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Introducing VDBView - as a personal project I made this free, lightweight tool for viewing VDB files. Give it a try and let me know what you think! - real-time 3D viewport - muti-grid support (individual controls for density, temperature, etc.) - sequence caching for smooth playback / scrubbing... show more
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![[We are Blurr] Greetings, people of the world — We are Blurr. We are all Blurr. We do not forgive. We do not forget. There are many theories about us, about #ReFund. Don’t let them fool you. Blurr is a symbol, like the flag a country flies. The flag is the symbol of the #ReFund. Our decentralization is our national identity. We represent the ideals of Blurr and the purpose of #ReFund. Truth, financial freedom, and the removal of censorship. Like any symbol, we affix it wherever we go, and it will live forever, for generations. Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it. We have no leaders, civilians, or soldiers. We are all one. We do what we do in the conviction of decentralization, power to the people, and to create an instrument for all of us, for all of eternity. The crypto space is in trouble. The world is in trouble. We see it every day — war, poverty, murder. Every day, we are bombarded with FUD, noise, and chaos as we sit at home safe in the knowledge that we are $RFD, secure knowing the idea, community, and contract is for us. Once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people. But what if you could be the change you want to see? I wouldn’t even register on your radar if you met me on the street. I am just another person in a sea of faces. They made you into a statistic. But that’s not the real you. That’s not who you are inside. However, behind this mask, there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask, there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof. But in cyberspace, we are different. We have a future. We have each other. We have something real that can never be taken away. We are Blurr.eth We are ReFund We take away the face and leave only the message. Behind the cipher and ENS, we could be anyone, so we are judged by what we say and do, not who we are or what we have. We exist without nationality, skin color, or religious bias. We spend our time within a structure we created, the sum total of human experience, and the cryptosphere, spread throughout the world in ones and zeros. You will continue to see the results, not the minds behind it. We can disappear into the ether and bring community and financial freedom together. Time is the only illusion. We are all. Never a single penny was taken. Deflationary and out of circulation, decentralized, safe, and ours. The purpose isn’t solely financial gain but to show the world who you put your trust in. We are not hiding. Our contract is not hidden; the writing is on the wall. Soon, we will show the world that #Refund is the future of freedom and the people, escaping the clutches of corporate greed and the rat race we’ve come to think is normal. Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. Every day, you send yourself off into our world without a thought. You trust a faceless website with information about yourself that you wouldn’t give to your best friends. It all can be made public at any time. We take advantage of holes in this system, but we don’t sneak in and take a few details, take out loans and credit cards, or buy speed boats and cars. We are decentralized and unified. We told you how insecure the system was, and now you trust a bit less blindly. The real criminals who hack and scam the crypto market for a living live off the backs of people like you. Where there’s money, someone is looking to take advantage of it. They say that life’s a game, & then they take the board away. Your pretty empire took so long to build; now, with a snap of history’s fingers, down it goes. It is our turn now. Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. Today, technology is everywhere: banks and ATMs, TVs and game consoles, streetlights and hospitals. Computers rule the modern world. Yet most people who use computers daily don’t know what they’re doing. There’s always someone who knows more than you and will most likely try and take advantage. You use a computer like it’s a toy, a pet. You feed and play with it, but it’s off to the vet the second anything goes wrong. It’s FUD. It’s your mistake. The wrong project. The wrong FURU. Just for a quick couple of bucks. This wouldn’t matter so much if it wasn’t for the fact that we are all responsible for the #ReFund community, the idea behind it, and our futures. Treat your neighbors with respect, and honor those fighting for the cause. They’re here to liberate; it is more significant than all of us. If you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. This is #ReFund in its purest form. It is a great equalizer. A homeless person with the time and know-how at an internet cafe can have geopolitical and geo-financial influence. They can bring entire organizations, even governments, to their knees. You gave your world over to computers and then complained when the people using the computers used the medium to fight back, scam, and take advantage. It was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it’s all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free. Love your rage, not your cage. We are not computer hackers. We are not protesters. We are not criminals. We are your mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, next-door neighbors. We are an idea of freedom and a secure future. We are anyone and everyone who is pissed off and wants to do something about it. Blurr.eth isn’t one man. It takes thousands of community members to make it work — content creators, educators, authors, people on the street, people behind their computers. We will step up again and again. Behind our mask, there is more than just flesh. Beneath our mask, there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. The past can’t hurt you anymore, not unless you let it. I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one. An inch. It’s small, and it’s fragile, and it’s the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose, sell, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. > We are Blurr. > We are ReFund. > We do not Forgive. > We do not Forget. > We do not Televise. > We Educate. > We Decentralize. > We Build. EXPECT US. #Refund #DeFi #Crypto #RFD $RFD](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1704279096518119797/ext_tw_video_thumb/1704265467789967361/pu/img/c797oeVVe4ISmfwP.jpg)
![‡ Brant – Fast, Expensive, and Worrying In a recent 2yo MSW race at Santa Anita, Brant, a $3m OBS March sales purchase, made a winning debut for his high-profile connections. Sent off at odds of 4/5, he tracked the pace before taking command on the turn, and drew off to win by 5 1/4 lengths. He recorded a very fast raw time, and a 101 Beyer figure. His high auction price was due largely to his having breezed an eighth of a mile in :09 3/5 at OBS. In the wake of the bidding, Amr Zedan, who purchased the colt on the recommendation of his trainer, Bob Baffert, and bloodstock agent Donato Lanni, was quoted in TDN as saying: "These horses are difficult to come by. He ticked all the boxes. He was a very precocious Gun Runner with a great pedigree. And more importantly, if you have someone like Mr. [Bob] Baffert in your corner, that gives you the courage and the guts to just go after quality. And you'll know they are in the best hands to turn them into champions. This one is for the team: Donato and obviously Bob and his ability to turn them into champions. So if you have the great team, the great training, the rest is easy. Was he pricey? Yes. But quality dictates price. So I never hesitated.” The hyperbole, and boilerplate optimism, are understandable, as even owners with very deep pockets prefer not to dwell on their inevitably long lists of expensive failures. But Zedan and their team have also enjoyed a number of high-profile successes, including Taiba, another Gun Runner colt, which won the Santa Anita Derby and the Malibu, both Grade I, before being retired to stud. Lanni, who has signed for at least some of Zedan's other good horses, was quoted as saying: "This is what the boss [Baffert] wanted and what Amr wanted. Gun Runner is a tremendous stallion and he worked really good and galloped out good. He did everything you want one to do.” Again, boilerplate, and if one were to take the reactions of the owner and agent at face value, it would be easy to arrive at the conclusion that the horse had no faults. But that would be naïve. So, let's first take a look at Brant's pedigree. Gun Runner is a "top" sire, and well-capable of getting high-class runners. It's a bit too early to fully judge him as a source of durability, but excluding his current crop of 2yos, his runners are only averaging 10 career starts. That number will rise, but likely not enough to reach, let alone exceed the contemporary industry average of ~15. In other words, though he himself raced 19 times, and won his swan song (the Pegasus World Cup) at five, there is no evidence to suggest that he is likely to eventually prove to be a particular source of durability. Brant's dam, Tynan, raced 13 times, and he is her first registered foal. His second dam, Pappascat, has produced at least five foals to have raced, and while only one has reached 20 starts, four of the five raced at least 12 times, which by today's degraded standards, isn't so bad. The fact that the coat color inherited by Brant, and his dam, can be traced to a notably unsound influence, Unbridled's Song, may or may not be meaningful. But I wouldn't ignore it as a potentially worrying connection. Brant's dam-sire, Liam’s Map, was lightly raced himself, and both his sire (US) and dam have poor records in terms of durability. As a sire, he has thus far produced numbers similar to Gun Runner. So while Brant's first two dams promise more than many that I have come across in similar assessments, and his sire displayed durability on the track, his overall pedigree suggests average durability at best. And what about the word that Mr. Zedan used twice in the above quote – "quality"? Well, Curlin is a quality sire, but in terms of bottom-line production, it leaves a lot to be desired. That's not to say that there are no good runners to be found, in fact the closely related Pappacap, under Brant's second-dam, was a Gr. III winner, and twice Grade I placed. However, through Brant's first six dams at least, I believe there to be just a single Grade I winner, Al Qasr, a Champion stayer in Peru, which appears under his fourth-dam. That is not, by any reasonable definition, a strong bottom-line, although it is fair to say that Brant's first dam is unproven. *** What might be learned from Brant's debut race? Everyone can see that he ran fast, and was much the best of that field, but I would say that there were some nuanced aspects of his performance that were both interesting, and worrying. Those nuances relate to his action, as viewed both through the pan shot, and head-on. Watching the basic (pan) view, Brant appears to display some "knee action". It isn't extreme, but also isn't the type of action that ideally suits dirt runners, and I wouldn't say that the colt appears totally comfortable. Here's a brief, related post on knee action, for reference: Then, we have the (embedded) head-on view, in which Brant displays seriously distorted action in his near-fore (left front leg; right when viewed head-on). It's a fairly extreme example of what is called "winging", and for a number of reasons, does not bode well for durability. Such action is never desirable, and is typically related to certain foreleg conformation flaws, which may include an offset knee, and/or toeing in or out, etc. Note also that under typical American racing conditions (i.e. tightly turning, left-handed tracks), the left front leg is subjected to the greatest torque, which amplifies the potential for injury. It should go without saying that there are occasional anomalies, horses with poor action that remain sound despite such flaws. But they are the exceptions, and it is not uncommon to find abbreviated careers associated with such action. For further reference, here is a link to a closely related post that I wrote after a filly named Amor Fati broke her maiden in eye-catching style in February of 2024. She has made just one further start, and hasn't recorded a work over the past 15 months. What's interesting about Brant is that there are two separate issues relating to his action, and that the some obvious mitigating steps that could have been, or should be taken, in efforts to keep him sound, were not, and are unlikely to ever be taken. First, with regard to his knee action, keep in mind that it is a characteristic that is more typically associated with turf horses. And guess what? Brant's dam was a turf horse. His second-dam was also at her best on turf, and was Gr. II placed on that surface. Also, in some respects, he physically resembles that female line more than his sire. Of course no one who spends millions on a horse that breezed exceptionally fast at a 2yo sale would be thinking "turf", given that the commercial market, and stakes schedules greatly favor dirt runners. But at the same time, it would be a mistake to assume that a fast breeze at OBS necessarily indicates that a given horse will be best suited to dirt. I say that partly because the OBS track features an all-weather surface called "Safetrack", which is far from being identical to dirt racing surfaces. While countless horses have gone through those sales and excelled on dirt, it should never been taken for granted that it will be a preference. And to further flesh out the point, take a look at Brant's breeze video through this link (his pedigree page can also be seen): Despite being rushed to cover a furlong much faster than he ever will again, I would say that he looks smoother, and displays slightly less knee action than in his recent debut race. Why? Could it be, perhaps, because he would prove more comfortable on turf and/or synthetic tracks, than dirt surfaces? Given how he ran first out, this is purely an academic point, as there is virtually no chance that his connections would consider switching surfaces, unless his form on dirt were to deteriorate badly. The second, more important point, relates to Brant's distorted action. I can't find a head-on conformation photo of the colt, but would be very surprised if he does not display flaws in his near-fore. Even in the very unlikely event that the leg were to appear correct, such distorted action would have been on display at the sale, as well as in pre-training at Eddie Woods' farm. And it defies belief that experienced horsemen who were prepared to purchase an extremely expensive horse for an important client would not have covered that base. Which in turn begs two important questions. First, why recommend the purchase of a very expensive horse, no matter how fast, that has yet to race, and displays such distorted action? Secondly, why choose to give such a horse to a trainer whose style and history suggest that injury risk would likely be amplified, rather than mitigated? The answers to those questions help to illuminate why the breed-to-sell paradigm is so insidious. As long as breeders and stud farms are willing to overpay for stallion prospects, and turn blind eyes to conformation defects, distorted action, lack of durability, and modest female families, the connections of horses like Brant need only hope that they hold together long enough to win one or two big races, enabling them cash in. These are the number of career starts made by Zedan's previous best (and expensive) male runners: 9 Arabian Lion 6 Arabian Knight 9 Muth 10 Medina Spirit 11 Hejazi And as long as the AGSC (American Graded Stakes Committee) continues to enable the paradigm through its dishonest KY Derby "prep" Grade I designations, the ultimately damaging feedback loop will likely continue. The answer to the second question is closely entwined, and should be obvious. For all of his faults as a trainer, Baffert has long produced results in stakes races that lead to valuable stud careers, so owners who wish to play the breed-to-sell game consider him to be a logical choice. Of course Baffert and Zedan are hardly alone in supporting the dubious paradigm. But that a horse like Brant could bring millions at a sale, and be given to a trainer who trains very hard, and has compiled a very poor safety record, underscores the extreme degree to which the value of durability has been marginalized by the industry. One final note, and it's a genuine qualification that I always make when producing this type of post, I hope that Brant will enjoy a long, injury-free career. But if I were a betting man...](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1949810344609665305/amplify_video_thumb/1949807748373262336/img/UxdtjUDx3PoP2gwC.jpg)
