Overview

		⚽
Home	Minnesota United FC	2
Away	LA Galaxy	2
Status	Full Time
Venue	Allianz Field
City	Saint Paul, Minnesota
Date	Wednesday May 15, 2024
Time	07:30 PM CDT

♻️ Auto-refreshing reddit comments link
Lineups

	Minnesota United FC	Pos		LA Galaxy	Pos
	Dayne St. Clair, #97	G		John McCarthy, #77	G
	Michael Boxall, #15	CD		Martín Cáceres, #22	CD-L
	Miguel Tapias, #4	CD-L		Maya Yoshida, #4	CD-R
	Kervin Arriaga, #33	CD-R		John Nelson, #14	LB
	Robin Lod, #17	CM-L		Miki Yamane, #2	RB
	Wil Trapp, #20	CM-R		Gastón Brugman, #5	CM
	Joseph Rosales, #8	LM		Ricard Puig, #10	LM
	D.J. Taylor, #27	RM		Marky Delgado, #8	RM
	Tani Oluwaseyi, #14	F		Miguel Berry, #27	F
	Jeong Sang-Bin, #11	CF-L		Joseph Paintsil, #28	LF
	Bongokuhle Hlongwane, #21	CF-R		Gabriel Pec, #11	RF
	Franco Fragapane, #7	SUB		Maruicio Cuevas, #19	SUB
	Teemu Pukki, #22	SUB		Edwin Cerrillo, #20	SUB
	Alejandro Bran, #25	SUB		Eriq Zavaleta, #15	SUB
	Carlos Harvey, #67	SUB		Novak Micovic, #35	SUB
	Zarek Valentin, #3	SUB		Daniel Aguirre, #37	SUB
	Devin Padelford, #2	SUB		Julian Aude, #3	SUB
	Clint Irwin, #1	SUB		Diego Fagundez, #7	SUB
	Victor Eriksson, #40	SUB		Jalen Neal, #24	SUB
	Caden Clark, #37	SUB		Dejan Joveljic, #9	SUB

Match events via ESPN

• Kickoff
  
• 30' ⚽ Goal! Minnesota United FC 1, LA Galaxy 0. Bongokuhle Hlongwane (Minnesota United FC) right footed shot from outside the box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Robin Lod following a corner.Goal awarded following VAR Review.
  
• 45' 🟨 Tani Oluwaseyi (Minnesota United FC) is shown the yellow card.
  
• 45'+3' Halftime
  
• 45' Start 2nd Half
  
• 52' 🔄 Substitution, LA Galaxy. Diego Fagúndez replaces Joseph Paintsil because of an injury.
  
• 58' 🟨 Joseph Rosales (Minnesota United FC) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
  
• 59' 🔄 Substitution, LA Galaxy. Dejan Joveljic replaces Miguel Berry.
  
• 60' 🔄 Substitution, Minnesota United FC. Teemu Pukki replaces Tani Oluwaseyi.
  
• 60' 🔄 Substitution, Minnesota United FC. Franco Fragapane replaces Jeong Sang-Bin.
  
• 60' 🔄 Substitution, Minnesota United FC. Caden Clark replaces Bongokuhle Hlongwane.
  
• 61' ⚽ Goal! Minnesota United FC 1, LA Galaxy 1. Dejan Joveljic (LA Galaxy) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Gabriel Pec.
  
• 68' ⚽ Goal! Minnesota United FC 1, LA Galaxy 2. Diego Fagúndez (LA Galaxy) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Riqui Puig.
  
• 76' 🔄 Substitution, LA Galaxy. Julián Aude replaces John Nelson.
  
• 77' 🔄 Substitution, LA Galaxy. Edwin Cerrillo replaces Riqui Puig.
  
• 77' 🔄 Substitution, LA Galaxy. Jalen Neal replaces Gabriel Pec.
  
• 80' ⚽ Goal! Minnesota United FC 2, LA Galaxy 2. Kervin Arriaga (Minnesota United FC) header from very close range to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Joseph Rosales with a cross following a corner.
  
• 90'+6' 🟨 Diego Fagundez (LA Galaxy) Yellow Card at 96'
  

^{This thread is managed by a bot running on AWS Lambda. All data is sourced from ESPN APIs. The project can be found on GitHub at mrundle/mls-reddit-bot. This post was last updated at 2024-05-15 21:38:15 CDT.}

About six months ago, in November, I started my journey through the "Chronicles of Chrestomanci," which of course are not really a series as much as a collection of books which all take place in the same set of universes. I read everything in order of publication, posting my thoughts here each time, and with the completion of this book I am now all the way through these wonderful novels. Please forgive my lack of direct quotes this time--having read nothing else for fun besides these books for six months, I found my note-taking capacity to be somewhat diminished. Maybe in the future I'll write a more detailed review.
The Pinhoe Egg is the final Chrestomanci book, whether you're reading them in order of publication or chronologically. I have no doubt Diana Wynne Jones did not intend this to be a "series" with a beginning and end; rather, I assume she simply got several book ideas that took place in this world, and this happened to be the last time before she died. It is sheer luck, then, that this last book is a sort of grand culmination of them both thematically and narratively, and possibly the best of the lot.
We start, typically, with a new protagonist, Marianne Pinhoe, and a new locale, the small rural village of Ulverscote, located a stone's throw from Chrestomanci Castle and Helm St. Mary. I liked that we got a little more background about this area throughout the book. When I go back to reread Charmed Life, I'm looking forward to putting it all into this new context.
Marianne became a favorite character almost instantly, and I was hooked on her storyline right from the beginning. Jones has a typically virtuosic opening sequence, wasting no time in establishing the key characters and launching into a dreadfully funny episode telling of Marianne's grandmother (who is also a kind of matriarch or "Gammer" over all the Pinhoes) apparently abruptly developing dementia and being forcibly removed from her home. There is black comedy galore here, all painfully adjacent to the real experience of making arrangements for a feeble or senile parent, as when Gammer is so averse to leaving her home that she roots herself in the bed, complete with actual roots. Meanwhile, Gammer's brothers and many children squabble over who gets to live in her house and where her belongings will go.
I mentioned before how Jones is always surprising me with the variety of formal structures and writing styles she employs. I thought I had figured out her game here, and was sure it was going to be similar to Conrad's Fate, where a new protagonist gradually makes their way into meeting familiar characters. But of course, Jones neatly sidesteps all reader expectation and switches tracks suddenly a few chapters in, focusing on Cat Chant as a second, equal protagonist, and revealing this book to be, among other things, the true sequel to Charmed Life--published 29 real-life years later. Jones then begins alternating between Cat and Marianne unevenly, and sometimes even from sentence to sentence, as in Witch Week. Her sleight of hand is sly and clever, and the craftsmanship is remarkable. Hats off--each of the seven books in this series reads totally differently. Jack of all trades, master of all, our Diana.
Jones stacks on the themes this time. We of course get some of her usual preoccupations, particularly with that of unreliable families. The Pinhoes may be the worst of the lot, or at least the most upsetting, because while in most of the other books the dysfunction is obvious, things are more insidious here. The reader is actually led (through Marianne's obedient, rule-following perspective) to see Harry, Cecily, Gammer, and most of the uncles and aunts as well-meaning individuals who care for one another. However, as in Charmed Life (and Cat himself draws the comparison), as the book goes on and Marianne becomes more independent, it becomes increasingly difficult for her, and for us, to justify their cruel behavior. It is genuinely devastating when Marianne figures out what's going on halfway through the book, decides to approach the adults in her life about it, and is laughed off or outright punished by all of them. There is a familiar scene at the end of the book: Marianne's and Joe's talents are vindicated by Chrestomanci and they are given the opportunity to nurture their skills in an education apart from parents who hold them back by refusing to understand or accept them. Replace the current Chrestomanci with the previous acting Chrestomanci, Gabriel de Witt, and you have the same scene as the end of Conrad's Fate. The detail that Marianne and Joe still go home and see their parents regularly is brutally realistic, Marianne able to convince her mother to soften on some issues, but ultimately failing to truly connect with her father. This seems to me the ultimate conclusion of the obsession with family dynamics in the Chronicles of Chrestomanci--that your family will always be there, like them or not, whether or not a true understanding can ever be reached. I'm not ashamed to say I cried through the last couple chapters of the book, and found the first line Jones has written that made me audibly sob. This was a feeling from childhood I didn't even know I had forgotten:

[Marianne] was depressed and worried. Dad was never going to understand and never going to forgive her. And Gaffer had still not turned up. On top of that, school started on Monday week. Though look on the bright side, she thought. It'll keep me away from my family, during the daytime at least.

As in Conrad's Fate, the potential toxicity of religion crops up here, in a bigger way than ever. The last act of the book is barely disguised by its magical trappings: what we have here is a group of devout, religious conservatives, being shown the harmful effects of their actions, and blindly rejecting all of the proof and logic in front of them in favor of enforcing rules and laws that keep them comfortable. There is no doubt that the next generation of Pinhoes will be just as subject to the old traditions, in spite of Marianne and Joe breaking free. That the Reverend Pinhoe is portrayed as a hapless and kind man, ignorant to most of the wrongdoing in the village, does little to soften the point of Jones's pencil here. As I said, I was startled by how moved and devastated I was by this final section, recognizing all of the real-world pain in this fantastical setting.
Jones has always been steadfastly protective of those who cannot speak up for themselves, as with the character of Cat who finds it difficult to recognize and verbalize his feelings. This time, borrowing from a kind of Shinto animism, Jones includes the concept of Dwimmer, a magic that is focused on the life force within all creatures and plants. There is no debate where Jones stands on this--her deepest and most profound sympathies lie with Cat, who can't bear to imagine his horse Syracuse chopped into dog meat, who frets over Klartch's wellbeing when out of his sight, and who firmly refuses to apologize for releasing all the goblinlike fairy folk from their bindings. There is no direct intimation of endangered species, global warming, or human-caused environmental destruction in this book, as you might expect in this kind of setup (I suspect Jones was too clever to resort to trite metaphors). However, in a fascinating twist, a plot detail revolves around the Pinhoes and Farleighs erecting a barrier in the forest to contain the magical creatures, making the forest feel empty and incomplete in the process--a magical, but also literal, instance of deforestation. Motives of plants, herbs, and trees, both good and evil, carry through the book as well. Jason and Gaffer Elijah Pinhoe, as well as Cecily, are handy with plants and tend large gardens. The Farleighs' and Pinhoes' spells tend to take the form of small bags of weeds and branches as well. Interestingly, and insightfully, the natural world is portrayed as difficult as well: Gammer grows roots to impede her family's mission, and the vile Gaffer Farleigh morphs into a stubborn, gnarled, immovable petrified oak when Cat works a spell forcing him to assume his true form.
This was one of the most enjoyable books in the Chrestomanci series, and it was bittersweet to close the door on the Pinhoes. I like that the continuity between these books is vague and tenuous, so I'm free to imagine all sort of side goings-on, like what might happen to Marianne and Cat later in life, or whether Conrad and Christopher remained friends, or what Roger and Julia thought when their dad told them all about the events at the academy in Witch Week. Howl's Moving Castle is still the book closest to my heart, and will forever be the Diana Wynne Jones I read over and over, recommending to anyone unfortunate enough to strike up a conversation about books with me, but I am so glad that I found the time to welcome Chrestomanci and all his strange acquaintances into my heart, too.
Here's my personal ranking of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci, but please note I love all of these books and a low ranking does not mean I don't like the book. I have to put that there because there's always someone who doesn't understand that last place doesn't mean bad or worst. I'm not including the short stories individually because it's impossible for me to weigh a short story against a novel, whereas a large collection seems to make sense to me. I also must admit that the top three, especially the top two, were really difficult to place and I more or less love them equally.

1. Conrad's Fate
2. The Pinhoe Egg
3. Charmed Life
4. Mixed Magics
5. The Magicians of Caprona
6. Witch Week
7. The Lives of Christopher Chant

My next Jones book will be -- drumroll, please -- Archer's Goon, though I'm taking a break for some adult reading during the summer. While I'm in a school semester I can pretty much only manage to read children's fantasy, so I'll see you all come August or September. :) Thanks to those of you who have been reading and following my journey from start to finish. I would love to chat more about this book and this series.
Oh, and finally... ALL SPOILERS ALLOWED!

FT: Getafe 0-3 Atlético Madrid

Venue: Estadio Coliseum
Auto-refreshing reddit comments link
LINE-UPS
Getafe
David Soria, Omar Alderete, Gastón Álvarez, Diego Rico (Juan Latasa), José Ángel Carmona, Luis Milla (Jesús Santiago), Nemanja Maksimovic, Óscar Rodríguez (Alberto Risco), Carles Aleñá (Jordi Martín), Mason Greenwood, Ilaix Moriba (Jaime Mata).
Subs: Fabrizio Angileri, Nabil Aberdin, Daniel Fuzato.
^{____________________________}
Atlético Madrid
Jan Oblak, José María Giménez, Mario Hermoso, Axel Witsel, Samuel Lino (Saúl Ñíguez), Marcos Llorente (Reinildo Mandava), Koke , Rodrigo De Paul, Antoine Griezmann (Memphis Depay), Pablo Barrios (César Azpilicueta), Ángel Correa (Rodrigo Riquelme).
Subs: Álvaro Morata, Gabriel Paulista, Stefan Savic, Arthur Vermeeren, Horatiu Moldovan, Antonio Gomis.
MATCH EVENTS via ESPN
14' Diego Rico (Getafe) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
17' Axel Witsel (Atletico Madrid) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
27' Goal! Getafe 0, Atletico Madrid 1. Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid) left footed shot from the left side of the six yard box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Rodrigo De Paul.
42' Goal! Getafe 0, Atletico Madrid 2. Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid) left footed shot from a difficult angle on the left to the top left corner. Assisted by Samuel Lino.Goal awarded following VAR Review.
45' Substitution, Atletico Madrid. César Azpilicueta replaces Pablo Barrios.
45' Substitution, Getafe. Jaime Mata replaces Ilaix Moriba.
45' Substitution, Getafe. Jorge Martín replaces Carles Aleñá.
45' Substitution, Getafe. Juanmi Latasa replaces Diego Rico.
51' Goal! Getafe 0, Atletico Madrid 3. Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid) left footed shot from a difficult angle on the left to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Samuel Lino with a through ball.
55' Omar Alderete (Getafe) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
57' Substitution, Getafe. Yellu Santiago replaces Luis Milla.
67' Substitution, Atletico Madrid. Rodrigo Riquelme replaces Ángel Correa.
70' Substitution, Getafe. Alberto Risco replaces Óscar Rodríguez.
76' Substitution, Atletico Madrid. Saúl Ñíguez replaces Samuel Lino because of an injury.
77' José Giménez (Atletico Madrid) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
87' Substitution, Atletico Madrid. Memphis Depay replaces Antoine Griezmann.
87' Substitution, Atletico Madrid. Reinildo replaces Marcos Llorente.
88' Mario Hermoso (Atletico Madrid) is shown the yellow card.
88' Yellu Santiago (Getafe) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
^{Don't see a thread for a match you're watching? Click here to learn how to request a match thread from this bot.}

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Hi Horror fans! I am back with a few more reviews. I normally try to mix up the new and the old the classic and the atypical when I can. My success varies depending on which books call to me. Let me know what you think!
Lowest reviewed to highest.
Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay
Premise- A new rabies virus is running rampant in Massachusetts and Nats is running out of time. Almost ready to give birth and exposed to the rapidly advancing virus she needs help before the baby arrives or she succumbs…
Thoughts- This book almost broke my DNF record. It has been a long time since I gave up on a book and this was close. If it wasn’t a relatively short book (around 300 pages) I don’t think I would have powered through. I disliked one of the main characters throughout (Nats) finding her grating and her attempts at humour embarrassing. It also employs just about every cliché ever put into the apocalyptic or outbreak genre and then makes it worse by being self referential about the cliches. Then towards the end the other main character who I didn’t mind as much becomes so selfish (I understand she’s trying to help her friend but come on) that she willingly endangers a busload of people just for her own ends. All of this is without delving into the awkward and awful kid “slang” Tremblay employs for about 50 pages in the middle of the book. My wife really enjoyed the audiobook for his A Head Full of Ghosts so I will probably try that before writing him off as an author who is not for me but he has a really difficult hill to climb after this. A final thing to note much of this book even when action was occurring felt plodding and slow somehow which I can’t even wrap my head around because rabies infected people chasing down our main characters should be exciting but I could barely keep my eyes open.
Rating- 2/5. Not a 1 because I finished it. Do not recommend. Read any other apocalyptic or outbreak book The Stand or Swan Song comes to mind.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
Premise- The Black Death ravages the French countryside and evil lurks behind every corner. A former knight turned brigand encounters a young girl who is more than she seems. Can he find redemption? Does he deserve it?
Thoughts- This is another horrorlit darling. I actually picked up Buehlman’s fantasy novel The Blacktongue Thief first in anticipation of this this novel because it was the only novel of his available at my book store. I enjoyed that and appreciated the author’s humour and dark side. This novel came with a lot of hype as it has to be one of the most recommended books in this sub. The premise of a medieval horror which features demons and devils was incredibly appealing and my wife and I decided to read through it at the same time (her on audio). We both found it pretty underwhelming which I know might be controversial. It’s strange because its well written, I enjoy the characters and the setting but somehow it did not gel with me. The best way I can describe it is it felt almost like a horror show with say 22 episodes. Like most shows with 22 episodes a lot of them are filler or freak of the week episodes and that is how a lot of the middle of the book felt to me. We would travel along with Thomas and Delphine, they would encounter something strange and remarkable (occasionally horrifying) and move on to another area where another strange or remarkable thing would happen. It felt oddly disconnected. Now I need to talk about the ending which didn’t redeem my feelings about a large portion of the book but it was my favourite thing about this novel for sure. It ends in a fantastic way and encapsulates what I think the author was going for throughout the book but didn’t land for me until the end with themes concerning sin, redemption and second chances. This might be the definition of a book I appreciate and can see what others love about it but didn’t register with me for large portions. That ending though, so good.
Rating-3.5/5 stars. An interesting setting for a modern horror novel let down by some meandering adventures which caused it to lose me somewhat before ending on a high note.
Little Heaven by Nick Cutter
Premise- Three hardened mercenaries team up for what seems like an easy job, rescue a woman’s nephew from a cult down south. What it turns into is a fight for their lives which will haunt them down through the years and will make them wonder if they ever really escaped Little Heaven?
Thoughts- My second foray into the work of horrorlit darling Nick Cutter. I enjoyed The Troop and found it suitably disgusting and chilling to earn the reputation it has in the wider horror fan annals. I actually think I prefer Little Heaven overall. One of my biggest gripes with The Troop was its lack of meaningful characters and many of them felt like stereotypes and while some of the characters in Little Heaven fall a little into that category (the Reverand in particular is just a straight black heart) the main group were all well realized in my opinion and despite their obvious shortcomings I came to root for them. Cutter per usual is a master with description, creeping the reader out with every mention of things slimy, crawly or looming. In this book he has included some pages of art which further the atmosphere and really burn some of the images into your mind (one rather tall character in particular). I enjoyed the back and forth between the two timelines, one during the initial trip to Little Heaven in the 60’s and the ugly return in the 80’s. It had almost an It like feeling of needing to overcome your fear when you know what is awaiting you but finding the courage decades later to face it regardless. Similarly to The Troop, Cutter doesn’t give us the Hollywood happy ending either which I enjoy, you get your elements and take what you can from such an evil place. Without going into spoilers there were things about the ultimate confrontation which I disliked (mostly the reveal of what is within the black rock itself) and things which I enjoyed a lot (the ultimate fate of one of the main characters). I think that I have now read what I would consider his two most applauded books I can move onto the one which splits horror audiences in half, The Deep. Overall though Cutter writes horror that really is a page turner and I will continue to read him until he proves otherwise.
Rating-4/5 stars. Another fast-paced creepy jaunt evoking elements of Heart of Darkness (and modern horror takes like Children of Chaos) and the two timeline split involving children obsessed evil like King’s It, Mr. Cutter continues to impress and make it his own.
Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff
Premise- The sun has gone dark and the great empire of Elidaen is at war. Not with their neighbouring countries but the great unholy horde of undying monsters that make up the vampiric kingdoms. Gabriel De Leon will learn what it means to survive and battle against these creatures on his journey to becoming a member of the Silversaints, the great brotherhood of warriors who try to keep the darkness at bay.
Thoughts- Let me start by saying that putting this into my horror reviews is a little of a stretch. This is really more of a dark fantasy book with horror trappings. If you just want straight horror and are not into fantasy as a genre maybe give this one a pass, but if you do enjoy fantasy even a little please check this out. It is epic in scale with fantastic characters and really fun dialogue. If I am being reductive it is like 70% Witcher, 20% Blade and 10% Interview with a Vampire. I happen to enjoy all three of those things quite a bit so I loved this book. The story bounces between three time frames, the framing story in the “present” where Gabriel is imprisoned and telling his life story to his vampire jailor, his origin story taking place when he is around 16 telling of his upbringing and becoming a Silversaint and finally him as a 32 year old on a quest for the holy grail. Kristoff does a really good job at least early on keeping the reader engaged on each story as they bounce back and forth and I never felt too much like I needed to go back to the other time line even though I was always interested in what would happen next. There was one sequence which dragged a little for me (basically the sequence going to and time in Redwatch) but it is a minor gripe in a hell of a book. I am very excited for the sequel which should be out in first half of 2024. This book looks from the title and cover a little juvenile but it is very adult (many brutal murders, battles, amusing and creative cursing and a fair bit of the sexy stuff) so do not be scared off by appearance alone. A definite recommend from me. I could see some people finding the dynamics and themes well trodden from other recent media as mentioned Witcher and things like The Last of Us, but the world and characters Kristoff creates makes it work despite the familiarity.
Rating-4.5/5 stars. A brilliant start to what I hope will be the and amazing vampire series.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patick Suskind
Premise- Jean-Baptise Grenouille is born with a unique ability, the most extraordinary nose of all time. He can remember, store and create any scent he wishes. To that end he “collects” as many as possible and aims to create the greatest perfume known to mankind. Unfortunately, the best scents that he wishes to capture for his perfume comes from virginal teenage girls and he will take their odour no matter the cost….
Thoughts- I prepared myself for this book based on comments from fellow readers by expecting it to fall into the more distinguished “literature” side of the horror genre. It did but it still surprised me with the directions that it went in. I was expecting more focus lets say on the murders themselves and Suskind does such an amazing job detailing the inner workings of Grenouille’s mind that when we finally get to that part of the book we absolutely understand why they are not really the focus of the novel but merely a means to an end. The descriptions of odours are amazing and a few times I felt myself almost gagging at some of the images Suskind conjures with his prose. I am not a prose person but he does a wonderful job detailing scents in a way you would never think of. The journey Grenouille goes on is utterly unexpected and fascinating. You truly get a strange insight into this broken creature and why he is doing what he is doing and how ultimately the murders mean nothing to him but a way to capture or collect his perfume which is his ambition. The last few pages erupt into a madhouse of defied expectations just when I thought we would have a fairly basic ending Suskind pulls the rug out once again. It also really underlines how animal humanity can be and what we can be reduced to based on our senses.
Rating-5/5 stars. A truly unique novel which defied all expectations. Very different and easy to recommend to horror readers who want something out of the ordinary.
THANKS FOR READING!
If you want to read my previous horror reviews I will post the links here:
Devil in the White City, The Troop, The Damnation Game, Swan Song, The Fisherman and Something Wicked This Way Comes
https://www.reddit.com/horrorlit/comments/15a7jvq/review_sixpack/
Playground, Ghost Story, Red Dragon, The Exorcist, Children of Chaos
https://www.reddit.com/horrorlit/comments/17a3s9t/halloween_season_reviews/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, Mongrels, Strange Weather, Let the Right One in, The Final Girl Support Group
https://www.reddit.com/horrorlit/comments/18282lx/fall_horror_reviews_feat_graham_jones_hill/
Potential Options Upcoming books:
Owned- Old Country by Query, The Fireman by Hill and Carrion Comfort by Simmons (started this one got about 1/3 through and put it down wasn’t clicking despite me loving his Sci-Fi).
Wishlist- The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Barron, Boy’s Life by McCammon.

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You are not recommended to try spells to bring a lover back if you are going through the following: You know that your relationship with your ex is toxic and the best painful option to take in this is to move on. It is not a good choice to be in a relationship that is un-natural, one that is built on witchcraft. The love spark as to be their at all times.
Even the most powerful love spell may not fulfill the things that are required for a real relationship to be in place. Love should be natural and if your partner looses interest in you, its better that you let them follow the heart. If one door closes, expect another open infront of you.
Therefore witchcraft or love spells should not be the ultimate solution to mending a broken heart in a relationship, one has to make love exist naturally by doing the right things to your partner, the things that will recapture the inner feelings of love and affection as you did in the start of the relationship.
Only if and when all has been tried and failed to work that one should order for my love spells that actually work, and indeed this will be the last nail in the coffin to fix your troubled relationship permanently.
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I've been asked to do a reading at my best friend's wedding and she would like it to be a surprise which makes it that much harder to make it perfect since it won't be reviewed by her or the groom. I think the vernacular needs to be modern (ie. no Shakespearean), positive, non-religious, more romantic than funny (leaving the funny for the reception), staying away from something too rhymey.
Her inspiration / vibe is similar to the SATC wedding reading
His hello was the end of her endings, Her laugh was their first step down the aisle, His hand would be hers to hold forever, His forever was as simple as her smile, He said she was what was missing, She said instantly she knew, She was a question to be answered, And his answer was 'I do’.
Some top contenders to give you more of a feel of what I think would work:

• "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez [but is it too short?]
• "Love Me Through It All" - Caroline White [is it too short, is it too negative of focusing on wounds?]

Would love some more suggestions from the brief I provided and/or thoughts on the above! Thanks in advance

As Reddit doesn't allow posts to exceed 40,000 characters, Eastwood's edition had to be split into two parts because his whole career cannot be ignored. The second part will be posted tomorrow.

Here's a new edition of "Directors at the Box Office", which seeks to explore the directors' trajectory at the box office and analyze their hits and bombs. I already talked about a few, and as I promised, it's Clint Eastwood's turn.
Eastwood was a troublemaker at school, and he had a bunch of odd jobs such as lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy. In 1951, he was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War and was discharged two years later. Through this, he got into contact with a Hollywood representative, who got him into acting classes and started his acting career. He got his start by starring in the hit show Rawhide, but he said he was exhausted by the experience. This caught the attention of some film producers and he decided to act in films directed by the then-unknown Sergio Leone. His career was on the rise, and then he got the chance to make his directorial debut.
From a box office perspective, how reliable was he to deliver a box office hit?
That's the point of this post. To analyze his career.

It should be noted that as he started his career in the 1970s, some of the domestic grosses here will be adjusted by inflation. The table with his highest grossing films, however, will be left in its unadjusted form, as the worldwide grosses are more difficult to adjust.

Play Misty for Me (1971)

"The scream you hear may be your own!"
His directorial debut. It stars Eastwood, Jessica Walter and Donna Mills, and follows a radio disc jockey being stalked by an obsessed female fan.
Before his colleague Irving Leonard died, he and Eastwood had discussed the idea of producing a film that was to give Eastwood the artistic control he desired, and his debut as a director. Eastwood said he was ready, "I stored away all the mistakes I made and saved up all the good things I learned, and now I know enough to control my own projects and get what I want out of actors."
The film was a huge success for Eastwood, and it also received positive reviews. So far, his directorial career was off to a great start.

• Budget: $950,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $10,600,000. ($81.7 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $10,600,000.
  

High Plains Drifter (1973)

"They'd never forget the day he drifted into town."
His second film. The film stars Eastwood, Verna Bloom and Mariana Hill, and follows a mysterious stranger who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town.
Eastwood reportedly liked the offbeat quality of the film's original nine-page proposal and approached Universal with the idea of directing it, which would make it his first directed Western. The screenplay was inspired by the real-life murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens in 1964, which eyewitnesses reportedly stood by and watched. Holes in the plot were filled in with black humor and allegory, influenced by Sergio Leone.
It was well received, and the film even surpassed Play Misty for Me at the box office. Eastwood was just going up.

• Budget: $5,500,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $15,700,000. ($110.4 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $15,700,000.
  

Breezy (1973)

"Her name is Breezy."
His third film. It stars William Holden and Kay Lenz, and follows the relationship between a middle-aged real estate agent and a young hitchhiker.
This was his first directed film without starring on it. And his lack of presence certainly hurt the film; it received mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.

• Budget: $750,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $200,000. ($1.4 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $217,753.
  

The Eiger Sanction (1975)

"His lifeline, held by the assassin he hunted."
His fourth film. Based on the novel by Trevanian, the film stars Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, and Jack Cassidy. It follows Jonathan Hemlock, an art history professor, mountain climber, and former assassin once employed by a secret government agency, who is blackmailed into returning to his deadly profession for one last mission.
The film received mixed reactions for its writing, and it wasn't a box office success either.

• Budget: $9,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $14,200,000. ($82.4 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $14,200,000.
  

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

"An army of one."
His fifth film. Based on the novel Gone to Texas by Forrest Carter, it stars Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney and John Vernon. The film tells the story of Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer whose family is murdered by Union militia during the Civil War. Driven to revenge, Wales joins a Confederate guerrilla band and makes a name for himself as a feared gunfighter. After the war, all the fighters in Wales' group except for him surrender to Union soldiers, but the Confederates end up being massacred. Wales becomes an outlaw and is pursued by bounty hunters and Union soldiers as he tries to make a new life for himself.
Eastwood was fascinated by the novel and he bought the film rights, hoping to star on the film. He got Philip Kaufman involved as screenwriter and possible director, but left after disagreeing with Eastwood in the material adapted to the screen. Kaufman insisted on filming with a meticulous attention to detail, which caused disagreements with Eastwood, not to mention the attraction the two shared towards Locke and apparent jealousy on Kaufman's part in regard to their emerging relationship. This caused Eastwood to take over as the director. Kaufman's firing angered the DGA, as he did most of the pre-production, and sanctioning a $60,000 fine. This resulted in the Director's Guild passing a new rule, known as "the Eastwood Rule", which prohibits an actor or producer from firing the director and then personally taking on the director's role.
The film received critical acclaim, and in subsequent years, is ranked among Eastwood's greatest films. It was also a huge success at the box office, doubling his previous highest grossing film. It was also one of the few Western films to receive critical and commercial success in the 1970s at a time when the Western was thought to be dying as a major genre in Hollywood.

• Budget: $3,700,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $31,800,000. ($174.5 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $31,800,000.
  

The Gauntlet (1977)

"The man in the middle of..."
His sixth film. It stars Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, and Mara Corday. It follows a down-and-out cop who falls in love with a prostitute, to whom he is assigned to escort from Las Vegas to Phoenix for her to testify against the mob.
While it received mixed reviews, it became another box office success for Eastwood, becoming his now highest grossing film.

• Budget: $5,500,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $35,400,000. ($182.4 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $35,400,000.
  

Bronco Billy (1980)

"The most outrageous of 'em all."
His seventh film. The film stars Eastwood and Sondra Locke, and focuses on the financially-struggling owner of a traditional Wild West show and his new assistant.
It became another critical and commercial success for Eastwood, who referred to the film as one of his most affable shoots of his career.

• Budget: $6,500,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $24,265,659. ($91.9 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $24,265,659.
  

Firefox (1982)

"The most devastating killing machine ever built... his job... steal it!"
His eighth film. Based on the novel by Craig Thomas, it stars Eastwood, Freddie Jones and David Huffman. The Soviets have developed a revolutionary new jet fighter, called "Firefox". Naturally, the British are worried that the jet will be used as a first-strike weapon, as rumors say that the jet is undetectable on radar. They send ex-Vietnam War pilot Mitchell Gant on a covert mission into the Soviet Union to steal the Firefox.
The film received mixed reviews, but it earned almost $47 million, becoming Eastwood's highest grossing title as director.

• Budget: $21,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $46,708,276. ($151.1 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $46,708,276.
  

Honkytonk Man (1982)

"The boy is on his way to becoming a man. The man is on his way to becoming a legend."
His ninth film. It's based on the novel by Clancy Carlile, and it stars Eastwood and his son Kyle. It follows Red Stovall, a country music singer and composer. With his nephew Whit by his side, he travels to Nashville to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in the backdrop of the Great Depression.
While the film received acclaim, it earned just $4.4 million, becoming his second worst performer.

• Budget: $2,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $4,484,991. ($14.5 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $4,484,991.
  

Sudden Impact (1983)

"Dirty Harry is at it again."
His tenth film. The fourth installment in the Dirty Harry series, directed, it stars Eastwood and Sondra Locke. The film tells the story of a gang rape victim who decides to seek revenge on her rapists 10 years after the attack by killing them one by one. Inspector Harry Callahan, famous for his unconventional and often brutal crime-fighting tactics, is tasked with tracking down the serial killer.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, but it earned over $150 million worldwide, Eastwood's first film to pass that milestone. It's also very popular for including the iconic catchphrase, "Go ahead, make my day."

• Budget: $22,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $67,642,693. ($212.1 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $150,642,693.
  

Tightrope (1984)

"A cop on the edge..."
His 11th film. It stars Eastwood, Geneviève Bujold, Dan Hedaya, Alison Eastwood and Jennifer Beck, and follows a detective determined to hunt down a sadomasochistic serial killer of prostitutes.
The film became another critical and commercial success for Eastwood.

• Budget: N/A.
  
• Domestic gross: $48,143,579. ($144.7 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $48,143,579.
  

Pale Rider (1985)

"...And Hell followed with him."
His 12th film. It stars Eastwood, Michael Moriarty and Carrie Snodgress. A couple and their daughter, along with a few others, are driven out of Lahood, California, by goons working for a mining baron. However, a stranger enters their life to assist them in their fight.
There was no stopping Eastwood: another critical and commercial success.

• Budget: $6,900,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $41,410,568. ($120.2 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $41,410,568.
  

Heartbreak Ridge (1986)

"The scars run deep."
His 13th film. It stars Eastwood, Marsha Mason, Everett McGill, and Mario Van Peebles. The story centers on a U.S. Marine nearing retirement who gets a platoon of undisciplined Marines into shape and leads them during the American invasion of Grenada in 1983.
The film was inspired by an account of American paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division using a pay telephone and a credit card to call in fire support during the invasion of Grenada, and fashioned a script of a Korean War veteran career Army non-commissioned officer passing on his values to a new generation of soldiers. Eastwood was interested in the script and asked his producer, Fritz Manes, to contact the US Army with a view of filming the movie at Fort Bragg. However, the Army read the script and refused to participate, due to Highway being portrayed as a hard drinker, divorced from his wife, and using unapproved motivational methods to his troops, an image the Army did not want.
It received mixed reviews, with some deeming the film as "imperialist propaganda". But it was still another box office success.

• Budget: $15,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $42,724,017. ($121.7 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $121,700,000.
  

Bird (1988)

"There are no second acts in American lives."
His 14th film. The film stars Forest Whitaker and Diane Venora. It is constructed as a montage of scenes from saxophonist Charlie Parker's life, from his childhood in Kansas City, through his early death at the age of 34.
Eastwood, a lifelong fan of jazz, had been fascinated by Parker ever since seeing him perform live in Oakland in 1946. He approached Chan Parker, Bird's common-law wife on whose memoirs the script was based, for input, and she lent Eastwood and arranger Lennie Niehaus a collection of recordings from her private collection Before Eastwood was involved, Richard Pryor was originally cast as Parker.
Despitive positive reviews, it performed poorly, earning just $2.2 million in North America.

• Budget: $14,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $2,181,286. ($5.7 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $2,181,286.
  

White Hunter Black Heart (1990)

"An adventure in obsession."
His 15th film. Based on the novel by Peter Viertel, it stars Eastwood, Jeff Fahey, George Dzundza, Alun Armstrong and Marisa Berenson. It follows a famous movie director, John Wilson, who goes to Africa to make his next movie. He is an obstinate, contrary director who'd rather hunt elephants than take care of his crew or movie. He has become obsessed with one particular elephant and cares for nothing else.
Despite positive reviews, it made just $2.3 million domestically, not even 10% of the budget.

• Budget: $24,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $2,319,124. ($5.5 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $2,319,124.
  

The Rookie (1990)

His 16th film. The film stars Eastwood, Charlie Sheen, Raul Julia, Sônia Braga, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Tom Skerritt. It follows a veteran police officer teamed up with a younger detective, whose intent is to take down a German crime lord in downtown Los Angeles, following months of investigation into an exotic car theft ring.
It received negative reviews for its acting and story, and it became another flop for Eastwood. That's three bombs in a row. Ouch.

• Budget: $30,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $21,633,874. ($51.6 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $21,633,874.
  

Unforgiven (1992)

"Some legends will never be forgotten. Some wrongs can never be forgiven."
His 17th film. It stars Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris and Morgan Freeman. It follows William Munny, a widower with two young kids, who was once a very vicious gunfighter who gave up everything after marriage. Now, a man named Schofield Kid brings him an offer that he cannot refuse, forcing him to come out of retirement for one last job.
David Webb Peoples wrote the script all the way back to 1976, and it was optioned by Francis Ford Coppola, but he lacked the funds needed to helm it. By Eastwood's own recollection, he was given the script in the "early 80s" although he did not immediately pursue it, because, according to him, "I thought I should do some other things first". Eastwood has long asserted that the film would be his last traditional Western, concerned that any future projects would simply rehash previous plotlines or imitate someone else's work. He dedicated the film to his close friends and mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. Hackman initially refused to participate as his daughters were upset that he was starring in too many violent films, but he became fascinated by the script that he agreed.
It opened with $15 million and it legged all the way to $100 million after playing for almost one year, closing with $159 million worldwide, his now highest grossing film. The film received Eastwood's best reviews of his career, with many considering the film as his magnum opus as director. It received 9 Oscar nominations, and won four: Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood, Best Supporting Actor for Hackman, and Best Film Editing. So Eastwood, on top of being a reliable box office draw, was now a 2-time Oscar winner.

• Budget: $14,400,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $101,167,799. ($225.2 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $159,167,799.
  

A Perfect World (1993)

His 18th film. Kevin Costner, Eastwood and Laura Dern, and follows an escaped convict who takes a young boy hostage and attempts to escape on the road with the child, while being pursued by a Texas Ranger.
The film received critical acclaim, and has appeared as one of Eastwood's best films. The film disappointed in North America, but it earned up to $100 million overseas (Eastwood's first film to gross that much) and ended with $135 million worldwide.

• Budget: $30,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $31,130,999. ($67.2 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $135,130,999.
  

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

"The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it's been broken into a million pieces."
His 19th film. Based on the novel by Robert James Waller, it stars Eastwood and Meryl Streep. The film is set in 1965, following a war bride, Francesca Johnson, who lives with her husband and two children on their Iowa farm. That year she meets National Geographic photojournalist, Robert Kincaid, who comes to Madison County, Iowa to photograph its historic covered bridges. With Francesca's family away for a short trip, the couple have an intense, four-day love affair.
It received more critical acclaim, and made over $180 million worldwide, becoming his highest grossing film. For her performance, Streep was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress.

• Budget: $22,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $71,516,617. ($146.5 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $182,016,617.
  

Absolute Power (1997)

His 20th film. Based on the novel by David Baldacci, it stars Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn, Dennis Haysbert, and Richard Jenkins. It follows a master jewel thief who witnesses the killing of a woman by Secret Service agents.
It received mixed reviews, and disappointed at the box office.

• Budget: $50,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $50,068,310. ($97.4 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $92,768,310.
  

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

"Welcome to Savannah, Georgia. A Ccty of hot nights and cold blooded murder."
His 21st film. Based on the book by John Berendt, it stars John Cusack and Kevin Spacey. It follows the story of antiques dealer Jim Williams, on trial for the killing of a male prostitute who was his lover. The multiple trials depicted in Berendt's book are combined into one trial for the film.
It received mediocre reviews, and flopped at the box office.

• Budget: $30,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $25,105,255. ($48.8 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $25,105,255.
  

True Crime (1999)

His 22nd film. Based on the novel by Andrew Klavan, it stars Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, Denis Leary, LisaGay Hamilton and James Woods. It follows a journalist covering the execution of a death row inmate, only to discover that the convict may actually be innocent.
This was another project that received mediocre reviews and flopped at the box office.

• Budget: $55,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $16,649,768. ($31.2 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $16,649,768.
  

Space Cowboys (2000)

"Boys will be boys."
His 23rd film. It stars Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner as four aging former test pilots who are sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite.
It received very positive reviews, and earned over $128 million worldwide.

• Budget: $60,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $90,464,773. ($164 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $128,884,132.
  

Blood Work (2002)

"He's a heartbeat away from catching the killer."
His 24th film. Based on the novel by Michael Connelly, it stars Eastwood, Jeff Daniels, Wanda De Jesús, and Anjelica Huston. It follows a retired FBI agent who recently had a heart transplant but still takes up the job to nab a killer.
It was another film with mediocre reviews and flop status.

• Budget: $50,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $26,235,081. ($45.5 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $31,794,718.
  

Mystic River (2003)

"We bury our sins, we wash them clean."
His 25th film. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, it stars Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laura Linney. It follows three childhood friends who are reunited 25 years later when one of them suffers a family tragedy.
Michael Keaton was originally cast in the role of Det. Sean Devine, and did several script readings with the cast, as well as his own research into the practices of the Massachusetts Police Department. However, creative differences between Keaton and Eastwood led to Keaton leaving the production. He was replaced by Kevin Bacon. This was the first film in which Eastwood would be credited as composer.
The film had a slow roll-out, but it was aided by strong word of mouth, closing with a wonderful $156 million worldwide. It also received acclaim, and was named as one of Eastwood's greatest films. Sean Penn received universal acclaim for his performance, with some naming it among the best acting of the century, particularly for one scene (if you watched it, you definitely know which scene). It received 6 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. It won two: Best Actor for Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Robbins.

• Budget: $25,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $90,135,191. ($153 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $156,595,191.
  

Come back tomorrow for Part 2

MOVIES (FROM HIGHEST GROSSING TO LEAST GROSSING)

No.	Movie	Year	Studio	Domestic Total	Overseas Total	Worldwide Total	Budget
x	The Bridges of Madison County	1995	Warner Bros.	$71,516,617	$110,500,000	$182,016,617	$22M
x	Unforgiven	1992	Warner Bros.	$101,167,799	$58,000,000	$159,167,799	$14.4M
x	Mystic River	2003	Warner Bros.	$90,135,191	$66,460,000	$156,595,191	$25M
x	Sudden Impact	1983	Warner Bros.	$67,642,693	$83,000,000	$150,642,693	$22M
x	A Perfect World	1993	Warner Bros.	$31,130,999	$104,000,000	$135,130,999	$30M
x	Space Cowboys	2000	Warner Bros.	$90,464,773	$38,419,359	$128,884,132	$60M
x	Heartbreak Ridge	1986	Warner Bros.	$42,724,017	$78,975,983	$121,700,000	$15M
x	Absolute Power	1997	Sony	$50,068,310	$42,700,000	$92,768,310	$50M
x	Tightrope	1984	Warner Bros.	$48,143,579	$0	$48,143,579	N/A
x	Firefox	1982	Warner Bros.	$46,708,276	$0	$46,708,276	$21M
x	Pale Rider	1985	Warner Bros.	$41,410,568	$0	$41,410,568	$6.9M
x	The Gauntlet	1977	Warner Bros.	$35,400,000	$0	$35,400,000	$5.5M
x	The Outlaw Josey Wales	1976	Warner Bros.	$31,800,000	$0	$31,800,000	$3.7M
x	Blood Work	2002	Warner Bros.	$26,235,081	$5,559,637	$31,794,718	$50M
x	Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil	1997	Warner Bros.	$25,105,255	$0	$25,105,255	$30M
x	Bronco Billy	1980	Warner Bros.	$24,265,659	$0	$24,265,659	$6.5M
x	The Rookie	1990	Warner Bros.	$21,633,874	$0	$21,633,874	$30M
x	True Crime	1999	Warner Bros.	$16,649,768	$0	$16,649,768	$55M
x	High Plains Drifter	1973	Universal	$15,700,000	$0	$15,700,000	$5.5M
x	The Eiger Sanction	1975	Universal	$14,200,000	$0	$14,200,000	$9M
x	Play Misty for Me	1971	Universal	$10,600,000	$0	$10,600,000	$950K
x	Honkytonk Man	1982	Warner Bros.	$4,484,991	$0	$4,484,991	$2M
x	White Hunter Black Heart	1990	Warner Bros.	$2,319,124	$0	$2,319,124	$24M
x	Bird	1988	Warner Bros.	$2,181,286	$0	$2,181,286	$14M
x	Breezy	1973	Universal	$200,000	$17,753	$217,753	$750K

The Verdict

Hope you liked this edition. You can find this and more in the wiki for this section.
The next director will be Robert Zemeckis. One of the biggest falls from grace.
I asked you to choose who else should be in the run and the comment with the most upvotes would be chosen. It had to be a controversial filmmaker. Well, we'll later talk about... Zack Snyder. Oh, BoxOffice chose fuego 🔥
This is the schedule for the following four:

Week	Director	Reasoning
May 20-26	Robert Zemeckis	Can we get old Zemeckis back?
May 27-June 2	Richard Donner	An influential figure of the 70s and 80s.
June 3-9	Ang Lee	What happened to Lee?
June 10-16	Zack Snyder	RIP Inbox.

Who should be next after Snyder? That's up to you.

In Triplicate #8 - The Beths - Future Me Hates Me / Jump Rope Gazers / Expert In A Dying Field (2018 - 2022)
While a large discography is not necessarily the indication of a great band or artist finding a musician who can release three watershed albums, either outputting high quality work or exploring similar themes and motifs within them is to me nothing short of an amazing feat. It’s an achievement that is worth taking a deep dive to dissect, contrast and compare different works during a time of seeming creative wellspring. “In Triplicate” will be a bi-weekly spotlight on what I feel are artist at their peak by releasing three killer albums in a row chronologically and making observations on the world of music, their creative mindset and how these albums interlink, or pull apart, from each other.
Listen
Future Me Hates Me – Bandcamp - Apple Music – Spotify
Jump Rope Gazers – Bandcamp - Apple Music – Spotify
Expert in a Dying Field – Bandcamp - Apple Music - Spotify
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Guest Review by u/MCK_OH
Sometimes a band is just really fucking good. We all love a band that has a stake in The Narrative, but sometimes a great band is more self-contained. They aren’t great because they tell us something about how the world works, they’re great because they make great songs. On an unrelated note, meet indieheads favorite The Beths. The New Zealand based four-piece formed in 2014 and has since released 3 studio records: 2018’s Future Me Hates Me, 2020’s Jump Rope Gazers and 2022’s Expert In a Dying Field. All three of these records rule. These records do not contain much experimentation. They do not contain a shocking amount of growth. They do not contain messages that will change the way you view the world. They do not contain songs that changed The Narrative. What they do contain is 32 perfect or near-perfect songs, countless brilliant hooks, clever turns of phrase, fun harmonies and cool riffs. And while these records probably don’t contribute to The Narrative they do have A Narrative. I promise I’m not making this up. Let’s view the three Beths records not as three records but instead as one triple LP concept record. Future Jump Rope Experts Hate Me. A power pop Tommy except without all the parts of Tommy that kind of suck. Sadly there’s no “Pinball Wizard” either but you can’t have everything.
Act I: Wondering If You Feel The Same
What does it mean that Future Me Hates Me is so beloved in this subreddit? When we redid our essentials last summer, this record was one of the 40 named to the 2010s essentials. It’s not seen that way, I think. Fellow online music nerds don’t even agree! I think it means that we are a broadly anxious bunch because this is an exceedingly anxious record. Or maybe it just means that Future Me Hates Me is a perfect batch of indie rock tunes for the indie rock subreddit. A bit of both maybe.
Future Me Hates Me is probably the tightest Beths record. It’s the shortest (by 14 seconds, but still) and maintains an up-tempo pace more than the other two. It’s a record whose entire tracklist probably could be singles. Or, as proven by a series of Fortnite YouTubers, a record whose entire tracklist could be background music for your Fortnite highlights video. I’m not kidding! Look it up, there’s a distinctly strange amount of these and they all rule. Opener “Great No One” reveals what the record will be about pretty quickly. Immediately catchy, harmony-laden indie rock. That’s it, that’s the bag of tricks. Sometimes it’ll be slow for a bit - “Less Than Thou,” “River Run” - but mostly, it’s this. And that’s good because this is fantastic. There is no type of music in the world I like more than hooky indie rock. And no one does it better. Every song has something truly special about it. “Great No One” has those layered “Yeah”s on the chorus, “Future Me Hates Me” has the little guitar thing over the riff in the intro and after the first chorus, “Uptown Girl” has the name of a much worse Billy Joel Song, “You Wouldn’t Like Me” gets quiet and then loud (genius maneuver), “Not Running” has its ridiculous forward momentum from the drums, “Little Death” has the brilliant final chorus, “Happy Unhappy” has the way frontwoman Liz Stokes sings the word particularly, “River Run” also gets quiet and then loud (still genius), “Whatever” has the super fun guitar solo and “Less Than Thou” has the entire like 45 seconds when the band comes back in on vocals. It’s a perfect indie pop album. Every song is brilliant. The only records that I think I can fairly compare it to are If You’re Feeling Sinister and Alvvays in terms of indie pop perfection. Just 10 brilliant songs.
Oh yeah, the narrative. This is the first act of 3 in the conceptual masterpiece Future Jump Rope Experts Hate Me. It’s a simple narrative. Our narrator falls in love despite her knowledge that it will probably end badly, it works for a bit and then it falls apart. Our narrator is anxious pretty much the entire time. Simple, but effective storytelling.
Future Me Hates Me is about the first part of that process. Our narrator tries, and ultimately fails to convince herself that she doesn’t have a crush. The evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming. She may believe that love’s no good idea (at all!) but on “Happy Unhappy” her every moment is haunted by wondering if he feels the same. She can’t even remember to take out the bins! On “Little Death” her body begins to fail her, dying the titular little death every time he comes near. Even then though, she maintains that “I’ll never tell, you’ll never guess.” On “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” she even admits that it “feels so much like being in love,” all the while worrying that she’s too unlikeable for it to work out. But on “Future Me Hates Me,” she comes around: she wants to risk going through future heartbreak. Future her may hate her but there’s nothing she can really do about it. And in the best song on the record, “Not Running,” she confirms that she’s not running away. It’s almost a response to the previous song, “You Wouldn’t Like Me.” It’s finally a song of trust - tell the truth. I won’t run away.. It’s okay to tell the truth. She was wondering if he feels the same and it looks like he does. Enough dying little deaths, worrying about future me. It’s time to meet the Jump Rope Gazers.
Act II: I Wanna Give It My Best Try
There’s a tendency, I think, to say that Jump Rope Gazers is the weakest Beths record. It has the weakest reviews, it has the fewest shooters among us non-critics, it is broadly just not quite as beloved as the other two. A classic sophomore slump. But I think that Jump Rope Gazers is, at the very worst, only like a quarter-step behind the other two Beths records. It would be like calling Ichiro’s 2002 season a sophomore slump. Yes, it was a step down from his rookie year and he would go on to have even better seasons but the dude still hit .321, stole 30 bases and made the all-star team. And yes, Jump Rope Gazers is a slight decline from Future Me Hates Me but it still has “Just Shy of Sure” and “Jump Rope Gazers” on it, which is the indie rock equivalent of hitting at least .321.
What sets Jump Rope Gazers apart from Future Me Hates Me the most at first is that it’s slower. Future Me Hates Me takes until the 8th song to slow down even for a minute, while Jump Rope Gazers slows down by track 3. It will slow down again at track 5 and track 9. These songs tend to be slightly weaker, though the title track is an exception. But there are still absolutely bangers on here. Opener “I’m Not Getting Excited” has a slightly gnarlier guitar sound than anything on Future Me Hates Me. Side 2 opener “Out of Sight” moves forward with the same momentum and pace that drives the best of Future Me Hates Me. “Mars, The God of War” does a little quiet/loud thing which is always welcome. While I can attempt to sort these songs into piles (“the slow ones,” “the bangers” etc) I think at the end of the day this is just another batch of excellent Beths tunes. “Dying to Believe” is a brilliant pop song that pulls out pretty much every trick in the book. I’m sort of in awe of it. It has sick harmonies! A bass solo! It has a part where the guitars are gone and then they come back! It’s another song about nervously waiting for the world to crash down around you but it sounds like a ton of fun. It has a super fun music video, the best they’ve ever made. It’s a ridiculous pop song that pulls out every trick without feeling overstuffed. “Acrid” has this faraway backing vocal at 3:33 that always makes my day. “Don’t Go Away” is like half chorus, and it’s a good choice because the chorus rocks. It’s a trick they’ll use again, to even better use on “Knees Deep” later, on Expert In A Dying Field. And the slow songs do still work. The chorus of “Do You Want Me Now” is absolute gold. One of their best. While “You Are a Beam of Light” is probably the weakest song between all three records, it’s still fun. The final chorus with the full band harmony is excellent. The best of the album’s slower cuts is “Jump Rope Gazers.” “Jump Rope Gazers” was the first Beths song that I loved. It has what is still probably the best set of opening lines of the decade with “I’ve never been the dramatic type / But if I don’t see your face tonight / I, I guess I’ll be fine.” Incredible, every time. The guitars sound really nice. The chorus sounds really nice. The melody is really nice. This whole song is just really fucking nice. It might be the one song from this band that makes you go “I’d want to live in the feeling of this song forever.” It’s the song that got me to fall in love with The Beths, and for that it will always be one of my favorites. But it’s not quite as good as the closer “Just Shy of Sure,” the best song on the record. It’s a high bar, but I think this one might have the best chorus melody of the Beths career to date. It feels like it has the same forward momentum of an “Out of Sight” while still having the more laid-back warmth of a “Jump Rope Gazers.” One of their perfect songs. One of the best songs of the decade. At the end of the day, what Jump Rope Gazers sacrifices in terms of bangers I think it mostly makes up for with a slightly more varied palette that mostly works wonders. It’s still a batch of Beths songs, which is among the highest compliments I’m willing to give anything.
Folks, meet the Jump Rope Gazers. The Jump Rope Gazers of course, are our narrator and the object of her affection. It would seem that our narrator has finally won the day. She is in love, willing to admit it and it seems like he is too. Of course, this has not stopped the worrying. On “I’m Not Getting Excited” she keeps her grip on joy loose, bracing for the potential for everything to fall down around her. On “Dying to Believe,” she’s willing to hope that everything won’t fall down around her but she also spends the song apologizing. She struggles with communication, with trust in herself and in her partner. There are true, earnest moments of joy on Jump Rope Gazers. The title track is a love song with no reservations. She wonders how this could have happened, despite all the worrying from Future Me Hates Me. She offers that she’s willing to give it her best try. The rest of the record tugs back and forth in either direction. You don’t get a sense listening to it whether it will work out long-term or not. While there are songs like “Jump Rope Gazers,” there’s also songs like “Do You Want Me Now” or “Don’t Go Away.” “Do You Want Me Now” indicates that communication here is often difficult. And anytime you need to say “don’t go away” 24 times in one song, it seems like things might not be going perfectly. The penultimate “You Are a Beam of Light” details a stilted phone call with tears involved but our narrator is willing to “meet outside in five.” Maybe they can work through this. Let’s return to the closer “Just Shy of Sure” and its brilliant chorus. What are the actual words in it?
“Oh, my head is aching
But if I keep very still
I might be able
To make this work until
The end of the weekend
Weak, but I’ll pretend
That you still want me
I’m the one you adore
But I’m just shy of sure”
More worrying! Not great probably. Sounds like it’s maybe not the sturdiest relationship in the world. Still, I hope they can make this work. That they can get around the insecurities, the doubts, the communication. Pull it together. Give us a happy ending. What’s the first lyric of the next album, as a sneak peak of where the jump rope gazers are headed?
“Can we erase our history?”
Ah, shit.
Act III: Staring Into Nothing (Or, I Hate Past Me)
If we continue to operate under the assumption that The Beths are the Ichiro Suzuki of indie rock (and we should, to clarify) then I think Expert In A Dying Field might be their equivalent of his dazzling 2004 campaign. After all, just like Ichiro in ‘04 this has a staggering amount of hits. Even more than the already staggering amount of hits from their previous efforts! It helps that, unlike the 10 songs of their previous records this has 12 songs. They manage to more than keep up the quality. While this is their longest and lengthiest record, it’s hardly The White Album. Lead single “Silence Is Golden” is a bit louder than usual, “I Want To Listen” is a bit quieter and “2am” is a slow, sad closer but really this is another batch of Beths tunes. Which, again, hell yeah. Can never have enough Beths tunes going around. Let’s all hang out and watch The Beths do the indie rock equivalent of hitting .372 and breaking the single season hit record.
The opener and title track, “Expert In A Dying Field” is the best song The Beths have ever made. The lyrics are as sharp and clever as they’ve ever been, the hook is gold and the song just keeps building momentum, and building momentum, and building momentum. What starts off as an understated pop tune has turned anthemic in less than four minutes. The backing vocals are fantastic, the guitar sound is great. It’s a song that could make you dance or cry. It’s the perfect Beths song. That last minute is unstoppable. I’ve gotten goosebumps listening to it more times than I can count. “Knees Deep” rocks. It’s like 65% chorus which is fine because it’s one of the best choruses the band has ever put down. It makes sense to keep hammering the chorus button if you’ve landed on something this good. No problems here. Speaking of great choruses, this record is just chock full of ‘em. The chorus on “Best Left” wasn’t my favorite initially but I’ve really come around on it. It’s really fun to sing along to. Important quality. “Change In The Weather,” written by guitarist Jonathan Pearce proves that there’s somehow more than one band member capable of writing brilliant Beths tunes. “Head In The Clouds” and “A Passing Rain” are Beths songs. Which, hell yeah as per usual. At this point it’s almost unremarkable how this band just churns out great indie pop tunes. Unusually happy “When You Know You Know” is heavier on acoustic guitars, providing a minor change on The Beths formula. It works wonders. The heavier “Silence Is Golden” similarly tweaks the formula, providing the perfect musical backdrop for Liz Stokes’ agitated vocal performance. It’s the song that probably best captures the feeling of loud construction being done beside your home. “I Want To Listen” is also a bit of a tweak on The Beths formula. It’s a jaunty little pop tune that reminds me of similar moments in the Rilo Kiley catalog. It is unsurprisingly great. “I Told You That I Was Afraid” returns to both the anxiety and the continuous forward momentum of Future Me Hates Me and does so exceedingly well. It rocks. It’s also an exceedingly tight song, the band seems to be moving as one on this one. “Your Side” is probably my second favorite song on the record, a melancholy post-breakup tune. It’s another one with a practically perfect chorus. Oh and the guitar sound is great. Especially the guitar after Stokes sings the “oo-oo” part after the chorus. That’s what music should be right there. Closer “2am” is a classic Sad, Slower Closing Song. Y’know like “My Hometown” or “Dublin City Sky” or “Gospel” or “Butterfly.” I’m broadly suspicious of this specific type of song. Slowing it down means you lose something in energy and just generally rocking (rocking, always a good thing!) so you’ve gotta make up for it somehow. And “2am” does. This type of song works when the lyrics pick up the slack, when the slow and spareness of the song makes you focus on the lyrics, and when the emotion in the lyrics complements the pace and atmosphere of the song. When the song is sad enough that mustering energy for it seems like it’s beyond the point. “2am” is a song like that. And to be fair to “2am” it does build towards the end. After an album of playing chicken with finally saying goodbye, “2am” finally does it.
So we reach the end of the road for the jump rope gazers. We were with them through the anxious crush stage, the even more anxious early relationship stage and now it’s time to say goodbye. “Expert In A Dying Field” laments all the time and knowledge now gone to waste. While on Jump Rope Gazer’s “You Are a Beam of Light” the late night phone call was stilted and sad at least there was a late night phone call, but on “Head In The Clouds” our narrator has no one to listen to her at night. The nervous self-doubt that’s shown up again and again re-appears at the worst times on songs like “A Passing Rain” and “I Told You That I Was Afraid.” Our narrator remains torn; on “Your Side” she wants nothing more than a dramatic, tearful apology, a romantic gesture, a chance that maybe they can get back together. Maybe it’s not over, or at least not over forever. But on “Best Left” she indicates that some things are best left to rot. Some things need to be put behind, and forgotten. One of the constants in these three records is that sense of uncertainty. On Future Me Hates Me, our narrator indicates that she’ll never reveal her emotions on one song while indicating she has to on another. On Jump Rope Gazers she’ll declare her love on one song, hoping it’s going to work out while indicating that she has no serious belief that it will in others. Finally, on Expert In A Dying Field she’s unsure if the best way forward is to keep looking back or to try to move forward. One way or another the story of the jump rope gazers is over though. On “2am” we finally hear how it all fell apart. We hear about the good times, but we also hear about the communication breakdown. We hear our narrator reminiscing about when it finally fell apart:
“There was news I was nervous to tell you
Through the filter softening the words we said
Were you mad? Tell the truth, I can take it
I could hear the engine as you drove away
Through the blinds, saw the glow of the light fade”
And that’s where we leave it. She asks one more time if he still feels it, but it seems there’s no response. This is it. To some degree, she was right; she probably does hate past her.
Outro: The End of the Weekend
The Beths, great band. If you’ve somehow read this far without having heard them go listen to them. I’d listen to them in chronological order but really you can’t go wrong. I admit I had to stretch the concept a bit, leave some stuff out of the narrative and all that. But I think that puts it more and not less in line with most concept records. In truth, I think these three records do work as a loose narrative if you want to view them that way, which I sometimes do. If you don’t then you can choose to view them as three of the best indie pop records of the past decade. That works too. Either way it’s a run for the ages.
As a music nerd I am naturally list-obsessed (sometimes I worry I’m getting too close to the High Fidelity guys) so here’s a bunch of Beths lists I assembled while I was writing this.
List 1: The Perfect Beths Songs
1. “Not Running”
2. “Little Death”
3. “Less Than Thou”
4. “Jump Rope Gazers”
5. “Out of Sight”
6. “Just Shy of Sure”
7. “Expert In A Dying Field”
8. “Knees Deep”
9. “Your Side”
10. “I Told You That I Was Afraid”
11. “Idea/Intent”
List 2: The Near Perfect Beths Songs
1. All the rest
List 3: The Abridged Tracklist to Future Jump Rope Experts Hate Me. Or, the songs that I think tell the narrative I’m trying to sell the best.
1. “Little Death”
2. “Future Me Hates Me”
3. “You Wouldn’t Like Me”
4. “Not Running”
5. “I’m Not Getting Excited”
6. “Dying to Believe”
7. “Jump Rope Gazers”
8. “Just Shy of Sure”
9. “Expert In A Dying Field”
10. “Your Side”
11. “Best Left”
12. “2am”
List 4: The Top 10 Beths Music Videos
1. “Dying to Believe”
2. “Knees Deep”
3. “Expert In A Dying Field”
4. “Future Me Hates Me”
5. “Your Side”
6. “Jump Rope Gazers”
7. “Uptown Girl”
8. “I’m Not Getting Excited”
9. “Little Death”
10. “Happy Unhappy”
List 5: 10 Actors Who Could Have Been That Actor In That One Particular Film
1. Jackie Chan
2. Jeremy Renner
3. Rebecca Ferguson
4. Dominic Monaghan
5. Owen Wilson
6. Charlize Theron
7. Matt Damon
8. Julia Roberts
9. Paul Giamatti
10. Viola Davis
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(Tentative) Schedule
May 27 - U2 - War / The Unforgettable Fire / The Joshua Tree
June 10 - R.E.M. Part 1 - Murmur / Reckoning / Fables of Reconstruction (Guest Entry u/p-u-n-k_girl)
June 24 - R.E.M. Part 2 - Out of Time / Automatic for the People / Monster
July 8 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend / Contra / Modern Vampires of the City
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Archive

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Hello everyone,
A couple of weeks ago we had a discussion about sabre gloves and I mentioned my wife had recently bought the HF Armory Black Knight Sabre gloves. You guys wanted a review when we had used it for a bit, so here's my review.
Note: after having seen my wife's gloves, I was so impressed that I bought a pair for myself as well.
Preface:
The gloves are available in Europe directly through HF Armory or if you're in the US through Purpleheart Armoury. Sabre Gloves Black Knight - HF Armory (hf-armory.com) / HF Saber Gloves (woodenswords.com) My wife uses an S pair and I use a M/L pair for reference. The pictures I've added are from my M/L gloves. We've both used these for a bit over a month now during sparring and regular classes. I have used mine during a sabre tournament as well. Prior to these gloves we have both used the generic kevlar gloves and the Gabriel gloves. My wife got hit on her pinkie a couple of times while wearing the kevlar gloves so wanted to upgrade protection wise. I hadn't had any issues with the kevlar gloves but an upcoming tournament required hard gloves for sabre so I needed new ones. I already had Gabriel gloves for longsword but I found that these were too cumbersome for sabre and a bit too bulky for my Easton Mk III even though they barely fit the guard.
Protection:
The gloves seem to offer decent protection for the fingers. The hard shell is sleek but feels protective as well. It might seem the sides of the fingers aren't as well protected but I found that when you are holding your sword the plates overlap enough with the guard to not make this an issue. You'll definitely feel hard hits to your hands but so far we haven't even had any minor bruises while using these. The wrist is less protected in order to safeguard the mobility. There is one hard plate on the side of your true edge which does help but overall the wrist isn't that well protected. I have noticed that wearing a small padded wristband (like from tennis) helped to take the sting out of some wrist hits while not hampering mobility.
Mobility:
The mobility in these gloves is great. Moulinets, disengages, cut overs, thrusts no technique posed any problem while fencing with these. If you order according to HF Armory's sizing chart the gloves are plenty spacious to allow you to use all your fingers while holding a sword. Your hands aren't cramped together at all. The thumb fits snugly and easily allows for a thumb up grip. The gloves are also sleek enough to fit in both my Easton Mk III and my wife's VB gymnasium sabre. I have also handled some other people's sabres as well with all kinds of guards and they all easily fit. These gloves come it at around 250 grams each which is more than half of my Gabriel gloves. As these are clamshell type gloves they don't allow the user to put a finger over the guard which might be of interest for people fencing rapier or sidesword. These are advertised as sabre gloves either way.
Prizing:
These gloves aren't the cheapest at €130 / $165 but aren't prohibitively expensive either. With the basic kevlar gloves rising in price each year, it might be worth it to make the small price jump for gloves with better protection.
Conclusion:
So far these gloves seem like the best in between glove for sabre I have handled so far and I have used a lot of gloves over the years including HF Armory's Firestones. They have good mobility and decent protection. As always with sabre it's hard to find a glove that fits in a more complex hilt, but I think these are the best solution to that problem so far. The protection isn't perfect but they are definitely a step up from kevlar gloves. Hits will still hurt but I think major injuries will be way less likely. The pricing also helps in putting these gloves in a competitive spot in the market. I'll certainly keep using them for now and see how they hold up over a longer period of time.
I hope this review was useful, please let me know if you need any more information from me.

Men without Women by Haruki Murakami, Phillip Gabriel (translator), Ted Goossen (translator)
First Published: Apr 18, 2014 Genre: Fiction, Short Stories Goodreads rating (as on May 12, 2024): 3.75/5 [105k ratings]
Review: Recently finished, It is a collection of 7 sad short-stories ("Drive My Car", "Yesterday", "An Independent Organ", "Scheherazade", "Kino", "Samsa in Love", "Men Without Women").
It is about despairing men and their exploration of loneliness and connection. The centre of most of the stories is Infidelity. Each story offers a profound glimpse into the complexity human emotions.
It was a good read.
My top 3 of these stories are: - Drive My Car, - An Independent Organ, and - Samsa in Love

This is the final arc! Yippee, hooray, and other such exclamatory remarks. Will Billy finally get to have a well-deserved rest? Is his mental health ever going to recover? There’s only one way to find out.
The first arc is here.
The second is here.
And the third is here.
Next
Content Warning: Suicidal thoughts and contemplation
You know the drill: credit to SpacePaladin15 for the universe.
Thank you JulianSkies for proofreading.
Memory Transcription Subject: Billy Marsh, Human Trash
Date [Standardized Human Time]: March 26, 2142
There was a parade on the main street, meant to honor everyone who fell during the war against the Federation. Some cheered, some cried, some just smiled and remembered. It was a day of remembrance, but also healing, of recognizing the past and moving forward from it. It was another one of the many holidays that had come about as a result of the war, another day of connecting to others who had experienced tragedies during the first eight months that Humanity existed on the galactic scene.
And where was I? Sitting in a shitty apartment, drinking myself to death trying to forget. How ironic.
It had been like this for about a year now. The military was the only thing holding my life together, once my contract was up and they didn’t accept my reapplication I knew it was over. They set me up with an apartment, some benefits for my service, and a job, thinking I could handle it from there. I couldn’t, and now I’m jobless, benefitless, and rotting in a cheap apartment. All it took was one year for me to ruin it.
I lifted the bottle, not even tasting the foul Venlilian alcohol anymore. It didn’t matter what it tasted like, all that mattered was it let me forget. I couldn’t live with the memories, but every part of me reminded me of them. My arm, my legs, my scars, my face, my eyes, not a single cell of my body was without memories. I’ve tried to tear out my bionics more times than I can remember now, but for some reason, I always stop just before they finally release their grip on me.
I went back for another drink. I had pushed everyone away from me, they shouldn’t have to worry about me. I had bothered them enough already, taking up time they could be used for better things. Why should they spend their time trying to help a piece of trash like me? They shouldn’t, they just didn’t realize it, so I decided for them. I acted angry and distant, but switched my attitude on a dime when I was visiting my assigned therapist. No one should have to worry about me, I didn’t deserve their concern.
I lifted the bottle again, but stopped as I realized it was empty. I check the floor around me, finding countless more empty bottles before finally sighing and standing from my seat. I slogged my way to the kitchen, only to find all of the reserves there dry as well.
I didn’t have the mental energy to slam the door, though if I did I would most likely rip it off its hinges with my bionics. Instead, I just left it open, like a trap without any bait. I’d get the bait soon, but first I wanted to at least look Human. I didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with me, they had their own busy lives and didn’t want to deal with some drunkard veteran, so I’ll at least try and cover the stench of booze with some cheap body spray.
I stepped out of the apartment looking, smelling, and feeling like shit, because I was, but not enough of a shit to make people care. I just looked like someone who didn’t know how to take care of themselves, not a veteran who is contemplating suicide.
I winced as the sun hit my eyes, a throbbing hangover barely held back by the over-the-counter headache meds I had been religiously taking every day. I barely ate food anymore, just ibuprofen and alcohol. It was all I needed, it’s not like I moved around anymore. I only walked to the fridge, to the store, and back to my seat. I didn’t mind it, I deserved it.
I blocked out the festivities around me as I entered the liquor store, a new one this time. My last one had cut me off for clearly drinking too much, all that succeeded was making me walk a little more. I gathered the highest-proof drinks I could find and made my way to the counter.
As the cashier rang me up, she tried to make small talk. “So, you’re a fan of the alien stuff. Couldn’t get into it myself, too strong.”
I didn’t respond, earning me an awkward sigh from the clerk. She finished scanning all of my items without another word, not even asking for me to pay as I placed my card on the counter before she could ask.
I picked my drinks up and headed for the door. She tried one more time to get me to speak. “Have a good day.”
I paused for a split second, before stepping out fully and letting the door close behind me. I wanted to explain to her exactly why I was never going to have a good day again, but then I would be making my problems her problems. I’ve caused enough problems for enough people, I’m done with that.
Once again, the streets and buildings passed in a blur and only began to retake shape once I was in my apartment. I stepped inside and dumped everything on the counter before I shut the door. I didn’t bother locking it anymore, no one was going to rob my home unless they were looking for empty bottles or cans. I took what I wanted and stuffed the rest into the fridge, now to return to what I was doing.
I sat in the stained, dented, misshapen, and honestly ugly chair and popped the tab on the first drink. I took two deep gulps before returning to staring at the wall in front of me. The day continued like that for an unknown amount of time, all the way until the sky began to glow orange and festivities were finally dying out.
With another empty bottle in hand, I looked out of the singular window in my apartment. In a flash, memories came rushing back. Memories of the Cradle, of my naivety and ignorance of just how the universe worked, of how cruel and unjust it was, and how idealists were chewed up and spit out.
Next, the Battle of Earth appeared in my mind. I had become much more cold, but I still cared enough to be considered Human. I could vividly remember the clean, metallic halls of the Federation bomber as we rushed down them, and also the stale smell of the cabin in the woods. I tried to hate the aliens that were occupying the cabin with us, but deep down I wasn’t that kind of person. In the end, I became that person.
Then I thought of Sillis and the constant rain making even our water-resistant suits damp. Those were the last days I could call myself something resembling a Human. I was consumed by hatred, but there was still something left deep down. Even if I acted distant, I still cared. I tried to hide it, but I couldn’t fight my nature. That was until I lost everything.
I took another deep drink from the bottle, trying to fight the memory of my allies. But they wouldn’t leave, they clawed their way to the front of my mind. I missed them, I missed them so much my heart broke. I failed them all, they all died because of me.
If Owen and Brandon were here, they would be talking about the weather or their favorite sports team while Ryan and Joshua shot jokes at each other about anything they could think of. James would be silent but not absentminded, listening intently even if he wasn’t looking at the conversation. Even Ueli would be grumbling along as we made the motions through the street, putting up a front of anger to hide his sorrows.
Gabriel and Jared, the two brothers would be comforting each other, supporting one another through hard times while Valya would be stoically listening to Jack and Teguh argue back and forth. Of course, Max and Sam would be shaking their heads back and forth as the argument grew louder and louder.
Blake would be making constant sarcastic remarks to every joke Kelly told, and the duo constantly playfighting with one another. Liam and Simmons would be checking their equipment, meticulously reviewing every aspect countless times to ensure everything was as it should be. And of course, Cody would be chatting it up with me, pointing out little details in the environment to comment on.
Before I knew it, I was crying. Alone, in a dim apartment, drinking poisonous alcohol, I cried my eyes out. I slid out of my chair and curled up in a ball on the floor, trying to comfort myself but only ending up making myself look more pitiful. I was Human trash, lower than even the germs and mold growing in the corners of my house.
This needed to end. I had been rotting in this room, gorging myself on liquor for far too long. I was just sucking up air, giving nothing in return. I’m a fucking parasite, and there’s only one way to deal with parasites.
Bottles clattered around me as I stood, some of them spilling what little was left in them onto the hardwood floor. I dragged my feet through the piles of trash, not caring enough to avoid making even more of a mess. I left the front door wide open, it’s not like it’s going to matter anyway. I’m not coming back.
I made my way to the roof, climbing the stairs with what little determination I had left to complete my final task. The afternoon sky was bright orange in the west, slowly fading into darkness to the east. There were no stars in the coming night sky, however, the only light in the dark was the artificial light of the city.
I made my way to the nightside and stared off over the city. New York was once a wasteland, but now it was one of the most important cities in the entire galaxy. People built the city back stronger than ever and turned the now water-filled creator into a memorial site. People came from all over, from other planets to visit the monuments erected in the name of the countless people lost that day and of the countless soldiers that were killed in the needless war. Every soldier who died on an alien planet, in space, or on some moon was remembered and with a field of statues that surrounded the crater.
I stepped onto the ledge, looking down to the street below. I was easily high enough to die, all it would take was one more step. One more step to put a guaranteed end to the memories, to the suffering. Just a small step and nothing would hurt anymore. I wouldn’t have to live with the fact that I was the single lowest form of life around.
So why couldn’t I do it? I had come up here countless times now, but I couldn’t do it. What was stopping me? It’s right there, it’s easy, it’s painless, why couldn’t I take the final step? Was there something left, some final action in the back of my mind that was stopping me?
I slowly lifted my eyes to the horizon once again, spotting what I had left to do. The memorial, I had never gone to. That was it, I’ve never visited my fallen comrades. The final act I had a duty to complete, once that was done I could do it.
I made a promise to myself, that once I visited the memorial I would finally take the step.
I returned to my shitty apartment and made my way to my room, finding a pen and paper. Then and there, I wrote my plan for the next day, down to an exact time.

Lifetime - Staked: 892.4u, Profit/Loss: +12.04u, ROI: 1.35%, Parlay Suggestions: 171-67 Dog of the Week: 13-16
2024 - Staked: 245.3u, Profit/Loss: -21.32u
As always, scroll down for UFC Vegas 92 Breakdowns. The following is just a recap of last event’s results.
~UFC St. Louis (PREVIOUS CARD)~
Staked: 15.75u
Profit/Loss: -15.75u
Parlay Suggestions: 3-3
I’m not really sure how to write a review of a card where you go 0-11 in bets and lose 15.75u. All I know is I’m currently going through an awful year and results have been shocking, and mentally it’s becoming quite taxing. The records are cool and all, but I’m obviously losing money here also and suffering that much of a loss just doesn’t sit well. Mentally I’ve taken a bit of a hit, I can’t lie. Thankfully I’d done most of my research for this upcoming card before UFC STL took place so it shouldn’t cloud my decision making too much. Grateful we’ve got a break week coming up, I need some time to lick my wounds after this one.
I’ll save characters and just direct you to last week’s post if you’d like to see the disasterpiece that was my betting slate for that card.

~UFC Vegas 92~
Bang average card, and even worse from a betting perspective from the looks of these money lines! Honestly I don’t even know why anyone would read this from someone who just took as many consecutive Ls as I just did, but thanks for sticking around if you did. It probably won’t be a massive slate for me here anyway.
(also all breakdowns were written before UFC STL so the self-loathing stops here)

~Edson Barboza v Lerone Murphy~
Full disclosure, all my betting life I have been very keen to fade British fighters, despite being from the UK myself. The talent pool is just objectively smaller, the lack of combat sports in our school curriculum means fighters have less overall experience and years in competition, as well as the media’s and the UFC’s infatuation with hyping up any fighter from this country overall means that fading has been a net positive investment over the years. When it comes to betting lines, the oddsmakers in this country always hang the UK fighters out at slightly shorter prices too, because obviously that’s where the money is almost always going to go. I know I always did that.
Whilst we’re talking about betting, I’ll take the opportunity to get in a quick victory lap about Edson Barboza, who I confidently bet as an underdog to Sodiq Yusuff. The reads I made in for that fight almost looked like I’d seen it before, and it was probably my best bet of 2023 from a pure analytical perspective. Good times.
Edson Barboza has managed to turn incredibly underrated in recent years, mostly due to the fact he’s old and has been mauled a few performances lately. The blueprint to beat him is very clear - you either to go balls to the wall, crowd/pressure him and finish him early, or you cardio-wrestle him for 15/25 minutes.
It sounds quite simple, but both of those lanes require quite specific skillsets. They are obviously skillsets that Khabib, Tony Ferguson, Bryce Mitchell, Kevin Lee and Gaethje possess naturally, which explains 5 of his eight losses in recent years. The losses to Dan Ige and Paul Felder were scored terribly and should have been wins for Edson…and the remaining loss was to Giga Chikadze, which is the only time I think he’s been outclassed in what could be called an “even” fight on paper. Another key thing to note is that Edson is so explosive and dangerous that he has also managed to still score wins against fighters that do fit the stylistic blueprint to be able to make life difficult for him. People like Benny Dariush, Shane Burgos and Billy Quarantillo. But he finished all three of them. Another thing to note is that the calibre of every single name mentioned is very high.
So how does Lerone Murphy measure up against these blueprints? Well right off the bat his record shows he’s capable of a KO win, but it’s not a super reliable method and isn’t particularly process driven (IE it doesn’t come from him smothering his opponent with suffocating pressure early). In fact, his finish of Ricardo Ramos came from some surprisingly effective ground and pound, and the knee against Amirkhani was a fortuitous impact, in a fight where he was expected to find the finish against a guy with the ‘1 round of resilience’ curse.
So how about the wrestling/top control route? Well as previously mentioned Murphy showed some dangerousness in the way he finished Ramos in a grappling position, and his performance against Josh Culibao also shows that it’s his best chance of beating Edson. I have been impressed with his grappling ability in the UFC so far. He’s not a pure takedown artist though, and has averaged just 1.29 takedowns per 15 minutes inside the UFC. In that Culibao fight he was keen to clinch up, but took advantage of Culibao turning his back in the second. The third round was dominant for Murphy in regards to the grappling, but it all stemmed from him landing a body shot that pretty much compromised Culibao and turned him into a ragdoll for more than three minutes in the round. If all you do is look at UFCStats for that fight, then Murphy looks like Khabib…but the tape shows a very different story. He also probably should have gotten the finish there if we’re being critical!
I understand that Lerone Murphy is undefeated (although if you ask me he lost that Tukhugov debut, not that it matters), and has shown good moments from top position, but does doing that against a compromised Josh Culibao and Ricardo Ramos really justify you being the favourite against Edson Barboza? Edson’s fought the cream of the crop in the UFC since day one – his three most underwhelming results were losses to Jamie Varner, Donald Cerrone and Michael Johnson…that’s how ELITE the competition he’s faced has been. And even though he’s a bit long in the tooth he’s showing that he can still hang with guys at this level, like he did with Sodiq. Personally I think Yusuff is a more dangerous fighter for him than Lerone, who doesn’t appear to have that kind of imposing and dangerous striking style.
I think this betting line is putting so much unwarranted faith in Lerone Murphy. Yes, he could turn out to be a great prospect that enters the top 5 of the division one day, but we have not seen him show anywhere near the level of competence to be expected to beat Barboza more times than not. Stylistically, he doesn’t have anything that gives an immediate advantage against Barboza (at least nothing I could trust him to lean on for 25 minutes), the only angle there is age. Yes Barboza is getting a bit old and shopworn, but he’s still beating younger guys consistently. Also, whilst we’re talking about intangibles, Barboza is very experienced in five round fights, and the extra two rounds allow him back into the fight should his weakness towards early pressure show itself.
I’d say Edson should be around -150 here. The line available feels unsubstantiated and purely based on the age dynamic, as I have not seen anything from tape that implies Lerone Murphy is up to the task. He barely got past Gabriel Santos last year.
I had a great time betting Barboza as a dog last time, so I’m doing it again. 1u on Edson Barboza to Win at +125 or better. The line looks to be moving in Lerone’s favour at the moment so I will wait to bet this.
How I line this fight: Edson Barboza -150 (60%), Lerone Murphy +150 (40%)
Bet or pass: 1u Edson Barboza to Win (+XXX)
Prop leans: None

Khaos Williams v Carlston Harris
Pretty awful Co-Main Event. It’s a fun fight but neither man is really considered one-to-watch and they’ve barely fought once each in the last year. You telling me they couldn’t have found a better fight to go on the poster for this one?
Anyway, both men are a little bit wild on the feet, but Harris is clearly the less technical and defensively sound of the two.
Williams kind of forged his path in the UFC with KO victories, but when forced to be technical across 15 minutes he gives a decent enough account of himself (I’ve tried to fade him twice in that type of bout, against Randy Brown and Matt Semelsberger). He’s clearly going to look much better when he can find finishes, but I think I still expect him to be the more eye-catching fighter if this one is a 15 minute kickboxing affair.
But that’s the problem here…Carlston Harris’ grappling game is the strongest skillset that either man possesses, and it’s whether or not he can get it going that will likely determine who wins this one. Unfortunately, we have only seen Williams taken down twice in the UFC, both times by Michel Pereira (who isn’t even much of a wrestlegrappler himself). To make matters worse, they both came in the 14^th and 15^th minutes of the fight and we barely got to see anything, so they really are low quality examples.
I’ve been watching MMA long enough to know that a guy like Khaos Williams probably isn’t a particularly amazing grappler, but of course that’s still a huge assumption to make. With no knowledge of how Khaos is going to fare working off his back, I really do not think this fight is one that you can have any degree of confidence in. The books had initially lined it around a pick’em, which could well imply that they feel the exact same way. It’s unfortunately a pass from me, because a Williams with great TDD and process on bottom could end up being -300…but white belt Williams could look +300.
How I line this fight: Impossible to line with any confidence, so a pick’em is fine.
Bet or pass: Pass
Prop leans: None

~Angela Hill v Luana Pinheiro~
After chasing it for quite some time, MMA bettors finally managed to catch the fade on Luana Pinheiro. When she entered the UFC she was discredited for her exclusively R1 finishes, with people predicting her cardio would not be up to scratch. Things got worse when she took the coward’s way to a win against Jessica Penne – seemingly blowing her gas and then milking the extent of the damage done from an illegal strike and winning by KO. As we know from the MMA community, doing stuff like that will make you one of the most hated fighters on the roster. She then moved to 2-0 with a split decision win as a favourite against Michelle Waterson…which many people think she lost. Basically, not a very impressive stint in the UFC so far.
Finally she went up against Amanda Ribas, who went on to expose that dodgy cardio of Pinheiro, melting her in the third round with a beautiful wheel kick when Pinheiro was death gassed. Now we know it’s possible, the third round of Pinheiro’s fight against Waterson-Gomez makes a bit more sense, seeing as Waterson took over and clearly won it.
Nothing kills a hype train quicker than realising that a fighter has bad cardio, and it’s safe to say that whatever hype there was on Luana (minimal) is dead…because she’s a +125 underdog to Angela Hill here.
In my opinion, Angela Hill has been an incredibly underrated fighter for such a long time and absolutely deserves her flowers as one of WMMA’s most respected journeywomen. She’s had 24 UFC fights, and she’s still showing up better than fighters much younger than her and doesn’t appear to even be slowing down.
The blueprint on Hill has been pretty clear for some time – if you want to beat her relatively easily, you take her down. Otherwise, you’re going up against technically impressive striker that has the durability, a sneaky bit of power and seemingly limitless cardio to keep you honest. Really, if you manage to have success against Angela Hill on the feet, the best thing you can really hope for is about 55% of dominance (typically where two judges score one way, and another goes the opposite).
As I often say, statistics for MMA are best used when comparing WMMA strikers, and the figures here are quite eye-opening. Hill’s strike differential is vastly superior, and their defensive rates are very close. In short, if they stay on the feet for 15 minutes I think Hill should be expected to out-volume her opponent. When you factor in Pinheiro’s cardio deficiencies, that’s even more likely.
Therefore, Pinheiro has two routes to success here in my opinion – her typical R1 finish, or by going the grappling route. Firstly, Hill has never been finished via (T)KO in 29 professional fights (most of which have come at a high level), so I think it’s fair to say she deserves trust in being able to stay safe. She’s also quite an intelligent fighter, so I assume she’s going to be aware that her success will come in the latter half of the fight.
In terms of the grappling, Pinheiro landed five takedowns in the opening round against Markos, and that’s what forced her to gas out…so I don’t really think she’s going to be comfortable enough to lean on that skillset for 15 minutes straight. Hill is defensively quite sound on the mat as well, so as long as she can avoid getting stuck in a position I think she’ll be fine.
So in short, the only skillset I think Luana Pinheiro deserves credit for at this level is her R1 explosiveness, and Angela Hill is one of the worst opponents to pit that style against. Hill’s last victory proves that, as she survived the early barrage of another R1 finisher and took over in R2/3. I think the exact same mission statement applies here, and I think Angela Hill should definitely be trusted to do that. I’d personally line Hill somewhere like -175 to -200 here, so the -137 available at the time of writing was an easy bet to make. Let’s go Angie! 2u Angela Hill to Win at -137.
How I line this fight: Angela Hill -188 (65%), Luana Pinheiro +188 (35%)
Bet or pass: 2u Angela Hill to Win (-137), 0.25u Angela Hill to Win by Decision (+125 or better)
Prop leans: Hill couldn’t finish her dinner, so the decision prop will be one to look out for.
Live Betting Leans: If Pinheiro wins R1 and goes a bit crazy in trying to find a finish, betting Hill on the stool before R2 is a good move as the cardio fall-off could be live.

~Adrian Yanez vs Vinicius Salvador~
This feels like a weird mismatch and I don’t know why it’s happening.
Adrian Yanez is a classy and technical striker that I feel has become a bit overrated. The fans love him and put him on a pedestal as some sort of elite fighter’s fighter – I get that he’s fun to watch and a good boxer, but I’d argue he’s had more underwhelming performances than good in the UFC. He got styled on by Font and Martinez, was competitive against Davey Grant and lost more minutes than he won against Randy Costa. There’s not much shame in that and I’m not trying to say Yanez is bad, but I don’t think those performances warrant him being regarded as one of the most popular unranked fighters on the roster.
He faces Vinicius Salvador, who looked like an exciting fighter from his DWCS victory, but there was always a suspicion that he would have very little to offer outside of barn burners and very early KOs. The UFC pissed away the chance for a fan-friendly prelim guy by putting him up against two of the scrappiest and most durable guys at Flyweight – Victor Altamirano and CJ Vergara. The path to victory for both men was very clear there, and they grinded out long-distance victories after Salvador had nothing to offer after five minutes.
The UFC should have instantly viewed Salvador the same as they do Trevor Peek. Someone who is hilariously flawed but scrappy and entertaining to watch nonetheless. His striking style is unorthodox and weird, which looks great when he’s the hammer but awful when he’s the nail. Against a fighter as scrappy and technical sound a boxer as Yanez, this obviously seems like a tall order.
But ironically, whilst this is the toughest opponent Salvador has faced so far in his career, it’s probably his most winnable fight too. Yanez will oblige him in providing a war for the fans, which will give Salvador his chance to land that early KO. Yanez also been pieced up twice in a row so durability could also be a bit more questionable. Yes there is a massive gap in technique and overall skill…but one clean right hand can trump all of that, and Yanez can be hit by one.
Yanez is a -350 favourite here, which is a very easy way to put that final nail in the coffin of considering betting him. Whilst I do think he probably deserves to be close to that number in terms of his overall winning probability, it really won’t take much for the tables to turn massively here, so risking -350 seems like a terrible idea.
A bet on Salvador on the return is too ugly to stomach though, because he could also get absolutely styled on. It’s an easy pass all round.
How I line this fight: Adrian Yanez -250 (71%), Vinicius Salvador +250 (29%)
Bet or pass: Pass
Prop leans: FDGTD very likely but doubt the price is at all playable.

~Oumar Sy v Antonio Trocoli~
We’re all jealous of Antonio Trocoli, AKA Mr Mackenzie Dern. I’ve probably got more to say about her than I do about this fight.
I’m obviously not going to do any tape for this fight, so the only thing of note from their records is that Trocoli has regional loses to Dhiego Lima (pre-UFC) and Jacob ‘Christmas’ Volkmann (post-UFC), both of which are pretty concerning losses. He also popped for steroids on DWCS, so who knows how good he actually is when he’s clean.
Sy is a terrifying specimen of a man, with a 9-0 record by KO/SUB/DEC. I suppose this is a good time to remind you that William Knight also looked like a god.
Why would you bet this fight? Just pass and take the info we get here into their next appearances.
How I line this fight: I’d have more confidence in my ability to hook up with Mackenzie Dern than my ability to accurate cap this fight.
Bet or pass: Pass
Prop leans: Over 1.5 Mackenzie Dern sightings (-200)

~Emily Ducote v Vanessa Demopoulos~
Two very middle-of-the-road WMMA fighters that I am quite familiar with.
Demopoulos got to the dance via her grappling and submission ability, but has spent time honing her skills on the feet that she actually seems to have abandoned a grappling based approach entirely, having landed an average of 0.49 takedowns per 15 mins in her UFC/DWCS career so far. On the feet, she’s scrappy and actually does hit kind of hard, but the technique is still very much a work in progress. She makes up for the lack of finesse with pure enthusiasm and grit, and will stay in her opponent’s face and swing until the final bell. She’s also pretty durable too, having never lost by finish in 15 fights with striking that’s that sketchy.
Emily Ducote is kind of the polar opposite. She’s a dedicated striker that has decent enough grappling defence. She has little to no power in her hands, but she’s reliable to rack up decent volume and can keep it up across 15 minutes. She has landed 100+ significant strikes in 3 of her 4 UFC bouts, but she’s also absorbed 100+ in 3 too.
The summary of this one is that Ducote is just the cleaner striker of the two, but I think this -330 price tag is a bit ridiculous. Yes, comparing the stats makes it seem that Ducote will win easily, but Demopoulos has faced quite a few opponents that have wanted to grapple her, and her Strikes landed per minute figures are skewed as a result. Given that Ducote absorbs a similar number to what she lands, I think Demopoulos’ enthusiasm should see her land far more than she has done before. Also, Demopolous’ fight metrics are often inferior to her opponents in all of the fights she loses, so the stats do her a major disservice to how competitive she can be.
I always say that there’s a real ceiling in regards to how much you can favour a striking based WMMA fighter if they have no power or finishing ability. The judges do not score technique, so the 50+ pitter patter punches they land can easily be trumped by any instance where it looks like they get hurt on the return, so in this instance I think Vanessa’s power and forward pressure could be enough to make rounds closer than the odds suggest they should be.
In short, Ducote price is nuts but she should probably win so definitely deserves to be favoured. I wouldn’t bet anything here other than FGTD, which could be a decent parlay piece anywhere less than -400. I’d be interested to see what Ducote by Decision looks like because I do rate Demopolous’ durability and see it going the distance quite frequently…so +100 or better would get my money.
How I line this fight: Emily Ducote -250 (71%), Vanessa Demopoulos +250 (29%)
Bet or pass: 1u Emily Ducote to Win by Decision (+100 or better)
Prop leans: See above

~Ramiz Brahimaj v Themba Gorimbo~
Stylistically this is a very funny fight, because it’s between two guys whose strengths and weaknesses are exactly the same. They’re both aggressive grapplers with average to bad striking, and they’ll hunt for the finish from the opening bell…and fall off a cliff at the halfway point if they can’t find it.
Themba Gorimbo is unfortunately completely unbettable at this stage in his career, I think. He’s obviously got this narrative with The Rock going on, and it’s somehow managed to turn him from a sub-par, barely UFC quality fighter that can’t beat AJ Fletcher, to someone whose fame actually manages to transcend MMA a little bit. Just goes to show how important those post-fight interviews can be! That popularity obviously swells his betting line as he’s likely to garner more money and attention from bettors, whereas Brahimaj is a nobody unless you’re a hardcore with a good memory. Couple that with the fact Themba’s style is not sustainable across 15 minutes, and you’ve got a fighter with a very limited path to victory that you can rely on, who comes with an eye-watering price tag.
Whilst Brahimaj’s betting line would lean towards the value side due to Thema’s popularity, this is the first time we have seen him compete in over two years. He was a fighter that came in during COVID times, and immediately got thrown into the deep end when matchmaking was difficult. I bet Max Griffin against him due to Max’s durability (IE my bet was ‘Max to survive and turn the tables’), and it resulted in Griffin slicing Ramiz’s ear in half with an elbow (one of the more gruesome moments we have ever seen in the cage). Ramiz managed to hit is PTV against Micheal Gillmore (the runt of the litter in a season of TUF who had no right competing in the UFC. The only interesting thing about him was that his parents couldn’t even spell his own name ), as well as Sasha Palatnikov. When facing a veteran grappler like Court McGee, I also won a bet backing the experience and durability of a guy like Court (which is ironic given I’ve bet on Court to be KO’d in his last two).
So basically, my summary here is that Thembo deserves to be favoured simply by being more proven and in the better recent form. He’s got good enough grappling all round to be able to stop Ramiz from being so dominant as a round one buzzsaw, and unless Brahimaj has made some major changes in the two years off, Themba’s probably got the slightly superior cardio (by a bit) and therefore should still be around once his opponent fades.
The -275 betting line is absurd though, as I mentioned earlier, because there’s a likelihood that Themba gasses out himself too, and it could easily be Brahimaj that’s fresher in the latter stages, should we get there. Therefore, it’s a very easy pass. I will take a look at the round props as there could potentially be an angle on some sort of combination, but we will see.
How I line this fight: Themba Gorimbo -200 (67%), Ramiz Brahimaj +200 (33%)
Bet or pass: Fight to End in Rounds 2 or 3 (price dependent), or something like that
Prop leans: See above

~Tom Nolan v Victor Martinez~
I’m bored of saying it, but Jesus Christ the calibre of a ‘UFC Fighter’ is just so low these days. Tom Nolan just got knocked out in 63 seconds as a -350 favourite to Nikolas Motta (shoutout to me for sort of predicting that), and Victor Martinez’s UFC debut saw him get knocked out cold by JORDAN LEAVITT.
So what do you do, bet at -350 on an unproven fighter who shat the bed at the exact same price tag last time? Or trust a guy who got put to sleep by the hands of Jordan Leavitt?
Obviously, you pass. If I see a single parlay screenshot with Nolan in it this weekend I will lose all hope.
How I line this fight: I like my chances of pulling Mackenzie Dern for a second time, more than I like my chances of lining this fight accurately.
Bet or pass: Pass
Prop leans: See above

~Abus Magomedov v Warlley Alves~
Abus Magomedov needs to fire his manager. He started off his UFC career with a highlight reel KO inside 20 seconds, and had the world at his feet. Then he gets a main event spot against Sean Strickland. Fair enough taking an opportunity, but trying to speed run the rankings is a terrible idea when you consider all they want to do these days is play monopoly and generate stars. It’s much better to KO bums in the prelims and get paid a 50k bonus a few times than do what he did against Strickland…because look who he got for his third fight after losing in embarrassing fashion - Caio Borralho, who is lowkey one of the best prospects in the UFC at the moment in my opinion. Abus basically went from prospect to fodder when he lost to Strickland, and I wouldn’t expect him to stick around in the UFC for too much longer if he doesn’t start delivering early KOs again.
He should be able to get the better of Warlley Alves though. Alves looks hella old and shopworn, despite only being 33 years old somehow. He has ridden the coattails of having a win against Colby Covington on his record for his entire career, because he’s done nothing remarkable with it since. His loss to James Krause was the fight where it was apparent Alves was on the decline, and a ‘loser leaves town’ win against the equally old and frail Sergio Moraes was the only thing keeping him afloat. He scored a shock upset KO via body kicks against Mounir Lazzez (who turned out to be a bit of a fraud anyway), but the writing has been on the wall for Warlley for some time. Fast forward a few years and he's on a threefight losing streak again, having been beaten down pretty badly and finished in under 1.5 rounds in four of his last five losses.
That’s a key piece of info for this one, because we know Abus’ limitations revolve around him being a great early fighter with terrible and unsustainable levels of cardio. When looking at Abus’ fights, you need to decipher the chances of him winning early, and that will explain the rest.
Given Alves’ frailty, I think this is a pretty generous fight for Magomedov – possibly the most appropriate and tailor-made matchup they could have found for him!
His winning probability relies heavily on doing work early, so naturally betting Abus R1/2 KO would be the obvious go to. I’m not sure there will be any value on that prop though, because it’s a pretty obvious angle that everyone’s going to try and take. However, I’ve long known that Bet365’s Bet Builder product is broken when combining Winner + Total Rounds, especially before they release the rest of the props as it’s completely out of context…so Backing Abus to Win and Under 1.5 Rounds at the right time could produce a valuable price before it gets corrected. That’s all I’ll be looking to play for this fight, assuming those early Abus props are rubbish. Be careful what price is available if you’re considering this, it’s going to be much shorter than normal and it’s a very limited window to be betting on.
How I line this fight: Abus Magomedov -250 (71%), Warlley Alves +250 (29%)
Bet or pass: Abus Magomedov to Win & Under 1.5 Rounds (+125 or better)
Prop leans: See Above
Live Betting Leans: I’d take a look at Alves on the stool after R1, but I don’t think I could trust him really.

~Piera Rodriguez v Ariane Carnelossi~
Ariane Carnelossi returns after two years on the sidelines. I’ve always jokingly been a fan of her, because that fight against Na Liang (the first UFC Fight back with fans after COVID) was genuinely one of the highlights of 2021 and it was such a fun fight with a crazy energy. Also helps that I bet her heavily in that.
Carnelossi’s a decent striker that actually hung with Angela Hill back in the day, but her wrestling defence is a clear weak point. She got absolutely ragdolled in one of the best UFC performances I can remember when she faced Loopy Godinez, and even Na Liang had some success in that opening round. She’s not a fish off her back or anything, but if you can’t defend takedowns and your opponent has the cardio and ability to chain takedowns together…you’re going to struggle.
Piera Rodriguez is a pretty well-rounded fighter, she’s decent enough in the striking realm and has a diverse arsenal with kicks and a whole lot of feints, but she’s also a decent enough grappler that can commit to that multiple takedown approach. She’s landed three or more in each of her UFC/DWCS victories and just generally does a good job of showcasing herself to be a well-rounded mixed martial artist. My biggest criticism of her is that she does look to have slight signs of bad cardio, as her third rounds against both Hughes and Hansen were a bit laboured and slow.
So initially this fight was lined as a clear pick’em, which I didn’t agree with at all. Whilst Carnelossi should be able to show some competitiveness, her inability to defend takedowns should see her on the back foot for a fair bit of this fight, and her desire to land the knockout with every punch she throws could even see her lose moments on the feet to Piera’s kicking game and more technical style. Carnelossi does have a bit of a cardio advantage though, which Piera will have to navigate, but other than that I think the Venezuelan should be given the nod as a moderate favourite, probably around -175. Considering I got Piera at -120, I thought that was worthy of a 2u bet. If the line continues to move though, I may arb out as I think -175 is a very fair number.
How I line this fight: Piera Rodriguez -175 (64%), Ariane Carnelossi +175 (36%)
Bet or pass: 2u Piera Rodriguez to Win (-120)
Prop leans: Probably a decision win for Piera, Carnelossi is dedicated and Piera not much of a finisher.

~Alatengheili v Kleydson Rodrigues~
I write the same synopsis for Alatengheili because the guy never changes. Here’s a paragraph from his last fight that I wrote:
Alatengheili is one of the most frustrating talents I’ve seen in MMA in recent years. He was once the number three freestyle wrestler in China and looks to actually have a really promising wrestling game…but he just doesn’t fight like it! In his UFC debut, he faced a clearly superior striker and waited until round 3 to start shooting religiously (no attempts in R1 or 2, 7 attempts in R3). After that, he did exactly the same again in a split decision win against Ryan Benoit (1 TD attempt in R1, none in R2, and 12 in R3). He then faced Casey Kenny, who is a great defensive grappler…and decided not to attempt a takedown. Then he faced Gustavo Lopez, who took HIM down three times from eight attempts, and none from Alatenheili. He went on to beat Kevin Croom in under a minute on the feet, then went back to his regular style of waiting until R3 for takedowns when he beat Chad Anheliger. In the Gutierrez fight that followed, he attempted four takedowns and landed two. These all came in – you guessed it- round three.
So I think it’s fair to assume that we can’t call Alatengheili much of a wrestler anymore. When he’s striking on the feet, he’s clearly got some power in a big wind up shot, but other than that it’s quite flat footed and low volume stuff. Those aren’t particularly good qualities, as he’s hardly demonstrating a clear killer instinct that makes up for bad minute winning fundamentals.
Kleydson Rodrigues is a guy I was quite excited about when he got to the UFC. He looked great on DWCS, but immediately had a tough test against CJ Vergara in his debut. I do personally think he won that fight, but CJ’s pace, pressure and tenacity got the better of him down the stretch and made that fight close. He returned and obliterated Shannon Ross, before being steamrolled on the mat by Farid Basharat. A real mixed bag of results, overall.
The thing is, I don’t exactly think that the losses Rodrigues suffered are directly relevant here, as Farid’s topside grappling is way way better than Alateng’s. The Mongolian also doesn’t have the forward pressure or pace of CJ Vergara, due to how flat footed he is.
On the flipside, Alatengheili has struggled against fighters who technically outclass him on the feet, or those with good takedown defence. The Mongolian has proven to be a tough fighter to put away, which should give him a chance to take over at the midway point.
Comparatively, I think Kleydson Rodrigues has shown himself to be a higher calibre striker than Alatenheili, and clearly the more diverse one. Kleydson also throws a lot of low kicks, which are a key weapon when trying to nullify the grappling threat of the already flat footed power puncher.
In conclusion, I just think Kleydson Rodrigues outclasses Alatengheili in the striking, whereas I don’t think the Mongolian outclasses him anywhere on the return. The Mongolian has proven he is keen to stay on the feet for the majority of fights, which should leave the door wide open for Kleydson to win minutes. The cardio advantage does lie with Alateng, but I don’t think he pushes enough of a pace in the grappling or striking department to make Kleydson fade like he did against CJ (who is one of the more suffocating guys in the division). Also, Alateng’s grappling threat in R3 may well be nullified by the 10 minutes of leg kick investment that Kleydson has already made.
So as you can probably tell, I favour Kleydson Rodrigues in this one. I personally thought he should be a -200 favourite, so I was expecting to pass on this one…but it looks like the BetOnline moneyline is moving towards -150. For some strange reason the fight is barely available in the UK for now, but I’m hoping that -150 would be available for me to bet for 2u.
How I line this fight: Kleydson Rodrigues -200 (67%), Alatengheili +200 (33%)
Bet or pass: 2u Kleydson Rodrigues to Win (-160 or better)
Prop leans: None
Live Betting Leans: If it’s 1-1 going into the third and there’s been a pace…I’d recommend betting Alatengheili.

~Tamires Vidal v Melissa Gatto~
Melissa Gatto is a competent and well-rounded fighter. She went to competitive decisions with Tracey Cortez and Ariane Lipski. She is UFC quality.
Tamires Vidal is a plodding fighter that doesn’t appear to be very good at defensive grappling. She went to a competitive decision against Montserrat Rendon. She is not UFC quality.
Gatto is -400. It’s a very steep price to pay but I don’t think it’s too far off where it ought to be – she should be able to point strike on the feet and have very decent grappling success, where she can definitely fish for a submisison. I’d be interested in seeing what the price on Gatto by Submission is though, so I may be looking to play that.
How I line this fight: Tamires Vidal +300 (25%), Melissa Gatto -300 (75%)
Bet or pass: Xu Melissa Gatto to Win by Submission (+300 or better)
Prop leans: See above

Bets (Bold = been placed)
2u Edson Barboza to Win (+130)
1.6u Themba Gorimbo to Win (-137)
0.3u Themba Gorimbo to Win by Submission (+650)
0.3u Themba Gorimbo to Win in Rounds 2/3 (+380)
0.1u Themba Gorimbo to Win by Submission in Rounds 2/3 (+1150)
2u Angela Hill to Win (-137)
2u Piera Rodriguez to Win (-120)
2u Kleydson Rodrigues to Win (-150)
2u Abus Magomedov to Win & Under 1.5 Rounds (+130)
0.5u Melissa Gatto to Win by Submmission (+225)
0.25u Parlay Pieces (+699)
Parlay Pieces: Angela Hill, Emily Ducote, Abus Magomedov, Kleydson Rodgriguez, Melissa Gatto
Dog of the Week: Edson Barboza

Overview

		⚽
Home	Atlanta United FC	2
Away	D.C. United	3
Status	Full Time
Venue	Mercedes-Benz Stadium
City	Atlanta, Georgia
Date	Saturday May 11, 2024
Time	07:30 PM EDT

♻️ Auto-refreshing reddit comments link
Lineups

	Atlanta United FC	Pos		D.C. United	Pos
	Brad Guzan, #1	G		Alex Bono, #24	G
	Luis Abram, #4	CD-L		Lucas Bartlett, #3	CD
	Noah Cobb, #24	CD-R		Matti Peltola, #4	CD-L
	Caleb Wiley, #26	LB		Christopher McVey, #97	CD-R
	Brooks Lennon, #11	RB		Cristián Dájome, #11	LB
	Thiago Almada, #10	AM		Aaron Herrera, #22	RB
	Bartosz Slisz, #6	LM		Jackson Hopkins, #25	CM
	Tristan Muyumba Nkita, #8	RM		Mateusz Klich, #43	CM-L
	Giorgos Giakoumakis, #7	F		Theodore Ku-Dipietro, #21	CM-R
	Edwin Mosquera, #20	AM-L		Christian Benteke, #20	CF-L
	Saba Lobjanidze, #9	AM-R		Jared Stroud, #8	CF-R
	Daniel Ríos, #19	SUB		Steve Birnbaum, #15	SUB
	Luke Brennan, #25	SUB		Pedro Santos, #7	SUB
	Josh Cohen, #22	SUB		Kristian Fletcher, #27	SUB
	Xande Silva, #16	SUB		Garrison Tubbs, #16	SUB
	Dax McCarty, #13	SUB		Gabriel Pirani, #10	SUB
	Ronald Hernández, #2	SUB		William Conner Antley, #12	SUB
	Ajani Fortune, #35	SUB		Jacob Murrell, #17	SUB
	Nicolas Firmino, #30	SUB		Tyler Miller, #1	SUB
	Efrain Morales, #21	SUB		Martín Rodríguez, #14	SUB

Match events via ESPN

• First Half begins.
  
• 16' ⚽ Goal! Atlanta United 1, D.C. United 0. Thiago Almada (Atlanta United) converts the penalty with a right footed shot to the bottom right corner.
  
• 19' ⚽ Goal! Atlanta United 1, D.C. United 1. Christian Benteke (D.C. United) header from very close range to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Jared Stroud with a cross.Goal confirmed following VAR Review.
  
• 29' 🟨 Bartosz Slisz (Atlanta United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
  
• 38' 🟨 Cristian Dájome (D.C. United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
  
• 44' ⚽ Goal! Atlanta United 1, D.C. United 2. Christian Benteke (D.C. United) header from very close range to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Jared Stroud with a cross.
  
• 45'+2' 🟨 Thiago Almada (Atlanta United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
  
• 45'+8' First Half ends, Atlanta United 1, D.C. United 2.
  
• 45' 🔄 Substitution, D.C. United. Jacob Murrell replaces Theodore Ku-DiPietro.
  
• 45' 🔄 Substitution, D.C. United. Conner Antley replaces Cristian Dájome.
  
• 45' 🔄 Substitution, Atlanta United. Dax McCarty replaces Edwin Mosquera.
  
• 45' Second Half begins Atlanta United 1, D.C. United 2.
  
• 48' ⚽ Own Goal by Matti Peltola, D.C. United. Atlanta United 2, D.C. United 2.
  
• 55' ⚽ Goal! Atlanta United 2, D.C. United 3. Christian Benteke (D.C. United) header from the centre of the box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Mateusz Klich with a cross following a corner.
  
• 61' 🔄 Substitution, Atlanta United. Xande Silva replaces Tristan Muyumba.
  
• 70' 🟨 Giorgos Giakoumakis (Atlanta United) is shown the yellow card.
  
• 73' 🔄 Substitution, D.C. United. Gabriel Pirani replaces Jared Stroud.
  
• 73' 🔄 Substitution, Atlanta United. Daniel Ríos replaces Saba Lobjanidze.
  
• 75' 🟨 Luis Abram (Atlanta United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
  
• 81' 🔄 Substitution, D.C. United. Garrison Tubbs replaces Jackson Hopkins.
  
• 84' 🟨 Conner Antley (D.C. United) is shown the yellow card.
  
• 86' 🔄 Substitution, Atlanta United. Nick Firmino replaces Bartosz Slisz.
  
• 87' 🔄 Substitution, D.C. United. Pedro Santos replaces Christian Benteke.
  

^{This thread is managed by a bot running on AWS Lambda. All data is sourced from ESPN APIs. The project can be found on GitHub at mrundle/mls-reddit-bot. This post was last updated at 2024-05-11 20:42:14 CDT.}

Let's be honest, adaptations of Sparks' works are not exactly thought of as "good" (save for "The Notebook" and that was lucky enough to get leads as good as Gosling and McAdams to carry the weight). And "Safe Haven" is no exception, especially since it's so much a rehash of "Sleeping With the Ememy" that I'm surprised Sparks didn't get sued for plagiarism. And while "Sleeping" was boosted by having Julia Roberts' star power, "Safe Haven" has to make due with Julianne Hough, who's never been particularly on the ball with the whole acting thing. (James Berardinelli in his review had a particularly on-target comment on Hough; "The camera loves her, but she doesn't necessarily love it back.") For the most part, the movie is basically your typical Lifetime Original Movie with a big screen budget, nothing special, but an okay time waster...
...until the very ending when one of the all-time out of nowhere WTH twists you'll ever see gets dropped in our laps. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it and is curious, but it's completely out of left field and makes little to no sense in the context of the film. It's so out of place it's like Sparks had almost finished the story and stepped out to take a break and while he was gone, a drunk M. Night Shaymalan staggered in, wrote the ending and staggered out. Once Sparks came back, he read the ending and went, "Eh, I'm on deadline, I'll just go with it." It's not only ridiculous, it actually makes earlier parts of the movie retroactively hysterical. You have to love a film at least a little that goes absolutely bonkers at the very end with no forewarning.

DISCLAIMER: I'd like to note that I do not consider myself an expert on many of the topics he talks about or even economics in general but a lot of what I'm about to say is pretty easily verifiable and basic, and I'll try to be clear that I'm expressing my opinion and not fact when I'm doing so. Given my lack of expertise, none of what I say here should be considered as the final authority on these topics, it's a reddit post for fucks sake, I encourage everyone to search up the relevant data and information on the topics they are interested in or claims they find dubious. It's really not that hard and all the links and data I'm gonna cite here took me less than five minutes to find for each piece of information. If you're not familiar with where to find this data it might take you longer but I promise that anyone with access to the internet can do the same thing I'm doing. Finally, for those looking for some opinionless, academic argument, that's not what this is, this is gonna sound like a rant because it is, I'm posting this for nothing more than my own satisfaction, take from it what you will.
Ok I'm writing this after I finished the whole thing and I said that I'd try to be clear that I'm expressing my opinion and not fact when I'm doing so and the basically entire second half of this is my opinion and I don't make that very clear so sorry about that.
Honestly I'd love to be wrong because I really do think that younger people are at a disadvantage compared to previous generations at the same age but the arguments he makes and the data he uses throughout his talk just sound like such bullshit to me.
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott\_galloway\_how\_the\_us\_is\_destroying\_young\_people\_s\_future?
https://www.profgalloway.com/war-on-the-young/
Scott Galloway recently did a Ted talk titled "How the US is destroying young people's future", as well as an accompanying blog post. He's made some fair points about how young people have been put at an inherent disadvantage and that they have it harder than previous generations. That's most likely true and I personally support that point of view, but the a lot data and numbers he makes this argument with seem to be cherry picked, misleading, or just straight up wrong. So let's break his talk down. u/JustTaxLandLol made a pretty good post about him comparing median wages to the S&P500 (https://www.reddit.com/badeconomics/comments/1cc3rs8/scott\_galloway\_compares\_median\_wage\_to\_sp500/) but I think that Galloway's mistakes are much more comprehensive than just that particular slide.
The first slide with data makes a claim about how pre-tax income, adjusted for inflation, has decreased across generations from grandparents to parents to kids, and that cost of public colleges and home prices have increased significantly across generations too. First of all, categorising generations by whether they have children or grandchildren is kinda nuts. That's a very wide, overlapping, range of ages. If he has actually fixed age ranges for each generation that don't overlap and just made these categorisations for the sake of understandability to a nonacademic audience, I still think that's the wrong choice but fine. However, his claim that real income has decreased across generations is weak at best. This working paper (https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf) from the Fed Reserve was published February 2024, and from the figures that start at page 35, shows that by almost every categorisation they could think of, GenZ earns more at the same age than every previous generation before them. There's some conflict here with Raj Chetty's work but I don't have the time or knowledge to reconcile the two perspectives but at best, the pre-tax income numbers Galloway presents are questionable at best. Furthermore, he doesn't provide anyone a chance at even checking the sources he gets this information from. Not once in his entire talk does he cite a single source. He couldn't even have some tiny text at the bottom of his tables or diagrams saying what organisation he got this data from. Ok so that crossed out bit is wrong, he does have sources they're just very very faint and you can see them if you squint hard enough at the bottom left corner of his graphs. But the source he gives for this slide is a joke. Here's the link https://www.profgalloway.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Table-01.png
His "source" is his own analysis. Ok so by his analysis, the average cost of public college is 56000*0.43 = 24080. I'm gonna use numbers from this US News page (https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/paying-for-college-infographic), which might not be the most reliable source in the world, but it's probably somewhere in the ballpark. So according to US News, average tuition for the 2023-2024 school year for out of state students going to a public school is 23,630 and 10,662 for in state students. If these numbers are anywhere near accurate, the only conclusion I can draw is that Galloway has cherry-picked his data by only including the cost for out of state students in his analysis. First of all, public schools in the US are there to provide affordable access to higher education FOR RESIDENTS OF ITS STATE. Using only out of state numbers is absolutely ridiculous. Secondly, even if he used only the in state numbers, 10662/56000 is approximately equal to 19%. So if I use his very very questionable pre-tax income numbers, cost of public college for in state students has still increased across his categorisation of generations. It's not like his point would have been invalidated if he had used the in-state numbers, a trend of tuition increasing as a percentage of real income across multiple generations is still very bad. This is my opinion but I guess that he just wanted to find a nice shocking number. I didn't catch this but in their post, u/JustTaxLandLol notes that later on Galloway says "real median income from labor is up 40% since 1974" so he's also contradicting himself in the same talk.
I couldn't be bothered to look into the house price to income column he has so I don't have any comments on that.
His next slide is a point about how the percentage of 30 year olds earning more than their parents did at 30 has been decreasing very significantly over time. This is from a paper in 2016 by Raj Chetty (link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aal4617). I've seen some counterarguments about the methods used in the paper but there are counterarguments for basically every inequality paper in existence so I'd take them with a grain of salt. Those points are more complex than the scope of this post and I lack the expertise to be making them anyways so I believe this slide. I'll admit that Galloway makes a good argument for this slide.
Right after this slide he says "As a result, people over the age of 55 feel pretty good about America, but less than one in five people under the age of 34 feel very good about America. This creates an incendiary, righteous movement...". He supports this with data on the percentage of US adults who feel "extremely proud" to be American.
Before I talk about the data on this slide, I'd like to be a little anal about things and pick apart his wording and causal claims he makes. When Galloway says "as a result" he's making a causal claim about the relationship between a young person's earning ability and their national pride. Leaving aside the econometric issues of making random causal claims, this is a ridiculous marginalisation of all the other critically important issues in the US. It seems pretty clear to me that reduced national pride amongst younger individuals is a combination of a lack of social mobility (or however you want to word your version of the fading American dream), the continued existence of systematic racism and sexism, US response to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, bodily autonomy (abortion), and many other issues. Not to say that the economic disadvantages of young people doesn't play a role in causing this lack of national pride but come on. He also says "this creates an incendiary righteous movement...". Ok if the "as a result" from the last sentence could be interpreted as the economic disadvantages of young people play some part in their dissatisfaction with the government, it should be obvious to anyone not living under a rock that many of the political conflicts and movements that have erupted in the US over the past few years have little, if anything, to do with earning ability. In the slide after the poll data he shows three photos, one of a MeToo protest, one of a BLM protest, and another of a pro-Palestine protest. I can only interpret this as him making the claim that the younger generations economic difficulties are causally linked to those movements, which is totally bananas.
Now lets talk about the data. He got this from the Gallup polls (link: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394202/record-low-extremely-proud-american.aspx, there's a link to download the pdf with the poll numbers at the end of this article). There are 5 options for the Gallup poll: "Extremely proud"; "Very proud"; "Moderately proud"; "Only a little proud"; or "Not at all proud". So Galloway is cherry-picking again. To be fair, it's true that even including the rest of the answers, a quick glance at the data suggests (very strongly) that young people are less proud than older people. There are also more young people who choose "Not at all proud" (11% for 18-34 and 1% for 55+). Though there is probably some argument to be made about whether "extreme" pride is a good thing. Furthermore, "pretty good" and "very good" do not reflect the extremity of choosing, well, the most extreme option.
As an introduction to his next slide he says that "a decent proxy for how much we value youth labor is minimum wage". I've never heard of this before and am very very skeptical but I'm willing to attribute this to my own ignorance so I'll leave that sentence alone. So on this slide there's a graph with two lines, one is minimum wage across time adjusted for inflation, the other is whats supposed to be minimum wage if adjusted for productivity (also adjusted to inflation I assume). Galloway got this data form the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/), which shows that this gap between productivity began around 1979. This was when Carter was president and right before the Reagan administration. Those who know about the economic history of this time probably won't be surprised since a lot of the policies of this time were rather inegalitarian and heavily favoured the wealthy. I agree that many of the policies of the time contributed heavily to the inequality America faces today and though I haven't read any studies about how this affects minimum wage workers, I believe that minimum wage workers or low income workers in general today have significantly lower purchasing power relative to a few decades ago.
What I have a problem with here is the idea that productivity and minimum wage should increase in tandem. According to the EPI, "Productivity measures how much total economywide income is generated (i.e., for workers, business owners, landlords, and everybody else together) in an average hour of work" and "pay is defined as the average compensation (wages and benefits) of production and nonsupervisory workers. The pay for this group is one appropriate benchmark for 'typical worker pay' because production and nonsupervisory workers have made up roughly 80% of the U.S. workforce over the entire period shown in the figure and because the data for production and nonsupervisory workers exclude extremely highly paid managerial workers like CEOs and other corporate executives". Before I try to break down my complaints with the measures used, my immediate reaction when I saw this was that it seems rather stupid to compare the relationship between average productivity and minimum wage in an industrial economy against the same relationship in a service oriented one. There are just more jobs now that let you make an impact on the economy far beyond what you are paid and it is so so difficult to quantify this change. Using a similar argument, I really have no clue how macro people make models or do estimates for things like productivity but I'm quite skeptical about the reliability of using such a measure of productivity because of the increased prevalence of second, third, or n-th order effects that would be present in a measure of something like total gdp but pretty much impossible to identify for any employer. For those who want to read more about this difference between productivity and compensation I think this is the most relevant paper from EPI (https://files.epi.org/2015/understanding-productivity-pay-divergence-final.pdf). There are some points I'm not satisfied with in this paper like them attributing the entirety of the difference between median hourly compensation to average consumer hourly compensation but that would take more time than I want to spend on this.
Now we're still on the same slide. Galloway says "we've kept it [minimum wage] purposely pretty low" twice in three sentences. Now he's suggesting that there's some collective out there that has the political power and desire to keep minimum wage low. By "we" I think he means to suggest that the old-timers have banded together to screw the young people over. Ok buddy. I'm stepping outside the bounds of what's considered strictly economics here a little but pinning the injustices of society on some ethereal enemy whose existence can never be disproven is the same as taking "advantage of the flaws in our species with medieval institutions, Paleolithic instincts, and godlike technology" (Galloway's words, same TED talk) to me. Maybe there really is some cabal of scheming geezers out there who have some twisted desire to keep the minimum wage low, but I'm more inclined to believe that a lot of these "injustices" are a result of our existing political and societal institutions being poor and inefficient aggregators of our desires as a society, rewarding selfishness instead of cooperation. This certainly makes the problem harder to solve than if there were just some evil 'others' we could get rid of and be done with. Having a target to direct our outrage at, believing that I am good and they are bad, is easier than facing the reality that everyone is born with the selfishness that creates the injustices we live with but that's not gonna make people more agreeable. As an economist, I study the theory of incentives to use the same human selfishness that creates all the problems Galloway talks about to create solutions that hopefully improve our quality of life. This is what I believe is the beauty of being human, all the good and bad that happens stem from the same desires, it is our job to create institutions and systems that allow us to channel our desires in a way that benefits everyone, but I digress. The point is, this enemy that Galloway creates is an effective tactic at convincing people of his argument, but I don't believe such a perspective benefits society at all. Mistakes should be corrected, that doesn't mean they're always the result of ill intentions.
His next slide compares the difference between percentage increase in median household income against percentage increase in median home price, as well as a comparison of the median monthly mortgage between 2019 and 2024. I have nothing to say about the graph, I agree that over time, home prices have increased to an unacceptable level. The Fed funds rate went from 2.4 percent in Feb 2019 to 5.33 percent in Feb 2024 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/fedfunds). To his credit, Galloway does attribute this increase in mortgage payments to "an acceleration in interest rates" but what's the alternative? Don't increase interest rates? Then if I was Galloway I'd make the same TED talk and talk about how the continued low interest rates contributed to rampant inflation that made all the poor people even poorer. It seems like he's decided to take whatever bad economic event that seems somewhat relevant and made it to be the result of some group's dogged determination to keep the younger generation down. Why is the increase from pre- to post-covid prices on anything surprising. I'd like to meet the genius who saw covid coming and intentionally created this increase in home prices.
He also says "the most expensive homes in the world, based on this metric, are number three, Vancouver. Why? Because 60 percent of the cost of building a home goes to permits...". I have no idea what point he's making here. Based on what metric, median home price? Monthly mortgage payments? Why do I care about Vancouver, a Canadian city, being number three? Then he talks about how "the incumbents that own assets have weaponized government". Either he's switched to talking about oligopolistic lobbyists in general without saying so or he's still talking about Canada. I dunno. Someone please explain. Then he says "this is the transfer I'm going to be speaking about". Also, everything he just said is talking about how there exists a group of people trying to PREVENT transfers of wealth to new entrants. And there was huge applause after that sentence. Nutsos, all of them.
Ok next slide. Galloway presents two pie charts, comparing the share of household wealth by age in 1989 to 2023. So he's talking directly about inequality in wealth now. Inequality in the US is really really bad, that's a fact. I'm a big fan of the work of Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, and Thomas Piketty. These people have been at the forefront of research on inequality for many years now and though their work is not flawless, I'm convinced by the data they present and the methods by which they have aggregated the data and what they show is that inequality is worse than even what the pie charts Galloway presents suggest. However, this is not to say that Galloway makes a valid argument. Please note the grey bits in the pie chart. If Galloway has shown the numbers for everyone under 40 and above 70, the group that's excluded are those between 40 and 70. So those in the age range of 40-70 owned 100 - 19 - 12 = 69% of household wealth in 1989 and 100 - 30 - 7 = 63% in 2023. I could probably go and find how the age demographics of the population have changed over time and I think that with declining birth rates, the percentage change in age demographics would be pretty close to the percentage change in household wealth but I'm tired of beating every slide to death so I'll leave that to someone else if anyone's motivated enough to do that (if my hypothesis is wrong here just comment and I'll make that change). My first thought when I saw this though was again, this guy has paid no regard to structural change in society. Given the increased accessibility of buying stocks over the past three decades is it really that surprising that older people who have had more time and cash at the start of the digital age to invest in companies that are now massive mega-corporations have experienced a higher return on their capital. This is not to say that none of this change in the share of wealth held by those under 40 is due to some inherent unfairness in our society and I have neither the time nor knowledge to separate these effects out but to say that this was a "purposeful" effort to cut their wealth in half is complete and utter bullshit. Also, this guy makes another causal claim WITH NOTHING BUT A CHANGE IN SHARE OF HOUSEHOLD WEALTH. Congratulations everyone Scott Galloway has just made every econometrician in the world redundant, I always knew my professors were just trying to confuse me with funny symbols and Greek letters, someone get this guy a Nobel Prize.
Then while introducing his next slide Galloway says that his analyst's presence in the audience "brings the average age of the entire conference down in 11 days". So he's saying that TED knows exactly who's showing up to their event before it happens and that they have the exact birthdates of everyone in the audience too and that they've given this information to one of their speakers. A friend of mine has told me he's just making a joke and that I should let this point go because I'm being too anal about things but yeah I become anal about things when someone suggests sweeping institutional changes in a talk viewed by millions of people so thought I'd include it anyways just as another example of the bullshit this guy has been spewing.
When he moves on to the actual content in the slide the first point he makes is about lower acceptance rates in schools. So I don't have data on this because I couldn't be bothered to go find any so again, I'll change my statement if anyone has reliable data indicating otherwise but I think its pretty safe to say that way less people used to apply than before and combined with an increase in international student applications and enrollments the competition is just way higher than before. The most obvious explanation would be that higher education institutions have made the mistake of not increasing enrollments at a rate quick enough to meet demand. However, according to US News (https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-many-universities-are-in-the-us-and-why-that-number-is-changing) there were 3982 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the US. and UCLA is ranked 15th in national universities. So why is it surprising now that university education is becoming more popular that higher ranked universities are harder to get into. So instead of expanding enrollment I think that a well thought out plan of affirmative action would be a much better option of giving "unremarkable kids and giving them a shot at being remarkable" (what this well thought out plan may be I don't know, I honestly didn't even search up any statistics about affirmative action this was just the first solution I thought of that didn't involve ignoring the crowning achievement of statistics). To his credit, Galloway does include a point about income-based affirmative action at the end of his talk, though he overwhelmingly emphasises increasing enrollment in schools. I don't have any data about that but I think that class sizes at public universities are large enough as it is.
The rest of the slide gives numbers on college debt of house price compared to first year income. College debt is ridiculously high and many people struggle because of it. I don't have the solution and neither does Galloway because he doesn't really mention it. I think that house price-to-first year income is a poor comparison because it doesn't take into account average rate of income increase and no normal person from any generation is looking to buy a house with first year income but there's probably a more appropriate metric out there that shows a similar change anyways so I'm ok with that.
Then he talks about him and his "colleagues" who "artificially constrain supply to create aspiration and scarcity". I would like to meet the professors who have control over enrollment rates because none of mine did. Then he says "to my colleagues in higher ed: we're public servants, not fucking Chanel bags". The marketing professor from NYU says he's a public servant...ok.
The slide after that compares Harvard's increase in endowment compared to their increase in enrollment and he calls them a "hedge fund offering classes". I see no issue with this point, he made a great argument, can't really criticise anything here.
Don't worry though he makes up for it by immediately making one of the most egregious statements in this whole talk. We're looking at his next slide, the one titled "Grand Bargain" now. He says that the government should take some of the money that's supposed to be used to forgive existing loans to about 500 of the top public universities to reduce tuition by 2% and year, expand enrollments by 6% a year, and increase vocational programs to 20% of the degrees granted. Then the slide after that, claims this will double freshman seats and cut costs in half in just 10 years. Ok so he thinks that most of the money "earmarked to bail out the one third of people that got to go to college on the backs of the two thirds that didn't" should go to future students instead because, I assume from the tone of his words, he doesn't think they need or deserve all that loan forgiveness. So why bring up the increase in college debt previously (the slide I talked about three paragraphs ago)? Anyways that's not the crazy thing. Let's see what happens if you reduce tuition by 2% a year for 10 years. So the calculation goes like this 0.98^{10} is approximately equal to 0.81. So with the number he puts up, tuition decreases by 19% in ten years. If everything before this slide could be attributed to cherry-picking, stupidity, or lack of good data, then fine he's just ignorant even though he shouldn't have been if he went up there to make that talk. But now this is just a FUCKING BAREFACED LIE. I cannot think of a greater insult to the audience's intelligence than the fact that this guy didn't think anyone would pull out a fucking calculator and do the calculation themselves. I won't blame the audience for not saying anything because I'm not sure I would have wanted to do that either but at least from youtube and reddit comments there are a decent number of people who didn't realise this. A similar calculation shows that expanding enrollment by 6% per year increases seats by about 80% total (1.06^{10}). Not sure how that translates in terms of freshman seats but at least this is closer than the tuition claim.
Then his next slide compares wages to the s&p500. This is the point of u/JustTaxLandLol's post and I think his post and the discussion in the comments covers most if not all of my thoughts so you can just read that. https://www.reddit.com/badeconomics/comments/1cc3rs8/scott_galloway_compares_median_wage_to_sp500/
Ok next slide, "The Transfer: Purposeful". Oh yay he's about to make another causal claim with nothing but a graph on the change in top marginal tax rates for corporations and individuals. And if we skip ahead to the next slide we'll realise that this claim is that the gradual decrease in top marginal tax rates for corporations and individuals results in lowered senior poverty and child poverty either remains constant or increases. Yes everybody the newest advancement in economic research has just been released. Lowering top tax rates decreases senior poverty and increases child poverty. And Scott Galloway made that argument in 24 seconds (transcript on TED website has time markers).
Man I really set out with the intention to keep the tone of this post as neutral as I could but I'm just writing out my internal dialogue with less swearing now. I apologise to those who would have preferred a more careful and less emotional knee-jerk response of an analysis but this is a reddit post, its not like there are standards.
Now he moves on to talking about social security. Galloway says "it would cost 11 billion dollars to expand the child tax credit. But that gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill". So zero explanation about why it would cost 11 billion dollars to expand the child tax credit, why not more or less, no comment about how many children it would affect, how much money it would mean for each child or family, just some number that you have to accept. Most of the time there's no why to the amount of funding that the government allocates to policies but at least there's some breakdown to how its going to be used, Galloway doesn't even have that. This is before we even consider the fact that child tax credit was expanded this year (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-tax-credit-2024-who-qualifies/). Maybe he's talking about some other issue that I'm not aware of but I don't think so. He says he got the social security spending data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which is a think tank. I don't want to sort through their website to fact check so I'll accept it as the truth but as far as I know the actual social security administration releases their facts and figures for the year August of next year so I'm not sure why he didn't just use the 2022 numbers from a more reliable source.
His next few couple slides are about the increasing age of politicians. I think this is a great point but he probably should have used a better example of a younger politician than Justin Trudeau.
Then at around the 10 minute mark, using his slide titled "Generational Theft", Galloway claims that "we pumped the economy" during covid so that the Nasdaq would gain value, causing "intergenerational theft". I don't know if he thinks it was intentional or not but how is he going to completely ignore the fact that the stimulus checks were primarily for households that were struggling due to the greatest unemployment rate we have seen in our lifetime (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-months-of-covid-19-than-it-did-in-two-years-of-the-great-recession/). I'm really kind of tired of this so I'll let those at the CBR make my argument for me. "Within the first 10 days, households spent an average of 29 cents from every dollar received. The bulk of this spending was on food, rent, and bills" (https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/how-effective-were-stimulus-checks-us). Damn so turns out struggling families did need these stimulus checks pretty urgently. Shocker. I also think that most people in finance would agree that tech stocks surged over covid because people needed fucking technology... People built PCs to play video games, used online shopping services because they couldn't go to malls, all that.
The next slide is supposed to support his point that the increase in stock prices doesn't allow young people to find "disruption". What. The only thing that matters to any investor is the percentage increase in value of the stock price after you've invested. It doesn't matter if 7 dollars is 1 share of apple or 0.04 of a share of apple. Its stock price going up by 100% means you get 14 dollars either way. I think this guy's arguments are getting dumber as the talk goes on, I actually had to go and find data to refute his points earlier on. Now arithmetic does the work for me, I should have hired a grade schooler to do my analysis.
His next point is about how algorithmic content selection is bad. Yeah its bad. Its bad for everyone, turns everyone into psychos. Though I think there's a very good argument to be made about how such content could affect developing brains. He makes a point about age-gating social media at the end of the talk. This is actually the only drastic measure he proposes that I agree with so I'll leave this alone too.
After a couple slides about Zuckerberg and TikTok (which I agree with, though I think Zuckerberg's damage probably leans more towards older people than young now), he gives a bunch of graphs showing upward trends in all sorts of terrible things happening to young people. Every single one is an issue of critical importance in the US, but importantly, no comparison to older people. For all we know, the trend on every graph could be the same or even worse for older generations. If I had written about this first then I'd go and find the data for it but at this point I just want to be done with this but can't stop without getting to the end so I'm just gonna slap this slide with lack of comparisons and move on.
His next slide shows the difference in 30 to 34 year olds who have at least one child, some of that is probably due to family planning but I still think its a great indicator of people not wanting to have children because its not affordable. Great point, I believe in it.
Next slide, oh god it's a happiness report. I think happiness reports are a fun conversational tidbit but I see no way for it to be reliable enough to be used as an argument in any semi-serious setting. That said, I have no idea how they do these measurements so maybe I'm wrong.
As if the happiness report wasn't bad enough, Galloway is gonna compare the biggest one-day market cap gain (in an unspecified time frame) to the budget of several policies implemented by the government. Oh man. This is too stupid, there's so many things to pick from it'd take too much effort to sort through them. Someone else please make the argument for me.
Then he says universal basic income should have been called negative income tax. Wow the frequency of good points is going up, though I think this is accompanied by an increase in the frequency of absolutely idiotic arguments.
Then he says we should eliminate capital gains tax deduction. The issue of taxing capital gains is a very serious one, but I don't think it actually matters that much how much we tax realised capital gains. Again, not an expert but here's my understanding. If you have a high net worth with a lot of it in stocks and you need cash, you don't have to sell them and get taxed on the realised gains. You go to the bank and say I want to borrow money, I'm going to put these stocks up as collateral so if I can't pay you back you can take these stocks which are somewhere around the value of the principal amount plus total interest over the course of this loan. Because the bank is now convinced they'll get the money back regardless of if you make the payments or not, they say ok here's the money you asked for at a nice low interest rate. Then you take the money, you keep your stocks, which will probably gain value at a rate that exceeds the interest rate by a pretty decent margin, and you can probably make your interest payments pretty easily because hey, you were rich to begin with. If you're really strapped for cash a couple years down the line, you can sell some of the stocks that are now worth more than they were before and cover your payments and not have to pay taxes on the rest that you don't have to sell. Free money. There's plenty more ways to avoid taxes if you're rich but you get my point by now. Now that's a lot of problems without a solution. Luckily we have some economists far more skilled than I am who work very hard to find solutions to these problems. Here's one example of a policy that may help (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/opinion/global-billionaires-tax.html). This is an opinion piece written by Gabriel Zucman (famous economist), for the New York Times. If you don't have an NYT subscription, sorry for giving a link you can't read but if you search Gabriel Zucman billionaire tax, you could probably get a decent idea of what this talks about. Here's Zucman tweeting his proposal for his suggestion (https://twitter.com/gabriel\_zucman/status/1763253132572729623). It probably requires a little more thinking than the NYT article but he did present this at the G20 so that might sound more exciting to you than some news article.
Then Galloway says "we need to remove 230 protection for all algorithmically-elevated content". Zero mention on what 230 protection is so here's an explanation (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230). Basically that was a fancy way of saying that companies should be held accountable of the content on their platform, even if it's posted by an unrelated third party. I'm not sure getting rid of it in its entirety is a great idea (though I have no arguments against that except Orwellian ones) but I certainly agree that most if not all social media platforms have abused this protection and it should be at the very least restricted. To what extent? Again, I have no clue.
Then he goes "break up Big Tech". That's the whole suggestion. This is a terrible idea but the fact that he doesn't elaborate more on how to do this, the ramifications of doing so, or really provide any explanation at all makes me automatically ignore this. Then he makes his point about age-gating social media, like I said before, I agree with it.
His next suggestions are universal pre-K, great idea, then "reinstate the expanded child-tax credit". Not sure what he's going on about here, child tax credit exists and like I said before, was just expanded. Then it's income-based affirmative action. I don't know what kind of affirmative action is best and that sounds like an interesting idea so I won't criticise it. I think the rest of his suggestions are pretty normative arguments so I'll leave those alone too.
Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with the overall theme of his talk. I believe that young people in the US (and many places worldwide) are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to accumulating wealth, buying homes, inter-generational transfers, etc. But you cannot go up on a popular platform like this, make claims as sweeping as he has, and make suggestions as radical and drastic as he has, with garbage arguments and data like this. Saying the right things for the wrong reasons is arguably worse than just saying the wrong thing because it makes it easy for those who want the status quo to remain to make counterarguments. Given how divisive opinions have become over the past decade or so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how many people are eating this up but it kinda scares me how easily people will eat up this shit as long as its for a cause that sounds like its going for some kind of radical change for the good of all and has some imaginary "them" as the common enemy to everyone.
So that's it, I've finally covered all his points. I'm free, thank fuck. I should really proofread this but this has been my past eight hours and my back is breaking from all this sitting, I'm just gonna post this and read it over tomorrow. Maybe do a tl;dr, fix some formatting.
EDIT: As u/myphriendmike and u/Mordoci have pointed out, my dummy corp example was just tax fraud, that's illegal and so it's a bad example, I've removed it. Zucman has some estimates on the "real" tax rate wealthy people (mostly billionaires) pay, maybe I'll include that at some point.
I also corrected my wording in some places.

Line Score - Game Over

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E	LOB
CLE	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	3	8	2	5
CWS	0	0	0	0	3	0	2	1		6	8	0	4

Box Score

CWS		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
RF	Pham	4	0	1	1	0	0	.308
RF	Sheets	4	0	0	0	0	2	.248
CF	Ortega	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
1B	Vaughn	4	1	1	1	0	0	.196
DH	Jiménez, E	4	0	0	0	0	0	.212
LF	Benintendi	4	0	2	0	0	0	.199
3B	Ramos	4	0	0	0	0	2	.318
C	Lee, K	4	2	2	1	0	1	.286
SS	DeJong	3	2	2	1	0	1	.252
2B	Lopez, N	3	1	0	0	0	0	.200

CWS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Crochet	6.0	5	0	0	0	11	97-72	4.63
Wilson, S	0.1	1	1	1	1	1	10-4	3.45
Banks	1.1	2	2	2	0	0	20-12	5.60
Leasure	1.1	0	0	0	0	0	16-12	2.20

CLE		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
SS	Rocchio	4	0	0	0	0	2	.207
LF	Fry	4	1	1	0	0	1	.308
3B	Ramírez, Jo	4	1	2	2	0	0	.245
DH	Naylor, J	4	0	1	0	0	1	.276
CF	Laureano	3	0	1	0	0	2	.156
C	Naylor, B	1	0	0	0	0	0	.188
2B	Freeman, T	4	1	1	1	0	1	.193
CF	Brennan	3	0	1	0	1	1	.252
2B	Arias, G	2	0	1	0	0	1	.240
1B	Manzardo	2	0	0	0	0	1	.143
C	Hedges	2	0	0	0	0	2	.147
RF	Florial	1	0	0	0	0	0	.189

CLE	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Carrasco	7.0	6	5	3	0	5	93-63	5.36
Avila	1.0	2	1	1	0	1	17-12	6.27

Scoring Plays

Inning	Event	Score
B5	Nicky Lopez reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by second baseman Gabriel Arias. Korey Lee scores. Paul DeJong scores. Nicky Lopez to 2nd. Fielding error by second baseman Gabriel Arias.	2-0
B5	Tommy Pham singles on a line drive to left fielder Will Brennan. Nicky Lopez scores.	3-0
T7	Tyler Freeman homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	3-1
B7	Korey Lee homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	4-1
B7	Paul DeJong homers (6) on a fly ball to left field.	5-1
T8	José Ramírez homers (9) on a fly ball to left field. David Fry scores.	5-3
B8	Andrew Vaughn homers (1) on a fly ball to center field.	6-3

Highlights

Description	Length
Carlos Carrasco against the White Sox	0:07
Garrett Crochet against the Guardians	0:09
Bullpen availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Bullpen availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Bench availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Fielding alignment for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:11
Starting lineups for Guardians at White Sox - May 10, 2024	0:09
Bench availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Fielding alignment for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:11
Breaking down Garrett Crochet's pitches	0:04
Tyler Freeman: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:11
Garrett Crochet's outing against the Guardians	0:23
Breaking down Korey Lee's home run	0:12
Paul DeJong: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:12
José Ramírez: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:13
Breaking down Carlos Carrasco's pitches	0:04
Measuring the stats on Andrew Vaughn's home run	0:11
Carlos Carrasco's outing against the White Sox	0:23
Replay confirms Vaughn safe on an error	0:29
Bryan Ramos snags a hard-hit liner	0:26
Foul ball is confirmed after umpire review	0:29
Nicky Lopez's two-run fielder's choice	0:28
Tommy Pham's RBI single	0:18
Ramón Laureano strikes out swinging.	0:05
Garrett Crochet's 11th strikeout sets career-high	0:18
Tyler Freeman's solo home run (4)	0:27
Korey Lee's solo home run (4)	0:24
Paul DeJong hits a home run to left (6)	0:20
José Ramírez cranks a two-run homer (9)	0:30
Garrett Crochet strikes out 11	1:32
Andrew Vaughn's first home run of 2024	0:26
Kyle Manzardo pops out to first baseman Andrew Vaughn in foul territory.	0:11

Decisions

Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher	Save
Crochet (3-4, 4.63 ERA)	Carrasco (2-3, 5.36 ERA)	Leasure (2 SV, 2.20 ERA)

Game ended at 8:57 PM.

Postgame Thread 5/10/2024

Final Score: Guardians 3, White Sox 6

Line Score - Game Over

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E	LOB
CLE	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	3	8	2	5
CWS	0	0	0	0	3	0	2	1		6	8	0	4

Scoring Plays

Inning	Event	Score
B5	Nicky Lopez reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by second baseman Gabriel Arias. Korey Lee scores. Paul DeJong scores. Nicky Lopez to 2nd. Fielding error by second baseman Gabriel Arias.	2-0
B5	Tommy Pham singles on a line drive to left fielder Will Brennan. Nicky Lopez scores.	3-0
T7	Tyler Freeman homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	3-1
B7	Korey Lee homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	4-1
B7	Paul DeJong homers (6) on a fly ball to left field.	5-1
T8	José Ramírez homers (9) on a fly ball to left field. David Fry scores.	5-3
B8	Andrew Vaughn homers (1) on a fly ball to center field.	6-3

Highlights

Description	Length
Carlos Carrasco against the White Sox	0:07
Garrett Crochet against the Guardians	0:09
Bullpen availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Bullpen availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Bench availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Fielding alignment for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:11
Starting lineups for Guardians at White Sox - May 10, 2024	0:09
Bench availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Fielding alignment for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:11
Breaking down Garrett Crochet's pitches	0:04
Tyler Freeman: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:11
Garrett Crochet's outing against the Guardians	0:23
Breaking down Korey Lee's home run	0:12
Paul DeJong: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:12
José Ramírez: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:13
Breaking down Carlos Carrasco's pitches	0:04
Measuring the stats on Andrew Vaughn's home run	0:11
Carlos Carrasco's outing against the White Sox	0:23
Replay confirms Vaughn safe on an error	0:29
Bryan Ramos snags a hard-hit liner	0:26
Foul ball is confirmed after umpire review	0:29
Nicky Lopez's two-run fielder's choice	0:28
Tommy Pham's RBI single	0:18
Ramón Laureano strikes out swinging.	0:05
Garrett Crochet's 11th strikeout sets career-high	0:18
Tyler Freeman's solo home run (4)	0:27
Korey Lee's solo home run (4)	0:27
Paul DeJong hits a home run to left (6)	0:20
José Ramírez cranks a two-run homer (9)	0:30
Garrett Crochet strikes out 11	1:32
Andrew Vaughn's first home run of 2024	0:26

Decisions

Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher	Save
Crochet (3-4, 4.63 ERA)	Carrasco (2-3, 5.36 ERA)	Leasure (2 SV, 2.20 ERA)

Guardians (24-14) @ White Sox (10-28)

First Pitch: 7:40 PM at Guaranteed Rate Field

Team	Starter	TV	Radio
Guardians	Carlos Carrasco (2-2, 5.67 ERA)	BSGL	WTAM
White Sox	Garrett Crochet (2-4, 5.31 ERA)	NBCSCH	WMVP, WRTO (ES)

Game Preview
Sub Rules Message the Mods 2023 Streaming Information

Line Score - Game Over

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E	LOB
CLE	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	3	8	2	5
CWS	0	0	0	0	3	0	2	1		6	8	0	4

Box Score

CWS		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
RF	Pham	4	0	1	1	0	0	.308
RF	Sheets	4	0	0	0	0	2	.248
CF	Ortega	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
1B	Vaughn	4	1	1	1	0	0	.196
DH	Jiménez, E	4	0	0	0	0	0	.212
LF	Benintendi	4	0	2	0	0	0	.199
3B	Ramos	4	0	0	0	0	2	.318
C	Lee, K	4	2	2	1	0	1	.286
SS	DeJong	3	2	2	1	0	1	.252
2B	Lopez, N	3	1	0	0	0	0	.200

CWS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Crochet	6.0	5	0	0	0	11	97-72	4.63
Wilson, S	0.1	1	1	1	1	1	10-4	3.45
Banks	1.1	2	2	2	0	0	20-12	5.60
Leasure	1.1	0	0	0	0	0	16-12	2.20

CLE		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
SS	Rocchio	4	0	0	0	0	2	.207
LF	Fry	4	1	1	0	0	1	.308
3B	Ramírez, Jo	4	1	2	2	0	0	.245
DH	Naylor, J	4	0	1	0	0	1	.276
CF	Laureano	3	0	1	0	0	2	.156
C	Naylor, B	1	0	0	0	0	0	.188
2B	Freeman, T	4	1	1	1	0	1	.193
CF	Brennan	3	0	1	0	1	1	.252
2B	Arias, G	2	0	1	0	0	1	.240
1B	Manzardo	2	0	0	0	0	1	.143
C	Hedges	2	0	0	0	0	2	.147
RF	Florial	1	0	0	0	0	0	.189

CLE	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Carrasco	7.0	6	5	3	0	5	93-63	5.36
Avila	1.0	2	1	1	0	1	17-12	6.27

Scoring Plays

Inning	Event	Score
B5	Nicky Lopez reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by second baseman Gabriel Arias. Korey Lee scores. Paul DeJong scores. Nicky Lopez to 2nd. Fielding error by second baseman Gabriel Arias.	2-0
B5	Tommy Pham singles on a line drive to left fielder Will Brennan. Nicky Lopez scores.	3-0
T7	Tyler Freeman homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	3-1
B7	Korey Lee homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	4-1
B7	Paul DeJong homers (6) on a fly ball to left field.	5-1
T8	José Ramírez homers (9) on a fly ball to left field. David Fry scores.	5-3
B8	Andrew Vaughn homers (1) on a fly ball to center field.	6-3

Highlights

Description	Length
Carlos Carrasco against the White Sox	0:07
Garrett Crochet against the Guardians	0:09
Bullpen availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Bullpen availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Bench availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Fielding alignment for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:11
Starting lineups for Guardians at White Sox - May 10, 2024	0:09
Bench availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Fielding alignment for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:11
Breaking down Garrett Crochet's pitches	0:04
Tyler Freeman: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:11
Garrett Crochet's outing against the Guardians	0:23
Breaking down Korey Lee's home run	0:12
Paul DeJong: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:12
José Ramírez: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:13
Breaking down Carlos Carrasco's pitches	0:04
Measuring the stats on Andrew Vaughn's home run	0:11
Carlos Carrasco's outing against the White Sox	0:23
Replay confirms Vaughn safe on an error	0:29
Bryan Ramos snags a hard-hit liner	0:26
Foul ball is confirmed after umpire review	0:29
Nicky Lopez's two-run fielder's choice	0:28
Tommy Pham's RBI single	0:18
Ramón Laureano strikes out swinging.	0:05
Garrett Crochet's 11th strikeout sets career-high	0:18
Tyler Freeman's solo home run (4)	0:27
Korey Lee's solo home run (4)	0:24
Paul DeJong hits a home run to left (6)	0:20
José Ramírez cranks a two-run homer (9)	0:30
Garrett Crochet strikes out 11	1:32
Andrew Vaughn's first home run of 2024	0:26
Kyle Manzardo pops out to first baseman Andrew Vaughn in foul territory.	0:11

Decisions

Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher	Save
Crochet (3-4, 4.63 ERA)	Carrasco (2-3, 5.36 ERA)	Leasure (2 SV, 2.20 ERA)

Game ended at 9:56 PM.

Streams
Tracker	MLB.com	Game Graph

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Guardians (24-14) @ White Sox (10-28)

First Pitch: 7:40 PM at Guaranteed Rate Field

Team	Starter	TV	Radio
Guardians	Carlos Carrasco (2-2, 5.67 ERA)	BSGL	WTAM
White Sox	Garrett Crochet (2-4, 5.31 ERA)	NBCSCH	WMVP, WRTO (ES)

MLB	Fangraphs	Reddit Stream	IRC Chat
Gameday	Game Graph	Live Comments	Libera: ##baseball

Line Score - Game Over

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E	LOB
CLE	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	3	8	2	5
CWS	0	0	0	0	3	0	2	1		6	8	0	4

Box Score

CWS		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
RF	Pham	4	0	1	1	0	0	.308
RF	Sheets	4	0	0	0	0	2	.248
CF	Ortega	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
1B	Vaughn	4	1	1	1	0	0	.196
DH	Jiménez, E	4	0	0	0	0	0	.212
LF	Benintendi	4	0	2	0	0	0	.199
3B	Ramos	4	0	0	0	0	2	.318
C	Lee, K	4	2	2	1	0	1	.286
SS	DeJong	3	2	2	1	0	1	.252
2B	Lopez, N	3	1	0	0	0	0	.200

CWS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Crochet	6.0	5	0	0	0	11	97-72	4.63
Wilson, S	0.1	1	1	1	1	1	10-4	3.45
Banks	1.1	2	2	2	0	0	20-12	5.60
Leasure	1.1	0	0	0	0	0	16-12	2.20

CLE		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
SS	Rocchio	4	0	0	0	0	2	.207
LF	Fry	4	1	1	0	0	1	.308
3B	Ramírez, Jo	4	1	2	2	0	0	.245
DH	Naylor, J	4	0	1	0	0	1	.276
CF	Laureano	3	0	1	0	0	2	.156
C	Naylor, B	1	0	0	0	0	0	.188
2B	Freeman, T	4	1	1	1	0	1	.193
CF	Brennan	3	0	1	0	1	1	.252
2B	Arias, G	2	0	1	0	0	1	.240
1B	Manzardo	2	0	0	0	0	1	.143
C	Hedges	2	0	0	0	0	2	.147
RF	Florial	1	0	0	0	0	0	.189

CLE	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Carrasco	7.0	6	5	3	0	5	93-63	5.36
Avila	1.0	2	1	1	0	1	17-12	6.27

Scoring Plays

Inning	Event	Score
B5	Nicky Lopez reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by second baseman Gabriel Arias. Korey Lee scores. Paul DeJong scores. Nicky Lopez to 2nd. Fielding error by second baseman Gabriel Arias.	2-0
B5	Tommy Pham singles on a line drive to left fielder Will Brennan. Nicky Lopez scores.	3-0
T7	Tyler Freeman homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	3-1
B7	Korey Lee homers (4) on a fly ball to left center field.	4-1
B7	Paul DeJong homers (6) on a fly ball to left field.	5-1
T8	José Ramírez homers (9) on a fly ball to left field. David Fry scores.	5-3
B8	Andrew Vaughn homers (1) on a fly ball to center field.	6-3

Highlights

Description	Length
Carlos Carrasco against the White Sox	0:07
Garrett Crochet against the Guardians	0:09
Bullpen availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Bullpen availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Bench availability for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:07
Fielding alignment for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:11
Starting lineups for Guardians at White Sox - May 10, 2024	0:09
Bench availability for Chicago, May 10 vs Guardians	0:07
Fielding alignment for Cleveland, May 10 vs White Sox	0:11
Breaking down Garrett Crochet's pitches	0:04
Tyler Freeman: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:11
Garrett Crochet's outing against the Guardians	0:23
Breaking down Korey Lee's home run	0:12
Paul DeJong: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:12
José Ramírez: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:13
Breaking down Carlos Carrasco's pitches	0:04
Measuring the stats on Andrew Vaughn's home run	0:11
Carlos Carrasco's outing against the White Sox	0:23
Replay confirms Vaughn safe on an error	0:29
Bryan Ramos snags a hard-hit liner	0:26
Foul ball is confirmed after umpire review	0:29
Nicky Lopez's two-run fielder's choice	0:28
Tommy Pham's RBI single	0:18
Ramón Laureano strikes out swinging.	0:05
Garrett Crochet's 11th strikeout sets career-high	0:18
Tyler Freeman's solo home run (4)	0:27
Korey Lee's solo home run (4)	0:24
Paul DeJong hits a home run to left (6)	0:20
José Ramírez cranks a two-run homer (9)	0:30
Garrett Crochet strikes out 11	1:32
Andrew Vaughn's first home run of 2024	0:26
Kyle Manzardo pops out to first baseman Andrew Vaughn in foul territory.	0:11

Decisions

Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher	Save
Crochet (3-4, 4.63 ERA)	Carrasco (2-3, 5.36 ERA)	Leasure (2 SV, 2.20 ERA)

Attendance	Weather	Wind
	67°F, Partly Cloudy	10 mph, R To L

HP	1B	2B	3B
Doug Eddings	Scott Barry	Nic Lentz	Jacob Metz

Game ended at 9:56 PM.
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