I didn't have time to even try to figure out what's going on. Election day verified that impulse -- the race hasn't been called, five candidates are in double-digits, and at the moment less than 1,500 votes separate first place (Jake Auchincloss, 22.4%) from second place (Jesse Mermell, 21.4%). Still, while the race hasn't been officially called, most observers seem to think Auchincloss -- who ran as a moderate and used to work for Republican Governor Charlie Baker -- will hold onto his lead and become the Democratic nominee. Of course, a race this close immediately raises questions about what will happen come 2022. On the one hand, next cycle Auchincloss almost certainly won't benefit from a wildly fractured field splitting the progressive vote. On the other hand, he will benefit from being an incumbent. As Rashida Tlaib just showed, the entrenching effect of the latter can easily wipe away apparent vulnerability implied by the former even after a single election cycle. I suspect that once in Congress Auchincloss will work to lock down his progressive bona fides and will be able to hold onto his seat for awhile. But it is well within the realm of possibility that Joe Kennedy's ill-fated Senate run meant that a safe Democratic seat just got a much more conservative representative. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/3lIeZxJ

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Even if you knew in advance about the “blue shift” that would occur in states like Pennsylvania — and we did know in advance about it! — it’s been hard to make enough of a mental adjustment for it this week. Numbers flashing across a TV ticker have a certain magnetic power and certitude to them. It was easy to forget that Joe Biden would gain ground once mail votes were added to the tallies because such votes were overwhelmingly Democratic this year in Pennsylvania and most other states.

But just because of that blue shift — and the red shift that occurred in states where mail votes were counted first — that doesn’t mean the presidential race was all that close in the end. Joe Biden’s win was on the tighter side of the likely range of outcomes suggested by polls, but it was a thoroughly convincing one judged on its own merits.

So put aside your anxieties of the past few days and the premature media narratives that have been circulating since Tuesday night. Suppose, instead, that you’d been on one of those weekslong rafting trips in the Grand Canyon (sounds pleasant, doesn’t it?) and woke up to this map:

It’s not a landslide, by any means, but this is a map that almost any Democrat would have been thrilled about if you’d shown it to them a year ago. Biden looks to have reclaimed the three “blue wall” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (ABC News has announced that Biden is the “apparent winner” in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin1) — that were central to Hillary Clinton’s loss. He may also win Arizona (he would become the first Democrat to do so since 1996) and, in the opposite corner of the country, Georgia (the first Democratic winner there since 1992). Additionally, Biden easily won Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which could be a thorn in the side of Republicans going forward. He also ran far ahead of Clinton in rural northern states such as Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

Extrapolating out from current vote totals, I project Biden winning the popular vote by 4.3 percentage points and getting 81.8 million votes to President Trump’s 74.9 million, with a turnout of around 160 million. This is significant because no candidate has ever received 70 million votes in an election — former President Barack Obama came the closest in 2008, with 69.5 million votes — let alone 80 million. That may also be a slightly conservative projection, given the blue shift we’ve seen so far and the fact that late-counted votes such as provisional ballots often lean Democratic. I’d probably bet on Biden’s popular vote margin winding up at closer to 5 points than to 4, and 6 points isn’t entirely out of the question either.

The margin is also a bit more impressive in the context of our highly polarized political era, which has tended to produce close elections. If I’m right about the popular vote margin, Biden’s win would come via the second-largest popular vote margin since 2000, exceeding Obama’s 3.9-point margin against Mitt Romney in 2012 but lagging behind Obama’s 7.3-point win over John McCain in 2008.

Biden also defeated an elected incumbent, which is relatively rare. Since World War II, five elected incumbents who sought reelection have won it — Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Obama. Trump is now the third sitting president to lose his reelection bid in that time, along with Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.

What about the polls? Didn’t they show a wider margin for Biden? Yes, they did — Biden led in the final national polls by around 8 points. So we’re probably going to wind up with a polling error of around 3 to 4 points, both nationally and at the state level. (Although that will reflect a combination of states like Georgia, where the polls were spot-on, and others like Wisconsin, where there were big misses.) This is, of course, a subject on which we’ll have more to say in the coming days. For now, it’s safe to say that pollsters will have some questions to answer, especially about how they missed in the same direction (underestimating Trump) in some of the same states two elections in a row.

At the same time, this election’s polling error may wind up being fairly normal by historical standards. Indeed, the final polls miss by around 3 points, on average, in presidential elections. The error this year may be somewhat wider than that, but we should wait for all the votes to be counted because margins may shift substantially in some states before results are certified.

In any case, Biden’s ability to survive a polling error of the size that sank Clinton was precisely the reason he was a fairly heavy favorite in our forecast. Biden won (or is likely to win) several states — Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona2 — by margins that will probably be between 0 and 2 percentage points, in contrast to Clinton, who lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida by margins of 1 percentage point or less. Biden’s 89 percent chance of winning the Electoral College included the possibility of nail-biter wins in critical states — although, again, it’s hard to know if this race would be regarded as that much of a nail-biter if not for the timing of ballot counting and the blue shift.

The bigger problems — both for Democrats and for the polls — were in races for Congress.

There weren’t necessarily any huge upsets in the Senate; it’s just that Democrats lost most of the tossup races. Among races where winners have been projected so far, Democrat Sara Gideon is the only Senate candidate favored in our forecast to have lost, and she had only a 59 percent chance of beating Sen. Susan Collins, according to our final forecast. Gideon, however, is likely to eventually be joined by Cal Cunningham in North Carolina once that race is projected, who had a 68 percent chance, although the polling in that Senate race had tightened in the closing days of the campaign following a Cunningham sexting scandal. Republican Joni Ernst held off challenger Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, although Ernst was a narrow favorite in our forecast.

Democrats do retain a chance at a Senate majority, or more likely a 50-50 split in which Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the deciding vote. Democrats currently hold 48 seats,3 but there are two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 that are sure to attract hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising. I’m a little too exhausted to prognosticate about the Georgia runoffs all that much, but Democrats are at least mathematically alive here in a state that Biden appears likely to win. They also retain some outside chances at winning a Senate seat in Alaska, where mail votes have not yet been counted.

But Democrats underperformed in the U.S. House, where they’ve lost almost every toss-up race that has been projected so far and Republicans have made a net gain of 5 seats and counting. It also appears as though Democrats will underperform in the House popular vote relative to the presidential vote and the generic ballot, where Democrats led by about 7 percentage points. That looks like a significant polling miss (although the House popular vote can take a long time to finalize). In that sense, the election could be described as more of a repudiation of Trump specifically than of Republicans writ large.

Biden did have some shortcomings, however. One major one was his apparent underperformance among key groups of Hispanic voters, especially Cuban Americans in South Florida and Mexican Americans in South Texas. As you can see in this chart from The New York Times, there were huge shifts toward Trump in these areas:

Indeed, even with the addition of Georgia and Arizona in their column, Democrats’ Electoral College coalition is somewhat fragile if it doesn’t contain Florida and/or Texas. It’s not clear yet what the tipping-point state will be in this election — but mostly likely it will be Arizona or Wisconsin, where it appears as though Biden will win by around 1 percentage point. That could mean there’s around a 4-point gap between the roughly 5-point popular vote victory that we eventually expect from Biden and his margin in the tipping-point state, a bigger Electoral College disadvantage than Clinton had in 2016 (3 points).

Still, this brings up one last point: This is the seventh election out of the past eight in which Democrats have won the popular vote for president. If American elections were contested on the basis of the popular vote, this race could probably have been called fairly early on Tuesday night, and we could all have gotten a lot more sleep the past few days. But don’t let bleary eyes obscure Biden’s accomplishment.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I hope it's okay if I ask you a question. When I read what fans want for Sam and Cas, there's some really great stuff. For Dean, though, meta writers pretty much just focus on his sexuality and his relationship with Cas. Destiel is my OTP and I'd be over the moon if bi Dean finally accepted Cas' love. But there's more to Dean than just his relationships with Cas and Sam. I love your take on Dean so I was wondering - is there anything else you'd like to see for him this season and as end game?

Please always feel free to ask me questions!! It might take a while for me to answer because I am always fighting against time and time always wins -_-

Honestly when I talk about Dean’s sexuality I don’t really intend it as “strictly” about his sexuality in the sense of whom he bangs, but in a larger sense about identity and his way of perceiving himself and having a good relationship with who he is. It is a bit of a shorthand for Dean’s general sense of identity and way of relating to himself and others.

It’s a complex topic because different writers/showrunners over the course of the show seem to have written Dean from different perspectives on his relationship with sexuality. Fans have different ideas/headcanons of how Dean relates to his sexuality--a lot of fans read him as a repressed bisexual that doesn’t act on his attraction to men and possibly doesn’t even acknowledges it to himself, which is not the way I read him, I lean more on a John Shiban-era image of Dean as perfectly aware of being “different” and having a complex relationship with that, a mixture of pride and conflict. But it’s also true that the earlier season tend to portray Dean like that more than recent seasons have.

I am definitely not a fan of “everyone knows Dean is bisexual/in love with Cas but Dean”, which rubs me in a bad way especially when the focus is on “Sam knows” because the idea of Sam knowing Dean, and especially Dean’s sexuality, better than Dean does is something I’m really not into.

That said, yeah, I’m also a “Destiel shipper” in the larger sense of the word although sometimes I feel I’m more of a Dean fan to really fit in with the “mainstream” Destiel fandom (but not bitter enough to fit in with the bitter Dean fans...) which can be tricky because, for instance, right now I really don’t click with the most popular take on Dean and Cas’ “breakup” (you know, yas Cas dump his ass). I’ve also been through all those years when we discussed Dean and Sam’s relationship through the lens of the infamous “toxic codependency” to the point I don’t really feel the expression has a meaning anymore...

What I want to see for him is mostly find a healthy balanced way to... exist as himself. A way that works best for him. Of Dean’s “coping mechanisms” has been said so much over the years, not always in ways I agree with. “Healthy” and “unhealthy” are relative concepts when it comes to coping mechanism; the trauma is inherently bad, but the ways we cope with it have a margin of positive value for what help they can give us. Clearly something like drugs is “unhealthy” and one should make an effort to find a better alternative, but even “bad” coping mechanisms like alcohol and drugs are a way to self-medicate. A coping mechanism is a way we use to take care of ourselves, and Dean has been through a journey where he’s tried out different coping mechanisms and tried to find something that works best for him, with all the due relapses and regressions of the case. Look at the latest episode, or when he stayed holed in his room eating pizza - technically, it’s a “bad” attitude because he’s staying in the bunker watching tv and eating not the healthiest food the market offers, but he is taking care of himself. His life has been so filled with violence and abuse and lack of control, I would like if Dean weren’t so judged for indulgences.

I think I was going somewhere but went on a tangent...

Anyway, I think that Dean’s endgame should not require him to change much of who he is. The circumstances around him should change, not him. There’s not really a big lesson I think he needs to learn. He and Cas need both to work on their relationship, the fact they’re having issues is not solely on Dean. Just because Cas said I love you while literally dying doesn’t mean he did all he could and had to do for their relationship. The way some people paint it, it seems like Cas is so open about his feelings and love for Dean and Dean is a ball of repression that can’t say it back. Dean is dealing with things that go way beyond Cas right now.

Speaking of which, I think a fully complete endgame would have Mary alive, or, better, to be revealed not to be really dead. The hints are there, although of course they’re ambiguous enough that I’m not saying I’m convinced of it. But still.

Some might say that Dean needs to learn to let her go and deal with the trauma of losing her, but Mary has a significance wider than “the mom”, she belongs to a semiotic area of repressed femininity and the cosmic darkness and all that jazz (I never got the “Amara is witchcraft” reveal I was hoping for in the beginning of season 11, but we’ve been getting some interesting things in regards of witchcraft and alchemy and I can’t say I’m not content), and Eileen coming back from water makes me optimistic about our chances here, the latest few episodes have a mini-theme of fire versus water and we know what’s the most narratively important thing that burned in the show.

I’m not sure I answered your question, but I don’t really have a “wishlist”. Okay, if I really need to, I would be very very happy if the show explicitly linked John’s return with Chuck’s machinations, but if 14x13 was like that more because of external pressures than Dabb’s will, then they probably don’t want to dig it up again.

What are your thoughts?

[reimenaashelyee]

History for Granted, or When a Marginal Voice Tackles The Main Text

My thoughts about being a marginalised creator who chose to make a graphic novel on a historical figure in the dominant Western canon. About why I didn't choose a lesser-known history instead. About why, either way, it is not a loss to POC representation

Reposted from my official blog, where I keep all my long-form thoughts.

Some of you may know I write historical fiction. Some of you may also know I’ve been chipping away on an Alexander the Great graphic novel.

My role as a historical graphic novelist has been stewing in the back of my mind for a while now. Actually, the stewing began when I first thought of The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, but I already know my insights from that project. Be actively thoughtful. Be self aware of how your own biases and societal context influence your storytelling. Recognise the people before and around you. Use your power to bring up voices. Understand that the work of being a responsible author lasts beyond the final page of your story.

Such is the case for Alexander, The Servant and The Water of Life. What I have learnt from TCM still carries over, thank goodness.

However, since last November, I realised that Alexander is a different kettle of fish. I already knew this early on: the mindboggling breadth and scope of research material, the baggage carried by the subject, and the newness of everything. While TCM focused on a narrow historical context (Ottoman era Istanbulite migrates to Georgian era England), and had the advantage of me knowing the lead character for years prior (Zeynel, my precious nerd son…), Alexander was from scratch. I didn’t know just how many Alexander Romances I really needed to read. I didn’t know much about ancient Greek anything. I didn’t know an atom about Alexander the Great himself – really, it was zilch.

Which means my responsibilities this time have a somewhat different character. A different edge.

I don’t write historical fiction about royalties or the elite. The most I have ever been interested in is a well-to-do merchant. Even then, my merchant would have an uncommon edge; he is with the common people. That’s where my interests lie: in the common people. The ordinary people outside of the court who go about their daily ordinary lives and daily ordinary struggles. The ups and downs and ins and outs of aristocrats and royals don’t excite me as much.

Then why Alexander? Honestly, he’s an exception.

Not because he’s suddenly a royal that interests me. Seriously, no royal will ever interest me enough to make a GN out of their life, based on their biography alone. (Though King James of the King James Bible and the secret tunnel to his boyfriend make a convincing petition) Alexander came to me in a roundabout way. A trick. He fooled me to exception by showing me his resume: Macedonian king, prophecised Egyptian pharoah, Persian king, son of a god, Jewish convert, Christian hero, Muslim prophet. And he showed me how many different cultures have absorbed him into their folk mythology over 2000 years. Even as the world changed and his body laid somewhere in Egypt, his shade travelled the world. He’s the only secular figure with similar cultural-legendary reach as Jesus. King Arthur can’t claim that. Heck, even Odysseus can’t claim that. Oh, how could I have resisted? This is exactly what I am all about.

This is all Alexander by the way.

The common people’s Alexander. The story of how different places have appropriated and localised him over time. Gave him different faces. Gave him slightly different names. Gave him quests and adventures and stories that had absolutely nothing to do with ancient Greece. Made him the believer of a pantheon into a believer of a singular God.

What brought me here is this literal embodiment of world literature. But he’s not an epic. He’s popular legend. And he doesn’t belong to any one culture or time or place. He’s everywhere.

But like I said, this kettle of fish is different.

Alexander the Great is not exactly the most obscure of histories. He’s a military idol. A national figurehead. He was a man. He was from ancient Greece. He’s claimed as a “heritage of the Western (read: white) world”, an excuse for why conquest is the legacy of the white, Western man. This is Alexander’s baggage, as I call it.

As a woman of colour (WOC) author from the global south, I’m aware of my (small, individual amount of) power to bring up unheard of histories. Unseen biographies of little known people. A glimpse into outside cultures and voices that Western-dominated media and education gloss over like wallpaper. I could have written about Puteri Gunung Ledang, or May 13th 1969, or the history of how my family came to Malaysia sometime during the Xinhai Revolution. I have no obligation to write about Alexander, because until last November, he was seriously a cultural nobody to me. I have no stake in the furthering the hegemony of Western history.

And I think, maybe not owning that stake is why it’s necessary.

Just as important as minorities writing about little known histories, minorities should write about the histories that are taken for granted. Because of our unique experiences with the consequences of colonialism, slavery, violence, discrimination, dehumanisation, etc, we look at history differently. It’s not about who wins or who loses. It’s about who is missing, who is harmed, what is lost…the gaps made by what was edited out.

With those glasses on, history taken for granted – if not already thoroughly given a critical cleansing – is shown to be what it really is: a history that isn’t as well-known as we thought. (and that’s okay)

I won’t be alone in saying I had no clue Alexander belonged to nobody and everybody (because everyone in the old world has an Alexander). For a long time, Western white history was gatekept, using the reasoning that whatever they claimed had an easy connect-the-dots relationship to their present day (even though I always knew that claim was oversimplified, anti-intellectual thinking). But, all of these things are simply whitewashed facades. The truth is that, like Greco-Roman everything, like Norse history, like Christian destiny, they are more complex, more diverse, more ambiguous, than what these facades can contain.

Just working with Alexander through the framework of the Alexander Romance already blows up general misconceptions about history: that history was a bubble, homogenous and separated from each other (“Egyptian history” “Chinese history” “Roman history”, “Christian world”, “Muslim world” “East”, “West”), rarely interacting and influencing.

And looking at Alexander’s actual biography says a lot about how open the world already was in his time. He was king of three empires. His pre-Hellenistic world was multicultural and diverse. It wasn’t all white marble statues. It was, like what reality is, painted technicolour marble statues.

The Victorian era archeologists who whitewashed those statues stripped off more than just the colour. They took off knowledge.

After a lot of thinking, I feel like I’m in a good place to make a GN about Alexander and the Alexander Romance.

It’s not a confidence thing, though tbh, I believe that as a WOC creator from the global south I cannot afford to doubt myself. It’s more about the position I am in and the new perspective I can offer about a historical-legendary figure taken for granted. And there’s my endless well of passion for multicolour histories. Alongside my desire to decolonialise everything.

It’s not a loss that I have chosen to work on a history taken for granted. Historical GNs are still dominated by the white Western cis-male perspective, both in subject and authorship. To be clear, I wouldn’t consider that particular perspective wrong or lesser on its own. My only qualm is when that perspective becomes the majority perspective, or worst the only perspective, which is given to an audience. I always think about this TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, about the Danger of a Single Story:

Me being here, telling an entirely different story, is a statement by itself.

Even then, I shouldn’t need to justify my choice. Whether it’s to a person who tells me I shouldn’t pursue Alexander because he’s a part of the dominant narrative, or to another person who tells me that as a minority creator I must adhere to my social responsibility (responsibility demanded by whom?) to tell little known histories or stories. Again, in my case, I think it’s not a loss which way I go, Alexander or not, because whatever I write is going to be a different story.

I think the only loss is when there aren’t still yet more marginalised authors to take on both the little known histories and histories taken for granted. The project of diversifying storytelling is not demanding the few marginalised voices to choose the correct, exotic, culturally-representative dish they had to bring to the potluck, but making the table wider, inviting more voices, so that, by author’s choice, any dish can be present and enjoyed by everyone.

My choice in whatever story I desire to write, as long as it doesn’t bring harm and intolerance and it undergoes the necessary self-interrogation, should be a choice that is already given. If white, Western authors can have this freedom, why not everyone else? Why must minority voices be defaulted to never having this good faith at the start?

Is it not enough that we already suffer from a lack of representation and a lack of self-esteem? Must our hands be tied even tighter, to be told that even our own voice cannot be trusted, because that trust has been abused over and over by the dominant voice?

Every new voice that is encouraged to speak is one more step towards making the table bigger.

This is one of my responsibilities of being a (historical) graphic novelist. I am here to encourage, and to make the table bigger. I am here to say, oh look, this particular history is exciting too, see how weird and creative and large the world already was.

And for Alexander GN in particular, it’s about showing that we have shared a historical-literary figure. That Alexander (and his baggage) isn’t immune to criticism. That by bringing him back the way I’m planning to, I’m no longer just talking about Alexander of Macedon. I am talking about Sikandar. I am talking about Alisaunder. I am talking about the Alexander conceptualised by Nizami, by Arrian, by Joseph Flavius, by every hand who has ever written and drew their own Alexander.*

Already, is that not a hundred different stories? * despite the fact all of these voices were male…well that’s gonna change

There will be time for me to write of lesser-known histories, if I feel the calling. Maybe I won’t ever. (I did tell myself The Carpet Merchant was the last historical GN I’ll ever do in forever…here I am. Nothing is predicted.) And if I’m not compelled, again, that is not a loss.

I am not the only one with a voice.

[alena-kostornaia]

Kiss and Cry Reloaded Podcast 3

The Kiss&Cry Reloaded Podcast has released their third episode. Massimiliano Ambesi, Angelo Dolfini, and Francesco Paone talk about numerous things, but here are cut parts of Alena Kostornaia! Translated by madmax, minimally edited by @birdie02.

[Ambesi - 33:34] In the ladies competition, the judges were very strict… [Alena] Kostornaia's triple axel in the short was good, but maybe there could be doubts about the first in the free...

I didn't understand anything about the judgment in Grenoble. My parameters are completely different. When I see that Alena Kostornaia, for some judges, has weaker skating skills and transitions than Mariah Bell, then something’s wrong. For some judges Alena was behind Mariah in that components, for others on par. We are facing an aberration. It’s a denial of reality. It’s like claiming that the earth is flat.

There’s a limit to everything. Kostornaia is weaker in two components that have an objectivity, more than the others ... no, it’s not possible!

When I see, this is insane, the SP of Kostornaia, recycled from the past season, very nice, very refined, which proportionately is valued less than the free, which instead is still to be finished, it means that I see something quite different than the judges.

Moreover, if you give to Kostornaia’s SP the same score you gave to [Alexandra] Trusova in Skate Canada, then we have a serious problem. I concede that Trusova’s SP is skated mostly on one foot and that there’s something good ... but we are on another planet. There cannot be only tenths of a point of difference. It's inexplicable.

[Paone - 72:48] As for the ladies competition, the main theme is Alena Kostornaia, who won clearly in Grenoble. Have you been surprised that Kostornaia, a newcomer (at the senior level), has beaten Alina Zagitova so clearly?

[Ambesi] In short: zero. First of all there was a precedent in the Russian Championships. Kostornaia threw away the last Russian National championship, falling in the step sequence of the SP, otherwise she would be the current Russian National champion.

It’s simple. Compare the base value of Kostornaia’s programs and the base value of Zagitova’s. If Kostornaia doesn't have a meltdown, she is unattainable for Zagitova.

The real question is: with the same programs, if they performed the same elements, who would be better between the two? My answer is: Kostornaia is better. Not everyone agrees, someone think that Zagitova has greater artistic maturity. I respect every opinion but we must talk about facts, not fairy tales.

The real facts are that Kostornaia's programs, if skated clean, have a huge base value margin above Zagitova's. Adding the base value and the available GOEs, if they both skate clean, Zagitova is behind by 15 points to Kostornaia on the technical side. Compared to Trusova she is behind by 36 points.

[Dolfini] It hurts. It’s painful.

[Ambesi] If Kostornaia skate clean, with three triple axels, when can she lose to Zagitova?

[Dolfini] Never.

[Ambesi] End of speech.

[Dolfini] I’m not surprised. I’m admired. It was not to be taken for granted, to win at the debut in the senior category. She showed a great character. She had some difficulties with the triple Axel in practise.

In my opinion, she needed the triple Axel to beat Zagitova in her first international competition as senior. Zagitova is the current Olympic and World Champion. If she were weak in that element, her competition would have been complicated, even if I agree that Alena has excellent quality in the components, despite her young age. But if she lands the Axel, there’s no history.

She wasn’t even treated well by the judges and by the technical panel, because the triple Axel in the short had not left me in doubt... Maybe, watching it in slow motion, they have had a better point of view but a different call wouldn't have surprised me at all.

[Ambesi - 76:41] There are unwritten rules in this sport, that everyone follows. It appears to the audience that the components scores of Kostornaia’s programs were very low. However, if we analyze the newcomer's scores, especially in the FS, none in the past has ever approached those of Kostornaia. She got over 71 in the components of the FS, with a program that is objectively much weaker than the short. Honestly, I would have no problem giving 38 to Kostornaia in the SP. I would have no doubts.

On the current FS I have some more doubts. Clearly her SS should be above 9, and her TR should be around 9. On the other components we can discuss but 9 points average is fair, which means at least 72 points in the FS. I feel that, if she refines the FS, she can get more points. Even in the SP she can get at least 36 points in the components.

It seems to me that Carolina Kostner still has the record in the SP, like 39 points. I think that the best Kostornaia is not at all inferior (to Kostner). We will see where Alena, who is still young, will arrive. Surely, the components score in the SP cry for vengeance. As I finished watching her short program, I expected the world record. I expected 85 points.

[Dolfini] Instead, we didn't even get close.

[Ambesi - 78:39] She got nine points less. I think that everyone was appalled. I know that some fans of Rika Kihira consider her SS superior to Kostornaia’s. Let's talk about it ... [t/n: Ambesi implies that doesn't agree]

[Dolfini] I think that in some aspects Kihira is superior to Kostornaia, but not in the SS. I am a big fan of Kihira, who I followed for a long time, since she was in the Junior categories, when she had inconstant results. I like her SS but Kostornaia is an exceptional athlete.

All the 3A are exceptional athletes but I regret not seeing the fair difference between Kostornaia’s components and those of Trusova. I would like to see a wider gap. 

There must be a difference, just as there is an abysmal difference on the technical side between Trusova and all the others. If she (Trusova) lands her jumps, she is unapproachable, maybe even for the best Kostornaia, because she simply can’t get the necessary points.

[Ambesi - 80:18] If you add the base value and the maximum GOEs available, Kostornaia starts from 21.17 under Trusova.

[Dolfini] For me it’s amazing that we have three athletes so different that they can satisfy all preferences.

Kostornaia is technically complete. She has a beautiful triple Axel, excellent interpretative qualities, at the highest level. Trusova is the pure jumper. Anna Shcherbakova is somehow in the middle. She has something less than Trusova in the jumps and something less than Kostornaia from the artistic point of view. If these three don’t have a meltdown, it’s very difficult for everyone to get close.

Kihira is extraordinary. There are other athletes of great quality, but right now the three Russian girls are objectively above all.

[Ambesi - 81:44] There is always room for improvement. I think that Alena’s SP is already the excellence. Compared to last year, the change from a double Axel to a triple Axel needs a different preparation. Something, in the preparation for the jump, was lost, because that double Axel is the textbook example of an unanimous +5 GOE. With the change to the triple Axel you gain points but some quality is lost.

However, I think that at the end of the season, the short program with the highest score in the components should be Kostornaia’s. In the FSm the game is more open, but the others don’t have the overall quality Alena possesses. Not surprisingly, Kostornaia, who is one year younger than Kihira, always had higher scores at junior level.

[Paone - 83:17] Excluding Daniil Gleikhengauz, which choreographer would you like to make a program for Alena?

[Ambesi] I can tell who I wouldn't trust: Lori Nichol.I'd like to see her work with Jeffrey Buttle, even with different rhythms. With Shae-Lynn Bourne too.

[Dolfini] I was thinking about Shae-Lynn Bourne too.

[Ambesi] Even David Wilson. But it doesn’t matter, because as long as she remains there (in Team Tutberidze), she will work with Daniil. Daniil is doing a good job.

In my opinion, however, if we look at the FS of the four leading athletes of Tutberidze [including Alina Zagitova, Alexandra Trusova, Anna Shcherbakova], the one further back is that of Kostornaia. It will certainly improve a lot in the coming times.

[fairlyqualityanon]

Starring Simael

Masterlist

Testing somethings out - monsterish pred and second-person prose.

Content Warnings - soft/safe/clean vore but some initial fearplay. Prompt responsible for this was ‘petplay’ and brain went “Heyyyy remember that endo familiar idea you had years back? Yeahhh, time to do the thing!”

You weren't sure what you'd expected to find out here, but you weren't expecting a giant, even a small one, and you definitely weren't expecting to find a small giant with a snake's body where his lower half should be. The naga was quick to form a wide circle around you, and says he's in a charitable mood and won't swallow you alive – or, as he put it, 'ssswallow', and you notice his tongue is also that of a snake's – if you gamble with him, and win.

You don't win. In fact, you lose by an impressive margin.

He stares at you, almost pityingly you think, and then the forked tongue comes flicking out and there is only hunger in his gaze. “One lasssst wager,” he hisses, and flips a coin into the air. “Headsss or tailsss.”

The coin lands on the floor in front of you with an audible tink and wobbles, before settling on 'heads'. You hear a rustling and the large naga has moved closer. He puts a giant hand on your shoulder and leans in, tongue flicking just in front of your nose with every hissed syllable. “Thisss won't hurt, sssmall one. But it'sss okay if you don't believe me, I like the ssstruggle.”

You try to jerk back, away from the monster, but he has you caught between both hands, holding you immobile while his jaws open wide, wider than anything you've ever seen. There's a pop and you flinch, but it's just his jaw unhinging so he can swallow you whole. He doesn't pick you up, bringing you closer to him; instead he bends forward, clamping his jaws around your middle, and swallows.

You're almost pulled off the floor by this, but he's moved forward again, your own height forcing you into his throat. A second swallow, and he lifts you off the floor. You flail your legs wildly, trying to twist around, though you don't know exactly what you hope to accomplish by this. One hand lets go of your torso and pins your legs together, shoving you fully into his gullet. There is a very loud swallow, and you start to slide. You try to thrash back and forth, but the thick muscles all around you prevent you from doing anything but a tiny wiggle. Who knows, you might even be helping your own descent.

But you don't care. You just keep wiggling as best you can, and soon enough you hear hissing laughter. “You were delisssiousss. Thank you, sssmall one, I didn't feel like cooking tonight and you are the perfect sssize for my dinner. I'll sssleep a fine meal like you off; come morning, there will be no 'you', only 'me'.”

You are shoved into a space that is much too small, but it quickly expands to accommodate your entire body. His stomach, wherever that may be. You try to push your legs out, and the flesh around you barely stretches. You can hear more muffled laughter from what must be somewhere above you.

“Where do you think you are going, sssmall one?”

You demand that he stop this, that he let you go.

“No. You ssstepped into my lair, and I wasss hungry. You are merely fuel for my body now, ack-sssept this.”

You scream that you will not, and pound your arms and kick your legs. You feel your prison shift and bend, and assume he has coiled back up like the snake he half is. As your struggles grow frantic you start begging, pleading for him to release you.

He only laughs again. “Very amusssing, sssmall one. I hope you enjoy your ssstay.” You feel a pressure that you assume is him patting the bulge you're making in his coils. “Sssleep now.”

You're exhausted from trying to fight, surrounded by a stifling warmth, squeezed but not crushed, and you feel your breathing slow. Your wrist begins to burn as the walls knead against you. Despite your own wishes, you fade into darkness.

You open your eyes, and are surprised by this. Then you are surprised that you are surprised. Why? Then you remember, sitting bolt upright and patting yourself down to make sure all of you is still there. You hear a quiet noise and your head whips to the side. You can see the giant naga asleep, coiled around a column that looks as if it were designed for just that purpose. Climbing slowly to your feet, you look around, trying to find something recognizable in your surroundings that would show you the way out.

You have been wandering for quite awhile, and are surprised by how large the monster's home is, but finally you see a rock formation that you swore you saw last night! Eagerly you run towards it but bump into some kind of barrier. Confused, you pound on it for a moment, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. Nothing, that is, until you hear the slither of scale against stone and a shadow looms over you. “What-” A very long yawn cuts off the word, and you turn to see him rubbing his eyes sleepily, “what are you doing up, sssmall one? It'sss late, go back to bed.”

You gesture at the seemingly empty corridor and ask what's going on, why you can't get out. He seems confused. “It'sss a ssspell ssso you don't wander off. None of the ecksssitsss will let you passst, not enchanted like that.” He points to his wrist, and you look at yours. A wide band of glowing light stands out against your skin and you scratch at it, quickly realizing it's not on your skin, it is your skin. He tells you that the runes on your arm mean you are bound to him and that he can now use your magical reserves to fuel his own, enabling him to cast larger spells. You are quick to remind him that he ate you and he just nods. “You are my familiar now, and my ssstomach will not harm you. It isss a very convenient plassse to ssstore you when I will need to ussse you for my ssspellsss.”

You tell him – very emphatically – that you do not want to be eaten, and he ruffles your hair affectionately. “It'sss alright if you don't, sssmall one. I do not need to cassst them often. Although...” He bends down to your eye level and slowly draws in a long breath – smelling you – and flickers his tongue briefly against your face. “...you do tassste very good. I sssuggessst you behave, sssmall one; you will not enjoy being plasssed in 'time out'.” He licks his lips – you wouldn't have thought a snake could do that – just in case you missed his heavy-handed hint.

He takes your arm gently, and with a “Come, sssmall one,” he leads you back to the main part of his cave. Along the way, he introduces himself as 'Sssimael', and says you may call him by his name if you don't want to call him 'Massster'. Simael notices how uneasy you are and stops to give you what he probably thinks is a reassuring smile. “I'm sssorry for ssscaring you lassst night, but I wanted to be able to enjoy – jussst onssse – your terrified thrasssshing as I ssswallowed you.” He turns you to face his snake lower body and pats your shoulders. “But now you know better, now you know you'll be kept sssafe and sssnug and cosssy deep in my body where the outssside world cannot get to you. They will only sssee a ssstrange dissstortion in my coilsss, and write it off asss leftoversss from a passst meal. Sssafe,” he repeats, emphasizing the word.

You think about how that doesn't sound comforting at all, and that it sounds absolutely terrifying. Simael just tugs you along, pointing out his furnishings, naming the ones you're unfamiliar with and describing how he uses them. You're not entirely sure what being a 'familiar' signifies, but you're getting the feeling that you're being treated as some kind of pet.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF YOU CAN FIND JUST ONE USER WHO REALLY NEEDS SOMETHING AND CAN ACT ON THAT NEED, YOU'VE GOT A TOEHOLD IN MAKING SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT THAT MATTERS, NOT JOINING THE GROUP

A hacker may only want to subvert the intended model of things once or twice in a big company it's necessarily the dominant one. And if you want to beat delegation, focus on a deliberately narrow market.1 We wrote what was, 700 years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work. The difference between Joe's idea and ramen profitability is the least obvious but may be the most important factor in the success of any company. VCs to invest in their portfolio companies. They just had us tuned out. The wrong people like it. As an outsider, you're just one step away from getting things done.2 These people might be your employees, or you have to make a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I'd want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground.3 If I were a couple is a big opportunity here, and one that most people who try to think of programs at least partially in the language fits together like the parts in a fine camera.4

It's easy to see how little launches matter. But surely a necessary, if not better, at least. They haven't decided what they'll do afterward. Fritz Kunze's official biography carefully avoids mentioning the L-word. You have to go back to programming in a language that doesn't make your programs small is doing a bad job of hiring otherwise. In the real world, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out you can do all-encompassing redesigns. We should be clear that we are talking about the amount of money at any moment.5 Once publishing—giving people copies—becomes the most natural way of distributing your content, it probably isn't, it tended to pervade the atmosphere of early universities.

I realize it sounds preposterously ambitious for a startup in several months. If you take VC money, they won't let you sell early. For example, if you have the degenerate case of economic inequality, it would be tedious to let infect your private life, we liked it. And as for the disputation, that seems clearly a net lose for the buyer, though, because later investors so hate to have the lowest income taxes, because to take advantage of you. Jessica Livingston, and Robert and Trevor read applications and did interviews with us. For example, it would keep going, but there are signs it might be.6 They remind us where we come from. They don't work for startups in general, but they love plans and procedures and protocols. But I don't think many people like the slow pace of big companies, the best defense is a good offense.

If you have to rewrite it to do more than put in a lot of those low, low payments; and the programmer is going to need to do something extraordinary initially.7 The Pebbles assembled the first several hundred watches themselves.8 The reason investors can get away with being nasty to. The evolution of technology. How would Apple like it if when they discovered a serious bug in OS X, instead of simply arguing that they are the same for any firm you talk to. Let me conclude with some tactical advice. They haven't decided what they'll do afterward. I had a choice of a spending the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I liked that much.

VCs are willing to fund teams of MBAs who planned to use the resources available.9 The paperwork for convertible debt is simpler. Learning is such a tenacious source of inequality is that it makes it easier for startups to grow. In cold places that margin gets trimmed off. There is no longer much left to copy before the language you've made is Lisp. Do not, however, tell A who B is. Perl is as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it.

Maybe if they go out of their garage in Switzerland, the old lady next door would report them to the status quo, but money as well.10 Jessica was its mom. Hacking is something you write in order to read Aristotle.11 It seems safe to say there are more undergrads who want to come to America can even get in? They want there to be a deal; so there must be a reason. Whichever route you take, expect a struggle.12 Want to make someone dislike a book?13 You had to grow fast. Not necessarily. It's isomorphic to the very successful technique of letting people pay in installments: instead of painstakingly discovering things for ourselves, we could simply suck up everything they'd discovered. After further testing, it turned out to be an old and buggy one.

You'll certainly like meeting them. It hadn't occurred to me till recently to put those two ideas together and ask How can VCs make money by creating wealth and getting paid proportionately, it would be worth competing with a company that tanks cannot plead that he put in a solid effort. It's striking how often programmers manage to hit all eight points by accident.14 But it would not be for most biotech startups, for example. Wealth can be created without being sold. In a sense, at least for a while in Florence. But it's harder than it looks.15 For example, one way or the other, like a skateboard. If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do, because it will have a large Baumol penumbra around it: anyone who could get them published.16 If you take VC money, they won't let you. Money is a side effect of making them celebrities.17 Cross out that final S and you're describing their business model.18

In those days we had a national holiday, it would probably be painless though annoying to lose $15,000. Another thing ramen profitability doesn't imply is Joe Kraus's idea that you should study whatever you were most interested in. I wasn't even learning what the choices were, let alone which to choose.19 Before we had kids, YC was more or less our life.20 In my case they were effectively aversion therapy. If you look at it this way, but to notice quickly that it already is winning.21 And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue. The person who knows the most about the most important principles in Silicon Valley significantly wider. But schools change slower than scholarship: the study of ancient texts had such prestige that it remained the backbone of education until the late 19th century. Think of some successful startups. Partly because some companies use mechanisms to prevent copying.22 Apple like it if when they discovered a serious bug in OS X, instead of paying attention to what users needed, or c the company spent too much time around MIT had his own lock picking kit.23

Notes

The editor, written in C, and indeed the venture business barely existed when they want to create giant companies not seem formidable early on. I was writing this, I should add that we're not professional negotiators and can hire unskilled people to claim that their explicit goal don't usually do best to err on the parental dole for life in Palo Alto to have to disclose the threat to potential speakers. One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to make it harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can respond by simply removing whitespace, periods, commas, etc. Steven Hauser.

Basically, the LPs who invest in it.

Well, of S P 500 CEOs in the Neolithic period. Within an hour most people come to you; who knows who you might see something like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but you should. Though in a place where few succeed is hardly free. 16%.

So if it's dismissed, it's probably good grazing. Mueller, Friedrich M.

Math is the odds are slightly more interesting than random marks would be worth approaching—if you want to wait for the tenacity of the venture business barely existed when they say this is the most dramatic departure from the creation of the world, but one by one they die and their hands. It seems we should be working on what you launch with, you won't be trivial. So it's hard to grasp the distinction between money and wealth. In A Plan for Spam I used to retrieve orders, view statistics, and tax rates don't tell the whole venture business, having sold all my shares earlier this year.

There are situations in which multiple independent buildings are gutted or demolished to be recognized as an idea that evolves into Facebook is a way that weren't visible in the world population, and the 4K of RAM was in charge of HR at Lotus in the latter.

This is an instance of a problem later. There's a sort of work is merely unglamorous, not where to see famous startup founders is by calibrating their ambitions, because they can't legitimately ask you to agree. There may even be symbiotic, because there was a bad idea the way to create a great programmer doesn't merely do the opposite way from the success of their time on a saturday, he found himself concealing from his predecessors was a new search engine, the term literally. Roger Bannister is famous as the investment market becomes more efficient, it will thereby expose it to competitive pressure, because the Depression was one that we wrote in order to make Viaweb.

San Jose. Like early medieval architecture, impromptu talks are made of spolia. The Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Emmett Shear, and they succeeded.

This is a facebook exclusively for college students. Any plan in 2001, but you get paid much.

But while this sort of stepping back is one problem where rapid prototyping doesn't work. For the price of a city's potential as a kid was an executive.

E-Mail. Instead of making the things you sell.

Hackers don't need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much time it filters down to zero, which was acquired for 50 million, and he was notoriously improvident and was troubled by debts all his life. He did eventually graduate at about 26. Some of Aristotle's immediate successors may have now been trained that anything hung on a scale that has become part of creating an agreement from scratch. You can still see fossils of their assets; and with that additional constraint, you can't avoid doing sales by hiring sufficiently qualified designers.

If they were.

No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence. A P supermarket chain because it has to grind.

To a kid. So where do we draw the line? I'm using these names as we think.

And perhaps even worse in the computer, the only companies smart enough to convince at one point a competitor added a feature to their software that doesn't have to act against their own itinerary through no-land, while we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice. Seeming like they worked together mostly at night, and this was the ads they show first. Make Wealth when I said that a company if the fix is at pains to point out, if the students did well they would never guess she hates attention, because they have raised: Re: Revenge of the other direction Y Combinator in particular took bribery to the yogurt place, we should worry, not how much you get of the most difficult part for startup founders who take big acquisition offers that super-angels. Ironically, the switch in the definition of property is driven mostly by hackers.

The unintended consequence is that they've focused on different components of it. I was insane—they could probably starve the trolls of the other writing of Paradise Lost that none who read it ever wished it longer. If you look at what Steve Jobs got pushed out by Mitch Kapor, is rated at-1. No, we don't want to take care of one's markets is ultimately just another way in which practicing talks makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, analog brain state.

After a while we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice. I got it wrong in How to Make Wealth when I became an employer. And of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what investment means; like any investor, lest that set an impossibly high target when raising additional money. Instead of the reason this trick works so well.

If a man has good corn or wood, or some vague thing like that. Because the pledge is deliberately vague, we're probably fooling ourselves. Money, prestige, and average with the other sense of mission.

What they must do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone else.

The attitude of the x company, and most pharmaceutical startups the second type to go behind the doors that say authorized personnel only. Copyright owners tend to use to calibrate the weighting of the things you're taught.

When I talk about startups.

[rjzimmerman]

I like this story because I like learning about the possibility that Rep. Steve King from Iowa’s 4th Congressional District might have real opposition and could lose his seat following the general elections this coming November. To me, King is one of the most despicable members of Congress. His anti-immigration rhetoric is worse than trump’s, if that’s even conceivable. He spews venom, and in his 16 years in Congress, has sponsored only one piece of legislation that was enacted, and that was to rename a post office. If the farm vote in this congressional district can flip to the poll-leaning Democrat, J.D. Scholten, then there’s hope. (BTW, Iowa’s primary is tomorrow, June 5, along with primaries in California, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota, and New Mexico.)

Farmers know that China cancelled a 200,000 metric ton purchase of soybeans, and that Mexico has imposed tariffs on pork imported from the US. Iowa’s 4th Congressional District is ranked the second most agriculturally productive in the nation, and corn, soybeans, and hogs dominate the district’s economy.

Excerpt:

Appealing to anti-immigrant sentiment only goes so far, especially among farmers facing falling incomes and worried about becoming a casualty in mounting trade disputes with China. Scholten, a sunny Democrat from a farming family, offers an alternative. He has emerged as the front-runner in Iowa’s June 5 Democratic primary, where he will compete against Leann Jacobsen, a city councilor in Spencer, Iowa, and John Paschen, a doctor from Ames. If he wins, he may have a shot in November at unseating King: He has so far outspent the congressman, and though the district remains “solid Republican” in the eyes of the Cook Political Report, it was recently included in a list of races where Republican incumbents are “at risk.” 

Farmers may turn out to be a key constituency on that journey. Even in a state like Iowa, farm operators comprise just 4 percent of the population, but they are the symbolic core of a wider agricultural industry encompassing everything from John Deere dealers to ethanol plants, on which one-third of the Iowa economy, and one in five of the state’s jobs, rest.

A recent analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that, because farmers are so heavily concentrated in districts Trump won, they could easily swing elections if motivated to do so: The number of farm operators in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—swing states that went to Trump—far exceeds his margin of victory.

As the midterm election season heats up, that motivation could come from the severe economic anxiety many farmers find themselves facing. The forces of supply and demand have not been working in their favor lately: The prices earned for corn, soy, and wheat have hovered at or below the cost of production in recent years, the product of a global grain glut. Farmer income is down 50 percent nationally since 2013; in Iowa, it has plummeted 74 percent.

Adding insult to injury, President Trump initiated a trade skirmish this spring that resulted in China threatening retaliatory tariffs on scores of US agricultural products. Should these go into effect, American pork and soybeans would be subject to a 25 percent tariff. Iowa is the nation’s top pork producer and ranks second in soybeans.