edit: thanks for the awards. I'd be a dick to take credit. Go check out the one-man-band who actually wrote it---I've been reading for a couple months, good stuff https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
(Best Interest) This post will explain the Big Short and the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse in simple terms.
This post is a little longer than usual–maybe give yourself 20 minutes to sift through it. But I promise you’ll leave feeling like you can tranche (that’s a verb, right?!) the whole financial system!
Key Players
First, I want to introduce the players in the financial crisis, as they might not make sense at first blush. One of the worst parts about the financial industry is how they use deliberately obtuse language to explain relatively simple ideas. Their financial acronyms are hard to keep track of. In order to explain the Big Short, these players–and their roles–are key.
Individuals, a.k.a. regular people who take out mortgages to buy houses; for example, you and me!
Mortgage lenders, like a local bank or a mortgage lending specialty shop, who give out mortgages to individuals. Either way, they’re probably local people that the individual home-buyer would meet in person.
Big banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who buy lots of mortgages from lenders. After this transaction, the homeowner would owe money to the big bank instead of the lender.
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)—deep breath!—who take mortgages from big banks and bundle them all together into a bond (see below). And just like before, this step means that the home-buyer now owes money to the CDO. Why is this done?! I’ll explain, I promise.
Ratings agencies, whose job is to determine the risk of a CDO—is it filled with safe mortgages, or risky mortgages?
Investors, who buy part of a CDO and get repaid as the individual homeowners start paying back their mortgage.
Feel lost already? I’m going to be a good jungle guide and get you through this. Stick with me.
Quick definition: Bonds
A bond can be thought of as a loan. When you buy a bond, you are loaning your money. The issuer of the bond is borrowing your money. In exchange for borrowing your money, the issuer promises to pay you back, plus interest, in a certain amount of time. Sometimes, the borrower cannot pay the investor back, and the bond defaults, or fails. Defaults are not good for the investor.
The CDO—which is a bond—could hold thousands of mortgages in it. It’s a mortgage-backed bond, and therefore a type of mortgage-backed security. If you bought 1% of a CDO, you were loaning money equivalent to 1% of all the mortgage principal, with the hope of collecting 1% of the principal plus interest as the mortgages got repaid.
There’s one more key player, but I’ll wait to introduce it. First…
The Whys, Explained
Why does an individual take out a mortgage? Because they want a home. Can you blame them?! A healthy housing market involves people buying and selling houses.
How about the lender; why do they lend? It used to be so they would slowly make interest money as the mortgage got repaid. But nowadays, the lender takes a fee (from the homeowner) for creating (or originating) the mortgage, and then immediately sells to mortgage to…
A big bank. Why do they buy mortgages from lenders? Starting in the 1970s, Wall St. started buying up groups of loans, tying them all together into one bond—the CDO—and selling slices of that collection to investors. When people buy and sell those slices, the big banks get a cut of the action—a commission.
Why would an investor want a slice of a mortgage CDO? Because, like any other investment, the big banks promised that the investor would make their money back plus interest once the homeowners began repaying their mortgages.
You can almost trace the flow of money and risk from player to player.
At the end of the day, the investor needs to get repaid, and that money comes from homeowners.
CDOs are empty buckets
Homeowners and mortgage lenders are easy to understand. But a big question mark swirls around Wall Street’s CDOs.
I like to think of the CDO as a football field full of empty buckets—one bucket per mortgage. As an investor, you don’t purchase one single bucket, or one mortgage. Instead, you purchase a thin horizontal slice across all the buckets—say, a half-inch slice right around the 1-gallon mark.
As the mortgages are repaid, it starts raining. The repayments—or rain—from Mortgage A doesn’t go solely into Bucket A, but rather is distributed across all the buckets, and all the buckets slowly get re-filled.
As long as your horizontal slice of the bucket is eventually surpassed, you get your money back plus interest. You don’t need every mortgage to be repaid. You just need enough mortgages to get to your slice.
It makes sense, then, that the tippy top of the bucket—which gets filled up last—is the highest risk. If too many of the mortgages in the CDO fail and aren’t repaid, then the tippy top of the bucket will never get filled up, and those investors won’t get their money back.
These horizontal slices are called tranches, which might sound familiar if you’ve read the book or watched the movie.
So far, there’s nothing too wrong about this practice. It’s simply moving the risk from the mortgage lender to other investors. Sure, the middle-men (banks, lenders, CDOs) are all taking a cut out of all the buy and sell transactions. But that’s no different than buying lettuce at grocery store prices vs. buying straight from the farmer. Middle-men take a cut. It happens.
But now, our final player enters the stage…
Credit Default Swaps: The Lynchpin of the Big Short
Screw you, Wall Street nomenclature! A credit default swap sounds complicated, but it’s just insurance. Very simple, but they have a key role to explain the Big Short.
Investors thought, “Well, since I’m buying this risky tranche of a CDO, I might want to hedge my bets a bit and buy insurance in case it fails.” That’s what a credit default swap did. It’s insurance against something failing. But, there is a vital difference between a credit default swap and normal insurance.
I can’t buy an insurance policy on your house, on your car, or on your life. Only you can buy those policies. But, I could buy insurance on a CDO mortgage bond, even if I didn’t own that bond!
Not only that, but I could buy billions of dollars of insurance on a CDO that only contained millions of dollars of mortgages.
It’s like taking out a $1 million auto policy on a Honda Civic. No insurance company would allow you to do this, but it was happening all over Wall Street before 2008. This scenario essentially is “the big short” (see below)—making huge insurance bets that CDOs will fail—and many of the big banks were on the wrong side of this bet!
Credit default swaps involved the largest amounts of money in the subprime mortgage crisis. This is where the big Wall Street bets were taking place.
Quick definition: Short
A short is a bet that something will fail, get worse, or go down. When most people invest, they buy long (“I want this stock price to go up!”). A short is the opposite of that.
Certain individuals—like main characters Steve Eisman (aka Mark Baum in the movie, played by Steve Carrell) and Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale) in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film The Big Short—realized that tons of mortgages were being made to people who would never be able to pay them back.
If enough mortgages failed, then tranches of CDOs start to fail—no mortgage repayment means no rain, and no rain means the buckets stay empty. If CDOs fail, then the credit default swap insurance gets paid out. So what to do? Buy credit default swaps! That’s the quick and dirty way to explain the Big Short.
Why buy Dog Shit?
Wait a second. Why did people originally invest in these CDO bonds if they were full of “dog shit mortgages” (direct quote from the book) in the first place? Since The Big Short protagonists knew what was happening, shouldn’t the investors also have realized that the buckets would never get refilled?
For one, the prospectus—a fancy word for “owner’s manual”—of a CDO was very difficult to parse through. It was hard to understand exactly which mortgages were in the CDO. This is a skeevy big bank/CDO practice. And even if you knew which mortgages were in a CDO, it was nearly impossible to realize that many of those mortgages were made fraudulently.
The mortgage lenders were knowingly creating bad mortgages*.* They were giving loans to people with no hopes of repaying them. Why? Because the lenders knew they could immediately sell that mortgage—that risk—to a big bank, which would then securitize the mortgage into a CDO, and then sell that CDO to investors. Any risk that the lender took by creating a bad mortgage was quickly transferred to the investor.
So…because you can’t decipher the prospectus to tell which mortgages are in a CDO, it was easier to rely on the CDO’s rating than to evaluate each of the underlying mortgages. It’s the same reason why you don’t have to understand how engines work when you buy a car; you just look at Car & Driver or Consumer Reports for their opinions, their ratings.
The Ratings Agencies
Investors often relied on ratings to determine which bonds to buy. The two most well-known ratings agencies from 2008 were Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (heard of the S&P 500?). The ratings agency’s job was to look at a CDO that a big bank created, understand the underlying assets (in this case, the mortgages), and give the CDO a rating to determine how safe it was. A good rating is “AAA”—so nice, it got ‘A’ thrice.
So, were the ratings agencies doing their jobs? No! There are a few explanations for this:

1. Even they—the experts in charge of grading the bonds—didn’t understand what was going on inside a CDO. The owner’s manual descriptions (prospectuses) were too complicated. In fact, ratings agencies often relied on big banks to teach seminars about how to rate CDOs, which is like a teacher learning how to grade tests from Timmy, who still pees his pants. Timmy just wants an A.
2. Ratings agencies are profit-driven companies. When they give a rating, they charge a fee. But if the agency hands out too many bad grades, then their customers—the big banks—will take their requests elsewhere in hopes of higher grades. The ratings agencies weren’t objective, but instead were biased by their need for profits.
3. Remember those fraudulent mortgages that the lenders were making? Unless you did some boots-on-the-ground research, it was tough to uncover this fact. It’s hard to blame the ratings agencies for not catching this.

Who’s to blame?
Everyone? Let’s play devil’s advocate…
​

• Individuals: some people point the finger at homeowners, saying, “You should know better than to buy a $1 million house on a teacher’s salary.” I find this hard to swallow. These people, surrounded by the American home-ownership dream, were sold the idea that they would be fine. The mortgage lender had no incentive to sell a good mortgage, they only had an incentive to sell a mortgage. So, it’s hard for me to put too much blame on the homeowners.
• Mortgage lenders: someone knew. I’m not saying that all the mortgage lenders were fully aware of the implications of their actions, but some people knew that fraudulent loans were being made, and chose to ignore that fact. For example, check out whistleblower Eileen Foster.
• Big banks: Yes sir! There’s certainly blame here. Rather than get into all of the various money-grubbing, I want to call out one specific anecdote. Back in 2010, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testified in front of Congress. Here it is:

To explain further, there are two things going on here.
First, Goldman Sachs bankers were selling CDOs to investors. They wanted to make a commission on the sale.
At the same time, other bankers ALSO AT GOLDMAN SACHS were buying credit default swaps, a.k.a. betting against the same CDOs that the first Goldman Sachs bankers were selling.
This is like selling someone a racehorse with cancer, and then immediately going to the track to bet against that horse. Blankfein’s defense in this video is, “But the horse seller and the bettor weren’t the same people!” And the Congressmen responds, “But they worked for the same stable, and collected the same paychecks!”
So do the big banks deserve blame? You tell me.
Inspecting Goldman Sachs
One reason Goldman Sachs survived 2008 is that they began buying credit default swaps (insurance) just in time before the housing market crashed. They were still on the bad side of some bets, but mostly on the good side. They were net profitable.
Unfortunately for them, the banks that owed Goldman money were going bankrupt from their own debt, and then Goldman never would have been able to collect on their insurance. Goldman would’ve had to payout on their “bad” bets, while not collecting on their “good” bets. In their own words, they were “toast.”
This is significant. Even banks in “good” positions would’ve gone bankrupt, because the people who owed the most money weren’t able to repay all their debts. Imagine a chain; Bank A owes money to Bank B, and B owes money to Bank C. If Bank A fails, then B can’t collect their debt, and B can’t pay C. Bank C made “good” bets, but aren’t able to collect on them, and then they go out of business.
These failures would’ve rippled throughout the world. This explains why the US government felt it necessary to bail-out the banks. That federal money allowed banks in “good” positions to collect their profits and “stop the ripple” from tearing apart the world economy. While CDOs and credit default swap explain the Big Short starting, this ripple of failure is the mechanism that affected the entire world.
Betting more than you have
But if someone made a bad bet—sold bad insurance—why didn’t they have money to cover that bet? It all depends on risk. If you sell a $100 million insurance policy, and you think there’s a 1% chance of paying out that policy, what’s your exposure? It’s the potential loss multiplied by the probability = 1% times $100 million, or $1 million.
These banks sold billions of dollars of insurance under the assumption that there was a 5%, or 3%, or 1% chance of the housing market failing. So they had 20x, or 30x, or 100x less money on hand then they needed to cover these bets.
Turns out, there was a 100% chance that the market would fail…oops!
Blame, expounded
Ratings agencies—they should be unbiased. But they sold themselves off for profit. They invited the wolves—big banks—into their homes to teach them how to grade CDOs. Maybe they should read a blog to explain the Big Short to them. Of course they deserve blame. Here’s another anecdote of terrible judgment from the ratings agencies:
Think back to my analogy of the buckets and the rain. Sometimes, a ratings agency would look at a CDO and say, “You’re never going to fill up these buckets all the way. Those final tranches—the ones that won’t get filled—they’re really risky. So we’re going to give them a bad grade.” There were “Dog Shit” tranches, and Dog Shit gets a bad grade.
But then the CDO managers would go back to their offices and cut off the top of the buckets. And they’d do this for all their CDOs—cutting off all the bucket-top rings from all the different CDO buckets. And then they’d super-glue the bucket-top rings together to create a field full of Frankenstein buckets, officially called a CDO squared. Because the Frankenstein buckets were originally part of other CDOs, the Frankenstein buckets could only start filling up once the original buckets (which now had the tops cut off) were filled. In other words, the CDO managers decided to concentrate all their Dog Shit in one place, and super glue it together.
A reasonable person would look at the Frankenstein Dog Shit field of buckets and say, “That’s turrible, Kenny.”
BUT THE RATINGS AGENCIES GAVE CDO-SQUAREDs HIGH GRADES!!! Oh I’m sorry, was I yelling?!
“It’s diversified,” they would claim, as if Poodle shit mixed with Labrador shit is better than pure Poodle shit.
Again, you tell me. Do the ratings agencies deserve blame?!
Does the government deserve blame?
Yes and no.
For example, part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 mandated that the government mortgage finance firms (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) purchase a certain number of sub-prime mortgages.
On its surface, this seems like a good thing: it’s giving money to potential home-buyers who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for a mortgage. It’s providing the American Dream.
But as we’ve already covered today, it does nobody any good to provide a bad mortgage to someone who can’t repay it. That’s what caused this whole calamity. Freddie and Fannie and HUD were pumping money into the machine, helping to enable it. Good intentions, but they weren’t paying attention to the unintended outcomes.
And what about the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the watchdogs of Wall Street. Do they have a role to explain the Big Short? Shouldn’t they have been aware of the Big Banks, the CDOs, the ratings agencies?
Yes, they deserve blame too. They’re supposed to do things like ensure that Big Banks have enough money on hand to cover their risky bets. This is called proper “risk management,” and it was severely lacking. The SEC also had the power to dig into the CDOs and ferret out the fraudulent mortgages that were creating them. Why didn’t they do that?
Perhaps the issue is that the SEC was/is simply too close to Wall Street, similar to the ratings agencies getting advice from the big banks. Watchdogs shouldn’t get treats from those they’re watching. Or maybe it’s that the CDOs and credit default swaps were too hard for the SEC to understand.
Either way, the SEC doesn’t have a good excuse. If you’re in bed with the people you’re regulating, then you’re doing a bad job. If you’re rubber stamping things you don’t understand, then you’re doing a bad job.
Explain the Big Short, shortly
You’re about 2500 words into my “short summary.” But the important things to remember:
​

• Financial acronyms suck.
• Money flowed from the investors down to the mortgage lenders, and the risk flowed from the mortgage lenders up to the investors. In between, the big banks and CDOs acted as middle men and intermediaries.
• When someone feels like their actions have no risk, or no consequences, they’ll behave poorly (big banks, mortgage lenders)When someone is given what seems like an amazing deal, they’ll take it (individual home owners).
• CDOs are like empty buckets. Mortgage payments are like rain, filling the buckets. Investors buy tranches, or slices, across all the buckets. If mortgages fail, then the buckets might not fill up, and the investors won’t get their money back.
• CDOs are intentionally complex. So complex, that not even the people grading them understood what was going on (ratings agencies).
• Buying insurance on something your do not own is a behavior with potential for abuse (big banks)
• Buying insurance on something for more than it’s worth is a behavior with potential for abuse (big banks). This is where most of the money in the financial crisis switched hands.

And with that, I’d like to announce the opening of the Best Interest CDO. Rather than invest in mortgages, I’ll be investing in race horses. Don’t ask my why, but the current top stallion is named ‘Dog Shit.’ He’ll take Wall Street by storm.
If you don’t mind my cussing but you do like this content, consider subscribing to the email list to get these articles (and nothing more) sent to your inbox every week.
I hope this post helped if you were looking for someone to explain the Big Short. Thanks for reading the Best Interest.
​
Source: https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/

Transcribed some thoughts I felt were relevant.
Introduction

• Hezbollah can't be a militia against Israel and Syria but also a Lebanese political party. Hezbollah shouldn't think it's stronger than it is.
• I salute the Lebanese Army for keeping stability.
• Hezbollah must show that it respects Lebanese in their entirety. Hezbollah has clearly shown in these past days that the opposite is true.
• No one has been up to the task given to them. All of them were saving their own hide and clan. They will not succeed.
• I will take note of this collective treason. They carry entire responsibility.
• The 1st September plan is still on the table. It is the only option and there is no alternative, so it stays on the table.
• End of October fund raising conference is still scheduled.
• Meeting on Lebanon within the next 20 days. We will demand the results of the Aug.4 explosion investigations and ask the results be published.

Q1

• I think Saad Hariri was wrong to put a religious aspect to a specific ministry. This was not agreed in the plan. I concede that eventually, Hariri did compromise and backtracked. We should recognize that.
• Amal and Hezbollah explicitly decided that nothing must change. At every single step they said, "We will name our ministers". Berri admit to us that this was a condition of Hezbollah, that he played along with. I know who decided, Hezbollah. I understand that this means Hezbollah decided to not respect what they told me, face to face and eye to eye.
• If the Lebanese political elite are betting on a certain change in the US political field, they're also wrong. Because with each day, an agreement grows more complicated and chaos seems nearer.
• Time for a second try, for the formation of a government of mission without any connection to the Lebanese political parties

Q2
There are several options.

• A government without shiaa representation. This is not realistic, because Lebanese leaders are afraid of Hezbollah and are afraid of war. Can I promise to protect them using the French army? No. So this is not realistic.
• Option 2 is to return to a political government. It will be a status quo, and reforms won't work.
• So, it's not because I lack imagination but as long as there is no deeper crisis in the region (to shake things up), our option is the only option on the table. Gathering the parties around a government of mission.

Q3

• Do we have time to rebuild a new Taef? (Which was originally designed for the Sunnis, but has now been captured by the Shiaas?). No, we simply don't have time. It's too late. This is why a government of mission is the only solution.
• Taef was not meant to be a system entrenching corruption, but that's what it has done. And superimposed on this system is a system of terror, that Hezbollah has imposed.
• [In response to a Qstn whether Iran forced Hezbollah to entrench]. I cannot tell which role Iran had to play, I have no proof to be able to say anything. Did Hezbollah entrench itself because of Hariri's move or is it because of regional considerations, I have no proof.
• [You] are right that the non-coordinated sanctions by the US have tensed things up, and made things harder to move. Which is why my line is to coordinate with all players involved [including Iran], to get a joint approach.
• There is another approach, endorsed by some, which advocates for immediate war on Hezbollah. The logic is to attack Hezbollah and bring Lebanon down with it. I think this is an irresponsible approach, because Lebanon has already went through civil wars and no one can really tell how that'll end up.
• Advocates of this approach believe the compromise is impossible, and thus war is the only option. We must avoid this escalation.
• I also add that Hezbollah and Lebanon's Shiaas also face a historic choice; whether they want a democracy in Lebanon or if they also want to follow this approach towards the worst.
• Today, the choice is in front of Hezbollah and Berri. If they decide for the worst, there's a risk that they create the worst. (Civil war)
• Today, this system doesn't work. Today, a dozen of people are sinking an entire country and its people.

Q4.

• In a month or a half, we will re-assess. In 4-6 weeks, we will see if we must take a different approach that fundamentally re-assesses the situation, but I still think the time for such an undertaken is inopportune.

Q5. [I will not transcribe this in much detail. This will also be in the 3rd person, not 1st as above. I'm tired, and he's repeating what everyone already knows. Economic reality.]

• Discusses the Lebanese economy. Repeats what many of our experts said about the Riad Salameh Ponzi Scheme, the lack of reforms, the collapse of the banking system, the banking system being beholden to Lebanese politicians, the way money was smuggled out; etc.
• Notes how the banking system managed to suffocate the Lebanese system. Explains the Ponzi scheme. States that all Lebanese politicians did in the past few weeks was try to maintain this system, which exists only to smuggle their money out.
• Lebanon cannot make it without international aid, and when reforms are implemented the International community will inject aid; whose monetary value will be "massive".
• [Macron] believes a rebound is possible, but only if the political class understands that they must give way to reforms or the end is now. Then, there are shocks that will hit Lebanon, internal or external, that he's been trying his best to stop.
• No one will help Lebanon as long as it operates this way.

Q6. [Back to 1st person]

• I believe the government of mission should represent every sect, because a secular government is simply not possible in Lebanon; let's be real. But the important point is that none of those in the government are beholden to the traditional parties/clans as hostages.

Q7.

• [In response to a question asking why he accepted a delay]. I could throw the towel and give up, tell the Lebanese they're on their own. But know what happens then? Either a return to the current governance or civil war. So I will maintain this pressure.
• It is much easier for foreign powers to destabilize Lebanon as long as there is no government in place. And we see today the games played by Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
• I don't have proof of specific orders from abroad, but what I'm saying is that the less governance the more space for foreign powers to occupy. And this won't be for the best, but the worst.
• So you ask me, why didn't I abandon them to a system of terror? 15 days, you're on your own in the hands of Hezbollah. No. [I will not do that.]
• I engaged with Hezbollah as a political force, for the first time. I don't want to say there's no hope for a political breakthrough, what I want to say is that over the past 10-15 years Hezbollah has maximizes its power by playing on its ambiguity.
• What I mean by ambiguity is where Hezbollah is a militia, terrorist group, and political force at the same time. So Hezbollah MPs in Parliament have to clarify their game. They cannot pretend to be the democratic representatives of a democratic nation by terrorizing with weapons, and you cannot stay on the table for long if you don't honor your engagements around the table.
• I cannot say what choice Hezbollah made, it would be irresponsible. But if they indeed choice the worst path, then I must abandon this initiative and indeed join the worst path. [US strategy implied]
• I don't agree with them, but they are here. It's not I who put them. It's a segment of Lebanese who support them, whether by choice or by fear; and I respect that. And it is also the other Lebanese political forces, who in a way, allowed all this to happen. And there are some who decided to become hostages of Hezbollah in an explicit fashion, and no longer run their own political parties.

Q8.

• I believe the policy of sanctions and terrorist designations is an instrument of American diplomacy that has its limitations, as we've seen.
• I think that when we want to try to improve a nation, we must talk to all its constituents; and Hezbollah is a part of it.
• The main question posed to Hezbollah is, is it solely a political party or is it a terrorist force dictated by Iran? I still want to believe a breakthrough is possible, which we should see in the next weeks.
• I am not naive, but it is important to go to the very end before making impactful conclusions.

Q9.

• When I first submitted my initiative, I did talk to Rouhani and discussed our terms. But I did not ask him to intervene with Hezbollah, because I wanted to maintain my coherence. I always defended the idea to keep Lebanon outside regional politics, and I only asked him to avoid negative interference but I did not ask him to behave as if he were a Lebanese political force.
• All the exchanges I had with the other neighbours in the region had a similar vein, where I shared the terms of the interference and asked to avoid any negative inteference.

This was exhausting. Alot is missing, but this is the gist of it. I will refrain from adding my opinion in the OP, outside the few interesting points I bolded.

Roland Garros : Aviator Adventurer? Or Mythical Dragon? Let's look at the facts.
1) Pokemon named the dragon looking pokemon Garrados (or something like that). Where did they get that idea? hmm
2) If you rearrange the letters in Roland Garros you get Roslan's Dragon, so the real question is was Roslan an aviator? because clearly Roland Garros was not
3) Many people dispute the realness of dragons, but have you ever been to France? If not, I promise you they had dragons
4) 4
5) Where did people even get the idea for airplanes from? Answer : from dragons. Dragons are notoriously good inventors, ever heard of fire? hoarding wealth? let's be honest, humans are just dragon wannabe's
Here's some tennis :
Djokovic Berankis : Quick standard work from Novak in the first round. No one looks more perfectly effortless than him when he’s in control. Berankis did well to surprise the lackluster Dellien even though clay isn’t his best surface. Dellien will likely be off the tour next year without some major grinding on the challenger tour. This next matchup looked good for a while at the USO but will be a similar result and a faster one on clay. Djokovic in 3.
Galan Sandgren : Cam Norrie and Galan played one of the worst 5-setters you could see if you were betting on either one. Nonstop exchanges of multiple games and no one could really sustain offense. I had thought Galan would run away with this one as he’s such a specialist but Norrie (when he wasn’t making errors) had control here and was the only one who could really change the direction of the ball or serve aces. Just the same scorelines but completely different play in the Sandgren and Hurkacz match. Sandgren hung around in the first set even though Hurkacz was dictating. It appeared fairly obvious that Sandgren’s plan was to hang in rallies and not go for much, hoping for errors. When Hurkacz managed to get broken at the end of the first it began to look like that was a solid strategy.
Sandgren was constantly serving at duece, facing break points in so many service games, and genuinely did not win this match at all. Hurkacz will need time or a new mental approach, because he’s losing matches due to errors, and this is a baaaaaad thing on tour because so many guys strategy when things get tight is to “try hard hope to earn errors”. When you’re known for making them guys try harder, and then you’re in the rare prison of supplying all the offense to a match. Guys like Federer can play 3 sets of offense, most of the tour is going to need to play error-free tennis so that their opponents are forced to at least go for something. Sandgren turned the tide in the 4th and 5th and Hurkacz began facing break points in all his games. The heavy ball Sandgren hits translates to a slightly more annoying pusher style, as he can kinda go for big targets and rely on pace/weight of shot to earn the point.
This next matchup opened at -195 for Sandgren and I tend to disagree. Sandren played an exhausting match but has gone through a number of deep runs at majors before. He’s not mercurial by any means on clay but he’s been working very hard the past few weeks to get his game together. Where Hurkacz has the weapons to really hurt Sandgren, Galan relies more on work ethic and simple consistency to unseat opponents. Barring fatigue, I don’t see Sandgren losing this, and he’ll have ample opportunities to break. His movement isn’t as good as Norrie but his offensive/service game are world’s more reliable. Sandgren in 4.
Garin Polmans : Garin and Kohl played a pretty good match, and Garin’s returning was what really got him over the finish line here. A lot of deep placement kept the times Kohl broke him from becoming a major issue, as he did have his chances. Garin is a player who thrives on flow and the more matches he wins the better he performs. Polmans, well, Polmans partied all over Humbert today. It was one-sided from start to finish, with Humbert just reflecting the ball and Polmans driving it. Fatigue could be a suggestion, but if you look at the guys who came from the ultra-fast courts of Hamburg they all struggled early in their matches. Humbert is not quite the physical talent that Rublev and Tsitsipas are so he wasn’t able to turn the tide, but they all found their timing around the 3rd set. Humbert’s mom is still cool, and he still has a bright future. If you like Polmans’ wacky hat and vivid celebrations on court (he seems almost like he’s about to start awkwardly breakdancing while celebrating/lamenting shots), him notching a win at a major is great for his ranking.
Garin is a better Polmans. I don’t consider Humbert’s demise a total implosion, and Polmans will be involved in this contest, but Garin is a player who usually loses to bigger weapons, and while Polmans moves the ball well he isn’t overwhelming. He can win a set or two because Garin is still in somewhat a daze from Hamburg, but I think Polmans will play Garin into a rhythm and Garin’s precision tend to improve as he strings games together. Garin in 4.
Vesely Khachanov : Vesely is starting to look like himself. Originally the inspiration for some Geico commercials, his transition to tennis has been brilliant, and his serving combined with the fact that he’s a lefty mean his game gives him an edge against most lower-tier players. Khachanov was one of the better comeback stories you’ll ever see in a straight set win. Majchrzak led by a break in every set and just couldn’t keep it together. A hint of future brilliance, but again his biggest issue is not being able to distance himself from his opponents in matches. Once Khachanov buttoned up his errors when he was down a break, it became difficult for Majchrzak to win rallies. I expect something similar in this tie with Vesely.
Vesely’s backhand has been the side that makes errors during neutral rallies, and for a guy who crushes the ball this represents a big target. Vesely will need to serve well to have a shot at this, and while matches between two big hitters tend to never go in straight sets, Khachanov and Garin looks like an inevitability. Khachanov in 4.
Bautista Agut Balasz : I’ve never seen someone look so dominant while getting beaten down. In the first set RBA was broken at love multiple times. Gasquet hit a number of unreal winners down the line with his backhand and worked to earn points with 20 shot rallies over and over. He led 5-2 at one point, but RBA had barely missed a shot to that point, aside from a few backhands into the net. Gasquet was emitting a quality of sweat I recognize as deep deep swampwater, and I know when things are that humid that comebacks are not in the cards. Gasquet lost the 1st set tiebreaker and was just about done. Gasquet is French for something, and while he’s out of the tournament here, he certainly has a neat backhand and a cool name,
Balasz was one of the cheapest and most straightforward options of the day, and Uchiyama never really put up a fight. Balasz has an interesting game and is worth watching, but his tournament is likely over. Gasquet was brilliant in the first set and still only won 9 games. The heavier balls and slower conditions mean RBA has a tough time hitting through the court, but the flipside is it’s very difficult to find points against him. Balasz may confuse him for a while, but errors will come as he forces shots. RBA in 3-4.
Pella Carreño Busta : Busta busta busta, I made you out of clayyyyyy. I know Pella’s name is first but I was just so relaxed watching PCB play his first round. He really comes into a match with a complete gameplan and sticks with it no matter the scoreline. Unpopular opinion : I don’t think he was going to lose in any fewer than 5 sets against Novak in NY. When he’s fresh and not making backhand errors it becomes extremely difficult to beat him, and for a guy whose somewhat regarded as a defensive player he steps into the court and unloads for winners whenever it’s possible. He is what Sandgren is trying to be.
Pella and Caruso played what must have been a depressing match for Caruso fans. Endless rallies, great quality tennis, but no real way for either player to find clean winners. Matches like that are difficult to watch because your neighbor will hear 3 hours of grunting coming from your apt and also because you know a few random points at the end of sets are going to decide things. Pella won those points, and though he was down early breaks he looked like himself for the first time. I’m glad I announced he has a terrible injury; I now know how to summon top play from any opponent.
I don’t know exactly what to expect from this matchup. They’ve traded some wins on hardcourt, but have oddly never played on clay. PCB’s movement/stamina are the biggest differences between him and Caruso, whose game sort of broke down as things progressed. Pella certainly played well, and even in a losing effort he’s going to make you play a ton of balls. The edge has to go to PCB given their recent forms, but his proclivity for going to duece means this could go the distance. PCB in 4-5.
Struff Altmaier : Struff and Tiafoe, or Struffafoe as they’re known from now on, played a pretty good quality match. I once again feel Tiafoe needs better coaching, as he was winning a fair number of the baseline rallies but insisted on playing dropshots. They cost him this match. I don’t know a nice way to outline that winning on tour just isn’t easy. The mental lapses are always going to cost you at a professional level, but Tiafoe has shown great improvements following the tour’s break, and you can’t just summon the type of resolve/focus that Nadal has. It’ll take time.
Altmaier (whose name is super annoying to type) beat Lopez in straight sets but these two pretty much started every service game at 15-40. It wasn’t great, but the conditions were such that Altmaier was able to take deep return positions and frustrate Lopez into forcing offense. A good win, and the comfort level may be a bit higher here against Struff, which should benefit him a great deal. Playing on tour in a major after grinding the challenger tour is something that gives you adrenaline you just don’t need at times, so a bit of comfort is a plus. I see a lot of recent wins for Altmaier but he hasn’t really played someone the caliber of Struff, and Struff’s loss to Coria troubles me but in a 3/5 format and after the good quality rallies him and Tiafoe had, Struff should be able to find an edge here. Struff in 4 or losing because he’s Struff.
Harris Berrettini : Popyrin really struggled on serve at times, and didn’t seem like he’d been playing enough clay leading into this match. Harris seems to get most of his points on tour in the majors, which is interesting for such a young talent. Berretini beat Pospisil like he did something, and there’s not a lot to say about this next matchup. Harris is a great server but lacks consistency. Berretini in 3.
Medvedev Ramos-Vinolas : Oops. The strangest thing about Medvedev’s loss was how early he started complaining about it. Halfway through the first set he was down a break and already fullscale yelling at the sky/his box/local squirrels/some children/the moon/the ocean/a rock/some guy. It reminded me of Novak’s wild frustration early against PCB. These guys shouldn’t be stressing so early in a match, but I think sometimes they know the writing is on the wall and the thought is too much. Fucsovics is not really a household clay name, but he stayed composed and got the job done here. Medvedev just forced shots here over and over, and it’s strange because his serve works fine on clay and his defense is good enough to really grind points.
ARV vs Mannarino on clay is like Mannarino vs ARV on grass. These guys have such specific styles that they really can’t overcome a surface disadvantage. ARV is the sort of test that Medvedev should have been for Fucsovics once he went down a few sets; very solid defensively, doesn’t give you much to work with, and works multiple shots to earn points rather than just hoping for a W. I tend to think Fucs is up to the task, and while the “going to disneyland” notion creeps in after a big win, Fucs has had enough “almost” situations against the top 20 that notching a win won’t change his game. Both should be fresh for this one and it should be a clean, crispy tennis match. Fucsovics in 3-4.
Giron Monteiro : So many matches went to overtime this first round. Both Halys and Giron were up a break in the 5th set, which is a much different feeling from Monteiro’s day. Thiago (which is the coolest name in the draw) added to Basil’s woes, breaking early and often. He just came off a finals appearance at a challenger a week ago and continued his good form. Giron represents a tough test because his speed/forehand are a gamechanger at times, but he’s unlikely to get the job done unless he gets an early lead. Monteiro tends to get out to quick starts and is a brilliant frontrunner. I give Giron a puncher’s chance, but can’t really think of a way he can win unless Monteiro’s backhand completely falls apart. Monteiro in 3-4.
Lajovic Anderson : When I picture these two I always think of them sitting across from each other wearing black turtlenecks and evilly stroking cats. Lajovic had a pretty tough time with Mager, who crushes the ball and is a good indication that Anderson’s hitting (during the rally at least) won’t be too much of an issue. Djere refused to hold serve in this match, and that’s a bad decision to make against a server. They played much of the first stretch of their match in light rain, and Djere seemed visibly upset heading into the break. I would say this was an empty victory for Anderson, but he served well and he at some point, will find his former form since he’s not exactly too old for the tour yet. I feel the same about Nishikori but the question of when is a difficult puzzle if you’re not in his camp.
Being conscious of your biases in assessing matches is a useful tool, and I’m aware that I’d never be backing Anderson in this one with Lajovic in good form. Due to this, Anderson having actually beaten Lajovic on clay two years ago in Madrid makes me think this is going to be closer than I’d normally expect. Anderson at full health gives him a slight nod. Lajovic on a decent run gives it to him here. I wouldn’t bet against Anderson here, but Lajovic in 5.
Davidoch Fokina Rublev : First time watching Mayo and he has a really nice game. Good power, good forehand, pushes the pace well. He was up early in the 1st but once errors crept into his game it slipped away from him. There’s a big key in professional tennis and it’s being able to maintain a level throughout a match, even if it means playing slightly less than your all-out game throughout. Fokina is very solid and very comfortable. He seems like win or lose his expression will remain the same, and that’s more confidence than indifference. Rublev played one of the more difficult first rounds, as anyone who expected Sam Querrey to come out firing that well must have six magic 8-balls hooked up to a super intelligent iguana flying along a slip-and-slide on it’s way to Narnia. Querrey is a scary guy when he serves well and his forehand is a thing of useless beauty. Ruvlev/Tsitsipas/Humbert all seemed like their timing was poor early in the matches and Rublev was the first to turn it around.
Fokina would win the first two sets against the Rublev from the first two sets. There’s no intimidation factor and his backhand/movement are rocksolid which is good since that’s the thing Rublev attacks the most. I think this is a tighter contest than oddsmakers are predicting but Fokina’s ability to hit winners during these baseline rallies is something I think will be absent. Earning errors, fine. Winning neutral exchanges at net, I definitely think so. Finding his way out of baseline rallies without Rublev errors? Idk. Rublev in 4-5.
Shapovalov Carballes Baena : Shap played one of the least inspiring first rounds of the heavy favorites, trading breaks and looking at times like he wouldn’t be able to find the effort to hit through Simon. Simon was happy to move the ball around but really couldn’t find 1st serves at any point in the match. It was not a great match which makes the next round interesting. RCB had some injury concerns for me going in but eclipsed those, beating Steve Johnson 1, 1, 0. For those of you not familiar with tennis, these are not good scores. RCB represents the opposite version of Simon’s game. He is dynamic, has multiple names, and hits with pace. He doesn’t serve aces but he puts his 1st serve in at a good clip, and although Shap should win this matchup almost all the time, his struggles against the pusher style of Simon in the first round make me wonder how much patience/resolve he has left after a month and a half of nonstop tennis. Shapovalov is not the -660 favorite that he is priced at in the books, and I’d avoid this one entirely unless you’re looking at RCB or the over. Shap still did break almost at will, so I’ll give him the slight nod despite his issues holding serve/hitting the ball over the net. (for those of you not familiar with tennis, hitting the ball over the net is often an effective strategy) Shapovalov in 4-5.
Martin Dimitrov : Maybe there’s something about Tuesdays that make me nervous about upsets, but this is an interesting contest. Dimitrov is -700 in this one. I also think he’s playing great ball lately, but that is not the correct line. Dimitrov is a big market and people haven’t heard of Martin so it lands this way. Sousa didn’t particularly do anything wrong in his opener against Martin, except for doing each thing you could do wrong once. He just looks unlucky out there. He’s hitting well at times, but just seems to find an error or unfortunate way to lose the point over and over. Martin, on the other hand, was crushing the ball. He hit clean winners time and time again on Sousa’s second serve, and I think that while he isn’t expected to beat Dimitrov, his ability to generate offense during baseline rallies will give him opportunities in some spots.
Dimitrov rolled Barrere, but he served at duece in a number of games. Barrere is a nice hardcourt player, but really hasn’t won too many matches on clay. It became a perfect situation for Dimitrov, who looks great when things are going well. Martin is the type of player that clay tends to produce; not a dominant guy or a title-winner, but someone who is very comfortable with their game and who isn’t too troubled situationally (similar to what we saw from Munar today competing against Tsitsipas without too much mental duress). If this were 2/3 I’d like Martin. In 3/5 I think Dimitrov will have ample chances to break serve, and so will only lose in 5. Martin in 5.
Milojevic Bedene : Upset of the first round for Milojevic. He hit the ball solid and was proactive about his shot selection, hugging the baseline and taking time away. Krajinovic really never had a chance to breathe in this one and as a player who refuses to move off the baseline, Kraj made a number of errors on the backhand trying to stand his ground. Nothing really new from him, as he’s been great on clay and also struggled at times. Bedene was solid against Rinderknech, who reminds me a bit of Ruusuvuori and may make his way on tour in a year or two. Good groundstrokes, very fluid forehand, and just a bit less experience giving Bedene the edge late in the match.
This is another match where I lean towards the upset, but is the breakdown. Milojevic beat a superior player in Krajinovic, but a less consistent one. Kraj has had his fair share of struggles. Bedene isn’t a threat for deep runs in events, but gets the job done very consistently when he’s “supposed” to win. That’s a big thing on tour, as upsets happen. I did like Milojevic’s pace, and were he playing someone who has a bit more variety in their game, I’d think he had a better shot. Bedene tends to play a very similar game though, and the edge here will be very small. Milojevic elevating his game as the Kraj match progressed rather than barely getting across the finish line indicates to me fatigue wasn’t a factor and that it was just a one-and-done effort. Milojevic in 4-5.
Cuevas Tsitsipas : Haha they put the Uruguayan flag for both, I thought. But it turns out I am a muppet and have much to learn about the world. Many countries enjoy stripey goodness it seems. Cuevas was a bit too good today, negating the over of 35 games even while going to 4 sets. Laaksonen looked ok in the second but Cuevas’ loopy returns saw Henri making error after error. The ball hitting the net with an open court is something that seems to compound struggles on tour, and this was over quickly. The polar opposite of Tsitsipas’ war with Munar, which took forever and featured some of the most skillful exchanges of the first round. Munar is everything you want in a smol one. Unexpected dropshots, clean shots down the line, and the ability to transfer luck if you rub his head. Tsitsipas looked very impatient, and I feel for Munar who really never had a chance to win after Tsitsipas found form, but Stefanos making this comeback is a very good sign. He was drenched in sweat, struggling to put this away, and never really blew up.
Stefanos and Pablo played a week ago and although Cuevas was good, Tsitsipas seemed like he was able to defend the court well enough that Cuevas was only going to get the match with errors. I expect to see something similar here, although Stefanos won’t be able to afford the sort of slow start he made against Munar. Tsitsipas in 4 or Cuevas in 4.
Bublik Sonego : Bublik got the job done, and Monfils left fans wondering if he really wants to be out there fighting any more. Nothing wrong with losing to a great server whose career is on the rise, but Monfils seems like he’s not fully engaged out there, and so as a professional athlete, people are going to ask questions. Sonego and Gomez had a good contest, and while I think Sonego matches up well with Bublik, taking 5 sets with Gomez means Bublik will be able to find breaks of serve. There are likely to be some tiebreakers here, but given Bublik’s ability to serve out Monfils, he’s likely to win them. Bublik in 4.
Albot Fritz : If you read my predictions, you know what’s coming. Albot broke his slump by playing spirited ball again Thompson. It was one of the quicker matches in the first round, lasting just (insert however many minutes it lasted). Fritz Fritz’d it up, almost dropping the ball against qualifier Machac. Considering he barely snuck by, there’s reason to believe this will be a tough contest as well, even with Albot’s struggles. Albot tests his opponents movement, Fritz makes errors on the run. Albot breaks serve at a higher clip than most guys on tour, Fritz is mainly just a server. I think Fritz is the better player here, but I think that the lead will be very important for belief here, since Albot has struggled lately. I think Albot’s movement will be a key on the slower surface, but he’ll need to get off to a quick lead since Fritz (as many servers are) is a very dangerous opponent in a 5th set. Albot in 4.
Gombos Rodionov : Finally a good reliable favorite. I warned readers that Gombos is the Gombosiest, but they didn’t listen. Coric found out the hard way, and honestly there difference in this one was just ballstriking. Coric was moving the ball around looking to present the “you can’t hit through me” challenge, and while this is a good strategy in later rounds, guys really crush the ball in the first round and the pace is much quicker. Gombos almost snagged Cilic in the USO, and didn’t falter here. Rodionov waited as long as possible to get going against Chardy, going down 2 sets and only winning the tiebreaker 8-6. He served for the match in the 5th set 3 times, and had a very lucky day to be playing Chardy. Chardy just couldn’t keep the ball in the court on offense, and will have to earn his points in the indoor season this year.
Rodionov plays a solid game, and being lefty helps, but he lacks big weapons which is why he mostly plays on the challenger tour. Gombos has enough power to be able to dictate here, and Rodionov coming through the qualifier and played 5 long sets will make this an uphill battle. Considering Gombos hit through Coric, the defense is unlikely to phase him. Gombos in 3.
Giustino Schwartzman : Lorenzo Giustino and Corentin Moutet had played the match of the first round by the end of the 2nd set. Moutet was just in unreal form and dictating most of the rallies in this one. Where he suffered was in two patterns. Giustino hit his forehand with height/shape rather than pace into Moutet’s backhand. Once into this pattern the shorter Moutet tended to drive the backhand downward crosscourt and Giustino would execute the same shot. The backhand never broke down but Giustino was able to wear down Moutet’s patience, and he took many opportunities as the match went on to run around his backhand and hit the inside in forehand. Giustino hit this ball crosscourt every time, really not missing often. These are simple exchanges but it’s the same shotpatterns that Djokovic employs against Nadal. What transpired was Giustino’s speed being pitted against Moutet’s arm, and while it looked like Giustino wouldn’t find offense, Moutet’s forehand got more loopy and Giustino found winners crosscourt since he was able to drive the ball more, and Moutet’s backhand lost depth and Giustino was able to catch Moutet with the forehand down the line over and over. If people are looking for the way to beat these lefty patterns this was a great example.
I had hoped Moutet would win, as his offense would be able to trouble Diego a bit more. Schwartzman beat Kecmanovic easily, and Kecmanovic had that “this draw sucks and I’m already thinking about the next tournament” glazed look in his eyes throughout this match. Giustino has to be exhausted at this point, after qualifying and playing an extra 2 sets of tennis in the 5th. Diego is the wrong opponent to try to outlast, and I think unfortunately Giustino will be more error prone here which will drive Moutet insane from wherever he’s watching. Schwartzman in 3.
Wawrinka Koepfer : Mats Wilander’s comment that Murray should leave these wildcards to younger players has some validity, but his presentation is part of what is wrong with social media. If he really had this concern, he could send Murray a message and offer some perspective. Maybe the clay tour isn’t really where Murray needs to play at this point. Posting these “open letters” and private messages as tweets is a really bizarre way to posture and the messages tend to be more about the person writing them than the issue at hand. Now, unfortunately, Mats Wilander (who I have never heard of) is an official douchenozzle in my mind. Unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as Murray/Wawrinka not giving us the classic we were all hoping for. Wawrinka has stumbled so badly recently that him playing his normal solid top 10 clay court tennis was unexpected. Murray’s movement was poor, but most players are going to lose to Wawrinka when he plays well.
Koepfer looked solid against in dispatching Hoang, and there’s something to the idea that this next contest will be tricky for Stan. There’s always the crisp shotmaking and overwhelming power, but Koepfer is not really looking to win the hitting contest anyway, and instead thrives on scrambling rallies and working his opponent’s backhand. The outcome here depends entirely on Wawrinka, as Koepfer is likely to be steady throughout. I expect at least one set to go the German’s way, as he has proven to be an extremely difficult out. Wawrinka in 4-5 but I would avoid backing Stan here if you like dollars, especially since he’ll likely show his level and have a more predictably simple match the next round against Nishioka. With guys who are good for deep runs in tournaments if they’re playing well, it often helps to gather information rather than let that fear of missing out have you backing question marks.
Gaston Nishioka : Lefty fiiiiiiiight! Gaston won the all-French affair pretty comfortably and Nishioka’s quality in his win over FAA was completely ignored. FAA can’t serve! FAA so many errors! Part of this is inconsistency but part of this is Nishioka being a wall and constantly moving his opponent. Gaston will be at a disadvantage here experience-wise but lefty vs lefty is always a difficult task for both, and Nishioka has been a mixed bag on the clay so far this season. Very tough to know how these two will match up, but the pre-match edge has to sit with Nishioka. Nishioka in 4.
Ruud Paul : Pretty simple victories for both of these two, and this will be a great match to watch. Paul has shown he can compete at the top level, but watching him in his doubles match today he didn’t seem to be serving great. His partner Monroe is a great player to watch at net which is why I caught it, and inferences from doubles aren’t the most reliable, but I think Paul will need to avoid long rallies with Ruud, who has been improving every week since the restart. Pretty similar styles at different points in their career. Ruud in 4.
Sock Thiem : Sock had some genuine emotion winning games against Opelka, and it’s nice to see him visibly motivated after his chubby troubles. Thiem looked like there wasn’t much adjustment to clay in the first round, and he was extremely composed/reserved while beating Cilic. Cilic isn’t in great form, but beating him so easily is a real testament to Thiem’s solid position in the top 2-3 players in tennis. Sock’s skill and whippy forehand allow him to match up better against the top tier than the results will indicate, but with Sock’s backhand still a liability this isn’t a spot where Thiem will struggle too much. Thiem in 3 and let the inbox threats begin, he is my pick to win this tournament.
Zverev Herbert : Zverev continued his slow start strong finish method against Novak. Once he locks down the errors he becomes a very tough out and he hits the ball with such reservation during rallies that when he does finally go for a clean winner his opponents almost don’t move. In Serena’s age of dominance she’d often lose the first two games and then break back and her opponents level would fall and Zverev’s slow starts give me the same sort of “accidental or genius” psychological strategic vibes. It’s more likely it’s just tall players start slow. Herbert beat Mmoh, who is somehow a pusher that makes errors. I’d like to see him (Mmoh) go a bit more offensive for a season, as looking to be solid from the baseline just isn’t enough to win on tour.
The Herbert Zverev matchup is an interesting one since Herbert’s game has the things that traditionally would snag a player who starts slow. Herbert is an old-school serve and volley player who is adept at adjusting his strokes to keep the ball in the court. Zverev is a bit too crispy at the moment to expect a bit blowup, but Herbert having a higher caliber of offense than Novak (who plays a bit too straightforward to really beat the mid-top tier guys) gives him a better chance. Zverev in 4.
Londero Cecchinato : Londero flipped the result against Delbonis, who he’d lost in straight sets against in their previous meeting. It’s nice to see him back in the win column, as he plays a very unique game, going for accurate offense and looking to test his opponents speed. If it weren’t for fatigue, I’d think he were a decent favorite. Cecchinato has been great though, and murmurs of his previous French Open run were flying with his snowball beatdown of De Minaur. De Minaur isn’t the best on clay, as many pointed out, but he has some notable wins in his past including PCB, and beating him is never simple. Cecchinato’s power gives him an edge here if Londero is tired. Slower legs will leave more short balls and Cecchinato can really dictate. He’s also fairly deft at using the dropshot which can wear his opponents down. Where I hesitate to just hand him the win is that these new wins have been out of nowhere, and he hasn’t played a real top level player yet. Londero is the first such test, as his claycourt game can threaten all but the top 10-20 guys at the French. No pick here, but if either is able to win this quickly then Zverev is in for a difficult 3rd round.
Paire Coria : Local kumquat Benoit Paire played quite well, beating Kwon in straight sets. There wasn’t a lot of hope for Kwon, and he struggled with his serving throughout. Paire, whose attention span is that of a drunk raccoon, will be a small favorite in his next round against Coria, but Coria is the quintessential villain to beat Paire. Coria lacks offense, but is a venerable wall. The errors Kwon made will be less available, and with Sinner looming in the next round both guys will know this is their last chance to advance. I expect Paire to either find great form here or lose. Finding great form isn’t what I expect, and if Coria is able to earn an early lead this could be over quick. Coria in 4.
Bonzi Sinner : Bonzi played great against Ruusuvuori, and I got that match completely wrong. Sinner’s defeat of Goffin coupled with his 6-2, 6-2 loss to Cilic a week or so ago makes me think Goffin is either a bit injured or just not fully engaged in this clay swing, but Sinner looks great. Sinner in 4.
Kukushkin Martinez : Fognini Fognini’d all over the place. He seemed to hurt his ankle during the 3rd set tiebreaker, and for a guy who lacks a bit of self control he shockingly did not withdraw. This seems to be one of his principles, as he’s finished matches injured before. Good win for Kukushkin, who hung around until he was given the match. Martinez on the other hand went out and earned it, downing the hard hitting Vukic in straight sets.
Martinez and Kukushkin are unlikely to have huge edges against each other. Kukushkin does his best work at majors, but not really on clay, and Martinez is a claycourt expert, but generally earns errors/preys on his opponents inconsistency. I expect long rallies, and I expect Martinez to gradually pull away in this one. Martinez in 5.
Korda Isner : I’m gonna have to be honest. I completely missed Isner’s match. It didn’t seem like Benchetrit was returning much, and Isner is generally the same. That being said, I regret this because Korda played very well in defeating Seppi and I’d like to be more confident about defending his chances here. Korda plays very well at net, and while he’s a bit green, he’s been losing in the qualifiers on tour for a few seasons now. Him starting to win matches now means we can expect a solid performance from him. He’ll have the edge in baseline rallies, and given they’re from the same country, he’ll be somewhat familiar with Isner’s game. This will come down to Korda’s ability to avoid bad service games, and whether Isner’s serve is unreturnable or not. These are question marks, and I’m starting to hate question marks. Not as much as I hate people bouncing the ball between their legs before their serves though. Korda in fourda.
Nishikori Travaglia : Clay Nishikori is back! A late 5th set victory against Evans saw many bettors writing creative words into the livestream chat, and if you’ve never been called an assfish, you can only imagine how upset Dan is tonight. Kei was happy to get across the finish line, and he has to feel like he can breathe a sigh of relief. Travaglia beat Pablo Andujar, who I have been instructed by my attorney to point out is not from Colombia and does not live in the jungle and does not train jaguars and does not sleep in a cave and does not channel magical eagles and definitely does not possess the ability to call the wind from within his lungs which are definitely not made out of the spirit of a cursed python. Andujar had been on a tear, and beating him in straight sets coupled with Travaglia’s serving prowess mean I make him a slight favorite to beat Kei in this matchup. Since Kei is struggling to find length and rhythm playing a big hitter is likely a bad situation, and I give Kei a good chance since he’s such a difficult defender to beat but he really will be behind the 8-ball in his service games. Travaglia in 4-5.
McDonald Nadal : Nice win and some much needed points and bucks for Mackie. Nadal didn’t look great against Gerasimov but Egor was hitting some great offense and Nadal doesn’t exactly need to press early. Nadal in 3 and the next round against Travaglia will be a good look at Nadal’s level.
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Finishing up the women's now. Should be up in an hour or two. <3

This happened several years ago and to date is the most abrasive interaction I have had with other folks in public regarding my service dog (who is now retired.)
EM: Entitled Mom, EK: Entitled kid, SD: Service Dog, Me: self explanatory
I was maybe about 21 at the time and was in the beginning stages of really learning to be an adult on my own at the time. I had just moved out of my parents house and I to an apartment with a friend. Before this, I still lived at home with my parents and usually just went to school, work and didn't often go places alone because I'm kind of a homebody. So between school, work and the odd outting with my parents or friends everyone usually around me was really respectful and familiar with my service dog and my general rules about her. I didn't have issues usually And if I did, someone less anxious and more assertive was usually there to help me. This was no longer the case after I moved out.
I was out and about running some errands on my own (which I was beginning to enjoy doing!) with my service dog at my side. Along the way, I realized I hadn't eaten in a while and decided to stop at the food court of the mall I was in right then for something quick and tasty. I got my food, found a seat, and began to get my SD focused and prepared to go through our usual process so I could get started on my meal.
I'm not secretive or anything personally and usually I'm down to discuss my dog and educate if I have the time or energy with someone who is polite and well meaning. I have a really intense food allergy so that's what she is for. She also knows how to bring me a handfull of objects on command like an epipen, inhaler, or just lay down next to me to give me access to meds carried on her harness. It's really important that she not be disturbed while I have her check things because a missed alert can be life or death for me, not to be dramatic or anything. Breathing tends to be important.
So I'm about to go through the process of having my dog do a check for me when I see a child making a beeline for my SD. She is harnessed, clearly and boldly marked and not facing this little girl. That doesn't matter though because the child is clearly too young or excited to read.
EK: PUPPY!
I placed a hand out instinctively just in time to keep her from touching my dog, who is still set to do her check thankfully. I try to be understanding with kids but I have a few hard and fast rules. I never reward attempts to touch without asking. I will stop and thank polite children tho. Each situation usually gets a conversation from me about how important working dogs are. However, even with polite children I do not stop my dog mid task for my own safety.
Me: Oh no, Honey. Please don't touch the puppy. She has a really important job and she is working right now.
This is usually a good enough explanation for most children about 2 and up. Not this one though because she immediately starts crying. I am talking full on pouring tears and a red face as she screamed loudly in the busy food court. I looked around for a parent and locked eyes with a round, blonde woman who was apparently staring icy daggers at me.
EM: Why are you touching my child?!
EK: Puppy! I WANT THE PUPPY.
EM marches over to me from her table and demands that I just let her child pet my dog. I could feel the heat on my neck I was so embarrassed at all the staring faces.
Me: I'm sorry, I really can't do that. This is my service dog and she's working right now. If I let her get distracted during her task, I can get really sick or even worse.
EM: Service dogs are for disabled people! You obviously aren't blind and you dont look sick.
Me: Thanks. That means she's doing a good job.
EM: Whats wrong with you then? Just let her pet the dog.
The child is carrying on incoherently during this exchange and has now thrown herself on the floor. My SD is not engaging her but is fond of children so she is looking at her with concern. I get more irritated because I will have to wait longer to eat now.
Me: That's none of your business. Nobody is petting the dog. Can you please leave me alone? Your kid shouldn't be running at large dogs she doesn't know anyway.
EM: I bet you're just faking it! I don't think pit bulls can even be service dogs.
Me: Any breed can be a service dog, lady. Please go away and take your daughter with you.
EM looks like I just slapped her in the face. She could tell I wasn't going to budge. She picked up the small screaming child, walked back to her table and put her in a stroller. She gathered her stuff and left. I breathed a sigh of relief and decided to check my phone for a minute so my SD could forget the ordeal and reset. I figured it was behind me and I could go back to what I was doing. Oh how wrong I was!
Just a few minutes later, I could hear the screech of an EM heading back into battle. The child was still crying and this time she was accompanied by a security officer.
EM: There! That animal bit my baby!
My eyes probably looked like they were going to fall out of my head. I knew people had weird hangups about breeds but this lady had JUST been demanding her kid be allowed to pet my dog. I couldn't believe it!
This particular security guard looked like he didn't want to be mediating between adults at all. He asked me if it was true and I of course said it wasn't. I told him that the child had run up to my dog and the mother was mad I wouldn't let my dog be pet. He asked if she was a service dog. I confirmed she was. He asked if she was trained to do a task to mitigate a disability. I confirmed she was.
EM: She's lying! That mutt but my daughter and made her cry.
EK: Puppy! (The child is visibly reaching for the dog)
The security guard is clearly having none of her crap at this point. My SD is calmly sitting next to us during the whole ordeal, watching me. She doesn't exactly look viscious and is actually quite a sissy.
At this point a girl (Nice Girl, NG) around my own age chimes in.
NG: This lady and her kid were bothering OP. That child was never bitten. You have cameras right?
The security guard confirms there are indeed cameras and says we will all need to follow him so he can check the footage due to the severity of the accusation.
SG: Either I have to call animal control or the police. Harassing a service dog is a felony and a dog biting a child is a pretty big deal. Either way, someone is in trouble.
EM looks panicked and starts to back pedal and says she's willing to drop it and everyone can go their own way. Her precious baby is fine after all.
Me: I'm not willing to drop it. You lied about me. Let's go.
Three more security guards show up and we all get escorted to the security office. Sure enough the footage shows that the kid never even got within arms reach of my dog and EM was harassing us. They ask me if I want to press charges and I say that I do. Police show up within a few minutes and I happen to know one of the officers because he's my ex boyfriends dad (we split amicably before we graduated high school). He knows me. He knows my dog. He loves my dog and has said she's one of the best trained dogs he's ever met. I usually wouldn't be petty but I excitedly greet him. He smiles and asks if it's ok to pet SD at the moment. I thank him for asking permission and say of course. EM looked like she could just throw something. The other officer takes my statement.
In the end, the officers see the footage, EM gets arrested and extra charges thrown on for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. It was pretty wild. And my first real experience with entitled people on my own. The charge for harassing my SD ended up getting dropped but the other two charges stuck. I didn't care too much about that but hopefully she learned a lesson. I also did eventually get to eat.

I wrote a post a few months ago (What will it take for Spacex to send humans to mars in 2024?) which did rather well. However I focused only on Starship itself, not on any of the other pieces that are just as important to achieve Spacex’s mars-sized ambitions, so let’s take a look at everything but the big shiny rocket. To be clear (like before), this is less me predicting the future and more me looking to start a discussion based on the data we have and a whole bunch of assumptions, speculations and wishes.
Let's start off by making the mother of all Big Falcon assumptions:
Starship works as intended
This is a MASSIVE leap of faith to take. While SN5’s (and now SN6’s) flight(s) did alleviate some concerns regarding Starship’s ascent, and Superheavy doesn’t really worry me with all the falcon 9 first stages Spacex has to draw experience from, there’s no guarantee that Spacex’s re-entry, descent and landing systems will work as well as they want and expect them to, since those all fall somewhere between unusual and revolutionary. Nor is the rapid and reliable reuse guaranteed to work as well as we all want it to.
Although I will say people need to cool it with claiming Starship is years and years away from orbit; the raptor works and the tanks, plumbing and command & control system are up to standards, as SN5&6 showed. If Spacex wanted to (and had enough engines) they could bolt together a Superheavy booster, stick a Starship on it and fly both expendable to put 100-200 tons in orbit right now if they had a launch pad and a humongous crane. Big waste of money and engines but they could do it. Once Superheavy hops (successfully) you can seriously argue that Starship is closer to reaching orbit than SLS, despite the latter’s development being started a decade earlier. It’s just that reaching orbit isn’t Starships main goal; getting to orbit and back down cheaply and reliably is, which is another thing entirely. To me, SN8’s 20 km flight will be the big thing to watch: if that works, Starship is ready for orbit. If not, Spacex has a nasty problem or two to solve. For the record, I will say that I think the launch, ascent and descent of SN8 will go fine, but that the flip-down has a high chance of going very, very wrong the first few times.
Just to reiterate: this is not me saying what will happen, this is me speculating what Elon plans/wants to make happen in order to put humans on the red planet basically 4 years from now, to give people something to ponder on and give their own take. Personally I doubt that humans will really depart for mars in 2024, but given Elon’s repeated statements that 2024 is still the goal, and the fact that at least at tesla his timelines are getting a little more accurate recently, I have crammed the insane amount of progress needed into the next 3-4 years to make it fit. My timeline should not be taken as a prediction but as my best guess to somehow get all the needed pieces into place given the insane objectives.
So, if we make the admittedly stomach-churning assumption that Starship works and is flying reliably and reusable sometime (early) next year, what else should SpaceX be working on? To me, it seems they need four other pieces to realize their mars ambitions:
getting Starship to mars -> orbital refueling
getting Starship back from mars -> fuel production on mars
getting the humans inside Starship to mars -> life support in space
keeping the humans inside Starship alive on the surface of mars -> life support on mars
I will go through them in order from what I consider to be least to most difficult (no part is “easy” if you ask me):
Orbital refueling:
This one I’ve made a U-turn on. I used to think it was a major obstacle but recently have concluded that it won’t slow down Spacex at all. Why? Because in their Artemis bid, Spacex announced that they plan to use not just tankers, but fuel depots. This simplifies the whole operation massively. Spacex can launch a few custom Starships that consist of nothing but a giant empty fuel tank, something which they can probably build today. No heat shield, no fins, no payload bay, no life support, to maximize the fuel capacity. Only some batteries, a solar panel, rcs and a way to dock. Heck with the recent raptor improvements they might be able to stretch this type of Starship to have even more internal volume for fuel.
Now these most likely will have to be painted pitch black to prevent an angry mob of astronomers marching on boca chica with pitchforks, but that’s probably not a bad idea regardless. The fuel boil off in LEO will be a lot less than Starship will have to deal with on its way to mars due to a noticeable lack of shade during the transfer, so subjecting the LEO fuelers to as high a temperature as possible seems like a useful safety margin when designing for that.
The current Starship can hold 1200 tons of propellant with a large amount of its volume turned over for cargo. Given that a Superheavy can hold 3300 tons of propellant, let’s say that a fuel depot Starship can hold between 2000 and 3000 tons depending on how much it’s stretched, with the lower estimate being more likely. Edit: elon recently stated that they are pushing for Starship being able to hold up to 2000 tons of fuel, supporting my hunch that Starship’s length will increase.
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations show that a 250 ton Starship (100 ton dry mass, 150 ton payload) with 750 tons of fuel and an isp of 380 will have just over 5 km/s of delta V. Going from earth to mars using a hohmann transfer takes just over 4 km/s, while a much faster 3-month transfer takes around 4.8 km/s. This fits well with Elon’s step-by-step strategy. For the first flights having an extra 1000 m/s will most likely be invaluable, allowing on-route course corrections, meaningful maneuvers in martian orbit, as well as an easier landing, both due to being able to start the landing burn higher up and the fact that more fuel means more mass at the bottom of the Starship making it more stable during the flip and upon touching down. Later flights, after Spacex has a high enough confidence in their navigation, aerodynamic controls and landing system, can then start to burn more fuel to incrementally shorten that transfer time until they reach Elon’s goal of a three month transfer for humans.
Now what would this mean? If Spacex launches say three of these fuel depot Starships early next year (and they totally will have the means to build and launch these by then, all they need is a working Superheavy), they now have something to use their insane launch cadence for that is both useful and dirt-cheap. Each one of these fully fueled will provide the propellant for three mars-bound or two lunar-surface-bound Starships to reach their destinations.
Since the tankers will be able to carry between 100 and 150 tons to LEO depending on how far along the vacuum raptor engine is, this is 60 to 90 flights right here for Starship. If I’m Elon/SpaceX, all I’m doing in 2021 is flying Starship tankers DOZENS of times to bring fuel up to these depots for use in 2022. Now I know people are excited about a Starship launch putting 400 Starlink satellites into orbit in one go, but let’s remember that those still cost $300.000 a piece to make, and that’s after achieving an impressive economy of scale (120 a month). One failure on ascent and there goes over a hundred million dollars. At least for the first dozen launches, Spacex would be wise to start with fuel only imho, and move to include Starlink launches after a few months of successful fuel flights. It will give Starship a simple cheap payload to fly over and over again with minimal impact if it suffers a catastrophic failure on ascent. Simply learn and move on; nothing of significant value was lost.
While the engineers focus on decreasing the turn-around time and fixing whatever unexpected problems arise due to Starships re-entering multiple times (which there definitely will be, don’t tell yourself otherwise), the designers can spend 2021 seriously working on life support and ISRU systems, with both available to support the other should they need to. As an additional bonus, all these launches will greatly boost the confidence in Starship from both nasa and the commercial sector, paving the way for Starship’s utter domination of the commercial launch market from 2022 onward. Finally, maybe the realization that voting for Artemis meant voting for orbital fuel depots will give Shelby a well-earned heart attack (one can dream). /s
If Spacex can get 10 to 20 Starship tankers to orbit in 2021 (they can all be the same ship, they can be 3 different ships or they can be 10 different ships depending on how successful they are in their re-use objectives by then), it will give them a much easier time in 2022; “simply” fly the mars-bound or moon-bound Starship to LEO, dock with the depot and perform a single large fuel transfer. This way Spacex won’t have to worry about keeping a dozen Starship tankers in orbit at a time.
As for orbital refueling itself (wow, went a little bit of topic there), I don't see any major hurdles: if Starship’s fuel lines can handle the pressures of being fueled on the pad through the Superheavy booster as is currently the plan, than all Spacex needs to do is not exceed those pressures during on-orbit fuel transfers, which really should not be hard so long as they take their time with them.
Life support on mars
This might surprise some, but I actually think keeping humans alive on the martian surface will be much easier than keeping them alive in space due to the zero-g and radiation concerns that the latter will have to deal with. Consequently, if I were to suggest only one thing to Spacex from my very comfortable armchair, it would be to split the two: one type of Starship designed to act as a permanently inhabitable martian base that is basically an office tower with a big empty drained fuel tank and some engines at the bottom, and one designed for crewed use in zero-g as well as ascent and descent on both mars and earth. Trying to make a Starship do both is asking for trouble if you ask me, as well as greatly complicating the design (“the best part is no part”). Yes this would mean that these “base” Starships will not return to earth, but that is not that big a loss given the production rates Spacex is already achieving, plus having a few extra raptors on mars that can be cannibalised for parts or simply swapped with a malfunctioning raptor of another Starship sounds to me like good redundancy. Furthermore this split would have three enormous upsides:
1: The base ones are easier to design and build due to only being operated and inhabited under gravity after landing.
Let’s remind ourselves that if Spacex wants to send people to mars in 2024, it will be much easier to find support from nasa and the like if there already is a habitable structure waiting on the martian surface for them, which will have to be sent there in 2022. The easier base ones can be the focus of design in 2021 before being built and launched in 2022. Meanwhile the manned zero-g Starship will be granted another year to prove itself as now it won’t be needed until 2023, which is probably a good thing anyway. Even if Spacex can build these next year there is no guarantee that any agency would have enough confidence in Starship by then to provide them with astronauts. Taking another year to really prove Starship’s reliability as a launch and landing system might be enough (remember this means dozens of launches since we’re assuming Starship works) for a Starship to take on crew in LEO at the end of 2022/early 2023, probably at first using a dragon capsule to go to and from orbit as Tim Dodd and others have suggested.
2: It’s simply much safer.
Living and working in a separate Starship from the one that you land and launch in will probably be a whole lot more comfortable for the crew on mars. Sleeping well might be a bit harder if every morning the giant fuel tank a few dozen meters below you is a little bit fuller with highly combustible propellant than the day before. Compared to if the tank beneath you is completely drained while the Starship you will return in sits a few miles away being steadily refueled with you only returning to it a few hours/days before launch. Good back-up in terms of life support systems too; if something is really vitally needed you can take it with you from the landelauncher upon arrival or from the base/habitat upon leaving, as only one at a time will be housing crew. I’m sure nasa would be much more comfortable with this system too.
3: This base/habitat Starship would be perfect for nasa’s Artemis program:
While I don’t agree with Zubrin on a lot of things (seriously, he needs to stop with the whole mini-starship idea, it’s not gonna happen), he is right when he says that starship as a lunar ascent vehicle makes very little sense imo. It would be a huge investment of fuel and time for no real gain besides funding and nasa support, the latter of which is all but assured if Starship works. If instead Spacex offered Starship as a lunar base and suggested that nasa use the landers from the other two companies to go to and from the lunar surface, there’s no way nasa would say no. Imagine the offer:
“So here’s the deal: we will build a Starship interior to your specifications and wishes. Once built we will launch it, refuel it in orbit and fly it out to whatever lunar crater you want us to. Once landed, we fill drain every drop of fuel out of the tanks, lower the staircase/elevator and wait for your crew to arrive on one of those landers. It will have a thousand cubic meters of interior volume, aka more than the ISS, and you can have it on the moon in 2023 since we want to send one or two to mars in 2022 anyway. We’d like you to give us a billion dollars and a promise for martian astronauts in 2024 once we’ve landed it in exchange. Deal?”. Obviously Spacex won’t be that blunt, but I don’t believe that nasa wouldn’t fall over themselves to take an offer like that.
So what would this designed-for-gravity Starship need? Honestly, nothing fancy, which is why I suggested splitting them. Starship will have the unique luxury to simply, as musk has stated, throw mass at a problem until it is solved. As an example, let us say that a mars crew would number an impressive 12 people (one mission commandetest pilot, 4 scientists, 3 engineers, 2 botanists and 2 doctors). We know that they will be staying on mars for at least two years, but for safety let’s design it for 4 years. If they all eat like the most wasteful people on earth (cough, americans, cough...) they will consume 10 tons of food per year, with half of that being the recommended healthy amount. So.... let’s just put 40 tons of food on board. Done. 4 to 8 years of food just like that.
This is what using mass as a solution looks like. All Spacex needs is a way to store and preserve that food by either drying or freezing it for up to 5+ years, at which point that problem is solved. I’m no food expert but surely that technology exists?
Same story with water. 12 people will drink less than 10 tons of water a year, but here recycling is a well-understood and “easy” thing to implement. We’re able to reach 90+% efficiency on the ISS I think (if I’m wrong feel free to correct me), so if Spacex gets anywhere close to that (anything over 50% will do) they can put 20 or 30 tons of water on board Starship and for all intents and purposes have an unlimited supply. Recycling CO2 back into O2 is a solved problem that basically only requires power which Starship will have plenty of.
Also keep in mind that the above figures don’t assume food production or recycling, higher efficiency or using martian resources like water ice, any one of which would make surviving on mars for a few years a non-issue.
So… is that it? Well... yeah, pretty much. Spacex will need to design some ways to control temperature, humidity and (human) waste disposal as well as provide communication and spacesuits for the astronauts, but these are by no means show stoppers, especially with help from nasa and all the lessons learned from dragon. As for spare parts they can either take a 3D-printer or simply a literal ton worth of the more important components, or both if they want to.
None of the above is easy, but none of it is something that Spacex cannot obtain or build in a year (that year being 2021).
I have a design in my head for how this thing would look like on the inside but I’m a pretty bad programmemodeller. If someone who is good at that wants to model and render it and read my far too detailed description feel free to ask. Just be prepared for a very long response comment.
Life support in space
This is where things start to get “actually” difficult even if Starship works. Keeping astronauts alive during the 6+ month trip to mars will be easy. Keeping them healthy and in good condition will be very hard. Like I said with the mars base Starship, food, water and air won’t be a problem. Even basic water recycling and CO2 scrubbers will keep the crew alive just fine. Put 10 tons of food and 10 tons of water on board and there’s your problem solved. Even if they have to abort the martian landing on-route for some reason and slingshot back to earth they will be fine as they will have 1 to 2 years or more of food, water and air. No, the two big problems will be radiation and weightlessness. On mars neither of these factors are a show stopper: The gravity most likely will be fine and mars and its atmosphere will shield you from some/much of the cosmic rays, while putting the radiation shelter right below your 40 tons of food with your 20-30 tons of water surrounding it will protect you reasonably well from solar storms. None of these “easy fixes” is available in interplanetary space, as there is no planet to create gravity or block radiation (shocking I know), nor will these ones be as full of food and water to use as shielding since they will be carrying much more cargo and scientific instruments. No reason not to if there is already a base Starship full of food and water waiting on mars.
The simplest way to solve the radiation problem is some sort of physical shielding material in the walls (maybe hydrogen-rich foam?) and a solar storm shelter which is surrounded by all of the food and water on board. Whatever Spacex comes up with, this is something that I hope they work very closely with nasa on. The main problem is that they will not have much time to test this theoretical solution with humans on board until probably 2023. At the earliest Starship will be flying with crew on board in 2022, and even that’s jaw-droppingly aggressive. It would probably require Starship to reach falcon 9’s current amount of launches (a 100 basically) in less than two years (aka, one orbital launch every week on average) with little to no failures before nasa would trust Starship to launch and land safely, since I don’t see any sign of Spacex adding a launch abort system or changing the landing sequence. For the first few flights they can use a dragon to shuttle between a Starship in LEO and earth’s surface, but they can only do that a few times before the costs in both money and disposed falcon 9 second stages start adding up. No humans have ever gone beyond the earth-moon system, and no human has gone beyond earth’s magnetic shield since 1972, so this part very much has a possibility of providing some unwelcome unknown unknowns.
There is another big thing though that I think too many people ignore: weightlessness. The first flights to mars will take at least 6 months. Even with exercise, I think it’s fair to say that astronauts currently do not have the muscle and bone strength to stand up and walk by themselves after returning from a 6 month mission on the ISS without help. Mars’ lower gravity might help them recuperate faster, but this too is a complete unknown that neither nasa nor Spacex will or should count on imho. So far I’ve seen only two solutions suggested: lots of exercise on-route combined with simply letting the crew recover slowly once they land on mars, or tethering two starships together and spinning them. I don’t think either one will be an option. The first one is probably not enough, and the second one is too risky. Nasa would almost certainly go pale with that amount of inhabited mass under constant loads and stresses from circular acceleration, even if Spacex can make it work mechanically.
The only alternative I can come up with is this (and since I don’t believe for a second that I’m smarter than the teams at Spacex I’d very much appreciate someone more knowledgeable to explain to me where my thinking is flawed): You place a ring inside the pressurised part of Starship 8 meters in diameter and 3 meters in height, connected to a central pole that is bolted to the floors above and below but is free to spin. You put the sleeping accommodations on the inside of this ring with your head facing towards the centre. At the start of the sleeping shift, you spin the ring up to a lateral speed where you feel your back being pushed into the wall at a force of one g. Since your entire body is experiencing the same acceleration at every part, as the radius between your head and the pole and your feet and the pole is constant, it shouldn’t be nauseating. If there are walls on all sides of you (and one door) so that you don’t see the rotation, and your “bed” is slanted slightly to account for the coriolis effect, would it not feel just like regular gravity? Big bonus: you can start at one g and slowly move to 0.38 g over the course of several months to acclimate to mars. Small bonus: if you’re willing to pay the power cost, putting some big scoops or buckets on the outside of this ring might help with circulating the air around the ship since it will be spinning quite fast. Finally you could also spin it faster to do exercises like push-ups (basically any effort where your body remains more or less fixed to the floor could work), meaning you could compensate for being in zero g most of the day by sleeping under gravity and performing some exercises while under higher gravity [insert goku joke here].
I’m sure I have overlooked something, but it seems to me like this would work and be a reasonably effective and practical solution. Feel free to explain to me why I’m wrong.
In short, Spacex needs to find a solution to the zero-g and radiation problems by the end of 2022 at the latest. Firstly because dearmoon is scheduled for 2023 and I can’t see nasa (much less the US congress) stomach letting private civilians being the first humans to return to the moon’s vicinity since Apollo instead of nasa astronauts. If a Starship capable of sustaining humans is flying successfully in 2022 and dearmoon is set for mid-to-late 2023, I’d bet on there being effectively an order from congress for Spacex and nasa to fly american astronauts on Starship around the moon before dearmoon takes place, regardless of the state of either SLS or Artemis. And before you say that that would be massive hypocrisy, remember that these are US politicians we’re talking about.
Secondly because they really need to perform a 6 month trial run at the L2 earth-moon lagrange point to confirm that their life support, radiation protection and zero-g mitigation solutions work as intended. (This is why my money is still on humans to mars in 2026 because I can’t make myself believe that everything will work right the first time they try it). If they want to send people to mars in 2024 they will need to have this test done to satisfy nasa (or whomever is providing them with astronauts) by the end of 2023.
So my reasoning/guess is that Spacex will want the design of this version of Starship finished in early 2022, build and launch one that summer, and maybe bring some crew on board with a dragon to prove out its life support systems by the end of the year. The big year for this piece of the puzzle will be 2023, as this is the Starship type that they will most likely use for dearmoon as well as perform any major test runs in the earth-moon system, before the big launch of the first crew to mars in 2024.
Refueling starships on mars
So why do I think this is the biggest hurdle? Isn’t the sabatier process a well-understood and quite simple chemical reaction? Yes it is, and the problem as I see it isn’t with the chemistry, but with the scale, the schedule and the industrial processes that are needed.
Spacex will have to design, test and build a full-on fuel production system… and have it ready for launch roughly 18 months from now. Why so soon? Because there is no way, repeat NO WAY that Spacex will be allowed to send astronauts to mars, on a rocket that cannot get back to earth without being refueled, if there is no fuel production on mars at the time of launch. I know Elon has often said that there is a real chance that the first crew sent to mars will die, but I can’t imagine he actually believes that he can get professional astronauts and nasa support if he doesn’t take every precaution possible to ensure that they can get back home safely.
Just to be clear: I don’t mean that there needs to be a fully fuelled Starship sitting on mars when the first crew lands, but there absolutely, 100% needs to be a Starship on mars producing fuel by the time the first crew leaves earth. And this is not as easy to pull off as it might seem.
Getting the CO2 is a non-issue: mars’ atmosphere is so rich with it that you might not even need to filter the incoming air. Also as long as the crane/elevator on Starship works, setting up a large solar field won’t be that difficult provided Spacex has made the panels reasonably easy to unload and deploy (safe assumption if you ask me), and if the surrounding surface is flat. Given that Spacex has chosen a landing/base site in the northern plains (IIRC) this should also not give any major problems.
The main difficulty will be getting enough water to produce enough fuel. If Elon is serious with his recent comment about “~2 tons/day” of fuel, which I have to assume he is, that means many tons of water ice have to be excavated, moved, filtered of other materials, melted and separated into H2 and O2, per day, for over two years, with no one around to fix something if it breaks. This is orders of magnitude more intense than what we’ve done on mars before. To be blunt, we are talking nothing less than autonomous bulldozers, that weigh several tons and make Perseverance look like a toy. Scooping up and gathering a truckload of ice and rocks daily and dumping them into whatever device Spacex comes up with to separate out the ice, melt it and split it into hydrogen and oxygen (of which the former probably must be combined with CO2 and turned into methane immediately given its habit of not liking being stored and subsequently floating away), and not break down thanks to the martian dust getting anywhere crucial.
Even setting aside the fact that this operation will make the planetary protection crowd pull their hair out, the chances of it working as designed the first time are not high if you ask me. There is every chance that something wears out faster than expected, stops working due to some unknown unknown, or gets wrecked by a malfunctioning autonomous vehicle glitching out and driving into/over it. Once there are actual humans on mars, keeping these machines operational won’t be all that hard, but basic safety standards (and nasa) are going to require that the fuel farm works reliably on its own, for as long as it takes to make enough propellant for the first crew to return home safely in case of an emergency, before the go-ahead is given for that first crewed mars mission to leave earth.
I would not be shocked if Spacex manages to design, test and build a system that they think will work in 2021 and launch, refuel, transfer to and land it on mars in 2022, only to find out that some crucial part doesn’t work as designed under the martian conditions, leaving a fully habitable base Starship and an empty propellant plant Starship sitting on mars with all the accompanying parts needed to start a base (pressurised cybertruck rover, unpressurised cybertruck rover, water ice gatherebulldozer, fuel transporter, solar farm and guidance & landing beacon) present, but no way to make fuel. It will be the most infuriating and cathartic thing ever at the same time. Such a situation will almost certainly set the Spacex timetable back the full two years, as I just can’t see nasa allowing astronauts to get in a Starship and blasting off to mars if there is no way for them to get back yet. I don’t think the argument “Well once they are there they can fix the fuel farm instantly!” will hold much weight, since if something important has broken, what’s to say that something else will not go wrong unexpectedly that the crew can’t fix, leaving them stranded?
My basic reasoning is this: the other three parts can be tested in LEO or on earth with the results being representative of their supposed tasks, but this one cannot. The environment on mars is simply too different from the one on earth (especially the atmosphere), and the scale and ambition of Spacex’s plan means that the rovers currently on mars are not much of a reference either. There is no way for us to know outside computer models what a five-ton vehicle driving around on mars for years hauling several tons of regolith and ice around daily would go through in terms of wear and tear, creating a massive potential for unknown unknowns to appear where we don’t expect them. To put Spacex’s project in perspective: the first fully loaded Starship upon touchdown will probably consist of 99% of all the mass humanity has ever landed on the surface of mars. Let that sink in...
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So that’s my take on Spacex’s mars ambitions. If Starship works (big if, but it seems to be getting more believable by the day), I am reasonably confident about orbital refueling and a martian habitat being ready on time, but have reservations about the human-rated Starships and am outright concerned regarding the autonomous propellant plant working as designed. As I’ve mentioned, my money if SN8’s 20 km flight goes well is on Spacex getting a Starship to mars in 2022, but not sending humans until 2026, either due to the 2022 starships not performing as well as intended (or not performing at all if they crash) or due to Starship not yet being declared safe for human flight in 2024.
Now before I go ahead and request the longest-reddit-thread-of-the-year award (I genuinely think this post is twice as long as my previous one), I’m curious as to your response to the three questions that in my opinion sum up the whole thing:
1, Did I miss something important besides the four areas I covered?
2, If you agree that these are the major roadblocks for Spacex and Starship, do you agree with my take on them? Did I badly underestimate something that is much harder than I gave it credit for? Or are certain things that I considered difficult much easier than I made them out to be?
3, Regardless of whether or not you agree with my list, ranking and reasoning, what do you think Spacex’s biggest obstacle will be to sending humans to mars in 2024, assuming Starship itself works?
Looking forward to your responses, opinions and rebuttals.

Part 1, Part 2
Well, I'm back at it, since waiting for Resin is boring, so here's another guide, this time the oft-asked for Artifact Guide. While this guide will, like the previous one, be focused on Keqing at the forefront, I'll be going over the value of a few different stats as well, and talking about a couple different Set Bonuses, so it can be useful for more than just Keqing (such as your Supports, or if you have a second DPS Carry you wanna work on for some ungodly reason -- like the Spiral Abyss)
Before getting too far into this, I heavily recommend at least taking a gander over at Part 2, because I'll be building on some core concepts introduced there. Part 1, which was all about the weapon, is also a bit foundational to this, but will be made somewhat obsolete as Part 3 is essentially the Advanced Course, as I'll be explaining the importance of actual stats in this one.

The Basics: Glossary

I'm not going to go to the absolute basics, like explaining what artifacts are, but I want to make sure you understand what Stats I'm talking about, as well as some basic information about how artifact stats work. So, let's start off with a list of stats.
DMG: This is your bread and butter, and the most important "stat" in the game. While technically not an actual Stat, it's an important variable, and, well, Damage is what you do to make your enemies dead. DMG has a long and complex formula, but we can simplify it down to [(ATK x Talent %) x (1+CRIT DMG) x (1+DMG%) x (1-Enemy DMG Resist)]. Because artifacts don't modify Enemy DMG Resist, we'll ignore that one for DMG calculations while working with Artifacts. Don't worry, I'll be explaining all the other stats mentioned.
Elemental Combination Damage: Technically, this is actually just DMG, but it actually uses an entirely different formula, which we don't have the specifics of yet, and each Elemental Combination uses a slightly different formula, but I can still present the basic idea of the formula for the ones we care about here (everything but Melt and Vaporize). One thing to note is that the triggering character is the only one that matters; more on this later. The formula: [(Combination Base Value) x (Level) x (Elemental Mastery Modifier) x (1 + Buff %)]
ATK: ATK is the base number used to calculate how much damage your Talents do. ATK's formula is a bit complicated as well, but the key thing to note is that ATK% bonuses only effect your Weapon and Character ATK number. This means that when an artifact gives you a +ATK Number, it is applied after ATK% is applied, meaning that at lower levels, +ATK is more valuable than at the highest levels, but ATK% also gets outclassed by other stats.
Talent %: Everything your character does except running and jumping is a Talent. Normal and Charged Attacks, Elemental Skills, and Elemental Burst are all Talents, and each different Talent has a deals a different amount of your ATK as a % towards damage. Your Normal and Charged Attacks usually do less than 100%, and your Elemental Skills and Elemental Bursts usual do more, or do lots of small ones.
CRIT DMG: Every Talent has a chance of scoring a "critical hit" that deals extra damage, and the amount of extra damage is governed by this stat. Keqing naturally has a very high CRIT DMG (higher than other characters), so we like to build around this. Since CRIT DMG is multiplied after ATK is multiplied, CRIT DMG scales better than ATK% does.
CRIT Rate: CRIT Rate doesn't show up directly in the formula, but it affects your CRIT DMG. You either deal CRIT DMG or you don't, so for calculating DPS, we use your CRIT Rate x CRIT DMG, instead of just CRIT DMG in the formula. Due to scaling, CRIT Rate ends up being worth more than ATK% at later levels (more on this later)
DMG%: This is my favorite stat, and it is a very powerful stat. Similar to CRIT DMG, this multiplies after ATK is calculated, so 1% DMG = 1% DMG, unlike ATK%, which isn't solid. There are multiple sources of this, and they're mostly situational or tied to specific elements, such as Electro DMG% -- Because Keqing does Electro DMG most of the time, Electro DMG% essentially becomes just DMG% for her, and you'll want to avoid Physical DMG%.
Enemy DMG Resist: All enemies have an inherent elemental resistance, and for most of them, it's 10%. Artifacts can't do anything about this directly (Viridescent Venerer is an exception, but it requires doing something special), so we really aren't going to worry about this too much.
Combination Base Value: Every Elemental combination has some secret magical number it uses to determine how much damage you do. We don't know this number, but I can tell you which ones do the most damage from our Electro list: Overloaded > Electro-charged > Superconduct. A note about Electro-charged, however, is that it does its damage twice if you don't reapply Electro-charged within roughly 1 second, so it technically can do more damage than Overloaded. More on this later.
Level: This one is self explanatory -- the level of the character that procs the Elemental Combination
Elemental Mastery Modifier: Elemental Mastery is a fancy stat that directly increases the amount of damage you do with Elemental Combinations. How much it does that by is calculated by a fancy formula that I'm not really going to explain, since you can just check in-game for the amount of bonus damage you're doing (it's under "Details" on the first section of the Character Screen, where you level up your character). Electro-charged, Superconduct, and Overloaded all get the same Modifier for the same amount of Elemental Mastery.
Buff %: This is stupidly rare. Like, there are only 4 ways to get it stupidly rare. Basically, it just adds a percentage of damage to your Elemental Combinations, and it seems to work the same way that DMG% does, but for Elemental Combinations.
Energy Recharge: Not part of any damage formulas, but important to know. Every time you make make a Normal Attack or Charged Attack, you get Energy. Every time an Elemental Sparkly Thing is generated and you pick it up, you get Energy. This increases both of those sources by the listed percentage, meaning you can use your Elemental Burst roughly this percentage more often, which means this indirectly contributes to your DPS.
There's also HP, HP%, DEF, and DEF%, but those stats aren't really important to doing damage, and doing damage is the most important part of building DPS Carry, so you typically don't to build for these. If they happen to be on an artifact you need, don't worry about it too much, though, as they do help.

The Basics: Your Five Slots

Alright, we have the Glossary out of the way, and with that, you actually should have the majority of the information you really need to know to start building your character. The rest of this guide will explain how to put all of those things together, how to optimize those for Keqing specifically, and some other basic things, but first, let's talk about the five different artifact slots you have.
Every artifact has Main Stat that increases every time you level it up, and alongside that it has substats that typically remain relatively static. What Main Stat is available to an Artifact, however, is tied directly to which Slot it is in. Flowers and Feathers always have a given Main Stat of HP and ATK, respectively, and as such, you'll be looking at their substats a lot more than their main stat. As a side note, Feathers are the most important artifact for a DPS carry to rank because they give Flat ATK (Feather Flat ATK is actually necessary, while other Flat ATK is not, since Feather Flat ATK is much higher).
The other three Artifacts have a variety of different Main Stat options. I'm not going to go over which piece has what here, but I will comment that due to how the stats are distributed, you can't get both CRIT DMG and CRIT Rate as main stats, but you can get Electro DMG% and CRIT Rate or CRIT DMG as main stats, and that's a great combination. All of them can get ATK%, which is nice, and all of them can get Elemental Mastery which is also really good, so keep that in mind as well.

Brooching the Subject of Stats

If you're still here after that terrible pun, good for you. Anyway, if you haven't put it together from the glossary section which stats are the most valuable, this section is going to go over that and explain why those stats are valuable. The tl;dr version for Keqing is Electro DMG% > CRIT Rate > CRIT DMG = Elemental Mastery > ATK% = Recharge Rate> Flat ATK > HP/DEF
Electro DMG% is so absolutely amazing on Keqing because, as I have mentioned earlier in this post, at least once in Part 2, and probably once or twice in Part 1, Keqing is pretty much always doing Electro DMG, so Electro DMG% is just DMG%, and DMG% is worth multiplied after all other damage calculations (including Critical DMG), so its addition to your DMG is very high. The only time Electro DMG% wouldn't be on your build is if you're running a Superconduct build and you're planning on taking advantage of that Physical Resist Down. If you are, then skip on Electro DMG%, and make CRIT Rate your top priority (avoid Physical DMG% though, it doesn't help your Skill or Burst).
CRIT Rate is good on everyone, but the reason Keqing wants it so bad is because she has an inherently higher CRIT DMG than other characters do, meaning that even without CRIT gear, she easily gets to 70%+ CRIT DMG, so every point of CRIT Rate is increases her DPS more than it does other characters. Furthermore, as long as you have at least 77% CRIT DMG (again, this can be extremely easily achieved on her; I have 86% right now, and none of my pieces of gear have CRIT DMG as a primary stat), every 1% Crit Rate is worth more towards your overall DPS than 1% of ATK%.
CRIT DMG is already high as hell on Keqing, so why not boost it more? Is it because you're scared of big numbers? Seriously, boost it, it's fun.
Elemental Mastery is hard to judge in how much you should prioritize it, because it depends heavily on your team comp as well as how much you can pump into it. At low Elemental Mastery, it's not super great, but once you get past 50 EM, it gets really good, especially on Overload and Electro-charge. I consider this equal to CRIT DMG because CRITs don't effect explosions.
ATK% is always nice, because ATK is the core of your damage, but you get most of your ATK from the fact that your Weapon exists, the level Keqing is, and the Plume of Death, so each point of ATK% doesn't do a whole lot in the long run. At least it's not flat ATK. An important note: 2% ATK > 1% CRIT Rate unless your CRIT DMG is 160% or higher
Recharge Rate is rated kina low on Keqing because a good team comp (see Part 2: Building your Harem) will give Keqing plenty of energy on its own, but it's still a nice stat to have because Bursts are good. Other characters will rate Recharge Rate at a different level, based on the energy needed to gain their skill and how much energy you can feed them.
Flat ATK technically is good if the Flat ATK numbers are a decent size compared to the numbers you get for existing, but the flat ATK numbers you get from substats (which is the only way to get them outside of the Plume of Death) are so small that by level 60, they're barely worth anything, and by level 90, they aren't worth anything.
HP and DEF don't contribute to DMG, and the better way to manage your HP bar is to just not get hit. Obviously, this is easier said than done, but still worth saying. Also, since one of your artifacts always gives you HP, and the amount of HP is actually pretty high, that artifact is enough on its own to cover your HP needs.

High Fashion

Just as the world of fashion discourages picking a random assortment of accessories, so does the world of Teyvat, though for a slightly different reason. All artifacts are part of a set, and when you've got 2 artifacts of of the same set, you get a very hefty, very noticeable, bonus to one of your stats. If you've got a whopping 4 artifacts of the same set (remember, you can only use 5 at a time), then you get that initial bonus and some cool extra bonus. Every 4-set bonus is unique, and most of them do something that can't be achieved without using a 4-set. That being said, running artifacts so that you have two different 2-sets is actually completely viable, and sometimes even better than running a 4-set. So, let's talk about Set Bonuses.
Since all of the sets give you a stat bonus for the 2-set, it's a good idea to look at what the stat bonuses are for any given set. Rather than going through every artifact set and telling you what stats it gives and why to use them, I'm going to let you do that for yourself, since it's a good learning experience, and since the golden rule still applies: What you have is better than what you don't have (of course, the artifact guide is largely to help people know what stuff to get, unlike the previous two, so it's slightly less applicable here).
Alright, have you acquainted yourself with the 2-set properties (or are waiting for me to give you the answers anyway because you know I'll do that eventually)? Good, let's move on. As you can see, a number of sets give +18 ATK% for having 2 of them, a few give HP, a few give DEF, one of them gives +12 CRIT Rate, and so on. There's a decent number of options, but remember the stat priorities from before, because they apply here as well, with only one notable exception: Elemental Mastery from the set bonuses is weirdly high, and might be worth it if you want to get the most Zap from your Splash (ie, you're running a Electro-charged build) -- this is one of the first major "it's your preference" sections on this guide, because this is one of those times where numbers are a bit weird.
Alright, moving on to 4-set bonuses. As I've mentioned before, 4-set bonuses are strong, but you don't have to go for them. Sometimes, it's better to run two 2-sets because of the bonuses they give, but still take a look at see if you like any of the 4-set bonuses. If you do, build for that set. At the end of the day, just make sure you have either one 4-set bonus, or two 2-set bonuses on Keqing.

Keqing's Fall Catalogue

Alright, here's the part I know many of you have been waiting for (not to sound arrogant, y'all have literally been asking me this a bunch): my recommendations for artifact sets on Keqing. I'll list a few options and why they're good as well as why they're bad. All of them are viable according to the math, and all of them should be at least somewhat fun. I'll even include some early-game sets to help you until you've managed to grind out the ones you want to focus on. For the early-game, only upgrade as many artifacts as you need to upgrade to get the Adventurer Journal goals.
The Queen's Jewels (best end-game)

1. 2-Set Thundering Fury with 2-Set ATK%: This set is actually the optimal damage set for pure numbers on Keqing, and the nice thing about it is that there are three different sets that you can 2-set for that 18% ATK increase. Now, to clarify, this set technically does 3% less damage than the Gladiator's Finale 4-set on specifically the Normal Attack combo, but it does more damage on everything else (including Charged Attacks) as long as you have your weapon infused with Electro from your passive, which not only evens out the damage, but makes it a noticeable difference. I bet some of y'all are surprised. Oh, and an added bonus is that this combo only takes 20 Resin per attempt, unlike the Gladiator's Finale which tells you to fuck off because it hates you. You don't even have to go to different Domains for this either, since an 18% ATK set drops in the same Domain, which also means you get more chances at getting a piece you want. Basically, best DMG, most user friendly (as long as you can deal that Domain; maybe try Co-Op because your DPS Carry is not good in that Domain)
2. 4-set Gladiator's Finale: Alright, this is the one many of you expected to see on this list, and with good reason. It'd does great DMG for everything, with 3% more damage on your Normal Attack combo, so it's a pretty dang good set still, much like literally every other guide out there says is best for Keqing since they all copy genshin.gg. If you've already farmed all 4 pieces of this set (how), then congrats, you've got a great set, and I'd say stick with it. If you have 2 or less of this set, try for the Thundering Fury 2-set instead, it'll take less Resin. This is the most optimal set if you're running Superconduct, and if you're running this set already, consider switching to Superconduct to make the most use of it.
3. 4-set Thundering Fury: After the first two, subsequent sets are a little more iffy in their ranking and how good they are. 4-set Thundering Fury does noticeably less damage than the 2-set version does, but in exchange you get a whopping 40% more damage on your Elemental Combos (this is worth about 80 Elemental Mastery btw), and you also get the added benefit of every time you proc an Electro Elemental Combo (.8s cooldown), your Elemental Skill comes back sooner. Even if you only proc 2 Combos in the first 5 seconds, this means that your Elemental Skill will be back up before you start dealing Physical Damage again. On a Elctro-charged or Overloaded team, this set is insane, at least on paper. I personally plan on running this set once I get the drops, though #1 is still probably slightly more optimal.

Rising Nobility (Early-mid game sets)

1. 4-Set Berserker: You'll start getting these pretty early, and they'll carry you for quite a while. This is the first real set to pay attention to while levelling, since the very early most sets are really quite meh. To really make use of this set, though, you'll want to make sure your health is always below 70%, otherwise you lose a lot of value from this set, and you'll want to run one of the other two below.
2. 4-set Martial Artist: I've been running this baby for a while, and while the DMG numbers aren't fantastic compared to the top-tier sets, you can get a full 4-piece of the Martial Artist set just by doing your Adventurer's Journal pre-20 or so, and it'll carry you until you can get one of the better ones. This set will excel if you like to run Superconduct, and since Kaeya is pretty nice to have for exploration (swimming is hard with less than 240 stamina), you can make use of both of those benefits. With this set, you want to make sure you're using your Elemental Skill as often as it comes up, so you can get the 4-set's buff (which will have 100% uptime for you this way)
3. 2-set Martial Artist with 2-set Berserker: A more forgiving Berserker set, with a nice DMG boost to your Normal and Charged attack. You don't have to keep your health low, and its more forgiving if you forget/can't use your Elemental Skill frequently. At a certain point, this will actually exceed either of the other two sets in raw numbers as well, though that's at a pretty high level, when you'll start working towards Endgame sets.

The Royal Gallery (Honorable Mentions)

1. 4-set Berserker: I know this is in the Early-mid game sets, but it actually gets pretty good in late game, with the same caveat of needing to keep your health below 70%. It's still not as good as the top three though.
2. 4-Set Resolution of Sojourner: This could maybe be in the Early-mid set, but it's not quite where I'd like it to be at, since in many ways, it functions as a discount Martial Artist set for Keqing.

Mondstadt's Discount Jewels

Your Support needs artifacts too, so this section is to help out with them a bit. The artifacts and stats for your Support aren't nearly as important as the ones for your DPS Carry, so this will be a brief section with just some general advice.
First and foremost: spend your resources on Keqing first. Focus her before you focus others, until you've got resources to spare (lol), or you're hitting a wall and feel you need your Supports beefed up a bit.
Alright, now for the stats: ATK, CRIT, and general DMG are much less important on your supports than on Keqing, because they're not here to do damage, they're here to make fire/wateice for you to explode with Keqing's lightning, or to be a Battery. They don't need good numbers for that. So, what you want to focus on with your Supports stat-wise will be more supporting stats, ie, Elemental Mastery, Energy Recharge, and things that increase your Healer's Healing (HP for Barbara, as an example, or ATK on QiQi).
How important Elemental Mastery is on any given Support depends on how your procs are happening. If your Support shows up briefly, gives everyone an element, then disappears to let you proc that element, they don't need any Elemental Mastery. If, however, your support creates an Aura, Field, or Pet that repeatedly reapplies an Element, then suddenly their need for Elemental Mastery starts to go up, but the need for it also starts to get tricky. Auras like Barbara's Song, Kaeya's icicles, or Xinqiu's swords work either on server ticks or some hidden timer to apply their proc, which can mean you're in middle of a combo when they apply, so the enemy already has an Electro on them, and the Support is the one who proc'd the Combo, not you. Pets, on the other hand, are slow and easily predictable based on their animations, so you can focus other targets until enemies are tagged by the pet, and you can then combo that proc, so your Elemental mastery is more important. In short, learn your team and how your procs work, then judge Elemental Mastery needs on that
A note: Combination Procs don't care who's on the field when it happens, only who gave the target the Second element. The first element doesn't matter for the math. That's why Barbara can proc Electro-charged even while she's not on the field, for example, and why it's good to give her Elemental Mastery (Xinqiu is also a good candidate for high EM, because his Sword Rain hits after your attacks).
Energy Recharge is much more important on your Supports because they aren't getting nearly as much energy as you are, since High Voltage only helps Electros, and your Battery is also only helping the two Electros. Your Battery doesn't need Energy Recharge as badly, but it can be helpful on people like Fischl who have high Energy costs and get a lot of benefit from more frequent casts.
Finally, if you have a healer, give them the stat that helps them heal the most. This will require reading their Talents. Barbara scales off of her Max HP, and Qiqi scales off of ATK, to help out with the two most popular healers.
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Parting words: Good luck out there, and have fun! This isn't necessarily the end of this series, but this is all I had specifically planned. If y'all have ideas for another guide you want me to write, let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

Hey everyone, I am a former Wall Street trader and quant researcher. When I was preparing for my own interviews, I have noticed the lack of accurate information and so I will be providing my own perspectives. One common pattern I see is people building their own algorithm by blindly fitting statistical methods such as moving averages onto data.
I have published this elsewhere, but have copy pasted it entirely below for you to read to keep it in the spirit of the sub rules. Edit: Removed link.

What it was like trading on Wall Street

Right out of college, I began my trading career at an electronic hedge fund on Wall Street. Several friends pitched trading to me as being a more disciplined version of wallstreetbets that actually made money. After flopping several initial interviews, I was fortunate to land a job at a top-tier firm of the likes of Jane Street, SIG, Optiver and IMC.
On my first day, I was instantly hooked.
My primary role there was to be a market maker. To explain this, imagine that you are a merchant. Suppose you wanted to purchase a commodity such as an apple. You would need to locate an apple seller and agree on a fair price. Market makers are the middle-men that cuts out this interaction by being always willing to buy or sell at a given price.
In finance lingo, this is called providing liquidity to financial exchanges. At any given moment, you should be confident to liquidate your position for cash. To give a sense of scale, tens of trillions in dollars are processed through these firms every year.
My time trading has been one of the most transformative periods of my life. It not only taught me a lot of technical knowledge, but it also moulded me to be a self-starter, independent thinker, and hard worker. I strongly recommend anyone that loves problem solving to give trading a shot. You do not need a mathematics or finance background to get in.
The trading culture is analogous to professional sports. It is a zero sum game where there is a clear defined winner and loser — you either make or lose money. This means that both your compensation and job security is highly dependent on your performance. For those that are curious, the rough distribution of a trader’s compensation based on performance is a tenth of the annual NBA salary.
There is a mystique about trading in popular media due to the abstraction of complicated quantitative models. I will shed light on some of the fundamental principles rooted in all trading strategies, and how they might apply to you.

Arbitrage

One way traders make money is through an arbitrage or a risk free trade. Suppose you could buy an apple from Sam for $1, and then sell an apple to Megan at $3. A rational person would orchestrate both legs of these trades to gain $2 risk free.
Arbitrages are not only found in financial markets. The popular e-commerce strategy of drop-shipping is a form of arbitrage. Suppose you find a tripod selling on AliExpress at $10. You could list the same tripod on Amazon for $20. If someone buys from you, then you could simply purchase the tripod off AliExpress and take home a neat $10 profit.
The same could be applied to garage sales. If you find a baseball card for $2 that has a last sold price on EBay for $100, you have the potential to make $98. Of course this is not a perfect arbitrage as you face the risk of finding a buyer, but the upside makes this worthwhile.

Positive expected value bets

Another way traders make money is similar to the way a casino stacks the odds in their favour. Imagine you flip a fair coin. If it lands on heads you win $3, and if it lands on tails you lose $1. If you flip the coin only once, you may be unlucky and lose the dollar. However in the long run, you are expected to make a positive profit of $1 per coin flip. This is referred to as a positive expected value bet. Over the span of millions of transactions, you are almost guaranteed to make a profit.
This exact principle is why you should never gamble in casino games such as roulette. These games are all negative expected value bets, which guarantees you to lose money over the long run. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as poker or card counting in black jack.
The next time you walk into a casino, make a mental note to observe the ways it is designed to keep you there for as long as possible. Note the lack of windows and the maze like configurations. Even the free drinks and the cheap accommodation are all a farce to keep you there.

Relative Pricing

Relative pricing is a great strategy to use when there are two products that have clear causal relationships. Let us consider an apple and a carton of apple juice. Suppose there have a causal relationship where the carton is always $9 more expensive than the apple. The apple and the carton is currently trading at $1 and $10 respectively.
If the price of the apple goes up to $2, the price is not immediately reflected on the carton. There will always be a time lag. It is also important to note that there is no way we can determine if the apple is trading at fair value or if its overpriced. So how do we take advantage of this situation?
If we buy the carton for $10 and sell the apple for $2, we have essentially bought the ‘spread’ for $8. The spread is fairly valued at $9 due to the causal relationship, meaning we have made $1. The reason high frequency trading firms focus so much on latency in the nanoseconds is to be the first to scoop up these relative mispricing.
This is the backbone for delta one strategies. Common pairs that are traded against each other includes ETFs and their inverse counterpart, a particular stock against an ETF that contains the stock, or synthetic option structures.

Correlations

Correlations are mutual connections between two things. When they trend in the same direction they are said to have a positive correlation, and the vice versa is true for negative correlations. A popular example of positive correlation is the number of shark attacks with the number of ice-cream sales. It is important to note that shark attacks do not cause ice-cream sales.
Often times there are no intuitive reason for certain correlations, but they still work. The legendary Renaissance Technologies sifted through petabytes of historical data to find profitable signals. For instance, good morning weather in a city tended to predict an upward movement in its stock exchange. One could theoretically buy stock on the opening and sell at noon to make a profit.
One important piece of advice is to disregard any retail trader selling a course to you, claiming that they have a system. These are all scams. At best, these are bottom of the mill signals that are hardly profitable after transaction costs. It is also unlikely that you have the system latency, trading experience or research capabilities to do this on your own. It is possible, but very difficult.

Mean reversions

Another common strategy traders rely on is mean reversion trends. In the options world the primary focus is purchasing volatility when it is cheap compared to historical values, and vice versa. Buying options is essentially synonymous with buying volatility. Of course, it is not as simple as this so don’t go punting your savings on Robinhood using this strategy.
For most people, the most applicable mean reversion trend is interest rates. These tend to fluctuate up and down depending on if the central banks want to stimulate saving or spending. As global interest rates are next to zero or negative, it may be a good idea to lock in this low rate for your mortgages. Again, consult with a financial advisor before you do anything.

BIG UPDATE: New 13D/A Form; Ryan Cohen disclosed it has held recent talks with the retailer's management and board members. RC Ventures says it believes that under the right circumstances it could produce the best results for GameStop shareholders if it were more involved.
I. INTRODUCTION

• When I look at the sentiment surrounding GameStop, it doesn’t take very long to see comments like these, yet here we are. What’s going on? Are people that stupid? Just jumping on the new console cycle? Idiots not pulling their gains and going to zero? When even wsb thinks the stock is a dud, it must be right? Nearly 120% short interest, yet the stock is up nearly 40% this week.
• Its no secret GameStop has been hurting. The secular shift to digital has been pressuring them for some time with their highest margin category - used video software – under significant distress. Each year their gross margins contract with net income in the red these past few quarters. Everybody has written them off as the easiest short in the world, however I'm going to try to explain whats going on and tell you that buying GameStop may not be as bad as you think.

II. CONSOLES

• Just to start things off, you have to remember we’re in the beginnings of the new console cycle. But what does that even mean? Well the advent of new consoles means new trade-ins, new product, new customers, and a fresh spike in GameStop’s popularity. Sales have stagnated the years prior, and they are all but certain to go up and remain elevated for the next 1-2 years. Note that against all counts, the company was actually profitable during the 2019 holiday season, with new consoles you can bet that they will annihilate all expectations and proceed into 4-8 more positive quarters off the cyclic shift. This is pretty unanimous, and everyone accepts that they will start reporting positive going forward. In fact, new console cycles are where GME has historically spiked.

III. POST CONSOLE CYCLE

• At this point, the focus turns to what happens once the hype dies down. Digital will continue to erode upon physical, but the key factor here is that physical is not actually dying off. Its not going to zero. The biggest reason physical is sequentially a lower percentage of the market is because the total market size is increasing. Digital is shooting off while physical is largely stagnant. Note that physical games admittedly have their strengths. Not only are they structurally cheaper because you can resell them, they also have clear definitions of ownership and the collectability factor where you need to have a physical copy you can hold. In fact, two thirds of console video game players prefer physical vs digital.
• While physical is here to stay, albeit at a weaker level, that isn’t enough to turn the tides for GameStop. You see, GameStop knows digital is the trend and here to stay, they are not fighting it, they are moving along the secular shift. GameStop sells digital games. GameStop is set to release a mobile app combining Game Informer and a online storefront by month end. They are doubling down on their online store with +500% ecommerce growth in Q1 and +800% growth in Q2. Expanding into numerous other categories. Nearly 70% of their online orders were fulfilled on the same day leveraging their wide network of stores, of which they are pruning the excess. Also, Game prices are set to increase $10.
• GameStop’s Loyalty Program accounts for over 55M users. They intend on leveraging this network though a company branded credit card with spending rewards to grab market share and retain customers. Furthermore, a digital revenue sharing model continues to grow as publishers understand the value of GameStop as a customer acquisition service and that keeping the company afloat is better for sales and the general video game industry. (See the fall of Toys R us and its impact on Mattel/Hasbro; turns out the manufacturers really needed ToysRUs)

VI. BALANCE SHEET

• But wait, their financials must be shit right? They have to be losing money. How much longer can they last?
• Well it turns out their books are rock solid. They offered their creditors a new set of terms to push back debt for 2 years, 50% of them took it. They have eliminated all excess goodwill impairments. They are in a $300M net cash position with significantly reduced inventory (which explains the sharp reduction in Q1/2 sales) and massively cut SG&A by 28% in preparation for the console cycle. FCF KING
• Many believe the days of their strong margins are long gone, but in fact its only beginning. You have to remember, digital is only outpacing NEW physical games. Retro games are a huge untapped market where GameStop can replicate their past success, and it is a category digital can never penetrate. Jesus wtf. GameStop is looking into these already

V. MAJOR BACKING

• In fact, their ecommerce prospects are so promising, Ryan Cohen bought a 10% stake. This guy took on Amazon and won. Jefferies and Telsey, wall street firms, came out with strong buy ratings citing company prospects. Michael Burry still holds a 5% stake. This guy took on Wall Street and won. Half their creditors ($200M worth) believe in GameStop’s prospects. Why would they defer their debt unless they believed the company will be in a paying position by 2023?

VI. THE SHORTS

• But here is the real kicker. GameStop’s short float. 120% has never been seen before. The short theory was that GameStop would not make it to the new console cycle and the shorters would collect their tendies. But GameStop made it. Current short fees are like 60% and from some figures we can draw on, we estimate that around 70% of the shorts got in under $7, GameStop is currently nearing $10. 70% of the shorts are underwater. Even if you don’t believe that any of their initiatives will work you have to admit that the company will be able to continue operating for another two years off the new console hype alone. When the stock hits roughly $15, we can expect to see several margin calls trigger a fucking massive short squeeze. For reference, Blue Apron, Volkswagen.

VII. CONCLUSION

• Just the fact GME got to the new console cycle must be making the shorts cry. Add on that they’ve been making serious progress towards online and mobile presence, aligning themselves with industry trends, operating in a growing market, potential monopoly in the untapped retro market, solid financials, beginning their new upward cyclic cycle; you have the makings of a powerful ecommerce storefront just leaning into their growth period. Even post console hype, they should be able to leverage their branded credit card to retain a huge number of customers and bite off huge market share off other retailers. Lastly, remember that despite the trend towards digital, its in the gaming industry's best interest to keep GameStop going strong. The likelihood of additional revenue sharing agreements are fairly high.
• For comparison GameStop has a P/S ratio 0.11. Chewy has a P/S ratio of 3.6. If GME begins to grow their revenue from this point its valuation will begin to normalize. Even a P/S of 0.2 would mean a stock price of ~$16, 0.4 would mean $32. The company is going to ride the console hype and likely trigger more than a few margin calls along the way. Everything management has been doing is to ride the new cycle into a fluid ecommerce business model, and everything I'm seeing suggests its going to work.

Tl;dr
10c 9/25 to play XBOX prerelease
10c 10/2 to play Mobile App/Stimulus
10c 11/20 to play Console Release Date
10c 4/16 to play Holiday Earnings/short squeeze
***most text references are from GameStop's Q2 transcript which you can find here.
***Digital vs Physical preorder statistic from u/nonagondwanaland
***Additional Digital vs Physical statistics