I'll tell you what impressed me today.

Tuesday, 07 January, Year 6 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

There's this Romanian junior tennis player, her name is Simona Halep.

Back in 2009 she was ~~fifteen or something~~ seventeen, and the proud carrier of a damned luscious, top shelf rack. At the same time she was also a mediocre tennis player (out of the top 100 at any rate). Neither consideration is particularly noteworthy, there are millions of seventeen year olds with nice tits, there are millions of seventeen year old mediocre athletes.

However, she decided to cut herself, because that extra gallon of pectoral fat, as delightful as it may be to my taste, was getting in her way. So I wrote an opinion piece at the timeⁱ wherein (and especially in the comments) I deplored the woman's choice as to how best use her own body.ⁱⁱ

Nevertheless, she did do it, and after a year spent convalescing she came back for the 2013 seasonⁱⁱⁱ, and she jumped through the charts like a massive load was just taken off her chest.

So I figured, well there goes, woman was right, I was wrong, she obviously made the right choice, she's obviously a talented player with a lot of potential, good for her and good luck. And, as an ancient and sort of bizarre supersition I guess, in token of this failure I made a slight sacrifice, which is to say I put a Bitcoin on a BitBet bet about her winning the Rolland Garros. I did this with the full expectation that I'm throwing it away, obscure player in obscure sport, BitBet regularly doesn't give a shit about marquee events in major sports^iv, no way my Bitcoin is ever getting covered.

This turned out to be false : two months in (and five!!! prior to the event) there's already >6 BTC on the other side, which means that my implied odds are 6:1. Now get a load of this :

Jan 07 03:06:08 {mircea_popescu} BingoBoingo you're better at this than me^v, can you get me what the bookies say on this prop ?
Jan 07 03:12:09^vi {BingoBoingo} mircea_popescu: A lot of fiat books are showing longer odds that Halep wins.
Jan 07 03:12:33 {mircea_popescu} longer like how long ?
Jan 07 03:12:49 {BingoBoingo} mircea_popescu: 15-17.5 to one

There is, of course, a lot of space between 6 and 17.5. However, there is also a qualitative difference at play here : the correct odds are now debatable. It is certain the correct odds are neither exactly 6 nor exactly 17.5. It'd have to be somewhere in between, and the fact it'd have to be somewhere in between is all it takes for BitBet to be an actual contender. Not in the narrow, stuffy space of pseudo-female pseudo-IT-expert pseudo-CEOs like this fuckwit, but in the actual world at large.

So now, is the 6 on BitBet overly reflective of the betting demographics' love of Halep's tits ? Perhaps. Is the 17.5 in some anon^vii Vegas venue reflective of the bookie's ossified, millitant ignorance of the greater world around them ? Perhaps.^viii "Nobody could have predicted" she'd use tits as a rocket to set the court on fire, right ?

That's what impressed me today. It's not the first time I throw away some Bitcoin on BitBet and the market moves to give me arguably correct odds. It won't be the last time. But for a year-old business to be this god damned fucking powerful... well what can I say ? Son, I am impresst.

Mazel tov.

UPDATE, two hours later : Someone just laid out 460 BTC on the current star difficulty bet. In one go, just like that, bam. Let that sink in for a minute.

———

Indicatively, the title reads Catastrophe : Simona Halep to mangle her bosom. [↩]
A relevant bit of conversation going on there :

roxana, Vineri, 29 Mai 2009

And if she doesn't, and fails in her chosen career, wouldn't she regret that later ?

Mircea Popescu Vineri, 29 Mai 2009

True.

On the other hand, if she does cut herself and then in Spring 2009 gets injured or breaks something and can no longer play tennis ? She gets bored and no longer feels like playing ? Finds a dude and prefers raising children ?

If in five years she ends up with mastitis, or with a mastectomy due to breast cancer will she consider the "shit, if I had just minded my own business maybe I'd have not had this problem now" angle ? Even if there'd be no likely connection, people still think this way.

In theory it sounds trivial, "reduction", but in practice it's a sort of putting the breast through the grater, even an augmentation intervention, which clinically is much simpler, can have the most unpleasant effects. If she loses all sensation, and later on holds her baby to her breast but doesn't feel it at all, how's that gonna be ?

Absolutely shitty situation, honestly, I'm quite happy to not have to make such decisions.

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The loss of that time interval alone is a massive loss for an athlete in that sport, but hey, mother nature ain't a loving sort. [↩]
Selected reading for your convenience :

Jan 05 17:59:30 {mircea_popescu} it would stand to reason that this navel grazing is in fact indicative of bitcoin's nicheness. as bitcoin diff bets start getting less interest than sport bets we will know that bitcoin is pretty much reached its secular price.
Jan 05 17:59:37 {mircea_popescu} until then, upside is still likely

[...]

Jan 07 02:46:28 {mike_c} i agree with mp, once football bets are popular on bitbet we will know the gold rush is over.
Jan 07 02:47:57 {mircea_popescu} certainly not this silliness where bitbet lays a quarter million bucks on any diff bet easy,
Jan 07 02:48:06 {mircea_popescu} and you struggle to get 1k together on football prime time events

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Yes, many people are better than me at many things. Just because you don't know any doesn't mean they don't exist, it just means you spend way too much time on retard venues. [↩]
This is why the Internet is powerful : ask a question, get an answer in time. Of course it would have to be the cool Internet, the Internet where I hang out, not the sordid web ghetto where most of the world myspaces around. But I care naught for such distinction, for I am not a Berliner. [↩]
Yes, anon. Pointedly anon. We are not here to play, we are here to take over. Everything. Forever. [↩]
Ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross ?

Stocks, bonds, objects of art, real estate. What are they? An opportunity. To what? To make money? Perhaps. To lose money? Perhaps. To 'indulge' and to 'learn' about ourselves? Perhaps. So fucking what? What isn't? They're an opportunity. That's all they are. They're an event. A guy comes to you, you make a call, you send in a card. 'I have these properties I would like for you to see.' What does it mean? What do you want it to mean. Do you see what I'm saying? Things happen to you.

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