Chapo was banned a while ago, but my opinions have only been put together recently. I must put a trigger warning at the start of this post, as it involves discussion of both Tara Reade and my own trauma, as my beliefs on the Reade story were intensely intertwined with how I was processing my trauma at the time.
This won't have nearly as many sources as the usual effortpost, because a lot of the concepts in play are pretty straightforward and simple, a lot of them are things I've personally interacted with and implemented, and I'd be linking to a lot of wiki articles. The mechanics of how these concepts were used is the sneaky part, and building understanding of what any people in your life drifting to the extreme are feeling is important.
One source I do wish to share is one of the organizations whose research was used in developing my understanding of intentional social marketing while I was going to college, and while I don't think a lot of people are formally setting out saying "I'm going do social marketing interventions to get my audience/others I interact with online to hate Hillary Clinton and Emmanuel Macron," but I do think they're using a lot of the same principles to relatively powerful effect.
https://www.thensmc.com/content/what-social-marketing-1
https://www.thensmc.com/publications

TWs under this line

Sexual Assault, Emotional Manipulation, Mental Health, Emotional Abuse, Depression

And, without further ado:

Intro

I used to be incredibly hard left, briefly a Stalinist, cooled down to just being a person who screeches online about Nancy Pelosi, eventually realized a bunch of things that we'll get to in this post, and realized market forces are useful if directed properly. I don't actually know where I stand but it's somewhere in this realm (currently calling myself a centrist between neolibs and social dem) and this seems like the best forum to post this, because people should know how the mechanics of this aspect of the lefty propaganda influence machine works.
Anybody who manipulates others in bad faith, playing on their emotional vulnerabilities so they'll buy and push literal misinformation, is an enemy to discourse, and I'm fairly sure the vast majority of people here will agree with this premise.
One of the few things I'm actually qualified to talk a little bit about is social marketing, that is, marketing a product, belief, candidate, behavioral change, etc, vis-a-vis the real or perceived social interactions we have and the opinions we think others have about us. It's interacting with the beliefs we have, interacting with why people do behaviors, what social incentives and disincentives and other barriers they have to doing something. This is not about changing belief, but behavior.
I took three practicums in this shit in college, I fucking love it.
And so it hit me like a truck when I realized I believed that Biden was a literal fascist and rapist (WE'LL FUCKING GET TO THAT PARTICULAR ONE LATER) almost entirely because of the techniques that I had mostly seen utilized to get people to use less water and electricity, to attend a city council meeting, or recycle.

Social Expectations

What were these techniques? The ones I was most interested in were primarily based on establishing social expectations. In the context of recycling, it's things like depicting people who litter as irresponsible and uncaring, encouraging people not to leave the lights on when they leave their house since it looks wasteful and silly to do so.
These influences can be incredibly pervasive while remaining subtle in how they function. If you get the owner of every coffee shop in your town and also the public library and elementary school to have up a poster or sign about some issue, you aren't actually convincing people to do anything by the sign's presence and ability to be read alone.
The purpose of the signs is to show that the owners of the shops care, the members of the community care, the people you interact with care. In short, it gives you this subtle influence of thinking people around you care about it and are willing to say so and encourage others to do so publicly. It is expected that others will push it, encourage it. And then, you feel a little weird if you aren't doing it. Ever smoked a cigarette, drank a beer, hit a joint, that you didn't fully want to but still felt like it'd be socially best to? Ever donated to a charity you know nothing about and felt briefly indecisive on but then you thought of what the sad child in the picture would think and feel if you said "No, you're not worth three dollars?" It happened to you. It does every day, every time an ad plays on how cool a person in it is, every time sometime references a group identity while making a statement.
If you're an unethical propagandist, it can take the form of banning anybody who says a single positive word about Joe Biden from your community, or even anybody who thinks that any of the most hyperbolic critiques are absurd. Harassing people who don't fall in line, who express opinions outside of the explicitly approved list, etc. Again, this doesn't influence the people being shouted down. *It encourages onlookers who agree with the people acting this way to also act this way, to become more extreme." If someone sees that people who disagree get treated like garbage and they start getting hooks in this community, they start needing to believe it.
These methods are most effective on people that are already strongly in favor of something and need reinforcement to go actually do a behavior, OR people who are currently apathetic BUT are in a social context where people care about it and encourage others to do so as well. The effectiveness increases if they're emotionally vulnerable, if they're lonely and detached, if they don't feel super strongly about anything and are looking for meaning, all that. Effectively, people who are more vulnerable to outside influence are more vulnerable to everything that comes with it, and resultantly to the places they spend most of their time.

My Own Experience On Chapo Before I Was Really, Really, REALLY into it

I've never been good at social interaction, have been Very Online since I was 13. I was an autistic trans kid at a conservative rural school with weird body language and loads of sensory issues, I understandably couldn't really interact with most of my peers very well.
In short, at this point in my life I felt like a dejected loser. I browsed a lot of online communities, made a lot of friends, felt better but drifted away from a lot of them from time to time, and in waxing and waning periods of more and less contact, I'd substitute that empty time with content. When Bernie showed up, it became boatloads of lefty content. A bit unclear on my timeline but it was people like Kulinski, Piker, TYT, all of "breadtube" from 2015 to midway through 2020.
This is tbh a bit embarrassing to admit given how I feel about it in retrospect, but...
I posted there fairly obsessively, or I should say browsed. Constantly. It was the first link in my bookmark bar and I clicked it a lot. I loved Chapo. I made a lot of comments far down in threads pulling "dunks" on people who were part far right fascists picking fights but also with a lot of people who were just frustrated with a hundred thousand jackasses larping in unison about their correctness. It was all about being the cool person, getting the approval, acting in a way that made me "good" by the standards set there.It didn't matter what the views I was arguing with were, it just mattered that I was right, and that they were wrong.
The Democratic Primaries were happening. Bernie started to lose. People started being massive doomers about everything. My mental health was in the gutter. I was withdrawing from friends I had in real life, I was a bit agoraphobic, all that.

My Breaking Point: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love their LARP

I will now put another TW and spoiler warning here as it is a description of bad, bad things an ex did that provide context but aren't strictly necessary to understand the post: The Tara Reade story broke. I had recently broken up with an incredibly horrifying ex, just a legit user. Most of my friends are convinced that she was a sociopath. She did deep and fundamentally violating things, both to my mind and body. She abused the fact that we were both trans women who had been abused to make me trust her to handle things. She had broken my ability to process a lot of my preexisting emotional issues without her, and she added a tat to my body that I won't describe here, as it is distinctive enough that you could identify me with it, as well as policing my body and behavior. I was violated a lot of times. That is all that needs to be said on her. Don't tell me if you do this, but dig back in my account to see my breakdown laid out in real time a year ago as I talk about everything happening, as well as some of what happened in my childhood that she took advantage of.
I was traumatized, as a result of what had happened to me, and I was re-traumatized by believing that the presumptive nominee of the Democratic ticket was someone that did things that awful. Chapo banned ANY dissent. If you mentioned anything pro-Biden or establishment or even fucking pro-lesser evil voting to avoid climate apocalypse death, you got banned.
A lot of the initial outrage was around this intercept article:
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/24/joe-biden-metoo-times-up/
And around the Soundcloud interview you can find by doing a ctrl+F for Katie Halper in that intercept article.
My opinion on the Tara Reade case now is that it's a blatant fabrication. The story changed over and over, every time to change a detail to look worse for Joe Biden or to make the story look credible again once a prior detail was shown to be false. Every witness who isn't personally connected to her denies the revamp of her story that makes it a full on sexual assault accusation. She has constantly and consistently lied for personal gain throughout her life and claimed to respect and admire the efforts of Joe Biden until 2019, changing a story she held stable for decades.
Here's a writeup that sums it up pretty well: https://medium.com/@macarthur.cliff/the-tara-reade-case-eight-things-the-media-wont-tell-you-27d3ca14978
I was depressed, traumatized, etc, and as such, I was incredibly vulnerable to influences. People in my life would get really concerned if I was browsing Chapo at all while I was talking to them because it kept sending me spiralling over my trauma, but I just couldn't stop going for it. Drowning myself in it. I was desperate to perpetually re-open the wound. I was falling away from everything. Friends. Religion. Relationships. My hobbies. My schoolwork. I barely passed my last semester, which was also mid-pandemic. Obsessively online.

My Part In Perpetuating This

After I got really deep in the shit, I got aggressively online. I got into arguments with literally hundreds of people about Joe Biden's rape accusations, across 3 or 4 platforms. I had it pushed into me that everyone who believes Joe isn't a literal monster is evil or ignorant and must be castigated or converted. I don't know how many people I convinced of this position but I do know that it's higher than 0. Than 5, 10. I turned this argument into part of my identity, as part of the way I dealt with and took power back from my abuser, and was treated with praise for doing so by a lot of people! I made compelling personal arguments about not voting out of protest for this man who I thought was as awful as the fucking literal sociopath who was manipulating me for years.
I privately encouraged a few other people to use me as a rhetorical weapon. To say "my friend was assaulted and is personally hurt by the concept that people who claim to support her and people like her will vote for Joe Biden." I had a sobbing breakdown the next time I was alone when my father didn't instantly buy it because "you know what happened to me."
I was making the social context and expectation manifest. By my aggression in establishing the expectation that people hate Joe, by letting others use me as an emblem of it, I was pushing it

Digging Out

This isn't the main point of the post, but I was asked elsewhere about it, so I should include here.
I dug out by improving my mental health, getting in contact with my non-dipshit-extremist-circlejerk supports again, getting back in therapy, doing things to feel self efficacy.
Also I watched a whole lot of Destiny videos and debates about leftism, and had a few people in my personal life talk to me about policy. (Lmao I'm still banned from Destiny's sub for being a former chapo user and they never respond to the unban request)
Watching people actually discuss concepts, especially people I used to look at as respectable or intelligent, and to see them get ripped apart was kind of a wake-up call. A big, big point in me realizing this was his debate with Pxie about the Tara Reade accusations, and how when I slowed down to look at everything I really, really didn't have a good reason to feel as strongly as I did other than other people encouraging me to.
Getting back into other hobbies, into religion, into other things I just enjoy engaging with and that actively improve my life, pulled me back from the edge of becoming just an ideologue.
I've stopped talking to a lot of the people who were my friends then. They were too committed to the bullshit. They were too mean to people who were outsiders, and I was one then. If you start expressing genuine doubt, pulling away, they'll either try to pull you in or kick you out if it's not working. Actually discussing the reality of the situation was a taboo. I don't know if it works for all other people like this but if people try to choose what I can and can't say for me it freaks me out. When I just said the same things they did I didn't notice.

Deplatforming

Another part of how I managed to get out was that one day I woke up and Chapo was just fucking gone. I was unironically weirdly aimless and listless for the next 3 days whenever I had downtime. I wasn't able to do my usual habit of triggering my PTSD by reading shitposts about Biden's evil or fake outrage about nonsense. I literally HAD TO do something else. There wasn't another place quite like Chapo, it had a unique vibe, a unique sense, a unique humor, and without it the aesthetic core of the bullshit I believed in was gone and my attachment to the issues Chapo cared most about slowly started to wane.

Miscellaneous Examples Of Establishing Social Expectations

I'm going to include here a few really obvious examples of people trying to clumsily make it so people think the only opinion it's acceptable to say it there.
Here's a TYT video about Amy Klobuchar where they lie and claim she said the opposite of what she did!
https://www.facebook.com/CenkUygurOfficial/videos/senator-amy-klobucharwhat-are-you-doing/734829663811319/
You see, they claim that anyone that agrees with her opinion is trying to "dumb their way out of helping Americans" and "just suck, just suck."
Her actual claim was that Trump showboating by threatening a veto on the 600 dollar checks when 2k checks weren't on the table was a threat to people because getting 600 dollars sucks less than getting 0 dollars, and getting continued unemployment is more relevant to a LOT of the people most affected by the pandemic.
By forcing the expectation that anyone who agrees with Klobuchar hates you and wants you to suffer, you make it so anyone who agrees with her gets attacked instantly.
https://youtu.be/vOvkPYqdjTE?t=3754
My next (this time timestamped!) example is Bri Joy-Gray debating Sam Seder about "Force the Vote," which I am including because it is content explicitly by and for the left, and Bri, as a former media director, is incredible at bowling people over rhetorically with performative outrage.
She is supposed to be talking to Sam Seder about the merits of forcing a Medicare for All vote by holding up the speakership. They both agree that the fundamental goal is to get a shared policy across. What does she do? She starts denouncing the way that Sam is unwilling to focus on the fight for the right of millions of people to healthcare. They already agree and she is both affecting strong emotion and acting unnecessarily aggressive at him claiming that trying to get your dream policy vote with a contingent of 6 people is probably unwise. She is again an example of creating and pushing an expectation that disagreeing makes you bad, and strongly agreeing makes you good.
The biggest whopper though, came recently. I don't need to give a single link because if you look at a single video on left youtube about stocks from a week ago, everybody I saw on the fucking PLANET but Destiny's stream and here were desperately promoting the working man's retail investment revolt, how it was fighting the man, getting one up on the big guys, and robinhood shutting down trades was just them STEALING IT from us. So I will link you one tweet in particular that epitomizes it.
https://twitter.com/KyleKulinski/status/1355573696119889921?s=20
Robinhood got the billion so it could OPEN UP TRADING AGAIN. Kyle is directly stating the opposite and follows it up by complaining that the critiques of him are pathetically stupid and need to try harder. If someone actually respected him and saw these takes they'd probably end up having some unpleasant kneejerk responses, and push them in casual conversation, pushing the cycle further.

Fin

Deplatforming people who spread misinformation in an inflammatory and manipulative way that actually screws people over generally does at least some good.
I might crash and go to sleep soon, but I will respond to anything when I wake up and for as long as I'm still up, though I can't promise the ability to go in deep on some of the stuff. But being able to identify when the driving force behind a political argument is social influence can be broadly useful to consider in understanding how a lot of beliefs spread.
edit for grammar.

AMD Complete Stock Analysis & Price Target Prediction

In this post we are going to go through an in-depth analysis of AMD, we are going to take a look at their fundamental value, their DCF, do a little technical analysis and set some price targets for the near future and for the long term
~Very Long Post~ [Do NOT Read if you don't like comprehensive analysis]
Hello everyone! Let’s start by talking a little about AMD, they are one of the biggest semiconductor companies in the world, and they operate in multiple segments like Computing, Gaming, Enterprise, Semi-Custom and many more with some of the most important products for the company being microprocessors and GPUs both for personal use like (gaming consoles & PCs) while also offering products for professional use like data centers.
The company was founded more than 50 years ago and have more than 11K employees, with the company overperforming recently as they have seen a more than 80% rise in the last year.
So, guys, let’s go a little through the 4th quarter & yearly results for AMD. The company reported a revenue of $3.24B in the 4th quarter, with a 53% growth since last year, while for the full year they earned almost $10B as they more than doubled they quarterly and full year net income, which resulted in a $1.29 earnings/share for the year.
The company has 2 major income segments in Computing & Graphics which brought in sales of over $6.4B for the year and an operating income of $1.26B and the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment which brought in $3.3B in revenues and almost $400M in operating income. They also provide an additional segment that doesn’t bring in any revenues but which represents costs that can’t be associated with any of the other 2 segments, but also includes stock-based compensations and acquisitions related costs.
Both of these 2 segments have seen huge increases in the past year with operating income doubling for the computing & graphics segment and increasing by almost 50% for the EEC segment.
AMD didn’t have such a big capital expenditure in 2020, with only $294M but this can increase depending on the demand of their products while they also adjusted their income with $312M in depreciation & amortizations. Both of these numbers have increased by 40 to 50% in the past years and will be important in the DCF valuation.
They have also managed to increase the gross profit margin to 45%, up 2% from 2019 as their earnings before interest & tax or EBIT stood at $1.37B.
The company has seen a continued earnings per share growth overall, despite the first 2 quarters of 2020 coming in lower than previous, but that was to be expected as this was impacted by the reduced revenues in Q1 & Q2 before things started to pick up back again, as they finished with a huge increase overall in the 4th quarter.
Their product portfolio has become a great challenge to Intel’s market share and is continuing to evolve, as Intel is still struggling to regain momentum with their products.
AMD announced the world’s best processors for laptop and an enterprise variant that is expected to be available in the first half of 2021.
They have also launched the fastest AMD gaming graphics card ever while also working with big companies like Amazon on their AWS cloud offerings & Microsoft Azure which are planning to use their upcoming 3rd generation EPYC processors.
AMD is also involved in supercomputers which indicates that they are continuing to innovate and develop products that will be in high demand for the foreseeable future
The one big thing that can propel AMD even more in the future is the proposed acquisition or more rather merger with Xilinx , which also beat earnings expectations the other day, with revenues of over $800M for the quarter and a Free Cash Flow of 44% of their revenues. Xilinx has a market cap of over $32B, and the combination of the 2 companies would create synergies. They are targeting an all-stock transaction which will have implications on my projections, but as time has gone, the $35B price tag is only a 10% premium for Xilinx. The one hurdle the companies have to pass is the regulatory procedures. We will have to wait and see if the deal goes through or not, as it’s expected the deal should be finished by the end of the year, with AMD shareholders retaining 74% of the new group shares and Xilinx holding the remaining 26%.
AMD also offered great guidance for 2021 as they expect the strength of their product portfolio to push AMD revenues up 37% over 2020 and also expect their gross margin to increase to 47%, while they expect an effective tax rate for next year of 15%, well belove the 21% US corporate tax rate.
I have made some predictions based on the growth rate of the company, the latest plans announced by them and used some estimates and expectations. So, keep in mind this are only projections and are calculated by myself, this is not an investment advice and you should do your own research and so on…
So, let’s start with the Unleveraged discounted free cash flow projections to see what the current valuation of the company is.
I used their total revenues projections that we will discuss later on in the long-term projection and the net income for 2020 to which I added back the Depreciation & Amortization costs they had in 2020 and got to a $1.68B EBITDA.
For the next years I used 1% increase in EBIT margin which I think they can achieve pretty easy and an increase in capex of 10%/year in order to maintain an increased production capacity while also applying a 15% decrease in their net working capital.
So, for an 8% discount rate, which is pretty much the Average SP500 return, we get a $9.7B Discounted Free Cash Flow by 2025.
Now there are 2 methods of doing the valuation, either the perpetuity method or the EBITDA multiple method, but for both of them we do have to subtract or add the net assets or debt, which in this case stands $5.75B in assets. I personally think a use of the average is better suited for most companies, though some of the companies trade largely on the EBITDA approach and other on the growth approach.
If we use the growth approach, we can see that AMD is pretty fairly valued right now, as this implies a loss of 2%, while on the other hand the EBITDA multiple approach gives us a valuation of over $112, meaning an almost 30% undervaluation of the company. But as I said, I think a use of the average is best, so, my current price target for AMD in 2021 is $98.82, implying a 13.5% return from the last price.
And now let’s move on to a longer-term valuation of the company based on the growth projections I have for AMD.
For my projections I actually just used their full year results and implied different growth rates for each revenue stream. I think we can continue to see 50% growth rate in the EEC segment for 2021 and then implying a gradual slowing of their growth, while for the Computing & Graphics segment I implied a 35% growth, way lower than the over 100% they saw in 2020, also implying a gradual slowdown of the trend by 2025.
I think these growth implications are pretty reasonable giving the high demand the company has seen for their entire product line, especially as gaming revenues have continued to increase, and also taking into account the need for their products in data centers, cloud usage & digital currency mining.
For their cost of sales, I started from the current ones which stand at 80% for the Computing & Graphics segment and implied a 1% improvement each year, while for the EEC segment I started from the 88% expense margin right now and implied a gradual 2% improvement. I also maintained their other expense regarding to the cost of sales to 3% of their total revenues, in-line with the previous years.
This means for 2025 we would get just over $33B in revenues and $26B in expenses, resulting in a gross profit of almost $7B. I also maintained the same capex as in the DCF and also substracted the interest & other expenses for which I implied a 5% annual growth, thus leading us to a $6.28B in earnings before tax.
I maintained their 15% effective tax rate projections and also diluted their shares by 1% each year accounting for some dilution in the stock.
So, for the $5.3B in 2025 revenues after tax and accounting for 1.27B shares, that would mean a $4.21 earnings/share, meaning the stock is trading at 20 times forward price to earnings for 2025.
I like to base my future projections on Forward/PE valuations so, with the current projected PE and depending on what PE you assume for the stock between 25 and 40, the stock can trade between $105 and almost $168.
So, after all these estimates what are my price targets? HERE are my actual price targets
I think the 2025 bear case price we can see AMD trade at is $115 which would imply a return of almost 33% , while my base case and my pretty safe assumption is that AMD will trade at 137$/share by the end of 2025, implying a 57% return on the current price. But my most bullish case would see the company trading at $158, which would imply a return of over 81%. So yeah guys, these are my Overall price targets for 2025, my bear case is an average of the 25 & 30 PE ratio, while the normal case is the average between the 30 and 35 PE’s with the most bullish case valuing the company between a PE of 35-40.
So HERE is the full spreadsheet that I have projected for AMD by 2025, if you do have another opinion or a suggestion please leave a comment down below, I think I have been conservative in most of my projections, but feel free to give your opinion.
I think these are pretty reasonable targets, as the semiconductors industry will keep on booming in the next decade, as the world will need more & more chips that also keep advancing in technology.
The company also has very good financials, with almost $9B in assets vs just $3.1B in total liabilities, which can be easily paid by just the current assets.
And let’s also take a look at what the estimates are from the analysts. We can only see EPS estimates until 2023 of $3.22, which I think is safe to say can grow an additional dollar by 2025, so my projections are pretty in-line with what other experts anticipate.
So, what do I expect in the next couple of days, weeks and months for AMD?
Let’s look at this CHART, the stock just broke below the long-term uptrend but has seen good support at the $86-87 levels, which is where the next support should stand. We saw AMD pushing towards $100 in the beginning of the year, but it hit major resistance once Intel also announced a change in their leadership, as they brought in the WMWare CEO Gelsinger, but it’s very hard to see him turn around Intel in a very short time. Intel will need some years & a lot of capital expenditure to turn things around, if they do manage to do it at all.
AMD hasn’t been overbought since August, and currently has an RSI near 41, which is pretty oversold for a good company, so I expect to see them regaining some momentum in the near-term, but I guess the market is very busy with the current short-squeezes. AMD will se a lot of resistance breaking through the $100 level, not because of something fundamental with the company, but I guess it’s a psychological resistance rather.
And let’s take a quick look at what 24 analysts on Wall Street are saying. They mostly have a buy call on the company with an average price target of $100 and a high price target of $135. So, I think the analyst are pretty spot on with AMD, but my PT are slightly lower as it’s always better to undershoot and overperform rather than the other way around.
So, what would I do? Well, I own AMD stock and I believe it still has plenty of room to grow, so I would start building a position right now and add on any weakness, and I would especially buy more if the stock drops even lower than 80$.
One last thing to mention about AMD is that they also have a very big % of their shares held by institutions, with over 74% of the float being held by big funds like Vanguard & Blackrock which does significantly reduce the sell-off possibilities.
So, this are my projections and my expectations for the company, I think Lisa SU has done a terrific job since becoming the CEO, and has driven AMD to a renewed approach to their business, as the company has been booming in the past 5 years, growing more than twice as much as Nvidia and crushing the SP500 and Intel’s performance.
Thank you everyone for reading! Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market! Have a great day and see you next time!

AMD DD / Stock Analysis 🚀🚀🚀 [Technical, Fundamental & DCF] & $AMD Stock Forecast [Short & Long Term]🚀🚀🚀

In this post we are going to go through an in-depth analysis of AMD🚀, we are going to take a look at their fundamental value, their DCF, do a little technical analysis and set some price targets for the near future and for the long term
~Very Long Post~
Hello everyone! Let’s start by talking a little about AMD, they are one of the biggest semiconductor companies in the world, and they operate in multiple segments like Computing, Gaming, Enterprise, Semi-Custom and many more with some of the most important products for the company being microprocessors and GPUs both for personal use like (gaming consoles & PCs) while also offering products for professional use like data centers.
The company was founded more than 50 years ago and have more than 11K employees, with the company overperforming recently as they have seen a more than 80% rise in the last year.
So, guys, let’s go a little through the 4th quarter & yearly results for AMD. The company reported a revenue of $3.24B in the 4th quarter, with a 53% growth since last year, while for the full year they earned almost $10B as they more than doubled they quarterly and full year net income, which resulted in a $1.29 earnings/share for the year.
The company has 2 major income segments in Computing & Graphics which brought in sales of over $6.4B for the year and an operating income of $1.26B and the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment which brought in $3.3B in revenues and almost $400M in operating income. They also provide an additional segment that doesn’t bring in any revenues but which represents costs that can’t be associated with any of the other 2 segments, but also includes stock-based compensations and acquisitions related costs.
Both of these 2 segments have seen huge increases in the past year with operating income doubling for the computing & graphics segment and increasing by almost 50% for the EEC segment.🚀🚀
AMD didn’t have such a big capital expenditure in 2020, with only $294M but this can increase depending on the demand of their products while they also adjusted their income with $312M in depreciation & amortizations. Both of these numbers have increased by 40 to 50% in the past years and will be important in the DCF valuation.
They have also managed to increase the gross profit margin to 45%, up 2% from 2019 as their earnings before interest & tax or EBIT stood at $1.37B.
The company has seen a continued earnings per share growth overall, despite the first 2 quarters of 2020 coming in lower than previous, but that was to be expected as this was impacted by the reduced revenues in Q1 & Q2 before things started to pick up back again, as they finished with a huge increase overall in the 4th quarter.🚀🚀
Their product portfolio has become a great challenge to Intel’s market share and is continuing to evolve, as Intel is still struggling to regain momentum with their products.🚀
AMD announced the world’s best processors for laptop and an enterprise variant that is expected to be available in the first half of 2021.
They have also launched the fastest AMD gaming graphics card ever while also working with big companies like Amazon on their AWS cloud offerings & Microsoft Azure which are planning to use their upcoming 3rd generation EPYC processors.
AMD is also involved in supercomputers which indicates that they are continuing to innovate and develop products that will be in high demand for the foreseeable future🚀
The one big thing that can propel AMD even more in the future is the proposed acquisition or more rather merger with Xilinx 🚀, which also beat earnings expectations the other day, with revenues of over $800M for the quarter and a Free Cash Flow of 44% of their revenues. Xilinx has a market cap of over $32B, and the combination of the 2 companies would create synergies. They are targeting an all-stock transaction which will have implications on my projections, but as time has gone, the $35B price tag is only a 10% premium for Xilinx. The one hurdle the companies have to pass is the regulatory procedures. We will have to wait and see if the deal goes through or not, as it’s expected the deal should be finished by the end of the year, with AMD shareholders retaining 74% of the new group shares and Xilinx holding the remaining 26%.
AMD also offered great guidance for 2021 as they expect the strength of their product portfolio to push AMD revenues up 37% over 2020 and also expect their gross margin to increase to 47%, while they expect an effective tax rate for next year of 15%, well belove the 21% US corporate tax rate.
I have made some predictions based on the growth rate of the company, the latest plans announced by them and used some estimates and expectations. So, keep in mind this are only projections and are calculated by myself, this is not an investment advice and you should do your own research and so on…
So, let’s start with the Unleveraged discounted free cash flow projections to see what the current valuation of the company is.🚀🚀🚀
I used their total revenues projections that we will discuss later on in the long-term projection and the net income for 2020 to which I added back the Depreciation & Amortization costs they had in 2020 and got to a $1.68B EBITDA.
For the next years I used 1% increase in EBIT margin which I think they can achieve pretty easy and an increase in capex of 10%/year in order to maintain an increased production capacity while also applying a 15% decrease in their net working capital.
So, for an 8% discount rate, which is pretty much the Average SP500 return, we get a $9.7B Discounted Free Cash Flow by 2025.
Now there are 2 methods of doing the valuation, either the perpetuity method or the EBITDA multiple method, but for both of them we do have to subtract or add the net assets or debt, which in this case stands $5.75B in assets. I personally think a use of the average is better suited for most companies, though some of the companies trade largely on the EBITDA approach and other on the growth approach.
If we use the growth approach, we can see that AMD is pretty fairly valued right now, as this implies a loss of 2%, while on the other hand the EBITDA multiple approach gives us a valuation of over $112, meaning an almost 30% undervaluation of the company. But as I said, I think a use of the average is best, so, my current price target for AMD in 2021 is $98.82, implying a 13.5% return from the last price.
And now let’s move on to a longer-term valuation of the company based on the growth projections I have for AMD.🚀🚀🚀
For my projections I actually just used their full year results and implied different growth rates for each revenue stream. I think we can continue to see 50% growth rate in the EEC segment for 2021 and then implying a gradual slowing of their growth, while for the Computing & Graphics segment I implied a 35% growth, way lower than the over 100% they saw in 2020, also implying a gradual slowdown of the trend by 2025.
I think these growth implications are pretty reasonable giving the high demand the company has seen for their entire product line, especially as gaming revenues have continued to increase, and also taking into account the need for their products in data centers, cloud usage & digital currency mining.
For their cost of sales, I started from the current ones which stand at 80% for the Computing & Graphics segment and implied a 1% improvement each year, while for the EEC segment I started from the 88% expense margin right now and implied a gradual 2% improvement. I also maintained their other expense regarding to the cost of sales to 3% of their total revenues, in-line with the previous years.
This means for 2025 we would get just over $33B in revenues and $26B in expenses, resulting in a gross profit of almost $7B. I also maintained the same capex as in the DCF and also substracted the interest & other expenses for which I implied a 5% annual growth, thus leading us to a $6.28B in earnings before tax.
I maintained their 15% effective tax rate projections and also diluted their shares by 1% each year accounting for some dilution in the stock.
So, for the $5.3B in 2025 revenues after tax and accounting for 1.27B shares, that would mean a $4.21 earnings/share, meaning the stock is trading at 20 times forward price to earnings for 2025.
I like to base my future projections on Forward/PE valuations so, with the current projected PE and depending on what PE you assume for the stock between 25 and 40, the stock can trade between $105 and almost $168. 🚀🚀🚀
So, after all these estimates what are my price targets? HERE are my actual price targets🚀🚀🚀
I think the 2025 bear case price we can see AMD trade at is $115 which would imply a return of almost 33% , while my base case and my pretty safe assumption is that AMD will trade at 137$/share by the end of 2025, implying a 57% return on the current price. But my most bullish case would see the company trading at $158, which would imply a return of over 81%. So yeah guys, THIS are my Overall price targets for 2025, my bear case is an average of the 25 & 30 PE ratio, while the normal case is the average between the 30 and 35 PE’s with the most bullish case valuing the company between a PE of 35-40.
So HERE is the full spreadsheet that I have projected for AMD by 2025, if you do have another opinion or a suggestion please leave a comment down below, I think I have been conservative in most of my projections, but feel free to give your opinion.
I think these are pretty reasonable targets, as the semiconductors industry will keep on booming in the next decade, as the world will need more & more chips that also keep advancing in technology.
The company also has very good financials, with almost $9B in assets vs just $3.1B in total liabilities, which can be easily paid by just the current assets.
And let’s also take a look at what the estimates are from the analysts. We can only see EPS estimates until 2023 of $3.22, which I think is safe to say can grow an additional dollar by 2025, so my projections are pretty in-line with what other experts anticipate.
So, what do I expect in the next couple of days, weeks and months for AMD?
Let’s look at this CHART, the stock just broke below the long-term uptrend but has seen good support at the $86-87 levels, which is where the next support should stand. We saw AMD pushing towards $100 in the beginning of the year, but it hit major resistance once Intel also announced a change in their leadership, as they brought in the WMWare CEO Gelsinger, but it’s very hard to see him turn around Intel in a very short time. Intel will need some years & a lot of capital expenditure to turn things around, if they do manage to do it at all.
AMD hasn’t been overbought since August, and currently has an RSI near 41, which is pretty oversold for a good company, so I expect to see them regaining some momentum in the near-term, but I guess the market is very busy with the current short-squeezes. AMD will se a lot of resistance breaking through the $100 level, not because of something fundamental with the company, but I guess it’s a psychological resistance rather.
And let’s take a quick look at what 24 analysts on Wall Street are saying. They mostly have a buy call on the company with an average price target of $100 and a high price target of $135. So, I think the analyst are pretty spot on with AMD, but my PT are slightly lower as it’s always better to undershoot and overperform rather than the other way around.
So, what would I do? Well, I own AMD stock and I believe it still has plenty of room to grow, so I would start building a position right now and add on any weakness, and I would especially buy more if the stock drops even lower than 80$.🚀🚀🚀
One last thing to mention about AMD is that they also have a very big % of their shares held by institutions, with over 74% of the float being held by big funds like Vanguard & Blackrock which does significantly reduce the sell-off possibilities.
So, this are my projections and my expectations for the company, I think Lisa SU has done a terrific job since becoming the CEO, and has driven AMD to a renewed approach to their business, as the company has been booming in the past 5 years, growing more than twice as much as Nvidia and crushing the SP500 and Intel’s performance.
Thank you everyone for reading🙏 Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market! Have a great day and see you next time❗

"Mindmed Forecast/Fundamental Case" [BULLISH] {MMEDF}

The original author's account was deleted, so unfortunately I can't credit them. Regardless, full credit to them. This post was included in the deletion, so it took a decent amount of digging to find and save. Shoutout to u/adamfixeseverything. Enjoy. -

Hey guys,
I thought I’d post about my thoughts on MMED. First of all, please do your own due diligence and do not fall victim to the pump, hype and euphoria. These are highly speculative investments and have significant risk associated. All that said, there have been many requests for fundamental analysis and MMED projections so I wanted to provide my thoughts.
*All figures in USD (market cap, sales) except for my investment holdings. I purchased MMED.NE shares. Source data available as well, but got messy with all the 10-k filings and links in the table.
Entry Point
First and foremost, I want to address the most commonly raised question on this thread: “Is it too late to buy MMED?” Any investment is subject to the risk / reward paradigm. Those that got in at $0.3 deserve every penny they earned as MMED was by definition a penny stock and one of the most risky investments you could own. Since then, it has grown tremendously due to scientific milestones which have pointed to significant progress in the industry.
The milestones MMED has achieved have DERISKED MMED from a penny stock to a small cap biotech company with a very large drug portfolio and numerous future catalysts. I do not expect to make 10x my investment in a week, nor should you. Is there still tremendous upside even at the current valuation of ~$1.5bn? I strongly believe so and will let my position reinforce that.
I entered this space with an average cost of ~$4.9 CAD, holding 311,206 shares, and a book value of ~1.5MM. Yes you read that correctly. Do I panic every day and check the ticker? No. Does my heart beat thinking of the time I evaporated ~$500,000 in unrealized loss when the stock was at $3.4? No. In fact, I continue to pick up shares at what I believe is a discounted valuation. There will be many that look at $4.9 entry point and think that even I got in at the bottom. It’s all relative.

OP's Original Investment
I only invested what I could afford to lose and although $1.5MM is a large sum of money, it is not my entire portfolio, nor would it impact my daily life. If I lost it all it would not impact my ability to service my mortgage, pay my bills, impact my other investments, nor prohibit me from doing the things I love. I continue to hold dry powder and monitor my investment on a monthly basis, while continuing to buy following successful milestones.
This is a very long term play that could fundamentally change the way we treat the body’s most important organ. We are just getting started. I have a very strong conviction on the future outcome of this industry and that is the reason I couldn’t be bothered about short term fluctuations. An important question to ask yourself is whether you believe MMED can reach its next scientific milestone. Take things one step at a time and is there a probability the next scientific update will be positive? Emphasis on science, ignoring NASDAQ, candlesticks, and capital structure (for now).
Institutional Capital
I work in finance (albeit project finance / private equity, and don’t value stocks for a living, so don’t consider me an expert here) but already know of a few moderately capitalized asset managers that are now participating in MMED. The recent bought deals are evidence of sophisticated capital flowing into this industry. I personally qualify as an ‘accredited investor’ and am having conversations constantly with folks in my circles who are investing heavily into these stocks. As more institutional capital flows in, the more stable these stocks become. Of course, this is all relative.
Access to liquidity
As with all brand new industries, the capital requirement is immense in order to bring products to market. What drew me into the space was the fact that MMED did raise capital. Biotech stocks do not have cashflow, thus their only path to fund operations is through equity raises. The fact that MMED was able to raise over $237MM CAD since May 2019 is a positive for this company. Yes it is dilutive, and good job for paying attention in finance 101 class, but bootstrapping a biotech company is not possible, nor is servicing debt.
The path to commercialization of will be full of obstacles, however a strong balance sheet with sufficient capital gives MMED the resources to get there. The current valuation has tremendous upside following scientific milestones and future equity raises and dilutions are a good thing, as it will be at an increased valuation.
There are definitely smaller cap companies out there that may double overnight, however for the risk / reward, I do not feel comfortable owning companies that don’t have a large balance sheet, nor a diversified drug portfolio.
Believe in the Science
I do not feel I am in a position to write original content on the efficacy of these drugs. I have done my research and read a fair number of published studies but anything that I write would simply be regurgitating what others have said.
The biggest investors in this space are those with personal experiences with psychedelics because you have first-hand experience of the profound meaning extracted from one treatment. The ability to dissolve your ego enables you to deal with the root cause of so many problems ranging from depression, PTSD and addition, without approaching the problem by numbing symptoms. Herein lies the inherent value of this industry and will simply take time to prove it through trails. I have the conviction to continue to invest because I believe in the science. The data to reinforce this is on its way, and I personally want to invest now, knowing that the likelihood of very significant catalysts are probable.
Forecasts
This of course is the elephant in the room for early investors, later[er] investors and bears alike. Is a $1.5bn market cap pricing in all of the upside already? Is this a $100bn stock? This company has zero revenues, shouldn’t it be worth zero?
The truth is, no one knows. There is tremendous risk with this company. However, I will not be selling unless we see some significant negative scientific outcomes. Again, less emphasis on stock price, NASDAQ, more emphasis on the science. Everything else will follow.
The various ways to value a company (DCF, sales / earnings multiples, liquidation value etc) all have their issues with an early stage company of this nature. Any sort of bottoms up DCF analysis is just guessing because variables such as patient count, dosage, pricing, market share, market penetration, amongst other have far too much variation to come up with a reliable figure. Discount rates and time horizon can favour your outcome depending on how aggressive / conservative you are.
Thus, the way I like to look at this market is a best case scenario for a single drug, based off historical sales data from one company and one drug. This implicitly takes into account patient dosage, competition, market share, market penetration etc, because one drug from one company has already proven its ability to capture such sales data.

Data
I have broken out annual sales data for various comparable drugs according to MMED’s current pipeline offering. This is the inherent benefit of MMED, is that it has a diverse portfolio covering many underserved issues. Like many of you, I believe MMED’s biggest blockbuster will be Layla, given the problem of Opioid addition plus MMED’s IP rights on 18-MC to corner sales. Suboxone is the current drug on the market due to delayed onset effects ranging from 24-36 hours, compared to someone in withdrawal uses fast acting opioids 3-4 times a day. Suboxone itself however is still addictive and has a long list of negative side effects. Furthermore, it does not correct dopamine dysregulation in patients.
The sales of Suboxone alone are growing at an ~9% CAGR, with sales expected to reach ~$4bn in 2028
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/18/2079779/0/en/Opioid-Use-Disorder-OUD-in-8-Major-Markets-2018-2028-Reformulations-of-Buprenorphine-Will-Drive-Growth.html.
The use case for 18-MC however, does not stop at Opioid addiction, and can be applied to alcohol dependency and smoking dependency among others. This means the TAM for 18-MC could be significantly larger than the existing market captured by Suboxone given its smaller demographics relative to 18-MC. Could Layla exhibit sales greater than Suboxone one day? Who knows. Sticking with comp sales for the analysis for now.
Various anxiety, depression and ADHD medication is also shown in the table to show sales potential of Lucy, Albert and the micro dose programmes.
Is there a possibility of a LSD, 18-MC, or LSD compound or derivative achieving blockbuster drug status? Do you think there is an inherent benefit to a psychedelic compared to an antidepressant sedative with side effects such as nausea, weight gain etc?
Your perceived probability and sales outcomes depends on whether you believe in the science. Those that don’t can easily be skeptical of a $1.5bn market cap many years away from profitability.
Those that do, look at the next half a dozen clinical trial outcomes as very probable and thus have applied a less punitive discount to the stock valuation. I have rationalized my decision to invest at $1.5MM because of my own perceived discount rate and confidence in the next 12 months of positive catalysts.
Valuation Multiples
Now, as many of you know, investors pay a multiple for the future earnings of a company, today. If a drug makes $1bn annually, investors will pay a multiple of future earnings expected over the drugs lifetime, discounted by various factors.
There are various metrics to use here, ranging from Enterprise Value / Sales or various types of earnings metrics. MMED is years away from having a real operating company, anything to sell, or even the corporate infrastructure to get it to market. However, the question has always been, how big do you think this company could get?
This is where things can get tricky. We used peak annual sales in the last section to forecast comparable estimates for MMED revenues. Thus, I believe it is appropriate to use mature, large cap trading multiples instead of early stage bio techs, as our revenue estimates were mature figures with stabilized growth. If we were to use companies / drugs earlier in their lifecycle or clinical phases, the trading multiples would be much higher because the market is buying potential future sales. Can’t have it both ways.

Chart
All of the chart data in the graph is specific to the pharma industry. However, there are various subsectors to the industry such as Contract Development Manufacturing and Contract Research Organization. MMED would likely have to partner with each of these types of firms to scale its business, better assess market size etc, but wouldn’t trade at similar multiples given a different business model. Same goes for Packaging and Distribution.
The graph also shows S&P average which is a good rule of thumb.

Other chart
Although the chart gives a good reference point for pharma multiples, I wanted to look at valuation from a more company specific perspective. The chart above shows large cap specialty pharma companies that are publically traded. This will give you an approximate median value of what the market is willing to pay for a company that has a certain amount of sales. As you can see in the green box, industry multiples of EV/EBIITDA or EV/Sales will basically get you to the same place. Median pharma industry EBITDA margins are in the 40% range with EV/Sales at ~4x vs EV/EBITDA of 10x.
Note that the above list of trading comps is stale data, as of Sept ’19. I only want to use public data and have refrained from using Bloomberg, Cap IQ etc. Thus the information I’m posting is merely reposts of info available on Google. As you can see, Allergan is listed in this table as a live trading comp, and has since been acquired by AbbVie. Accordingly, I want to highlight some notable M+A activity:
Amgen acquires Celgne’s plaque psoriasis drug, Otezla $13.4bn: EV / LTM Sales = 7.6x Thermo Fisher acquires Qiagen for $11.5bn: EV / LTM Sales = 7.3x Abbvie acquires Allergan for $84.2bn: EV / LTM Sales = 5.4x Elanco acquires Bayer’s animal health unit for $7.6bn: EV / LTM Sales = 4.5x As you can see, companies are willing to pay a premium in M&A to acquire competitors and drugs, due to synergies, reduction in SG&A etc.
This is a very long winded way of showing that if one of MMED’s compounds hits, and exhibits sales in line with any sort of comparable drug from the table above, this could be a $20-30 billion dollar company (~4bn*5-7x). If several of these drugs reach commercialization, this is potentially a $100 billion dollar company.
Now I agree that these projections are completely outlandish right now. I’m simply doing the exercise you all wanted.
Feel free to guess at your own forecast sales and multiply out enterprise value using the above metrics. Before you rip me apart for the extreme optimism, I understand that I’m using multiples for stable, reputable, large cap pharma. I understand that there is an extreme amount of stigma attached to psychedelics and achieving ubiquity for these treatments is a large uphill battle. There is an enormous amount of work, luck and time from now until sales and this is not to be under estimated.
Do I think MMED is worth $30-$100bn today? No.
Do I think MMED is worth somewhere in between today’s valuation and $30-$100bn?
Depends whether you believe in the science. If you’re reading this, odds are you do. I invested because I believe it too.
So instead, let’s take a lazy man’s approach to valuation and take things one step at a time.
Simpler Approach to Valuation
The exercise above is to show you all the immense potential of MMED’s drug portfolio. Do I think MMED is the next Pfizer, Abbie Vie or Eli Lilly? No. This is not a $500bn dollar company. However, I do genuinely think there is tremendous upside not factored into the pricing for this stock.
Fundamental analysis aside, I think the simplest way to approach valuation is from a catalyst + efficient market hypothesis perspective. Markets are not fully efficient, nor even semi-efficient, but there is some sort of reasoning in believing what the market is willing to pay. The obvious flaws in this are that the market right is riddled with irrational investors and a market of 300m financially illiterate traders isn’t more efficient than an illiquid market of 10 rational ones. As of today’s post there is a discount to the $4.40 price. To me, that’s just more opportunity to continue to scoop up more shares.
I have stayed out of the industry in the early days because truthfully I did not know which stocks to pick. Since then, much smarter people than me have done their diligence and allocated their capital to the companies that they believe are winners. This is part of an efficient market hypothesis.
Sophisticated capital flowed into MMED @ 4.40 / share, with the expectation to make a profit. I also, invested in this company at $4.9/share, with the expectation to make a profit. If we establish this as a baseline, do we believe there will be more positive than negative catalysts in the next year and in the future, such that we will see accretion in the share price? Conversely, if we see negative outcomes in future catalysts, it will cause erosion in the stock valuation. Below are near term events which should have a significant impact on share price:
Project Lucy
Phase 2 readout– Q1 2021 Open IND w/ FDA for Phase 2b – Q3 2021 Project Layla
Phase 2a study– Second half of 2021 Strategic Pharma Partner Potential – Late 2021 Various
Combined MDMA LSD Phase 1 trail – Q1 2021 IV DMT Phase 1 trail – Q1 2021 First ever Phase 2a clinical trial Microdose LSD – Q3 2021 Patent filed for neutralizer technology for LSD to shortestop hallucinogenic effects Game changer for safe, regulated environment for clinical administration Given that Phase 1 studies are focused on safety, what are the odds clinically developed LSD / MDMA fails a safety test?
Given that Phase 2 studies are focused on proof of concept and method, what are the odds the clinically designed process fails the test?
Believe in the science.
Each one of these incremental catalysts derisks MMED, and will bring the valuation closer to ‘blockbuster drug’ status, albeit inches at a time. Just as the bought deal derisked this company for me to participate, achievements in clinical trials will be evidence for more investors to jump in as well. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and guess at how large this company can get. Just think of what is the next step and do your own evaluation as to whether achieving it is realistic. Once we get through the above list, there will be more milestones to pass such as Phase 2bs and 3s. If we establish $4.40 as the baseline currently and MMED has a successful outcome in any of the previously listed catalysts, there should be a significant accretion in valuation.
There is a noticeable omission for most of you, in that I’ve left out the NASDAQ up listing, future dilutions and general capital structuring events. To me, a NASDAQ uplisting is irrelevant. This will add liquidity, although probably more volatility, but changes zero fundamentals about the stock. It should however, add more weight to the efficient market hypothesis and erase the discount I believe this stock is trading at. We’ll see some analyst coverage with price targets that will attract more investors, but the fundamentals of the stock do not change.
With respect to stock price, it is impossible to forecast this because the capital structure of this company is completely unknown. IF we can even get to revenue generation, and this becomes a $30-100bn company, how much dilution will there be from now until then to back out a share price? The point is that there is so much runway in share price accretion from now until then, that I’m not bothered with anything finance related for this company. There is potential for 50-70x accretion in the value of this company. The focus needs to be on the science. MMED has raised enough money to get though its next set of obstacles and fund operations, thus insolvency risk has fallen away for now which is really the only important financial point for early stage biotech.
Let’s take things one step at a time, believe in the science and be patient.
Cash position & Expenditures
As you can see below, the quarterly burn payroll burn rate is quite low for MMED relative to its cash position. It’s hard to discern which items under their historical expenditures are one off versus recurring, thus difficult to calculate their exact run rate. However, the huge positive here the low ratio of payroll relative to its cash.

Data table
Next up we have the projected use of proceeds from their latest raise, net of underwriter expenses. Now that the Over-Allotment has been exercised, MMED has additional capital that it has further allocated to Albert, Lucy, Layla and the Microdose LSD program.
Proceeds Table
General takeaway is that MMED is well enough capitalized to get through its next phase of milestones. I will be keeping an eye on news surrounding the Microdose LSD program. Estimates at this stage for Phase 2a are $3-4m and the results of which will inform capital expenditures required for future phases. A positive milestone in Q3 ’21 should be an incredibly positive catalyst for this company.
Proving that you’ve raised capital and have enough cashflow to get to the next step doesn’t guarantee we’ve picked the winner in the industry. It does however give me confidence that MMED will continue to be a going concern for at least the short term and get to a point when new investors can come in at a much higher valuation. This is a real risk for the penny stocks out there without capital or IP, and that is the reason I chose MMED.
Edit: Did some re-formatting to make it easier to read cause it's pretty lengthy and there's a lot of details. Hopefully it helps.
Edit #2: I went back into the trash compacter and salvaged the original data and charts since some people were asking. The resolution may be questionable, so apologies for that, you might have to zoom in.

(Spoilers Extended) The Optimist's Gambit: Why George RR Martin Always Thinks He's Closer Than He Actually Is, Part 2: THE WINDS OF WINTER

Intro

A year after George RR Martin finished A Dance with Dragons, he updated his fans on The Winds of Winter:

THE WINDS OF WINTER. Also known as "Son of Kong." Working on it. Lots to do.

Massive and very specific update on The Winds of Winter complete, George turned to another project:

THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE. The concordance. Elio and Linda are my partners on this one, a compendium of the history and legends of the world of Westeros. A coffee table book, lots of gorgeous art from such talents as Ted Nasmith, Justin Sweet, and others. Making good progress on this one of late, lots of great historical stuff that I think my readers will enjoy. Never before revealed details of Aegon's Conquest, the War With the Faith, The Dance of the Dragons, the Paramours of Aegon the Unworthy, etc.

Hm. That seems much more detailed. This would become a pattern for George in the early years after A Dance with Dragons’ publication. He’d update at length on all of the imaginary history he was inventing for The World of Ice and Fire while occasionally placing a single-yet-generous breadcrumb of an update about Winds into our porridge bowl of need.
This led to fans mostly being in the dark on GRRM's progress on Winds -- with more cynical fans wondered if George was working on on the book at all.
Here’s the thing: George was working on The Winds of Winter. I can prove it. And in 2015 when he optimistically predicted he could finish the book in six months, he had good reason for his optimism. What was that good reason? Because by 2015, GRRM had completed two plot arcs and had wrapped two major POV characters for The Winds of Winter.
You are skeptical. I will convince you. Follow me into the light.

The Leftovers

In his retrospective on A Dance with Dragons, GRRM talked about the chapters he cut to The Winds of Winter, saying:

First, my editors and I made some decisions as to where to end this book which involved shifting a few chapters back into the next volume, THE WINDS OF WINTER. With a series like A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, there are always judgment calls to make as to where to end one book and begin the next, since you're really dealing with one long story. Does this scene work best at the end of one book or the beginning of the next? Should this character go out with a cliffhanger or with some sort of resolution (be it permanent or temporary)? And so on. And so forth.

Then he talked about the identity of the POV characters that were not in ADWD that had chapters leftover saying:

Sansa, Sam, Aeron Damphair, Arianne, and Brienne have no chapters in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Several of those characters had chapters written, completed, and polished that have been moved into THE WINDS OF WINTER.

In the years since 2011, we were told or been able to piece together most of the chapters cut from ADWD to TWOW. They are: Alayne (Sansa I), Mercy (Arya I), Arianne I and II and Aeron Greyjoy (The Forsaken)
In that 2010 post where he talked about cutting Damphair’s chapter from Dance to Winds, he talked about how many pages he had on hand for Winds, saying:

The good news is that I seem to have written more than a hundred pages of THE WINDS OF WINTER already.

Five chapters/100 manuscript pages. Now, let’s turn to the chapters that were moved after Damphair's in 2010. In 2011, GRRM’s editor Anne Groell talked about how two major sequences were cut from ADWD to TWOW. These two sequences are the Battle of Ice and the Battle of Meereen. Originally, these two battles were supposed to close ADWD out, but GRRM voluntarily cut one battle to TWOW, and then Anne Groell convinced him to cut the other battle.
Knowing, now, that GRRM was working on an Asha Battle of Ice chapter in 2014 but released a Theon chapter as his first TWOW sample in December 2011 (right after he finished his ADWD tour and also before he planned to embark on new writing for TWOW), we can reasonably assume that the Theon sample chapter was originally written for ADWD before George voluntarily removed it to TWOW.
Switching to deduction, we can then determine that the Battle of Meereen was the sequence GRRM's editors urged him to cut late in the process. What Battle of Meereen chapters were cut to TWOW? Here, we turn to the Cushing Library and find a display card from the “Deeper Than Swords” event indicating that George cut three chapters from ADWD to TWOW in April/May 2011.
As to who the POVs were, we can make an educated guess that one of them was a Victarion chapter and another one was a Tyrion chapter. Both chapters were read in early 2012 at conventions shortly after GRRM started writing TWOW afresh. As for the third chapter cut, I think this was Barristan’s first chapter. Thanks to zionius_, we know that George was writing Barristan II in April 2012, but in early 2013, GRRM read both Barristan chapters and indicated that the chapters were “new to you but old to me.” That third chapter was probably Barristan I.
The final two chapters we can be relatively certain were written for ADWD and cut to TWOW were a Bran chapter and an Areo Hotah chapter. We only know that Bran was cut thanks to _honeybird who discovered that it was listed among “missing chapters” originally slated as among the final chapters of the book. Additionally, we know that in 2010, Elio Garcia Jr. reported that three Dorne chapters were moved from ADWD to TWOW. Two of those Dornish chapters were Arianne chapters. The third was likely an Areo Hotah chapter.
Post-2010, GRRM cut six additional chapters to Winds. Adding in the previously-accounted-for five chapters, George had eleven leftover chapters as a springboard for Winds. Fast-forwarding to 2012, GRRM told Spanish fan-site Adria’s News that he had two hundred “really finished” manuscript pages for TWOW -- probably all of his leftover material from Dance (100 pages/5 chapters cut in 2010 + 100 pages/6 chapters cut in 2010/2011).
The identity of these chapters gives us a springboard for understanding where George was when he returned to writing Winds anew in early 2012, but it's important to note that George started Winds with a much smaller sample of leftover chapters than when he split Feast and Dance in 2005. Recall, then, that he had 542 manuscript pages/22 chapters done for ADWD.
But there's another and perhaps even more important difference: From all available evidence, George did not have complete story arcs like he did when he split AFFC/ADWD.
In 2005, George believed that the amount of material he had leftover put him over halfway complete on Dance. That was not the case for The Winds of Winter in 2012 where he only had 200 of the expected 1500 manuscript pages completed.

Early Progress on TWOW (2012)

When George began writing new material for Winds in 2012, he faced a daunting amount of new writing to finish the book. And given his track record, any old and new writing for Winds would be rewritten, revised and restructured.
So, how was it that George thought he was close enough in 2015 to get the book out before Game of Thrones, Season Six aired -- just three years after writing new material for TWOW?
We’ll start with what we know of George’s early progress on TWOW.
As we talked about above, George had about 200 new manuscript pages for the book between January and June 2012 -- work he considered to be “in rough form.” As to what specifically was contained in those 200 rough draft pages, we know that:

George reported having a partially written complementary chapter set between the finished Arianne II and the unwritten Arianne III in 2010. Link
He was working on Barristan's second TWOW chapter in April 2012. Link
He was writing about the Dothraki in May 2012. (A Daenerys chapter) Link
George sent a “batch” (3-5) of Arya TWOW chapters to Jonathan Robert, artist for The Lands of Ice and Fire to help in the creation of the map for Braavos in early 2012. Link

That’s about the extent of what we know about those 200 manuscript pages. Given the benchmark that 100 manuscript pages = ~5 chapters, he wrote rough drafts of ~10 total new chapters.
Fast-forwarding to a year later, Anne Groell reported receiving a batch of 168 manuscript pages from TWOW for a contracted payment from Random House in February 2013, and George reported being “about a quarter of the way done” on TWOW a month later. My reading is that GRRM finalized 168 of the 200 draft manuscript pages or ~9 additional chapters for TWOW.
So, by early-2013, GRRM had 368 manuscript pages and ~20 finalized chapters for TWOW complete for TWOW.
However, Anne Groell reported that the 168 manuscript pages wasn’t everything that George had written:

I currently have 168 pages that he submitted back in Feb 2013 in order to receive a contracted payment, but I know more exists, because he keeps talking about chapters he hasn't yet sent me.

This throws a wrench into things as George having 368 manuscript pages complete for Winds lines up well with his statement a month later that he was “about a quarter of the way done.” So, how to square that circle? What I'd guess is that George sent all of his finalized chapters forward to his publishers while retaining mostly-finished chapters he still wanted to polish.
To sum it up: from what we know: In 2012, George wrote ~200 manuscript pages and was specifically working on the Barristan, Daenerys and Arya chapters.
Meanwhile, GRRM was making significant progress on The World of Ice and Fire.

The Written World(book)

Let’s pause on Winds and switch over to George’s progress on The World of Ice and Fire for reasons that will become clear later on.
Shortly after returning from his ADWD tour, George began writing The World of Ice and Fire. As elio_garcia told me a few years back, George first wrote the history of Aegon’s Conquest which he sent to them in May 2012. Thereafter, GRRM wrote detailed histories of the various Targaryen monarchs, but where he really focused on was the history of the dance of the dragons.
By September 2012, Martin reported having 103 manuscript pages on the dance of the dragons. But even that was not the full extent of all he wrote on that event. In August 2013, George finished the dance of the dragons, writing 80,000 words solely on that particular Targaryen civil war.
Reasonably, many fans wondered whether The World of Ice and Fire detracted from George’s progress on The Winds of Winter. In terms of the sheer amount of time and effort it took to write the worldbook: probably, yes. However, as we’ll explore later on, George probably used his writing on The World of Ice and Fire as part of the process for writing The Winds of Winter.

Winds Progress (2013)

Switching back to Winds. By early 2013, George was only a quarter of the way complete on The Winds of Winter. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones was a few months away from airing the third season. So, George had to pick up the pace for the book to get ahead of the show.
The major issue in getting ahead of the show was that 2012 only had him finalizing ~10 new chapters, and in terms of completed story, he hadn’t finished writing the battles of Meereen and Ice that were supposed to close out ADWD. So, George seemingly continued work on the Battle of Meereen, writing and completing Tyrion’s second Winds chapter sometime between February and August 2013 as it wasn’t a part of the batch of chapters that Anne Groell received in February 2013, but he read the chapter at Worldcon 2013.
Meanwhile, in May 2013, George was asked point-blank by Portuguese fans what POV character he was working on, and he responded with “Arya.”.
Later in 2013, GRRM stated on his notablog that “you will definitely hear more of Jeyne Westerling.”. Given that we later learned at ComicCon 2014 that Jeyne Westerling will be seen in the Winds Prologue, we can speculatively-assume that George had written at least a draft or partial form of the Prologue by 2013.
Elsewise in 2013, we learned that GRRM requested Dothraki translations for The Winds of Winter from David J. Peterson (The creator of the Dothraki Language for Game of Thrones). This implies that George had Daenerys material written by 2013 and needed it translated from English to Dothraki.
So, again, in 2013, we see George working on the Battle of Fire, Daenerys and Arya (and also the Prologue).

The Locomotive Approaches (2014)

By 2014, two things happened. The first was that George RR Martin finished The World of Ice and Fire in March 2014. The second was that George realized that Game of Thrones was catching up to him.
First, The World of Ice and Fire. In March 2014, George RR Martin completed a chapter on the Iron Islands and finished the book. As he reported in that post, his completion of The World of Ice and Fire was late, owing to him being a slow writer but also due to him adding a lot to the book (Sound familiar?).
GRRM concluded his notablog post by saying:

And HEY, this means another monkey is off my back. Only a couple left gibbering up there now. That little joker monkey, HIGH STAKES. And... gulp… SON OF KONG.

Part of George’s nervousness about confronting the Son of Kong was based in how high of a mountain he had to climb to complete the book, but the bigger part is that he had a locomotive heading for him in the form of Game of Thrones.
In the early years after Game of Thrones premiered, GRRM wasn’t exactly dismissive of the idea that Game of Thrones would catch up to him, but he didn’t seem overly concerned.
By 2014, though, things had changed. Now about to air its fourth season, Game of Thrones was approaching the end of George’s published ASOIAF material. George, to his credit, was now cognizant of this, telling Vanity Fair in 2014:

“It’s my hope that they’ll [do two or three seasons for AFFC/ADWD] and then, long before they catch up with me, I’ll have published The Winds of Winter, which’ll give me another couple years. It might be tight on the last book, A Dream of Spring, as they juggernaut forward.”

The problem for George was that David Benioff and Dan Weiss were not interested in adapting A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons into multiple seasons. Instead, they were only looking at doing these two books in one season.
In response, George transitioned most of his creative output to The Winds of Winter. Sadly, we don’t know much of this output, really only being sure that George was writing: Daenerys and Asha.
On a brief appearance on the John Oliver show, GRRM appeared from his office with the computer screen on. Years later, fans were able to figure out that George was working on an Asha Greyjoy Battle of Ice chapter.
Onto Daenerys. In September 2014, in an interview with Galaxy Magazine (link unfortunately behind a paywall or in a hard copy), George talked about his writing for Winds saying:

“I’m going back to The Winds of Winter and writing the next scene—I’ve got Dany in a particular situation. I’ve just got to worry about how does this scene resolve? How do I end this chapter? How do I phrase this sentence?”

Finally, when George released the Mercy chapter, he talked a little about his progress, saying:

So far, I have not done anywhere near as much rewriting on WINDS... but of course, it is not done yet.

Fans took this as a qualitative sign of George’s progress back in 2014. The problem was quantitative. Information about how much of The Winds of Winter was done by 2014 is sparse. However, at a November 2014 charity drive for the Wild Wolf Sanctuary, George off-handedly said:

"I'm still in the middle of [The Winds of Winter], so it'll be some time before I write the scenes in which they die."

Provided that George wasn’t using “the middle of the book” colloquially, this meant that Winds was roughly halfway complete by November 2014, or had 750 finalized manuscript pages for TWOW. George had picked up his pace in writing TWOW, but he still had a long way to go to reach the finish line -- an additional ~750 manuscript pages.

The Deep Breath Before the Plunge:

Before we venture into theory territory, we’re going to take a tactical pause and assess all of the known chapters George completed for The Winds of Winter by late 2014.

Aeron Greyjoy: 1 Chapter
Asha Greyjoy: 1 Chapter
Areo Hotah: 1 Chapter
Arianne Martell: 2 Chapters
Arya Stark: 3-6 Chapters
Barristan Selmy: 2 Chapters
Bran Stark: 1 Chapter
Daenerys Targaryen: 3 Chapters
Prologue: 1 Chapter
Sansa Stark: 1 Chapter
Theon Greyjoy: 1 Chapter
Tyrion Lannister: 2 Chapters
Victarion Greyjoy: 1 Chapter

In total, that’s 19-23 completed chapters that we can be sure existed. If George was truly halfway done on Winds by 2014, that tacks on an additional ~19 chapters to bring us up to 38-42 chapters/750 manuscript pages completed for Winds by late 2014. For comparative purposes: A Storm of Swords was 1521 manuscript pages/82 chapters while ADWD was 1510 manuscript pages/72 chapters. What this means is that in a best-case scenario, George had to write or finalize an additional ~30 chapters/750 manuscript pages for the book to get to the finish line: a daunting task!
So, then why in early 2015 (four months after he said he was “in the middle”) did George RR Martin tell Entertainment Weekly that he could get the book out before Game of Thrones, Season 6?:

Having The Winds of Winter published before season 6 of Thrones airs next spring “has been important to me all along,” says the best-selling New Mexico author. “I wish it was out now. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic about how quickly I can finish. But I canceled two convention appearances, I’m turning down a lot more interviews—anything I can do to clear my decks and get this done.”

This interview was conducted in April 2015, and given what Martin later said about his publishing house setting an initial deadline of October 2015 to release the book, George thought he only had six months of work to do before the book would be done.
And that’s why I think George’s optimism about getting the book done by October 2015 was sourced to what he had already written, rather than what he had left to write. In that, I now believe George finished major storylines for The Winds of Winter by late 2014/early 2015.

The Completed Battles

Among the known completed chapters for Winds, one thing that stands out is how many of the chapters dealt with the Battle of Meereen and the Battle of Ice. From our best information, four battle chapters were removed from Dance, and George wrote at least three additional battle chapters between 2012-2014.
Let’s move into theory ground: in looking at the available evidence, it appears that when George got back to writing The Winds of Winter, he picked up where he left off: in Meereen. Completing Barristan’s second chapter in 2012 and then Tyrion’s second chapter in 2013 indicates that George’s initial forays into Winds were Meereenese-centric. But after 2013, we don’t hear about George working on Meereen.
Over to the Battle of Ice. The Asha fragment reads like the opening moves of the Battle of Ice, chronologically occurring almost immediately after the Theon sample chapter where Stannis tells Justin Massey:

“I want you gone before midday, ser. Lord Bolton could be on us any moment, and it is imperative that the banker return to Braavos. You shall accompany him across the narrow sea.”

To get speculative, it reads like George hadn’t written anything about the Battle of Ice between the Theon Winds chapter and the Asha chapter he was working on in June 2014. Yet we know that George had written additional Theon, Asha and Victarion Winds chapters by 2017.
All of this leads me to think that by the end of 2014, George had finished the Battle of Meereen, and I think it’s possible he completed the Battle of Ice as well.
That’s two major plot-points possibly complete by the end of 2014. Still, even with those story points hypothetically completed, George had only finished story arcs originally intended for ADWD.
And that’s why he wasn’t just done with the battles by 2014. He might have completed far more than that. Entire POV characters.

Daenerys Targaryen the Complete

Let’s start with an uncontroversial statement: By 2014, I believe that George RR Martin had completed what he thought was all of Daenerys Targaryen’s chapters for The Winds of Winter.
Kindly drop the rocks that have suddenly materialized in your hands. I know that is a controversial theory. It was a joke! For this particular hypothesis that George had all of Dany’s chapters done by 2014, I started with the problem of “How the fuck did George think he could finish Winds by 2015 given how little of the book seemed to be done by that point? And then my research took me to everything we knew about Daenerys in Winds and then by accident, I stumbled on the split between Feast and Dance.
That accidental stumbling led to a whole essay on this topic. In that essay, I talked about how George believed he had Daenerys' and Tyrion’s ADWD story arcs complete before he split AFFC/ADWD into two separate books. This, along with the started-yet-incomplete Jon, Davos, Arya, Asha arcs, led to his optimism that ADWD would be finished by 2006.
I think something similar happened with The Winds of Winter. I think George had completed Daenerys Targaryen’s arc (and another arc I’ll unpack in the next section) by 2014. Is there evidence for this wild-ass theory? Perhaps!
In June 2014, George RR Martin was interviewed by James Hibberd and teased The Winds of Winter, saying:

“Well, Tyrion and Dany will intersect, in a way, but for much of the book they’re still apart,” he says. “They both have quite large roles to play here. Tyrion has decided that he actually would like to live, for one thing, which he wasn’t entirely sure of during the last book, and he’s now working toward that end—if he can survive the battle that’s breaking out all around him. And Dany has embraced her heritage as a Targaryen and embraced the Targaryen words. So they’re both coming home.”

For much of the book, they’re still apart. That’s a fascinating statement! Why? Because it might imply that George had written Dany’s story to its near or actual endpoint!
No, I don’t think this means that George was nearly complete on all of his story arcs. Just Dany's (and the other one). And that tracks with his non-linear writing style whereby he writes from one POV - until he runs out of steam before switching to a separate POV. As George talked about in that interview, sometimes, he gets way ahead on certain POV characters, and even has them completed well in advance of other POV characters.
In that vein, there’s something else odd about Daenerys. After 2014, we don’t hear about George working on a Daenerys chapter … at all. This radio silence on Dany in TWOW lines up with George writing Dany’s ADWD chapters. In 2003, he told a fan that Dany’s ADWD chapters were almost wrapped up -- eight years before he published them. George did write a bit more about Dany after 2003 and after the split of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, but the last we hear about him writing Dany chapters for ADWD was in 2008 -- three years before the book was published.
However, to be fair, in 2018, George had one more mention of Dany within the context of her aforementioned intersection with Tyrion, telling Entertainment Weekly:

In Winds, I have like 10 different novels and I’m juggling the timeline — here’s what’s happening to Tyrion, here’s what’s happening to Dany, and how they intersect. That’s far more complicated.

So, the counterargument is that what George was saying about Dany and Tyrion's intersection back in 2014 was aspirational. He planned for the two to intersect late in The Winds of Winter, but he had not written that intersection. And perhaps by 2018, he was still struggling with timing Dany and Tyrion’s intersection.
Here’s a counter-counterargument: George wrote one version of Daenerys and Tyrion intersecting by 2014, was initially satisfied with it, but in the years since, he grew dissatisfied and experimented with the event occurring at different narrative junctures in the Winds -- hence the “I’m juggling the timeline” wording.
At the very least, George juggling the timeline of character intersections by writing multiple versions of it is something George has done in the past. Back in ADWD, he reported writing three versions of Dany and Quentyn’s intersection, timing that to occur at different junctures in the story to see which one was the most narratively-satisfying.
Now, before I leave you all convinced that George had written all of Dany’s TWOW chapters by 2014/2015, there is a good counterargument. About a month ago, I sent the sketch of this theory to feldman10, and he responded by saying:

What I question given his writing style is how GRRM could have “finished” Dany years in advance if she is regularly intersecting with other POVs. For instance, if Barristan, Vic, and Tyrion do reunite with Dany at some point in TWOW (as I certainly hope they do!), I would expect GRRM would begin writing them as all one “story” (unless they split up again). That’s even more important if Dany reaches Westeros and starts interacting with the Young Griff team.
That's really because of the gardening approach. Given that writing style, how could GRRM possibly write Dany’s interactions and conflicts with those other characters without having written them all up to the same point, and therefore having decided what they’ve all experienced, where they’re all coming from, and what their respective gardens have produced?

These are all excellent points by Adam, and I appreciate the counterpoint and have copied and pasted it here with his permission.
And if you thought the “Dany is wrapped” theory is way too speculative, you’re going to love (hate) the next part of the theory.

The Dances of the Dragons

Remember how we talked about George’s progress on The World of Ice and Fire? Let’s bring it home here. Part of the reason why I initially brought up the worldbook is how it's tied into the plotting of The Winds of Winter. It’s almost as if George used his imaginary history as a set of guideposts for The Winds of Winter. But perhaps the imaginary history is more than a guide for the novel.
The theory: What I think happened was that George parallel-wrote the dance of the dragons alongside of his Young Griff story arc in The Winds of Winter.
Recall that in 2010, George had written two Arianne chapters that he cut to The Winds of Winter. Also recall that he had a partially-written complementary chapter and envisioned a third unwritten Arianne chapter. We skipped over the possible identity of that partially written complementary chapter, but here, we’ll talk about it. It’s very likely a Jon Connington chapter as he’s in a prime position to bridge events from the end of TWOW, Arianne II (Arianne goes to Storm’s End) to whatever George is planning for Arianne III.
Right after George published A Dance with Dragons, though, he decided to write another chapter in the Stormlands as werthead reported in August 2011:

As speculated by many, two large battles will take place early on, a ‘battle of ice’ (presumably at Winterfell) and a ‘battle of fire’ (presumably at Meereen). A third battle has been added, namely the assault on Storm’s End by Jon Connington’s forces. Originally this was going to happen off-page, but GRRM decided it really should be shown. Possibly because we’ve seen Storm’s End under siege forever and it might be cool to finally see the place under full-scale assault.

This was another spot where George was expanding Aegon VI’s story, gardening his way towards more satisfactory storytelling vis-à-vis a newly-imagined Jon Connington chapter. It also shows us that George was very much in the mindset of thinking through Young Griff’s storyline just a few months after the publication of ADWD.
And then similar to Daenerys, 2011 was the last time we heard about George writing one of our primary eyes on Young Griff in TWOW. Like the absence of Dany chapters, that is odd. With Dany, George played mostly coy with whether Dany would have chapters, because of the cliffhanger he left Dany on in at the end of her ADWD arc. But with Arianne Martell and Jon Connington, we already knew that Arianne would return as a POV, and George had all-but-confirmed that JonCon would return.
And yet, July 2010 is the last time GRRM talked about writing Arianne’s TWOW chapters while August 2011 is the last time we hear about George’s plan to write a Jon Connington chapter. But in the years immediately following ADWD’s publication, we have a whole body of imaginary history work which reads like signposts for where George was going to take Aegon VI and Daenerys’ story.
Here comes the speculation: I think the whole time George was writing a detailed account of the dance of the dragons for the worldbook, he parallel wrote Young Griff’s story arc in the form of Arianne and Jon Connington’s Winds chapters.
We know that George didn’t set Winds aside while he worked on The World of Ice and Fire as there are Winds chapters we know he was writing in the 2012-2014 timeframe. Logically, it makes sense that George stayed within the same sphere of creative inspiration as he developed the imaginary history in parallel with developing Young Griff's story.
There’s a paragraph which first appeared in The Princess and the Queen (an abridged version of the dance of the dragons) which has always struck me as explicit foreshadowing for Young Griff's story in TWOW. It's this one:

Every visible symbol of legitimacy belonged to Aegon. He sat the Iron Throne. He lived in the Red Keep. He wore the Conquerer’s crown, wielded the Conquerer’s sword, and had been anointed by a septon of the Faith before the eyes of tens of thousands. Grand Maester Orwyle sat in his councils, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard had placed the crown upon his princely head. And he was male, which in the eyes of many made him the rightful king, his half sister the usurper.

This paragraph is emblematic of something at work with the entirety of the dance of the dragons that George wrote: namely, that the entire historical conflict and civil war reads as backdrop for Young Griff/Aegon VI’s rise in The Winds of Winter and downfall in A Dream of Spring.
Is it so implausible, then, that GRRM was switching back and forth between writing Arianne and JonCon chapters while writing what became known as "The Dying of the Dragons" section of the worldbook? (Maybe, lol)

What Went Wrong

In 2005, GRRM predicted that ADWD would be published in 2006, sourcing this to how much Dany and Tyrion material was already done. If George had completed all the Dany, JonCon and Arianne chapters by April 2015, GRRM had good reason to believe he could get Winds out in six months. All he had to do was complete the POV arcs for characters supporting Young Griff and Dany’s stories as well as the “bottle storylines” and probably complete one more major story arc.
So, what went wrong?
In his New Year 2016 Winds post, George talked generally about the issues he had after his bout of optimism in 2015, saying things like:

Yes, there's a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters. (Those 'no pages done' reports were insane, the usual garbage internet journalism that I have learned to despise). But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.) Chapters still to write, of course... but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures.

Later in the post, he talked about a similar angle, saying:

Even as late as my birthday and our big Emmy win, I still thought I could do it... but the days and weeks flew by faster than the pile of pages grew, and (as I often do) I grew unhappy with some of the choices I'd made and began to revise...

This is George’s gardening style at work: restructuring/rewriting/revising what he considered to be substandard writing. That’s part of the reason George failed to meet his October and then December 2015 deadlines.
But I think there’s a missing piece -- one which has only become apparent in George’s recent posts about the POV characters he’s reported working on in June, August and November 2020: the Dany/Young Griff supporting POV characters and the bottle arcs.
Back in 2005, George was optimistic that he could finish ADWD by 2006, because he merely had to finish Jon’s story along with cast of characters supporting Jon/Dany’s storylines. But what delayed ADWD was the supporting cast of characters – especially in Dany’s storyline as it related to the Meereenese Knot. George struggled for years to satisfactorily write a twisting path of POV characters heading toward – or away – from Meereen, and that, more than anything, delayed that book’s publication.
Turning back to Winds: In recent months, George has indicated that he was writing/visiting the following POVs:

Tyrion Lannister
Barristan Selmy
Areo Hotah
Asha Greyjoy
Cersei Lannister
Arya Stark
Victarion Greyjoy
Melisandre of Asshai
Samwell Tarly

The POV characters listed here are ones likely to be found in support of Dany’s arc (Victarion, Barristan, Tyrion), in Young Griff’s orbit (Cersei and arguably Areo) or bottle arcs -- ones temporarily independent from the rest of the story (Samwell and Arya).
So, in addition to the rewriting/revising/restructuring, I’d argue that what belayed George’s optimism of publishing Winds in 2016 was the supporting cast of POV characters. Those troubles extended beyond 2015 given that George was still working on these POV characters in 2020.

Conclusion (2017-2021)

In the years since 2016, George has optimistically predicted that he'd finish TWOW in 2017. But six months later, GRRM discounted 2017 and thought 2018 was possible. But by mid-2018, he admitted that Winds wasn't coming in 2018. Then in 2019, tongue-in-cheek said New Zealand could imprison him there if he did not have TWOW in hand by Worldcon 2020.
Unfortunately, data on what GRRM was working on is spare, but I'll give it a shot. Given that George talked about how important Lady Stoneheart's story is for TWOW in 2017, my theory is that GRRM made progress on Jaime and Brienne's chapters in 2017.
Meanwhile, you may have noticed that there's another POV character I haven't mentioned: Jon Snow. Will Jon have chapters in TWOW? Are they written? Yes. Perhaps some of his optimism in 2019 is sourced to him making progress on Jon Snow, perhaps even completing his POV arc.
In his last specific update on Winds (As of January 2021), George sounded optimistic once again, :

No, sorry, still not done, but I do inch closer. It is a big big book. I try not to dwell on that too much. I write a chapter at a time, a page at a time, a sentence at a time, a word at a time. It is the only way.

At the beating heart of all of this work that George RR Martin has put into The Winds of Winter is a desire to create a book that satisfies and captivates us. I believe this book will come, and when it does, all of the bleeding into the keyboard will have been worth it.

Jaylen Brown is a superstar

Jaylen’s Extraordinary Growth
Under The Radar:
The underappreciation of Jaylen Brown has gotten out of control. Despite his impressive playoff run and exceptional 2-way play last season, as well as his position at #8 on ppg scoring this year, he still lives in Jayson Tatum’s shadow in the eyes of many basketball talking heads and analysts. I’m here to tell you not only why this lack of recognition is unfair, but why he is the best player on the Celtics and will make an All NBA 1st or 2nd Team this year.
Unprecedented Improvement:
What Jaylen Brown has done on the basketball court and in the film room has been truly unbelievable. The way he has continued to go back to the drawing board in the offseason and figure out what he needs to get better at has been unique and special. When he came out of college, he was extremely raw. To be quite honest, he had a bad feel for the game and was pretty unskilled; all he really brought to the team was energy on the defensive end and a high flying finish here and there. He wasn’t reliable shooting the ball from anywhere on the court and he had a problem finishing at the rim. In only about 4 years, he has turned himself into a polished offensive player to add to his defensive prowess, and has become, I will argue, one of the top 10 players in the NBA.
Ball Handling and “Feel”:
Jaylen came into the league as a work in progress. On drives to the hoop he often lost the ball and got pushed off his line - he had a hard time controlling his body and the ball which made it tough for him to make decisive and efficient decisions. Ball handling seemed to be the first thing that Jaylen realized he needed to improve upon to be playable in this league. He greatly improved this area of his game during and after his first two seasons, which really allowed him to make a jump. When you’re able to handle the ball, the game slows down for you. You spend less time focusing on controlling the ball and handling pressure and more time with your eyes up making reads. He started to fumble the ball less and became more composed and poised with the ball in his hands. It’s really incredible to notice the differences in Jaylen’s game from his rookie season to the next couple years, specifically in the “feel for the game” category. If a player does make a significant jump in this category (which is incredibly tough), it rarely happens in a year; players do not just wake up one day and understand how to make reads at NBA level quickness with NBA athletes in your face. It normally takes years and years of film breakdown and experience to improve upon things like shot selection and pace (by pace I mean the pace at which the player plays; better players are often able to play “quick without hurrying” by changing speeds at the right moments, not taking aimless dribbles, and using their bodies effectively). For Jaylen Brown, it took an offseason. This season, Jaylen requires the fewest dribbles of any guard and the 4th fewest touches of any player averaging more than 20 points to get his numbers. This is a testament, I believe, to his improved ball handling and feel. His decision making is at an elite level and it shows in those touches and dribbles numbers. It might be counterintuitive, but the better ball handler you are, the fewer dribbles and moves you need to get an opening to the hoop.
Finishing Above, Below, and Around the Rim:
Jaylen began exclusively as a high flyer who could finish above the rim in transition but rarely in other situations. He had a poor left hand and, quite frankly, really poor touch around the rim. He shot 48% on layups his rookie season - that’s really, really bad. This is common for young, explosive athletes though. Oftentimes they don’t have to finish with too much contact or go to their weak hand earlier in their careers because they can simply jump over the defenders they play against - of course it’s a rude awakening for these players when they are finally playing with athletes who are as talented and athletic as them. But with his newfound ball handling ability and increased feel and awareness, Jaylen was able to improve his finishing drastically and adjust well to the heightened athleticism of the NBA. He quickly realized that he would have to rely on more than just his athletic ability and was going to have to develop some finesse in his game. And BOY did he develop some finesse. Jaylen increased his finishing percentage to 54%, 55%, and 62% (2020-2021 season) in the following seasons. This is especially impressive given the expanded pressure he faced nightly as he became more of a focal point of the Celtics offense. He truly looks like a different player around the rim than he used to. He’s able to make high, contested finishes off the glass with both hands, something he could rarely do in the beginning of his career with EITHER hand. He gets to two feet a lot more and seems a lot more in control of his body when he gets into the lane. It seems like his touch has improved significantly, too, which is a fairly unique skill to develop, especially this late in one’s career; it’s usually viewed as more of a natural ability. Jaylen didn’t stop his development there, though. Next, he set his mind on becoming an elite shooter.
Extending his touch beyond the key:
Once Jaylen was able to break people down and get to the hoop, the next logical step for him was to work on his shooting, specifically his 3 point shot. It’s where the league is trending and it’s an extremely sought after skill in today’s pace and space game. In 2018-2019, JB shot 34% from three. He followed that up by shooting 38% the next season and is currently shooting 44% this year. I noticed a difference in the bubble last season; he just seemed like he had an extra level of confidence in his 3 point shot. He was taking more threes in transition and above the break, and his success allowed him to continue to let it fly. This season, Brown is number 1 in the NBA in pull up jump shot percentage at 50% (Min 5 pull up FGA per game and at least 20 MPG). He’s been impossible to stop in the mid range, simply rising over defenders with his athletic ability and stroking it at the top of his jump. He’s even extended his pull up range to three this season. There’s not much more to be said than the fact that Jaylen got in the gym and worked tirelessly on his shot. His pull up mid range, his standstill three, pull up three, you name it. Jaylen worked on it and got better at it. The development is happening before our eyes at an unprecedented pace, and not nearly enough are talking about it.
The Intangibles:
Jaylen has what it takes to be a star in this league. It’s been well noted how intelligent he is, and I think that’s a big reason why we’ve seen this rapid development. He’s both smart enough to figure out what his deficiencies are and address them in a logical and effective way, and dedicated enough to put the hours in required to fix them. This is what separates good players from great players in this league. The good players might be content with scoring 18ppg and continuing their slow, gradual development; great players, on the other hand, completely transform their games in the offseason and add something totally new. Go watch the film of LeBron and how teams defended him in his early seasons. Teams would give him a step or two, essentially allowing him barely-contested pull up jump shots, both from inside the arc and from three. Now, LeBron is a consistent 3 point shooter who is able to hit step back, contested threes with some reliability. He’s a different player than he was earlier in his career; what he’s lost in athletic ability or burst he has made up for in his shooting, which has allowed him to prolong his career unlike anyone else. Joel Embiid has done something similar - he’s brought his game outside the perimeter and it has changed the way he operates in the post. He didn’t allow himself to be put into the box of “post player”, and he’s changing the way we view big men because of it. I see Jaylen Brown’s development fitting into this category. He will attack the offseason with vengeance and a need to improve at a faster rate than his fellow stars. Furthermore, he will strive to show the entire league that he’s not done evolving yet. There’s something else, though, that I find incredibly impressive about Brown. He has been playing in Jayson Tatum’s shadow for essentially his entire time in Boston, and it has seemingly not influenced him one bit. Tatum gets most of the credit for the C’s success and is by far the most talked about player on the team. Unlike many other star players in this league, JB hasn’t let this unfair treatment affect him, and I think that’s a sign of his humility and maturity. For such a young player, this is a level of professionalism we don’t often see, and it’s a testament to how special of a player and person Jaylen is.
Jaylen The Facilitator:
Jaylen’s development is far from over. Just as people have come to understand who Brown is as a player - an elite 2 way player who can break you down with the dribble and score at all three levels - is exactly when Jaylen will go back to the drawing board and add a completely new part to his game. He’s already shown flashes of brilliance as a playmaker; he’s made some beautiful lob passes and pocket passes to Theis and Rob Williams out of the pick and roll, and he’s gotten a lot more comfortable at making reads in delayed transition situations (something he struggled with early in his career). This is the definite logical next step for Jaylen in his development, and I expect him to approach it as such. In fact, I expect Jaylen to address it quite quickly. The C’s have clearly not gotten enough production from their role players and bench this season, and I think Brown will take it upon himself to get them more involved. Given how quickly the other developments in his game have been, I could imagine him becoming an improved facilitator this season. Watch out for it… this is your warning NBA.

You can read more, and see the full post, here: https://analyticcity.com/blogs/help-side-analytics/jaylen-s-extraordinary-growth

Dynasty 2020 Rookie Stock Watch - **Final 2020 Class Rankings**

Welp, there it is. We're officially out of football until the "kinda combines" and draft. Hopefully by the time camps and preseason comes around, we start to see glimpses of a post(ish?) Covid-19 landscape - both personally and also in the sportsverse.
I've really tried to put in a lot of work through the season adjusting my thoughts on rookies - on the fly - based on adding to the sample. The reactions and style of my methodology has clear strengths and weaknesses. No better were the weaknesses illustrated than overreacting to JT's abysmal stretch midseason. On the flipside, my "I'm worried about Reagor" (quite earlier than most!) and "The Bell signing is going to crush CEH for at least this year" were valid concerns. And I definitely was one of the earlier guys to start hyping Tee Higgins once he showed some signs. That said - my methodology is mostly a barometer of perceived value, and the combination of an extremely talented 2020 Draft Class as well as a Covid-19 impacted year probably made for a very non-typical year as far as Rookie evaluation goes.
Before the season started, I did a mildly popular [Dynasty 2020 Rookie Stock Watch] (and at the request of the community, I did weekly updates, and will continue doing this next year! In case you missed previous weeks, you can find week 1 here, week 2 here, week 3 here, week 4 here, week 5 here, week 6 here, week 7 here. week 8 here, week 9 here, week 10 here, week 11 here, week 12 here, week 13 here, week 14 here, week 15 here, and week 16 here.
As this is my last "risers and fallers" of the 2020 class, my disclaimers are a LITTLE different and I'd encourage you to read them before diving in.

I consider where I would now draft this player if we were to redo a 1QB rookie draft NOW, after a full season is in the books. Since higher picks are SO MUCH MORE VALUABLE, having a guy drop from 1.01 to 1.07 is a much bigger value loss than if a guy drops from 2.12 to 4.05. Also baked into my decisions of who is a riser and faller is how I feel the player looks to fit into future dynasty start up rankings. In some cases, a player ranked #1 and a player ranked #4 could feel miles apart on a rookie ranking, but I very well might consider them just as close (3 spots difference) in a full startup as well!
When I try to determine if a player has risen or fallen, I like to weigh what some of the perceptions were on that player's upside, and if any of those perceptions appear to no longer be true or at least need to be tempered.
We absolutely need to weigh in what the rookie did with the opportunities (or lack thereof) in their opening season. A huge factor in the final valuation of the 2020 rookies is this question: "What will they be worth before the 2021 season?" - and that question is highly impacted by volume and opportunity (and how they did with it!) in year 1.
Just because I have someone as a riser or faller doesn't mean I think you should buy/sell them at bad value. It's the same concept as stocks - if you believe in the fundamentals of the company you invested in, you don't sell off yet. 2020 was a WEIRD year. I expect we will have more "2nd year breakouts" than normal as a result. Similarly, after a stock skyrockets is not usually the best time to buy in - you'd want to wait for a brief regression before that. You should **always** make a value play, not merely selling or buying at cost.
Like Matthew Berry has said - just because a guy is on my faller list doesn't mean I like them less than a guy on my riser list. This is just my evaluation of their value relative to where it was before this season. These rankings are an attempt to really lock in where I feel the player will rank on a 2021 Startup draft compared to other rookies.

With that out of the way, let's dive in!

Biggest 2020 Season risers:

James Robinson. There really can be no answer other than JRob for the biggest riser of the season. In most drafts, he was not taken in the first 5 rounds. And if he was, it was still a VERY late flyer - and we've heard many stories of him being taken and cut and picked up by someone else. Wherever you have James Robinson now - he was virtually nothing more than "a very deep sleeper blip who might take over in a year when Fournette is gone". Well, that takeover happened, and it happened a year early. Robinson won a lot of people money this year, even as he disappeared by season end - because he still got you to the dance. For that reason, Robinson wins the title as the absolute biggest riser of the year.
Antonio Gibson. Depending on when you drafted (I drafted earlyish June) Gibson was a late 2nd/early 3rd. Once news started breaking regarding Guice (still makes me yikes when I type his name!) and Peterson was cut, Gibson climbed charts quickly. His profile was that of an extremely talented back with a TINY sample size running the ball. Now that sample size is a bit bigger, and we like what we see. He has all the makings of a guy who could be an RB1 type for the next few years, and big play potential to break open any touch. We're counting on an uptick in passing game usage in 2021, and crossing our fingers for some improvement at the QB position.
Jonathan Taylor. How does JT making the biggest riser list when he was already high to start the year? **Perceived startup value**. At this point, JT is a 1st half of the 1st round guy in tons of Dynasty Startups. That's a huge spike from where he was at the start of the year. You're looking at an RB that in many eyes is worth more than **every single WR playing football right now**. I'm not saying that's the precisely correct valuation for a player I embarrassingly was worried about for a few weeks... but it's where he's valued on a lot of charts now. So take it for what it is - Taylor is the single most valuable piece of the 2020 Draft Class.
Justin Jefferson. Similar narrative to Taylor - and you could make the case that I should swap these two guys, considering JT was a top 2 pick and JJeff was around 1.08-1.10. Not going to argue that really. Let's just say JJeff vaulted to the top of the WR class with a record-breaking year and is now the clear-cut 1 of a class where he started as the 3 or 4 on most lists. Heck - Jefferson's explosion has impacted the 2021 class valuations (Chase, anyone?) and has easily put him as a Dynasty Startup top 5 WR type.
Tee Higgins. This guy was simply not making it as a 1st round pick in a LOT of 1QB rookie drafts. Now he sits pretty comfortably as WR3 or 4, depending on who you ask. A lot of questions we have about Lamb's 2021 production also echo for Higgins - and we desperately want both to be reunited with their gunslingers as soon as possible. But where fears existed of Higgins being a boom-or-bust player, those fears have been silenced. It's boom.

Honorable mentions: I would be remiss if I didn't mention the great rookie years of Aiyuk and Claypool - both guys are positioned well to be strong WRs for any roster going forward, and both have upside potential to be even more than the greatness they've already flashed. I'm not sleeping on them. In addition, Herbert had a stellar season and should be looked at as the clear QB1 of the 2020 class.

Biggest 2020 Season fallers:

Ke'Shawn Vaughn. Look! We're talking about Vaughn again! A guy who was going as early as 1.08 in 1QB now would likely not even be a top 3 round pick. He's the inverse James Robinson. Not much else to say. He did put out a few nice plays here and there, but ended the season as effectively the RB4 on the Bucs. That could change in the offseason though, so if you bought stocks in Vaughn, don't cut bait at this point when there's a chance he heads into 2021 as Tampa's RB2.
Jalen Reagor. Depending on who you ask, Reagor was being taken as high as WR3 in the 2020 class. Despite his mediocre final season in college, people were sold on his talent and the barren Eagle's WR room. Instead, Reagor battled injuries, terrible QB play, and even when he did play, he was frequently outshined by... Travis Fulgham and Greg Ward. Don't get me wrong, anyone who has watched a bit of Eagles Football (firstly, pity them!) can tell that Reagor is way more talented than JJAW. But it might not be enough. In a year where so many great players were taken, Reagor feels like a fringe WR2 type at best, going forward.
Henry Ruggs. Taken as a back-end Rookie 1st, Ruggs flashed early, got hurt, and then totally fell off the map. Lots to be concerned about here as he rarely looked like anything more than an extremely expensive decoy who needs to catch all 3 of his targets per game to have a chance at a fantasy stat line worth starting. His value is a bit sticky because you can't picture the Raiders giving up on their 1st round draft pick. However, we're now left hoping that something changes in his usage and attention in 2021. Hoping for change is not the position you want to be in for a fantasy asset.
Clyde Edwards-Helaire. First, I can't knock CEH's strong job in an otherwise abysmal KC performance in the Super Bowl. He was extremely efficient per touch, and was one of the few bright spots in the game. The problem? Despite averaging almost 8 yards a touch, CEH only managed 11 touches. The early sparks he showed fizzled once Bell was eligible to play, as did his snap share and touch share. As of now, his usage simply isn't trending anywhere that would make him a top 6 pick if we were re-drafting the 2020 class. That's a significant drop, and we've gotta have him on the list as a result. I worry that the 2021 KC offense will use him the same way they used him the second half of the 2020 season. If that's the case, he's a low end RB2/very strong flex/RB3.
Bryan Edwards. One of 2020's biggest hype darlings found himself barely playing after getting hurt early. A guy who peaked as going nearly in the 1st round would now likely be a middle 3rd if the class was redrafted. Between Edwards and Ruggs, the Raiders managed to be the only team with two players to show up on the list, and having them both be fallers is not an encouraging sign. My gut tells me ONE of them might turn it around, but even that is a coinflip at this point. As I said in my disclaimer - it's possible a non-Covid year will allow some of these guys to be late bloomers.

How I rank them right now
(in 1QB, but I will include where I would bump the QBs up to in 2QB)
Tier 1, all 3 pretty similar in value for me
01 Jonathan Taylor
02 Justin Jefferson
03 Cam Akers
04 D'Andre Swift
05 Antonio Gibson
Tier 1.5 (not a true break from tier 1, very close in value)
06 JK Dobbins
07 CeeDee Lamb
08 Tee Higgins
09 James Robinson
10 Clyde Edwards-Helaire
Tier 2
11 Brandon Aiyuk
12 Chase Claypool
13 Justin Herbert (1.01 in 2QB/SF)
Tier 3
14 Jerry Jeudy
15 Laviska Shenault
16 AJ Dillon
17 Michael Pittman Jr
18 Denzel Mims
19 Jalen Reagor
Tier 4
20 Darnell Mooney
21 Joe Burrow (1.02-1.05 in 2QB/SF)
22 Tua Tagovailoa (1.03-1.06 in 2QB/SF - but definitely behind Burrow)
23 Henry Ruggs III
24 Gabriel Davis
Tier 5
25 Zach Moss
26 Jalen Hurts (late 1st in 2QB/SF)
27 Bryan Edwards
28 KJ Hamler
29 Lynn Bowden Jr. (but he drops to mid 30's if he loses RB eligibility in 2021... or goes to jail!)
30 Van Jefferson
31 Donovan Peoples-Jones
32 Cole Kmet
Tier 6
33 Devin Duvernay
34 La'Mical Perine
35 Collin Johnson
36 Quintez Cephus
37 Ke'Shawn Vaughn
Tier 7
38 Darrynton Evans
39 Tyler Johnson
40 Harrison Bryant
41 Anthony McFarland Jr
42 Salvon Ahmed
43 Joshua Kelley
44 Deejay Dallas
45 Jordan Love (late 2nd in SF)
46 Antonio Gandy-Golden
47 Albert Okwuegbunam
48 Adam Trautman
Obligatory Kicker Shoutout:
49 Tyler Bass
50 Rodrigo Blankenship
Last words:
Thank you so much for the support and dialogue throughout the year. It's been a joy and blessing to write this and be a distraction from the world while you reply and praise/criticize me shoot-from-the-hip takes. After the NFL draft, I'll be ready to do it all again with the 2021 class. Now to find my way onto a vaccine list...
As always, I'll try to engaged with each and every reply. :)

February 12, 1934: Bill Russell was born. No one did more to ensure his team’s success & win championships. Russell won 11 NBA titles, 2 NCAA titles, and Olympic gold with his elite defense, athleticism, versatility, passing, rebounding, leadership, intelligence, clutch play, etc.

Here are some highlights of Russell and here are his career stats.
1) WINNING (Part 1): The Celtics were ho-hum right before Russell joined the team, pretty bad right after he retired, and even worse when he missed games during his career, but when he was there they were the most dominant title-winning franchise in sports history, which proves how ludicrous the “He was simply the best player on a loaded team” comment is. DETAILS: a) Boston won 2 total playoff series in the 10 seasons before Russell arrived, and both were short best-of-3 series (‘53, ‘55), b) Boston went 34-48 and missed the playoffs in ‘70 right after winning the title in Russell’s final season, and c) when he missed games during his career, the Celtics were 10-18 (.357), and 18 of those 28 missed games were against teams with losing records, so there was no excuse for a “loaded” squad to be so bad. When Russell missed 3 or more games in a row --meaning his teammates really had to adjust & couldn’t just “get up” for one game without their leader-- the Celtics were a pitiful 1-12. They were horrible without him. There is NO evidence the Celtics were any good when Russell wasn’t on the floor, rather a ton of evidence to the contrary.
2) WINNING (Part 2): It's been commonly reported that Russell was 21-0 in winner-take-all games, but that’s incorrect …. he was 22-0. If Russell's team played even with an opponent throughout a series or got to the same place in a tournament, Russell's team was ALWAYS going to pull it out in the end.

At USF, his '55 team was 5-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
At USF, his '56 team was 4-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
In the '56 Olympics, the US squad was 2-0 when it came to the winner-take-all Final 4 for gold after the group stage.
In the NBA, the Celtics were famously 10-0 in Games 7's throughout his career.
In the '66 playoffs, the Celtics won Game 5 in the best-of-5 series with Cincinnati (link).

3) WINNING (Part 3): The Celtics didn’t win the title only 2 times during Russell’s 13-year career, and both were (very likely) due to difficulties experienced by Russell.

In 1958, the Hawks topped Boston 4-2 in the Finals (winning by 2, 3, 2, & 1 points), during which Russell missed 2 games and played at far less than 100% with a horribly sprained ankle when he was available in the series. It’s safe to say Boston would have won that title with a healthy Russell.
In 1967, the aging Celtics, fresh off of 8 straight championships, lost to the loaded and younger Sixers in the ECF. This was the first year Russell was Boston’s player-coach, which is significant since he faced horrendously stressful & over-the-top racism as the first black coach in major US pro sports history. He played so much and so intensely (43.3 min/gm in the playoffs) that he often forgot to sub players which hurt his team. The next season, the Celtics were older & considered “done”, but he added a bench coach to handle subs, and they beat the favored defending champion Sixers in the playoffs, and then won the title. Then the “seriously, they’re done now” 1968-69 Celtics clawed their way into the Finals & beat the loaded West-Wilt-Baylor Lakers 4-3 in Russell’s final season. Two giant asterisks have to go beside the only two championships Boston didn’t win during Russell’s career.

4) WINNING (Part 4): Russell went to college at the University of San Francisco which had just suffered through 3 straight losing seasons before he joined the varsity team. He lead an unranked USF team to 2 consecutive NCAA titles during his junior and senior seasons, going 57-1 along the way, and he could have won a title all 3 seasons he played at USF if not for losing teammate K.C. Jones one game into their sophomore season; they smashed the #17 team 51-33 in game 1 with Jones who was hospitalized that night with a burst appendix, but Russell still lead them to a 14-7 record before going on to those 2 titles. Even at the college level, he could lead players who weren’t supposed to win to the ultimate heights; it wasn’t just in Boston. Also, he was the leading scorer, rebounder, and defender on the 1956 gold medal winning US Olympic team, which had an average margin of victory of +53, the highest ever (’92 Dream Team was +44).
5) CLUTCH: I already mentioned how dominant Russell’s teams were when it was all on the line, but I’ll add that his list of clutch games, series, and moments is ridiculously long, plus his ppg, rpg, and apg averages all rose in the playoffs. I’ll simply point out that he had the greatest Game 7 performance of all-time in the 1962 Finals, scoring 30 points & grabbing 40 rebounds to win the title in a super-tight Game 7. If you didn’t know, the NBA Finals MVP award is officially called the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award.
6) INTELLIGENCE: Part of what made Russell so unbelievable in big games and moments was that his IQ and level of manipulating opponents is unparalleled historically. On defense, he’d often intentionally “just miss” blocking a particular star player’s shots earlier in a contest, but late in the game when the opponent was lulled into thinking they could get a certain shot off over Russell that night, he’d extend the extra inch and come up with clutch blocks & defensive plays they weren't expecting. I’ve never heard of another player doing stuff like this. The stories about his IQ are legendary & numerous; here are some clips about his hoops IQ. At least watch the 3rd one on that list ("Some more mindgames") to see a short interview with him talking about manipulation of a star opponent in a way I’ve never heard another player articulate; he truly was thinking on a whole different level to create advantages for his team.
7) VERSATILITY: Bill Russell was so versatile on the floor because he trained and played all 5 positions on offense. The only other players in history who could maybe do this are Maurice Stokes and Giannis Antetokounmpo, but Russell’s results were quite different, plus immediate & sustained. His value to the Celtics’ offense is WAY underrated, especially on the fast break where he arguably had a bigger influence than Steve Nash did for the Suns’ fast break due to how well he could start, run, and finish it.
8) PASSING & OFFENSIVE INFLUENCE: Speaking of his versatility on the fast break, Bill Russell was a great passer, both in the half-court & full-court, and put up insane assist numbers for a center, especially in the playoffs (averaged >5 apg in the playoffs during 7 different seasons, far more times than any other center).
John Havlicek, in his 1977 autobiography, said the following about Russell's effect on Boston's offense when specifically discussing their first post-Russell season ('70):

"You couldn't begin to count the ways we missed [him]. People think about him in terms of defense and rebounding, but he had been the key to our offense. He made the best pass more than anyone I have ever played with. That mattered to people like Nelson, Howell, Siegfried, Sanders, and myself. None of us were one on one players ... Russell made us better offensive players. His ability as a passer, pick-setter, and general surmiser of offense has always been over-looked.”

I’ll add that Bill Russell finished 4th in MVP voting with an 18% vote share in 1969, his final season (‘69 MVP voting). I believe this is the best MVP finish by any player in their final season.
9) MORE ABOUT HIS OFFENSE: Fans often knock Russell for not being a high scorer. He played on a team that spread around the scoring, so very few Celtics ever had big scoring numbers, and he often had the best FG% on the team. Russell was top-5 in FG% in the league 4 times, while more recent dominant-scoring centers Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing all did it once. Russell understood what individual sacrifices to make and how to improve his teammates so they collectively would be winners, which is why he won the 1962 MVP (voting) over Wilt Chamberlain (his epic 50 ppg & 26 rpg season) and Oscar Robertson (his epic triple-double season). By the way, Russell holds the record for the most consecutive MVP awards (3), most consecutive top-2 MVP finishes (6), and has the 2nd most MVP’s of all-time (5). It was clear that Russell’s approach was far more valuable to his team’s success than that of other superstars with monster stats.
10) DEFENSIVE IMPACT: There is no hyperbole in saying Russell was unquestionably the most impactful defensive player ever. The Celtics consistently & regularly had the #1 defense in the NBA throughout his career, yet they were FAR worse before he joined the team, and they immediately dropped in the ‘70 season right after he retired. Here are Boston’s annual rankings in Defensive Rating, starting in the ‘54 season: 8, 8, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 8 (the highlighted parts represent Russell’s career). He had an overwhelmingly positive influence on the entire team’s defense to a degree we’ve never seen from any other player.
11) ATHLETICISM: Watching film of Russell, it’s clear he was extremely fast and active, elite even by today’s standards. He also possessed Olympic-level leaping ability (7th ranked high jumper in the world in 1956). For the record, he was measured as 6-ft-9-and-⅝ without shoes, taller than both Dwight Howard and Alonzo Mourning. This incredible athleticism is what allowed his defense to be a cross between Tim Duncan & Kevin Garnett, covering everything everywhere with phenomenal explosiveness, plus impeccable timing & decision-making.
12) LEADERSHIP: Bill Russell had the best combination of elite on-court impact on team synergy plus elite locker-room unity & positivity. Very few guys are even in the discussion of having this type of elite combo: Tim Duncan, Jerry West, Larry Bird …. not many more, especially when you also consider a player’s impact on his team’s defensive synergy.

best pick up lines 2020 video

Chat up lines – some people love them, some people hate them. But, there is something attractive about someone who can reel off a line, whether it’s silly or serious, with confidence. Which is why we’ve scoured the web for the best chat up lines ever and come up with the 70 you see below you. Pexels. Pick up lines are super corny, we know, but much like love, these lines are timeless.It’s also a fun way to snag the guy or girl of your dreams.It shows just how silly you are and is just about the cutest way to let someone know you’re interested. You’re always off to a good start if you can make them laugh. By using the pick up lines you can make them fall in love. There are different types of people with different moods and characteristics. So in our website , we are sharing some of the best pick up lines on various categories like Cheesy, Funny, Crazy, Dirty Romantic, Cute, Clever, Smooth, Pun, etc... Collection of Cringey Pick Up Lines for Guys & Girls Use these Cringey Pickup Lines to not to create an awkward situation and play safe ... Post date 07/05/2020; No Comments on Cringey Pick Up Lines; Best Cringey Pick Up Lines to get rid of creating awkward situations on the first meet. Dirty Pick Up Lines – Use with Caution! The best pick up line is clever. If you manage to pull that off, you will be successful even if your humor is a little bit dirtier. Funny pick up lines work well with a bit of humor because they show you’re joking and you’re well-intentioned. Last updated on September 22nd, 2020 at 05:40 pm. Are you looking for the best, cheesy, romantic cute pick up lines for girls and even some corny and a little dirty pick up lines?. Then you’re in the right place! Your pick up lines can set the tone for your next chats but you gotta be very careful not to use the right one at the wrong time or place. You have to create a connection with your match by breaking the ice and having an interesting conversation. The quickest way to do this is to use some opening line. We all know you didn’t read this article to just learn about pick-up lines so here’s that list of the best thing the internet (and my brain) have to offer us, enjoy. 150+ Best Pick Up Lines… It’s always hard to approach a cute girl. Whether she is your classmate, co-worker, your colleague or just the girl you saw often at a restaurant or bar, all you will need is some opening lines or pick up lines for girls that can impress her right away. 20 Best dating app pick-up lines for 2020. Want to stand out from the online dating crowd? You’re going to need to perfect the art of the pick-up line. Angela Serednicki May 12, 2020 It’s no secret that if you want to stand out on Bumble this summer, you’re going to need to step up your pickup-line game a bit. As we all adjust to this ... Smooth Pick Up Lines for Instagram or Tinder to impress someone over Text Use Smooth Pickup Lines to ask Girls/Boys out for a Date without being awkward

100+ Tinder Pick Up Lines (2020) - Funny But Works Most Times!

best pick up lines 2020

best pick up lines 2020 - win

Best pick up line I heard in 2020

59 Best SpongeBob Pick-up Lines (Quotes) [2020 ]

59 Best SpongeBob Pick-up Lines (Quotes) [2020 ]

69 Best Fruit Pick-up Lines for Guys (Food Conversation Starter) 💝 [2020 ]

69 Best Fortnite Pick Up Lines (Dirty) 💏 [2020]

200 Best Question Pick-up Lines for Guys 2020

50 Best Quirky Pick-up Lines 🤪 🤡 [2020 ]

What are some of the best pick up lines of 2020?

Best pick up line for 2020

[OC] Tua has actually had a fairly good rookie year, and the Dolphins should not draft a QB.

Social Influence, Tara Reade, Deplatforming, and /r/ChapoTrapHouse, Presented Through the Observations of a Former Poster

TWs under this line

Intro

Social Expectations

My Own Experience On Chapo Before I Was Really, Really, REALLY into it

My Breaking Point: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love their LARP

My Part In Perpetuating This

Digging Out

Deplatforming

Miscellaneous Examples Of Establishing Social Expectations

Fin

AMD Complete Stock Analysis & Price Target Prediction

AMD DD / Stock Analysis 🚀🚀🚀 [Technical, Fundamental & DCF] & $AMD Stock Forecast [Short & Long Term]🚀🚀🚀

"Mindmed Forecast/Fundamental Case" [BULLISH] {MMEDF}

(Spoilers Extended) The Optimist's Gambit: Why George RR Martin Always Thinks He's Closer Than He Actually Is, Part 2: THE WINDS OF WINTER

Intro

The Leftovers

Early Progress on TWOW (2012)

The Written World(book)

Winds Progress (2013)

The Locomotive Approaches (2014)

The Deep Breath Before the Plunge:

The Completed Battles

Daenerys Targaryen the Complete

The Dances of the Dragons

What Went Wrong

Conclusion (2017-2021)

Jaylen Brown is a superstar

Dynasty 2020 Rookie Stock Watch - **Final 2020 Class Rankings**

Biggest 2020 Season risers:

Biggest 2020 Season fallers:

February 12, 1934: Bill Russell was born. No one did more to ensure his team’s success & win championships. Russell won 11 NBA titles, 2 NCAA titles, and Olympic gold with his elite defense, athleticism, versatility, passing, rebounding, leadership, intelligence, clutch play, etc.

best pick up lines 2020 video

best pick up lines 2020 top

Dynasty 2020 Rookie Stock Watch - Final 2020 Class Rankings