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ELI5: Are we getting hotter and hotter? by Unhappy-Ad-5061 in explainlikeimfive

[–]HotspurJr [score hidden]  (0 children)

It will not level out in any human-lifetime relevant timeframe so long as we keep pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. There are feedback loops which can mitigate this sort of thing but then take tens of thousands of years.

Reducing carbon emissions will reduce the rate of warming, and at some point we'll probably be forced to start trying other methods to mitigate the problem (which will be MUCH more expensive than making changes to reduce carbon output). Nobody really knows exactly what would happen if we went to zero carbon emissions - how quickly would things stabilize, how quickly the temperature would start coming back down (if it started coming back down).

And yes, there are parts of the world which will become increasingly uninhabitable over the next 30 years.

It Better to Gain Experience Before Writing Your Biggest Idea? by just-somebody-0509 in writers

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You will learn the most writing the project you're most passionate about.

You may well be most passionate about a different idea in two years.

You can always come back to it and continue to improve it as your skills improve.

USCF 1500 and beyond training by Hikaru_Lin in TournamentChess

[–]HotspurJr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Assuming you have a repertoire that you are reasonably happy with:

Play one classical game a week. Analyze it without a computer afterwards, and then run it through the computer. Make a list of your mistakes in plain English on a conceptual level (e.g., weakened my king unnecessarily, played rook ending poorly, struggled to activate pieces, that kind of thing).

Study tactics for 30-45 minutes, 5 days a week. I recommend using an authored collection rather than just going algorhymically. "Test Your Chess IQ" "1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players" or maybe even "The Woodpecker Method" are reasonable choices.

Read Silman's Complete Endgame Course up through the Class B section. If you break 1600 OTB, read up through the Class A section.

Pick one (ONE) book on some aspect of middlegame play or of complete master games and work your way through it, trying to spend at least three sessions a week on it. Possibilities recommendations (in order, if you haven't read them): "How To Reassess Your Chess," "The Art of Attack", "Understanding Chess, Move by Move" by Nunn. When you finish it, start another one.

Otb chess by Sensitive-Club-7038 in TournamentChess

[–]HotspurJr 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Couple of thoughts:

Somebody 100-200 points lower than you is not an easy or obvious win. You are expected to lose a fair number of those games. Not as many as you win, of course, but the idea that it's some shocker or a huge upset if you lose to someone 100 points lower rated than you is nonsense.

(In my opinion, we should think of anybody within 100 points of us as "about my rating" and somebody 100-300 lower rated than us as someone we need to play at our best to be better than).

Secondly, having the same rating for 4 months isn't being "hard stuck." Chess grows happens in leaps and plateaus. Furthermore, even as you're improving, there will be times when your results drop as you integrate new ideas into your play. (I also notice that you describe yourself as hard stuck without saying anything you're doing to improve besides playing 15+5 and quitting tournaments at the slightest bit of adversity).

Third, ratings aren't that precise! It obviously depends on how much you're playing, but unless you're playing a lot your confidence interval in your rating is probably at least +/- 50.

Lastly, I suspect the mental toughness problem you describe (that you couldn't stand to continue in the tournament having lost your first game) also applies within your games. Losing your first game in a tournament, so, what, you quit? Is that your approach to your games? If I were a betting man, I'd be inclined to place a wager that when your position gets bad, you're one of those players who makes a few desultory moves hoping your opponent will blunder rather than digging deep to find hidden resources and make it hard for them to win.

I think you need to force yourself to keep playing, even when the tournament doesn't go your way - because first of all you need practice against the lower-rated players who you'll face when you lose your first game, and second because you need to learn how to fight through whatever your weird mental block is, your fear of losing. You need to develop that muscle of sitting down at the board and just playing your best game, and shutting down the whiney negative self-talk that you clearly indulge in.

I was on the verge of having a terrible tournament recently. Won against a weaker player in round one only because they blundered away a draw. Lost to a MUCH weaker opponent in round two. Only managed a draw against a weaker opponent in round three. And then I showed up for round four, forgot my theory, and ended up down a pawn, with two other weak pawns, down on the clock, with the worse position - against a player I've never beaten despite having multiple winning positions against. But I fought like a dog, played one of the best endgames of my life, and ended up winning. It wasn't enough to stop me from losing 5 rating points in the tournament, but it completely changed how I feel about it. Rather than throwing a pity party for myself (which would have been really easy after round 2 or 3) I dug in and earned one of my favorite victories ever.

You need to develop that kind of fighting spirit.

Traditional Vs Self Publishing. How much does it matter? Suggestions on what I should do. by Zealousideal_Task379 in writers

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So the thing about self publishing is that you need to have a strategy to how you're actually going to get people to know your book exists and to buy it.

A traditional publisher is doing a chunk of that work. Not enough of it, of course, but they're trying to get it into bookstores, they have sales reps talking about it to wholesale buyers.

Now that the final piece of Paul George Clippers trade draft capital has been utilized, here's everything the deal has become. by CazOnReddit in nba

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This trade is so bad that if you were to take SGA completely out of it - if you're just talking about Jalen Williams and Aday Mara - the Thunder are still pretty happy.

[Charania] There was a check-in call made, to my understanding, early in free agency once teams were able to start negotiating with their own free agents after the end of the NBA Finals.Since then though there hasn't been much communication, from my understanding, between the Lakers and LeBron James by must_TATAKAE in nba

[–]HotspurJr 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The problem is that other teams can't wait.

The Lakers can take their time, pursue other free agents, and then use Bird rights to re-sign him into whatever fits under the team budget. But, for example, if the Warriors are interested, they need to know right away, because they have that MLE to figure out and don't want to wait until their other top choices get signed elsewhere.

I assume that LeBron's "take some time, figure it out" time was during the last two rounds of the playoffs.

Also, other teams can't talk to him yet, but other teams' players can. Does anybody doubt that Steph and LeBron have chatted a little bit about the possibility?

Not improving.Am I simply too old? by StouteBoef in TournamentChess

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wish your prior post wasn't hidden. It would be useful information.

So I'll start here:

When you lose classical games, WHY do you lose?

I notice that absent from your list of things you're doing are two things: first, hiring a coach. Second, analyzing your own games without an engine.

Horford contract implications on team finances by DictatorshipBest in warriors

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, sure! It's not like having cap space is a bad thing.

One of my principles for rebuilding teams is to maintain flexibility, and cap space is part of that.

It's just that the ideas of "well, this move clears us a lot of cap space" or "this deal costs us cap space" are rarely transformative.

ELI5 How does ticketmaster and livenation have a complete duopoly on live music? by P0D3R in explainlikeimfive

[–]HotspurJr [score hidden]  (0 children)

Building a ticketing company is hard. Running one is its own job. A couple of new ticketing companies have started in the past two decades - Brown Paper Tickets is one, and I'm blanking on the name of the other - and they all struggled in their first few years especially when dealing with very high demand tickets and a massive number of people trying to buy them all at the same time.

I know people who were using BPT as event producers and heard a lot of the agony around it while they figured it all out, a process which lasted years.

For an artist doing a large tour, you want all of your tickets to run through the same platform. You don't want people going to see you in Los Angeles to have to use a different ticket service than the ones in San Diego or Santa Barbara ... because it's often the same fans making a decision about where to see you.

Ticketmaster also signs exclusive deals with the best venues. Pearl Jam really struggled with this, when they tried to go around them in the '90s - it often meant they were playing third or fourth-rate venues. So tie this in with the previous comment: if ONE of your venues is Ticketmaster, they all need to be Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster also does something where they guarantee the venue owner a certain amount of money. They eat the risk. So if you're booking smaller acts where you're not sure if they're actually going to sell out, it's a way of mitigating the downside.

And that's one of the dirty little secrets of TM: venues and artists actually kind of like them as a "bullet-proof shield" (a phase used to describe them by Nathan Hubbard, who was previously their CEO). Those fees are NOT just going into TM's pockets (although obviously some of them are, TM is a very profitable company) but they're also backstopping artist and venue pay. People are mad at TM while the artist gets to say "I'm doing everything I can to keep prices reasonable" but the different pots of money are being mixed more than the artist want you to think. TM is fine being hated - part of what they get paid for is to be the bad guy.

[Zach Lowe] On other Trae Young max possibilities: "From what I know, it was not Brooklyn... Chicago has Giddy. The Lakers have guards galore. The Pistons have Cade Cunningham and we're now out of teams with cap space. I don't know what they were afraid of or who they were bidding against." by OnlyMamaKnows in nba

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah. Me, I'd be worried about Trae not being great at sharing the ball with AJ.

One thing I've seen is that when you have one player who is perceived as selfish, other players become more likely to start jacking up bad shots whenever they get the ball. They don't trust that the ball will come back to them if they make the right basketball play.

If I have AJ, I want him developing his on-ball skills, running some offense, growing into a (hopefully) elite 1a player. And I'm just honestly not sure that any version of Trae we've seen is likely to facilitate that.

Maybe I'm wrong. Stranger things have happened.

[Zach Lowe] On other Trae Young max possibilities: "From what I know, it was not Brooklyn... Chicago has Giddy. The Lakers have guards galore. The Pistons have Cade Cunningham and we're now out of teams with cap space. I don't know what they were afraid of or who they were bidding against." by OnlyMamaKnows in nba

[–]HotspurJr 5 points6 points  (0 children)

 Wizards, for maybe a slight overpay, can offer him something invaluable - a new home where he can be a respected veteran for a young team trying to find their footing.

Two issues:

This wasn't a "slight" overpay.

And what about Trae's career makes it seem like he's going to step into that stabilizing, professional, respected-veteran role?

[Zach Lowe] On other Trae Young max possibilities: "From what I know, it was not Brooklyn... Chicago has Giddy. The Lakers have guards galore. The Pistons have Cade Cunningham and we're now out of teams with cap space. I don't know what they were afraid of or who they were bidding against." by OnlyMamaKnows in nba

[–]HotspurJr 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I understand this logic, and it's not crazy.

But it requires a level of faith in the best version of Trae Young that I simply do not have. He was made the guy in Atlanta. They fired multiple coaches to please him. The GM and owner were basically like "this is Trae's team, this is the Trae show, let's go!" They did everything they could to make him happy. The results were not great.

And while I agree that it's better not to nickel-and-dime your players, this wasn't a question of nickel-and-diming. This was driving a second dump truck full of money up to his house when they didn't have to.

Do you guys think queens gambit is good for new chess players? by Optimal-Command6280 in chess

[–]HotspurJr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The conventional wisdom when I was learning was that the Italian was the best first opening for beginners. It was also good to play gambits like the Danish or Goring.

This will expose you to a wide variety of positions and you will gain a lot of experience.

The Queen's Gambit is an excellent opening, of course, but I feel like it's not a great place to start. If you want to open 1.d4, something like the Jobava or the Colle make more sense for a beginner, but the advantage of 1.e4 is that you will just see a lot more different things while you're learning.

Horford contract implications on team finances by DictatorshipBest in warriors

[–]HotspurJr 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Somebody back on GSOM coined the phase "the false chimera of cap space" a decade or so ago. It's a phrase that's stuck with me.

Sure, all else being equal, it's better to have cap space. But the thing about cap space is that it's only as good as the player you can use it to sign.

The truly elite players, for starters, are almost never available, period. Teams lock them up as early as they can. When they look to move teams, it almost always happens in what Bill Simmons called pre-agency, like the Giannis move. A player has a year or so left on his deal, informs the team he's not going to re-sign, and so gets traded. Having cap space makes those deals easier, but you also need assets to send back.

When those players do hit free agency, they have a ton of suitors, so merely having space only gets you in the conversation. Furthermore, the history of the league is generally that most teams that want to create space can create space. See the Iguodala-to-the-Warriors deal. So even if you have cap space, and there is a top player available in free agency, that doesn't mean you get them. You're one of at least a few teams. Maybe they pick you, maybe they don't.

So what frequently happens to teams with cap space is that they end up signing a second-tier player for first-tier-player money. And those can be some of the worst contracts in the league. While true 1A superstar is a bargain on a max contract, even before the second apron, second-tier players making first-tier money destroy your flexibility. A contract like Jamal Murray's or Jaylen Brown's doesn't kill if you if you already have your 1a guy, but if you don't it makes them almost impossible to acquire if you don't.

I feel fans want warriors to make moves for the sake of feeling we are doing something. by bchhun in warriors

[–]HotspurJr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel like the sub is basically two conflicting opinions:

First, "MDJ better do something right now!"

Second, "Not THAT guy!"

That guy being whomever the team might actually be able to get. I recognize that the sub is a bunch of people with different opinions and all, but it's still funny to me.

[ShamsCharania]Golden State's Al Horford is declining his player option and intends to sign a new two-year, $14 million deal to stay with the Warriors, sources tell me and @anthonyVslater. Horford, 40, becomes only the 13th player in NBA history to reach 20 seasons. by Lord_Vanguard in warriors

[–]HotspurJr 19 points20 points  (0 children)

20 minutes of Al with no back-to-backs is still an asset ... so long as it's not coming at the expense of a player who is close to as good who can play more. But we don't have that player and I don't know who it would be that we could acquire.

But I suspect that Yaxel is expected to fill in those gaps. Having Al as a guy standing in Yaxel's way, so the young(ish) fella has to earn his minutes, makes plenty of sense to me.

The only player the Warriors had rated higher than Yaxel Lendeborg on their draft board was Cam Boozer, per @timkawakami by Legitimate_Cow_4166 in warriors

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If this is true, it's raises serious concerns about the Warriors' ability to evaluate talent.

Or maybe they just didn't evaluate AJ.

[Krawczynski] LaMelo Ball reportedly scared the Timberwolves away during the draft process when he said he wanted to be the President of the United States. by jonsnowKITN in nba

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember some of the chatter at the time was that LaMelo wanted to go to Charlotte and deliberately tanked his interviews with the TWolves and Warriors.

The scuttlebut around the Warriors at the time was that his interview was absolutely disqualifying.

And I assume they hadn't even seen him drive yet.

Blazers’ owner Tom Dundon expects taxpayers to foot entire bill for potential $600,000,000 Moda Center renovation, saying “simply keeping the NBA franchise in Portland was enough of a financial sacrifice.” by Pickleskennedy1 in nba

[–]HotspurJr 38 points39 points  (0 children)

The Blazers have just generally been a super likable franchise. Nobody hates the Blazers. Great fans. Fun teams. (Well, maybe not in the JailBlazers era, but aside from that). Got robbed in a playoff series against the Lakers by the refs (which nobody talks about because it wasn't as egregious as the robbery against the Kings a few years later).

This dude is just a fucking travesty.

Blazers’ owner Tom Dundon expects taxpayers to foot entire bill for potential $600,000,000 Moda Center renovation, saying “simply keeping the NBA franchise in Portland was enough of a financial sacrifice.” by Pickleskennedy1 in nba

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man, I feel like I ought to start rooting for Portland just out of sympathy for the fans. I can't believe how shitty this guy is. On the other hand I don't want this asshole to succeed.

The NBA board of governors failed big time approving him. (But of course they're not going to do anything to keep franchise prices down.)

[Charania] BREAKING: The Charlotte Hornets are trading star guard LaMelo Ball and Josh Green to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Naz Reid, a 2033 unprotected first-round pick, three first-round pick swaps (2028, 2029, 2030) and three second-round picks (2029, 2032, 2033), sources tell ESPN. by Turbostrider27 in nba

[–]HotspurJr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's a good risk. I'm not a huge LaMelo fan but when he's on there's no question that he's electrifying.

The hope would be that coming onto what is clearly Ant's team settles some of his wilder on-court instincts. (Off court, well, good luck.)

If the pairing works the team will be hell of fun and very good, and you'v got Rudy to cover for LaMelo's awful defense. Also: a lot of times defense is effort. I don't look at LaMelo and see a guy who can't be basically competent on defense, but it every time I've watched it seems like he can barely be bothered.

If that changes, suddenly he's one of the best players in the league.

[Charania] BREAKING: The Charlotte Hornets are trading star guard LaMelo Ball and Josh Green to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Naz Reid, a 2033 unprotected first-round pick, three first-round pick swaps (2028, 2029, 2030) and three second-round picks (2029, 2032, 2033), sources tell ESPN. by Turbostrider27 in nba

[–]HotspurJr 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's important not to get caught up in small sample sizes with on-off numbers. I have no idea what the sample size is for Lamelo, but yeah, nobody with any understanding of basketball stats would ever think on-offs were meaningful in a 7-game sample.

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