When to Bench Basketball Players Due to Foul Trouble?

comments on: 2 foul auto-bench

I think the best reason to do it during the regular season is to teach players not to foul.

Otherwise I think a decision process should be used. Is this player foul prone, is there a difficult matchup making fouling more likely, are these officials calling questionable fouls, how badly do we need them out their now (are we falling behind by a large margin...). Also I would vary it (especially late in the season) depending on how likely we are to need to push every advantage. If we are likely in trouble take more risks, leave the player with fouls more exposed. If we should win even with them missing extra time, ok be more willing to pull them.

In general, I think coaches pull players much too often due to foul trouble. Unless the player is foul prone it seems they often pull the player with 2 fouls in the first half and they never even pick up a 3rd foul in the second half. That just makes it seem like a bad in game tactic. The one exception is for a season long strategy of teaching the players not to foul.

One way pulling a player earlier for 2 fouls in the first half or 3 or 4 in the second is to spread out the time of the reserve. If there are 12 minutes left in the first half and there is really 1 reserve that needs to take the time this player is out, pull them now, let the reserve get 4 minutes in and bring the player with 2 fouls back (maybe for 2 or 3 minutes). Especially if the reserve almost always plays in short 3 or 4 minute spurts don't create a situation where they need to play 12 straight minutes or something (protect, not just them getting tired but the other team figuring out how to exploit them).

Related: Frank Kaminsky, College Basketball Player of the Year - Lessons for Managers from Wisconsin and Duke Basketball - Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Methods? (underhanded free throws) - Universities Again Abandon Fans/Mission to Increase Pay to Administrative Staff/Coaches

The Most Popular Social Media Sites

These are the most popular social media sites ranked by monthly active users (for the most recent date I could find data for). The data is from various sources and is the most recent reliable sources I could find (Alexa ranks as of January 2019). What constitutes a "social media" site isn't so easy to define so I use a bit of judgement on what sites of involved enough of a social element to be included.

1. Facebook (monthly active users 2.2 billion - Alexa Rank #3)
2. YouTube (1.6 billion - Alexa #2)
3. WeChat/Weixin (1.1 billion - #2,537)
4. Instagram (900 million - #17)
5. Tencent QQ (803 million - #6)
6. QZone (548 million) - #209
7. TikTok (500 million - #3,204)
8. Sina Weibo (446 million - #18)
9. Tumbler (350 million - #65)
10. Reddit (340 million - #13)
11. Twitter (335 million - #11)
12. Baidu Tieba (300 million)
13. Snapchat (291 million - #4,480)
14. LinkedIn (270 million - #30)
15. Pinterest (230 million - #77)
16. VK (120 million - #14)
17. Huya (100 million - #565)
18. YY (95 million - #270)
19. Taringa (75 million - #811)
20. Renren (? - #1,824)
21. Nextdoor (? - #1,310)

Alexa rank doesn't track smart phone app use (Alexa tracks website use, and far from perfectly but it does provide some insight into how much use popular sites get). Most of the social media sites have most use via apps but many also have useful web sites. Some have much more of a bias to smartphone apps (WeChat for example).


Related: What I Would Include in a Redesigned Twitter Profile - Don't Lock Your Content Inside a Proprietary System

Most Popular posts on the Curious Cat Comments blog in 2018

The most popular posts on our blog (by page views in 2018):

1. Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA (2013)
2. Blog Readers, for Reading RSS Feeds (2013)
3. Critical Thinking is Needed to Counter Propaganda (2018)*
4. The Worst Aspect of TPP That Gets Nearly No Attention (2016)*
5. When You See the Problem as Capitalism Instead of Corruption You Seek to Solve the Wrong Problem (2015)*
6. Utopia (Dreamland in the USA) is an Amazing TV Program (2015), available on Netflix
7. Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots (2010)*
8. Liberty and Support or Control and Hate (2013)
9. Challenging Conventional Thinking (2015)*
10. Curious, Joyful, Happy Kids Grow Up: Unfortunately (2010)

11. Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans (2011)
12. Netflix is Well Managed - People are Overreacting (2011)
13. They Will Know We are Christians By Our Love (2010)*
14. Banks Continue to Push for Insane Special Favors (and Sadly Get Them) (2014)*
15. Why Copyright Extension is a Very Bad Idea (2009)
16. Bikinis For Liberty (2010)
17. USA Encouraging Governments Worldwide to Spy and Hack Globally is Very Dangerous (2014)*
18. Appeasing Rude Selfish People Just Makes them Behave Even More Selfishly (2015)*
19. Filter Out Links to Lame Websites on Reddit (2017)*
20. Businesses Misusing Required Private Information (2017)*

* new on the most popular list this year (for the 2016 list we only listed the top 10)

The publication year of our most read posts this year:

2018: 1 post
2017: 2
2016: 1
2015: 4
2014: 2
2013: 3

2011: 2
2010: 4
2009: 1


Related: Most Popular Post on the Curious Cat Comments Blog (2016) - Most Popular Post on the Curious Cat Comments Blog (2011) - Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Comments Blog (2015) - Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Comments Blog (2014)

Egregious Billing Practices by USA Health Care Organizations

Taking Surprise Medical Bills To Court Under the Theory of “Mutual Assent”

Consumers are increasingly vulnerable to... so-called balance bills, which represent the difference between what insurers pay and hospitals’ list prices. List prices can be several times higher than what they accept from Medicare or in-network insurers.

Congress is considering bipartisan legislation to limit balance billing. But some legal scholars say that patients should already be protected against some of the highest, surprise charges under long-standing conventions of contract law.

That’s because contract law rests on the centuries-old concept of “mutual assent,” in which both sides agree to a price before services are rendered, said Barak Richman, a law professor at Duke University.

Thus, many states require, and consumers expect, written estimates for a range of services before the work is done — whether by mechanics and plumbers or lawyers and financial planners.

But patients rarely know upfront how much their medical care will cost, and hospitals generally provide little or no information.

While consumers are obligated to pay something, the question is how much? Hospitals generally bill out-of-network care at list prices, their highest charges.

Without an explicit price upfront, contract law would require medical providers to charge only “average or market prices,” Richman said.

In several recent cases, for example in New York and Colorado, courts have stepped in to mediate cases where a patient received a big balance bill from an out-of-network provider. They ordered hospitals to accept amounts far closer to what they agree to from in-network private insurers or Medicare.

I strongly believe congress should pass a law outlawing the existing practices. And it is good to know the most egregious, and increasingly common, practices of the USA hospitals are already illegal. If you state hasn't already taken hospitals using such practices to court and required refunding all ill gotten gains, contact your attorney general to make sure they do so. And contact you state legislators to make sure they act also. Several states have been much more concerned with protecting their citizens from being abused by large health care providers but most states have not.

The existing practices are unethical and it is unconscionable that our elected representatives have allowed such egregious practices to continue and even become more common.

Related: Democrats and Republicans Have Failed the USA on Health Care for Decades (2015) - USA Health Care System Remains Broken, Neglected (2011) - The USA Should be Ashamed of Who We have Elected - Decades of Failure by Those Responsible for USA Health Care System Needs to be Addressed (2012)

Privacy Invasion as a Business Plan

The rise of the internet has resulted in many companies building business plans on invading the privacy of their users and selling the data to those wishing to track those users. For many companies this model of behavior has always been obvious. I never created an account on Facebook because of how strongly focused they have always been on invading privacy and selling that data. The distain for Facebook finally became more than a side note in 2018 (though there has long been some push back against them). Though still most people continue to use Facebook even as the extent of their bad behavior has come to light.

Certainly other companies (Google etc.) also practice gathering and aggregating information about individuals in order to profit. I have used Google from the beginning though I have reduced such use in the last few years (still using them quite a bit). Duck Duck Go has long been my primary search engine though I do also use Google. I added Fastmail years ago, but still use some gmail accounts.

The integration of online tracking and offline tracking (via credit agencies, credit card companies etc.) has greatly increased over the last 5 years with Google planning a central role (along with, of course Facebook and many others).

One of the worst behaviors by internet companies is to collect phone numbers in order to facilitate selling and integration of private information while pretending it is somehow a security issue. Though security experts all say using phone numbers for security adds security risks instead of using much more secure methods such as a security key. Companies that use deceptive security methods to collect phone numbers in order to sell the private information of their users make it very hard to trust what else they are doing.

Twitter has long claimed a security reason to collect phone numbers [update in 2020 - Twitter faces $250 million fine from the US FCC for these practices abusing the private information of users]. Now they have locked one of my Twitter accounts (because I sent a string of 5 reply comments) and refused to allow me to regain access without adding a tracking phone number (I had no phone number before). For this reason I won't be using Twitter any longer.

This experience once again shows the risks of promoting connections via a system that can lock you out when they chose. It is much safer to use systems like (blog, where you own the domain, email... that are within your control). Of course nothing is 100%, email can blocked (people that try to run private email servers find they are challenged by systems setup to distrust such email). But investing time in building communities (say on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter...) is risky. At any time they can change the rules and harm what you have built.

I suggest avoiding investing in Facebook, Twitter, etc.. To some extent it may make sense to invest some time in such communities but I suggest focusing most effort on things that are not built on the model of invading users privacy and selling that data to others.

One of the many things Apple is doing well is positioning themselves to protect user's privacy. With so many other businesses built on invading that privacy it provides Apple both a real opportunity to help and also a marketing advantage. Other organizations and tools are also filling a need to protect people from spying and malware (some of which is getting hard to distinguish from business practices of large privacy invading companies) such as EFF's Privacy Badger, ublock origin and Ghostery.

It is extremely difficult for individuals to protect their private information. It is essentially impossible. When companies built to sell that private information and create business processes to ease their business practices they often create a situation where their actions have resulted in false information created that somehow becomes the individual user's responsibility to fix (so when those privacy selling companies allow a person's data to be mis-used it is then called "identity theft" though it is not, it is companies misusing information and then putting on the individual the burden of fixing the errors). Europe has much better privacy rights than the USA does. But much more and better efforts are needed from governments to protect citizens from having their lives thrown into turmoil by the abuse and misuse of their private information.


Related: Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions - Businesses Misusing Required Private Information - Living Through Your Society Becoming a Police State - I Can Spy on You, But You Can't Spy on Me - Freedom Increasingly at Risk

Stamping Out Curiosity

Thoughts on LinkedIn conversation about curiosity it lean (LinkedIn's extremely poor Ux practices means I can't link to a web page of the discussion).

The strong sense of curiosity is in America but crushed out by bad management.
Allen Scott

And crushed by poor education systems and even just peer pressure. I have written about encouraging curiosity in kids (and adults).

I do agree bad management reinforces the anti-curiosity culture but it goes far beyond bad management - even the anti-fact or anti-critical-thinking aspect so prevalent in media and politics is a system designed to quell thoughtful questioning of existing systems, policies, results, affects... I think the decreasing of curiosity is likely strongly influenced by psychology, aging and coping as an adult (coping becoming the focus instead of curiosity and joy). And then we have several powerful aspects of our culture that discourage cultivating curiosity.

I wrote earlier this year that Critical Thinking is Needed to Counter Propaganda. It seems very obvious to me there has been a decades long concerted effort to decrease critical thinking, discourage curiosity and create a large group of people that will follow what they are told (Fox "News" etcetera). That makes things easy if you control what those people are told, but it also makes those uncritical and incurious followers susceptible to anyone that can create propaganda that appeals to them.

Related: Curious, Joyful, Happy Kids Grow Up: Unfortunately - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Experience Teaches Nothing Without Theory

Surviving Modern Conveniences

Today my car wouldn't start. I guessed the battery died.

I try to use Lyft. Their app says it is a bad connection and so it won't work (using iPhone on Sprint in Charlotte, NC - the 17th largest city in the USA). Sad but ok, whatever, deal with it. Ok try my iPad mini with ATT. Lyft connects and doesn't let me use it requires putting in a phone number before it will do anything so that I can get pin and give it to them. Ok, give them the number. Nothing ever comes from them.

Ok try Uber on iPhone. Uber asked for permission to spy all the time (not just when you are using Uber. Decline that intrusion. Now it can't find my current location. So I type it in. It finds it. Uber says it isn't available where I am and only offers their "luxury" options.

Now I could go directly to work but I have a mover scheduled to unload my large moving items at my new house this afternoon. And my dead car is blocking the garage (and there is a fairly steep hill up to the house) so backing the truck to the garage seems like a much better option so I want to move my car out of the way before they arrive (it is parked front in so jump starting it would be very hard I figure).

I select the closest Walmart (that I went to the night before 3 miles away or so). Driver shows up in the most beat up car I have ever been picked up with by Uber or Lyft (including traveling around SE Asia (where actually they were always very new and clean). This is Uber's luxury option remember. They then drive me to some other Walmart at least twice as far away.

I get a trickle charger (to charge my car battery) at Walmart and am back on my way. I use my iPhone to request Lyft and they show up. The signal strength is actually good. Now I am late to my 3rd day onsite at a new long term client. So I ask the driver to wait and let me take 5 minutes to setup the trickle charger and then he can take me to work. He asks me to add the new leg to the Lyft app. I tell him it might not work since my Sprint signal is so bad usually and I try and it fails. He says he will wait but you can tell he isn't thrilled with it. I guess that Lyft has a bad process to deal with situations like mine (or maybe he just wasn't certain how it would work).

I try calling someone at work using my iPad mini (while the ATT signal is bad, Sprint is much worse) and it connects but constantly breaks up.

But he says he will wait. I hurry up and set things up and am going out the door in maybe 3 minutes and I see him driving away. I try Lyft again and it fails again (on both phones just like earlier).

Then I try Uber and decide to give them my address again and they come pick me up. I type in the wrong address (a leading 4 instead of a leading 1, sigh). It doesn't seem we are going the right way, I figure that out and ask what address we are going to... I am amazing able to update the address in the Uber app (the connection barely works). The driver and car were nice for this trip.

Now I am late to work but am able to put in a partial days work then have to leave to meet the mover. My workplace is one of these huge building with big delays for visitors checking in... I have no idea how you can get Uber or a taxi or anything or any idea who you can ask (those I did ask have no idea either). So I decide to walk out (the equivalent of a few blocks to a sensible public street. I actually have 4 bars on 3G on Sprint (the iPhone) which is the best I have seen yet in Charlotte. I try to use the iPhone Lyft app. Won't connect due to bad connectivity. Seems much more likely it is some caching bug but whatever it doesn't work. And of course the other Lyft app (on the other device) won't let me use it (due to it not sending my pin number). So I open up Uber on my iPhone (which as with other other times today Lyft said it couldn't work due to bad connectivity the Uber app on the same phone worked fine. But now the wonderful Uber app (that I didn't allow to continuously spy) has decided that the only place I can be picked up is my house that I entered the first time. They won't let me change it.

So I have now use 3 of the 4 ride hailing options I have at hand. So I try my 4th and final option, the Uber app with full spying privileges and thankfully it works. And the can is new and clean and the driver is professional.

I get home go look at my car. The charger is off. I think wow that is pretty good I didn't think it would be finished. Put everything away and try to start the car and nothing. I put everything back the way it is and it all lights up like it is fine and charging and in about 15 seconds turns off. It must not like something, I try it a couple more times and finally reach a state where it won't turn off.

Of course when the mover arrives I the car won't start. Actually we tried to back it up the driveway some but it was too steep and couldn't make it anyway.

The modern convinces really did help in many ways (I am still hoping the trickle charger will help, though as I write this it is still questionable). The battery is about 10 months old. But while it is great to have cell phones and apps to help us when we are stuck it is very annoying to have such bad connectivity in the 19th largest city in the USA and such lame usability failure in the Uber and Lyft apps. And it is frustrating to have to deal with your own lameness that likely caused the battery to die (I left the lights on in the car - the garage had lights on so I didn't register the car lights were no going off...) and putting in the wrong address...

And this is one of what seem like several such episodes each day for the last few weeks. I agreed to move states within about 10 days to a full time job on site with a client. I didn't really have a desire to do so but I have worked for the company as an offsite consultant for years and understood the situation they were in where I really was the best option and it was fairly important. So far it has been a struggle. I hope soon I will have passed through this spate of frustrations. If I had this one episode happen some week it wouldn't bug me much. But day after day of multiple such things is wearing me down.

And since I have no decent internet connection I can't even Netflix and chill :-(