Mike Parrish

FWIW, I completely agree with you. The points total list of athletes shouldn't be called "Rankings", it should be called "Point Leaders" or something. It rankles me the same way. "How on earth do you have "Rankings" without taking head-to-heads into account?!," said I, the first time I saw that list. It's also not terribly effective, to my mind. If Dom does nothing but sit on her 45K points from the WCs and goes to Pan Ams and wins, she'll still be the prohibitive favorite to win the "top point getter" award at the end of next year. There's zero upside to going to ranking tournaments for her. That seems like a perverse incentive structure to me, reminiscent of the state placer who ducks everyone good all year to keep their seed going into states again. 11.5US

Looks like dates will shift too. https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Wrestling/Features/2022/November/14/Belgrade-to-host-2023-Senior-World-Championships Not moving the dates would suit me fine!

I think we're in violent agreement here. Since we're doing lists... I don't know why you think I don't understand. I do. You missed out Continental Championships The point is that BETWEEN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS AND JANUARY 1, UWW wants to give out cash awards to the top 3 point winners in all 3 disciplines. This is for going to lots of ranking tournaments, etc, WHICH THEY WANT TO ENCOURAGE. If UWW didn't want to give these top 3 points awards and cash, they could just fold it into the World Championships. This is clearly intentional on UWW's part. You can disagree with the structure, the motivations of UWW, the unfairness of it all (stamps tiny foot), but you can't credibly maintain that we (at least I) don't understand what you're talking about. P.S. Looooooove the profile picture..

Read that article. It isn't about the underlying crypto tech, it's about the frauds and snakes who run the companies.

It. Just. Keeps. Getting. Worse. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-s-balance-sheet-was-bad

Because they payout awards based on total points for the year. https://uww.org/article/end-year-freestyle-rankings After Jan 1, the points are reset, except for WC/Oly points, so the points leaders are the World Champions for the next year.

https://uww.org/article/belgrade-host-2023-world-championships

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/31823158

The one thing I think I would change for this next year is that I would stay on the same side of the river as the competition venue, but find a place further out. 5-10 minutes away in a quiet village but within easy driving distance.

I think it's for paying out the top cumulative point getters. And they still want to have the World Cups.

If you win WCs, there's very little incentive for you to go to the ranking tournaments the next year. You start with 45000+ points carried forward, you are guaranteed to be the 1 seed all year at ANY tournaments you enter, and if you win the Continental Championships, you're going to be guaranteed to be the 1 seed at WCs.

No. The WCs end the competition year.

It's a pain to find the actual rules on UWW's site. https://cdn.uww.org/s3fs-public/2022-02/uww_ranking_rule_book.pdf?VersionId=gWyYUPkiTFNwpBoPZDtZNmn_5UbdEOse I have mixed feelings about these rules.

Not to reignite the forge here, but this article is a reasonably fair overview of the FTX/Alameda scam and collapse. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/14/why-did-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-cryptocurrency-exchanges-just-collapse

Budapest is more western and much more picturesque. Cleaner, easier to get around in, more polished, more expensive. Belgrade is on the junction of the Danube and Sava rivers and the venue was north of the Sava with our Airbnb in the southern suburbs of Belgrade. Driving that route 4+ times a day was painful. Narrow lanes, lots of zigzagging, lots of aggressive drivers, traffic laws as helpful suggestions. The people were generally friendly, the younger generation, in particular. English is widespread but sometimes limited in depth. Prices are cheap if you get out of expat land. We brought the family and we always go native, buying at local shops/stores/markets. Lots of decent restaurants, local beer is good, salads (cucumber, tomato, etc) are excellent. You WILL get tired of pork. We ran into one hiccup when we went to the Nikolai Tesla museum. Riot police everywhere, probably 200 in full gear, but we talked our way past with blue passports. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/ultranationalist-protestors-attack-police-cordon-at-pride-march-in-belgrade We almost rented a houseboat, which I think we'll do this time. When we came back after Dom won the championship, I was outside calling friends in the US to inform/brag and the owner of the Airbnb overheard me. He came over, heard my tale, jumped up and down and hugged me and insisted that I come drink Rakija with him and his brother. We killed 1.5 liters of the stuff and talked for a couple of hours about Serbia, the US, current geopolitical tensions, economics, wrestling (of course), each others' families. A lubricated cultural exchange which was one of the highlights of the trip.

What's that all about?

The article. https://uww.org/article/belgrade-host-2023-world-championships Belgrade was OK. It's an older eastern European capital. I spent a bunch of time for work in Bucharest. It's similar.

Getting a vibe here.

I, for one, welcome our new corn based overlords.

The more appropriate term for cryptocurrencies is "unregistered security".

You're all hung up on the definition. Its kind of weird. I've been recruited several times by cryptocurrency companies and consistently refused after having done my due diligence on the technology and the industry as a whole. I did notice that you refuse to engage on the more substantive points about the fragility of cryptocurrencies.

Merge that mess with snapchat and setup a system where if you don't send the next micropayment, the portion of the match already watched will self-erase.

I do understand this topic and your silly declarations that I don't are futile. I quoted you the definition of 'fiat currency', which was correct, but not the one you wanted to use. Your strange assertion that "crypto can be completely crippled but not worth zero" is both funny and sad. If a currency can't be easily traded (packet drops) and can't be made fungible with local currency (central bank) or has a large cost to exercise transactions (punitive taxation), then it's not much of a currency, is it? CryptoBros think they've got things figured out, but, really, they have the tiger by the tail.