Ted Hoffman's Actuarials

Do you take requests?

Asking for a friend, by the way.

That's the book by Edmund Wells, right?

This is the content I show up for.

Also: this is the content that provokes an argument where people begin irrationally hating Tom that I show up for.

Yes, don't force them back to Iran. Force them here, where ... [checks notes on recent history] they'll be kidnapped by masked thugs and whisked away to unknown detention centers and fed vermin-infested food in squalid conditions before being whisked away to El Salvador.

So much better for them.

Starting to get the feeling that Trump and Epstein may have known each other - perhaps even meeting once.

I’m trying to figure out which John loves sending other people to fight and die in wars they would never fight in themselves more: Bolton or Fetterman?

2 years at $6.5M on the cap, and he's steadily getting worse. But, once upon a time he was good and he might get back to 40-point pace once in those final 2 years, and occasionally he'll drop the gloves and start a pointless fight to "spark the team" - and clearly, that's more than worth it.

Doug Armstrong. Super Genius. One day Kekalainen will thank him for bungling this trade.

I would think you should know if your player will waive his NTC before you go work out a trade with a team that requires it to be waived, but then again I'm not a super genius GM with an actuary table.

That's not to say he won't eventually waive for this. He might. But he might also read the writing on the wall [we're going to try to move you sooner rather than later] and say "if I'm going, here's where I *will* waive for" and force Armstrong to work with that list.

1. Legit shocked we're at this point. If I was going to bet on a Blues player *never* getting traded by Armstrong, I would have bet on Parayko. [Schenn is next.]

2. If Parayko was OK with Buffalo, this would be done by now. The fact that it's not says that Parayko *does not want* to waive.

It would be like looking at your alleged #1 goalie who's had a history of hip problems [including last season, which was after he got hurt in the playoffs the postseason prior] and deciding to invest 3 years, $25.5 million in him for a contract that starts a year from now.

No one does that, right?

I'm not [just] saying a 1st round pick + the #9 overall pick for Colton Parayko is too much. I'm [also] saying it's too much for a 32-year old, 6'6" defenseman who's never successfully played as the lead defenseman on his pairing, who's had a back issue in the past and currently has one now.

As I keep telling people: Doug Armstrong, super genius - just like Wile E. Coyote.

This, people. If you want to understand relations between Iran and the U.S. since 1979, you have to understand what happened in 1953. *A whole lot* of things begin to make more sense once you understand how we've tried to maintain Western colonialism for decades at their expense.

Passed on. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet his maker. Became bereft of life. Metabolic processes are history. Off the twig. Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Joined the choir invisible.

Or ... perhaps just pining for the fjords.

Susan Collins is also concerned, but I'm sure it's much different for her.

Fuck that motherfucking asshole. Never forget John Bolton's role in enabling a 2nd Trump presidency. *Always* make sure to note that he chose money over integrity and the protection of the republic.

You would think the host country attacking a qualified country would be enough to get FIFA to act, but no - as you point out, it won't.

The 1st UEFA country to say "we're not going to the World Cup because of everything going on in the U.S. + what the U.S. is doing" will have *lots* of company.

When people talk about U.S.-Iran relations, make sure that among other things they mention how we overthrew their government in 1953 to preserve Britain's continued looting of Iran's oil reserves while we re-installed the Shah of Iran, who the Iranians expressly did not want.

It looks like they tried covering his hand with some bandage, then painted over it - and it still looks like shit.

Imagine how much worse it looks without all that.

Meta is a **massive** accounting fraud where advertisers and investors are lied to every day about everything. Whoever does the work to uncover it will win Pulitzers, and state AGs will line up to prosecute Zuckerburg and the company beyond oblivion.

Hopefully "is this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame worthy?" is not one of those questions.

If anyone [for some truly inexplicable reason] needed any more hints on which 3 are fully captured by Trump and the conservative right and are fervently anti-Constitution and would have been on the side of the King in 1776, they've got their answer now.

Because some other team wants to win, even if that includes getting better players from other, worse teams.

Let's encourage that and encourage highly competitive postseason and all the memories those create, not ensuring two bad teams are still 21-43 in March to avoid appearing to tank.

Unless the NBA or any other pro sports league once again in the business of telling teams who they must play on a given night and managing in-game decisions, how teams are run is left to discretion of the owner, GMs and coaches.

If they want their teams to suck, more power to them.

Screaming at bad teams to "win more, do better" ignores potentially obvious problems. Maybe it's injuries. Maybe it's poor coaching. Maybe it's poor development.

The solution for some: pretend it's all tanking, punish teams equally accordingly.

I have long said if tanking were a real problem, the solution is to strip teams of the draft pick they'd get. That *instantly* stops tanking, as there's no longer a reward for it.

Outside of an open admission, way too many people are willing to equate "bad team" with "definitely tanking."

"But fans shouldn't cheer for their team to lose." Yeah and fans shouldn't pay $250 for a seat, $25 for parking, $12 for a beer, etc.

There's no "right to win a given number of games in a season" which the anti-tank coalition implicitly argues. Some teams are going to be just bad, tank or not.

The fact is, tanking pushes better players toward better teams who are more likely to make the playoffs. That makes for a higher quality postseason, which is more entertaining, which fans care far more about.

That attracts more attention than lots of mediocrity.