Renomitsu

This donation is made in honor of a recent clinical rotation I had that had a significant component of gender health - that is, people who are experiencing gender dysphoria or making the transition to a gender they weren't assigned at birth. It was a transformative experience for me to hear about the struggles of LGBTQ+ youth, finally offer them a place that they could call 'home' medically and psychologically, and offer them a chance to initiate (or at least discuss) gender-affirming medical and surgical care. This is probably the first of multiple donations, so keep an eye out!

1. Which Wolves player do you think is performing the best this season? Jerome Reinhart. Relatively young player that's in the top 10 for points. I think we're performing quite well as a whole though. 2. What's your biggest fear? My biggest fear is probably being considered a failure -- though I'm not sure whose judgment (in addition to my own) I'd use as a metric for that. I'm terrified that I won't be able to accomplish my career dreams because of burnout, but hey, you live with what you've got. 3. What is the worst restaurant food you ever had and why? Yeah... there was a really seedy joint by my alma mater that I went to - a Greek place, if I recall correctly - that tasted pretty meh but gave me horrible food poisoning. Never again. 4. Who's your favorite actor? I don't know that I have one! I'm a fan of Jessica Chastain's softer, more emotional works, and Christian Bale's incredible dedication to literally make his body take different shapes for characters, though I don't think it's healthy for him. 5. Do you like spicy food or not so spicy food? That's changed over time. Used to be as spicy as possible -- and I do still like spicy food -- but I think I appreciate being able to taste other flavors now that I'm a little older. 6. If you had to go to jail for committing a crime, what would it be? Probably using some experimental or off-label treatment for a terminal disease that the parents got angry at me/sued me for using. I suspect if I had sufficient physiologic or theoretical reason for using it, other treatments had failed, and the parents gave consent it wouldn't send me to jail whatsoever, but if I had to it'd be in the name of medically-justified care of a patient with no other options, where no treatment would cause undue suffering.

the kidneys of course the heart only exists to pump blood to the kidneys

1. What's your favorite part of the regular season? Depends on if we make it to the playoffs -- if we do make it, then my favorite part is when the regular season ends so we can get to playoff hockey. If we don't, then it's when the season starts (in fact, if we don't make it I kind of dread the end of the regular season). 2. Is water wet? If we're using it as an adjective, then yes - water has cohesive and adhesive properties, and 'wet' means covered or saturated with a liquid (e.g. water). Really, running water is loosely-held collections of H2O with hydrogen bonds keeping individual molecules close to one another, so I'd say you can call it water covered/saturated with more water. 3. What is your favorite genre of music? Right now? It's big band style pop -- Lawrence, Lake Street Dive, Melt, Couch, etc. are all great to me. 4. If you had the ability to resurrect 1 person from the dead, who would it be? Jesus, again. Can you imagine how controversial that'd be in the modern day, especially in the U.S.? People would have a fit debating whether or not he's real, he'd probably get shot by a whole lot of people, and probably wouldn't take on the image of the son of God that everyone's expecting... okay, maybe this would be a little more chaotic than I'd like. 5. Any plans for Thanksgiving? I hung out with my intern (doctor) class! We actually had a great time, though most of us did have to work. 6. When do you start getting in the Christmas spirit? After Thanksgiving. I've never been a participator in the religious aspect of the holiday, just the American commercial half, and I do not enjoy listening to Mariah Carey for 2.5-3 months straight.

Yeah, I think there was some odd technical issue as it somehow saved my prior picks and posted that instead of Rasputin. Oh well. G - Em Em Flex

F - Taylor Mourning D - Robin Galante Nilsson @zepheter is still up

All good, thanks for making the attempt - just had a very busy/long day at work! D - Zeedayno Chara D - Robin Galante Nilsson @kelvi you're still up!

1. What is your biggest regret in life? Oof, that can be a pretty heavy topic. I think skipping a grade for me is the one that I'm willing to talk about - I wouldn't have been able to make that decision myself, but I think it affected my ability to be social with others. 2. Do you think Vanny can repeat as champs? Absolutely. I wouldn't have joined Vancouver for my eighth and final season if that weren't the case. 3. Do you think that Tyler Reinhart shoulda won MVP? Nope. Too many great, high-scoring players on Vancouver to reasonably pick an MVP from this team, especially with comparable players on other teams. 4. Have you ever played any sports and if so which are you best at. I have, not great at many of them (unless eSports back in like 2011 counts, ha). Love playing some backyard football, otherwise I was probably best as a midfielder in soccer as a kid. Baseball wasn't really my thing, and I'm certainly not tall enough to play any kind of organized basketball. 5. Do you think we're better off with the VHLE or should we have just stuck with VHLM -> VHL? I don't feel strongly about it. There's a lot of weird overlap between the E and M I think which is really impinging on M GMs' abilities to foster talent, but it does help new players from getting absolutely wiped in their first season up. 6. What's your favorite type of pet? Dogs. Sorry to the cat lovers - I'm allergic to both so it's not about that. Would love to own a mini Aussie shepherd later on in life.

F - Tyler Reinhart F - Pistil Stamen @16z

In a loaded free agency class like this one, even individual star forwards like former DC Dragon and Warsaw Predator Aloe Dear can get overshadowed by similarly-shiny players - after all, after the 800 TPA standpoint lots of players tend to have very similar builds. That was no exception for Dear, who found herself offered deals by a few teams (plus a $9M contract offered by D.C. - half in jest, half seriously) but without any interest from the overwhelming majority of the league. It's nothing particularly new -- especially with teams like Prague tight up against the cap and several teams not wanting to compete. Let me be upfront: my free agency destination is the Vancouver Wolves. I know that's an extremely unpopular decision, possibly burning some bridges in the process. If you want to stop reading now, you're well within your rights and I won't judge you for it. This might be my last season with a player in the league, and Aloe is my only real shot at making the Hall of Fame after Hiro Renomitsu retired nearly 60 seasons ago without so much as a mention (except by Victor - thanks ). Here's the challenge I want to issue to the VHL: let's be intentional about how we treat this upcoming season, because it's an important one for the VHL. If the Vancouver meta team is problematic, then change something about the league to prevent it from happening again (whatever 'it' is). Let's not turn up our noses at a given build as exploitative, but only enforce our distaste for the build behind closed doors when no individual player would have specific, complete control over how their player performs in the sim and plays within the rules. I don't even have 40 passing, and have never ended a season in the VHL with as much. But if these specific builds -- however you'd like to categorize them -- are going to have subjective repercussions despite statistical excellence over a build with yet-to-be characterized benefits/faults, then it's punishment based on speculation at best and misguided bias that harms the community at worst. If the Vancouver meta team is not problematic and it flounders this season, what consequences befall those that decried it? None. I make a bad free agency decision and despite making an erroneous statement, those that call the Vancouver team exploitative despite that not being the case, and only I look bad. And yeah, I get it. Sometimes we aren't logically consistent, myself included. Sometimes we are. Could this one be supported empirically on further investigation? Yes, absolutely - but it hasn't been demonstrated yet, and no action has been taken on it despite the outcry. If you want to argue 'til you're blue in the face about the end-result, fine - but apply those standards to a season where it's been given a negative mark by those that set expectations and standards. Have a discussion on it where everyone can air their concerns about these team builds, and when a decision is made, then you can apply the standard to upcoming seasons. Ultimately, the choice for me in selecting Vancouver grants me a complete team with an excellent set of forwards and a complete set of defensemen. If it also means the team has an outlandish season that results in quicker action, great - short term loss for long-term league gain. If the team is horrible, hey, that's fine too. No HoF, no individual awards, (most) everyone goes away happy as a controversial team fails. That's just the game we have to play.

Transaction ID: 20830579509387787 Claimed This Week (Ending 11/14/2021) 5 Uncapped TPE Free Week Claiming Week Ending 11/21/2021 Doubles Week

Aloe Dear - Scoring [SC]

Well, Aloe's played her last game of the season with D.C – and I wish it wasn't as lopsided a series as it turned out to be against Vancouver, but it's more or less what I expected. I do think anyone that said "well you handed the cup to Vancouver" when we beat Chicago needs a little bit of a reality check, though. Sure, there are upsets in the playoffs, but give teams that placed top 3-4 in their region a little bit of credit, right? Oh – and regarding this past week's events? I'd recommend La'Wana Harris's Diversity Beyond Lip Service and Mahzarin Banaji's Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. Both are excellent for different reasons, but I can't recommend one over the other necessarily. I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at my hospital's Grand Rounds this past Wednesday and felt it was maybe a little too coincidental with the recent infraction leading to a ban last week. Implicit bias exists in all of us and doesn't make you a bad person – refusing to acknowledge it, however, is more fraught with the potential to do a disservice to others. A willingness to have the conversation – be it from the offended party or the (intentional or inadvertent) offenders – is an important step towards normalizing discussions on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's a small one, because you still need to actively intervene to achieve cultural competency and humility, but sometimes first steps need to be small to be achievable. That's a brief soapbox moment. I won't belabor the point, as I think there are those with some lived experiences and insights that have already expressed their points of view. Make your next week a great one!

no managing for me, but i'll pretend to make picks in a timely fashion

1. We have won the series against Chicago! What can you tell us about our next opponent - Vancouver Wolves? They're gonna beat us. Sucks to be from the future where things didn't go so well. 2. Lester Green has stepped up in playoffs, having most points in the team. Who needs to step up in the next series to win over Wolves? Again, we're doomed unfortunately as I come from the future. 3. 5 of the 7 games in the 1st round with Chicago ended with 1 goal difference. Do you think it's a good thing we are keeping it close or bad that we can't pull away or get it done? The latter. Vancouver was clearly superior to Chicago throughout the season - slump or otherwise, bad-natured response or otherwise - and that was obvious during the playoffs, too. 4. What kind of special power would you like? None. "Special power" means "probably going to get caught up in some weird government project," so let me stay as mundane as possible. 5. Which celebrity would you like to spend your vacation together with and why? Emilia Clarke seems like the kind of person who would be great to hang out with, but wouldn't want to do anything crazy extravagant. Let's go with her. 6. Which Guinness record would you be able to break? I like as little publicity as possible, so let's say "the fewest world records broken by a single individual," which is tied about 7 billion ways with 0.

Hi friends! As you may have seen, the Malmo and Los Angeles general manager jobs were vacated with this upcoming offseason. GM is a pretty popular job, doubly so at the VHL level. For some, there's a lot of prestige behind the job title. And I get it -- being a bigwig of the major league team means being one of the faces of the league, so many of the applicants put a lot of importance in being selected. But don't get frustrated or upset if/when you aren't selected. Someone else becoming a GM over you doesn't mean you aren't a worthy candidate, or that you weren't brought up in the conversation behind closed doors, or that the league hasn't noticed all of the effort you've put into your media, graphics, press conferences, or other leadership positions. Consider the size of the league and all of the other wonderful users you've interacted with -- and then remember your friend group, with all of its awesome people, is only a fraction of the size of the site's user base. In short: radio silence isn't an insult to you or a blacklisting. Good luck and congratulations to whoever gets selected to be GMs - but for those of you who aren't - don't give up!

1. We have finished the season in 3rd NA Conference place. We won't have to play in 1st round. What will you be doing in the free time? Sleeping. I need sleep. SO badly. 2. Dragons had 3rd most goals scored in the league, where do you think D.C will rank next season, when Dood will be retired? I'm uh... a little concerned that the team will look very different next season. So let's say 9th? 3. What will be the hardest challenge to overcome in playoffs? Getting through the first series. Take it one at a time - if we screw up the first series there's no second one. 4. What is something you are really good at? Staying up for really long times per day and working lots of hours, I guess. 5. What is the best thing you can remember from your childhood? Weirdly, taking advanced classes in school. I focused a lot on being challenged academically. 6. If you had to choose different name for this league, what would it be? Nerd Digital Hockey League (NDHL).

Toronto, Canada - With just 56 of his team's 68 games played, defender Rusty Knale (a 326 TPA fifth-season player) shot out onto the scene in a massive way -- with 293 hits and 182 shots blocked, good for tenth and sixth in the league, respectively. With such gaudy defensive stats, it's a wonder Knale wasn't picked up and started earlier. It's not unusual for defensive players on bottom-of-the-barrel teams to put up excellent stats, but with no real record of his acquisition, Knale continues to be a baffling part of a miserable Toronto squad. Indeed, STHS seems to be trying to find a way to accommodate the unusual Legion roster, including a 600+ shot Asher Reinhart and 525-shot Matty Fire, each players with an impressive number of aggregated points encompassing 99 of Toronto's 207 goals as a team by themselves. It also begs the question of "where do these players fall in the grand scheme of valuable player voting?," as the league is no stranger to having decent TPE players on awful teams winning awards because the stats have nowhere else to go.

1. Recently we acquired Victor Grachev in a trade, do you think we should do more trades or keep the squad as it is? Probably keep things as they are. I suspect the more we try to change the squad up now, the more it'll cost the franchise in the long run and the less predictable our playoff run will be - which could be good... or very bad. 2. Which VHL record would you like to break? None. I want a very reasonable, previously-achieved milestone: a single HoF player. 3. Which is your best season in the league? Probably a couple of seasons ago when I was on Warsaw and we won the championship. I had a previous player in Apollo Hackett that had an OK final season, but ultimately I got so fed up with zero production season-in and season-out that even winning the championship was meh. 4. We have 3 players in the TOP10 of points leaders, the same as Vancouver. Which Big 3 do you choose? (D.C - Dood, Dear and Welch, Vancouver - Zolner, Reinhart, Tucker) And why? DC, of course. 5. Favorite holiday? I don't know if I have one. I'm not a terribly festive person at baseline. 6. NHL is starting, which team is going to win the Stanley Cup this year? I don't watch the NHL, so we'll go with whoever won the last two titles. I think that was Tampa? Sure, why not three in a row?

Over the last several weeks, we've seen a handful of GMs elect to step down - from diamond_ace calling it quits after he finishes this season out with Prague to (apparently) Hylands stepping back from his role on Malmo, this season seems to be no different. Over the last few seasons, we've seen quite a few long-standing GMs move on to greener pastures, from Victor with Moscow to Beaviss/fonzi on Vancouver and Esso on New York, it'd seem as though just about half the league is going through some kind of leadership transition within the last half-dozen seasons. As I'm deliberating on what to do for Aloe's swan song, I find myself more and more uncertain with whether she'll opt for another go at free agency or stick with one of her old teams. Warsaw is in a clear rebuilding mode, while D.C. is aging into its twilight. But with fewer overall familiar faces in leadership positions in the league and this season being one of my last for a little while, I think finding a locker room with some leadership and players I'm familiar with will be increasingly important. I do hope that the more recently selected GMs stick around for a good while - sim leagues are oft-lacking in stability and VHL has been something of a rock for me for nigh-on a decade now.

1. Groovy Dood is just 9 assists away from reaching Valentino D.C Dragons assist record. Which player will score the goal, that will put Dood in front of Valentino in assists? I don't know. It'd feel weird for Dear to score that goal, provided she's a bit more of a one-year rental than someone Dood has been playing with for a long time. I'd love for Strong or Welch to get that privilege. 2. What is the team, that you look in the schedule and think that - this match is going to be fun? Warsaw. Any time it's a high-powered offense vs. another high-powered offense, especially one that was my former team, I'm always going to find the game a bit more interesting. 3. Dood is retiring after this season, what are you offering to him, so he would stay? The VHL gods take no exceptions. Dood knows it's time for him to go and he's been a monumental figure in the league - I think he's accepted his fate, and to deny him where he believes he's going would be irreverent at best. 4. Do you prefer listening to podcasts or music? Music, personally. But IRL I've been a more music-oriented person from childhood, be it playing or listening. I do still have a healthy number of podcasts I enjoy listening to though! 5. What is your favorite genre of music or what podcast would you recommend to others? (continuing from 4th question) Right now I'm on big-band style pop (e.g. Lake Street Dive, Melt, Couch the Band, etc.), so anything by them really! 6. What languages do you know? English, sign language, some functional (but not fluent) Spanish, and a little Swedish from DuoLingo. I'm unfortunately not multilingual in any meaningful way!

So the theme's "Life After the VHL." But Aloe still has another season left in her career, and I didn't find Apollo Hackett's career to be all that interesting before he won the championship with Riga in his seventh (and final) season, anyways. Instead, I opted to consider what life might be like after the VHL for me, the user – I've explored this topic a couple of times in the past through VHL.com articles, and I'd like to expand on it a little more here. The closer I get to the end of Dear's career, the more at-peace I am with a decision to hang it up in the VHL, at least for a little while. Whether that ends up being one single season or ten, I think I'll need some time off from max earning here – and probably in the EFL, too, though I do feel strongly about the success of both leagues. Ultimately, I'm a single user in a sea of dozens, if not hundreds, for either league, so I don't think any hiatus I take would be of significant (practical) impact to either league. And I've espoused not really wanting to feel the pressure of being a max earner in the VHL for a couple of seasons now. The question then becomes, what does real life look like for me currently, and what do I want to do after Dear's done? I currently work in a hospital in the southeast US as a medical resident. So most of my days – usually 6 days a week, though sometimes there are weeks when I work 5 or 7 – are spent with about 12-14 hours in the hospital or a clinic. I do a little academic reading before and after work in preparation for boards (or a licensure exam in the first year of residency called Step 3, which is specific to this year in my training), maybe catch dinner with a friend or two a couple of times a week and make time every day for a little leisure. Whether that's putting in work for sim leagues, listening to the League of Legends crew play their games, reading novels for leisure, or playing music, I can always find something to do with free time. I'm also intensely introverted, which means by the time I'm done with work, I'm usually all social-ed out; it's even occasionally a chore for me to catch dinner with a friend since I'm so exhausted from speaking with so many people every day during work. What disengaging from the earning-specific aspect of the VHL and EFL does for me is free up some time for me to enjoy other activities, whether that's by myself or with others. I've a backlog of books I'd like to read – particularly John Green's Looking for Alaska and Lisa Delpit's Teaching When the World Is On Fire. Neither are particularly difficult reads, but I've found what I've read of the latter of the two to be particularly rewarding to read provided the recent trends in my country's political environment. In my line of work, being able to engage those in stressful situations in a thoughtful and compassionate way is critical; there's a lot of room for even seasoned physicians to improve in that capacity, to say nothing of someone with the comparatively little experience I possess. I want to make a deliberate attempt to improve my communication skills with those that don't share my specific educational background or childhood socioeconomic privilege. While I do get a lot of enjoyment out of spending time in the VHL and EFL, I think it's time to take a step back and make sure I'm being intentional about the way I use a larger portion of my free time and ensuring – even moreso than the last four and a half years – that I'm becoming the best physician I can be. Thanks for reading.

Washington, D.C. - The top three teams in the North American Conference - Vancouver, Chicago, and Calgary - have cleanly separated themselves from the field, leaving the early upstart D.C. Dragons in the dust. A full 9 points separates the Dragons from the worst of the three, and although they've a game in hand over Vancouver and Calgary, their goal differential since the start of the season has shrunk considerably; despite a 20-16-3 record, the Dragons have been blown out enough that they have a negative goal differential. Individual players are excelling, but it's clear some kind of balancing act is required. The question then becomes, what's dragging D.C. down? Has there been a shift in other teams' lines without a response from the Dragons' GM? Are the Dragons, in their relatively advanced age, just not improving (i.e. banking) while other teams' players are building up? It's not immediately clear why the Dragons have sunk down a couple of spots in the last week's worth of sims, but a change is needed in short order to ensure they don't suffer a flip-flop with the New York Americans in the standings, too.

1. We have fallen from 2nd place in NA Conference to the 4th. How do we turn around this dragon in the right direction? Not sure. We had some good results today overall, and I think we really just need Groovy Dood to be his good old self. It'll be important I carry my weight to ensure that happens. 2. Vancouver Wolves has got only 3 losses in 28 games. What can we learn from a team like Wolves? 99 scr/40 pas is too strong! Just kidding, I know that's a meme from the SHL and why they switched sim engines, but we'll see how they do in the playoffs too. 3. Welch just got 8 assists in 2 games. Which NHL player would you compare him to? Uh... I don't watch the NHL. Is that blasphemous? I don't really follow real-life hockey at all, I just earn TPE. 4. How was your day? It's been okay. I'm exhausted from work, and I'm in the middle of a 12-consecutive-day stretch. 5. If you had a choice, that you could visit any place in space, where would you go? In space? Look, I've got bad enough motion sickness in a car or on a roller coaster. I don't think I could visit any place in space without vomiting my guts out. 6. What is the thing that will always make you smile? Adorable lil' babies! I don't plan on having kids of my own any time soon, but part of my job right now is taking care of newborn babies, so I can't complain.