I grew up in suburban Pittsburgh and attended a very good public school. I had friends who lived only ten or fifteen minutes away but attended schools that were substantially worse by nearly every measurable standard. How should a university compare our applications on an apples-to-apples basis?

Some people would say, “Just use standardized test scores.” And sure, those can be part of the equation. But I attended a better school, benefited from years of stronger teaching, had access to better preparation materials, and had supportive parents with disposable income to invest in my education. The list goes on. How exactly should those advantages be measured? Is it a university’s job to account for them?

Others may disagree, but if I were on a university admissions team, I would say that it is...at least to some extent. I wouldn’t want a completely homogeneous student body. I would want every admitted student to clear a reasonable academic floor, but beyond that, I would value diversity in backgrounds, opinions, interests, intended majors, and life experiences.

In my opinion, the issue is much more complicated than people often make it out to be, and I don’t personally believe there is some vast liberal boogeyman behind it. I don’t think the process is perfectly fair to everyone, nor do I think perfect fairness is possible in the first place. But I also don’t automatically agree that it is wrong for universities to try -- however imperfectly or ham-fistedly they might do it -- to understand the broader context in which an application was submitted.

On the other hand, the "the ends justifies the means" justification of the near constant erosion of civil liberties and due process is really, really concerning. And I do not trust, at all, the Rand-lite tech bro sociopaths or anyone in the Trump administration to do the right thing.

That opened my eyes to the world of Assembly, which in turn turned me on to the demoscene, and off I went into a truly magical subculture!

The truly amazing thing, especially the second time around, are the supposedly sophisticated investors who fall for it. "Oh, he's learned his lesson -- he won't do it again!".

First, yes, you’re right.

Second, they raised a shit ton of money under the bull case of mass consumer adoption, which is going to be impossible if that said consumer feels it is rigged.

Let’s all be real here; for 95% of their use cases both now and in the future, they’re a sportsbook. Which is fine! But they’re not going to get to anywhere near returning a multiple on their manic valuation until they act like one. And the first thing to do is to stop with all of the pseudo-academic bullshit about what a prediction market is. And the second is for them to hire someone, anyone, who knows even the first thing about sports because everyone even tangentially connected to this market knows that before six months ago, Tarek and Shayne couldn’t differentiate between a football and a buttplug.

It's not all that complex though, really. Just a bunch of adult children who were bullied mercilessly and now have convinced themselves, through the magic of Dunning-Kruger, that they are both eminently more suitable to run things and eminently justified in using that power to exact revenge on their (largely imagined) tormentors.

Once Mogilny defected, it was impossible for the system to hold. Mogilny (along with Pavel Bure and Fedorov) were groomed and training together to be the next great line combination in hockey; two years later, all three were in the NHL.

You can't have this amount of obvious manipulation and expect the average retail consumer to join. Same reason why there hasn't been mass consumer adoption of crypto. People just don't feel safe.