Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything

Giants co-owner John Mara recently conceded what has been painfully obvious for three years.
“We definitely made some miscalculations in a number of areas in 2018,” Mara said after the Giants wrapped up the 2020 season.
Mara pinned Dave Gettleman’s 15-33 record in three seasons as general manager on those 2018 miscalculations. As a result, Mara is sticking with Gettleman for a fourth season due to greatly improved personnel moves last offseason.
Despite Mara’s clean slate, the Giants are still feeling the effects of the 2018 offseason. Every decision in roster building has a lasting impact and it has taken years to dig out from some of the misses Gettleman made in his first year on the job.
The Giants made a number of franchise-altering moves in 2018 and Mara didn’t specify which ones he viewed as miscalculations. So here’s an examination of the big moves from the 2018 offseason, why they didn’t work and how their impact has been felt in subsequent years.
• Sticking with Eli Manning
Quarterback Eli Manning was 37 years old and clearly in decline when Gettleman was hired. Manning had two years remaining on his contract, but the Giants could have cut him to create $9.8 million in cap savings while eating $12.4 million in dead money in 2018.
That was always a long shot and Gettleman made it clear that Manning was part of the plans in his introductory news conference, referencing a big game the quarterback had against the Eagles late in the 2017 season as evidence that the two-time Super Bowl MVP could still get the job done.
Would ownership have hired a general manager who advocated dumping Manning? Probably not. But Mara was adamant that there was no ownership mandate for Gettleman to make decisions geared toward one last run with Manning.
“That’s absolute nonsense,” Mara said last week.
In hindsight, cutting ties with Manning before the 2018 season would have been best for the future but it obviously would have been difficult to dump a franchise icon. But without even adding a successor in 2018, the Giants stuck with Manning again in 2019.
Cutting Manning in the 2019 offseason would have created $17 million in cap savings with just $6.2 million in dead money. The Giants, of course, took Daniel Jones with the sixth pick in the 2019 draft and he took over as the starter in Week 3 of his rookie season. Carrying Manning’s $23.2 million cap hit as a backup quarterback in 2019 was a poor use of resources.
• Signing Nate Solder
Even if there was pressure to build around Manning, Gettleman bears responsibility for the moves made with that objective in mind. Mara isn’t hands-on to the point where he dictates which specific players must be signed.
Signing left tackle Nate Solder to a four-year, $62 million contract with $34.8 million guaranteed was a gross miscalculation.
The Giants had a dire need at left tackle and Solder was the best option on the market. Anyone with a wi-fi connection knew that. But general managers don’t make seven-figure salaries for giving the biggest contracts to the biggest available names.
General managers earn their keep by evaluating all of the options and making decisions that give their team an advantage. Just look at what Solder’s former team did.
The Patriots determined Solder wasn’t worth the contract offered by the Giants despite seven solid seasons in New England. So the Patriots let Solder walk in free agency and traded a third-round pick to the 49ers for Trent Brown and a fifth-round pick. Brown counted just $1.9 million against the cap in 2018 and the Patriots didn’t miss a beat when he was plugged in at left tackle. In the process, the Patriots got a third-round compensatory pick in 2019 for Solder.
The takeaway: There’s always another option, so saying, “What else was Gettleman supposed to do?” isn’t an excuse for the Solder signing. And Gettleman had to have a Plan B at left tackle since the Giants’ top offensive line target in 2018 was guard Andrew Norwell, who signed a five-year, $66.5 million contract with the Jaguars. Once the Giants missed out on Norwell, they went all-in on Solder, which obviously hasn’t worked out.
Solder’s contract leaves the Giants in a tough spot after two disappointing seasons and an opt out for 2020. The Giants compounded the financial consequences by restructuring Solder’s contract before the 2019 season to create cap space. That move created $5 million in cap space in 2019 but added $2.5 million to the cap in the final two years of his deal.
Solder counted $5.6 million against the cap in 2020 during his opt out. He has cap hits of $16.5 million in 2021 and $18 million in 2022. The Giants can cut Solder this offseason to create $6 million in cap savings while eating $10.5 million in dead money.
The bottom line is the Solder contract was a major miscalculation and it continues to be a drain on the Giants’ finances.
• Other free agent signings
Whereas Solder was grossly overpaid, Gettleman’s other notable free agent signings in 2018 were simply poor evaluations.
Signing guard Patrick Omameh to a three-year, $15 million contract seemed reasonable. But the veteran was such a disaster that he was benched after six games and cut in Week 10 of his first season.
Linebacker Kareem Martin, who had familiarity with defensive coordinator James Bettcher from their time together in Arizona, was signed to a three-year, $15 million contract. Martin failed to make an impact in two seasons and was cut last offseason.
Giving running back Jonathan Stewart a two-year, $6.8 million contract wasn’t a big deal in terms of the cap implications. But Gettleman’s obstinate defense that the 31-year-old back hadn’t lost a step chipped away at his credibility when Stewart clearly had nothing left and was cut after one season.
In an ideal world, Omameh and Martin would have been established veteran starters on the 2020 roster. Instead, both were long gone. Misses happen in free agency. But it hurts that Gettleman signed them rather than keeping better players like Devon Kennard and Romeo Okwara, who have been far more productive with other teams since 2018.
• Trading for Ogletree
Like with the Solder signing, the Giants had a need at middle linebacker. So Gettleman took a big swing, sending 2018 fourth and sixth-round picks to the Rams for Alec Ogletree and a 2019 seventh-round pick.
It should have been a red flag that the Rams were looking to deal the 26-year-old Ogletree within a year of giving him a four-year, $42.75 million extension. Ogletree’s five interceptions in 2018 masked otherwise poor play. He struggled again in 2019 and was a cap casualty last offseason.
In all, Ogletree cost the Giants $20 million against the cap for two subpar seasons and a mid-round draft pick. Rebuilding teams shouldn’t give away draft picks and they should be cautious about adding high-priced veterans. The Giants violated both of those tenets with the Ogletree trade.
The Giants got it right at middle linebacker last offseason by signing Blake Martinez to a three-year, $30.75 million contract. If Gettleman had found a similar player in 2018, the Giants would have had better linebacker play in 2018 and 2019 plus an additional mid-round draft pick to develop.
• Trading JPP
The lone move Gettleman made during the 2018 offseason with the future in mind was trading defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul to the Buccaneers for a third-round pick. The trade came a year after former GM Jerry Reese gave Pierre-Paul a four-year, $62 million contract.
The trade left $15 million in dead money on the 2018 cap, but cleared a combined $37 million in cap charges off the books in 2019 and 2020. The Giants used the third-round pick on B.J. Hill, who had 5.5 sacks as a rookie and remains a solid rotational defensive tackle.
This trade looks worse in hindsight since Pierre-Paul has 30.5 sacks in the three seasons since the trade, which is tied for eighth-most in the NFL during that stretch. But dumping an aging player with a big contract for a draft pick wouldn’t have been a bad move if the Giants were rebuilding. The bigger problem is Gettleman’s inability to find a comparable replacement over the past three years.
• Picking Saquon
Using the No. 2 pick in the 2018 draft on running back Saquon Barkley is the decision that had the greatest impact on the franchise. The second pick is an incredibly valuable commodity that can make a seismic impact on a franchise, like when the Giants took Lawrence Taylor at No. 2 in 1981.
As Gettleman said, everyone saw him “drool all over myself” when evaluating Barkley in the pre-draft process. Barkley is supremely talented, but one of the main arguments against using a premium resource on a running back has been realized, since injuries have limited Barkley to just 31 of 48 career games.
The obvious alternative was taking a quarterback. It’s impossible to know how that would have turned out. No. 3 pick Sam Darnold has been a disappointment for the Jets, who may move on this offseason. No. 7 pick Josh Allen was a second-team All-Pro this season after a breakout Year 3 for the Bills. No. 10 pick Josh Rosen has been a complete flop and is already on his fourth team. So clearly there were a wide range of outcomes if the Giants took a quarterback instead of Barkley.
If the Giants took Allen and built a strong supporting cast around him like Buffalo has, maybe they’d be playing in the divisional round this weekend. And if they took Rosen, they’d probably already be back in the market for another quarterback.
The other option was trading back. We’ll never know if Gettleman could have received the package the Jets sent the Colts for the No. 3 pick (the No. 6 pick, two second-round picks in 2018, one second-round pick in 2019). Maybe if Gettleman had a better poker face about his commitment to Manning and infatuation with Barkley, the Jets would have been compelled to trade up to No. 2 to avoid having the Giants beat them to Darnold. But Gettleman admitted to never seriously considering offers for the pick because he was so dead set on taking Barkley.
The Colts took a three-time first-team All-Pro guard (No. 6 pick Quenton Nelson) and an excellent right tackle (No. 37 pick Braden Smith) with the first two picks from the Jets. They then traded the other second-round pick (No. 49) to the Eagles for the 52nd pick (edge rusher Kemoko Turay) and the 169th pick (running back Jordan Wilkins). They then used the 2019 second-round pick from the Jets (No. 34 overall) on cornerback Rock Ya-Sin. Turning the No. 3 pick into two stud offensive linemen, a starting cornerback, a rotational pass rusher and a backup running back is a master class in maximizing value.
Gettleman and Mara don’t view the Barkley pick as a mistake.
“I’m still happy that we have him,” Mara said last week. “I certainly expect him to be a Giant for a very long time.”
Again, we’ll never know if Gettleman could have secured the same offer or something similar to what the Colts landed for the third pick. But it’s tough to stomach how the team directly behind the Giants in the 2018 draft got so much more out of their premium pick.
• Extending Odell
Giving wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. a five-year, $90 million extension during training camp was the last big move of the 2018 offseason. There were rumors that the Giants could trade Beckham during the 2018 offseason, but they didn’t have much of a choice regarding an extension once they kept him.
Beckham had been a good soldier throughout the 2018 offseason so they rewarded him with the monster contract. Playing hardball with the team’s best player would have made for a rough start to first-year head coach Pat Shurmur’s tenure.
The Giants clearly had regrets, as they dealt Beckham to the Browns for safety Jabrill Peppers, a first-round pick and third-round pick after the season. Ultimately, the failed marriage resulted in the Giants paying Beckham $20 million for 12 games in the 2018 season. Even if the trade is viewed as a positive for the Giants now, the financial impact of the extension was significant.
Gettleman has acknowledged multiple times that his plan to win while rebuilding was flawed.
“As I’ve already admitted, ‘18 was not a stellar year, personnel-wise,” Gettleman said last week. “We’ve learned from our mistakes.”
If only it were that easy. There are consequences for such mistakes. The Giants just went 6-10 this season and have numerous holes to fill, yet they’re only projected to have the 19th-most cap space this offseason despite the benefit of having a quarterback on his rookie contract. Decisions like keeping Manning through the end of his contract and giving Solder a megadeal have financial implications that can’t be swept under the rug.
Mara and Gettleman both view the 2019 offseason as a step in the right direction. That’s debatable. The Giants certainly feel good about the Beckham trade despite the offense’s glaring lack of a No. 1 receiver. The lone big-ticket free-agent addition of the 2019 offseason — four years, $37.5 million for 30-year-old wide receiver Golden Tate — went about as poorly as the Solder signing. The evaluation of the 2019 offseason hinges on quarterback Daniel Jones, and the jury is still out on the sixth pick in last year’s draft.
“Our processes are better,” Gettleman said. “I think this past year showed the fruits of that, both in free agency and in the draft. I really believe strongly we’ll continue in that way.”
No one can dispute that Gettleman nailed free agency last offseason, while it’s too early to judge the draft. The Giants need a similar offseason this year as they continue to dig out of the hole created by the miscalculations of 2018.

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #4 - Round 3 Match 4 - Cabernet Sauvignon and Inch Nine vs Byte and Fira B

The results are in for Match 2.
Jade had been building, and building, managing to shrug past the bullets sent their way and just eating the chips in their quite literal armor, able to easily replenish it with yet more mud. The mud had stopped Dread from chasing them, and she had gone off and burned the place to scare the people off. Whatever. It complemented what it was they had desired…
All it would take now was this finishing touch, this last gesture of nonaggression towards Sentient Oona, who they were certain simply wished not to be bothered, did not care for any of this commodification of its very existence.
It was crass. It was sickening. It drove Jade, who just wished to live their own life, mad to think about, and now, nobody would follow, soon as they were a short swim through the basin away. The shrine itself would be a sinking island of concrete silk soon. All that would be left then was to use the cover of the dirtying water to avoid the bullets of the fan club, the last guard unit perched within the shrine.
Yet bullets never came, and above them, Jade felt instead a terrible heat, noted the appearance of spiked rubber on their mud-caked back. Something with an exoskeleton like an insect’s stood above them, they careened their head to see who was above them. It was Dread, barely swerving her body past dragonflies which had caught on to her malicious intent and meant to fry her.
“You again… I said fall down… Off.” They spoke with guttural contempt. “How did… You even…”
“You ruined my new boots, Antlerhead, but I am afraid that as much as the ground by which we did our battle had been soiled… You miscalculated in, I think, a fateful way, to utilize that ghastly terminology.” Briefly, indicatively, she looked to her side, and Jade understood as their opponent continued. “You didn’t destroy the bridge first. All I needed to do was walk across, watch your movements… And hop on.”
“You... still talk… too much.” Jade grunted, then, and spat at her, putting on their strongest face.
Then they saw so many dragonflies, flying towards both of them as fell bladed arms raised and descended.
The winner is Dread, with a score of 73 to Jade’s 71!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Tie	15-15	The first two matches in a row, up to the final moments, saw decent turnout while resulting in a tie by deadline.
Quality	Red Carpet Renaissance	24-21	Reasoning
JoJolity	Black Hill Estate	24-25	Reasoning
Conduct	Tie	10-10

After a few futile moments trying to commune with the alien, Dread stepped over that bridge once more, back onto land and stood over the lake where they had left Jade. After that final confrontation, the dragonflies had all dissipated, Sentient Oona either sated or exhausted after that final exchange of blows, and for a few days, slumbering.
Both of the fighters had been covered in blood, covered in gore, covered in wounds. The fire raged on even as the trapped god’s rage quelled, heat counteracted by the cool of the muddy, bloody lake, which Dread, feeling theatrical, turned herself away from.
“How quaint! A beast such as yourself thinking you had a chance beating a woman of my stature. Cute, really. Your malodorous challenge was something indeed, and I will admit that you… That you…”
Dread’s lip began to quiver. Her trip was RUINED!
She didn’t even get a single souvenir! Her train of thought lost, tears well in her eyes. Joywave fell, and she turned away from Jade, beginning to sob. She needed to go hug someone.
To this end, then, she ran and ran, tromping across the edge of the marsh towards the direction of the evacuating town she’d last seen her friend head, who surely would be not judgmental over such a platonic request as consolation. Mr. Jones was surely-
Ah. He’d already left, huh?
All he had left behind, then, was the Green Flying Man, clutching a massive gash in his flickering, transformed torso, hand feebly fumbling with a rotary phone in one of the few buildings not on fire yet.
“H… H-hello? Matilda? It’s… Nngh, it’s an emergency situation! The… The Estate is empty, and the closest member’s here with me in Sentient Oona and I’ll try and get back with them, but a guy cut his own leg off and died and everything’s on fire and Memory… He grabbed Memory Management, and said he knew how to kill her, that he would if she doesn’t-”
Click!
A fell claw hung the phone up, then severed the line, and Green collapsed, having been tripped and sent to the floor.
“Y-you! But if you’re here, th-that means-” Green whined. “No… No, no, no…”
“Do not irritate me with your whining!” The crying Dread, using Joywave, brought her hand down, then the other, then raised them, then brought each down again, and repeated this, and repeated this. “I! Am in! A very bad mood!”
The Green Flying Man was not long for the world anyway thanks to the distinctive sabre wound which had gouged him (a normal man would have been dead already), despite what he had said to assure whoever he was on the phone with, already fading from being, but he practically disintegrated seconds into Dread’s onslaught, and she hardly registered this until she stood, breathing heavily in the aftermath of her tantrum.
If… If what he said was true, then the reason Mr. Jones has left me here, messy and with no souvenirs to my name… Still sniffling pathetically, Dread quivered, trying to stiffen her posture. Then he, at least, had his success…
There’s only a few hours left, as of posting this match, to vote in its predecessor, a duel between a cactus-mancer and a clone-summoner in a clock tower.
Scenario:
Elephant Bones 2 - Afternoon
The empty former diner and tax shelter, adjacent to the legitimate restaurant to which it was a sequel, had constantly had people watching after it since the incident before, when ANVIL militia members had occupied it with the intention of using it to raid and capture the restaurant proper. For Fira B, the place made for a fine space to do paperwork and generally not be easily found when she wasn’t outright needed, also serving double duty in how it kept hooligans from their hooliganry.
“I raise you better dental. It’s a top-secret dental plan - people like us normally don’t get to know about it. But... you gotta risk 8% of the raise you earned so far.”
Byte, sitting at the table opposite her, pondered it over, not typically the type to end up in poker games, but having wanted a raise and found himself very easily swayed by Fira, basically, implying he was afraid to handle it this way, worried he would lose. Sure, Fira was probably blatantly cheating, but hey, so was he, and as it was, his pay was about to go up 10%.
Thanks to his Stand, he already had everything he needed to make a perfect game… All saved in spades, card-counted to hell for the perfect moment, and this forbidden dental plan for teeth beyond compare had been his ultimate goal this entire time.
“Alright, I’ll call.” The final hands were dealt and played to, then, tensely, before he declared, putting it all down on the table, “royal flush, all spades! Those secret teeth are as good as-”
Fira, grinning, displayed her own hand, then, having prepared her own forbidden technique for this exact eventuality, this moment. Not one, two, three, or four Aces in her hand, nor even something so hackneyed as an errant fifth Ace. She had gone beyond Poker, and displayed a devastating, never-before-seen six Aces technique, all in different suits. Everyone in real Poker knew that that was even better.
“No way… Dammit, that’s cheating! No way you seriously got-”
“So were you. Don’t forget this loss, Byte. Work hard, and maybe one day you’ll be able to get any teeth you want. Even mine, if you’re ruthless enough.”
He was about to raise an objection, then, when another figure walked through the faux-restaurant doors, carrying with them a face-obscuring massive gift basket full of assorted soaps and candies that look like soaps. More troublingly, as both parties present immediately narrowed their eyes at, though, was the uniform the figure was wearing.
They were clad in body armor, aqua and blue with white accents, the unmistakable colors of VALKYRIE and its members, complete with the sidearm all were known for carrying idly resting at their side.
“What do you want.” Fira asked sternly, about to stand up.
“Oh, the boss asked me to drop these off to sweeten the deal!”
“Deal?” Her voice lowered, and she stood tall, Byte almost wanting to grin at the sight of what was to come. “I don’t know anything about a ‘deal’.”
“Oh, right, uh, probably should’ve led with that!” Awkwardly, the recruit, young-looking, Byte surmised, put the gift basket down on the table. “See, uh, he wants you to swing by the address on the card later, says he’s sure you could help with-”
Effie Linder was sitting outside, fiddling frustratedly with the wi-fi as she tried to remember exactly what the new password was, only to see the man who’d walked in in a VALKYRIE uniform literally thrown out, crying out and hitting the pavement like a ragdoll. It made her smirk, despite herself and her contempt for the boss.
Fira brushed her hands off, seething and staring before letting the doors shut. Byte, meanwhile, looked over the gift basket, smelling one of the soaps, and one of the candies, within.
“Not bad, actually… Whoever picked this out has some taste. Always bugged me how soap doesn’t taste like it smells…”
“Eugh, I swear… VALKYRIE is acting chummy with us now... It’s one thing for their enemies to fight us because of some bad timing, but we are not people VALKYRIE sends gift baskets to!”
“Never even heard of Ugo McBaise sending gift baskets to anyone…” Byte quipped, curious.
“Exactly. It’s a passive-aggressive thing, clearly. They’re trying to tell us to play nice.” Fira cracked her knuckles, turning to him then. “You can admire soaps later. What’s the address on that card? Let’s go there and beat the hell out of Ugo. Send a message that we’re not friends, and his bones should be broken right now.”
“Hey, alright, I’m down,” Byte said, finding some amusement in the situation as he stood, slowly, opening up the card. “Besides… I know, different branches and all, but you know what happened to Zebra… All because he was backing Peres up in her fight against this company. Like, dammit, I was on that trip, too… Like half of us were, and people risked their lives and died trying to get that Ocean Soul caught alive in the first place, and then some guys from this company show up and then it’s all for nothing. Maybe I’ll feel better calling this a sort of revenge.”
The Black Hill Estate - Afternoon
Inch Nine paced around her room rubbing her temples. Ever since the fight she’d had with Byron Oxbow, everything in her life had gotten more complicated. She’d brought it up with Klein once, and the conflicted expression in his face had stuck with her. Pretty much any friends she had made with connections to the Industrial District reacted that way, to various extents. Inch was a cool headed person, but even though she struggled to show it, it affected her.
Thoughts rushed through her head on who was at fault for this… Cairo, Fira, Byron, that commander of his. Even with all of that a thought kept flowing through her head. Maybe herself, even. If she had only been able to talk Byron down, been more forthright about where she stood, it might have been avoided. She could have worked something out and her relationships would all be fine and so much hurt could have been avoided.
No. No, that was stupid, too.
It was that bastard, Ugo McBaise, and that horrible company he ran. He couldn’t help but keep pushing and pushing forward, turning a security company into a household bogeyman. Of course everyone would have been less on edge, never would have been at war in the first place, had it not been for that lot.
Yes, saying that, Inch felt at peace again, if only for a moment.
As that thought finished a small knock came at the door. Soon enough, she heard a voice she recognized well - that of her teammate, Cabernet Sauvignon, who came through the other side of the door. “Hey, we just got a letter and a gift basket from these VALKYRIE guys… Actually quite a nice fellow at the door, said it was specifically for us.”
“Hm.” Inch tilted her head. It had an… Assorted smell to it, and everything did look quite delicious. To test the mettle of this goodwill, she thought to grab something, take a bite…
She was glad that nobody could see the lower half of her face, the expression on it, at the random item within that she had taken, the soapy taste overwhelming her senses now. With a continued coolheadedness as Cab sat there surely unawares, she asked, “did he say what occasion this was for? I am to understand that this is not a company known for actions such as this, even if many of us have helped ODIN.”
“Said he had somewhere to be, then ran off before I could possibly entertain him,” Cab answered, “though I suspect perhaps that he was intimidated by my attempts to strike up a conversation about the exotic cheeses and scented candles which would best pair with the provided basket…” His face darkened a moment, then, as he added in a suspicious, perhaps self-importantly quiet tone, “and aside from that, probably whatever this is is suspicious as hell.”
“We are in agreement, then. No matter how polite they act towards us,” Inch said, her eyes narrowing at the deceptively tasty looking contents of the basket, towards the letter within, apparently from the head of the company urging them to come, “we can not abide by working with a man like that, or even being seen as his allies.”
“You know, I don’t know much about this Mcbaise guy, except by the reputation you all gave him, and this may be an old hobby of mine talking, but…” Cab gestured for the card, then, to glance, for himself, over the address. “If they’re going to roll out the red carpet for us, what do you say we head over there just to knock some heads?”
“I could not have thought of a better message myself. Perhaps you are not all culinary knowledge and trivia, Cabernet.”
Business District, Noon
As one would naturally do when receiving a “suspicious as hell” gift basket, Inch and Cab soon decided to investigate further, going to the address mentioned in the card the next day, driving Cab’s truck over there.
That was a mistake; the two of them must have spent almost an hour trying to find any available parking spot afterwards. The odds were stacked against them, but they eventually managed to find an overpriced spot fifteen minutes from their destination that they could stay in for a while, and went on their way.
Inch and Cab made their way through the hustle and bustle of the district, but after a couple minutes of walking, Inch spotted something out of the corner of her eye that gave her pause - a teal-haired woman walking angrily through the street, whom she’d fought for her life alongside not long ago. Fira.
Inch casually walked over, Cab following along behind her, and made her way to Fira, waving. “Hello there, Fira!” She said, actually sort of pleased to see her.
She didn’t expect to see a friendly-ish face here, so it was a welcome sight. Per usual Fira’s expression right now wasn’t one many people would call “friendly,” which is to say that she seemed even more pissed off than she usually did.
“Oh, Inch. You’re here. Hello.” Verbose as ever, Fira B.
“I am. What brings you here, Fira? You live and work quite far west of here, non?”
Before Fira said anything, Byte stepped in, taking over from there. “Those VALKYRIE assholes sent us some kind of gift package filled with soap and candy... wanted to win us over, I guess, make us do something for them, so we’re heading over to tell them to fuck off and beat that Ugo asshole up.”
“Oh! We received a similar package too... I had just thought of what candles I might buy while out here to combine with it all, offer the perfect ambiance for some aged Caciocavallo Podolico, but we agree - something’s suspicious about this…” Cab said, Inch nodding along.
Inch spoke up again then. “If all of us are heading towards the same place… I suppose it is best for us to all go together, non?”
“Guess so.” Fira, though not exactly overjoyed at the idea, seemed receptive enough to it, and neither Byte nor Cab objected either, so the four stand users went on their way. Each, though imagining different melodies, were totally all picturing the scene as being paired with some kickass background music or another.
Making their way towards the address, they noticed that there seemed to be less and less of the tall skyscrapers common to the district surrounding them, and more and more buildings directly associated with VALKYRIE - that made sense, given that this was their part of the district.
As they went along, Byte kept looking around, even more so than the rest of them, always looking and commenting on whatever came to mind for him - “hey, that building seems like a pain in the ass to work in,” “oh, that dude actually looks kind of strong, I bet he could take those other guys over there. Not me though, obviously,” and other inane comments. Soon enough, everyone else simply started tuning it out, paying them no real heed and going on along their way.
Eventually, they reached the address - a building, larger than most others in the area, marking the entrance to a VALKYRIE training ground. Getting near the building, Byte noticed something - a man in a VALKYRIE outfit, walking towards them. He seemed quite well built, enough so that Byte figured he might even have to use BRB to beat him were things to come to that. “Hey, that VALKYRIE guy over there seems like he wants something with us, no?”
No response. The man got closer.
Byte wondered to himself how he could get the attention of Fira or the other two without pissing them off. Eventually, he decided to give Cab a light slap on the shoulder to grab his attention - he didn’t seem particularly threatening, especially when compared to Fira or Inch.
Cab, who seemed to be lost in thought looking at the building, turned to Byte with a sour expression. “What do you want, and why would it necessitate hitting me?!”. He seemed angry, but Byte simply shrugged in response. “Well, you weren’t responding to what I said, and-”
“Uh… excuse me? You’re the ones we called over, right? Inch Nine, Cabernet Sauvignon, Fira B, and-”
“What do you want from us.” Before the man, who seemed to be surprisingly docile considering his build and appearance, could finish, Fira interrupted him, and he found himself angrily stared down by all four of the stand users. The man stammered for a bit, unsure of how to respond or what to say...
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey… let’s all calm down, yeah?” The intense staredown was interrupted when a voice came from afar, one that was familiar to Fira.
“Hey, wait a sec…” She cocked an eyebrow in disbelief, grunting and adding as she turned, “no way… Is it seriously-”
A man clad in a dark suit colored like VALKYRIE’s armor, adorned with cute shapes had emerged now, clad professionally head-to-toe, dress shoes to black sunglasses, and lord, that hair.
Such long hair, vertical and striped.
Rushen Smith stood before the lot of them, strutting around like he’d owned the place or something. She’d beaten him once, but hadn’t been expecting to cross paths with him again.
“What do you want.”
“No need to be so hostile, yeah? We’re not calling you here to start trouble or nothing, so-”
“We’re?” Fira interrupted him. “You’re with VALKYRIE?” Well, if he was with VALKYRIE, at least Fira knew very well that she could still beat the shit out of him, given that she already had a good track record against him. Then, she’d move on to Ugo.
“So you’re like a… Miniboss, now.” Byte interjected, disappointed, yet ready to fight nonetheless.
“If I may finish.” Rushen sounded impatient
“To make a long story short… Ugo’s out. CEO fired him for everything he’s done. You’re not talkin’ to some crony to an NFL reject. You’re looking at the new head of VALKYRIE. For security and PR reasons, Allday has been been keepin’ quiet about it for now, preparing for just the right moment to tell the public, make sure I get revealed to the public with a good positive splash, but it is what it is. So… ready to talk now? Because I’m thinkin’ we can use your help, and we can definitely make it worth your while.”
Deeper within the premises - An Open-air training facility
Everyone had been disarmed by their confusion, and by Rushen’s goodwill, and by the thought that, just like that, one of the most threatening people in the city could just be fired like it was nothing, which made for Rushen a convenient situation. They were in line, following his lead, and as he did so, he brought them to a state-of-the-art training facility, one wherein dozens upon dozens of security officers in armor were walking around, shooting the shit, running, chatting by vending machines stocked with overpriced health food and sports drinks, and almost always giving Rushen a respectful nod and salute as he passed by, always meeting it with a cool, “at ease.”
“I still do not understand why we are here…” Inch, after some time being led around, spoke up. “I assume you sent those gift baskets to us, but even then, beyond wishing us here quickly, you did not say what you expect of us. Or even sign your name, beyond ‘the boss of VALKYRIE.’”
“Yes, like I said, my step into the private sector ain’t public knowledge yet… Trying to keep a lot under lock, ‘cuz I’ve inherited a backlog of things to take care of. Need-to-know basis… You know how it is.”
Fira nodded, saying bluntly, “so you’re planning something big. Want us to have a part. What? And why? Better not be wasting our time…”
“All Ugo ever taught people far as tactics went was a bullheaded, aggressive push forward… Rush, and rush, and rush, and just overwhelm opponents before they can think their way out.” Rushen explained. “It hasn’t been working, it got a lotta people on all sides or no sides hurt and killed who didn’t need to be, and while he used to have a man for handling stuff that took a brain, long story short… He’s no longer with us either. We’re trying to work on a way to save the people of this city from what’s up ahead, and no point in doing that if there’s no one to save, yeah? VALKYRIE needs to be better… We need to reorient, pick and choose better battles, get better at fighting them. No more bullcrap about raiding bars or stealing cows, yeah?”
“So you want us to… Help you retrain this security company?” Byte asked. “Why us?”
“The four of you felt right for it,” Rushen answered, looking each of them over in turn, “Byte, I know the part you played in that shipyard incident, and while I still ain’t pleased at what you were working for then, and it really messed Jesse up in a bad way, that’s all over now. The Ocean Soul business is done and in the past, and you’re real good at what you do.”
He was quiet, then.
“Fira,” he continued, “you’re another career criminal in this city, and you and I both know it, but we need someone who can think like that, someone with fight in her, for what I’m trying to get these guys ready for. Now ain’t the time to get picky… Long as you keep minding your business.”
“I try. Some people make it so hard.” Fira snorted, folding her arms.
“Inch, you used to be seen with Cairo a whole bunch, until right around when a certain incident happened… You know what I mean, don’t you?” She and Fira sneered, and Rushen raised a hand. “I’m not here to criticize, mind. I like your style, and that cool gator power thing you got going for you, hear you’ve got some real good learning techniques, and most important of all, I hear the two of you managed to survive bein’ in the dead center of Byron Oxbow at his angriest in thirty years.”
“You are… Praising me. It is appreciated, thank you.”
“And Cab,” Rushen continued, “you are the whitest man I have ever met, and I’ve got family in the same neck of New York as Douglas Jones. But hey, you’re a friend of Jesse’s, and these guys around here, they remember you at the battle on Capital Island, hurt and just popped outta this magic bottle, and still fighting with ‘em and helping people escape. You’re good people, and you got a particular edge to you I need too.”
“I saw I think a better side of VALKYRIE than most, by good circumstance,” Cab started, flattered by the mixed praise, ultimately happy to recognize it as stroking his ego, and a part of him warmed up for what was being praised turning out to be something besides the hobbies with which he’d filled the void. “Though I was just as willing to knock these guys’ heads in as everyone else here, you know… I certainly don’t mind this turnaround, though. And I think I’m starting to guess who it is you want to fight here, why you want a group like this in on it… Might you be planning to stake out the-”
“Not a word. Can’t let this get leaked.”
“Of course, of course,” Cab answered, quite confident in his mental answer nonetheless. “You mentioned this being worth our while… Can I ask what you mean by that?”
“The CEO’s gonna be watching this training sesh too, if you didn’t already guess… We’ll make sure all four of you are rewarded handsomely for this, of course, but if you really go above-and-beyond, she’s said she’ll throw even more bonus on top of all the dough. I recommend you shoot for that.”
“So we need to help train your guys better than these two, huh?” Fira answered, jerking her thumb at Inch and Cab.
“I mean, it probably is better for you to work with the person ya know primarily, but it’s not really a comp-”
“We are gonna blow whatever you guys are doing out of the water,” Byte interrupted, looking towards the Estate residents with a fiery look in his own eye. “We’ll show you the kind of training you can normally only see for a total premium at Dukes!”
“Yes, let’s one-up each other,” Cab agreed with an amused smirk, well aware that this competitive streak was unnecessary, but beginning to feel a certain fire in him, “what do you say, Inch? You up for the task of whipping these guys into crimebusting shape?”
“I suppose I am.” Inch herself was beginning to feel the air of competition, feel her blood pumping, “no hard feelings to either of you, if you are not selected for this… But we are simply going to do a phenomenal job.”
Rushen sighed, shaking his head. “Least you ain’t trying to kill each other… Alright! I’ll roll with it.” He clapped his hands, perking up quite a bit. “Both of y’all are in charge of sixteen recruits who need retraining fast, and we’re gonna compare what you did at the end. Just don’t kill ‘em or nothing, or do nothing stupid, and for four hours, soon as you got a plan together, what you say goes. Got it? Good.”
Man, now I’m feelin’ the competitive spirit a bit… Really is contagious, huh? Probably gonna make ‘em do a better job… Ah, hell, now I’m feelin’ a certain urge. I’m gonna say it. I’m gonna!
“Open the game.”
(credit to magistelles for the awesome art!)
Location: A VALKYRIE training facility in the middle of the business district.
The area consists of track fields, indoor gymnasiums, shooting ranges, training equipment storage, training towers and practical training buildings as well as other training sites. There is also general equipment storage and a small infirmary on site.
Essentially any sort of equipment or facilities you’d expect to find in a military style boot camp can be found here. Things like body armor and helmets, large tires, guns (both handguns and rifles), training dummies, etc. If you aren’t sure if something can be found here, just ask the judges.
There is also a large amount of spare wood used for building obstacle courses.
Goal: Train your group of recruits better than your opponents in a 4 hour training session!
Additional Information:
You can assume there is minimal downtime from getting area to area within the full facility.
Each team has a group of 16 VALKYRIE recruits to be trained. Each of them has 333 physicals and a 2 in gun handling and a 2 in hand to hand combat. While your session is a full 4 hours, you may still need to consider the stamina of the recruits and schedule breaks for them accordingly. They are in full uniform, with helmets, combat boots, and body armor as well as a pistol and baton each. They also have equipment that lets them see stands. They each have spare uniforms and can be refitted with training equipment from the equipment storage as needed. They also have assault rifles and walkie talkies in the equipment storage.
For the purposes of training they will generally agree to whatever you put them through short of anything that has significant risk of resulting in actual harm.
Teams are allowed to use/take anything from the facilities for the purposes of training.
In terms of Voting and Quality we are looking for a few different things:

Having effective training: This can mostly be boiled down to how well their training either strengthenings their bodies or helps them learn muscle memories or techniques that improve fighting.
Using your time effectively: Similar to having effective training, minimizing wasted time that could have been otherwise useful is also important.
Having your recruits last for as much of the training as possible: Having guys needing to be sent to the infirmary for injuries or overworking them before the 4 hours is up will affect your score negatively. While accidents can happen through say sparring or other mishaps, you should try to minimize any lasting damages to the recruits.
Having varied and well rounded training: Having them build skills in multiple areas, full body exercise over focusing on one or two muscle groups, and preparing them for a variety of scenarios.
Discipline: While your recruits will be following your orders for training, being able to command their attention and respect can go a long way on making an impression and bolster training effectiveness. On the flip side, doing things that make the recruits not take you or training seriously can defeat the purpose of training.

In terms of training, you can also consider anything security personnel should be trained in, not just strictly combat. That can include rescuing, defending people, perceptiveness, team coordination, etc.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
The Graveyard Shift	Fira B.	“This pain-in-the-ass pillar is a reflection on that woman's personality...” You know, if you are going to be training these people, might as well make this fun for yourself. Personalize your training regiment as much as you can to make it unique with your abilities!
The Graveyard Shift	Byte	“Climb to the top of the pillar with just your hands. That's the only exit. If you can't climb out, you'll stay there until you die.” Anybody could just sit back and train people, that’s why you can’t bring yourself to do that. Be active and hands-on in your training!
Black Hill Estate	Inch Nine	“Climbing with something other than the ripple is not appreciated by the pillar... This "Hell Climb Pillar" only likes the ripple and knocks down everything else... Don't forget that.” No point in relaxing while they do all the training, might as well brush up on your own skills. Be active and hands-on in your training!
Black Hill Estate	Cabernet “Cab” Sauvignon	“It's the fault of the person who built that trap... whoever built this was really fucked up! Making me fall for that” While you could have them do just normal training, that is defeating both the point of the exercise and would be a complete waste of everybody’s time. Personalize your training regiment as much as you can to make it unique with your abilities!

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[SP] A dragon saves the knight in shining armor from the princess

Well... this turned into a wild ride of a response. I woke and immediately responded to this simple prompt which... well which led to... this thing. Enjoy!
The forlorn Reginald stared out into the night's sky. He looked through the window of his lofty bed-chamber in the highest part of the castle. He sat himself on the large king-sized bed with sheets of silk that would make any soldier feel a sense of true luxury. Reginald clenched the silks and felt his heart tremble with emptiness.
He felt the tears as they came tumbling down his face as he remembered his life before becoming a prince.
Reginald sat there, sobbing, as he reminisced about the journeys he would go on. He used to have all sorts of wonderful adventures when he was a knight of the land, well, more like the blight of the land. No one knew that Reginald conned most of the things he did, other than Malthazar and Calisto, but those two wouldn't call him a blight. No, that was reserved for all the lives that were probably lost thanks to Reginald's ruse.
But Timmy, Reginald's orphan squire thought the world of Reginald... or at least Reginald assumed the orphan boy did. The only real thing Reginald could remember of Timmy was his horrified look whenever they breached a villainous hideout.
A look so filled with dread that the vampire lord Brettlan had taken a special interest in him, or at least that's what Reginald thought. Brettlan kept saying something about wanting to get closer to the boy - saying that he needed to teach the boy things that only a father could. Reginald scoffed at that. Vampire lords couldn't have children, everyone knew that to be true from the rumors they heard.
The only thing that Brettlan taught that day was how to take a proper beating from a con-man knight. Reginald gave a tearful smile at those days.
He even remembered the time when he had to fight off pirates. The dread captain Calisto had been a scourage to the seven seas. Calisto would always be there somewhere on the high seas stealing from some poor sod - usually, it was Reginald's employer. In fact, it was thanks to dread captain Calisto that Reginald even became a knight. Through a series of fortune events, Calisto drunkenly admitted to being bested by Reginald. The news went throughout the kingdom and landed Reginald a place as the first-ever knight of the seas.
Reginald had just been a sailor with the courage to challenge the fearsome pirate to a drinking game. Apparently, years of alcoholic debauchery had given Reginald a hoppy fortitude that survived the slurred insults of a dread captain. He was either brave or just competently stupid enough to survive.
But now, Reginald couldn't even look his future wife in the eyes. He had saved Cynthia, the princess of Weiland, from the dragon Malthazar. Reginald thought it more accurate to say that he had convinced rather than saved. Saved had notions of chivalry and bravery. He had just convinced Malthazar to let him take the princess.
It was known throughout the lands that the red-scaled dragon had a penchant for stealing away young princesses and keeping them captive. But that was mostly because of Reginald. He was the one that came up with the idea.
Before his life as a sailor, he had helped the dragon. As for why Reginald would help? Well, they were, as they would say it, homies. A memory struck Reginald like a speeding arrow.
"Yo, Regi, you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" The dragon asked him one day as a princess went passing by in a carriage. Back then, Reginald and Malthazar had been one part thief and one part a torrent of terror. It had worked well enough to secure Malthazar enough money to survive without Reginald.
But, they still loved each other. Every time they'd see each other, they'd chant one single phrase over and over again. That phrase was, "Dudes rock." As for what it meant or if it held any meaning? Not really. They just liked how the words would tumble from their lips.
They knew each other from childhood and had watched out for each other for years. Reginald could still remember their first meeting, sorrow stabbing him through again at the thought.
"Ey, you a dragon or something?" Malthazar had asked with a gravely adolescent voice all those years ago. Reginald felt a renewal of the watery assault coming from his eyes as he thought about the wonderful day in a green undergrowth near Reginald's home village.
"Nah, you a human? You don't look nothing like a human I ever seen," the child Reginald had said with hand gestures, imitating the adults of his village.
The dragon's head had recoiled to the left, its neck curved from the cringe that the dragon must have felt. "You think I got me some fleshy bits like yous? Nah, all scales here, baby!"
Reginald was now a sobbing, wailing man in that bedroom chamber. The memories stung at him like a cut from Calisto would or a claw from Brettlan. He had left Malthazar once the dragon had enough of a horde to generate new would-be heroes that he could cut down. That was when Reginald had left to become a sailor and find the most beautiful treasures for the horde.
But then Reginald fell for another trap.
Royal life.
Once Reginald became a knight, he discovered how expensive and nice royalty had it. He would go to such lavish balls and dinners that he needed more. He thought marrying a princess would be the best bet.
He remembered what Malthazar was doing, and at the time, an ingenious plan came hurtling into his mind.
Reginald had dropped Timmy off with Brettlan, the vampire lord. He had no real good reason to other than the fact he knew the vampire lord would take care of Timmy. The creature of the night seemed to always have a guest room ready for the boy. So, Reginald figured the vampire cared about the boy enough to take care of him. Even though Timmy pleaded against it, Reginald just shrugged and figured no harm, no foul.
He rushed back to his old childhood dragon friend. He would need the massive creature for this plan to work.
When Reginald had found Malthazar upon his opulent pile of gold, Reginald pitched the idea.
"Ey yo Malthy, how's about this. How's about you steal a broad and I come to save her. Then I get married to her and get all their fortune. I come back, and boom, you's and I are worth a kingdom in gold, eh?"
Malthazar agreed in an instant. "See this is why I like you Regi, always coming up with these good plans. Never say I doubted that noggin."
With that, the plan was sprung. Malthazar captured Cynthia, and Reginald had saved her.
That was his downfall.
Now as a prince, Reginald didn't have all the freedom he was so used to. He couldn't just go off and roam the high seas. He couldn't just go fight vampires now. He also most certainly could not see his scaly childhood friend.
It was safe to say that Reginald held a broken heart even though he inflicted the pain upon himself. Had he not been so greedy for gold, then he would still be out there on the seven seas or even spending time with his dragon friend. Or possibly taking care of his squirely ward.
But Reginald's sorrow flew away as a sudden gust of wind slammed through his bedroom chamber. He looked out to the black night sky but discovered it was red with scales now.
Malthazar came to visit him. On his back was Dread Captain Calisto, Vampire Lord Brettlan, and even Timmy - who was now paler than before.
"Guys!" Reginald came bounding up to the window while he cleared his face of tears. "What's you doing here?"
Malthazar was the first to speak. "What does it look like, huh? We're saving you, don't you know?"
Reginald's eyes went wide. They were saving him? That didn't sound right. "What's you mean you saving me? Can't you see I'm cryin' over here, huh? I didn't know I needed saving from water."
Dread Captain Calisto cleared their throat. A voice that sounded like a female trying to fake a male's voice came sauntering through the air. "Well, I remember saving you a few times from the sea if I remember correctly."
Reginald shot the captain a look filled with contempt. "Eh, what's you doing here huh? I thought you's supposed to be doing your sailing and what not?"
Calisto shook their head. "Not any more thanks to you. Now, whenever I board a vessel they just give me money. Turns out they don't want to fight a friend of Weiland's new royalty. Do you know how much I miss the action?"
Reginald nodded at that. He knew exactly the feeling. It was the same reason he had just been sobbing himself into a puddle earlier. He missed the thrill of battle. Then he looked at her confused.
"Wait but I was fighting you. We ain't no friends!"
Calisto shook her head in dismay.
"I told them the same thing. It seems that everyone on the high seas thinks otherwise. Someone apparently spread rumors that we were friends before you became a knight. Whoever did that, I am going to kill them. I miss the thrill!"
Reginald quietly nodded at that and made a mental note to never tell Calisto he had been the one that started those rumors. He thought they would have saved him. Now those rumors would put him in hot water, which he would absolutely need saving from.
Finally, Reginald looked over at Brettlan and Timmy. "So, now I know why those two are here. But why are you two here, huh?"
Brettlan was the first to speak between the pair. "Father-son bonding time, of course! Do you know how many years of my son's life I missed? I need to catch up to all of them! Plus he wanted to see you! The boy has been saying how much he missed your ill-aligned morals!"
Timmy's lips went tight thin as he heard the words. He didn't want the last part coming out, but he did miss Reginald. Something about watching a man choose the absolutely wrong choice every time and getting out of trouble intrigued Timmy. "Yep," Timmy began hesitantly, "he's my dad. Turns out when your father is a vampire, it's really hard to see your half-human son. Everyone still thinks the vampire wants to kill you."
Brettlan's head oscillated up and down at an alarming speed from those words. "The custody battles I had to fight just to get my son! It was nonsense. Now, look at him! He is finally coming into his own vampire powers!"
"Wait but how'd you win the custody battle?"
Brettlan laughed at that with such exuberance that Reginald wondered if the rumors about vampires being brooding masterminds held any truth.
"Oh don't be silly! I just won the real battle," Brettlan said as he wiped a humourous tear from his eye. "I just razed the whole village to the ground and bam no more custody battle!"
It seemed the rumor needed to be updated. Vampires could be enthusiastically malevolent.
Reginald slowly nodded at that. If there had been any doubt in Reginald's mind that he was a bad guy, then it was wiped away from Brettlan's words. They were most definitely the bad guys. Then again, Reginald always knew somewhere deep down he was just a con artist moving from one role to another. But he never thought he'd find himself as a prisoner prince.
Reginald looked at Timmy. The now pale man just looked like he hadn't been out in the sun for a while. Reginald shrugged. He hadn't been out in the sun in some time either. But here was his chance.
Malthazar's voice came crunching through the window. "So you gonna hop on or what?"
Now Reginald needed to decide. He could flee from his cage or stay and try to fix things.
Before Reginald could decide what he wanted to do, the door burst open.
It was Cynthia. She would always come by and check on her soon to be husband. At first, she thought him a dashing knight. But when she discovered he was nothing of the sort, she moved out of the room and into another. Reginald had caught her talking to servants about how to "get rid of a pest." At first, he thought nothing of it, but when his bowls of soup started to leave him feeling a little too under the weather, he caught on just who was the pest.
Then came the accidents and the near-death experiences, and the assassins. Reginald actually liked the assassins. They used to try and kill him before he went to sleep. The extra action would be enough excitement to make him happy again. But Reginald had defeated enough of the assassins to the point where they would take the job, but just come keep Reginald company. Reginald had won a lot of money from all the impromptu poker games in his little prison of a room.
But Reginald couldn't think about his swathes of ill-gotten finances. He needed to react to his now seething fiancee as saw the furious look on her face.
"What are YOU do-," she tried to say but was cut off by the sudden rush of movement. Reginald sprinted towards the window and jumped out. As it turned out, jumping out of a window was preferable to chatting with Cynthia.
Malthazar caught him on his back and the group went flying away. But Cynthia heard something in the night's sky. She heard the torrent of chanting that came from the group that was flying away.
It was a simple phrase repeated over and over again. "Dudes rock."
Cynthia snarled at the sight. "Oh, now I am definitely going to kill you," she said with pure vitriol in her voice.
She angrily marched out of the room and slammed the door behind her. Then, like shadows in the night, four assassins reluctantly came out of their hiding spaces. Each one of them held a different item of food. One had packaged alcohol, another had a box of something called a "pizza," the last two had the various bags of poker chips and cards they had planned to use that night.
"So," one of them began, "that was wild..."
"Yep..." Another said.
"... So do you all want to play, or should we head out?"
The other three looked at each other and shrugged.
"We are already here... I mean might as well, right?"
The four of them nodded in agreement. They set up on the empty table near the window and began their nightly game of poker.
After halfway through the game, one of them looked up and asked something that should have been the first thing the assassins deliberated on.
"So... you think we should tell Regi?"
One of the assassins looked up and her face contorted into something of cringed concern. "... Yeah... Yeah we should."
They all absently nodded at that as they continued their game of poker.

I abandoned VR as an early user. I came back to try the Quest 2 and HOLY S#*!, I'm completely blown away by the experience. If you are on the fence, BUY ONE. VR is ready in 2020.

United’s hopeless pursuit of Jadon Sancho – the real story (theathletic.com)

Hi Folks,
Throwaway account here providing the full Article: https://theathletic.com/2115449/2020/10/06/manchester-united-jadon-sancho-transfer-window/ since it's behind a paywall.

United’s hopeless pursuit of Jadon Sancho – the real story
^{Laurie Whitwell, David Ornstein and more} (Other contributor: Raphael Honigstein)
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer identified Jadon Sancho as his principal target this summer in what was seen as a vital opportunity for squad enhancement following Champions League qualification.
But after 10 weeks of opportunity for talks, Sancho remains a Borussia Dortmund player and the simple truth is that United never got close.
The Athletic has been told that Solskjaer urged Ed Woodward to keep trying, and financial concerns meant other signings were pushed to the periphery until the final 48 hours of the window.
Donny van de Beek arrived on September 2 but sources say United waited to pull the trigger on other purchases until it became clear Sancho was not arriving.
So for the third window in a row, United were active on deadline day, completing the signings of Edinson Cavani, Alex Telles, Amad Diallo and Facundo Pellistri. In January, it was Odion Ighalo, hot on the heels of Bruno Fernandes. Last summer, the club were trying to sign Mario Mandzukic or Paulo Dybala.
The cause for this year’s unedifying sense of late freneticism appears to centre on the priority given to the Sancho move and, fundamentally, a misunderstanding by United of Dortmund’s intentions.
Essentially, United did not believe Dortmund would stay firm on the price-tag of €120 million or their deadline of August 10, embarking on a long-running game of poker without realising that the Bundesliga club weren’t even at the table. United effectively sat still in the hope Dortmund would blink first and place the call they were ready to do business. Intermediaries attempted to broker a deal but were waiting on United to move, which did not happen.
Some sources felt Woodward was holding until the last moment to place an all-in bet, giving the impression of resistance in the ambition of driving the price down. But instead, United kept their chips and stayed true to their valuation. By never ruling themselves out of the deal though, United’s actions seriously annoyed Dortmund’s executives, who became even more entrenched in their position as the weeks went on.
When Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc stood at the side of their training pitches on August 10, the first day of pre-season, and said the decision on Sancho staying was “final”, one alarmed United director made a call to check whether the statement was genuine. The response was along the lines of, “What did you expect? You knew the terms.”
Hans-Joachim Watzke, Dortmund’s chief executive, is said to have personally phoned United at the start of the summer and explained very clearly how much the deal would cost and when it needed to be done by.
United privately argue that the continued conversations after that point, conducted via intermediaries Emeka Obasi and Marco Lichtsteiner, were evidence of Dortmund remaining open to a sale. But the reason for the involvement of agents is hotly disputed.
United insist Dortmund wanted talks done through Obasi and Lichtsteiner, and some believe this was so Dortmund could stick to their public stance while having a backchannel to a potential resolution. United held lengthy discussions and made known what they were willing to pay, which held a firm limit given the current economic environment.
Sources say Dortmund reject that idea and deny they ever appointed agents. Previous deals with Arsenal and Barcelona for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembele respectively were based on face-to-face meetings with club counterparts.
On this occasion, they believed that they had provided the fee to United and since Woodward failed to match it by August 10, there was no need for further direct discussion.
United felt there was tacit encouragement to keep lines of communication going but the only way they could have got the deal on after that date was with a “crazy” offer along the lines of Neymar’s £200 million transfer to Paris Saint-Germain. Sources told The Athletic that if United had come in with an offer of €140-£150 million then Dortmund might have done business. Conscious of their reputation having set their position out so publicly, Dortmund would have been able to sell that as a turnaround made in extraordinary circumstances.
United argued that the €120 million price tag did not take into account the financial hit caused by the pandemic. Executives genuinely felt it should come down, given the full total of the transfer was potentially enormous. The Athletic has been told initial calculations rose to €250 million including wages and agent fees. United made what has been described as a “calm decision” to refuse that amount and felt vindicated when the government postponed the return of fans to stadiums costing the club another £50 million in lost revenue.
But it is understood that Dortmund originally planned for the €120 million as a “minimum” — and ideally wanted nearer the €147 million fee that Barcelona paid for Dembele — so it was an adjustment to even consider a bid that could reach that figure in installments.
In any case, United never got near to that guaranteed sum. One offer, submitted by chief negotiator Matt Judge through the agents in the final week of September, amounted to £80 million, plus add-ons. Once passed to Watzke, it was immediately rejected as too little too late. There was a sense at the Westfalenstadion that United did not take Dortmund’s demands seriously or were acting without full intentions to actually complete the signing.
All proposals were said to have been relayed to Dortmund via the agents knowing full well they would be turned down.
Sancho himself is believed to have felt undervalued by the offers and even if United had placed the right bid late on, it is understood he would have questioned why it did not come earlier.
Sancho was never going to agitate for a move unless United came close to Dortmund’s demands. Illness kept him out of the squad for Saturday’s 4-0 win over Freiburg but Sancho then attended a house party in London with Tammy Abraham and Ben Chilwell, in breach of lockdown rules, and will join up late with England as a result. He has since apologised.
The forward was prepared to join United but not “desperate” to move this summer. He was relaxed either way. That was the sense drawn by England team-mates at the September camp.
That being said, others close to United were under the impression he “would walk to Old Trafford”. Sancho texted Marcus Rashford about United, and the pair were said to be excited at the prospect of linking up. Sancho has many friends in Manchester from his time at Manchester City.
Other United players were in touch too and so was Solskjaer, who as long ago as January wanted to ascertain Sancho’s willingness to join and to get a personal sense of his character. Having privately acknowledged the possibility of a sale, Dortmund were aware of the conversations, which are standard for most transfers.
There had actually been dialogue with Sancho’s representatives dating back to when he left Manchester City for Dortmund in 2017, but talks commenced in earnest this year once United had secured Champions League football on July 26.
United’s exit from the Europa League was disappointing, but some close to the club felt it would at least reinforce the impetus for signings — a reminder to the Glazer family that funding was required to take the next step. “But extending the window to October 5 is probably the worst thing for Solskjaer,” said a source. “I can see United taking talks to the wire again.”
There were some raised eyebrows at United over reports of Sancho’s lateness to training and fines for breaching lockdown regulations in Germany. But United viewed the indiscretions as attributable to a desire to move on from Dortmund. “We’ll make Carrington a place where he wants to come to work every day,” one member of staff told a colleague.
Solskjaer had determined Sancho would be his main target, with one source saying in April: “We are ready to go, we know who we want, the people at the top are now certain.”
But that conviction was not found in the pursuit, with Dortmund soon frustrated at United’s reluctance to commit to a fee or structure. There were allegations of “freestyling”, a refusal to provide a top line, and when pushed for answers, Judge suggested the issue lay with “the owners”. Agents proposing other players were told of a £50 million net spend budget. Executives feel they have a responsibility to protect the long-term strength of the club by not over-paying.
The Athletic has previously reported how Joel Glazer, in daily contact with Woodward, is involved in all major signings and paid particularly close attention to the Sancho deal. There were accusations of a split in opinion between the pair over the price to be sanctioned, with Woodward advocating a higher fee, but United insist board members were united on their view that €120 million was too much in the post-COVID-19 climate. Recruitment staff were told about a significant budget being allocated to Sancho but later the internal line back from Woodward was that the deal was “too much money”.
Privately United suggested the €120 million figure could be reached including some unrealistic bonuses, which may have allowed Dortmund to save face with a headline figure. Dortmund were resolute in their stance though and believed a higher price could be achieved next summer. The cause for their confidence was revealed when Zorc announced a previously unknown extension to Sancho’s contract, meaning it did not run out until 2023.
United insist they knew all those details and were for a long time frustrated by what they perceived to be the slow process of dealing with Dortmund through Obasi, Sancho’s agent, and Lichtsteiner, the brother of former Arsenal player Stephan. The two intermediaries are described as “very close”. Lichtsteiner previously assisted on the departures of Aubameyang and Dembele to Arsenal and Barcelona respectively, and has vast experience of difficult transfers. He is said to be well-regarded and very discreet with information.
United have in the past worked on deals through agents, and last summer placed an offer for the Newcastle United midfielder Sean Longstaff in this manner. Sources at Newcastle suspected this was so United had deniability if unsuccessful.
On other occasions, the technique has worked well. Woodward conducted the purchase of Juan Mata from Chelsea without one word to his counterparts at Stamford Bridge to block any chance of Wayne Rooney being brought into the conversation. Chelsea wanted to buy Rooney that window.
Before any fee could be finalised this time, there were difficulties over wages and agent fees.
It has been suggested to The Athletic that the opening contract offer to Sancho was actually slightly lower than his Dortmund salary. As is customary in Germany, Sancho’s contract was heavily incentivised and contained bonus payments for each point Dortmund achieved.
Conscious of maintaining a certain wage structure, United’s initial proposal was less than Sancho’s total pay packet at Dortmund. Van de Beek joined on £110,000 a week, for instance, and his representatives were told that was in line with a refined structure given Fernandes signed for £150,000 a week.
A second offer to Sancho, in early August, is said to have achieved parity with his Dortmund deal, with the potential for a fractional increase based on performance. This was not accepted. Sancho’s representatives, who carefully organised a move away from City in 2017, were clear in their view of Sancho’s worth and expected to be recompensed as such.
Though not asking for money equitable to David De Gea, who signed a deal worth more than £375,000 a week within the final 12 months of becoming a free agent, the terms desired were thought to be in the region of Paul Pogba’s £250,000 a week.
There were reports that wages had been sorted in the first week of August but this was not the case. United believed leaks to that end emanating from Germany were an attempt to “put pressure” on the process.
Still, there was positivity about a solution. Sources say the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was keeping himself abreast of Sancho’s situation and around this stage told friends he believed the player would end up at Old Trafford.
There was eventually a breakthrough on Sancho’s salary in the second week of September.
Running parallel were negotiations over agent fees. Some have suggested an initial proposal for a payment to the agents put United on the back foot. After negotiations, a lower sum was agreed. But that still left the transfer fee and, as the gap remained, other options were considered. A prospective loan deal for Gareth Bale was set up but the Wales international declined to wait as a reserve for Sancho. He had the emotional pull of Tottenham Hotspur in any case.
Watford’s Ismaila Sarr, previously not regarded as a genuine option, came into the reckoning in the final fortnight of the window when United explored a loan move. With Watford in the Championship, Sarr has until the domestic deadline of October 16 to join a Premier League club.
Talks also commenced over Dembele. An original inquiry for the Barcelona forward was made in July but at that stage, Dembele was not interested. Sources say Liverpool also made a check back then.
But while Liverpool instead signed Diogo Jota on September 19, it was United returning in the dying embers of the market to investigate whether Dembele might join on loan. It was a late move. A source close to the Barcelona dressing room said at the time: “He intended to stay at Barcelona. In pre-season, his attitude was really different and the players were super happy to see how he was training and how involved in the routine. Therefore, everything has to have changed a lot for him to have decided to go to United.”
In the end, United only wanted a loan. Barcelona demanded a sale, so the situation looked unlikely to develop until a late change of stance by the La Liga club on Monday evening. Barcelona indicated they would agree to a loan but only if Dembele extended his contract at the Nou Camp, and the deal was off.
Industry insiders reported numerous other inquiries and proposals put to the club by representatives, such as Real Madrid’s Luka Jovic, Inter Milan’s Ivan Perisic and Juventus’ Douglas Costa. There was exasperation among some at Carrington that United were leaving business so late again and having to work down their list to second and third options. “Looks like a panic buy,” was the assessment by one source close to the dressing room of the Cavani signing.
United did ask Bayer Leverkusen for Kai Havertz in January but were put off by the €100 million fee and never made a follow-up call this summer, clearing the path to Chelsea.
Meanwhile, the Sancho failure represents the third time Dortmund have got their way over United this year, after the signings of Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham — two episodes that have caused lingering frustration.
Some agents who have worked with United on other deals believe the club should have halted talks on Sancho much earlier if €120 million was seen as too much and pursued alternatives. There are accusations the delay speaks to a fundamental issue in recruitment, which sources call a paralysis of decision-making. But given how much Solskjaer wanted Sancho, United wanted to try for their No 1 target for as long as possible.
United accept they have missed out on a top player but insist they have not over-extended their finances. The signings of Diallo and Pellistri, both 18-year-old wingers, are regarded as viable options for the first-team once bedded into England through the under-21s side. Diallo’s cost of €21 million plus €20 million is not insignificant, however, inevitably inviting questions about why United refused the extra money for Sancho. Diallo has been scouted since 2016 and is considered one of the most exciting prospects in Italy. There are echoes when Anthony Martial signed for big expense and little experience and became Joel Glazer’s favourite player.
Sancho will stay in the crosshairs, for the next time trading opens. It’s understood he long since shifted his focus to a future transfer rather than moving in the current window. But it is anticipated more clubs will be in the reckoning for his signature by then.

Book of Doom - “Living the Dream”

The Book of Doom
Living the Dream
Intro
Story of a time traveller trapped in a world where everything is backwards.
I’ve possibly never had an original thought. Everything is already written. I’m just discovering. I’ve lived my life and been manipulated left right and centre.
I love everyone.
I think I’ve rarely been conscious. My friends say i day dream more than participate in thought.
I think I’ve mastered life though & people in power know & are following me.
My whole life is a lie.
The whole world is a stage.
From genocide, world war & Jesus.
I’ve lived life just letting life take me.
It feels real but none of it feels like my own.
I’m writing this in a mental hospital for my own sanity maybe this will help you if you have gone through an awakening
The population to resources is a shambles but with technology and everyone working together we could turn the world green :)
They’re going to implement change through a world war where we will have no choice but to work together.
I’ve pretty much lived life for my mother and father, followed them all my life. My next job could be at the Chatsworth house. Working for the Duke of Devonshire.
I was stressed working with my mum, she ran a catering business and my Gran has moved to Greece. Alls I did from 15-17 was play video games. Outdoors had got violent and territorial. Xbox multiplayer came out and the introverts stayed in.
I played a pc game called Visual Utopia. It was an mopg, 2D map with around 200 players. A turn based strategy game, like hunger games, chess, fort nite, RISK & C&C all in one. You landed with 50 soldiers in a unit & had to find a place to settle, find friends & create a kingdom to survive. I hated it and loved it at the same time.
At 17 I moved to Greece with intensions of staying or coming back after a summer like I did. I convinced Gay to come with me before hand, I went but he couldn’t because of his dad. He came over a month later though. Damon was on holiday there with lads from work, he’d already booked before the idea and said he’d stay when I came over. Damon stayed two months and Gay stayed 1 month. Gav came back and got a job in Livingstones. I came back five months later and my neighbour got me a job in Bar Centro working for Noah the next week. I said to my mum, give me a year I’ll be manager. I was supervisor trainee manager after six months, after a year, Noah offered me managers job and a shit salary so I turned it down. He took me on holiday, now I black out when I’m drunk and I remember nothing of the holiday but I have a memory of him threatening to kill me if the truth gets out.
I’ve spent many family holidays with my mum in Greece. Me & mum loved to travel. She also took me to Paris twice, which a fell in love with but I was most fascinated by Greece, their history & architecture. From what I heard, Greek Mafia had their hands in bit coin & some of the common folk had ancestors from Zimbabwe which when I asked them about they was shady and avoided the question, as if they we’re wondering how I knew.
Here my life pretty much begins. My parents split at the age of seven. My mum and dad worked in bars, Bradbury Club, which has been torn down now. My dad was all round handy man pretty much managing the place, my mum worked the bars.
The split was rough. Me and dad moved to a flat in Grangewood then to Brimington where my Nan lived. My dads mum.

Contents :)

Chapter One - Age Seven
Chapter Two - Age Eight to Fourteen
Chapter Three - Age Fifteen to Sixteen.
Chapter Four - Age Seventeen
Chapter Five - Age Eighteen to Nineteen
Chapter Six - Age Twenty
Chapter Seven - Age Twenty One
Chapter Eight - Age Twenty Two to Twenty three
Theory of everything contents
The more wisdom and philosophy we attain the more heavenly life is
Wisdom is the truth known consciously
Truth is what has consistent value
We are all connected
We are the centre of the universe
We are an accumulation of our ancestors
Consciousness is the manifestation of interactions
We are a sum total of our experiences
Free will is a form of self control
Frustration is the door to perception
Hell is the burning desire for this moment to be different. Heaven is the present moment
Gratitude is the state of mastership
Everything is a phase
Good is to do love onto another; out of love for yourself, to make one love oneself. Evil is to inflict suffering on to another; out of hate for yourself, to make one hate oneself
We attract what we fear, we become what we hate
Unconditional love does not mean unconditional behaviour
Karma is when you don’t learn your lesson the same situation repeats until you accept your mistakes & make the changes.
The universe; inner and outer, is a spiral, what goes around comes back around
Change your mind, change the world around you
Our purpose is to express ourselves in order to understand ourselves and the universe
Alls life is is a story going back in time to understand creation
We are time travellers
Knowledge is power

Chapter one. - Age seven

My dad was an all round handy man. He was a carpenter in his spare time to earn us extra cash. We loved building things together or, I loved copying him.
I met Tricky, Gay & Alan at Brimington Junior School. Me and Tricky lived on the same street. We became friends when two girls stole his shoe and I just happened to be there. We became very good friends. We loved playing with action figures & watching Dragon Ball Z. Tricky was a bit mardy, hated playing outdoors and hated PC but I loved playing Age of Empires at his. With Gay & Alan, we loved to play outdoors & have tea at each other’s houses, throughout life we have loved building things together. I joined cubs with Tricky & I went to karate with Tricky.
I also gained three step brothers from my mums side. Daniel, Mathew & Liam. My brothers always stuck up for me and I looked up to Daniel, he was awesome :) we all loved building things together, playing blind mans bluff & man hunt. We also played for our local Rugby team & was learning to box at the local boxing club. Me and Liam played in the same team at rugby, under 11’s because I was small enough to be a back and get away with it even though I was 13 :) Me and Mathew was too big for me at boxing and Liam was too small for me so I never really got a fair fight. Mathew also joined the choir at the Crooked Spire :)
My Gran was amazing to me. Now let’s get to her. :) She was a very faithful woman, adored by the church and had great piano skills. She was well respected and played piano for the church. She used to get tons of Christmas cards. I loved learning to play piano with her, well, a little. :) she used to always play classical music and we’d drink orange juice and elderflower which is still a favourite, thanks Nan :) We could never say the Lords name in vein, my dad and her friend are the one’s that got me and Tricky into cubs :)
A rough part of my life in general this was. It was rough on the streets, fighting and territorial gangs of kids. I had baby sitters from a young age. Even before the break up. After the break up. I had mark bottoms who came from my street. He was still a kid really. Probably only 15. He used to bully me and beat me up. I blocked out most of my memory but I remember being trapped under a table being hit with poles. After one night another one of the baby sitters kicked him out, I called him a ginger twat down the street then he chased me to the shops and tripped me over. Fun :)
In Boythorpe I wasn’t having much more luck at my mums either. We was just being kids, taunting shop keepers when one dragged me into the shop. They then grabbed an arm each and started beating me, lovely stuff :) The shop keepers fled the country.
So I had a rough family break up that resulted in police tearing us apart and I was being beaten left right and centre :)

Chapter two - Age Eight to Thirteen.

By age thirteen I’d made lots of new friends and felt more comfortable. School was fun, the work was not. I’d took up ju jitsu as a hobby, I was a natural and stuck at it two years. :) I remember learning to draw in perspective, 3D in the younger years, creating a tin can alley to raise money for charity and having the dinner lady steal the earnings, lovely stuff. :) We’d play army with our imagination, we’d play pokemon cards & bulldog, the usual stuff kids we’re playing :)
I met a bunch of other more friends along the way, Ryan Turner, Luke Spyra, Damon Shaw, Daniel Stirling, Daniel Wood etc... I met Luke Spyra on the parks through Ryan Turner I met in school through girls we used to associate with. I fancied the girl that fancied Turner so I clung to Turner to learn everything I could from him. He’s still a close friend now. I met Stirling & Woody through school. I met Damon on the streets. He came from Manchester and his uncle was once the head of defence :)
I don’t remember doing any work during school because I basically didn’t do it. :) I was very lazy & unimaginative when it came to writing, I could never produce more than three lines worth of writing. I wasn’t made for school. I remember playing something maybe called the game of life where we all had to pretend to be adults and work out our expenses, what we could afford and couldn’t afford, that was fun :) I remember in nursery my favourite thing to do was build with the blocks & I built a small bird house out of wood for my nursery teacher when I left because me loved her :) 13-15 was the good life after that where we just played and paid no attention to school. I spent most of my time day dreaming not bothering other kids so I got away with doing nothing :) At 15 I said I’d get 3 GCSE’s just incase and I got myself. Maths, Science & Electronics. I had a passion for business :)
Around this age, we moved twice and my dad had met Jean, we spent some time on Somerset drive where we’d play football, be more building & fighting. Jean was wonderful to us, she studied at university, loved classical music and would help me out with my english gcse :) we loved camping holidays. Unfortunately Jean died of cancer, along side my dad’s best friend who was like an uncle to us and joined us on holidays. My Dad’s life wasn’t getting much better :(
If I wasn’t at school I was at work :) I got my first wage packet at about 9 years or younger, cleaning with my aunt for £2.50. I used to work paper rounds with my brother at eleven and at 13 I had my own paper round. At 15 I was skipping school to labour for my step father plastering :)
I learned for a while and owned a drum kit & a electric Guitar at this time. We’d also all love playing Warhammer & getting eight players linked up to two Xbox’s in my shed & having BBQ’s in the summers
I was accident prone too, by this time I had broken my arm three times & my fingers once. One time at band camp my arm actually snapped in half, I stood up and immediently snapped it back in to place after my older brother threw my over his shoulders :) Proud moment. Aha

Chapter three. - Age Fifteen to Sixteen

At fifteen we we’re pressured into making life choices, internet is becoming more popular. Streets are getting rougher and Xbox bought an online console out with Halo. Things got weird. We all started playing VU. I was mardy because Xbox had taken everyone indoors. But at-least I had VU. It had took a grasp on me and I became addicted. I played along side Turner, Gav, Adam, Damon, Straw, Stirlin & Woody. This was a rare time the game got a good flow of players.
I felt like there was a strange secret kept from me. I remember at one point in my life not being able to know something because I’m ginger as a joke. I linked it to VU lol.
Everyone but me and stirlin stopped playing, Stirlin was the founder. I became obsessed. I thought it was the most simple intelligent fun game there was on offer & I still do aha.
There was a kingdom called Legacy, pretty much like our illuminati of the world, all the veterans together undefeated. Well, I was determined to defeat them aha :) I set out on my own on a lower world to them where the noobs roam, Mantrax. I found two other players and created a kingdom called Trio, The Three Musketeers. All for one, one for all was our motto :) we became legendary in three era’s on the lower world. I had gathered about 20 noobs and was leading them all, teaching them how to play at the same time. We dominated every Era. On the fourth Era we went to the top world, Fantasia, where LGC roam and we defeated them :) Each era, Armageddon is cast by the winning kingdom and we all reincarnate again.
I wrote guides on this game. I was bar shit passionate about it, I felt like I was mastering life and Visual Utopia at the same time. I’ve met from the game probably around 200 people from all around the world and been trolled by nearly all of them :D I never felt respected by LGC but I felt respected and loved by other players. They mostly loved me :)
This game took over my life and I became depressed though between 15 & 17 whilst playing I was also working.
At Fifteen I started working for a company with my mum, it was silver service, waiting on for the three masons, on a steam train & weddings at Eyam Hall where the Black Plague started.
I was also working with my step dad plastering. I was working with Daniel Straw’s step dad landscaping & mechanics. I was left to change a gear box by myself lol. I did some bricklaying with Scott, my mum’s neighbour and with Damon Shaw’s Uncle Chris a couple of times.
I was also at College part time as well as school doing a bricklaying & painting & decorating City & Guilds
By 17 came I was out of work & stuck in just college not satisfied with my earnings or the fact I failed my driving test five times so, I moved to Greece :)

Chapter Four - Age 17

At seventeen Greece was the time of my life. Bars. Booze. Boobs. Beach parties & work :) I started at a bowling alley for a Greek Australian friend of my Nans with Damon. We had accommodation right on the beach next door to Mac Donald’s. Atleast 15 units of alcohol a night for 5 months :)
It was legendary. Gav came and by then we’d been kicked out of our first apartment and had an upgrade. It had a separate kitchen and bathroom with two massive bedrooms each. When Damon and Gav left, I had one of these to myself :)
I started smoking weed with my new manager and became supervisor of a night club and hosted poker nights in my kitchen after work.
I still believe Faliraki was the best place for British workers because of the community we all had. I spent the first two weeks with my Nan by myself, once Damon arrived it was all go :)
We lived off Mac Donald’s, Subway, chips & cheese or a Gyros, one meal a day aha We spent our days adventuring the island, sun bathing and go karting :)
I got back just before my eighteenth birthday. I caught up with everyone and the drinking continue’d :) Gav loved vodka and so did Straw. I got a job in Bar Centro and Gav got a job in Livingstones. I remember we would down half a bottle of vodka each before we went out. I never drank around town until my eighteenth birthday. It was drinking at parks, houses and the streets from fifteen up until now but I could get away with drinking in Brimington pubs before I was legal :)
I continue’d playing vu throughout this and we had now all started using Skype :)

Chapter Five - Age Eighteen to Nineteen

I loved my job at Bar Centro. I was getting paid for a social life. Sunday BBQ’s became a thing. Unfortunately Noah was married and sleeping with a girl that had friend zoned me, even told me she wants someone like me but not me. I learnt about the affair and this caused problems at work in the end. I was close to Laura, I never let it effect work until about twelve months in. I was taken on holiday to a fake maga reunion, at one point they was posing as night club owners to Ultra Beat and introducing me as manager as if we had a club big enough lol. I remember very little of the holiday, it’s all a blur but I remember being by a pool at one point. They sent me home at night once so they could have fun with women. I remember Nick telling me in the car if his wife found out I’m dead and he doesn’t care who my dad’s are.
A few more months of working and I’m offered salary and managers job. I was expected to work 50 hours a week, clean, manage the cellar & bar for 200 a week plus ten cash. I turned it down and I didn’t leave quick enough so they put a ban on phones then drew lines around my phone to see if I move and when I moved it they sacked me or I walked out there and then.
Lauren Whittaker joined in mid game and was sleeping with me and Nick.
I quickly got myself a job at escapade where I met Joe Mosley, Kirk Bytheway & Daniel Drew who became friends for years. I had a short fling with Hannah sellars I knew from Daniel Straws sister. Town had an awesome gang of workers, we was a little community, we often merged up with other bar workers for parties at each other’s houses. Summer peaked I became less interested in work, more interested in women & having sex. I got sacked at escapade for not taking the job seriously and spending more time dancing than working before my trial ended. I had also picked up another job at Vesuvius, a factory. So I didn’t care.
I got another job in brand new bar in town. I was also offered a job to run the bar and take a % with Gary Gee. I turned it down because Gary Gee was very Un organised and I’d have had to do all the work to turn the bar around. It was a failure. He framed me for stealing a tenner then sacked me lol.
I’m 19-20 now and round about this I met Leanne Moore :)

Chapter Six - Age Nineteen to Twenty One

Leanne knew Beck who was the sister of a girl I worked worked with. I was sleeping with Beck for a month before Leanne attached herself to me, we had sex in the night clubs, neither of them we’re happy when they found out I was sleeping with them both. I saw this as a way out and a start at a fresh life. I dropped Beck for Leanne and she became my everything. I was hopelessly in love. We lasted twelve to eighteen months on and off planning life and she wanted out in the end, I spent most of my time telling her to wake up and getting stressed at all the pressure she was putting on me.
I was made redundant at Vesuvius a few months in & I started working at Dominoes as a delivery driver with Luke Spyra as manager. Leanne has been going to university at Hull and I have been spending my time working full time and partying with Leanne in Hull. We loved each other too much to be apart, we went together like two peas in a pod, we was both dreamers and hard workers, very passionate people and we both clashed and argue’d a lot.
Her dad worked at Royal Mail and we decided it would be a good idea for me to get a job there. Me and her dad we’re pretty similar, both computer geeks & fiercely competitive. They used to call me stupid together and taunt me, her mum would stick up for me. They made me feel like family and bullied me at the same time
So I applied at Royal Mail a few times & got a job at Chesterfield, the head office of Royal Mail. I knew privatisation was coming and I was warned it was the worst office in the UK. I knew although we had broke up in the end I had made it, I had a job for life, I had unlimited possibility.
Leanne was inspiring though, she had come back from university and made a promotion in two jobs before we split
Leanne wanted to rush things, get married and have babies, I wanted to take my time and she couldn’t trust me, we was looking at houses to buy and I was walking a tightrope for her trying to keep her happy. I had to get a back bone and stopped having sex her at times, she gave me a black eye at one point and we just kept falling apart.
Gavin in the mean time had setup a business called Bespoke Bartenders with Rick. I was working and partying with them. I was working 50 + hours a week. I couldn’t keep my managers at work happy and my girl happy. I cheated. We ended. My managers told me to get out more so I went and slept with three girls and realised quickly it wasn’t the answer but my ego was back and I was a now a poser :)
I’m 21 now. :)

Chapter Seven - Age Twenty One

Danny Swan came into the picture. He appeared at Gav’s once and we started drinking together. Danny Swan was the most popular in town who hung around with the rich kids & got all the girls. I couldn’t compete with them so I didn’t even try lol. I believed I was stupid and ugly. Always had trouble with women. Had issues with my hair & weight. We started drinking together every weekend, it was fun just dancing, smoking drinking and getting attention from girls.
I’ve always been constantly criticised & called stupid and ugly by friends. My step dad used to say I was gay and point at me saying look at him he’s thinking, he knows what you’re thinking, that stuck with me. Girls used to call me ugly and say it was because I was ginger. Lad mates would all call me stupid and put me down on everything I did, idea I had or what I owned, nothing was ever good enough. I have often been flabbergasted at everyone, noticed people’s insecurities stop them from being themselves. I’ve always felt like everyone expects us to prove something. I hate it.
I was being used by Danny for a good time and my car. I didn’t mind, I just found it strange his need to steal fifty p from me once. Danny rarely had a job and always wanted to go out. We started smoking weed. I was paying for most things but I didn’t mind because I was in with the popular kids.
Danny introduces me to Mat Wood, Dan Malloy & Tom Smith. May wood was a tattoo artist. Dan was the leader singer of a band & Tom had just slept with everyone in town. I knew about them all previously from Laura Dawes. They all loved making fun of me and wanted me around all the time. The single life had began. I slept with three girls and realised this wasn’t the answer. I was looking for something meaningful. I just set to live & have a good time minus the sex. I made lot’s of new friends & reunited with old friends. Life was simple until point. Everyone wanted a piece of me and wanted to know what I was doing. I’d always just yolo’ it. I’d probably met 50 new people in a year.
I was a man in demand. Me and Ricky had caught up again and he always wanted me round his. Ricky and his friends all worked and I had a lot of good to say about them. They looked to Ricky as the what would Ricky do kinda guy.
Tom Smith was depressed and I was a sucker that couldn’t say no so I was also catering to him and hanging around with him to keep him happy
I made time for everyone & everyone started getting weird around me. I started questioning everyone and everyone was calling me stupid.
I had changed & I wanted to find out what was going off.
I’m now 22 and it’s 2012 :)

Chapter Eight - Age Twenty Two to Twenty Three

Danny introduces me to Mat Wood. He was very keen to give me advice and thought I was going through an awakening. He told me to concentrate on my breath. I was very angry at this point. I wanted to know why everyone was being shady around me at the same time I was trying to gain respect from everyone. This drove me made trying to get respect.
I was having trouble at work also. They noticed I had changed. I blamed them for the break up putting pressure on me to work too much. They would punish me every time I said no. I clicked on to their methods and started making them look stupid. The managers didn’t find it funny but all I wanted was respect. One postman said at a Christmas party I was the future of Royal Mail. People knew I knew something.
A year went by with all the stress from work and friends, I’d given up, I just wanted to settle down and find a woman. I was trying to say no to everyone. I wanted control of my life.
I’m 23 now and it’s 2012.
Mat Wood and Jaydee introduce me to zeitgeist. I become obsessed with it and watch it slowly. Watch a piece, meditate on it, concentrated on my breath and let the thoughts flow.
Suddenly bam. I had awoken. I had mastered life. All the dots connected in my life from past present to future. I was petrified I was going to destroy the world and everyone was out to get me for it. I was watching the whole world spiral around me from that point onwards.
I remember when my mind eclipsed I thought I was the last point in time.
This is my theory of everything :)

Theory of everything :)

The secret to philosophy is, it is true if you believe it to be true. Philosophy is like taking the tomato and making tomato sauce. Wisdom is knowing it is a tomato. By these means, philosophy keeps getting closer to the tomato. We make purée then we make slices and eventually we find our tomato, wisdom. Basically all philosophy is bull**** around what could be true. Wisdom is the result of good philosophy, which stands the time until another cycle begins. Philosophy is the love of wisdom.
So for example, we look at a chair and can see it is a chair, wisdom, philosophy, we can see it is nails and wood. :)
Wisdom is the truth known consciously. Wisdom is basically what is with the times; what the crowd can agree upon, what has consistent value. As for philosophy, we wouldn’t pick an in coherent philosophy out of the air but, someone may have an experience that gives them a philosophy that is ahead of the times. It only works if we truly believe it. :)
So basically psychosis = differently sane. :)
Their’s layers to truth but everything is built on truth. Truth can have more than one answer but a limited amount of answers. Meaning it is possible to understand the universe. :)
We are unlimited awareness but what we are materialistically is limited so, in other words. Wisdom is limited. Philosophy is unlimited.
So therefore, a plastic chair cannot be a plastic chair because that’s philosophy, the chair is plastic or a chair.
ID = Our wisdom
Ego = Our philosophy
So, we are our actions.
What we have done in our past is what creates the Angels & Demons that surround us.
Angels & Demons are also manifest by the things done onto us.
So for example we sacrifice people to summon a Demon.
This creates our karma, Karma is when we don’t learn our lesson the same situation repeats until we accept our mistakes & make the changes.
Angels and Demons can be also described as what makes up consciousness. Angels being consciousness. Demons being subconsciousness, so, until we make our demons conscious we will continue to be controlled by them from our subconscious. Preventing us from being ourselves. What we have not made conscious is our shadow.
Angels & Demons are what create our personality We can think of the ego as presence and that be all our demons playing together.
Life is about growth, holding on and letting go. We gain wisdom from angels and demons.
To create a Demon we go experience something and start a ritual*, then we simply let our Demons out to play and let them possess someone else. Talk about them, write poetry, a short story or a lesson we learned. This way they lose their power. The karma is released. * A ritual is taking the long way home around an action to create a better result, we apply method to the madness, and take small steps into creating bigger actions. Like gathering ingredients to empty our minds of all the questions and gain the power to manifest something we want :)
This is us creating the capacity to fulfil our dreams. We take the steps towards our dreams. This is creating more space inside ourself for them to happen. Whilst we are doing this; we are attracting the reality we want, by implementing our intension we create a ripple that spirals back to us. This is how our thoughts create our reality. We’re forcing the universe to conspire in our favour until we master what we are doing and gain the wisdom from the ritual. “I am” is the beginning of all wisdom, what we say after these words is what creates our reality.
We are god, Demons are our imperfections we fear being seen by the crowd, the fears that control us, this is how we attract what we fear, we become what we hate.
Demons will always stay with us, they are out to get us, Angels are their to save us. Demons give us the challenges in life, Angels give us the wisdom to get through them. Demons be like our children, frenemies, we have to give them something to look up to. We can think of Angels as our higher self, the elders.
So, we are the sins of our fathers. In this sense we are an accumulation of our ancestors. Each generation naturally practices self control and has had a sense of good and evil. Meaning, we inherit less & less Demons and we’re acquiring more & more wisdom through generations over time until we enter heaven.
In other words we have to go through hell and defeat all the demons to get to heaven.
There must be an alternate universe running backwards. One where philosophy comes first we are drawing all our energy from, the void must be a wormhole our imagination is trapped in eager to be discovered.
Wisdom = time
Philosophy = space 🙂
Dimensions:
3rd dimension = action, material world
4th dimension = thought, dream world
5th dimension = no thought, spirit world
The universe is a mirror so there would be ten dimensions, because we are in the middle of the middle looking in at the middle
They say life is better understood backwards so, the universe manifest from one point, the 1st dimension but, the universe also manifest from the higher dimensions. The higher dimensions are bigger, so, we go down the middle and we would say the 5th dimension is the centre of the universe. This is where the universe started but, this is not true. This creates dimension zero which is the egg, so, we have the 5th dimension down the middle of the spectrum which is the sperm. The 1st and the tenth, all this this creates you, a little spec, a special creation, a little miracle, a 5D, 3D hologram but, we’re not alone. We was shattered at the start. We mirror again, meaning the universe started with a twin flame in the 6th dimension. Each spec is going across distance is flat, each made of 3 points so, each spec is made up of zero, the fifth and the 3rd. Space, time & matter, creating a 3,6,9 pattern in every direction. This is the 3,6,9 method. This means everything that’s possible that could be manifest, manifest at the start of the universe with unlimited possibility 🙂
This would mean each universe is contracting or expanding. That there is only beginnings. All life is game, the universe is like a Russian doll.
This would mean we are all born at the centre of the universe. We are born with all the wisdom of the universe and life is a journey moving closer or further away from the centre of the universe as we develop, discovering wisdom or not. We are the singularity. This makes us creation & creator. :)
We all have the Ontic Sphere,
“ Deep inside the being of a human life there's a secret connection to powers and forces, the refined and raw energies of the world and the cosmos beyond it, all funneling down and inward to that secret connection and flowing through the entire ontic sphere* of the human being, bringing more reality to the reality than it had before it was fed the true foods of existence, the blending of experiences and the feelings, and from the ontic sphere spreading out to all the world, radiating like a microscopic star the rays and beams of a formative influence, making the human being more than a consumer or a parasite, but a symbiote, a producer even of the transformation flows through the topologies shaping reality everywhere. This is a good purpose for human beings, enriching the very planet and it's planes themselves, and between them, even more special the magick, the sorcery, the craft, the very tales of love and drama, the majestic other dimensions of the being of the human family. Consciousness is more than a trip, it's a vital part of our present cosmos & chaos alike. *An Ontic sphere, to the best of my understanding, is the world which you live interplaying with your psyche and it's organic expressions, creating an almost ultrafractal and transfractal appearance and relevance to life.” - written by Jerry David Rosenberger
So in theory. Each solar system is like a little universe. There are possibly little you’s running around with one leg missing. Our imagination is a portal. All the chaos happening here right now, is all the chaos happening everywhere in the universe. We could be the first to leave the planet and it’s probably already happened. Our realist us would be immortal and complete all challenges in life. All life across the universe shares the 3D 5D realm.
Everything that exists inside the mind has already happened somewhere or is about to happen. Everything is a phase. Everything is a figment of our imagination. Life is but a dream.
We could say we all share the same dream and it’s a dream within a dream. Meaning we all share the same wisdom with unlimited paths of getting there.
This means we are all connected. Meaning we all have attachments, demons. This causes frustration & frustration is the door to perception. We all desire happiness & the more wisdom & philosophy we attain the more heavenly life is. We can take these steps, (Compassion > self control > reason) on the way to attaining wisdom.
We have the question do we have free will? On one side we say everything happens for a reason. On the other side we say everything is random. If we go down the middle we say, self control is a form of free will. Yes, the universe is determined but the more awareness we have the more choice we have. The middle path is useful for philosophy. The middle path may mean going a hard right to balance a weak left.
Gratitude is the state of mastership, so, we rather ask what is this trying to teach me? instead of why me? in moments of frustration. It’s important not to play the victim.
And then there’s the eightfold path.

Right understanding (Samma ditthi)
Right thought (Samma sankappa)
Right speech (Samma vaca)
Right action (Samma kammanta)
Right livelihood (Samma ajiva)
Right effort (Samma vayama)
Right mindfulness (Samma sati)
Right concentration (Samma samadhi)

As you can see consciousness is a manifestation of interactions. Our soul is an accumulation of our ancestors, all our and Angels and Demons. We are one soul, wisdom, philosophy, we are all different souls. We came here with lessons to learn passed down through generations already so, an old soul is wise, every generation is more advanced than the next. Children are the wisest on the planet, children know they know but don’t know what they know until they are older.
So, Alls life is is a story going back in time to understand creation. We are an accumulation of the past, future and present. Souls can come from other planets as well as this as we are time travellers. We all have the ordinance of the entire universe limited by our awareness.
Everything has its place and we want everything in it’s fitting place. Good and evil can be seen as a spectrum. Intentions come into play and even the observer so, there can be a greater good and a lesser evil. When a crowd come together we all get on a level, you get what you give, for some direction I suggest:
To do love onto another is good; out of love for yourself, to make one love oneself. Evil is to inflict suffering on to another; out of hate for yourself, to make one hate oneself.
We have three forces pulling us. We all have god, we are god, wisdom. We all have our demons, our path, our philosophy and we all have our idea of perfection that haunts us.
Everything is spiralling us :)
The 5th dimension is where we are all heading. Where we are all connected at the heart and have empty minds, experiencing things like telepathy.
This would be heaven. This is where we become free spirits. This is where all our wisdom & philosophy comes from. Everthing has a spirit, all matter and thought are a manifestation of spirit.
Archons are what set the limits on our wisdom & philosophy.
The greys are the Devine perfect beings from the future that we will all metamorphosis into. They can shape shift, time travel & take hostage in our mind like a parasite. Everything get’s smaller and closer to perfection. These are what create our negative thoughts the beings preventing us from completing our challenges. They feed off of negative energy; if there’s no imperfection, they can’t exist.
if we don’t pay attention to spirits, spirits lose their power, so, we can kill death. Fear is a virus, the root of all evil.
I assume you know what to do. Our purpose is to express ourselves in order to understand ourselves and the universe. I suggest you be yourself.
This is how habits create the man. :)
We are a result of our life choices.
Knowledge is power.
Bonus:
Ten Commandments
Rule one Trust no one
Rule two Serve a brew
Rule three Dance with me
Rule four Don’t ask for more
Rule five Learn to dive
Rule six No quick fix
Rule seven Love comes second
Rule eight Always be straight
Rule nine Do not wine
Rule ten Master your zen

Who is Scott Borgenson? Profile from 2016 in “Institutional Investor”

(Note the connections)
CargoMetrics Cracks the Code on Shipping Data
Scott Borgerson and his team of quants at hedge fund firm CargoMetrics are using satellite intel on ships to identify mispriced securities.
By Fred R. Bleakley February 04, 2016
Link to article
One late afternoon last November, as a ping-pong game echoed through the floor at CargoMetrics Technologies’ Boston office, CEO Scott Borgerson was watching over the shoulder of Arturo Ramos, who’s responsible for developing investment strategies with astrophysicist Ronnie Hoogerwerf. At Ramos’s feet sat Helios, his brindle pit-bull-and-greyhound mix. All three men were staring at a computer screen, tracking satellite signals from oil tankers sailing through the Strait of Malacca, the choke point between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea where 40 percent of the world’s cargo trade moves by ship.
CargoMetrics, a start-up investment firm, is not your typical money manager or hedge fund. It was originally set up to supply information on cargo shipping to commodities traders, among others. Now it links satellite signals, historical shipping data and proprietary analytics for its own trading in commodities, currencies and equity index futures. There was an air of excitement in the office that day because the signals were continuing to show a slowdown in shipping that had earlier triggered the firm’s automated trading system to short West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil futures. Two days later the U.S. Department of Energy’s official report came out, confirming the firm’s hunch, and the oil futures market reacted accordingly.
“We nailed it for our biggest return of the year,” says Borgerson, who had reason to breathe more easily. His backers were watching closely. They include Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), the world’s largest hedge fund allocator, and seven wealthy tech and business leaders. Among them: former Lotus Development Corp. CEO Jim Manzi, who also had a long career at IBM Corp.
Compelling these investors and Borgerson to pursue the shipping slice of the economy is the simple fact that in this era of globalization 50,000 ships carry 90 percent of the $18.5 trillion in annual world trade.
That’s no secret, of course, but Borgerson and CargoMetrics’ backers maintain that the firm is well ahead of any other investment manager in harnessing such information for a potential big advantage. It’s why Borgerson has kept the firm in stealth mode for years. In its earlier iteration, from 2011 to 2014, CargoMetrics was hidden in a back alley, above a restaurant. Now that he’s running an investment firm, Borgerson declines to name his investors unless, like Manzi and BAAM, they are willing to be identified.
“My vision is to map historically and in real time what’s really going on in economic supply and demand across the planet,” says the U.S. Coast Guard veteran, who prides himself and the CargoMetrics team on not being prototypical Wall Streeters. “The problem is enormous, but the potential reward is huge.”
According to Borgerson, CargoMetrics is building a “learning machine” that will be able to automatically profit from spotting any publicly traded security that is mispriced, using what he refers to as systematic fundamental macro strategies. He calls the firm a new breed of quantitative investment manager. In unguarded moments he sees himself as the Steve Jobs or Elon Musk of portfolio management.
Though his ambitions may sound audacious, one thing is certain: Borgerson doesn’t lack in self-confidence. Over the past six years, he has secretly and painstakingly built a firm heavy in Ph.D.s that can manage a database of hundreds of billions of historical shipping records, conduct trillions of calculations on hundreds of computer servers and systematically execute trades in 28 different commodities and currencies.
For his part, Borgerson seems an unlikely architect of such a serious, ambitious endeavor. Easygoing and fond of joking with his colleagues, he is a hands-off manager who credits CargoMetrics’ investment prowess to his team. His brand of humor comes through even when he’s detailing the series of challenges he had starting the firm. After using the phrase “It was hard” several times, he pauses and adds, “Did I mention it was hard?” Although Borgerson declines to provide any specifics about CargoMetrics’ portfolio, citing the advice of his lawyers, performance during the three years of live trading apparently has been strong enough to keep his backers confident and his team of physicists, software engineers and mathematicians in place. “Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we can make a more significant investment,” says BAAM CEO J. Tomilson Hill. Former Lotus CEO Manzi is optimistic about the firm’s prospects: “It has an unbelievable edge with its historical data.”
CargoMetrics was one of the first maritime data analytics companies to seize the potential of the global Automatic Identification System. Ships transmit AIS signals via very high frequency (VHF) radio to receiver devices on other ships or land. Since 2004, large vessels with gross tonnage of 300 or more are required to flash AIS positioning signals every few seconds to avoid collisions. That allows CargoMetrics to pay satellite companies for access to the signals gleaned from 500 miles above the water. The firm uses historical data to identify cargo and aggregation of cargo flow, and then applies sophisticated analysis of financial market correlations to identify buying and selling opportunities.
“We’re big-data junkies who could not have founded CargoMetrics without the radical breakthroughs of this golden age of technology,” Borgerson says. The revolution in cloud computing has been instrumental. CargoMetrics leverages the Amazon Web Services platform to run its analytics and algorithms on hundreds of computer servers at a fraction of the cost of owning and maintaining the hardware itself.
At his firm’s headquarters — where the lobby displays a series of colored semaphore signal flags that spell out the mathematical equation for the surface area of the earth —Borgerson leads the way to his server room. It’s the size of a closet; inside, a thick pipe carries all the data traffic and analytic formulas CargoMetrics needs. That computing power alone would have cost $30 million to $40 million, Manzi says.
CargoMetrics is pursuing a modern version of an age-old quest. Think of the Rothschild family’s use in the 19th century of carrier pigeons and couriers on horseback to bring news from the Napoleonic Wars to their traders in London, or, in the 1980s, oil trader Marc Rich’s use of satellite phones and binoculars for relaying oil tanker flow.
Other quant-focused Wall Street firms are latching onto the satellite ship-tracking data. But, Borgerson says, “I would bet my life on a stack of Bibles that no one in the world has the shipping database and analytics we have.” The reason he’s so convinced is that from late 2008 he was an early client of the satellite companies that had begun collecting data received from space and on land to build a large database of all the world’s vessel movements in one place.
That’s what caught Hill’s eye at Blackstone when he learned of CargoMetrics a few years ago. BAAM now has a managed account with the firm. “If anyone else tries to replicate what CargoMetrics has, they will be years behind [Borgerson] on data analytics,” Hill says. “We know that a number of hedge fund data scientists want his data.”
But too much reliance on big data can go wrong, say many academicians. “There is a huge amount of hype around big data,” observes Willy Shih, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. “Many people are saying, ‘Let the data speak; we don’t need theory or modeling.’ I argue that even with using new, massively parallel computing systems for modeling and simulation, some forces in nature and the economy are still too big and complex for computers to handle.”
Shih’s skepticism doesn’t go as far as to say the data challenge on global trade is too big a puzzle to solve. When informed of the CargoMetrics approach, he called it “very valid and creative. They just have to be careful not to throw away efforts to understand causality.”
Another big-data scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of electrical engineering and computer science Samuel Madden, also urges caution. “What worries me is that models become trusted but then fail,” he explains. “You have to validate and revalidate.”
Borgerson grew up in Southeast Missouri, in a home on Rural Route 5 between Festus and Hematite. His father was a former Marine infantry officer and police official, and his mother a high school French and Spanish teacher. The family traveled 15 miles to Crystal City to attend Grace Presbyterian Church, which was central to young Borgerson’s upbringing: There he was a youth elder, became an Eagle Scout and received a God and Country Award. The church was across the street from the former home of NBA all-star and U.S. senator Bill Bradley, whose backboard Borgerson used for basketball practice.
When it came to choosing what to do after high school, Borgerson was torn between becoming a Presbyterian minister and accepting an appointment to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy or West Point. He went with the Coast Guard because, he says, “the humanitarian mission really appealed to me, and I had never been on a boat before.”
At the academy, in New London, Connecticut, Borgerson played NCAA tennis and was also a cutup, racking up demerits for such antics as placing a sailboat on the commandant of cadets’ front lawn and leading bar patrons in a rendition of “Semper Paratus,” the school’s theme song. Still, he graduated with honors and spent the next four years piloting a 367-foot cutter — which seized five tons of cocaine in the Caribbean — then captaining a patrol boat that saved 30 lives on search-and-rescue missions. From 2001 to 2003 the Coast Guard sent Borgerson to the Fletcher School at Tufts University to earn his master’s of arts in law and diplomacy. While at Tufts he volunteered at a Boston homeless shelter for military veterans and founded a Pet Pals therapy program for senior citizens.
Following graduation, from 2003 to 2006, Borgerson taught U.S. history, foreign policy, political geography and maritime studies at the Coast Guard Academy, and co-founded its Institute for Leadership. While there he would get up at 4:00 each morning to work on his Ph.D. thesis exploring U.S. port cities’ approaches to foreign policy. He would also travel to Boston to complete his course work at Tufts and meet with his adviser, John Curtis Perry.
Borgerson’s military allegiance runs deep. One weekend last fall he played football in a service academy alumni game. On another he attended the Army-Navy game. Still militarily fit at age 40, the 6-foot-5 Borgerson works out regularly at an inner-city gym aimed at helping youths find an alternative to gang violence; a few weeks ago he was there boxing with ex-convicts and lifting weights.
Leaving the Coast Guard was a hard decision for Borgerson, resulting in part from his frustration with the military bureaucracy’s stymieing of his bid to get back to sea for security missions. With his degrees in hand, he applied for a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations. During the application process he met Edward Morse, now global head of commodities research at Citigroup. Morse was on the CFR selection committee in 2007 and recommended Borgerson as a fellow.
Morse introduced Borgerson to commodities, and to trading terms like “contango” and “backwardation.” Morse himself had, earlier in career, gotten the jump on official oil supply data by hiring planes to take photos of the lid heights of oil tanks in Oklahoma’s Cushing field.
Working for the CFR in New York reconnected Borgerson with his Missouri roots. Bill Bradley’s aunt called the former senator to say: “The son of a family who went to our church in Crystal City is in New York. Would you welcome him?” Bradley did — and would later play a part in Borgerson’s career development.
While at the CFR, Borgerson became an expert on the melting of the North Pole ice cap, writing numerous published articles on its implications; this led him to co-found, with the president of Iceland, the Arctic Circle, a nonprofit designed to encourage discussion of the future of that region. Borgerson recently spoke to 50 international generals and admirals about the Arctic and is co-drafting a proposal for a treaty between the U.S. and Canada that would help resolve the differences the two countries have in allowing international ship and aircraft travel through the Northwest Passage.
His Arctic research led to an aha moment early in 2008, while he was still with the CFR, on a visit to Singapore and the Strait of Malacca with his Fletcher School classmate Rockford Weitz and their former Ph.D. adviser, Perry. Seeing the mass of ships sailing through the strait, Borgerson and Weitz decided to build a data analytics firm using satellite tracking of ships.
Like many successful entrepreneurs, the two struggled to find financing before reaching out to a network of friends and their contacts. One was Randy Beardsworth, who had sat with Borgerson at a 2007 Coast Guard Academy dinner, where Beardsworth, then the Coast Guard’s chief of law enforcement in Miami, was the guest speaker. Borgerson “made references to history and literature, and I thought, ‘Here is a sharp guy,’” recalls Beardsworth. “We have been friends ever since.”
But Borgerson didn’t turn to his new friend in his initial fund-raising. “He came to me in 2009, after he had been turned down by 17 VCs, was maxed out on his credit card, was married and had a newborn son,” says Beardsworth, who was reviewing the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Obama administration’s transition team. Beardsworth came to the rescue, not only committing to invest a small amount but introducing his friend to Doug Doan. A West Point graduate and Washington-based angel investor, Doan took to Borgerson right away. “To be honest, it wasn’t his idea, it was Scott I invested in,” says Doan, who provided $100,000 in capital and introduced Borgerson to a few friends, who added $75,000. Manzi came on board as an investor in 2009, having been asked by Bradley to check out Borgerson’s plan for a data metrics firm. (Manzi knew Bradley from the late 1990s, when the latter was considering a run for U.S. president.)
With Doan, Doan’s friends and Manzi as investors, CargoMetrics was finally able to garner its first venture capital commitment in early 2010, from Boston-based Ascent Venture Partners. That gave the start-up the capital it needed to hire a bevy of data scientists to build an analytics platform that it could sell to commodity-trading houses and other commercial users. In 2011, CargoMetrics added Summerhill Venture Partners, a Toronto-based firm with a Boston office, to its investor roster, raising roughly $18 million from venture capital and angels for its data business.
By then Borgerson had already begun to contemplate converting CargoMetrics from an information provider into a money manager; he saw the potential to extract powerful trade signals from its technology rather than share it with other market participants for a fee. Among those he consulted was serial entrepreneur Peter Platzer, a friend of one of CargoMetrics’ original investors. Platzer, a physicist by training, had spent eight years as a quantitative hedge fund manager at Rohatyn Group and Deutsche Bank before co-founding Spire Global, a San Francisco–based company that uses its own fleet of low-orbit satellites to track shipping, in 2012. “We had lengthy conversations on how to set up quant trading systems and how [commodities giant] Cargill had made a similar decision to set up its own in-house hedge fund to trade on the information it was gathering,” recalls Platzer. So Borgerson reset his course. Doan describes the decision as a “transformative moment” for the CargoMetrics co-founder. “The military trains you to be a strategic thinker,” Doan explains. “Scott had been tactical until then, making small pivots, and like a general who sees the theater of war, he moved into strategic mode.”
Borgerson’s ambition to succeed was in no small part fueled by the early turndowns by many venture capital firms and a fierce determination to best the Wall Street bunch at their own game. “There’s a lot that motivates me, including — if I’m honest — I have a big chip on my shoulder to beat the prep school, Ivy League, MBA crowd,” he says. “They’re bred to make money, but they’re not smarter than everyone else; they just have more patina and connections.” (Bred differently, he spent last Thanksgiving visiting his parents in rural Missouri. After breakfast he and his father were in the woods, shooting assault guns at posters of terrorists, with Gunny, his father’s Anatolian shepherd dog.)
Borgerson’s plan was not met with enthusiasm from the company’s then co-CEO, Weitz. CargoMetrics had been gaining clients and meeting its goals, and was on its way to becoming a successful data service provider. Weitz, who now is president of the Gloucester, Massachusetts–based Institute for Global Maritime Studies and an entrepreneur coach at Tufts’ Fletcher School, did not return e-mails or phone calls asking for comment. For his part, Borgerson says: “A ship cannot have two captains. The company simply matured and evolved into a streamlined management structure with one CEO instead of two.”
Eventually, Doan went along with Borgerson’s plan. “We believe in Scott and that shipping holds the no-shit, honest truth of what the economy is doing,” he says. But buying out the venture capital firms several years ahead of the usual exit time would require a hefty premium over what they had invested.
Once again Borgerson’s early supporters played a key role. Manzi, a fellow Fletcher School grad who had mentored Borgerson since the company’s early days, put up more money (making CargoMetrics one of his single largest investments) and introduced him to a powerful group of wealthy investors. Separately, the CFR’s Morse suggested that Borgerson meet with Daniel Freifeld, founder of Washington-based Callaway Capital Management and a former senior adviser on Eurasian energy at the U.S. Department of State. Impressed by Borgerson’s “intellectual honesty, vigor and more than four years of historical data,” Freifeld brought the idea to a billionaire third-party investor, who took his advice and became one of CargoMetrics’ largest backers. “I would not have suggested the investment if CargoMetrics had not done the hard part first,” adds Freifeld, declining to name the investor.
A chance encounter in the fall of 2012 gave the CargoMetrics team its first taste of real Wall Street trading. Attending an Arctic Imperative conference in Alaska, Borgerson met the CIO of a large investment firm, whom he declines to name. When Borgerson confided his ambition and that CargoMetrics had developed algorithms to trade on its shipping data once it was legally structured to do so, the CIO suggested CargoMetrics provide the analytical models for a separate portfolio the money manager would trade. Live trading using CargoMetrics’ models began in December 2012. Manzi brought in longtime banker Gerald Rosenfeld in 2013 to craft and negotiate the move to make CargoMetrics a limited liability investment firm. Rosenfeld acted in a personal role rather than in his position as vice chairman of Lazard and full-time professor and trustee of the New York University School of Law. The whole process took a year and a half. During that time Blackstone checked in as an investor.
Bradley, now an investment banker, has yet to invest in CargoMetrics, explaining that he is unfamiliar with quantitative investing. But he may eventually invest in Borgerson’s firm, he says, because “we are homeboys. I believe in him and that things are going to work out ” — pausing to add with a smile, “based on my vast quant experience, of course.”
Borgerson has been in stealth mode since CargoMetrics’ early days, when he moved the firm from an innovation lab near MIT because the shared space was too open. He is much more forthcoming when boasting of the firm’s “world-class talent.” The team includes astrophysicists, mathematicians, former hedge fund quants, electrical engineers, a trade lawyer and software developers. Hoogerwerf, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Netherlands’ Leiden University, built distributed technical environments for scientists and engineers at Microsoft Corp. Solomon Todesse, who works on quant investment strategies, was head of asset allocation at State Street Global Advisors. Aquil Abdullah, a team leader in the engineering group, was a software engineer in the high-performance-computing group at Microsoft. And senior investment strategist Charles Freifeld (Daniel’s father) has 40 years’ experience in futures and commodities markets, including nine with Boston-based commodity trading adviser firm AlphaMetrics Capital Management.
“All were self-made people; none were born with a silver spoon,” Borgerson notes. One of his blue-collar-background hires was James (Jess) Scully, who joined as chief operating officer in 2011, after his employer Interactive Supercomputing was acquired by Microsoft.
“The team we built treasures team success, which is Scott’s motto,” Scully says. “We want shared resources, one P&L, not ‘How much money did my unit make?’” Both Scully and Borgerson say CargoMetrics is like the Golden State Warriors, a leading NBA basketball team known for putting aside personal glory and playing as a band of brothers having fun.
Borgerson says he fosters a no-ego policy with “lots of play because investment teams are built on trust, and playing together builds trust.” Team building at CargoMetrics includes pub crawls, picnics at Borgerson’s house, poker nights, volunteer work in a soup kitchen for the homeless, Red Sox games and visits to museums.
Trips to the Boston docks or Coast Guard base are intended to remind the CargoMetrics team of the real economy. There are also occasional “touch a tanker” days. On one visit to a tanker, everyone was amazed that the ship was the size of a city building, Borgerson says. “They could smell the salt on the deck,” he recalls. “Wall Street can lose sight of the real fundamentals in the world. I don’t want that to happen here.”
Unlike the Rothschilds 200 years ago, only a small percentage of the trades that CargoMetrics makes relate to beating official government data. Most simply are aimed at identifying mispricings in the market, using the firm’s real-time shipping data and proprietary algorithms.
At a whiteboard in his conference room, Borgerson sketches out CargoMetrics’ general formula. He draws a “maritime matrix” of three dynamic data sets: geography (Malacca, Brazil, Australia, China, Europe and the U.S.), metrics (ship counts, cargo mass and volume, ship speed and port congestion) and tradable factors (Brent crude versus WTI, as well as mining equities, commodity macro and Asian economic activity). Using satellite data with hundreds of millions of ship positions, CargoMetrics makes trillions of calculations to determine individual cargoes onboard the ships and then to aggregate the cargo flows and compare them with historical shipping data. All that leads to the final comparisons with historical financial market data to find mispricings. If CargoMetrics observes an appreciable decline in export shipping activity in South Africa, for example, its trading models will determine whether that is a significant early-warning sign by considering that information alongside other factors, such as interest rates. If CargoMetrics believes a decline in the rand is forthcoming, it might short it against a basket of other currencies. “This is like a heat map showing opportunity,” Borgerson says, noting that CargoMetrics is not trading physical commodities. “We are agnostic on whether to be long or short, and let the computers spot where there is a mispricing and liquidity in the markets.” He sums up his simple, but still less than revealing, process by writing on the whiteboard “Collect, Compute, Trade.”
Borgerson says CargoMetrics is building a systematic approach that will work even when cargo cannot be identified — on containerships, for instance. It already knows a large percentage of the daily imports and exports into and out of China and island economies such as Japan and Australia. And although the firm cannot glean from its calculations on satellite AIS data the type of cargo, such as iPhones from China, it can measure total flow, which shows present economic activity. CargoMetrics’ data scientists are working on linking such activity to the firm’s data set of the past seven years to measure the evolving global economy. That will lead, Borgerson maintains, to more trades on currencies and equity index futures and, eventually, trades on individual equities. “Uncorrelated” is a mantra of Borgerson and his team. Well aware that correlated assets sent the performance of most asset managers, including hedge funds, plunging in the financial crisis, CargoMetrics is determined to come up with an antidote. Careful not to say too much, Borgerson lays out the simple principle that the process starts with placing many bets among uncorrelated strategies in different asset classes, like commodities, currencies and equities.
The goal is diversification, staying as market neutral as possible and remaining sensitive to tail risk in different scenarios. CargoMetrics’ analytic models help find asset classes that are outliers. Those may include a publicly traded instrument such as oil, another commodity or an equity for which shipping information was a leading indicator during times when other asset classes marched in lockstep. The historical ship data is then blended with this new information to seek opportunities. Identifying mispriced spreads among different trades within an asset class is another way of avoiding the calamity of correlation. Borgerson says the firm’s models will find instances where one type of oil should be a short trade and another a long one. The same goes for whole asset classes — shorting one that will benefit if virtually all asset prices plunge and buying another that will rise when oil prices gain. “We’re counting cards with the goal of being right maybe 3 percent more than we are wrong, as a way of making profits during good times and staying afloat during times of sudden, unpredictable but far-reaching events,” Borgerson says. The key, he adds, “is to know your edge and spread your risk.” CargoMetrics’ uncorrelated approach worked during the dismal first three weeks of this year, says Borgerson. Dialing down risk as volatility in the markets soared, the firm was on track in January to have its best month since it began trading.
To improve the firm’s models, eight of its data scientists hold a weekly strategy meeting, nicknamed “the Shackleton Group” after the band of sailors shipwrecked in the Antarctic from 1914 to 1917. Hoogerwerf and Ramos co-lead the group. At one recent meeting they were deciding how much risk, including how much liquidity, there was in a possible strategy; reviewing whether to keep previous strategies; and assigning who would research new ones.
The Shackleton Group’s meetings are free-form, with a lot of “I’ve got an idea” interjections that disregard official roles. “We hit the restart button a lot,” says Ramos, a former director of business intelligence and a quantitative economist at law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf who joined CargoMetrics in late 2010. “That’s why our motto is ‘Never lose hope.’” A bet on oil, related to Russia’s production, was stopped at the last minute in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Some currency-trading strategies have been abandoned in theory or after failing. Strategies the Shackleton Group likes are passed on to the firm’s investment committee of Borgerson, Scully and Ramos for a final decision. CargoMetrics has a unique set of big-data challenges. Historical shipping patterns may not be as useful in the new global economy now that shipping freight prices are plunging, a sign that trade growth rates may be changing. And analysts point out how hard identifying oil cargo can be in certain locations and instances, even in more-predictable economic times. “While it may be easy to say that ships leaving the Middle East Gulf are typically carrying crude oil, knowing the type of crude is sometimes quite difficult,” says Paulo Nery, senior director of Europe, Middle East and Asia oil for Genscape, a Louisville, Kentucky–based company that analyzes satellite tracking of ships. Borgerson maintains his team is well aware of the dangers of data mining and getting swamped by noise. “If you run computers hard enough, you can convince yourself of anything,” he says. To make sure CargoMetrics’ algorithms for identifying cargo are valid, the firm spot-checks manifest data filed at ports and imposes statistical confidence checks to guard against spurious correlations.
Getting the jump on official government statistics is likely to become tougher too thanks to the recently formed High-Level Group for the Modernization of Official Statistics. Although the U.S. is not a member, Canada is a key player helping to lead the mostly European nation group (including South Korea) in coming up with a global blueprint for measuring and reporting economic activity.
Reflecting on his journey to Wall Street — raising money, hiring employees with different skill sets, making changes to CargoMetrics’ culture, overcoming legal and regulatory hurdles — almost gives Borgerson second thoughts about whether he would do it again. “I’ve sailed ships through tropical storms, captured cocaine smugglers and testified before Congress [on his Arctic research],” he says, “but this was the hardest.”

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Examining the Giants’ 2018 ‘miscalculations’ and their ongoing impact - The Athletic