In the modern world, who has the time to spend 5 continuous days in front of the TV? On top of that, if the match takes place in the subcontinent, then there is a good chance that it will end in a draw. I hardly ever watch test cricket. Apart from rare occasions such as the Ashes and Border-Gavaskar, I don't even bother about test cricket. And in my neighborhood, I have never seen anyone younger than 30 years old watching test cricket. For them it is not interesting enough. Now tell me what is the point in having a test series between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, or one between West Indies and South Africa?

Women's cricket is not like the men's game. On average, totals of 120-130 are enough to win the match. 160 is like huge, and I don't think that the Netherlands has any chance of chasing such a total. And they are struggling now. After 6.3 overs, Netherlands is struggling at 22/1. Anyway, I was expecting this result. On paper both the teams are of equal strength. But this time Ireland had the home advantage, and the Netherlands sent a very inexperienced side. Only one player is aged above 25 (Miranda Veringmeier) in the Dutch playing XI, and there are several teenagers.

These are the players who will join the squad in England - Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav and Abhimanyu Easwaran. Injured trio of Washington Sundar, Shubman Gill and Avesh Khan are excluded from the squad. It is interesting to note that Prithvi Shaw was added to the test squad, after his outburst against the selectors earlier this year (for dropping him from the playing XI in Australia). I would consider neither Prithvi, nor Shubman matured enough to represent India in tests. For the opening pair, I would still prefer Mayank Agarwal and Rohit Sharma.

PoS coins rank much lower when compared to the PoW cryptocurrencies, because they offer less safety. Also, these coins have a bias towards wealthy users, as the more coins you own, the more you can earn from staking. Chances of hacking and theft are much more present with PoS coins such as Cardano, when compared to proper cryptos such as Bitcoin. And this is exactly the reason why during the last 11 years, none of the PoS coins have managed to offer competition to BTC in terms of user base or acceptability.

That depends on the cost of living as well. In the developed nations, you can get a full meal for as little as $0.50. A rented apartment comes at $100 per month in the rural areas. Can you imagine anywhere in the EU or US having such a low cost of living? So I would say that earning $500 a week in the US is equivalent to earning $100 per week in India or Indonesia. And finally, you can ask everyone this question - would you prefer to be a poor individual living in the US, or an upper middle class individual living in India or Kenya? I am sure that 90%+ would opt for the first option.

There has been no official statement from Amazon regarding this. The media has quoted "anonymous" sources. What if the intention is to pump the prices for a limited duration, so that the whales can sell their coins at a profit? Let's not forget what happened with the Tesla adoption. Elon Musk made a few tweets, and the exchange rates rocketed to $62,000. And then he made the U-turn and the prices fell by more than 50%. So this time, I would be more cautious. Keep a close eye on the trade volumes. It will tell whether any manipulation is going on or not.

Right now Japan is at no.2 position, with 7 golds. UK depends heavily on athletes of immigrant origin for the track and field events. And last time, many of them had upset victories. Right now they are at the 4th position with 3 golds, behind US, Japan and China. Given the disappointing performance by China so far, does anyone think that Japan may be able to overtake them in the medals table? China has been on the downward spiral for the last 10 years or so, and for this edition also that seems to be the case.

If any of the stolen coins are received by charity organizations, then they should return them. You can't play Robinhood saying that the money was stolen from rich guys and then donated to poor people. Theft is a theft, irrespective of who commits it, and who receives it. It is a criminal offense and not just the coins should be returned, but the individuals responsible for the theft should be prosecuted as per the prevailing laws.

Recently in India, there was an incident similar to this. In the state of Punjab, a bunch of criminals vandalized a mobile signaling tower of Jio Telecommunications and burnt it down. They stole a diesel generator that was present there and then donated it to a gurudwara. The guys at the gurudwara refused to hand it back, saying that they are a religious body and can't return the donations.

I checked some of the news portals to know what is now the mood in El Salvador and they are flooded with anti-Bitcoin articles. It is not surprising, since Bitcoin is now officially a competitor to the US Dollar in that country. There have been a few protests from people with vested interests, but I don't think that we need to give much importance to them. These protests will gradually subside as the exchange prices rise. Anyway no one really expects that everything will be very smooth. The road ahead will be full of obstacles.

Already the US has equaled China in terms of gold, as both are having 6 golds each. China is slightly ahead in terms of total number of medals (15 vs 13). The biggest disappointment so far has been Russia. Right now they are at the 7th position. Looks like the inability to compete under the Russian flag and anthem had a negative impact on the Russian athletes.

One of the golds that US picked up today came from Men's 4x100m freestyle relay swimming, where they were the favorites. A surprise gold came in Women's individual foil, where Lee Kiefer made an upset victory. Another surprise win for US was the gold in Taekwondo (Women's 57kg), where once again the US athlete defeated a Russian opponent.

The list doesn't make any sense. The cost of production of crude oil in Saudi Arabia is only around $9 per barrel (that includes transporting the crude to refineries). For Russia it costs around $30 to produce one barrel of crude from the onshore deposits (including transport). For the arctic reserves, the production cost excluding transport is $120 per barrel. So it is not right to group all the deposits together. It may give an impression that Venezuela will benefit the most in future, but the cost of production there is manytimes what they have in Saudi Arabia.

2011 was the year when Wikileaks started accepting Bitcoin. There was widespread coverage in mainstream media (although the portrayal of Bitcoin was mostly negative). The hype lasted for 1-2 months and helped the Bitcoin exchange rates to jump from $3 per coin to around $30 per coin. But from what I have heard, the Winklevii accumulated most of their BTC in 2012 and 2013, and not in 2011. Their purchase was not made in one go, but spread out over many months. So the purchase price also varies a lot, depending on the date.

In the next 3-4 years, many of the senior players including Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ishant Sharma are going to retire. That makes me a bit worried about the future, as I don't believe that any of the younger players have shown the maturity to replace these seniors. Perhaps with the exception of Shreyas Iyer, none of them has shown the ability to dig in and build partnerships. And we still badly lack a pace bowling all rounder. Shardul comes close, but his batting skills need to improve.

I guess the European nations are better prepared for this winter, because almost half of the population has been fully vaccinated. I am more worried about the countries in the northern hemisphere where the vaccination rate has been low - such as India and Russia. With the entry of more contagious strains of the virus, this winter is going to be disastrous for these countries. The trick is to vaccinate as many as possible, before the winter sets in. And in this regard, India is moving in the right direction, while Russia is not.

Can't agree with this assumption. Because only one variant has been reported from countries that have achieved a good vaccination coverage (Kent variant, from the United Kingdom). No variants have been reported from the EU, US or China, where the maximum doses of the vaccine has been administered. Maximum number of mutant strains have been reported from Brazil, India, South Africa and Colombia, where the vaccination coverage is lower than the global average (although Brazil has significantly increased it's vaccination rate over the last 1-2 months).

The Cuban American community is politically very important and most of them are descendant from the elite class who had to flee Cuba when Fidel Castro seized power from Fulgencio Batista. They support the US sanctions, because these people lost all of their property and business when Castro implemented nationalization in 1959. Barack Obama tried to remove some of the embargoes and that cost the Democrats the state of Florida in 2016 (and probably again in 2020). If Biden removes the sanctions, then the Dems can say good bye to Florida for the next 50 years.

^^^^ I didn't knew that damaadji's contract is about to end. And the signal from the BCCI was quite clear, when they sent Rahul Dravid as the coach for the India team on Sri Lanka tour. But I am afraid that a soft-spoken guy like Dravid may not be able to adjust himself with the likes of Kohli, Rohit and Pant. Kohli is just the polar opposite of what Dravid is. The former is known as an aggressive player, and even as a bully. While the latter is without an argument regarded as one of the gentleman to have played the game at international level.

I don't understand this "HOLD for a few months" strategy. If you want to keep the coin only for a couple of months, then we don't call it as HODL. We would rather call it as short-term purchase. And the newly listed coins are best for this purpose, as the established coins don't show a lot of change in 2-3 months normally. But then, investing in the new coins is like a lottery. There is a high level of risk, and from what I have seen a majority of these coins undergo corrections after they get listed. It will be best to purchase when the prices are at the bottom.

Personally I find it odd that the government has to provide the vaccines for free, and at the same time convince the population with offers such as lotteries. Here in India, a lot of misinformation is being spread regarding the vaccines and the government hasn't done much to stop it. Whenever they took some action to curb such propaganda, the supreme court told them to stay out, as it was termed as suppressing the freedom of speech. In the end, the anti-vaxxers not only harm themselves, but also others who listen to them. Check this news, from the United States about one such individual who refused the vaccines:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57958358

Call me crazy, but so far what happened in 2021 is looking like a carbon copy of 2017. Back in 2017, we had a major dip by the middle of that year, before the crazy bull run took Bitcoin to an ATH level of $20,000. BTC went up by 22 times in 2017 and most of the alts went up by 100 times or more. But what worries me is what happened next. In 2018, we had the big crash, when BTC went down by 85%. ETH went down by 95%, and altcoins like ADA and TRX went down by 98%-99%. So far the first 7 months looks like 2017. Will that hold true for the next 5 months?