Weekly Report: November 20, 2022
Observations
The 2022 World Cup kicked off today in controversy-ridden Qatar. The time zone is poor for where we are, with most matches occurring in the early morning.
I participate in two longstanding World Cup traditions. The first is a fantasy league which is running for the sixth time (which means the first was held 20 years ago when I was an undergrad!). Nothing is on the line except glory. We got a trophy made and every 4 years we engrave the winner’s name on it. I normally tend to fare pretty well but I’ve never won it and the victors always like to channel Ricky Bobby: “If you ain’t first, you’re last!”
The second is a 1 on 1 betting match where a friend and I bet on every single match against each other. After the group stage, we progressively increase the wager as it moves through the knockout stage, and add bonuses for penalty shootout outcomes. We alternate selecting the winner of each match, using Asian handicaps from this site to keep it fair. It’s all tracked in a Google Sheet and we added columns for gloating and sledging each other after each match. We sometimes do this for the Euro championships too, and the results are normally quite close… although I typically find myself on the negative side of the ledger. We now both live on opposite sides of the planet, so settling the debt sometimes takes time and creativity. (For 2018, my friend asked me to spend his winnings on Powerball tickets, which returned less than the cost of the tickets. I still owe him for my losses in the 2021 Euro Cup.)
On the home front, my family represents 3 different nationalities, each of which is participating this year: Australia, Denmark and the USA. For the second World Cup running, Australia, Denmark and France find themselves in the same group. Alas, Australia is not expected to survive the group stages.
Articles
- The Distributed Computing Manifesto (All Things Distributed)
- Murdoch tells Trump he will not back fresh White House bid – report (The Guardian)
- What Biden and Xi Can Agree On (The Atlantic)
- ‘Terrifying’: China’s business elite are losing hope as Xi tightens grip (Sydney Morning Herald)
- Is Elon Musk’s Twitter about to fall out of the GDPR’s one-stop shop? (TechCrunch)
- Musk issues ultimatum to staff: Commit to ‘hardcore’ Twitter or take severance (Washington Post)
- What happened at Alameda Research (Milky Eggs)
- Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself (Vox)
- Full text of FTX’s bankruptcy filing (Quartz)
- Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud (New York Post)
- Law Schools Withdraw from U.S. News & World Report Ranking (WSJ)
- The world has nine years to prevent climate catastrophe (Quartz)
- ‘Barkley’ excerpt: How Charles figured out how to work with Shaq (Washington Post)
- Inside the Wild Life of Footballers’ Luxury Assistants (Vice)
- Five football traditions that only make sense to Danes (Visit Denmark)
“Vi sejler op af åen, vi sejler nedad igen. Det var vel nok en dejlig sang, den må vi ha’ endnu en gang.” … ??? - The 25 Travel Experiences You Must Have (New York Times)
Uhh… this is pretty darn eclectic.
Charts, Images & Videos
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