It is very interesting how an industry monoply can shape the products of the monopolist, and how NBA 2k, a full priced console game can successfully operate its use of unskippable ads, and first and foremost, micro-transactions, in a way that is reminiscent of free-to-play mobile games. Obviously, this is not news to anyone slightly familiar with the franchise, and the MyCareer game mode, but it really proves how detrimental abuse of dominant market position can be to the product and the consumer.
Something that has always been an artifact of this business model, which I believe is often overlooked, is how there is no automatic matchmaking within the most popular game mode, "The Neighborhood" FKA "MyPark". This is unique to the NBA 2k franchise, as there is no other sports game where there is no automated matchmaking present within the most popular game mode in the game.
Now, as many of us already know, this is not by any means a coincidence. This is done in order to influence players into investing in virtual currency; VC. Finding a game as a 60-overall "brown shirt" is extremely difficult, due to others walking off, not wanting to play with new players. Again, this is probably not news to anyone who has ever played the game, but still very much worth noting. The game has many ways to clearly distinguish between more experienced players, and new ones (rep, clothes, ratings, etc.) in order to make it very clear who the newer players are, almost as an indirect warning that you should, in fact, not play with them (even though the game doesn't tell you this explicitly.)
Now, I'm not going into the discussion regarding if this is ethical or not, concerning the fact that many players are children, but it really proves how the whole fundamental structure of the game is built around purchasing virtual currency, not only because it has direct practical benefits that affects your performance, but also social, since the most popular game mode is more or less unplayable for newer players, since they will have an extremely hard time finding games.
I have not been following how the development is proceeding regarding EA:s NBA Live titles, and when they are planning to re-enter the market as the only serious competitor to NBA 2k- but as fans of virtual basketball, we have to hope that this is not too far away, as the case of NBA 2k's market dominance is the worst thing to have happened to us as consumers during the latest decade.
Despite this, I think that it is i
... keep reading on reddit ➡Article from Bloomberg: The End of Tesla’s Dominance May Be Closer Than It Appears
> VW last year became the No. 1 electric-vehicle maker in Europe, where sales of battery-powered cars surged thanks to stricter carbon dioxide limits. After the introduction of the ID.3 hatchback in 2020, the ID.4 crossover—the first global model based on VW’s electric platform—is starting to reach showrooms from Shanghai to Chicago. This year, VW plans to deliver 1 million plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles, and Diess aims to surpass Tesla in EV sales no later than 2025. Some analysts predict it will happen much sooner.
Source:
https://nba.nbcsports.com/2021/03/28/rick-carlisle-on-zion-williamson-shaquille-oneal-type-force-of-nature-with-a-point-guard-skill-set/
Full quote:
> “He’s an unusual force and obviously a great player,” Carlisle said… “We’ll have to figure something a little better out next time, but he’s doing this to everybody. We did have some very good possessions guarding him, but he was a beast... “It presents huge challenges for the defense and for officials. He is just creating collisions out there. This is a Shaquille O’Neal-type force of nature with a point guard skill set.”
Zion is having a historically efficient season in the paint; living up to every bit of the hype coming into the league and then some.
Summary:
- Most of the article is about VW (maybe sponsored by VW? :-) )
- VW become the #1 EV maker in EU last year
----EV cars sales in EU: Dec 2019: TSLA: 110K , VW 46K; Dec 2020: TSLA: 96K, VW: 174K
- VW CEO (Diess) using the same strategy as Musk (creating media hype, "power day" similar to "battery day, etc), stock has gone up 80% ytd, meme stock potential
- This year, VW plans to deliver 1 million plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles, and Diess aims to surpass Tesla in EV sales no later than 2025. Some analysts predict it will happen much sooner.
- VW can exploit something Tesla doesn’t have much of yet: scale. Dozens of brands that fill every nook and cranny of the auto market—and sales last year of 9.3 million vehicles (compared to TSLA's 0.5 million).
- By 2025, VW and its partners will have more than 35,000 public chargers around the world, and planning half a dozen battery factories in EU.
- VW aims to sell 26 million EVs in the next 10 years
- Other legacy auto makers following suit (e.g. GM planning to phase out diesel cars by 2035, Hyundai planning almost two dozen new models, Renualt having a super hit in EU with model Zoe, Ford's Mustang Mach-E)
- Chinese companies rolling out budget EV models
- Tons of new companies/SPACs (Rivian, Lucid, etc)
- Just like netflix that paved the way for streaming video is now facing great competition from "legacy" companies like disney, HBO, amazon, etc, TSLA will also face the same struggle with the EV market, specially when the giants like Apple, Amazon, Google have EV ambitions of themselves
- (maybe positive for TSLA) the biggest automaker in the world Toyota, still not fully committed to EV, and some major automakers like BMW do not think "only EV after year xxxx" is a good strategy because there are like 160 countries/markets to consider
Opinion:
- would have been nice to get some analysis about the software/AI aspect, as that is one of the main thing that TSLA is way ahead of others and legacy car makers seem to be struggling with
- Chinese companies barely mentioned (and also aspects such as the recent Chinese rule of not using TSLA cars in military sensitive areas due to the cameras, which may give acceleration to LADAR based
... keep reading on reddit ➡
What is bitcoin dominance?
Bitcoin dominance is bitcoin's marketcap dividend by the marketcaps of all cryptocurrencies combined. It shows how much value bitcoin has versus the all cryptos combined. This is important because it shows the relative strength of altcoins over time. For most of bitcoin's lifetime (pre-2017), dominance sat at over 98%. Bitcoin was the entire market. But since the first altcoin boom in 2017, it has never come close to that peak again.
Why did it happen?
There are a few reasons why bitcoin value relative to the rest of the crypto market fell so dramatically in 2017. One major reason was the bitcoin cash fork that occurred in July 2017. Bitcoin cash gained momentum throughout late as the "true" bitcoin because of miner support while bitcoin was suffering from network congestion and high fees. There were calls that "the flippening" was going to occur in early 2018 and there would be a mass exodus of bitcoin supporters moving to bitcoin cash. This never ended up happening and bitcoin cash rapidly fell off after this point.
Another reason was that other established altcoins at the time like eth, litecoin, dash and monero had huge rallies and hit their all time highs versus bitcoin. While they are similar prices today against the USD, they are still well off their all time highs vs. bitcoin.
The third reason was the first ICO boom. Hundreds of new ICOs hit the market from late 2017 and early 2018. Today we are seeing a similar boom of new ICOs and shitcoins hitting the market.
What does this mean?
Bitcoin dominance sitting at 65% means that alt season could run for quite a bit longer. If we see another nosedive of bitcoin dominance. Bitcoin dominance going back below 50% would mean that altcoin values would have gained hundreds of billions in value. While the altcoin market has absolutely surged over 2021, its still far from its all time highs in early 2018. I think the altcoin market will continue to boom.
There's been a lot of discussion around this topic in the British media with actors like James McAvoy and Judi Dench weighing in on the subject in the past and this article sums some of that up.
For my part, I was surprised at just how many successful British actors are privately educated considering only 6.5% attend independent schools.
A list below gathered from various articles:
Eddie Redmayne (Eton) Benedict Cumberbatch (Harrow), Dominic West (Eton) Damian Lewis (Eton), Tom Hiddleston (Eton), Henry Cavil (Stowe) Jamie Campbell Bower (Bedales), Tom Hardy (Reed) Matthew Goode (Exeter) Dan Stevens (Tonbridge) Andrew Garfield (City of London Freeman School) Josh O' Connor (St Edwards, Cheltenham) Alex Lawthers (Churchers College)
Rosamund Pike (Badminton) Alice Eve (Bedales), Juno Temple (Bedales) Carey Mulligan (Woldingham)Kate Beckinsale (Godolphin and Latymer) Imogen Poots (Latymer) Emilia Clarke (St Edward's) Emily Blunt (Hurtwood House) Rebecca Hall (Roedean) Anya Taylor Joy (Queen's Gate School) Florence Pugh (St Edward's School) Emma Corrin (Woldingham School) Phoebe Dynevor (Cheadle Holme School)
I'm not an actor and don't have any aspirations to act but if I came from a working class background and wanted to break into acting, I'd be seriously intimidated.
As a stubborn and pervasive myth in dog-owning communities, this topic seems to have cropped up quite a bit over the past few days. I thought I would write up a little spiel in the hopes of catching a few readers who might not have seen the sub’s wiki - and also as something I can link back to in other subs.
Wolf packs
The idea of dominance and a hierarchal pack structure was first introduced in a paper by Rudolph Schenkel in 1947, and introduced to popular culture through a book by L. David Mech in 1970 (who has since rescinded his stance ). Both authors studied wolves in captivity and came to the conclusion that wolves competed via aggressive displays for status and rank within their pack.
The problem lies in the fact that wolf packs in the wild are structured very differently from wolves in captivity. Wolves run as family units in the wild, with the “head” of the pack simply being mom and dad, not a wolf who has ousted his predecessor by being the biggest and the baddest. When competitions arise in the wild, most wolves will opt to leave or create more space rather than risk injury in confrontation.
Captive wolves are often packs of unrelated wolves packed together, in spaces such that avoidance of confrontation is much more difficult. The observed “hierarchal pack structure” was born out of artificial situations created by humans, rather than reflecting wolves’ natural behavior. Therefore, our basic understanding of dominance as it pertains to wolves is already flawed.
A more detailed layman’s article on the issue.
What is Dominance?
Dominance does still exist, just not in the same way that you might think. The generally accepted scientific definition of dominance is that it is a characteristic of interactions (rather than being an individual trait) regarding access to resources - food, water, mates, shelter. It’s a lot more fluid than the “alpha dog/wolf” concept allows for - one dog in a household might get priority when special chews are available while another might get the comfy spot on the couch.
Secondly, it is a way to avoid conflict and confrontation. A dog that rolls onto its back offers that gesture willingly - a dog that pins another dog is not considered confiden
... keep reading on reddit ➡I originally posted a picture of the chart but that got deleted.
So Bitcoin has been losing a lot of market dominance in the last few months. Perhaps BTC has had it’s run and we’re about to see a new alt season soon!
IMO the next altseason will be much bigger than the one we saw in 2017. There’s a lot more clarity and big institutional players involved in 2021. It’s going to be a wild ride!
Stay safe out there bro’s! Keep your coins secure and don’t let your emotions take over! Don’t forget to also take some profits every now and then!
Sinister Dominance
3B
Instant
You may pay 1B instead of paying this spell's mana cost.
If you pay 1B, an opponent may draw a card.
Exile target creature or planeswalker.
Typical 4cmc exile in black, but with the flexibility of using it for 2 mana? This seems very good.
This especially stood out to me:
" Findings of empirical research show that when women feel sexually objectified by men, they show more submissive behavior. In particular, when women learned that a man (vs. a woman) was looking at their bodies (vs. faces, or not looking at all) they “narrowed their presence” and spoke less when introducing themselves; men did not exhibit a corresponding narrowed presence when a woman was looking at their bodies (Saguy, Quinn, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2010, p. 181). Being sexually objectified also impaired women’s cognitive performance in negatively stereotyped domains (e.g., math; Gervais, Vescio, & Allen, 2011) and reduced their willingness to act for changing the existing gender-system (Calogero, 2013). It seems, thus, that the sexual objectification of women shapes their behavior in ways that perpetuate their inferior social status (O. Klein, Allen, Bernard, & Gervais, 2014). "
Source https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361684319871913
I've taken it upon myself, like many, to improve the abode in which I reside. Part of said improvements, is to landscape my garden. Its not been easy.. actually, some weekends have resembled a North Korean prison camp, with the amount of rocks being moved, tree trunks being dug out trenches being dug and sheer amount of earth being moved.
This week I've been building a wall. My first wall, and certainly an ambitious project from a noob like myself to undertake, but still.. gotta finish what I start.
So my partner has gone out for the day, and whilst she's been away I've been putting the finishing touches on the wall when I get notification on my generic wireless doorbell cam.. and who should it be? The N'law.
I wasn't expecting it as they live an hour away and over the past year I've grown accustomed to living like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
So I'm covered in crap and dust, and pops-in-law insisted he was "only passing" and knew my lovely lady isn't in town.. and I quickly jump in the shower.
I can see my garden from bathroom. In the 3 minutes its taken me to rinse myself off and wash my bits, I've seen pops in law walk from his car (with his very own spirit level) and proceed to check the levels of my wall and even pick and inspect the mortar I used before taking said level back to his car and sit back at the table.
I didn't question it.. I knew what he was doing. He just wanted to dad-in-law the hell out of me, as he can be quite a difficult man. But he didn't say a word.. as I know.. there's nothing to be said but "Bravo SquireOfTheShire.. that wall is a masterpiece of sheer excellence" but no. He drank his coffee and said he must be going.
He drove an hour to have a 5 minute coffee...
....of course he did.
