Person	Fraction	Prob %	US Odds (£)
Hillary Clinton	1/3	75.00%	-300.03
Donald Trump	5/2	28.57%	+250.00
Bernie Sanders	40/1	02.44%	+4000
Joe Biden	80/1	01.23%	+8000
Min Overrounding	---	04.46%	---

Person	Fraction	Prob %	US Odds (£)
Hillary Clinton	4/11	73.34%	-275.03
Donald Trump	9/4	30.77%	+225
Bernie Sanders	40/1	02.44%	+4000
Joe Biden	80/1	01.23%	+8000
Min. Overrounding	---	01.07%	---

Person	Fraction	Prob. %	US Odds (£)
Hillary Clinton	34/87	71.90%	-255.89
Jeb Bush	7/2	22.22%	+350
Donald Trump	16/1	05.88%	+1600

Introduction

Welcome to the /politics polling discussion thread for the general election. As the election nears, polling of both the national presidential popular vote and important swing states is ramping up, and with both parties effectively deciding on nominees, pollsters can get in the field to start assessing the state of the presidential race. Please use this thread to discuss polling and the general state of the presidential or congressional election. Below, you'll find some of the most recent polls, but this is by no means exhaustive, as well as some links to prognosticators sharing election models.
As always though, polls don't vote, people do. Regardless of whether your candidate is doing well or poorly, democracy only works when people vote, and there are always at least a couple polling misses every cycle, some of which are pretty high profile. If you haven't yet done so, please take some time to register to vote or check your registration status.

Polls

Below is a collection of recent polling of the US Presidential election. This is likely incomplete and also omits the generic congressional ballot as well as Senate/House/Gubernatorial numbers that may accompany these polls. Please use the discussion space below to discuss any additional polls not covered. Additionally, not all polls are created equal. If this is your first time looking at polls, the FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings page is a helpful tool to assess historic partisan lean in certain pollsters, as well as their past performance.
Several polls are in the field, so we won't have a full picture of the field until next week when more are expected to be released. Until then, here are the polls since August 16th.

Poll	Date	Type	Biden	Trump
USC Dornsife	8-30	National	54	39
YouGov	8-29	National	47	41
Morning Consult	8-29	National	50	44
Morning Consult	8-29	National	52	42
USC Dornsife	8-29	National	52	40
Emerson College	8-28	Massachusetts	69	30
Trafalgar Group	8-28	Michigan	45	46
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-28	National	48	38
Franklin & Marshall College	8-27	Pennsylvania	49	42
Harris Insights & Analytics	8-26	National	47	38
Ipsos	8-26	National	44	37
Benenson Strategy Group	8-26	National	50	39
Rasmussen Reports	8-26	National	46	45
YouGov	8-26	National	50	41
Roanoke College	8-26	Virginia	53	39
Ipsos	8-26	National	47	40
Change Research	8-26	Wisconsin	49	44
Change Research	8-26	Arizona	49	47
Change Research	8-26	Michigan	50	44
Change Research	8-26	Florida	49	46
Change Research	8-26	National	51	43
Change Research	8-26	North Carolina	48	47
Change Research	8-26	Pennsylvania	49	46
Trafalgar Group	8-25	Wisconsin	45	46
Public Policy Polling	8-25	Delaware	58	37
Public Policy Polling	8-25	New York	63	32
Public Policy Polling	8-25	Florida	48	44
Morning Consult	8-24	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-24	National	52	43
Morning Consult	8-24	National	52	42
Morning Consult	8-24	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-24	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-24	National	52	42
Léger	8-24	National	49	40
Morning Consult	8-24	National	52	42
Morning Consult	8-24	North Carolina	49	46
Public Policy Polling	8-24	Texas	48	47
Trafalgar Group	8-24	Louisiana	37	54
YouGov	8-24	National	50	39
TargetSmart	8-24	Ohio	47	46
YouGov	8-23	National	52	42
Morning Consult	8-22	National	52	43
Morning Consult	8-22	National	51	43
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-22	National	49	39
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-21	Pennsylvania	48	41
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-21	Florida	49	41
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-21	North Carolina	44	46
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-21	Michigan	50	38
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-21	Wisconsin	49	39
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-21	Arizona	47	38
Harris Insights & Analytics	8-21	National	46	38
Civiqs	8-21	Wisconsin	51	45
Civiqs	8-21	Pennsylvania	51	44
Civiqs	8-21	Michigan	49	46
Civiqs	8-21	Ohio	47	47
DKC Analytics	8-21	New Jersey	52	33
Saint Anselm College	8-20	New Hampshire	51	43
Muhlenberg College	8-20	Pennsylvania	49	45
Global Strategy Group	8-20	Texas	47	45
Echelon Insights	8-20	National	51	38
Echelon Insights	8-20	National	53	39
Data for Progress	8-20	National	50	41
Morning Consult	8-20	National	47	36
Morning Consult	8-20	National	49	39
Trafalgar Group	8-19	Minnesota	46	46
Ipsos	8-19	National	48	40
Ipsos	8-19	National	45	36
ALG Research	8-19	Louisiana	43	50
Rasmussen Reports	8-19	National	48	44
YouGov	8-19	National	50	40
Harris Insights & Analytics	8-18	National	45	39
OnMessage Inc.	8-18	Wisconsin	47	47
OnMessage Inc.	8-18	Florida	49	49
OnMessage Inc.	8-18	Pennsylvania	50	46
OnMessage Inc.	8-18	Arizona	48	51
GQR Research (GQRR)	8-18	Michigan	52	43
Léger	8-17	National	51	35
Morning Consult	8-17	National	50	43
Morning Consult	8-17	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-17	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-17	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-17	National	51	43
Morning Consult	8-17	National	51	42
Morning Consult	8-17	National	51	42
Morning Consult	8-17	Wisconsin	49	43
Redfield & Wilton Strategies	8-17	National	48	40
Landmark Communications	8-17	Georgia	44	47
YouGov	8-17	National	49	38
YouGov	8-17	National	50	41
YouGov	8-17	Texas	40	47
ABC News	8-17	National	54	44
ABC News	8-17	National	53	41
ABC News	8-17	National	53	41
SSRS	8-16	National	50	46
YouGov	8-16	National	52	42
East Carolina University	8-16	North Carolina	46	46
NBC News	8-16	National	50	41

Election Predictions

Prognosticators

Prognosticators are folks who make projected electoral maps, often on the strength of educated guesses as well as inside information in some cases from campaigns sharing internals with the teams involved. Below are a few of these prognosticators and their assessment of the state of the race:

Cook Political Reports - Charlie Cook's race ratings are well regarded in the political field, and he's been in the business for a while. Cook is known to incorporate both public and nonpublic (ie. internal polling) information in his projections. Also covers (and is perhaps better known for) Senate and House races.
Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball - Larry Sabato has also been in the political prediction business for a while now, and the team at the UVA Center for Politics has been fairly successful in past cycles. Towards the end of the election cycle, Sabato has a policy of making a call in each state, refusing to leave any race in the tossup category. Also covers Senate and House races.
Inside Elections - Inside Elections, run by Nathan Gonzales, is the successor to Stu Rothenberg's Rothenberg Political Reports, which used to be a part of Roll Call. This prognosticator did fairly well in 2018, though Rothenberg himself boldly (along with some other pundits) predicted in 2016 that Donald Trump's path to the presidency was nonexistent. Also covers Senate, House and Gubernatorial races.
Daily Kos Elections - Daily Kos Elections is the direct successor to the Swing State Project website, which merged with Daily Kos in 2010. Despite the liberal lean of the site as a whole, the Daily Kos Elections predictions tend to be fairly even-handed, if not even slightly bearish for Democrats. Presidential numbers aren't up yet but they have Senate, House and Gubernatorial races.
RRH Elections - Red Racing Horses Elections is a site founded by former conservative-leaning members of the Swing State Project community. Despite the conservative nature of the commentary, like DKE, the race predictions tend to be fairly neutral, if slightly bearish for Republicans. Like the Crystal Ball, RRH will call all races before the election so that none are left in the tossup category. The presidential rankings have not been published but they do cover Senate, House, Gubernatorial and Row Officer (statewide elected officials, such as state Attorney General, Secretary of State etc.) races.
Media predictions - CNN | U.S. News | NPR | POLITICO

Polling Models

Polling models are similar to prognosticators (and often the model authors will act like pundits as well), but tend to be about making "educated guesses" on the state of the election. Generally, the models are structured to take in data such as polls and electoral fundamentals, and make a guess based on research on prior elections as to the state of the race in each state. Below are a few of the more prominent models that are online or expected to be online soon:

FiveThirtyEight - after months of work, the model is live! 538's team of analysts have put together a beast of a forecast for 2020. It runs 40,000 simulations of the election and uses that data to come up with a projected winner out of 100 sampled outcomes. It also breaks down the projection to show potential electoral college results, popular vote share, tipping point state likelihood, and it can even be broken down into state-level analytics.
Princeton Election Consortium - this is the model run by Dr. Sam Wang, a neuroscience professor at Princeton University. This model has run in the past two cycles as well, though Sam Wang famously said he'd eat a bug if Donald Trump won the election because his model predicted no path to victory for the eventual winner of the 2016 election. Also includes projections for Senate and House.
JHK Forecasts - the earliest model on the scene this cycle. Jack Kersting's model is one of the newer ones this year and also includes projections for Senate and House.
The Economist - this is the model run by G. Elliott Morris, who previously had a midterm election model under The Crosstab.
Niskanen Center - Rachel Bitecofer's projection, which only seems to update a couple times a cycle. Part of this has to do with Bitecofer's central argument that there are generally no swing voters, and electoral fundamentals drive the outcome of the election. This was put to the test in the 2018 midterms, where Bitecofer very early on predicted a Democratic pickup of 40-45 seats in the House, which fell about where the election ended up.
Lean Tossup - a foreign model from Canada. This model did relatively well in the 2019 Canadian election, but this appears to be the first time they've tried forecasting the US Presidential election. Also includes Senate and House projections.
Primary Model - Helmut Norpoth's model does not actually change with inputs anymore. The outcome it predicts, stated as a 91% chance for President Trump to win reelection, is premised entirely on the primary vote totals in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries from earlier this year. Despite being a bit of an outlier against other models, this one was among the only to forecast that then-candidate Donald Trump was a favorite to win election in 2016, and has been applied to correctly predict the winner of 5 of the past 6 presidential elections.

Prediction Markets

Prediction markets are betting markets where people put money on the line to estimate the likelihood of one party winning a seat or state. Most of these markets will also tend to move depending on polling and other socioeconomic factors in the same way that prognosticators and models will work. Predictit and Election Betting Odds are prominent in this space, although RealClearPolitics has an aggregate of other betting sites as well.

The REAL Greatest Short Burn of the Century

Disclaimer from Quora: A true short squeeze is a fairly rare event. There are probably 100 predicted for every 1 that occurs.*
There needs to be an unexpected positive event. This could be a huge earnings surprise, a takeover offer, new patent, drug approval, etc.
Unscrupulous stock promoters (PUMPERS) often dangle a potential short squeeze as a carrot to entice inexperienced investors to buy a bad stock. For instance, you will find predictions of a “massive short squeeze” on virtually every message board for every penny biotech stock. If you point out that there is insufficient short interest for a squeeze, the promoters just add lies about “naked short selling”.*

There, nobody sue me for the pennies I have. The following is all for entertainment purposes only:
The intro:
Sup gamblers. Feel bad about missing the gain train on TSLA? Fear not - something much greater and stupider is here.
You know Citadel? The MM that took all our money today? Well now we finally won’t be at the mercy of the MMs. Instead, we’re going to temporarily join forces with the Galactic Empire and hijack the death star.
Our choice of weapon... $GME.
The setup:
Huh?? Isn’t GME an absolute piece of trash stock? NO (will explain below), and even if it is, it's not entirely relevant. The this turn around is going to make TSLA's short burn look like warm afternoon tea.
Why? Well, most short squeezes are mostly math. This one is special because we have math AND great underlying news.
To be clear, this will happen whether or not we participate. I prefer us idiots to be a part of history. Here’s what’s up:
Short interest:
GME currently has between 85% - 99.8% short interest, depending on what site you use. For context, 20% is already considered high as the moon. TSLA and NFLX were around 30-40% at their peak. But GME’S ACTUAL SHORT INTEREST IS OVER 110%. In case you think I’ve gone nuts, look below:

Shares Outstanding (June 2) = 64.8M

Insider Shares (June 30) = 8.9M

Total = Public Float = SO - IS = 55.8 M

Ryan Cohen Shares (8/31) = 6.2M

Total = Adjusted Public Float - Ryan Cohen = 49.6M

Shares Shorted (9/2) = 55.7M

% Shorted (Total Shares) = 86%
% Shorted (Float) = 99.8%
% Shorted (Adj. Float) = 112.3%

This is unheard of. Also, the short interest ratio/days to cover is 16 DAYS right now. Shorts are beyond trapped in their position. And the insiders? They won’t sell. In fact.. they’ve been BUYING.
Fine, what if the shorts are correct? They’ve been printing for 5 years. Ok fellow gamblers, here’s where the real DD comes in. The reversal:
3 big things will cause this reversal. Ryan Cohen, retail option buying, and Kenny G (Citadel) himself.
Who’s Ryan Cohen?
Ryan Cohen sold Chewy in 2017 for $3.3 billion. He poured most of his money into Apple and Wells Fargo, saying he hates diversification and only goes all in into things he has high conviction in. Cohen is a Buffet-like investor. He is the largest individual owner of AAPL, and has sat on his hands doing nothing for 3 years.
Until last week… he went long on $GME.
Who cares right? He’s just another gambler like us willing to lose money. Not in this case… RC is special due to his expertise in e-commerce. He understands how a smaller company can compete against Amazon and Walmart despite heavy competition. THAT, combined with his hatred against diworsification makes his interest in GME a bit special.
RC can spin this into an e-commerce/tech company, which would make Wall Street drool from their mouths. He’s already caught the attention of a few people, hence the recent 75% run up since the RC announcement.
RC only needs to disclose his investments every 10 days. If he’s been buying since 8/31, we won’t know until this week.
Add to that, the original contrarian Michael Burry found that 90% of stores were free cash flow positive before COVID. GME’s balance sheet is healthy with $100M in net cash (around $500M cash and $400M debt), so they aren’t going bankrupt anytime soon. They also added 2 more activist investors, Kurtis Wolf and Paul Evans, who were nominated by Hestia Capital Partners and Permit Capital Enterprise Fund, to turn the ship around.
All this meaning, prominent figures have sKiN iN tHe gAmE, and if needed (unlikely) they have more cash to see it through.
Second and third, degenerate gambling retail robinhooders + CITADEL. Told you we’re going to work with him this time.
Thanks to MMs literally not using their brain and relying on ze maths to configure their entire business, we can take advantage of them sleeping at the wheel for a few seconds, and cause them to ram into GME for us.
It looks like this: RH Call Option buying -> MM Delta hedging/share purchase -> short squeezing -> Greater retail/RHers price action chasing/call option buying -> MM Delta hedging/share purchase -> short squeezing -> Institutional and new channels flip the script -> GME to $400+ -> cash out.
By the way. This is NOT a pump and dump. This is a kick in the shorts’ teeth. The stock will STAY HIGH.
For reference: if $GME was trading at the same P/S multiple as $CHWY, the share price would be $420.
Maths:
On being delta neutral - quick refresher from a WSB classic:

“Part of the reason we see outsized moves is when a stock starts moving the dealers who are short the calls need to buy more stock to hedge. This can easily double the amount of buying pressure out there and lead to very exaggerated moves.
As the stock goes up, so does the delta of the stocks calls and dealers who were originally perfectly delta hedged before the move effectively become short the stock as it moves higher so they need to buy more stock to “hedge up” or flatten their exposure/risk."

Remember, since GME is literally 99.8% of float short (ignoring RC’s shares for now) they currently HAVE LESS THAN 50,000 SHARES IN LIQUIDITY.
https://iborrowdesk.com/report/GME
As of writing this, delta on average is around 0.200, give or take. Higher for near dated (0.395) lower for long dated (0.195). Let’s be conservative and call it 0.2 for the time being. So now, for every call option I buy, MMs need to delta hedge with 20 shares.
Here’s where it gets insane:
If $100,000 in calls are bought from RH, Citadel is forced to buy the remaining 50,000 shares. I’m using 10/16 $15C for this example. This is an insanely small amount of money, especially with Ryan Cohen, retail idiots, and the rest of the SeekingAlpha vultures waiting for this play. It’s a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.
Let’s say Burry wakes up and decides to drop $600,000 in call options. This is going to force Kenny to delta hedge 300,000 in GME shares. When there are only under 50,000 shares available in PUBLIC FLOAT. This has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE IN HISTORY. In an accidental squeeze (KBIO, VW), the shorts can’t buy back and get priced out momentarily. Pump and dump. Not what's happening here.
In a contrarian bet leading to a squeeze, shorts bail their positions and the stock STAYS HIGH (TSLA, PTON). The stock is no longer being artificially suppressed, and the shorts are NOT going short again.
To tell you the truth, I don’t even know how far this is going to blow up, since there is literally no historical precedent for this. I just know things are about to get very very insane.
Now also add in the fact that GME is at a 5 year low, which means shorts can be largely satisfied with their gains, and are comfortable covering their shorts. Which, as a reminder, they have to BUY back.
-Cut to Ryan Gosling toppling the Jenga pieces-
The timing:
Alright, if you’ve read up to now, I can assume you’re in. IV is off the charts right now. That’s what happens when a stonk goes up 75% in a week. Sorry, but the Ryan Cohen news is actually big news.
PRE-EARNINGS BET
There’s no idea how the call will go. So place your bets if you think it will go well. If $GME absolutely misses the mark, this DD is worthless. BTW GME flopped the last 2 earnings - that's why there have been no big gains. Proceed at your own risk.
Few things I’m betting on:
First, GME beats earnings. All gaming companies, Nintendo, Sony, ATVI beat due to COVID lockdowns. Same store sales should be flat or up, with 300 less total stores. $GME is expected to post a loss of 1.27 EPS. That's way too low.
Second, activist investor activity. Cohen is sharp as a knife and will make sure things get aligned correctly. He's more financially oriented than most foundeCEOs. He can probably recite CHWY's balance sheet to you off the top of his head, and he understands the investing environment (bad IPOs, interest rates, SPACs). Meaning, he's not a gung ho YOLO Masayoshi / Grant Cardone coked out founder. He's disciplined. Yea I did some stalking... Well you know I had to.
Third, positive news cycle due to Console Cycle: http://charts.stocktwits.com/production/original_240233258.jpg
If you’re wondering why fund managers aren’t covering and going long, remember that they have a JOB. They can’t make contrarian bets at the risk of looking idiotic. Cohen and Burry can because they own their own money.
They can talk about how $GME is going to be Blockbustered. Only one problem - GME’s Netflix… is GME itself. By the way, VW was also heavily shorted during a recession because everyone thought they would be bankrupt. Jus sayin.
AFTER EARNINGS
If GME rockets after earnings, the short squeeze has started and we can pile on weekly 10-20% OTM options to force KG to delta hedge by buying shares, ad infinitum: see $TSLA.
If GME tanks, buy cheap options in anticipation of the short burn.
The trade:
In order to capture the biggest upside, the highest strike call option is best. Remember when TSLA was going up so fast they didn't even have existing options to match the parabolic gains? Same will happen here. We only have $30Cs now, so these will have to do.
15 Jan 2021 $30.00 C.
Also, since we don’t know when GME will skyrocket, this gives you time to capture any squeeze that happens.
16 Oct $15.00 C.
This lets you capture more asymmetric upside in case the squeeze happens quickly.
LAST, and timing is crucial here. ONLY WHEN I get the confirmed signal that the squeeze is happening, I will pound weeklies 10-20% above strike price. Again forcing Kenny to hedge with shares, causing shorts to cover and BUY back, increasing the delta of the call, getting retail and institutional attention, buying more calls/shares, delta hedge, shorts cover, ad infinitum.
The weeklies have the highest delta, so Citadel will be forced to hedge the most by buying shares. In other words, we’ll get the biggest bang for our buck in squeezing these.
There is a chance Citadel/MMs switches to buying puts to delta hedge. Like I said, they’re asleep at the wheel for a second, retail will likely ram before they change their algos.
However, once the squeeze takes off, not even Citadel will be able to stop it. In any case, if they do start to buy puts, we can sell the puts as a bonus.
Like dlkdev once said, the only way to beat a rigged game is to rig it even harder.
This is not fraud. There is no manipulation here. We aren’t forcing anyone to do anything. It’s going to happen with or without us. But I want to ride.
Earnings will light the match, but we can add all sorts of gasoline to the fire.
I stole some data/ideas from a couple of different articles on Seeking Alpha/reddit/google/youtube. I’m not claiming credit for this trade, I don’t really care. In fact, I beg you to completely ignore me. I even dare you to short GME. I’ll happily take your money.
TL;DR: $GME is vastly oversold.
GME is TSLA one year ago. GME is AAPL in 2017. Add to that the greatest short burn you’ll see in history, and you’re in for a hell of a show.
Also GME is uncorrelated with the market. It might even be negatively correlated (it was today). It's only worth $500M (3 Bel-Air houses) and fund managers are happy to cut a high risk/low return position. Let your cognitive biases run free.
Ryan Cohen & Michael Burry if you see this - you better buy as much as you can now. When GME gets to fair value of $26B+, you won't be able to take over the company and kick out the backwards exec team. Good luck.
**Edit1: $GME missed and tanked. Not much Cohen can do in 1 week. IV is dead and liquidity is still dry. Get cheap calls while you still can. PLAY IS STILL ON.

Save us Gabe, you're our only hope {Seriously though, this is bad]

You know that company, the one that everyone hates? The one that makes people depressed, the that makes them angry? The one that makes them feel like everyone else in the world is okay and they're the one that's broken and a failure? The one that has every political scandal from interference with elections to negligence over a genocide? The most powerful and invasive ad generation machine ever devised? Well they're about to own VR.
The title is both a joke and not one. Reading dev twitter is horrifying. From Anton to the head of BigScreen, devs are clear about two things. Facebook screws us, they screw Devs, and they have a fucking evil plan for VR; but there's no stopping them. As Anton said. "there is no second party in VR that cares as much as them," to the end. To be clear, Valve has done a lot for VR and I think it would be much smaller and a lot worse without them. Not just steam but making the Vive and inventing room scale. If you don't know, Oculus originally was partnered with Valve, but Valve didn't buy them, then Facebook secretly bought them and ripped them away from Valve who was literally sharing hardware and software with them freely. Not just that but Micheal Abrash worked at Valve and shut down their entire AR division, firing everyone, then jumped ship and became an exec at facebook. Valve has been in this for years.
The problem is that for all their work, the stakes are now higher, not lower. Facebook is making a platform and capturing the whole medium. The point of this move was to remove a key thorn in their plans, and make a clear statement. They need to be able to do what they want freely in VR and they just went for the nuclear option and are killing whatever identity Oculus had. Soon you will need a facebook account to turn your VR headset from a paperweight into a useable device. And when Facebook is how games have avatars, multiplayer, every little feature or function, then crossplay breaks down. I've already talked to Devs who are making facebook only games since they need access to things that are only in the Oculus API. What happens when games are just rooms in Horizon? Horizon is a social platform clearly channeling The Oasis, something more ironic than I can convey right now. Facebook clearly thinks that by doing this now, before their big conference, they can get all the anger out now and trade their current customers for brand new ones who don't realize what has changed or don't care. They think the Quest will sell 100 million units and everyone in their way will be crushed like a bug. They care more than everyone else because they're coming for every drop of blood.
A company for which users are the product, not the customer, should not be in VR. Just flat out, VR is the creation of entire worlds, entire realities, and it's a big deal as we've all been telling ourselves. And that means the flaws and ambitions of the companies involved are magnified a lot. This is a clever company too. Their "big privacy initiative" a few years back told people that they would be able to hide anything they want from their friends.... but not from facebook. Your friends aren't the point of facebook, they're just the carrot that make you hand over your data, which is then handed to advertisers.
I'm not going to get into all the details of facebook but you can watch the john oliver piece about it for some of the details (including a genocide that facebook actively made worse). He doesn't even get into all of it. A few things he doesn't mention: Facebook's primary product accounting for 90% or more of their revenue is ads. Ads aren't a big seller usually so they actually are a pioneering targeted ad company. Now that may sound normal at first but you need to think about how it actually works. Ad buyers on facebook at one point could sell ads to a category called "jew hater," that's how automated and insane their system is. Another thing Oliver doesn't mention is the Facebook Free Basic program. This was a program that would have set up facebook satellites and service in India. But the catch was that you could only use facebook's systems and everything was financially and technically steered towards their services top to bottom. To India this was an outrage, basically swooping in and colonizing their digital life. India's parliament voted it down and the facebook VP in the country said "India has gone with anti imperialism, clearly that has worked so well for them for the last 60 years." Facebook experimented on teenagers manipulating their moods through their feeds (to the point of depression) without consent, the study showing it absolutely had an effect, and it's entirely possible teens could have actively self harmed as a result. Facebook told people that if they wanted to make sure their nudes couldn't be posted on facebook, they should send their nudes to facebook to feed into the automated system. The list goes on and on.
A lot of people don't think about the full implications of this. Your oculus account won't just require a facebook account, it will be one. In the sense that when you're in VR, what you do will be no less subject to facebook's scrutiny than on their site. On Horizon? Everything you do or say is fair game, what rooms you hang out in, who you talk to. On a third party app? You're still using their (depth aware) api and runtimes so they have access and since Facebook for flatscreen follows you after you leave the site it's far from unreasonable to think some fraction of their invasive behavior there will carry over. It's really hard to protect your data from them, even if you just have a burner account. Facebook even has "shadow profiles," which are profiles for people who don't even have accounts with the site, with their photo info, friends and family, and personal info. They were secret but they leaked years back.
This whole situation made me want to throw up. There is no feeling of "I told you so" satisfaction when you see Devs openly afraid online. When people who worked for Mozilla on VR are saying "If Facebook is going to be the only platform for VR, I am actively opposed to it, I have an ethical imperative." (Mozilla was working on something called "WebXR," which was supposed to be a way to spread and use VR content like using the web, totally free and open. Well the pandemic has hit them so hard that they had to close their entire VR division and now all their work basically belongs to facebook). When some outspoken devs are saying "they knew that devs are on the brink of bankruptcy in this pandemic and can't afford to walk away from Oculus." This is real, this is the actual reality that facebook is betting you'd rather put on a headset and run away from into their garden rather than face.
The real question I have right now is whether tech and especially VR journalism will actually wake up. Interview devs who are getting screwed by facebook, report on these problems, mention in every article about the quest that you have to have a facebook account, and stop giving their free marketing just because it gets clicks. And when facebook has a scandal, you avoided reporting on it before because it was facebook, not oculus, but now oculus doesn't exist so you need to be reporting on the company that wants to build whole realities and control this industry.
So what should Valve do? Something. This is new ground for them I'm sure, and it's such a complicated company that they could be fighting over this inside and we don't know. But the fact is that Valve is the largest and most serious player in this space after Facebook but people have so little faith that they care enough to fight facebook that after reading hundreds of threads by devs on all this, not a single one even mentions Valve. Maybe they can hire a bunch of VR studios to add open source functionalities to SteamVR like a WebXR browser, they could make systems like avatars and other services for free to give devs with few resources a way to compete, maybe they can make deals with content suppliers like big screen so they can sell their movie tickets without anyone taking a cut, maybe they can host webXR content really cheaply so Facebook loses people to WebXR as a platform. I really hope they're working with multiple manufacturers to make an "android" system of standalones to compete with facebook's "iOS." They have a small staff but a large warchest and a lot of attention.
Maybe Valve can't or doesn't want to do anything, and we have to hope for some traditional company to fight with facebook, the problem is that it took a decade for Epic to take on Apple, and we need something to happen now.
https://twitter.com/bai0/status/1295806708019687424
https://twitter.com/DShankastatus/1295825809496629248

Group D games/ Group Draw lck reactions

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #5: Round 2 Match 9 - Anthony “Ani” Oakley Versus Ostro Crudo

The results are in for Match 7. The winner is…
Cabernet “Cab” Sauvignon, with a score of 71 to Admiral Pineapples’ 69!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Masters of the Funky Action	14-16	MFAs took an early popularity lead, but it was closed to the gap of one vote by the conclusion.
Quality	Black Hill Estate	23-22	Reasoning
JoJolity	Black Hill Estate	24-21	Reasoning
Conduct	TEAM	10-10

Obviously, Cab hadn’t been actively antagonizing Pineapples - hell, by his high standards for company, he wasn’t a bad guy - but as he burst out of the Stand-jar ahead of him, even exhausted from fight after fight against the monstrosities inside that thing, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment as he burst from it. He was battered, singed, slightly intoxicated, and smelling like a Champagne vineyard, but he was fully prepared to pound Remix and Jack into the dirt for this indignity, and in fact, one of the two had been right there in front of him as he emerged, returning to his true, full size.
“Y-you..!” Remix stumbled forward, frail frame thrown off by the sudden emergence of an entire body from the urn in his pocket, even moreso as, shortly after, two other older men did the same, each holding back as ‘Red Red Wine’ held the urn aloft in one hand.
“Remix… What a joke you are, nothing under all your masks and disguises. But you know, there’s a part of myself I’ve tried to move on past, forget about too, you know…” Cab narrowed his eyes, contemptful of the scum before him, as the urn, rapidly imbued with ‘Wine,’ began to ignite. “I used to be a real hellraiser too, kid.”
His Stand, then, tossed the flaming jar straight at Remix’s head, and they barely reacted in time to catch it with God Shattering Star’s speed, wincing clearly at the pain and heat. Moreover, as Cab noted, the sight of the flaming urn flying towards him seemed to enrage Remix even further, the other hand flailing wildly.
“What’s the matter, can’t hold your ‘Wine?’ Then I guess I have to be responsible… and cut you off!”
Cab had planned on the fly to overwhelm Remix before he had a chance to set anything up, beginning to wail on him and imbue more of their surroundings with his Stand’s flaming material, taking a punch-rush advantage in the process, but a voice threw him out of that.
“Cabernet, man, your nine-o-clock!”
Pineapples had warned him just in time to see what looked like a fish-person, clad in a suit, rapidly swimming through the air towards him, brandishing an overly-long knife, and as he moved to deflect with his Stand, he felt his arm cut nearly to the bone and swore, doubling back through some suppressing fire from the Starlight Brigade. The new attacker was able to rapidly pull Remix away from this, however.
“NNghh… Nghh..!” Remix stood through his pain, his Stand shattering the Urn against a wall in a rage and smothering its flames, looking to his savior. “Took you long enough to step in! You can be anywhere in this city you want, so how could you be so damnably sluggish?!”
“ＤＯＮ＇ＴＰＵＳＨＹＯＵＲＬＵＣＫ．”
“That voice…” Pineapples was incredulous, then. “You’re… The Jo’s Sushi woman, aren’t you? What the hell are you doing here?”
Kimijo Kaneko was quieter then, before answering, “done with this city… Done with ‘Gravity.’ Going to make it pay, and then be free.”
“You…” Cab winced, clutching his arm. “Are you mad?! I’d read about the sort of things you’ve done, but associating with people like these two, is-”
“These ‘two?’”
That was all the warning, then, that Cab received before, barely grazing him as he dodged, another figure emerged from behind, sending a flying kick his way before rolling beside Jo, both of them striking a pose as Remix regained his composure, but was still too seething to join the fun. The new figure, framed by flames and blood, appeared avian in nature, with a beak, plasticy-looking armor, a Roman helmet of sorts, and thick-rimmed goggles, all the color red.
“No, it’s not just Jack, or Remix, or Jo or her wife, but the Crimson Courage of this city, here to wrench some away from its wretched fate!”
Pineapples, then, spied several other figures approaching, trenchcoat-wearing figures who appeared and disappeared through corners in halls, all while in the distance a brown-haired man watched, observing the scene curiously. As well, Pineapples took in for the first time the environment in which they had emerged. They were outside the entrance hall of a certain building on downtown’s Central Island, a place he had seen while campaigning!
“Los Fortuna’s Natural History Museum..? What are you-?”
Pineapples didn’t have much time to question, however, as the various fighters made a calculated ‘retreat’ out of direct combat, hurrying to secure the building’s many exits in case either Cabernet or Pineapples attempted a rush into the building for one reason or another. So they’re fortifying this place… I can hear sirens approaching. So they mean to have a siege here?
More concerning than the assortment of villains in the area, or an incoming police presence, a quick glance upwards made for a much stranger sight. Dark clouds were concentrated over the area, threatening to let loose a storm at any moment, but still holding for the moment. Through the shadows cast were dozens, perhaps hundreds of shapeless humanoid forms barely able to be focused on. There was nothing to confirm the suspicion, but a gut feeling identified the sight quickly. Ghosts.
“Hahahh… Ghhahahahahahahahah hah!” Remix, clutching himself, spit forth an ugly laugh, taking one of them into himself to bolster his strength as he declared, “yes, spirits, come! Come to heel before your master, and fight gratefully! Fight gratefully for the fact that we’ll deign to reward you in your next life!”
Pineapples knew that this was ugly, that even with his fleet, this situation had just gone from uneven to a potential bloodbath. They needed to get to safety, and fast, but to do so might be…
“Barret,” he declared, “I know you’re still watching, man. I’m in the best fighting shape here, so get Cab away!”
“I don’t normally do pro-bono work,” Barret admitted, leaning against the entrance of the building and dodging a scythe as it came for his head, embedding in the wall, “but what the hell? I’ll send you the bill.”
“What?!” Cab, almost offended, lurched forward, having to dodge a sweeping kick from the red bird and whiffing an attack with his Stand, feeling delirious now from blood loss but fighting for his ego anyway. “Don’t pull this hero stuff right now! I just saw you mourning a piece of your Stand, so don’t be a hypocrite and waste your-”
“You think something like this can sink me?” Folding his arms, Pineapples laughed a hearty laugh. “I’ll be better at cutting a path for myself without you holding me back! So leave now, so I can help fulfill the promise my crew made to Professor Tiffany!”
“You…” Cab grit his teeth. The old man would be stubborn, and thinking for a second, he knew he genuinely would only be holding him back like this. He would have to repeat his feat from before and escape first. “Damned showoffy old man…”
He turned away, then, beginning to book it, seeing a blinding flash and several fascimiles of himself, Pineapples, and the old lawyer filling the halls as he ran by, distracting all who tried to stop them as the pair ran out to the sounds of battle behind them.
Cab blacked out as he stepped into the sunlight, seeing VALKYRIE guards, led by a man who looked like a human cinderblock, rushing towards him and the attorney, as well as a reassuring-looking man who seemed to be directing paramedics personally.
“It’s alright, you’re safe now,” the low, reassuring voice told him as he let himself fall asleep, “my name is Raymond… I’m going to patch you up now, alright? Hang in there.” He called out, then, loudly, “Cavallo, we have survivors coming out of the building!”
And like that, after a record-long holdout, there is no longer a single team with all eight players remaining. Who knows when the last holdout for being even seven members strong will be next? If you’re the type for betting, or not, take time to see a roulette wheel match where an improving vigilante and an Agnes must fight off a tortured killer and a cat in human form.
Narration:
The Dream Theater is an art studio and living space for one of Midnight Sun’s most strangely inconspicuous employees, known only as ‘Tapir’. The studio itself lives up to its name, filled with trance inducing imagery that can make people feel like they are in a vivid dream. It’s rare and seldom advertised when the studio is open to the public, and even rarer is for ‘Tapir’ to receive guests into the theater.
Hotel Delmano - North Island, Downtown Los Fortuna - Shortly before all the bullshit happening in the district hit critical mass
Ostro Crudo and Peter Bequasimodo looked on at the computer screen while Peter typed. Ostro had asked for Peter’s help with a question he had, regarding Midnight Sun University.
“Did you want me to look all the way into Aaron too?” Peter asked,the screen scrolled across Midnight Sun’s faculty members.
“No that will not be necessary,” after Aaron and Funk worked together, it would be rude to snoop on him. “We are only looking for anybody else that you might think is a Stand user, the more recent the better.” Ostro continued.
“You think they’re going around hiring Stand users or something?” Peter asked, he rapidly double clicked the profile images as they scrolled by. “Some kinda hiring bias… ‘Institutions is the same,’ to paraphrase the landlord comedian.”
“Just a hunch, maybe a wrong one. They have a whole field dedicated to Parapsychological Research and a student population of Stand users from what Cy saw. Would not be surprised, then, if these observations and many breaks they get amounted to ‘preferential treatment.’” Ostro glanced out of the corner of his eye at an androgynous face on one of the profiles, “Hey, scroll back a bit.”
Peter does so, he couldn’t help but feel he was being undersold for his abilities but whatever helped, “That one?” Peter scrolled and clicked on a profile, “Somebody called ‘Tapir’… they got some pseudonym, huh? Makes me think of certain pieces of internet lore about a sand seller and a proboscis monkey that- eh, I can see I’ve lost you.” Peter scrolled through their bio as he and Ostro looked.
“Age: 44, Gender: Undisclosed, Role: Head Researcher on… O-neigh-rology? Uh, don’t know that word, lemme just…” Peter copy pasted that last word into Google.

Oneirology: “The scientific study of dreams”

Peter squinted, “Starting to maybe think they’re just one of the normal faculty members? Even their parapsyche guys look into things that aren’t Stands sometimes, apparently…”
Ostro wasn’t convinced just yet. Some gut feeling, some instinct, told him to dig deeper… And sure, that was the same instinct that put him in the hospital recently, but was that not sign enough that it was a good barometer for trouble to sniff out? “See who else works in that field over there.”
Peter searched the page, and only one result came back up. “Nobody else, closest thing is the school’s huge Sharkboy and Lavagirl fanclub. Ok, yeah, if that’s their only dreams guy, that is a bit weird. What made you want to look at this person in particular though?”
Ostro looked on, “You know, I really could not tell you. It is just… It is hard to articulate, but it is like this person is familiar somehow.”
Peter sighed and closed the laptop, “Look, as much as I’d love to help you explore your hunch, I think we have other important things to also be looking at, like how that Jack Aurel guy is apparently about to Berlin Rosso Capital Island. I’m 100 percent down with investigating that thing on the student body and faculty being weird, but we’ll need more to work off.” The hacktivist rubbed at his neck. “Look, uh, I know the last time someone went out doing Midnight Sun recon for me, they got put in the hospital, but it seems like they keep a lot of stuff pen-and-paper just to keep guys like me out. So if you really wanna figure this out…”
Ostro nodded, “Thanks for the help, and do not worry; this is my hunch, after all. I’ll go look into things myself for now.”
Midnight Sun University Town - Psychological and Cognitive Research Center
Keith and Ani wandered about the campus, Keith wanted to have some bit of leisure time for the both of them and when he was last here looking for information on their new pet he had happened across a flyer for something called the “Dream Theater Exhibit”. While the name wasn’t specific on the details, Keith had elected to take Ani with him to help them both take some much needed time for themselves. Ani didn’t have too much else to do and agreed, thinking that it would be a nice time to talk more with Keith at least.
Keith compared the flyer in his hand to the campus map in front of him, “It should be around here somewhere... Maybe if we double back around we should find it.”
Ani looked over Keith’s shoulder at the flyer at and then back toward the rows of buildings. “Yeah, I think I saw it tucked away between there.” Ani pointed to two of the larger facilities.
Keith squinted and took a look, and they both started to make their way over.
“So… what do you think’s really in there?” Ani asked, turning to Keith.
“Well, since it’s called the ‘Dream Theater Exhibit’... I’d bet it’s related to dreams.” Keith said with a shrug.
“I know that! But what would a ‘Dream Theater’ even be?”
“Hmm… Knowing this place, probably some kind of stand.” Ani didn’t respond to what Keith said, simply thinking about what sort of stand might be in this ”Dream Theater”. The thought of the unknown stand both excited him and made him worry slightly.
Making their way between the two larger buildings to either side, Keith and Ani could see a decently sized two story studio.
“You’re… Keith Moon, right?”
The pair paused, then, confused about the sudden interruption, only to be met by the approach of two figures in aviator hats, one middle-aged looking, clad in a shabby yellow business suit, and wearing glasses, the other looking like an orange, goggle-clad, artsy-looking teenager. The elder, then, spoke again.
“Pardon the interruption…” He said, “but, I’m Theodore Lloyd. I just wanted to talk about some things. I understand you’re quite experienced for your age, on matters… Comparable, to our current conflict.”
“What’s this guy asking about?” Ani asked, confused, tilting his head.
Keith, meanwhile, understood the interruption completely. “You’re asking about the Urban Uprising.”
“You catch on pretty quick… And!” The orange kid said, sounding proud of himself. “We’ve heard that you were also at a certain ‘incident’ at the Institute’s big library… And prone to fortunate misfortunes, no?”
Keith sighed, rubbing at his neck and looking away. “Just my luck, when I’ve been trying to forget about this stuff…” He sighed. Everyone who’d talked to the new head of the College of the Arts had only positive things to say about him. “Yeah, you’re right on all counts there. Some book didn’t go missing or something, did it? If that’s it I pity whoever was there when that librarian found out…”
“It’s confidential,” the yellow-clad thirtysomething said, constantly seeming to glance away from his orange companion, “I have certain security concerns it would be irresponsible of me not to follow up on, so I’d like to talk a bit about what you were doing there that day.”
Keith frowned. He was right in front of their destination, too. He and Ani looked it over, then he noted how important this looked to the professor. “Alright… You go on ahead, Ani.”
“But-!”
“If it’s this pressing, it probably matters more than me being here, and one of us should see Tapir… This is your responsibility, alright?”
Ani, reluctant as he was, nodded, heading off.
With Keith gone, Ani walked on feeling a bit betrayed, looking back at him in the distance getting further away. “He would be back, he told you he’d come back,” Ani tried to psych himself back up mentally as he got closer and closer.
Getting to the door, Ani noticed that a flyer like the one Keith had been holding was taped on it. The door was closed, and it didn’t seem like there was anybody else here yet. Ani gingerly knocked on the door, unsure of what to expect.
“Just a second,” a voice could be heard from inside as the door opened. Ani looked to see a tall androgynous figure in black and white make-up and a glossy black dress looking around then down at him. “Oh my, oh my, hello are you here to see the Dream Theater’s exhibit?”
Ani nodded slowly, slightly apprehensive.
“Are you here alone? You look a bit young to be at a college?”
“Well, you know... I was coming here with a friend of mine, but...”
“They left you here to meet me alone?” The ‘Tapir’ asked, “This wouldn’t be the first time somebody’s done that you know? But I promise, I’m completely harmless.” Their tone tried to reassure him. A short pause later, they spoke up again. “... I was joking, by the way. This would be the first time something like this has happened.” Ani couldn’t tell if Tapir meant for this to be a quick clarification or a joke.
Ani tried to look past them, into the studio, only to see that the paintings there looked to be covered by tarps. “Are you not open yet? It looks liked your exhibits are covered...” Things seemed a bit strange, but there was just the chance that they were only just mildly eccentric.
“Oh, you’re not supposed to see all of them all at the same time, silly~,” Tapir’s tone chastised him, a bit of sing-song in their voice told him that they knew how strange it looked from his perspective. Tapir moved to the edge of the door, and invited Ani inside, “Come on, I can show you what it is if you are really curious.”
“Well, I did come to see the exhibit...” Ani looked back on Keith still in the distance, talking with somebody else. “Alright, let’s go.” Ani tried to put on a brave face as he walked inside.
“Excellent.” Tapir closed the door behind them, “Don’t worry, you’ll see why once I show you the exhibit.”
The studio seemed fairly normal, but Ani’s cautious apprehension never left. He looked around the studio, seeing tarped paintings and a small living space in a room beyond. However, everything seemed to change the moment Tapir took off one of the tarps with a flourish.
A painting of various intensities and shades of black was unveiled, a black fog that seemed to draw him deeper and deeper around the painting.
All of a sudden, Ani felt as though he wasn’t in the same room - he was in a void, a place behind his eyes, and a screen in front of him showed him what his eyes should have been seeing. “You see what I mean now?” Tapir’s voice echoed within his mind, he wasn’t hearing it with his ears, at least it didn’t register as such. “Don’t worry this is just where you go before you start dreaming, just relax and let the dream take you.”
Ani’s dream was strange, or at least the parts that he could remember. Something about Jackie eating the moon, following trails of ants, and walking with the rest of his team.
Tapir had just placed the tarp over the painting, “How long was that?” Ani wondered out loud.
“Only about 12 hours~,” their tone indicated they were joking, but Ani looked around to double check. “Would you believe me if I said around 30 seconds?” Ani found the clock on the wall, it had indeed been not that long.
“The brain is a very complex thing when it comes to processing time, especially in dreams.” Tapir continued, “The basic gist is, things are only as fast as your mind wants you to perceive them.”
Another knock came at the door. Ani lit up, hoping that it was Keith and to tell him what exactly he just experienced. But to his disappointment as Tapir opened the door, Ani saw a dark haired man he didn’t recognize at the doorway.
“Hello, hello,” Tapir invited Ostro, who stood just outside the door.
“Are you Professor Tapir?” Ostro found himself slightly surprised to have to look up a bit to get eye contact.
Tapir nodded, “If there’s something you wanted to know about feel free to ask.”
Ostro stepped inside, “Well first off I wanted to ask, have we met before?” It took awhile to get here, but it was like he knew the path before he got here.
“Hm... maybe in a dream?” Tapir gave a small grin, “I don’t believe I’ve met you in person.”
Ostro and Ani couldn’t tell if Tapir was joking. Even with what Ani had gone through, he found it hard to believe.
“I’ll go get you some tea so we can talk,” Tapir said, before they walked into the other room.
Ostro looked at the tarped paintings as Ani shuffled around looking around the room and occasionally glancing at Ostro.
“Uh..?” Ani piped up as Ostro turned to face him.
“Pardon me, but what is this exhibit exactly?” Ostro asked. Ostro inched closer to the largest painting.
“You probably shouldn’t remove the tarp.” Ani lightly suggested, not wanting to experience what he did before so soon and not wanting to betray Tapir’s implied trust. “They have a weird effect when you look at them.”
Ostro kept looking around the tarp, intrigued now. “Weird in what way?” This Tapir could very well be a Stand user if his hunch was correct.
“Meow?” A cat poked its head out from under the bottom of the tarp.
Before they could react, the tarp fell off the painting as the cat scampered out. Ani moved to catch it but it was too late, the mesmerizing effect of a glossy neon image, dazzling white mixed with blotches of vibrant colors that melded seamlessly, pulled them both in.
Ostro and Ani found themselves where Ani was earlier. The screen of their vision this time flickered in and out, their eyes blinked rapidly involuntarily.
Tapir came in front of their field of view, “Oh no, you weren’t supposed to see that one this early. That one’s the most intense one.”
Ostro tried to summon his stand to help but to no avail. He wanted to speak but his mouth couldn’t move even though he could feel it completely.
“Sorry, but you are going to have to get out of there manually, unless you want to be dreaming for 12 hours. Don’t worry, I’ll send you some help.” Tapir pulled out a strange wooden dog whistle and blew.
Shuffling around Ani and Ostro’s legs could be felt as they looked down and saw a dog sized elephant shrew(?) nudging them.
“One of my spirit animals can guide you through, once you fall into the dreamscape he can show you the way to get out quickly. He’ll also let you have your full range of senses back too.”
The world shifted around them, they found themselves in a room similar to the Dream Theater with muddled details, the elephant shrew was still there.
Ostro pinched himself and winched. He and Ani then tried to summon their respective stands, relieved to find them working properly again.
The shrew stood just out the door as a strangely inhuman voice rang in their head.
OPEN THE GAME!
Location: The dreamscape, a world within your dreams and everybody else’s dreams. Starting off in the Dream Theater in the write up, players have exited the door to find themselves in the first new location.
There will be four locations that you will both go through in order to get out, each of them have a specific exit condition for the players to leave.
The second and fourth locations are impossible terrain fusions of different areas. These areas are effectively checkerboard mixed areas and things can be split down the middle, so you could see half of a building were it to otherwise overlap with the other landscape. Each tile so to speak here is 10 by 10 meters. These maps are pseudorandom where the players can imagine what lies around them within the constraints given by the description.
Similarly any object or place you think you could find in whatever area you may ask if you can find it from the judges, and objects can be taken with you when you move onto the next sequence. Judges may also reserve the right to say how difficult an object may be to find or how long it would take if it is relatively rare or unlikely.
As for the sequences, they will be covered in the additional information section.
Goal: Complete the sequences to get out of the dreamscape before your opponent does!
Additional Information:
Players have all their inventory still on them, including all of Ani’s ants.
All NPCs here can be affected by Ostro’s stand.
Each section of the dreamscape has something you must do in order to leave and potentially some conditions that may be applied to players. The list of dreamscapes and the conditions necessary to leave it is:
First: a busy city strip crowded with people. The entire main streets, Broadway and Seventh Avenue, have people heading left along the map down these streets. The rest of the place is fairly devoid of people. The people here will only walk to the left, but will still react to stimulus and as such can be jolted, pushed, attacked etc. Players start at the left side of the map, where the Pink “7” Circle is. The full map is around 80 by 200 meters.

In order to leave, the players must exit through the end of one of the main streets on the right side of the map.

Second: A melded beach and forest with a person trapped under a tree, a person stuck 20 meters up a tree, a person drowning in a 10 by 10 meter ocean. These three are 30 meters away from where the players first spawn in and are all equidistant to each other. The paths to each are blocked by overgrowth, trees, sand and bodies of water in about equal amounts. There are also 5 one meter long giant ants wandering in a circle separate from each other around 10 meters away from the starting location. These ants can be controlled by Ani without needing to force them into the UFO as long as he or his stand can get to them.

In order to leave, the players must rescue one of the three people here to move on. Getting them to safety or out of their precarious situation alive will count. The people here will generally cooperate with you trying to help them.

Third: A dimly lit long school hallway with 25 doors on either side. The area is 100 meters long and 10 meters wide with each door on either side being 4 meters apart. There are unlocked lockers all along the walls with whatever you might expect from a school locker and 5 security guards patrolling around in circles for each 20 meter area. Security guards have flat 3 physicals, a 2 in Awareness to Disruptions, and a flashlight each. The security guards will move to inspect fast moving shadows and noises but will otherwise continue their routes as normal once their suspicions go down. Security Guards can be stunned/damaged, but will not permanently go down. If they suffer enough damage, they’ll just be asleep for 30 seconds before waking back up. If the security sees one of the giant ants, they will rush over with a can of bug spray to kill them.

In order to leave, the players must open all the doors and look into all of the classrooms, and the last door they open will be the exit to the last section. The security will be patrolling around, and if you get caught and touched by them you will be sent back to the beginning of the hallway, but your progress on the doors won’t reset.

Fourth: A melded fish market and construction site, similar to Ani’s and Ostro’s Round 1 matches. Shadowy Gray or Yellow shaded facsimiles of people you know, people you trust are going to come out and attack you here, each of them only have flat 3 physicals and no other skills. There will be 5 of these facsimiles out at any given time near each player and once one goes down a new one will take its place. Around the map, you can also find some fairly spread out as well, you should be able to find one every 10 or so meters.

In order to leave, the players will have to defeat 20 facsimiles that match their team color, and once that is done they will have made it out of the dreamscape.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
Underground Exodus	Anthony “Ani” Oakley	"There are no children in this amusement park, but I keep hearing a baby crying." While the world seems so surreal, the people here seem so lifeless in a strange way. Interact with the people of this place in as many different ways as you can!
Baker Street Rat Pack	Ostro Crudo	"What a relief. A dead dog isn't scary if it's just a dream." This place is just your imagination, you have to remind yourself of that. Interact with the people of this place in as many different ways as you can!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
As always, if you would like to interact with the tournament community and be among the first to get updates for the tournament, please feel free to PM a member of our Judge staff for an invite to our Official Discord Server!

Save us Gabe, you're our only hope {Seriously though, this is bad]

Solar ETF joins options mania as traders continue to position for the presidential election.

Save us Gabe, you're our only hope {Seriously though, this is bad]

Tartaria: The Supposed Mega-Empire of Inner Eurasia

Introduction

For those not in the know, the Tartaria conspiracy theory is one of the most bizarre pieces of pseudo history out there. Its core notion is that the region known as ‘Tartaria’ or ‘Grand Tartary’ in Early Modern European maps was not simply a vague geographical designate, but in fact a vast, centralised empire. Said empire emerged… at some point, and it disappeared… at some point, but for… some reason, its existence has been covered up to suit… some narrative or another. As you can tell, there’s a lot of diverse ideas here, and the fact that there hasn’t been the equivalent of a Christological schism every time a controversial thread goes up is really quite impressive. While this post will primarily address one particular piece of writing that is at the core of Tartaria conspiracy theorising, I’ll include a few tidbits to show you just how much madness its adherents have come up with. But first, some background.

State of Play, and why I’m doing this

The Tartaria theory has a small but active following on subreddits such as Tartaria, tartarianarchitecture, and CulturalLayer, which as of writing have around 5,300, 2,400 and 23,000 subscribers, respectively, but it’s clear from the 8 questions on the topic asked at AskHistorians since January 2019 and this debunk request from June that it’s a theory that has somewhat broad appeal and can reach beyond its core niche. This is unsurprising given how little education most people in the West receive about basically anything east of Greece: simply put, the reality of Eurasian history is just not something most of us are taught. And if we don’t know the reality of Eurasian history to begin with, or if we do then it's all in bits and pieces where we might not even know a basic set of dates and names, then what seems to be a pretty developed narrative about a lost empire actually turns out rather plausible.
Unfortunately, many debunks of the Tartaria narrative come from people pushing competing conspiracy theories, like this guy claiming that there’s a global ~~Jewish~~ Phoenecian conspiracy and that Tartaria is simply rehashing the notion that Khazars were Jews in order to distract from the real Phoenecian threat at the heart of global society or some nonsense like that. (I don’t really care, I died of laughter after page 3.) Now, there are those coming from serious perspectives, but they focus largely on the problems with Tartaria as a concept rather than addressing the more specific claims being made. This is of course valuable in its own right (shoutout to Kochevnik81 for their responses to the AskHistorians threads), but we can go deeper by really striking at the roots of this ‘theory’ – what is the ‘evidence’ they’re presenting? But to do that, we need to find out what the origins of the ‘theory' are, and thus what its linchpins are. Incidentally, it is because of some recent events regarding those origins that I’ve been finally prompted to write this post.

Where does it come from?

My attempts to find the exact origins of the Tartaria conspiracy have been not entirely fruitful, as the connections I’ve found have been relatively circumstantial at best. But as far as I can tell, it at least partially originates with that Russian pseudohistorian we all know and love, Anatoly Fomenko. Fomenko is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his 7-volume ‘epic’ from 2002, History: Fiction or Science?, but in fact he’s been pushing a complete ‘New Chronology’ since the publication of Novaia khronologia in Russian in 1995. While the New Chronology is best known for its attempt to explain away most of the Middle Ages as a hoax created by the Papacy on the basis of bad astronomy, it also asserts a number of things about Russian history from the Kievan Rus’ to the Romanovs. Key to the Tartaria theory is its claim that there was a vast Slavo-Turkic ‘Russian Horde’ based out of ‘Tartaria’ which dominated Eurasia until the last ‘Horde’ ruler, Boris Godunov, was overthrown by the European Mikhail Romanov. This, of course, is a clear attempt at countering the notion of a ‘Tatar Yoke’ over Russia, as you can’t have a ‘Tatar Yoke’ if the Tatars were Russians all along. Much as I’d like to explain that in more detail here, I don’t have to: in 2004, Konstantin Sheiko at the University of Wollongong wrote an entire PhD thesis looking at the claims of Fomenko’s New Chronology and contextualising them within currents of Russian nationalism, which can be accessed online.
But I personally suspect that if there are Fomenko connections as far as Tartaria specifically is concerned, they are limited. For one, at one stage users on the Tartaria subreddit seemed unfamiliar with Fomenko, and there are those arguing that Fomenko had ‘rewritten’ Tartarian history to be pro-Russian. This is why I said that the evidence was circumstantial. The only other link to Fomenko is indirect: the CulturalLayer sidebar lists the ‘New Chronology Resource Collection’ and the audiobook of History: Fiction or Science? under ‘Essential Resources’, and Tartaria in its ‘Related Subs’.
As far as I can tell, the ultimate origin of its developed form on the Anglophone web traces back to this post on the StolenHistory forums, posted on 17 April 2018. This makes some chronological sense: only one post on CulturalLayer that mentions Tartaria predates this. Moreover, KorbenDallas, the OP of the thread, was also the forum’s chief admin, and given that StolenHistory is still (as of writing) the top resource on CulturalLayer’s sidebar, that suggests significant influence. However, using the search function on camas.reddit.io, it was mentioned at least 9 times before then, with the first mention, on 10 January 2018, mentioning that the ‘theory’ had been doing the rounds on the Russian web for at least 5 years. Nevertheless, as the detail in these early comments is sparse and generally refers only to speculation about maps, it is probably fair to say that the first in-depth English-language formulation of the Tartaria ‘theory’ was thus the April 2018 forum post. Funnily enough, it is not cited often on Tartaria, but that subreddit was created on 27 December, long after discussion had been taking place on places like CulturalLayer, and combined with the ‘mudflood’ ‘theory’ and the notion of giant humans, which are not significant features of the StolenHistory thread. This more convoluted and multifaceted version of the Tartaria theory doesn’t really have a single-document articulation, hence me not covering it here.
It is this StolenHistory thread which I will be looking at here today. Not just because it seems to be at the heart of it all, but also because it got shut down around 36 hours ago as of writing this post, based on the timestamps of panicked ‘what happened to StolenHistory’ posts on CulturalLayer and Tartaria. So what better occasion to go back to the Wayback Machine’s version, seeing as it’s now quite literally impossible to brigade the source? Now as I’ve said, this is not the most batshit insane it gets for the Tartaria crowd, in fact it’s incredibly tame. But by the end of it, I bet you’ll be thinking ‘if this is mild, how much more worse is the modern stuff!?’ And the best part is, I can debunk most of it without recourse to any other sources at all, because so much of it involves them posting sources out of context or expecting them to be read tendentiously.
But that’s enough background. Let us begin.

Part 1: The Existence

Exhibit 1: The Encylcopædia Britannica, 1771

”Tartary, a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west: this is called Great Tartary. The Tartars who lie south of Muscovy and Siberia, are those of Astracan, Circassia, and Dagistan, situated north-west of the Caspian-sea; the Calmuc Tartars, who lie between Siberia and the Caspian-sea; the Usbec Tartars and Moguls, who lie north of Persia and India; and lastly, those of Tibet, who lie north-west of China.” - Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. III, Edinburgh, 1771, p. 887.

Starting a post about the ‘hidden’ history of Central Asia with an encyclopædia entry from Scotland is really getting off to a good start, isn’t it? Anyone with a sense of basic geography can tell you that Tibet lies due west of China, not northwest. But more importantly, this shows you how single-minded the Tartaria advocates are and how tendentiously they read things. ‘Country’ need not actually refer to a state entity, it can just be a geographical space, especially in more archaic contexts such as this. Moreover, the ethnographic division of the ‘Tartars’ into Astrakhanis, Circassians, Dagestanis, Kalmuks, Uzbeks, and, for whatever reason, Tibetans, pretty clearly goes against the notion of a unified Tartary.

Now compare to the description given by Wikipedia, ”Tartary (Latin: Tartaria) or Great Tartary (Latin: Tartaria Magna) was a name used from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, settled mostly by Turko-Mongol peoples after the Mongol invasion and the subsequent Turkic migrations.”

Obviously, Wikipedia is not a good source for… anything, really, but the fact that they’re giving a 349-year-old encyclopaedia primacy over the summary sentence of a wiki article is demonstrative of how much dishonesty is behind this. And it only gets worse from here.

Exhibit 2: Hermann Moll’s A System of Geography, 1701

THE Country of Tartary, call'd Great Tartary, to distinguish it from the Lesser, in Europe, has for its Boundaries, on the West, the Caspian Sea, and Moscovitick Tartary; on the North, the Scythian, or Tartarian Sea; on the East, the Sea of the Kalmachites, and the Straight of Jesso; and on the South, China, India, or the Dominions of the great Mogul and Persia : So that it is apparently the largest Region of the whole Continent of Asia, extending it self [sic] farthest, both towards the North and East: In the modern Maps, it is plac'd within the 70th and 170th Degree of Longitude, excluding Muscovitick Tartary; as also between the 40 and 72 Degree of Northern Latitude.

Immediately underneath the scan of this text is the statement, clearly highlighted, that

Tartary was not a tract. It was a country.

Hmm, very emphatic there. Except wait no, the same semantic problem recurs. ‘Country’ need not mean ‘state’. Moreover, in the very same paragraph, Moll (or rather his translator) refers to Tartary as a ‘Region’, which very much disambiguates the idea. Aside from that, it is telling that Moll refers to three distinct ‘Tartaries’: ’Great Tartary’ in Asia, ‘Lesser Tartary’ in Europe, and ‘Muscovite Tartary’ – that is, the eastern territories of the Russian Tsardom. If, as they are saying, ‘Great Tartary’ was a coherent entity, whatever happened to ‘Lesser Tartary’?

Exhibit 3: A 1957 report by the CIA on ‘National Cultural Development Under Communism’

Is a conspiracy theorist… actually believing a CIA document? Yep. I’ll add some context later that further complicates the issue.

Or let us take the matter of history, which, along with religion, language and literature, constitute the core of a people’s cultural heritage. Here again the Communists have interfered in a shameless manner. For example, on 9 August 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, sitting in Moscow, issued a directive ordering the party’s Tartar Provincial Committee “to proceed to a scientific revolution of the history of Tartaria, to liquidate serious shortcomings and mistakes of a nationalistic character committed by individual writers and historians in dealing with Tartar history.” In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten—let its be frank, was to be falsified—in order to eliminate references to Great Russian aggressions and to hide the facts of the real course of Tartar-Russian relations.
[similar judgement on Soviet rewriting of histories of Muslim areas to suit a pro-Russian agenda]

What’s fascinating about the inclusion of this document is that it is apparently often invoked as a piece of anti-Fomenko evidence, by tying New Chronology in with older Russian-nationalist Soviet revisionism. So not only is it ironic that they’re citing a CIA document, of all things, but a CIA document often used to undermine the spiritual founder of the whole Tartaria ‘theory’ in the first place! But to return to the point, the fundamental issue is that it’s tendentious. This document from 1957 obviously is not going to be that informed on the dynamics of Central Asian ethnicity and history in the way that a modern scholar would be.
In a broader sense, what this document is supposed to prove is that Soviet coverups are why we don’t know about Tartaria. But if most of the evidence came from Western Europe to begin with, why would a Soviet coverup matter? Why wasn’t Tartarian history deployed as a counter-narrative during the Cold War?

Exhibit 4: ‘An 1855 Source’

This is from a footnote in Sir George Cornwalle Lewis’ An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History, citing a travelogue by Evariste Huc that had been published in French in 1850 and was soon translated into English. From the digitised version of of Huc’s book on Project Gutenberg (emphasis copied over from the thread):

Such remains of ancient cities are of no unfrequent occurrence in the deserts of Mongolia; but everything connected with their origin and history is buried in darkness. Oh, with what sadness does such a spectacle fill the soul! The ruins of Greece, the superb remains of Egypt,—all these, it is true, tell of death; all belong to the past; yet when you gaze upon them, you know what they are; you can retrace, in memory, the revolutions which have occasioned the ruins and the decay of the country around them. Descend into the tomb, wherein was buried alive the city of Herculaneum,—you find there, it is true, a gigantic skeleton, but you have within you historical associations wherewith to galvanize it. But of these old abandoned cities of Tartary, not a tradition remains; they are tombs without an epitaph, amid solitude and silence, uninterrupted except when the wandering Tartars halt, for a while, within the ruined enclosures, because there the pastures are richer and more abundant.

There’s a paraphrase from Lewis as well, but you can just read it on the thread. The key thing here is that yes, there were abandoned settlements in the steppe. Why must this be indicative of a lost sedentary civilisation, and not instead the remnants of political capitals of steppe federations which were abandoned following those federations’ collapse? Places like Karakorum, Kubak Zar, Almaliq and Sarai were principally built around political functions, being centres for concentration of religious and ritual authority (especially monasteries) and stores of non-movable (or difficult to move) wealth. But individual examples of abandoned settlements are not evidence of broad patterns of settlement that came to be abandoned en masse. Indeed, the very fact that the cited shepherd calls the abandoned location ‘The Old Town’ in the singular implies just how uncommon such sites were – for any given region, there might really only be one of note.

Exhibit 5: Ethnic characteristics in artistic depictions of Chinggis and Timur

I… don’t quite know what to make of these.

Today, we have certain appearance related stereotypes. I think we are very much off there. It looks like Tartary was multi-religious, and multi-cultural. One of the reasons I think so is the tremendous disparity between what leaders like Genghis Khan, Batu Khan, Timur aka Tamerlane looked like to the contemporary artists vs. the appearance attributed to them today.

Ummm, what?
These are apparently what they look like today. These are ‘contemporary’ depictions of Chinggis:

Except, as the guy posting the thread says, these are 15th-18th century depictions… so NOT CONTEMPORARY.
As for Timur, we have:

In what bizzaro world are these contemporary?
We’ll get to Batur Khan in a moment because that’s its own kettle of worms. But can this user not recognise that artists tend to depict things in ways that are familiar? Of course white European depictions of Chinggis and Timur will tend to make them look like white Europeans, while East Asian depictions of Chinggis will tend to make him look Asian, and Middle Eastern depictions of Chinggis and Timur will make them look Middle Eastern. This doesn’t prove that ‘Tartaria’ was multicultural, in fact it you’d have an easier time using this ‘evidence’ to argue that Chinggis and Timur were shapeshifters who could change ethnicities at will!

Exhibit 6: Turkish sculptures

Why this person thinks modern Turkish sculptures are of any use to anyone baffles me. The seven sculptures shown are of Batu Khan (founder of the ‘Golden Horde’/Jochid khanates), Timur, Bumin (founder of the First Turkic Khaganate), Ertugrul (father of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman empire), Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire), Attila the Hun, and Kutlug Bilge Khagan (founder of the Uyghur Khaganate). They are accompanied (except in the case of Ertugrul) by the dates of the empires/confederations that they founded – hence, for instance, Babur’s dates being 1526 to 1858, the lifespan of the Mughal Empire, or Timur’s being 1368 (which seems arbitrary) to 1507 (the fall of Herat to the Shaybanids). To quote the thread:

A few of them I do not know, but the ones I do look nothing like what I was taught at school. Also dates are super bizarre on those plaques.

Again, Turkish sculptors make Turkic people look like Turks. Big surprise. And the dates are comprehensible if you just take a moment to think.

Do Turks know something we don't?

Turkish, evidently.

Exhibit 7: A map from 1652 that the user can’t even read

The other reason why I think Tartary had to be multi-religious, and multi-cultural is its vastness during various moments in time. For example in 1652 Tartary appears to have control over the North America.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1652-nova-totius-terrarum-orbis-geographica-ac-hydrographica-tabula_1-1-jpg.37277/
This speaks for itself.
The thread was later edited to include a link to a post on ‘Tartarians’ in North America made on 7 August 2018, but that’s beside the point here, read at your own leisure (if you can call it ‘leisure’). Except for the part where at one point he admits he can’t read Latin, and so his entire theory in that post is based on the appearance of the word ‘Tartarorum’ in an unspecified context on a map of North America.

Part 2: The Coverup

The official history is hiding a major world power which existed as late as the 19th century. Tartary was a country with its own flag, its own government and its own place on the map. Its territory was huge, but somehow quietly incorporated into Russia, and some other countries. This country you can find on the maps predating the second half of the 19th century.

…Okay then.

Exhibit 8: Google Ngrams

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_ngram-jpg.37276/
This screenshot shows that the use of ‘Tartary’ and ‘Tartaria’ declined significantly over time. This is apparently supposed to surprise us. Or maybe it shows that we actually understand the region better…

Part 1a: Back to the existence

You know, a common theme with historical conspiracy theories is how badly they’re laid out, in the literal sense of the layout of their documents and video content. Don’t make a header called ‘The Coverup’ and then only have one thing before jumping back to the evidence for the existence again.

Exhibit 9: A Table

Yet, some time in the 18th century Tartary Muskovite was the biggest country in the world: 3,050,000 square miles.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_huge-13-jpg.37329/
I do not have enough palms to slap into my face. Do they not understand that this is saying how much of Tartary was owned… by foreign powers?

Exhibit 10: Book covers

You can look at the images on the thread itself but here’s a few highlights:

1654: Bellum Tartaricum, or the Conquest of China By the Invasion of the Tartars, who in the last seven years, have wholly subdued that empire
1670: Historia de la Conquista de la China por el Tartaro

Histories of the Qing conquest of China, because as far as Europeans were concerned the Manchus were Tartars. Proof of Tartaria because…?

1662: The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors of the Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia… Containing a compleat History of Muscovy, Tartary, Persia, and Other Adjacent Countries…

An ambassador who never set foot in ‘Tartary’ itself, cool cool, very good evidence there.
There’s also three screenshots from books that aren’t even specifically named, so impossible to follow up. Clearly this is all we need.

Exhibit 11: Maps

The maps are the key think the Tartaria pushers use. All these maps showing ‘Grand Tartary’ or ‘Tartaria’ or what have you. There’s 20 of these here and you can look for yourselves, but the key thing is: why do these people assume that this referred to a single state entity? Because any of these maps that include the world more generally will also present large parts of Africa in generic terms, irrespective of actual political organisation in these regions. And many of the later maps clearly show the tripartite division of the region into ‘Chinese Tartary’, ‘Russian Tartary’, and ‘Independent Tartary’, which you think would be clear evidence that most of this region was controlled by, well, the Chinese (really, the Manchus) and the Russians. And many of these maps aren’t even maps of political organisation, but geographical space. See how many lump all of mainland Southeast Asia into ‘India’. Moreover, the poor quality of the mapping should give things away. This one for instance is very clear on the Black Sea coast, but the Caspian is a blob, and moreover, a blob that’s elongated along the wrong axis! They’re using Western European maps as an indicator of Central Asian realities in the most inept way possible, and it would be sad if it weren’t so hilarious. The fact that the depictions of the size of Tartaria are incredibly inconsistent also seems not to matter.

Exhibit 12: The Tartarian Language

There’s an 1849 American newspaper article referring to the ‘Tartarian’ language, which is very useful thank you, and definitely not more reflective of American ignorance than actual linguistic reality.
The next one is more interesting, because it’s from a translation of some writing by a French Jesuit, referring to the writing of Manchu, and who asserted (with very little clear evidence) that it could be read in any direction. In April last year, Tartaria users [claimed to have stumbled on a dictionary of Tartarian and French](np.reddit.com/Tartaria/comments/bi3aph/tartarian_language_dictionary/) called the Dictionnaire Tartare-Mantchou-François. What they failed to realise is that the French generally called the Manchus ‘Tartare-Mantchou’, and this was in fact a Manchu-French dictionary. In other words, a [Tartare-Mantchou]-[François] dictionary, not a [Tartare]-[Mantchou]-[François] dictionary. It is quite plausible, in fact probable, that the ‘Tartarian’ referred to in the newspaper article was Manchu.

Exhibit 13: Genealogies of Tartarian Kings

Descended From Genghiscan

Reads the comment above this French chart. How the actual hell did OP not recognise that ‘Genghiscan’ is, erm, Genghis Khan? Is it that hard to understand that maybe, just maybe, ‘Tartars’ was what they called Mongols back in the day, and ‘Tartaria’ the Mongol empire and its remnants?

Exhibit 14: Ethnographic drawings

These prove that there were people called Tartars, not that there was a state of Tartaria. NEXT

Exhibit 15: Tartaria’s alleged flag

Images they provide include
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_flags-11-jpg.37367/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_flag_6-jpg.37307/
Except there’s one problem. As any EU4 player will tell you, that’s the flag of the Khanate of Kazan. And while they can trot out a few 18th and 19th century charts showing the apparent existence of a Tartarian naval flag, the inconvenient fact that Tartaria would have been landlocked seems not to get in the way. To be sure, their consistent inclusion is odd, given the non-existence of Tartary as a country, and moreover its landlocked status. It seems plausible that the consistent similarity of the designs is just a result of constant copying and poor checking, but on its own it means relatively little.

Exhibit 16: 19th-century racism

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/flags_of_all_nations_1865-mongolian-1-jpg.37369/
That I think speaks for itself.

Exhibit 17: Flags of Moscow on one particular chart

It is also worth mentioning that in the British Flag Table of 1783, there are three different flags listed as a flag of the Tsar of Moscow. There is also an Imperial Flag of Russia as well as multiple naval flags. And all of them are proceeded by a flag of the Viceroy of Russia.

By that logic, the Royal Navy ran Britain because the Royal Navy ensigns precede the Union Jack. It’s simply a conscious decision to show the flags of individuals before the flags of states. The ‘Viceroy’ (unsure what the original Russian title would be) and ‘Czar’ of Muscovy would presumably be, well, the Emperor of Russia anyway, so as with the British section where the Royal Standard and the flags of naval officers came first, the same seems true of Russia. Also, as a side note, the placement of the USA at the end, after the Persians, the Mughals and ‘Tartarians’, is a fun touch.

Significance of the Viceroy is in the definition of the term. A viceroy is a regal official who runs a country, colony, city, province, or sub-national state, in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. Our official history will probably say that it was the Tsar of Russia who would appoint a viceroy of Moscow. I have reasons to doubt that.
Why is the flag of the Viceroy of Moscow positioned prior to any other Russian flag? Could it be that the Viceroy of Moscow was superior to its Czar, and was "supervising" how this Tartarian possession was being run?

No.

Part 3: 1812

This, this is where it gets really bonkers. A key part of this post is arguing that Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was a cover story for a joint invasion against Tartaria gone horrendously wrong. All the stops are being pulled out here.

There is a growing opinion in Russia that French invasion of Russia played out according to a different scenario. The one where Tsar Alexander I, and Napoleon were on the same side. Together they fought against Tartary. Essentially France and Saint Petersburg against Moscow (Tartary). And there is a strong circumstantial evidence to support such a theory.

Oh yes, we’re going there.

Questions to Answer:
1. Saint Petersburg was the capitol of Russia. Yet Napoleon chose to attack Moscow. Why?

He didn’t, he was trying to attack the Russian army. (credit to dandan_noodles).

2. It appears that in 1912 there was a totally different recollection of the events of 1812. How else could you explain commemorative 1912 medals honoring Napoleon?

Because it’s a bit of an in-your-face to Napoleon for losing so badly?

And specifically the one with Alexander I, and Napoleon on the same medal. The below medal says something similar to, "Strength is in the unity: will of God, firmness of royalty, love for homeland and people"

Yeah, it’s showing Alexander I beating Napoleon, and a triumphant double-headed Russian eagle above captured French standards. Also, notice how Alexander is in full regalia, while Napoleon’s is covered up by his greatcoat?

3. Similarity between Russian and French uniforms. There are more different uniforms involved, but the idea remains, they were ridiculously similar.

Ah yes, because fashions in different countries always develop separately, and never get influenced by each other.

How did they fight each other in the dark?

With difficulty, presumably.
Basically, he’s saying that this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1_rus-jpg.37322/
Is too similar to this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1_rus-jpg.37322/
To be coincidental.
OK, whatever. Here’s where it gets interesting:

There was one additional combat asset officially available to Russians in the war of 1812. And that was the Militia. It does appear that this so-called Militia, was in reality the army of Tartary fighting against Napoleon and Alexander I.

Russian VolunteeMilitia Units... Tartarians?
Clearly this man has never encountered the concept of a cossack, an opelchenie, or, erm, a GREATCOAT.

4. Russian nobility in Saint Petersburg spoke French well into the second half of the 19th century. The general explanation was, that it was the trend of time and fashion. Google contains multiple opinions on the matter. * Following the same logic, USA, Britain and Russia should've picked up German after the victory in WW2.

Clearly never heard of the term lingua franca then.

5. This one I just ran into: 19th-century fans were totally into a Napoleon/Alexander romance

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/treaties_of_tilsit_miniature_-france-_1810s-_side_a-jpg.37314/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/napoleonxalexander2-jpg.37310/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/napoleon-alexander-jpg.37312/
It is true that after the Treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon wrote to his wife, Josephine, that

I am pleased with [Emperor] Alexander; he ought to be with me. If he were a woman, I think I should make him my mistress.

But Napoleon’s ‘honeymoon period’ with Russia following the Treaty of Tilsit should not be seen as indicative of a permanent Napoleonic affection for Russia. Notably, Napoleon’s war with Russia didn’t just end in 1812. How are the Tartaria conspiracists going to explain the War of the Sixth Coalition, when Russian, Prussian and Austrian troops drove the French out of Germany? Did the bromance suddenly stop because of 1812? Or, is it more reasonable to see 1812 as the end result of the bromance falling apart?

Conclusions

So there you have it, Tartaria in all its glorious nonsensicalness. Words cannot capture how massively bonkers this entire thing is. And best of all, I hardly needed my own sources because so much of it is just a demonstration of terrible reading comprehension. Still, if you want to actually learn about some of the history of Inner Eurasia, see below:

Bibliography

The Cambridge History of Inner Asia – 2 volumes so far, covering up to 1886. Not really a single contiguous narrative, as each chapter has its own individual author, but a good general coverage.
Scott C. Levi, The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th Century Central Asia (2020) – A book about actual Central Asian history, focussing on the global and local factors that led to the weakening and collapse of the Chinggisid state in Bukhara and the rise of the Uzbek-led Emirate. Also a very good historiographical examination of lay understandings of the period.
Mark C. Elliott, ‘The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 59, No. 3 (2000) – A discussion of conceptions of Manchuria by Manchu, Chinese, Japanese and European cartographers and geographers, with the section on European geographers being important for getting at the ‘Tartary’ aspect.
David Christian, ‘Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History’, Journal of World History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1994) – A somewhat older view, presenting Inner Eurasia as a distinct unit in world history, but largely in terms of effects on the rest of Eurasia.
Nicola di Cosmo, ‘State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History’, Journal of World History, Vol.10, No.1 (1999) – A partial response to Christian, offering an alternate periodisation based more on the internal dynamics of nomadic state formations and stressing viewing Inner Asian history in terms of those internal dynamics, rather than relegating it to a subordinate place in the histories of ‘Outer Eurasian’, sedentary states.
Konstantin Sheiko, ‘Lomonosov’s Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, Pseudo-History and Russia’s Search for a Post-Communist Identity’ [PhD Thesis] (2004) – Specifically deconstructs Fomenko’s version of Tartaria.

Short Summaries of previous Subvertadown Analyses -- an Archive, with links

"Damnit I was told there'd be no math!!"
Many of you know that I've posted a number of stats-heavy posts, which can be difficult to digest. But they are meant to improve your overall understanding of the game of fantasy football. So I wanted to make a single post meant to function as an archive.
Below you'll find links to the analysis posts. I have also highlighted some "nuggets", in bullet point form, so you don't necessarily need to go back and read the whole posts.

Description of "what I do" in this year's Intro post: [Link]

Posts about Overall FF Statistics

(1) Predictability and Randomness, for each Position [Link]:
(overview of how to understand the basic stats behind the game)

Even though QBs are often considered more predictable, their variances and prediction errors are largest. Contrary to what some people think, Kickers actually contribute the lowest variance of all fantasy positions. Related:
- The weekly point errors for kickers fall in a distribution between -10 and +10, which is half as wide as the QB error.
- No fantasy position adds more randomness than skill to the overall roster-- even for kicker.
The post explains why each position's skill/luck ratio is well-represented by the accuracy correlation coefficient. (Values range from 0.2 - 0.4)
By combining multiple players, rosters reduce the relative amount of randomness. The overall point predictability becomes slightly higher than the level of randomness. (22 points vs. 19 points).
- So you could say Fantasy Football is balanced: "just a bit more skill than luck".
- (Not shown) The roster correlation coefficient effectively becomes ca. 0.75.

(2) Updated Values of the Skill/Luck ratios, for each fantasy position, covering 3 years: [Link]

Most fantasy positions are about as predictable as game scores (i.e. Vegas betting lines, correlation coefficient 0.36).
The order of predictability is: QB (0.38) > RB1 > DST > TE1 > WR1 (0.23).
- With my projection model, kicker predictability (ca. 0.3) is better than WR1.
  - Most other sources have poorer kicker projections, so usually Kicker < WR1.

(3) Defensive scoring can be adjusted to be more predictable. [Link]

The predictability of each individual D/ST factor is presented:
- Yards > score > sacks > interceptions > FRs > TDs
If you wanted to make D/ST scores more predictable, for your league's scoring, then: emphasize yards-allowed and de-emphasize most other factors.
(Not presented, to be investigated...): I think a sensible scheme would be to reward points for each drive, according to the yard-line of the final down. My gut says this should be very predictable, and it would have the appealing effect that scoring would increase upwards from 0 during the game. (Something to work on and test; would love to hear someone willing to help find the data!)

(4) Streaming QBs is a viable strategy-- if your league is not too deep. [Link]

Analysis was for 2018-- when there were not as many significant QB injuries as seen in '17 and '19.
- This shows that streaming QBs is viable even when all top QBs remain healthy.
  - The analysis shows how expectations depend on #QBs already claimed.
- Streaming is shown to be more successful when the QB model is more accurate. (Surprise surprise /s...) (Not shown: in 2019 my model seemed to improve accuracy over other sources, which ought to make streaming more reliable.)
QBs add at least as much point randomness as D/STs-- both overall and on an individual level.
QBs have a steeper drop-off in fantasy output relative to D/STs, which would make streaming less viable. Luckily, QB output depends on the opponent, strongly enough to enable streaming based on match-up.

(5) Streaming Kickers can be more effective than trying to own the top kicker: [Link]

The analysis presents how expectations depend on #kickers already claimed in your league.
- Streaming based on match-up is viable, especially if your league-mates simply chase the high-scoring kickers.
When we conclude "who was a top kicker", it is mostly made in hindsight. (Yes I was also surprised.)
- Chasing the top-scoring kicker surprisingly does not give the best results.
It appears that my own kicker model should enable you to stream with a "top kicker" experience, even if your league-mates already own top kickers.

Commentary on how to approach rankings

(1) "Fantasy Points Allowed" are not very useful for making lineup decisions. [Link]

When using Points-allowed, the accuracy correlations are poor and can lead to bad decisions
- Best case is correlation 0.1 (for QB); otherwise 0.05 for RB and WR, and approaching 0.0 for TE.
- The exception is of course D/ST (not an offensive role).
My own projection models permit more reliable fantasy scores predictions, in contrast to using points-allowed. (QB / RB / WR / TE / K /DST)
- My models already account for opponent points-allowed, to exactly the extent they matter.
- My models have significantly higher predictive value (correlations up to 0.35-.4).

(2) Why Rankers don't always rank teams the way you expect. [Link]

A breakdown of which D/ST factors are predictable (interceptions, TDs, etc.) and therefore become useful factors in statistical models (vs. factors which are random/ not dependable).
A very rough equation you can use for D/ST projection [Could use an update]: = 25.3 - 0.23*(opponent score) + 0.12* (-spread) + 0.02*(defensive yards-allowed) + 0.03*(offensive yards) + 0.8* (sacks allowed) + 0.3*(interceptions allowed) + 0.4 * (defensive interceptions).
The chances are low that most suggestions for model improvement could actually pan out, for a model that is already top-accuracy. Models only work well consistently if all the variables have passed rigorous tests for predictability.

(3) There are good ways and bad ways of assessing weekly accuracy: [Link]

The method that FantasyPros uses is not very reliable for trusting as an "accuracy" measurement. So you can take their overall rankings with a grain of salt: the #20 could be better than the #1.
- No statistician would try to optimize a regression by minimizing the "error gap" that they define.
I use correlations in my accuracy reports, because they are more robust and better indicative of future reliability-- they carry some meaning beyond only the current week.

(4) Here are some intuitive (fun...?) ways to interpret the "accuracy correlation coefficient" in fantasy football [Link]

Accuracy can be represented by the "controllable range of points" (often around 8-12 points)
... or as the "expected rank" outcome of the weekly #1 ranked player (often around the #8 spot)
... or as the "probability that the lowest ranked player outscores the top-ranked player" (often around 5% - 15%).

(5) Why and when to stash D/STs around playoffs [Link]

Less useful stuff...: Just some old, oddball statistical observations etc.

(1) Pulling out meaningful trends, from the seasonal randomness: [Link]

There is less than 20% chance that a single week’s score implies a trustworthy trend. In other words, 80% of the time, high/low fantasy scores simply reflect the usual high level of variance.
From one season to the next, D/ST fantasy outputs have a correlation coefficient around 0.2 on average.
Unfortunately, it usually makes sense to continue incorporating last season’s data for essentially the whole season. (Update needed: exception e.g. RB points more accurate using only the last 5-6 weeks.)
In-season data doesn’t converge on a reliable average for about 13-19 weeks, and therefore you cannot reliably identify a top D/ST from just a few games.

(2) A more meaningful calculation of "consistency", for fantasy production: [Link]

There is a highly reliably linear relationship between 3 different calculations from players' seasonal fantasy points:

Seasonal "win rate"-- each score relative to the whole collection of scores
Sharpe ratio (a useful measure of risk/reward)
Truncated average-- a procedure where you apply score cut-offs before averaging.

These all comprise a better way to compare "which players had the best fantasy production" for a given year.

(3) Correlations I found interesting (this is outdated and could use an update): [Link]

A stronger WR2 more often makes the WR1 stronger.
A TE1 and a WR1 on the same team won't usually both score a lot during the same game, unless they're on a super-strong offense.
If a team scores a lot, the kicker's probably gonna score a lot too. But if a team scores a lot, and the team has a bad QB, that's the bestest.

Descriptions of my models

2020 intro. DST 2019 intro. Kicker 2019 intro

You are welcome to plant the seed in my head for any similar types of analysis you'd like to see. Bigger tasks I may not get to it right away, but at least I can collect ideas for the off-season.
Some of you have previously asked if you can support this stuff as well as my projection posts. So I set it up and now you can tip a $3+ field goal at my newly created Patreon site (suggested by you). It's totally voluntary, but know that donations go directly to lifting my spirits.

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General Election Polling Discussion Thread (August 30th, 2020)

Introduction

Polls

Election Predictions

Prognosticators

Polling Models

Prediction Markets

The REAL Greatest Short Burn of the Century

Save us Gabe, you're our only hope {Seriously though, this is bad]

Group D games/ Group Draw lck reactions

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #5: Round 2 Match 9 - Anthony “Ani” Oakley Versus Ostro Crudo

Save us Gabe, you're our only hope {Seriously though, this is bad]

Solar ETF joins options mania as traders continue to position for the presidential election.

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Tartaria: The Supposed Mega-Empire of Inner Eurasia

Introduction

State of Play, and why I’m doing this

Where does it come from?

Part 1: The Existence

Exhibit 1: The Encylcopædia Britannica, 1771

Exhibit 2: Hermann Moll’s A System of Geography, 1701

Exhibit 3: A 1957 report by the CIA on ‘National Cultural Development Under Communism’

Exhibit 4: ‘An 1855 Source’

Exhibit 5: Ethnic characteristics in artistic depictions of Chinggis and Timur

Exhibit 6: Turkish sculptures

Exhibit 7: A map from 1652 that the user can’t even read

Part 2: The Coverup

Exhibit 8: Google Ngrams

Part 1a: Back to the existence

Exhibit 9: A Table

Exhibit 10: Book covers

Exhibit 11: Maps

Exhibit 12: The Tartarian Language

Exhibit 13: Genealogies of Tartarian Kings

Exhibit 14: Ethnographic drawings

Exhibit 15: Tartaria’s alleged flag

Exhibit 16: 19th-century racism

Exhibit 17: Flags of Moscow on one particular chart

Part 3: 1812

Conclusions

Bibliography

Short Summaries of previous Subvertadown Analyses -- an Archive, with links

Posts about Overall FF Statistics

Commentary on how to approach rankings

Less useful stuff...: Just some old, oddball statistical observations etc.

Descriptions of my models

Top 10 - Biggest Wins of 2018 - YouTube

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