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Iskaral Pust

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Everything posted by Iskaral Pust

  1. Ireland still missing captain James Ryan but otherwise starting a very strong team. Hopefully our wingers are actually fit to play and can let the whole match because improvised wingers cost us defensively late against Scotland. No Cian Healy called into the squad either, so front row depth still a problem. Andrew Porter has done incredibly well to anchor a scrum that has been very competitive despite being outweighed in almost every match.
  2. You can say Ireland. We’re all thinking it.
  3. Outside of P1, this season has had plenty of intrigue and variation as competitors jockeyed. Ferrari, Aston Martin, Mercedes and Alonso have all had their periods of strength and promise, plus moments when the second driver shone brighter (Alonso excepted, of course). Verstappen deserves his championship. They won’t always be by such a distance. Perez puts the lie to claims of an unbeatable rocket ship but the other teams need to catch up on engineering — as Aston Martin has done by liberally copying the RB.
  4. S2 was enjoyable enough and we’re sticking with it. It’s very noticeable that some characters have been deprecated in order to elevate others but non-readers probably wouldn’t notice except asking why “the one” is so ineffectual. I think some of the plot holes are there to allow cool scenes at lower cost, e.g. the beach scene (why could Moraine break the oaths with her attack, how could she channel fire through water over such a distance, and why did Seanchan soldiers suddenly show up to defend an empty beach far from the city?), and the heroes of horn appeared for a minor skirmish that had no bearing on the wider battle. Even if I’m rolling my eyes at Matt making a light saber spear by tying the dagger with a roll of cloth, it’s still an enjoyable fantasy watch.
  5. Now we just look like bullies. Edit: Scotland finally saved some face after I posted that
  6. Really professional by Ireland so far, securing the bonus point by half time. Just please avoid any more injuries. @ljkeane Aside from a couple of sloppy break-away concessions in the opening two WC games, Ireland have been consistently very strong for more than a year at not conceding tries. IIRC we conceded the fewest in the 6N by a fair distance. France only get close on the scoreboard because Ramos can kick penalties from very long distance. Scotland showed well in the 6N but haven’t shown enough threat yet against SA and Ireland to stay in the WC. They need to find some magic in the second half to conjure up a high scoring win.
  7. I’ve decided it’s time to sell my holdings of the TBT ETF (a double short exposure to long-dated US Tsy Bonds). Yields could definitely go higher yet but it would only take some growth anxiety to pull yields back down again. Also the daily reset mechanic of those leveraged ETFs makes it better to sell rather than hold after a period of strong momentum. Otherwise my long term assets are all in stocks and my short term holdings have been all in cash this year.
  8. I’m fairness, those are all actual defenders and senior team players and quite experienced. When you have to put Casemiro and McTominay into the back line plus call up the equivalent of Sepp VanDenBerg, Billy Koumetio and Ki-Jana Hoever from the youth team, then you have a defensive crisis.
  9. I would bet that post-Brexit relationship signaling was also a factor when the bid was being compiled.
  10. That sounds like a tacit admission that he showed clear bias against Liverpool, not just general incompetence. Considering the really bad decisions we’ve experienced from the cadre of Manchester-based referees over the years, I’m pretty shocked PGMOL created this precedent.
  11. So PL referees get additional income from UAE and Sheikh Mansour. But of course that wouldn’t bias them in favor of City, not at all.
  12. The OG is a sickening way to lose that match but the refereeing bias is what caused the outcome. It’s disgusting to watch.
  13. Villa are worth keeping an eye on. Setting aside a reserve match in the LC (against Everton) because it has no information, they’ve been very consistently beating teams who aren’t good, while getting their comeuppance from the only two strong teams they faced: Newcastle and Liverpool. Today was the first time they beat a strong team. it’ll be interesting to see where they can take this, especially with European games as a distraction but also a place for them to build momentum with a new tactical style and new players.
  14. Understood. For a proxy of a simple power ranking, I wouldn’t count Italy or Argentina as being as competitive as the rest of the 6N and QN, although obviously stronger for having regular matchups with tier 1 opponents.
  15. Perhaps my problem is that I abandoned this book too early. I don’t think I read more than 10% of this one either time. (memory is foggy; it’s been a long time)
  16. I did not realize the Pumas are/were tier 1. I thought the phrase referred to general competitiveness rather than seedings specifically for this tournament.
  17. My career has been in investments and I know I don’t have the time or energy to do active stock trading on my own behalf in a quality way. I buy index funds and wait. Roth IRAs aren’t available to us. A lot of the tax-efficient savings options are designed to only work for middle class incomes. But I’m not a corrupt property developer either to avail of those tax advantages.
  18. I’ll admit that I’m in a weird place undeserving of any sympathy: mid-forties* with some minor defined benefit pension plus a very healthy accumulated 401k from maxing contributions for a long time, plus a large amount of other investments. But my income (and lifestyle) has continued to grow strongly all these years such that my accumulated savings don’t look especially large as a % of income. The typical aim is to accumulate retirement assets of 10-15x income to retire comfortably but that math is pretty much impossible for me now. My early savings were a % of a much smaller income then than now. Even the magic of compounded returns does not make up that ground. And the majority of my savings have to be from post-tax income with taxable returns, which is just much less efficient. So I have to realistically plan that my retirement funds will not be able to replace my current level of income, even if it doesn’t go up any further, unless I work well into my 70s. So I need to decide instead what is the plausibly attainable retirement income that looks acceptable and allows me to retire or at least scale back to a much less stressful job perhaps ten years from now. I’m very lucky my career has provided the financial security that it has and yet I still worry about saving enough to secure our current lifestyle for the rest of our lives. It’s due to financial trauma in my childhood — that stuff shapes your relationship with finances forever. *shit, that seems old when I just type it like that.
  19. Toll The Hounds is where I dropped the series. I even did a reread at some point and still dropped it here. I think it was partly the book itself felt boring and partly that in the eighth book of ten it once again breaks away from all of the open plot lines and introduces another setting and more new characters. The lack of any convergence toward resolution at this stage of the series makes it difficult to care to finish this boring book. Perhaps I should return for another reread and actually finish this time.
  20. Think of the poor Scots as Wales and England are the first two confirmed in the QFs. On top of both their poor form in 6N and warm-ups, and both of their domestic association problems, Wales were unconvincing against Fiji and Portugal before they blew out Australia by a surprising margin (themselves on a poor run of form) and England don’t even have a tier 1 opponent in their pool and still managed to have a stodgy attack. Life can be pretty unfair. Scotland know they need a BP win against Ireland (and deny the Irish a losing BP) to reach the QF. They’ll be so amped up for that match.
  21. Especially because bank loans are typically floating rate, so the interest rate on that debt is probably ~5% higher now than it was 18 months ago. I don’t understand why sophisticated floating rate borrowers didn’t enter into swap agreements in early 2022 to lock in long rates of interest at low levels (when inflation was already very noticeable and a risk that central banks would raise short term interest rates). Liverpool and many other clubs took out additional loans in 2020 to weather the lost stadium revenue. It’s good that FSG are shoring up the balance sheet, and presumably some of the equity stake is a partial cash-out of the huge growth in enterprise value. But it all doesn’t mean much for the first team except the debt payments will take less from the budget.
  22. I just scanned back and Arsenal haven’t yet beaten any solid, in-form opponent. A tie with City in the opening friendly has some merit but they’ve otherwise had a pretty soft opening schedule to build some rhythm and confidence. Spurs were their first competitive test. By contrast Liverpool have had a tougher run of opponents, with an opportunity to build grit and exhaustion rather than rhythm and confidence. Solid win today against a parked bus that can counterattack very effectively. Still some unevenness in the performance & structure and some vulnerability for want of a true DM. Let’s see how we manage against Spurs next weekend. Good to see Gomez and Matip play well, covering effectively for two key absences. Diaz and Nunez have earned their starting roles with their initiative and danger but they’re both inconsistent with their end product — but they overall offer a better attacking outlet at the moment and eventually one of those attacks becomes a goal. The expanded substitutions is a positive when we have so much depth in attack; late goals against fading legs are becoming our thing.
  23. I’m glad Klopp has rotated so much for tonight’s game. The EL Thursday-Sunday pattern can feel like a grind for players and fans alike, but one redeeming feature is lower stakes development time for some peripheral players. I hope it produces some fun surprises.
  24. Greyhound was a good movie about the Battle of the Atlantic. I’m watching Gangs Of London — pretty good so far for a genre show, albeit very violent. My wife and I watched S1 of After Party — this is what Glass Onion wanted to be. Good humor.
  25. Positives from Ireland vs Tonga: lots of rotation early, especially some of the younger players, without losing cohesion; dominated territory and possession; ultimately ran up a strong score against a capable opponent; line-out was very solid until the final few minutes; good balance of performance across the team; basically used the first two group matches as part of the warm-up process. Negatives: Bealham’s very quick head injury means Furlong had to play the whole match and will be tired next week; and now the bench is very thin at prop; lots of sloppy penalties conceded at the ruck (although for some of them I couldn’t see why they were given) — perhaps a greasy ball on a humid night didn’t help but better discipline is needed. If only Mack Hanson carried another 30lbs of muscle — he’d carry even greater threat.
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