
Weekly updated Spotify Playlist	H2L: New Drum & Bass
Soundcloud Playlist	H2L: New Drum & Bass Soundcloud
Youtube Playlist	H2L: New Drum & Bass Youtube
Retroactive Spotify Playlist	**H2L: Retroactive New DnB
Last Week's list	http://reddit.com/khfgph

Picks Of The Week (by u/lefuniname)

1. Used - Where I Belong [usedmusic]

Recommended if you like: Andromedik, Murdock, Subsonic
Welcome to the last releases thread of this year! It has been a year of ups and downs. Well, mostly downs. But there was one major up for me: becoming a part of the weekly releases crew and writing these release reviews. I am still utterly overwhelmed by all the supportive comments and messages the team and I have received for these threads. I would write these even if I didn't have an audience, but seeing that people actually read and sometimes even enjoy wasting their time reading it makes it all so much more worth it for me. Big ups to every single one of you!
Fittingly, the first release I'm covering talks a lot about what happened this year. There has been a sharp increase in DnB tracks with lyrics that are obviously inspired about the various shitty things that happened this year, from Millbrook - Echoes to Andromedik - Break Away. However, there's not many tracks that are as direct about their feelings towards 2020 as this one is.
I'm of course talking about Used's newest single Where I Belong. Even though Used is in many ways still a newcomer, including that he has only been around as a producer since around 2016 and that he has only released a handful of songs, he is also in many ways more established than some other producers that have been around for longer. The belgian prodigy's first big hit, Mistakes, has recently hit 2 million streams on Spotify and has over the years become a straight-up anthem that the whole of Belgium can sing along to.
Used isn't just any old, or in this case young I guess, producer though. He not only writes and sings his own vocals, he also plays multiple instruments, including the violin and the piano. Oh yeah, by the way, he's also mainly a Jump Up producer. I'm sure I've lost a few of you already, but I assure you that Used is certainly one of the more interesting ones out there and definitely worth your time.
Not only is he quite the multi-talent musically, he is also the producer with the highest hit-to-release ratio I've seen in the last few years. Since Mistakes, every single track he released is an instant anthem that a majority of people at a rave could sing along to. After the trilogy of personal tracks about one of his own breakups that were Mistakes, Come Back Home and Better On My Own, Used strayed off the beaten path and decided to change the subject for this next single while still remaining personal. This time the topic is something we can all relate to: a longing for a return to normal. A longing for a rave, just any rave.
While his biggest hits so far were very personal, they still had a certain distance to the artist himself. This is not the case for his newest single Where I Belong. In it, he speaks his heart out about how much the lockdown and the cancellation of all the shows and festivals have affected him. "No therapist can do, what the live show's done." - Biggest mood of the year. Right below that on the "big mood top 10" you can find the previous line: "I can't even remember a single thing that happened between March and December". As mentioned earlier, I've heard quite a few lockdown inspired tunes lately, but none have felt quite as deeply personal as this one.
These relatable af lyrics are of course performed by himself, alternating between rapped and sung verses. The shortest description for the instrumental I could come up with is Andromedik meets Fox Stevenson. A fun Jump Up inspired Liquicity type beat, with violins and pianos, all played and produced by himself. In the second drop the jumpy beat is stripped back a lot and the violins take centre stage, further driving home the melancholy of it all. I like songs that make me feel things and this is one of them.
Big recommendation for my fellow vocal dnb fans out there.

2. Various Artists - Various single releases [All kinds of labels]

Recommended if you like: Drums, Basses
Due to Christmas, we sadly don't have much time for more deep dives (except for the Hidden Gem section below). Luckily, not a whole lot of people released something this week anyway. Loads of yearly compilations once again, but mostly just repackaging of older tunes. But there are still quite a few tracks and EPs I want to quickly mention at least, just to give you a quick overview over the neat stuff that did get released.
On the Dancefloor side of things we've got Protostar's remix of the Darren Styles classic Us Against The World, as part of the Monstercat Christmas remix saga. If you ever wondered how Happy Hardcore DnB would sound like, this is for you. If you like something more laid back and maybe more asian (who knows), I've got just the thing for you. Japanese Electro Rock Band The Game Shop, who from time to time do dabble in DnB, released a remix EP of one of their earliest hits Everything Is OK. My favorite remix of the bunch by far is the one by Osaka-based producer Mountain. I will never get enough of his Miami Vice funk type of drum and bass.
From the chill side of dancefloor we take it down another notch to Liquid. One of the most underrated czech producer duos out there, Ripple, released a really neat free download Words that is sure to calm you down if the festivities stressed you out. Watch out for that album they've got coming up! If you need even more c h i l l, there's also the lovely Emotions single by my fellow german countryman and multi-genre producer PLTX. Big up the Dresden gang.
Let's take it down even further. To the Deep side of things. My favorite release on that side is probably Rift's Can't Stop EP on Differential Recordings. Especially Never Last and the Phobetor Rift & Petroll VIP did it for me. Great stuff as always from Rift and Differential. Need For Mirrors also released a very interesting track this week: Patience, a collab with vocalist Fusion. In true Need For Mirrors fashion it's one of those tracks that you cannot really compare to anything else. Definitely one of the more uplifting NFM tunes though.
This week was also great for Deep DnB compilations. First off we've got the The Frontliners Vol. 1 compilation on Propaganda011, which I only found because it features a DnB track by a Bass House producer I fell in love with the last few months: Kage. I'm very glad I did find this though, my favorites were the tunes by Mew Zu, Point 4, Sub Mortal and, of course, Kage. Next up we got V Recordings's yearly compilation Planet V Vol. 4. Not a whole lot of new tracks, but the few new ones Bryan Gee blessed us with are well worth your time. L-Side and Command Strange, Makoto and Paul T & Edward Oberon, Alibi, Beat Merchants, all these are featured and deliver the good stuff, as expected.
Lastly (in the deep section), I want to mention the Christmas present that is the SANTA FIGHTS SOME MONSTERS LP on my newcomer label SIN.FULL Maze. And the incredible LP name isn't even the best part of it! 16 free tracks with some of the freshest productions around, by some of the most unknown names around too. I can't even recommend specific tunes, it's all so interesting. Just listen to it all If you only care about streaming (guilty as charged), I was assured that this one will also come to Spotify, probably next month. Which is good, because I need all of these in my playlists, like now.
Hey, nice, we have arrived at the Neuro section! A clear highlight this week was the release of the album that puts the funk back in Neurofunk: Mean Teeth's Bring Back The Funk LP. If you have closely followed their excellent album preview EPs over the years since the Estonian and Lithuanian duo started this project, you won't find that many new tracks on this finished album, but it's still very much worth your time. Great remasters of their biggest tunes to date and collaborations with NickBee and Volatily Cycle for those who are up-to-date, for everyone else a whole 20 amazing tracks of the funkiest of the funk Neurofunk awaits you. For those who like their dnb even harder, there was also Hallucinator's new Rejects LP on PRSPCT.
One last thing and then I swear to God I'll shut up about this forever. Until next week that is. This week also saw the releases of DJ Hazard's When The Dreams Are Over EP and the long awaited Bou and Mefjus collaboration Wormhole. Not for me personally, but I can't not mention them at least.

3. Particular Shades - Fault Input / String [Watchout Music]

Recommended if you like: Amoss, Notequal, Synergy
You better Watchout, you better not cry, better not pout, I'm telling you why: Hidden Gem Of The Week™ is coming to town!
Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? I've got one last present for you guys. This week's pick is Particular Shades - Fault Input / String on Watchout Music. Lots of new names in there. Let's start with the label and work our way to the artist.
Watchout Music is a very very new label. They were founded earlier this year and this is just their second overall release so far. They are a Slovakia-based label focused on showing off the vast amount of talent that can be found in Eastern Europe, more specifically Slovakia and the Czech Republic. If you were active in that specific scene (no judgement if you weren't) in the last 3 years you might remember there being another project with very similar ambitions: dnb.zone. In fact, dnb.zone and Watchout are working very closely together to not just showcase releases by Slovakian producers, but now also release the best ones themselves. Watchout is also collaborating with the czech label SIN.FULL MAZE that I've mentioned earlier and covered for the Notequal EP a few weeks back. If you recognize any of these names, you know that can only mean one thing: Very high quality music. Watchout for this label in the future.
Not convinced yet? Alright alright, let's talk about their newest release then. It comes from the newly established Slovakian producer duo Particular Shades. Previously known in the local scene as the DJs Abbre and Deepthonic, they have now joined forces, expanding their repertoire from "just" DJing to also producing their own tracks. As they are still very new and only have one single other release, it's hard to judge their production too much. But if that one release and this new double single is anything to go by, this certainly won't be the last time we will have heard of them.
This newest release by them is a double single that combines the best of the techy and deep worlds of drum and bass. The first track, Fault Input, is a collaboration with fellow Slovakian trio Notequal. It's a great blend of rolling and shuffling drums, seriously hard-hitting snares and basses that go crazy all over. But my favorite part has got to be the way they worked a old timey computer tutorial sample into the mix. I love documentary or computer generated voice samples. Techy, deep goodness. If this is the faulty input, I don't even want the correct input.
Continuing with the IT-based naming schemes, String is the second half of the double single. This one takes us a bit further away from the techyness, but doubles down on the deep part of it all. A loudly growling bass so deep I can barely hear it in my headphones, a string of equally aggressive but slightly less deep bellows and roars and lots and lots of different sections keep you on your toes as you listen to it.
Can only recommend following both Watchout and Particular Shades in the future!
Other Hidden Gems of this week: - Various Artists - VA AW20 [Sub:Edit Records] - DEZPOT - CORRIDORS OF DEATH PART 13 - Anizo - ANEP01 (what an EP name lol) - MYLK - Chocolate Parfait (KONKAI Remix) - Ci-Energy - Qualia (sadly missed this one on release, definitely worth a belated shout-out imo)

Extra Reviews (by u/jandogearmy)

War – Rebirth / Crofters

War hasn’t been too active in terms of releasing originals in 2020. If you look back at his discography, he never really puts out a lot of solo stuff. War shines in collabs and as a fantastic engineer, having done a lot on the technical side together with Hydro, like their album „Lateral Thinking“ for Utopia Music in 2019. But every now and then, War graces us with some new solo work. After having released the VIPs for Heat and Come Cross in June, the end of the year brings Rebirth/Crofters on Doc Scott’s 31 Recordings. Music on 31 is usually not everyone’s favourite, but if an artist lands there you can usually expect it to be something special.
Rebirth has a rather unusual sounding, noticeably clipped kickdrum. To me, this sound carries the track as it stands out so much from the clean samples often used in a lot of tracks. The bassline in this tune has a fair bit of midrange, which is also something special for War’s music, because he has mastered the game of sub basses and used a lot of deeper basslines over the last couple of years. The top layer of percussion is built by some clanky percussion, and some space filled with a quite monotone pad. At no point does the tune slow down, there are only eight bars without percussion.
Crofters is a bit more subtle, but by no means less efficient on the dancefloor. Strong metallic sounding percussion and a deeper bassline and get this tune going, while it has a lot more atmosphere than Rebirth. Two different, heavily processed vocal samples dance around a bunch of constantly evolving pads, adding for a sometimes sparse, sometimes dense sounding atmosphere. The occasional dub alarm adds sparkle on top.
This one isn't my favourite War release, since a lot of the past output felt a lot deeper and these two tracks feel more like DJ tools to me, but they also got their place and are good in their that role.

Crypticz – Between Dust & Time LP (Western Lore)

Crypticz is an artist very little people pay attention to, despite him being immensely good at doing what he does: subtle, special and super strong tracks, not so much aimed at the dancefloor, but rewarding the patient and mindful listener. The first entry on his discogs page dates back to 2013, and on his way through music he put out releases with 31 Recordings, Different Music and Cosmic Bridge, to name a few. His contribution for Om Unit’s Cosmology: Dark Matter compilation, a track named Chrysalis featuring Any Kisnorbo on the vocals, was one of my favourite tunes I discovered in 2019, and I listened to it countless times.
Between Dust & Time is not a drum and bass album. It’s barely even a jungle album in the sense of what most people expect when hearing the word jungle. This body of work to me feels more like an ambient or dub album that loosely fits into a jungle context, but takes the term "jungle" to a very abstract meaning. There won’t be any significant DJ tools in this one, its purpose is away from the dancefloor. If you value music beyond its meaning in a set, this album is for you.
Broadcast Feeling, the opening tune, sets the general sound for the following 48 minutes very well. The track opens with an intricate soundscape of pads, ambient drums, field recordings, and a bass hinting at what will come later on. This soundscape takes its time to develop, and at around four minutes, a sudden short amen burst darkens the mood and foreshadows what’s next to come. At 04:36, the main section of this piece starts, if one can even call it that, as the long intro is just as much of a highlight as the part with drums and a deep 808 sub bass.
Ocean Blue features Amy Kisnorbo, who also did the vocals for Crypticz‘ 2019 track „Chrysalis“. Her ethereal voice is not so much a foreground lead element, but gets treated like an instrument that is part of the atmosphere built by the pads in this track. The beautiful soundscape might as well stand on its own as an ambient work, but it gets underlaid by a drum break that I don’t know the name of.
Lakutala (Version) sits at around 160 bpm, but feels slower due to the drum pattern being half as quick as in the average jungle tune. The drums feel quite lo-fi, and this effect gets reinforced by some noise getting layered underneath.
The Guided starts with a sample recorded in a forest, and some tribal percussion with spring reverb on it, an effect commonly used in dub music. After about one minute a vocal joins the percussions and ambient forest noises, with a sub bass already announcing itself, only for the percussion to get filtered out again at around 01:40, the vocal sample ending, and the track leading into a snareless halftime soundscape, carried by a delay effect messing with the vocal sample and occasional pads. The sub bass carries the rhythm most noticeably in this one. Later on a sparsely used middle eastern string instrument delivers extra ear candy.
Journey Through The Rings Of Saturn doesn’t contain any driving percussion. No kicks and snares in this one. Hats and some tribal drums are the only impact sounds, the shining star of this track are its pads. They start out ever so quiet and become louder and more expressive, developing and forming a soundscape over the four minutes of the tune. The bass seems far away in this tune, until it turns into a reverbed and filtered reese in the second half. The tune closes with some quiet bells.
Nightshifter’s Groove features the usual long intro we’ve come to expect after the previous tunes on the album, most of them having the intro take half of the track. But this time it isn’t just forming a soundscape, but leads into a rhythm driven by a lowpassed kick with lots of space for the tribal drums to keep on coming with more layers and details, and even adding an oldschool break on top. The drum layers are the shining star of this track.
Lakutala (the non-version of it) is exactly a minute longer, and features a „full-time“ jungle pattern instead of the stripped back halftime pattern of its version. The atmosphere remains the same, and with the 808 bass underneath, this one might even work as a tune on the dancefloor – a rare exception for this album. Despite having a more traditional jungle arrangement, it still manages to stand out by paying close attention to making the drum programming and effects as unique as possible and having separate spaces for the pads to breathe on their own, without fighting with the drums. Pads also deserve appreciation on their own.
Memories Fade As I Drift Away, the closing track, once again doesn’t use any major drums, only some heavily reverbed hats and foley samples along with some pads and a field recording of someone walking next to a road, gently bringing this absolute journey of an album to an end.

New Releases

Anizo - ANEP01 , [Bandcamp]
Archaea – Urghh / Get Down [Beatport]
Black Barrel & Nami - Hit Me More EP , [Bandcamp]
Blade (Dnb) - O7s 003 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Bladerunner - The Crazy Dragon (Vip) [Beatport]
Bowsar - The Rift , [Bandcamp]
Cryfelt - Ammunition EP , [Bandcamp]
Current Value - CV Set Stormers (Neuro) , [Bandcamp]
Dan Guidance, Fishy - The Mind State EP [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Spotify]
Darren Styles - Us Against The World (Protostar Remix) [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Spotify]
Dezpot - Corridors Of Death Part 13 [Beatport], [Spotify]
DJ Hazard - When The Dreams Are Over EP [Beatport], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Dorian - Radiation [Beatport], [Spotify]
dreadmaul - Dark Incantation , [Bandcamp]
dreadmaul & Bereneces - Curandeiro EP , [Bandcamp]
Erritate, Able, Pluvio, Fullstep Phil, Max Baker - Monk Audio Various Artists 2020 EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Fanatics, Licid, Maze – Trooper / Cloudless [Beatport], [Spotify]
Filthy Habits - Turn Back The Clock [Beatport], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Furney, Lady Emz - Urban Blue LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Fusion, Need For Mirrors - Patience [Beatport], [Spotify]
Godderz - Wake Up / Protocol [Beatport], [Spotify]
Graysound, Elipsa, Medium - Shapes & Colours [Beatport], [Spotify]
Hallucinator, Coppa, Julia Marks, Maztek, Kiara - Rejects LP [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Spotify]
Henry - Dystopia / Deeper We Go [Beatport], [Spotify]
Higher Sector - Covid-19 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Imran Graffiti - Prisoner Of Identity EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Ivy Lab, Frank Carter Iii – Soul Sista [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Label Store]
Kalum - How You Like EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Kelle - Revolution In You LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Law & Wheeler - Survivalist , [Bandcamp]
Mark Dinimal – Surplus EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Master Error, Natrix - Connected Part 3 EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Mean Teeth - Bring Back The Funk LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Mefjus, Bou - Wormhole [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Motiv, Zar, Diligent Fingers, Sahala, Duskee - Your Power / Lost In Space [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Spotify]
Msdos - Red Yellow Green LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Notequal, Particular Shades - Fault Input / String [Beatport], [Spotify]
Pitch Black - Did You Get The Message EP , [Bandcamp]
Pltx – Emotions [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Spotify]
Profile, Sub Killaz - Sirens [Beatport], [Spotify]
Rido - Breaking Rules [Beatport], [Spotify]
Rift, Petroll, Cluda - Can't Stop EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Ripple - Words [Beatport], [Spotify]
Sully - Up , [Bandcamp]
Sydney, Bert H, Hiraeth – Particles [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Teej, Mtek, Jappa – Hooligan / Rebellion [Beatport], [Spotify]
Terrence & Phillip - Just A Feeling [Beatport], [Spotify]
The House Crew, S.E.S. - Superhero (My Knight) Remix EP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Trakker - Curiosity / Angel [Beatport], [Spotify]
Treba - Inner [Beatport]
Various Artists - 4 Years Of Hoofbeats Music LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Bad Taste Drum & Bass 2020 [Beatport], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Best Of DTR 2019-2020 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – BNC Express, Dnb Music Delivery IX LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Camo Tribe, Yeah Man: The Remixes LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Celsius Best Of 2020 LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Deep In The Jungle Anthems 7 - Lp Sampler [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – DNB Vibes [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Drift EP , [Bandcamp]
Various Artists – Ghetto Dub, Dubz: Rerubbed LP [Beatport], [Bandcamp], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Headsbass Volume 5 LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Incursion Recordings Unsolicited Dubs, Vol. 2 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Jango Music Most Rated 2020 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Korsakov Music, The Story So Far LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Midnight Bass, Scotland LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Nu Venture, Drum & Bass Anthology: 2021 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Propaganda011 The Frontliners Vol. 1 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Sub Edit AW20 [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists - Subhive Essentials 2020 [Beatport], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Various Artists – Subway Sounds, Back To The Future Part 2 LP [Beatport], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Various Artists – The Dreamers, Dreamcatcher Vol.5 LP [Beatport], [Spotify]
Various Artists – V Recordings, Planet V Drum & Bass Vol. 4 LP [Beatport], [Label Store], [Spotify]
Various Artists - We Are Crucast 3 [Beatport], [Spotify]

Here are the results from the r/golf 2020 Census!

A big thanks to the 2055 of you who took a moment to complete the recent golf 2020 census.
This is a tremendous response and should provide a reasonable sample size among active users of this sub. Caveat: while my IRL work has a lot to do with digital media and numbers, I am no data scientist or Excel whiz, so I'm sure this isn't quite as good as it could be, but it's all I have time to do with now!
So without further ado, here are the results (and I have made the data available here if anyone wants to take a peek or slice and dice it for themselves). You can view natively in your browser, or simply click the 'download' button in the top right.
I might edit this later with some more findings, but that's enough for now! I'll be really interested to know what you think. What results surprise you? What results were you sure of? Please post and discuss your feedback!
1. How old are you? The average age of golf is 30.01 years. It's also the most common age selected in the census with 144 of you identifying as exactly 30 years old, 135 of you identifying as 31 and 134 identifying as 28 years.
The oldest respondent is 72 (and has a handicap of 5). The youngest respondent was 13, which is the minimum age to have a reddit account, which is why I cut it off there. The two 13-year-olds identify as being off 12 and 6 handicaps.
Just 108 of the sample size are teenagers, representing a mere of 5.26% of respondents.
2. What is your gender? A whopping 98.2% of us identify as male and just 1.1% female. I knew this sub was heavily skewed to men, but that's a LOT more than I expected.
3. What is your relationship status? 41.9% of this sub is married, 29.7% are in a relationship and 27.5% are single.
The average handicap of married golfers is 17.0, single 17.5 while golfers in a relationship are 18.4, suggesting this latter category is prioriting other matters in life :)
0.8% of married golfers and 1.1% of both single and golfers in relationship are better than scratch players
4. Where do you live? 79.7% of you live in the United States Canada is second with 8.1% and the UK third with 4.4%.
The top 10 is:

Country	Count
USA	1637
Canada	166
UK	90
Australia	27
Sweden	26
Ireland	23
New Zealand	11
Norway	10
Germany	8
Netherlands/Denmark/Finland	7

There are single representatives from Antigua, the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Greece, Grenada, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Romania and Thailand.
5. In which US state do you live? Here is where the Americans among us live:

State	Count
California	171
Texas	108
New York	88
Illinois	69
Pennsylvania	63
Massachusetts/Ohio	62
Georgia	69
Florida/Michigan	58
Virginia	56
Minnesota	54

The states with the fewest golfers are Delaware and Montana (2 each) while Vermont and Wyoming each have 4 representatives on golf according to this census.
6. What is your current handicap? (rounded to the nearest whole number) According to this census, the average handicap or golf is slightly lower than 17.5 (slightly lower as there are 20 players who identify as better than scratch, but were counted as 0 for the purposes of this average).
7. Recently,my handicap has been... 1262 (61.35%) of you have been reducing your handicaps lately - well done! 8.81% of you need to stop the recent rise in your handicap 29.84% of you are remaining relatively unchanged/consistent
8. My status as a golfer is... The vast majority of us (96.15%) are amateur players/weekend hackers while there are at least 8 current professionals among us, 3 former pros and 68 aspiring pros
9. What would you say is your preferred brand of club? I appreciate this question didn't suit everyone, as putters are different to irons as wedges are different to drivers - you might like a brand in one club, but loathe it in another. Without wanting to make this survey too in-depth, I think the below table is a decent snapshot of golf's preferred club brands (and really sorry I forgot about the PXG crew!)

Brand	# that express it as 'favorite'
TaylorMade	532
Callaway	380
Mizuno	303
Titleist	270
Ping	218
Cobra	126
Cleveland	46
Wilson	46
Nike	39
Srixon	32
Ben Hogan	20
Adams	13
Miura	9
Dunlop	6
Bridgestone	4
MacGregor	4
Bettinardi	2
Honma	2
Vulcan	2

Obviously a lot to unpack here and there a LOT of variables. Of particular interest is the love for a now defunct golf brand (Nike) ahead of leading brands such as Srixon and Miura. Also, there is a noticeable drop-off from Ping to Cobra and an even greater one from Cobra to Cleveland.
When you isolate the data to those with a 0 or better handicap, the results look like this:
TaylorMade (9) Titleist (7) Callaway (3) Mizuno (3) Ping (3) Cleveland (2) Miura (1) Nike (1)
10. Do you prefer to mix or match? 19.57% prefer to match your sets while 80.43% don't mind what's in the bag, as long as it works for you.
11. What brand of ball do you primarily play?

Brand	Number who play it
Titleist	462
Whatever I find in my bag or the woods	290
Callaway	249
TaylorMade	211
Srixon	194
Bridgestone	170
Kirkland	121
Vice	119
Snell	79
Wilson	39
Nike	21
Top Flite	19
Oncore	16
Maxfli	13
Inesis	8
Volvik	8
Mizuno	7
Pinnacle	6
Noodle	3
Seed	2
Sugar	2
Slazenger	2
OtheVarious	12

12. Do you think the ball you play has a significant impact on your game? 37.59% of you think it's VERY important 19.40% of you don't think it matters at all 43.01% don't mind, as long as it's a ball by a 'leading' manufacturer
17/20 of BETTER than scratch golfers said that ball choice is critical. The only surprising thing about this is that it wasn't 20/20! The average handicap of players who suggest ball choice is very important is 14.16 (down 3+ whole points from the overall golf average) and if you include the BETTER than scratch handicappers as zero, that falls to 13.85.
13. What is your position on iron covers? 57 of you (2.77%) use iron covers 821 of you (39.97%) of you think these 57 people should be openly mocked 1176 (57.26%) of you think these 57 people should do whatever they like :)
14. Do you drink alcohol while golfing? 17.96% of you don't see any difference between a golf course and an open bar 29.60% of you drink and play some of the time 24.74% of you drink occasionally 27.70% of you never drink while golfing
Of the 29 zero or better handicappers among us, 11 never drink on the course and 5 drink most of the time!
15. What is your preferred tee time? 40.55% of you enjoy gettingup at the crack of dawn for an early morning tee time 27.46% of you like a morning slot, but without the early wake-up 14.41% of you would rather play in the afternoon 13.00% of you enjoy finishing the day with twilight golf Just 4.58% of you prefer to tee off at lunchtime
16. What is your preferred way of getting around the course? 45.13% of you prefer driving 32.18% of you are card carrying members of the push cart mafia 22.69% of you mental bastards prefer to walk and carry
17. Are you a member of a club? 71.23% of golf are nomads 23.81% of us are full year members of a club 4.96% of us are members of a club for part of the year
18. Have you ever had a hole-in-one? 10.18% of you have an ace to your name 89.82% of us are still searching for that elusive milestone!
19. Who do you prefer golfing with? 76.53% of us would rather golf with our friends 12.03% most enjoy playing with family 10.37% prefer the solitude of a solo round 1.07% of you most enjoy the company of strangers
20. Hot or cold? 67.53% of you would prefer to play in roasting hot conditions 32.47% would rather play in the freezing cold
21. What is your biggest pet peeve on the course?
Here's how you responded to the pre-defined answers:

Peeve	# of you who most hate this
Slow play	1051
Lack of course care	214
People who hit up on you	204
'Put me down for bogey' guy	147
People who litter	145
Bluetooth speakers	111
Unsolicited advice	93

And here are some of the best 'write in' answers!

All of the above in equal parts (this was a popular response!)
The 6-foot gimme guy
Drunk golfers (refer to question 14)
Finding out the greens have been cored
The 10 practice swings before a duff guy
Snobbery
Rule sticklers
This is technically littering, but cigarette butts and sunflower seeds
Starters who don't properly manage their time sheets
Angry players who swear, throw clubs etc.

22. What do you consider to be the best part of your game? 34.95% of you are best with an iron in your hands 31.44% of you are magicians around the green with a wedge 16.84% of you feel most at home on the greens 16.77% of you love to step on to the tee with the big dog
23. What do you consider to be the worst part of your game? 45.62% of you aren't confident with driver in hand 20.25% of you least like putting 18.55% don't strike irons well compared to the rest of your game 15.58% of you are most uncomfortable with a wedge
24. Assuming you had not achieved either, would you rather... 68.01% of you would rather play a whole round to par or better 31.99% of you would prefer to write a "1" on your score card
25. Which shot produces the most pleasure for you? An utterly PURE mid/long iron right out of the sweet spot (40.12%) Ripping a booming drive down the middle of the fairway (30.62%) Reading the break and hitting the ideal weight on a putt (11.74%) A pin-point chip/pitch to tap-in range (9.54%) Crushing a wood off the deck (4.67%) Splashing out of the sand to a few inches from the cup (2.58%) A perfectly judged bump & run (0.73%)
So that's all of the questions with pre-defined answers, which was much easier for me to dissect than the qualitative answers to come! With upward of 2000 responses, I can't depict every answer, so have done my best to group them and provide some outlying humour and interesting responses.
26. Who are you picking to drain a 20-foot breaking putt to save your life?
By far the most popular response was "Tiger" or a variation of it (including "2000 Sunday Tiger" or "Young Tiger" or simply just an emoji and there are so many variations of TW, Eldrick, El Tigre etc. that I am not going to tally them up - just trust me on this, he is far and away the top choice!)
A lot of you would back yourself for the putt. Some because you legitimately think you will make it, others because they will feel more motivated than anyone on earth while others wouldn't consider burdening another person with that responsibility!
So here's the list I've generated with everyone who had 5 or more mentions.

Tiger Woods (714) - not including the aforementioned variations of his name, so I suspect that more than half of you will have chosen TW in some way, shape or form
Myself (139)
Jordan Spieth (121)
Jack Nicklaus (83)
Phil Mickelson (82)
Dustin Johnson (76)
Rickie Fowler (62)
Justin Thomas (58)
Jason Day (49)
Kevin Kisner (31)
Bryson DeChambeau (26)
Colin Morikawa (20)
Brad Faxon (18)
Kevin Na (17) - and two said "just so he can walk it in"
Steve Stricker (16)
Rory McIlroy (15)
My dad (13)
Dennis McCarthy (12)
Anyone but myself (11)
Happy Gilmore (11)...uh oh, Happy learned how to putt!
Jesus (11)
Ben Crenshaw (10)
Brandt Snedeker (9)
Webb Simpson (9)
Matt Kuchar (8)
Ian Poulter (8)
Brooks Koepka (6)
Arnold Palmer (6)
Tommy Fleetwood (6)
Jim Furyk (6)
Jon Rahm (5) - would have been a lot more after last weekend!
Patrick Reed (5)

A special shout out to....

The 6 people who would choose my mom (clearly good putting is not hereditary)
The 3 people who said "The Club Pro Guy"
The 2 people who said Michael Phelps
The 2 who said Batman
The 1 cool cat who said Carole Baskin
The 1 who nominated Rick Shiels because he "prefers some risk"
And the wise guy who said "a robot designed for putting" (see: 2000 Tiger)

27. If you could change one rule in golf, what would it be?
Another one where I made it pretty difficult to analyse and display the results! But here are a few of the top answers (in what I interpret as order of popularity), and please feel free to access the results yourself if you want to sort through them all.

Lost ball to become a drop at nearest point of relief for a one-shot penalty instead of reloading for three
All hazards/OOB to be red stakes for consistency
Be permitted to ground your club in a bunker
Relax dress codes (including allowing tour players to wear shorts)
"Gallery Balls" whereby amateurs receive a free drop for a 'lost' ball that is definitely in play
All players should receive relief from fairway divots
Any drop/penalty should just be one stroke (a LOT of you think all OB should be treated as a lateral hazard)
A certain number of mulligans per round (most said one, but some of you want up to 3 per nine!)
Actual enforcement of penalties for slow play and/or a shot clock
Be permitted to lift, clean and place on all fairways
Free relief for things like ree roots, fences etc.
Drop height... some of you want it lower (ankle) and some of you want it back to the waist!
Change number of clubs permitted in bag (interestingly, half of those who suggested this want fewer and the other half want more - there doesn't seem to be a universal consensus)
That inconsequential and accidental touches of the ball or sand should not result in a penalty
Allow rangefinders/slope in competitive play
Preferred lies within one club-length no nearer the hole on all grass and bunker sand
Flagsticks should remain in the cup 100% of the time
Overturn the ban on anchoring
Slightly bigger cups
Stymies should be permitted

While sorting through these responses, it became apparent just how difficult it is to please all golfers. On one line, someone says "Collared shirts compulsory" and on the next, someone says "Collared shirts optional!"
And finally, this one tickled me...
"If you are not on the green and can run to your ball and play another shot within 5 seconds, the first one shouldn't count!"
28. What is your hottest/most controversial golf take?
Another one that's impossible to really depict succinctly, so here are some interesting responses, copied and pasted exactly as you wrote them!

(most) old people ruin the game (gatekeeping & arrogance towards younger generation)
"Annoying fans" are necessary to grow the sport
18 holes per game is too many
70% of people should be playing from the red tees. Move forward
Alcohol should be banned on the course
Alignment lines on balls should be banned
All private clubs should have a public day
Amateur golfers on YouTube do more for attracting new people to the sport than pros on TV
Augusta as a course/club is overhyped. If it wasn't for the exclusivity and the masters itself, it would be considered an average course
Bad golfers should be relegated to non-ideal tee times
Blades make you a better golfer because you can feel where your misses are on the face
Breaking 80 isn’t impressive if it’s not from the tips
Brooks is more annoying than Bryson
Bryson and brooks are likable, talented guys
Bryson and Patrick reed are good for the game (several dozen more Bryson takes!)
Carts should only be used by people with mobility issues
Corn Ferry far superior to European tour
Dress codes are stupid
European Tour is more difficult than the PGA Tour
Everyone cheats, somehow or some way
Fairway shots are most times harder than shots out of the rough on low quality courses
Fedex Cup should be match play
Fitting is the biggest scam going. It is a sales tool and nothing more.
Getting married ruins the promising careers of young pga pros (see Jordan, tiger, rory, rickie, DJ)
Gimmes are acceptable and should be reasonable encouraged in social (non-competitive) play
Gimmes suck and hurt your game
Glove should not be removed during putting
Golf courses are a waste of resources and land
Golf decorum means something and isn't designed to be purely elitist
golf fans are the worst fans of any sport
Golf isn’t fun to watch just to play
Handicapping is a participation trophy for bad players
Hazards should not be raked, they are hazards
Hitting Fairway Woods off the deck is far easier than off the tee
Hole in one's aren't that special
I don't like Phil Mickelson
I don't really mind slow play
I don't think you should mark your ball on the putting green for the other golfers. Putt around other balls.
I love golf but hate golfers
I'd be on tour if I was given 1 year to train, a new fitted set of clubs, and had no obligations to anything outside of golf (this respondent is a scratch player)
I'd like to see a tournament with separate tees: womens/champions/PGA, all competing for the same $/trophy
I'd rather hit a great drive and double bogey than dink my iron a few times and par
If Bryson was black people would focus on the fact that he is changing the game and advancing it rather than focusing on his minor blunders he has had and blowing them out of proportion.
If you can’t shoot under 100, you have no business being on a regulation/championship 18 hole golf course
Instead of rolling back the ball, ban the use of tees
Iron covers aren’t terrible
Irons should be labeled with loft not numbers
Leaving the pin in to putt is better than taking it out
Men can learn way more from watching the LPGA than the PGA Tour
Mulligans are stupid and you cheat yourself out of an actual score
Music being played from the cart should not be distracting during a random weekend tee time. We aren’t on tour.
No discount should be given if the greens are aerated
No one should take more than one practice swing. Just get up and hit the ball.
Nobody wants to see pros play ridiculously tough courses where the winner is -1.
Older men at golf courses prove millennial aren't the entitled generation, its the 50 to 60 old dude who is
Pace of play is less of an issue than people make it out to be in the amateur game
PGA tour broadcast juices yardages for casual fans
Players on the tour aren’t too long, it’s cool to see what they can do with the same equipment as us
Playing forward by a set of tees doesn't make you less of a man
Playing more rounds will help you improve scores faster than range sessions. Rounds are what get scored, not repeated hits off turf.
Practice swings don't work and are generally pointless
Prime tiger wouldn’t go on that run he had today against this new talent
Pro Golfers should be able to play through noise and heckling
Pro V1s are overrated and mainly used by people for placebo
Pros are playing for millions of dollars they are allowed to be entitled and whine
Pros should carry their own bags
Putters over $100 are a waste of money
Rowdy fans are alright
Ryder Cup is better than any major
Scottys are not overpriced
Scrambles are a horrible way to play golf
Shafts don't matter for most golfers
Solo golfers do not have the right of way as long as the group ahead is meeting course pace of play
Stepping on someone's putting line makes no difference
Take the driver out of the bag. You’ll shoot better.
Tee boxes based on handicap not age/gender
The British Open is more prestigious than the Masters
The top 20 LPGA players could make bank on the men's tour if they could tee off from 100 yards ahead
The US Open is a better tournament than the Masters
There are like 5 people on the subreddit qualified to give swing advice
Tiger doesn't care to win again
Unless you are a 10 handicap or better, the ball you play does not matter
US Open should only be played at public golf courses
Waiting for the group in front of you is not hard or annoying
Womens golf is more entertaining to watch
Yelling fore does nothing. You’re on a course be aware of your surroundings.
You should have to have a license to play golf. Nothing crazy just take an online class that would go over basic rules and etiquette.

29. What is the best golf course you have ever played?
Have aggregated the most popular answers to the best of my ability, capped at 6+ responses.

Pebble Beach (17)
Chambers Bay (16)
Half-Moon Bay (15)
Torrey Pines (13)
Whistling Straits (12)
TPC Scottsdale (11)
Bethpage Black (10)
Arcadia Bluffs (9)
Wolf Creek (9)
Tobacco Road (8)
Sypglass (8)
Pinehurst #2 (7)
Pasatiempo (6)
TPC Sawgrass (6)

30. What is your bucket list course that you are yet to play?
Again, a lot of variations here which made it tough for me to sort the data, but have done my best to sample a Top 10. I was very surprised to see Augusta behind St Andrews and so far behind Pebble but I suppose people subconsciously don't vote for courses they have no legitimate way of ever playing. I'd be interested to see these results if I re-phrased the question to "You have a free, no questions asked tee time anywhere in the world, name your club..."

Pebble Beach (433)
St Andrews (200)
Augusta (193)
Bandon Dunes (119)
Pinehurst #2 (61)
TPC Sawgrass (49)
Bethpage Black (35)
Torrey Pines (22)
Whistling Straits (22)
Wolf Creek (21)

31. What is the ONE thing golf administrators ought to do to encourage more people (particularly young people) to play the sport?
This was a genuinely encouraging list of 2000+ results to read though. We often read about the 'doom & gloom' aspects of the future of our sport, but there is a vibrant and dedicated golf community out there thinking of ways to perpetuate interest in the sport and keep the flame lit for the next generation.
Again, here's a sampling of what I would consider to be the most popular responses.

Make the game less cost prohibitive (this is a big one - everything from clubs to green fees to beers)
Open 'masterclasses' or free clinics from pros at ranges and local clubs (another big one)
Shorter courses (9 or 12 hole)
Heavily discounted beers for 18+ players
More facilities like Top Golf
A greater focus on 9-hole game, tee times, handicap structure etc.
All clubs should have a dedicated youth program
Allow interest free payment plans for things like memberships, clubs etc.
Alter rules to make it less elite/proper ie. mulligans, preferred lies etc.
Allow kids (U15) to play free (and rent clubs free), or at heavily reduced rates
Alternate course routing that allows you to come off whenever you like, not necessarily play 18
Kids play free with a paying adult (ensuring pace of play is maintained)
Relax the dress code and 'traditional' golf culture ie. be far less elitist
Twilight 9-hole beer leagues, aimed at young professionals looking for something to do after work
Carving out tee time blocks for 'beginners' so they don't feel pressured
Similarly, these blocks might be "free for all" in terms of attire, etiquette etc. so if a 14-year-old shows up in a hoodie, carrying 18 clubs and wants to have two mulligans from every tee, it's completely fine!
Introduce golf to public schools through gym/PE classes
More tech in carts and ability to connect bluetooth (with limited volume)
Change the nomenclature of "women's" tees to "beginner" or "forward" tees
Close the course one day a month for beginners, with teaching pros on the course and range
Pace of play is important, but if newbies feel intimidated they will never come back
Encourage mini games within a round for kids ie. straightest shot, nearest to pin etc.
Engage with local community/government to identify talented (possibly minority) athletes who would otherwise have no access to golf and get clubs in their hand
Decrease the emphasis on score - make it FUN and about the process, not the end result
More social events BEYOND golf in local clubs to build the golfing community rapport
Improve the professional tour TV and online products

32. What is the best tip, or piece of advice you have ever received that's improved your game?
This one is just too crazy to aggregate, so please view all responses (in column AG) here :)
But I will list EVERY bit of advice provided by our scratch or better players.

Only hit shots you know you can hit
Just keep playing
Don't think, just do
If you chunk chips, focus on using you left (right handed) hand more than your right
Focus on the next shot
Get a lesson
You're not good enough to get mad
Slow tempo always creates a better shot
Tempo tempo tempo! 90% of my bad swings are rushing at the top and hands getting ahead of my body
Hammer the nail
You don't control the outcome, focus on the process
Bowed left wrist
Being mad is ok, being negative is not
Ask quetions of people who are better than you
Focus on the shot you have now, not the one you just hit
Swing on a plane
Eliminate the double cross
Play your game
Before all else, hit the center of the face
Aim small, miss small
Care less
Slow Down
Learn how to properly manage the course
The only shot that matters is the next
Rotation is the wrong word, you're not supposed to rotate
Relax your grip
Accelerate THROUGH the ball - let the ball simply get in the way of your club head’s swing path

33. If you had the attention of EVERY SINGLE PLAYER in the world for 10 whole seconds, what would you say?
Again, too much for me to break down, so you can see all responses here in column AH, but here are some of my favorites and some of the more popular ones!

Fix your ball mark
Hurry the fuck up
One practice swing is enough
Leave the flag in
Pick up your fucking trash
Have more fun on the course - it's a game after all
Enjoy this game while we can - it's truly a privilege
Accommodate the new as when you are gone, they are all that are left to carry the game
Grip it and rip it
Focus on contact before power
Sam Snead's win record is B.S.
Thank you for making me feel like I'm not the only person obsessed with this game
If you love golf, take new people golfing
Be considerate to players of all skill levels and work to grow the game not alienate newcomers
Keep your tempo up through the chip shot
Yelling "FORE" could save someone's life (including tour players)
FORE RIGHT
Your ego doesn't exist, let it go
Don't be a dick, treat the game/courses right, and if you're going to suck, suck at a faster pace
There's always someone worse than you
You don't practice enough to get that mad
You aren’t as good as you think and that's okay
Go get fitted, it will pay for itself many times over in the long run
Be ready to hit your shot before it's your turn
You hit the ball 15 yards shorter than you think you do
At your best as a pro, you’ll never be half as good as Tiger's peak
Mashed potatoes
It's our job to grow the game.
Baba booey
Jim Nantz, please come do the color commentary for one my rounds
Take some damn lessons and stop buying $500 drivers
Stop giving yourself gimmies, put the ball in the hole
Smell the roses, enjoy the views
Golf is hard
All of you sandbaggers are going to hell
Hurry the fuck up, and stop spending a minute perfectly adjusting the line on that 15 footer for bogey
It's our job to grow the game
ONE FUCKING PRACTICE SWING

Thanks again for your input! I might edit this later with some more findings, but that's enough for now!

Ethical/SRI Criteria Series #2 - Liontrust Sustainable Future funds (Equities)

Rant on why "why don't they use nukes in Mass Effect" is stupid, and why judging weapons by total energy is stupider

This post was originally just for Mass Effect, but the information within is valuable for pretty much any sci-fi that uses omnidirectional energy burst weapons in space warfare.
Basically I keep seeing something along the lines of this:
**"Dreadnoughts only shoot out double digit kilotons per second (38.72 kt every two seconds). Scaling by length, cruisers and frigates should only output single digit kilotons per second; by volume they'd have even less, single digit kilotons to triple digit tons per second. So why don't they just use nukes instead? Our standard missiles are in the 300-500 kiloton range today, and we can build ones in the double digit megaton range pretty easily. We were doing it in the 1960s. Man, everyone in the universe must be so dumb!"**
...and I'm compelled to write. There's a few things to note here.
Point number one. GARDIAN point-defense turrets largely renders missiles unusable within their envelope, bar mass-spamming at point-blank range. Chris L'Etoile, who wrote for ME1 and ME2 and wrote almost all of the codex, actually weighed in on this subject specifically ten years back on the old Bioware forums, which have now been deleted (dead link). Fortunately, his comment has been preserved on various sci-fi forums. I will quote it here:

"1) Why don't the disruptor torpedos have nuclear warheads so that they can destroy or disable ships on their own?"
>They probably do use nuclear warheads, but not very large ones. The idea behind a torpedo is to crank up its mass so the target's kinetic barriers can't deflect it. They don't carry a lot of payload - they're mostly mass effect core and thrusters. The latter because increasing mass makes the torpedo more difficult to accelerate, as FTL drive fields make ships easier to accelerate.
>So torpedo payload space is at a premium. You use a very small tactical fusion warhead to get optimal bang for minimum buck, where "buck" is defined as volume/weight of warhead.
Taking it outside the box...
In terms of IP design, we want fighters and warships form a combined arms force - neither able to achieve victory without the other. If fighter-launched torps always trumped warship shields/armor, who in their right mind would build those giant warships everyone loves to look at? (Conversely, people really like space fighters because they allow individual heroism - as Star Wars capably proved.)
"2) What would the the likely outcome if one force tried a "missile spam" technique with nukes? (I know nukes in space aren't all that useful but the suggested yields in ME suggest that close misses would have an effect)"
A very expensive, ineffective alpha strike, followed by the ship blowing up. **Dozens or hundreds of missiles will be downed by GARDIAN at range, dozens more repulsed or absorbed by kinetic barriers**.
For spam attacks, you want your projectiles to be cheap. **Figuring that 90% of them will just be fodder for the target's defenses**, you probably give them smallish warheads (kilotons of yield max).It would work, yes. But as expensive as element zero is, slow torpedoes carried by fast fighters are probably going to be a more cost-effective solution. Mind you, I haven't done any hard core number crunching on that. I haven't done the research to figure how much fusion warheads might cost.
The krogan might try it. Probably no one else.

Emphasis mine. This tells us a few interesting things:

"Hundreds" of missiles are required to overload the average ship's point-defense system.
Parts of the nuke are actually blocked by kinetic barriers. Likely alpha/beta particles and fusion products, as they have mass.
It would take dozens of direct nuke hits to destroy a standard ship, despite barriers explicitly not blocking extremes of heat or radiation. Those parts of the nuke just aren't interacting with them at all.

"Wait," you may be asking, "that doesn't make any sense. If the barrier didn't block the primary damage mechanism, how would the ship survive?". Simple. We see multiple times that barriers can be projected a good distance from their emitters. They're simply mass effect fields programmed to repulse things; there is nothing about the tech that necessitates it hugging the hull any more than the mass effect "bubble" that they project around themselves to travel at FTL. The Derelict Reaper is a particularly extreme example of this function in action, with several seconds passing between the Normandy entering its mass effect field envelope and touching down on the surface- indicating that barriers were projected dozens if not hundreds of kilometers from the hull, consistent with the cutscene. The exact distance of the barriers from the emitters (projecting them further means they need to cover more surface area and are thus weaker to pure kinetic impacts) would logically be adjusted on the spot for the threat and controlled by an on-site VI. This brings us to:
Point number two, the most important one. There is something called the inverse square law, and it's a complete bitch for explosives. The inverse square law is a basic scientific law stating that a specified physical quantity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. When applied to explosions, this basically means that they get much weaker the further you get from the epicenter. Take the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear device ever detonated. It had a yield of 50 megatons, 50,000,000 tons of TNT. Let's say that you managed to detonate this thing at "knife-fight" ranges for a ME ship, that is 10 kilometers. The inverse square law is helpfully modeled with Eric Rozier's calculator on nuclear weapon effects. From this we can see that a 50 megaton blast at 10 km would have the following stats:
1,256,600,000 m^2 surface area
166.48 megajoules per m^2
Or in other words: a 50 megaton bomb detonated at 10 kilometers has the same intensity as a half-ton bomb detonated at 1 meter. It will scrub a 3.71 cm thickness of titanium armor and a much lesser thickness of anything tougher (like the specially designed ablative plates that cover every Mass Effect ship). In other words it's basically harmless to a space warship with thick armor. MIT's nuke calculator specifies that, at that distance, a 50 megaton bomb would "only" be reduced to severely damaging reinforced buildings, destroying less reinforced ones, and killing the vast majority (but not 100%) of people. Definitely devastating, and roughly what you'd expect with the above figures, but far removed from the outright vaporization of everything that occurs at the bomb's epicenter. Applying the far closer distance of 1 kilometer, at which point it may as well be touching the ship's hull in space warfare terms:
12,566,000 m^2 surface area
16.648 gigajoules per m^2
To give a real-world example of the inverse square law in action, at a mere 320 meters from the blast, a WWII-era tank was able to survive a 9 kiloton nuke. Result: damaged, but salvageable.
I feel like I should emphasize just how CLOSE even 1 kilometer is in space terms. We constantly see ships in the series pulling dozens or hundreds of gees of acceleration both in and out of combat. A dinky shuttle was able to go from nearly 100,000 kilometers distant from Habitat 7 (comparing Apollo 7's image of Earth and noting Habitat 7's smaller diameter) to starting deceleration inside the atmosphere in under 14 seconds during the opening scene of Andromeda, an event that would require it pulling tens of thousands of gees of straight line acceleration. But you don't even have to go that far. At a mere 10 gees of acceleration, glacially slow by ME standards, a ship would be able to clear a kilometer within four and a half seconds. A few kilometers distant in any direction, all but the biggest nukes are useless, and it only takes slightly more for the latter.
Point number three, the second most important: nukes are omnidirectional. A nuclear explosion is essentially a rapidly-expanding sphere. Thus even when detonated at point-blank range, only a fraction of its energy is actually being transferred to the target. On top of that, what energy is transferred is being transferred along the target's whole surface area, as opposed to a hypervelocity impact, which concentrates its energy on an area thousands of times smaller. The disparity in intensity is going to be ludicrous.
Eric Rozier's calculator is again helpful here. At a distance of merely 1 kilometer, a fairly large megaton explosion is only dealing 333 gigajoules per square meter. That's definitely a lot, but when you compare it to a mass accelerator round you start to see why no one bothers. A frigate-scale mass accelerator round that concentrates, say, 1 kiloton of kinetic energy (4,184 gigajoules) on an area of 100 cm^2 (this is very likely larger than the surface area of a typical mass accelerator round judging by the size of that dreadnought shot the gunnery sergeant was holding) is packing 100 kilotons or 418,400 gigajoules per square meter - literally over a thousand times as much as the point-blank megaton nuke. It's like the difference between a concussion grenade (typically around 1 megajoule, can be protected against by class III-A armor at a meter and is not lethal past a few meters) and an assault rifle round (typically around 0.002 megajoules, will go through class III-A armor like it's not there). At any appreciable distance this problem becomes far worse. At 10 kilometers, that megaton explosion is now down to 3.3 GJ/m^2. Keep this in mind for when any franchise has their ships threatened by proximity detonations.
(I blame the common conception of sci-fi shields as video game health bars that crap out universally all over the ship if they take an arbitrary number of joules applied in any way distributed by any means, even though that's not how any real world damage mechanic works and pretty much no franchise actually has them acting like that.)
Point number four, nukes in space kinda... suck. NASA has a page on this. A nuclear bomb detonated in space would entirely lose its blast wave (40-50% of the explosion's energy) in the absence of an atmosphere, as well as the bulk of its thermal radiation as there is is no longer any air for the blast wave to heat. The vacuum of space is a fantastically shitty medium for any heat-based weapon system to propagate through. All of the calculations I made previously were simply modeling an explosion's fall off over distance, they didn't account for the effects of a vacuum on a nuclear detonation at all.
*"But wait, what about nuclear shaped charges, like the Casaba howitzer? I read an article about those once, and they'd focus all the energy of a nuke to power a jet of molten metal. Wouldn't that be a way better choice than a kiloton railgun?"*
Point number five. Nuclear shaped charges are popular among war nerds. Substantially less so among physicists. The website Atomic Rockets has an extensively-cited article about plausible near-future weapons which includes a section about nuclear shaped charges. Several tests on their viability were done in the 1980s and subsequently analyzed. Here's are excerpts:

The difficulty is in transmitting this thermal energy to the propellant, and keeping the particle cone focused.[...]It would be reasonable to use a lower figure when calculating the amount of energy delivered to the propellant. Scott Lowther gave a 50% figure for small fission charges. An SDI nuclear weapons study, Project Prometheus, experimentally tested Casaba Howitzer weapons using plastic propellants. It achieved 10% efficiency.
A Princeton University study from 1990 on third-generation nuclear weapons cited 5% instead, but for fusion devices with ten times better beam focus. Despite the reduction in cone spread, the stream of particles produced by by Casaba Howitzer dissipates much more quickly than an electro-magnetically accelerated particle beam or a laser.**
It is possible to reduce the beam angle to 0.006 degrees in width, as reported by the third-generation nuclear weapons study. 0.057 degrees has been experimentally achieved by project Prometheus. The trade-off is much lower efficiency than propulsive units (5-10% vs 80-85%).**
The theoretical maximal performance of a thermonuclear device is 25TJ/kg. Modern weapons are able to achieve 2.5TJ/kg, but this figure is for large weapons that have better scaling. Smaller warheads such as those tested for project Prometheus are likely to be in the kiloton range, and mass about 100kg. Better understanding of fission ignition has reduced the nuclear material requirement down to a kilogram or less.A nuclear detonation only lasts a microsecond, so we can assume that the entire energy of the unit is delivered to the target in a single pulse of duration 10-6 seconds. As the particles produced expand in a cone with an angle θ, we can use the following equation to calculate the destructive potential at various distances:
Intensity = (Yield * Efficiency * 10^6) / (3.14 * (tan(θ) * Distance) ^2)
Irradiance = (Yield * Efficiency) / (3.14 * (tan(θ) * Distance) ^2)
Intensity is measured in watts per square meter. Irradiance is joules per square meter. Yield is how much energy the nuclear charge delivers, converted to joules. Efficiency ranges from the 0.85 of a propulsion unit to the 0.05 of a Casaba Howitzer. θ is the cone angle. Distance is between the nuclear detonation and the target, in meters.
Let us calculate some examples:
Small Casaba Howitzer (50kg)
0.01 radian directivity (0.057 degrees)
5kt yield, 10% efficiency: 2.09TJ
Distance
1km: Irradiance = 673GJ/m^2
Distance 10km: Irradiance = 6.7GJ/m^2
Distance 100km: Irradiance = 67.2MJ/m^2
Distance 1000km: Irradiance = 672kJ/m^2
Large Casaba Howitzer (1000kg)
0.001 radian directivity (0.0057 degrees)
1Mt yield, 5% efficiency: 209TJ
Distance 1km: Irradiance = 6728TJ/m^2
Distance 10km: Irradiance = 67.3GJ/m^2
Distance 100km: Irradiance = 672MJ/m^2
Distance 1000km: Irradiance = 6.7MJ/m^2

Based on the efficiency of a Casaba howitzer in converting nuclear energy to kinetic energy (5%, in very optimistic scenarios), as well as the beam's spread over distance, even a megaton-grade warhead is reduced to dozens to hundreds of gigajoules per square meter at 10 kilometers, and in the tiny megajoule range at 100 km- both of these being "knife-fight" range for space warfare. This is also going with the author's optimistic projections rather than actual results (I actually can't find some of the figures he cited in the original documents). To my knowledge, there has only been one NKEW test, that being Chamita. It had 0.007% efficiency using a small nuclear warhead.
But I digress. If we go with Atomic Rockets' made-up numbers and assume you pull a miracle and manage to ignite the missile ON the enemy's shield without it getting intercepted, thus making beam spread irrelevant, you can transfer a maximum of 5% of the bomb yield as kinetic energy (~50 kilotons), at which point you basically just have a slower railgun that can only be used on contact and can only be used one time. More likely it gets intercepted before it gets anywhere close. This is the absolute best case scenario for it, by the way. Atomic Rockets made these calculations assuming scaling this weapon system up to megatons was even feasible. A Princeton physicist who analyzed the tests highly doubted it could scale past 50 kilotons or so due to blackbody x-ray emissions killing efficiency. From the same page, quoting said physicist:

SPARTA Workshop, 1986. This scaling [of efficiency] presumably holds up to about 50 kilotons but, due to blackbody x-ray emission, decreases to about 1 percent for larger yields.

Further:

"There is also a fundamental problem with both the Casaba and Prometheus concepts that becomes relevant at higher yields. Despite the alleged success in directing 5 percent of the energy of a small nuclear explosion into flying debris, a good portion of the remaining energy inevitably becomes blackbody radiation, which would quickly overtake the pellets. Even at 1 kiloton with optimistic assumptions, this poses the risk that most of the particles will be vaporized or even ionized, rendering them ineffective: The NKEW concept is thus one that may require subkiloton explosives to be feasible. If its feasibility also depends on employing shaped thermonuclear explosives to help direct the pellets or dust more efficiently, then the concept is further burdened by the difficulty of designing thermonuclear devices with yields less than 1 kiloton. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that demonstrating a rush of hypervelocity pellets from a nuclear blast, while perhaps impressive, in no way guarantees that a useful weapon will ever be derived from this concept."

The concept hasn't been extensively tested (at least that we know of), the tests that we do have don't paint a good picture, and there's no guarantee of the concept ever bearing fruit. Some are optimistic and some are skeptical. But even in the best case scenario, it's not a super weapon and is largely inferior to a mass accelerator.
"But what about bomb-pumped lasers? Those aren't kinetic, so they'd entirely bypass kinetic barriers. You wouldn't need kilotons."
Point number six. Bomb-pumped lasers are also discussed in the page. The author quickly dismisses them by citing research that shows their efficiency would be something like one-hundred thousandth of one percent.

The concept has many problems that prevent it from being a useful replacement for conventional lasers. You first need to expend a nuclear warhead, which is a terribly wasteful use of fissile material. Only a tiny fraction of the warhead’s X-rays, which are emitted in all directions, are intercepted by the metal tube. From those, a tiny fraction of its energy is converted into coherent X-rays. If you multiply both fractions, you find an exceedinglylow conversion ratio.Further research has revealed this to be on the order of <0.00001%. It also works for just a microsecond, each shot destroys its surroundings and its effective range is limited by relatively poor divergence of the beam. These downsides are acceptable for a system meant to take down a sudden and massive wave of ICBMs at ranges of 100 to 1000 kilometers, but not much else.

You can get a nifty long-range point-defense laser for shooting down thin-skinned ICBMs out of this. Not much else. Even completely ignoring beam divergence, which would be significant, at that point the ship's ablative armor could handle such a low-yield threat without too much trouble. On top of that, it works for just a microsecond, wastes an expensive nuclear bomb, and each shot destroys its surroundings by detonating. If you have fusion reactor-powered lasers, as the civilizations in ME do, you have no use for this.
"Okay. But even if they weren't useful as the primary weapons for space warfare, they still have other uses. So why don't they use them?"
Point number seven: they DO. First there's L'Etoile's quote. Disruptor torpedoes are nukes, on top of warp bombs. He specifies that they have small warheads, but "small" in the context of a fusion warhead must be taken in context. Today, we can practically get around 6 kilotons per kilogram of bomb mass out of our fusion weapons. Assuming the ME races can obtain ratios no better than this (despite their mastery of helium-3-deuterium fusion power, which should logically allow them to build fusion bombs with an order of magnitude superior yield to weight ratio to ours), even a tiny missile warhead like those mounted an AMRAAM (24 kilograms) would get you yields in the hundreds of kilotons. A 5 kg RPG-7/LAW sized warhead would get you 30 kilotons. Of course, at 2 km away a 30 kt device would have an intensity of ~5 MJ/m^2, not enough to melt a cubic meter of iron. Negligible even before you factor in mitigation.
Second there is the planet description for Illium and the codex entry for the Miracle of Palaven, both of which indicate wide employment of nukes, including man-portable ones.
Third, there are various stories that reference their use in Cerberus Daily News. They have lots of nukes and no compunctions about using them where they're effective (read: not in space warfare).
Fourth, there are scenes in the games where their usage is implied but not explicitly stated. The example that comes to mind right now is Jack's loyalty mission. A fringe terrorist group on a shadow budget gives you an apparently man-portable bomb for no reason other than to make one of their mercenaries feel better. This bomb causes a fireball that persists for eight seconds and visibly rocks a large aircraft that was probably dozens of kilometers away (it had been accelerating in the opposite direction for nearly thirty seconds on-screen and had been doing so for an unknown but significant amount of time off-screen), putting its yield in the low megatons. They think nothing of just throwing these kinds of weapons away for no reason.
But they mainly use nukes for cost-cutting reasons. Because, and this deserves some emphasis:
Point number eight:
THE MASS EFFECT POWERS HAVE FUCKING ANTIMATTER WARHEADS.

Gianna Parasini: He called in a Code Omega. If there is no all clear, the Executive Board votes on whether or not to destroy the facility. One antimatter warhead from the battlestations vaporizes all contaminants.

...and they're common enough that private corporations can deploy them en masse in their battle stations orbiting a single backwater planet. If a small private corporation can install and maintain orbital based antimatter warheads for the purpose of scrubbing bio-hazards, and a military thousands of years ago could blow hundreds of tons of it in secret (see below), there is clearly sufficient industrialization of antimatter that the cost/benefit of generating, transporting and suspending it is vastly superseded by its commercial availability - so much so that it can be sold to private entities as opposed to more commonly available fusion weapons. Not exactly surprising when matter-antimatter annihilation is the main source of military starship fuel. One half kilogram of antimatter reacting with one half kilogram of normal matter would produce a 43 megaton explosion, orders of magnitude above the energy efficiency of even pure fusion weapons. The main issue with using antimatter as a weapon is containment, a problem that clearly has been solved in ME to the point that antimatter is the power source for every warship. Mass-altering fields make containment easy-peasy.
Of course, antimatter warheads have all the problems of nukes while also being far more expensive, so it's no wonder that no one's jumping at the chance to waste hundreds of them just for the chance to kill a shitbox frigate.
"Even if they didn't use them in space warfare, wouldn't nukes still be good for planetary bombardment?"
Not unless you want to just kill everything on the planet, in which case it's a wonder why you're even attacking it. To rule a rock? Most any mass accelerator of warship scale can kill anything you need killed (enemy formations, armored units, supply depots, communications nodes, orbital battle stations, ground to space batteries, etc.) and reduce the ground-side resistance to dispersed light infantry and technicals without you even needing to get within 100,000 kilometers of the planet.
But they can do it if they want to. The turian bomb on Tuchanka was likely an antimatter bomb (makes sense given that the Citadel Conventions indicate that antimatter warheads existed as far back as the Krogan Rebellions), given its demonstrably impossible energy densities even for pure fusion weapons. Even H3-DT reactions "only" produce about 353 terajoules [85 kilotons] per kilogram. If it goes off, it kills every living thing in a 500 kilometer radius, which going by MIT's nuke calculator equates to a 14.5 teraton (14,500,000,000 kilotons) explosion assuming that the denizens of Tuchanka are no more durable than humans (they are). This would require hundreds of tons of antimatter.
The turians built this as a precaution. In secret. 1,400 years ago.
So yeah, building big bombs is not an issue for a population that considers H3-DT fusion quaint civilian-grade stuff and which has a population measured in the trillions with an effectively post-scarcity level of wealth, where middle class citizens can plausibly buy thousand-ton starships, where multi-billion ton spacecraft can be built as vanity projects by single billionaires, where planet-encircling structures are not notable, and where a single mining operation on a backwater world can shift hundreds of millions of tons of material per day. Building huge bombs wouldn't be an issue even without antimatter or DT-H3 fusion with this level of industry. It wouldn't be an issue with OUR tech base, in fact. Physicist Edward Teller noted the possibility of building 10-gigaton bombs decades ago just by scaling up regular nukes. There's no reason it can't be done. The ME powers (and us, for that matter) just don't do it because why the fuck would they do that? If you attached thrusters to it you'd essentially just get a comically over-sized and slow one-shot starship that is useless at hitting anything more mobile than a space station or planet, given the ease with which any warship could accelerate away (their thrust/weight ratios are going to be higher by definition). And if you've obtained the space superiority necessary to casually deorbit thousands of tons of fusion material/antimatter into the enemy's static position out of spite without retaliation, you're in a position where you can accomplish more damage on the cheap just by throwing an asteroid the size of a small moon at the object of your oddly specific hatred. Kenson and Balak demonstrated this using jury-rigged civilian equipment.
Let's talk about those asteroids for a minute, on the subject of strategic weaponry. Dialogue indicates that X57 is 22km long, as the lead engineer tells you:
"X57 is 22 kilometers long. Twice the size of the asteroid that wiped out the Earth's dinosaurs."
X57 appears to be an ellipsoid shape, slightly more than half as wide & tall as it is long, hence:
V = (4/3)*pi*a*b*cV = (4/3)*pi*11000*6000*6000V = 1.66*10^12 m^3
X57 is a metallic asteroid, and was put into Terra Nova's orbit to be mined, as such it is likely rather dense. Pulling from this paper, it appears that metallic asteroids - while composed of materials with density in the ranges of 7000kg/m^3, have overall densities of 4000kg/m^3. Therefore, X57 likely masses in excess of 6.64e+15 kg, or 6.64 Trillion tons
X57 was put into orbit around Terra Nova before being hijacked by batarian terrorists who planned to crash the asteroid into the planet. During the introductory cutscene, the Normandy VI states that at the current rate of acceleration, the asteroid will hit in 4 hours. Comparing the size of Terra Nova against Earth in Google Earth, X57 appears to be ~20,000 km away from the planet. We arrive shortly after the asteroid has been taken. Taking 4 hours to cross 20,000km would suggest a constant acceleration of 0.1929m/s^2. With the asteroid massing in excess of 6.64 Trillion tons, that would result in the effective force the 3 engines applying being 1.28086E+15 Newtons. This results in the three engines producing a total of 6.12 teratons of energy over their 4 hour burn, with a power of 1.7 exawatts (conservatively, as text entries found in the missions suggest it's actually 300,000 km from Terra Nova). This is consistent with the lead engineer describing the results of the asteroid crashing into the Earth-like planet of Terra Nova, which seem consistent with a planetary extinction event in the high teraton range:

X-57 is twice the size of the asteroid that wiped out the Earth's dinosaurs. It would be like millions of fusion bombs striking at once. With the heat of the blast, a thousand kilometers away, clothes would ignite. There'd be global wildfires. Air shock will flatten everything for hundreds of kilometers. Terra Nova will die, Shepard- not just our colony, the planet. There'll be a climate shift, mass extinctions, the ecosystem won't recover for thousands of years. Millions maybe.

tl;dr

Most missiles are intercepted by point-defense.
Even if they were not intercepted by point-defense, nukes are terrible weapons for space warfare.
Mass Effect warship barriers and accelerations compound the issues with using omni-directional energy burst weapons against them.
An energy burst weapon with thousands of times the yield of a mass accelerator round would be lucky to get even a thousandth of its intensity, therefore the mass accelerator round is actually much better for destroying durable things.
Nuclear shaped charges are slightly less terrible weapons for space warfare, but beam dispersion and inefficiencies render them basically just an (extremely) poor man's mass accelerator, except they only have one shot and can only be used at point-blank range.
Bomb-pumped lasers are specialized weapons with extremely low efficiencies that would be useless for anything other than a very specific type of point-defense.
The Mass Effect races do use nukes, just not usually in space warfare (because they're terrible).
The Mass Effect races have antimatter warheads which do everything objectively better than nukes.
They don't use nucleaantimatter missiles against each other for very specific reasons; they're still fully capable of mass-producing them cheaply for use against civilizations that DON'T have their level of point-defense and speed (i.e., any civilization in sci-fi where small numbers of slow-moving missiles are presented as relevant in space warfare).
Building an oversized bomb that releases gigatons on detonation can be done even by Earth circa the 1990s. It's not a big feat for any civilization that has discovered fusion weapons. The turians built a big bomb that released teratons on detonation. In ME's own context that wasn't a big feat either. In the ME3 trailers, and on the approach to Menae in ME3, we even see multiple large fireballs taking up non-negligible percentages of planetary surfaces (complete with muffled explosion sound effects), indicating that not only do they have the ability to build these weapons easily, they're already keeping stockpiles of them.

Thank you to anyone who made it this far.

[OC] Expected Goals: The Perfect Representation of the Strengths and Limits of Modern Stats

Introduction

Goals as a metric of finishing performance have always been controversial. While it is true that all goals are treated equal in terms of the score, the fact of the matter is that not all goals are scored equally. The idea of the "tap-in merchant" and a wasteful striker is frequently echoed throughout discussions. Finishing rates, while being more useful at assessing finishing performance than goals, are still misleading given that some players are forced to take more difficult shots than others. There really wasn't a single statistic available to fans that could assess the difficulty of every shot. That all changed in 2012, when Opta's Sam Green created an article detailing Expected Goals (xG). From then on, Expected Goals took the world by storm, being utilized in media coverage and at clubs themselves. Many websites, including the publicly available understat.com, brought expected goals into their posts when talking about player performance.

However, seven years on from Expected Goals' unveiling, controversy about this statistic has still raged on. And the people who are skeptical of xG's usefulness aren't just traditionalists afraid of change. There are numerous concerns and misinterpretations that have plagued the stat and given it an air of uncertainty. With this post, I hope to lay all the cards on the table and assess not just what Expected Goals truly measure, but what they should mean to the fans. As usual, I'll try to show a middle ground that supports statistics being utilized correctly. Hopefully, I can help those still confused or skeptical on the stat's metric see it in a clearer light, while still bringing up some concerns we should still have over Expected Goals.

Setting Expectations

Before laying out the evidence for and against Expected Goals, it's important to actually break the stat down. At its core, Expected Goals takes the various variables (situation, distance to goal, angle to goal, body part used, etc.) involved with a shot and places them within a statistical model. The output from this model reflects the quality (and conversely, the difficulty) of every shot. At its peak (Opta's frequently utilized model), expected goals uses a logistic regression model with the inputs of a shot as dependent variables. The output is always between 0 to 1. To train the regression model, hundreds of thousands of shots are analyzed.

To see it in action, let's compare two different goals. First, we have Virgil van Dijk's header against Newcastle

These aren't the only factors involved, but it gives you a general idea.

Now, compare that with Vincent Kompany's strike against Leicester City.

https://preview.redd.it/jicuz3phvv431.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=edd768a2d7d3f4f750145122931ac5e1012a2faf

So far, the stat seems to accomplish what it is set out to do: assess the difficulty of the two shots. Pretty much anyone agrees that Kompany's long-shot is more difficult than van Dijk's header, and the stat backs that up. At face value, it makes sense, but when using data from so many previous shots, it adds a layer of proof and statistical rigor.

The best comparison though comes from seeing how a player performs compared to their goals. Having fewer expected goals than actual goals scored means that a player has over-performed in finishing according to expectations. Having more goals than xG corresponds with an underperforming finishing season. To illustrate the point, let's look at the three golden boot winners in the Premier League (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mohamed Salah, and Sadio Mané), and see how they stack up with xG.

At face value, all players performed the same. But xG adds another dimension to the argument.

So laying out the three players, it is easy to see why goals aren't the best indicator for finishing assessment. And while you still want to look at shot numbers and other indicators, looking at these three stats still give a good general outlook at a player's finishing performance over a season, which xG is set out to do.

Limitations and Potential Drawbacks

While xG seems simple enough and incredibly effective, there are still some concerns when it comes to the reliableness of the stat.

Penalties - Penalties in general are problematic. Not just in the controversy of what exactly establishes a penalty, but in assessing a player’s finishing ability. It can be particularly frustrating when considering expected goals. Different websites and statistics companies have different ways of dealing with penalties. Some have their own model for the expected goal value of a penalty. Others just don’t factor in penalties at all. It’s a sticky situation to be in, considering that you don’t want to reward players too much for scoring the easiest shot in the game, but you don’t want to punish them either for being forced to take the penalty. Let’s compare the non-penalty goals and xG for the three top-scorers (understat.com has their own model for penalties which is calculated into the expected goals tally in the first table).

Aubameyang went four for five from the spot, while Salah scored all three of his penalties.

Both Aubameyang and Salah both see decreases in their differences, but Aubameyang is punished less from the first table since he missed a penalty. Is that fair to Salah, given that he scored every single one? Or does he deserve to go into the negatives, given that he was the one to take the easiest shot? It’s a question that doesn’t have a clear answer, and needs to be acknowledged whenever looking at a table like this.
Misinterpretations - One of the biggest concerns for xG isn’t the data itself; it’s how media and fans perceive the stat. Even the sites themselves that calculate the stats have been prone to misinterpreting the statistic (the most egregious example being this FiveThirtyEight article about Harry Kane). Describing a striker as lucky after one season is impossible, as it takes multiple seasons of data to get a better idea of how a striker is performing. That article has aged poorly, given that Harry Kane has over-performed his Expected Goals in each of his last five seasons.

The author said Harry Kane couldn't replicate his 14/15 form. He was right, since Kane smashed it in 16/17.

Even Sadio Mané, who I've so far made to look like an incredibly clinical finisher, shows inconsistency that can only be shown by looking at his previous seasons.

Could you call Mané lucky after the 14/15 season? It takes a larger sample size to make conclusions.

Another sense of confusion comes from abstraction of the stat. It can be difficult to understand exactly what the stat is measuring when it’s not something that you can just see, like a tackle or a save. The output is fairly simple, but confusion over the inputs leads to distrust in the stat. And lastly, Expected Goals alone can’t be used to describe other aspects of a player’s attacking performance. Just because a striker has a high expected goals, doesn’t mean they are taking really good shots (a comparison between shots to expected goals can fill this gap). While some extrapolation can be taken from Expected Goals, it’s important to remember what its limits are.
Opposing Goalkeeper’s Performance - Expected goals is also unable to show a player’s ability to place the ball in unsaveable positions. Players can get unlucky when playing against a really good goalkeeper, or get fortunate when a keeper fails to make an easy save. Expected Goals on Target (xGOT), a new stat from Opta, can account for this, but it’s not easily available and will need refined. When this stat becomes more widely used, it will be better to describe the luck factor and placement abilities of a player.

Disparity in Models - Definitions amongst stats have the potential to vary wildly (what exactly constitutes possession being lost, etc.), but for the most part is generally pretty constant. However, Expected Goals also has to factor in using a statistical model that is trained by so many shots. Different stats companies and websites will have different shot data sets and models. That can lead to disparity amongst the Expected Goal totals over a game. Just looking at two websites assessing the xG for three matches is enough to be worried. In fact, all three of these matches happened on the final matchday of the 18/19 season.

https://preview.redd.it/n0g3s8kewv431.png?width=837&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b15dd1d5db7c714e3a7d4f76df3853fb3998310

That can be a little concerning. Yes, if a model is consistent over a season, then the overall difference between goals and expected goals shouldn’t vary too much. Most of the time, the numbers compare really well amongst different sites, but these differences should be noted as a cause for concern.

Lack of Transparency - Obviously, sites do not want to make their models public, as it can hamper their profits and usefulness. But it still creates a bit of a fog around just where the outputs are coming from. Some sites reveal what inputs go into their model, but it still creates some doubt around the consistency about the stat. Obviously the outputs aren’t just made up, but there’s a level of accountability that just doesn’t exist.

When looking at all of these detractors, in can be pretty clear why doubt can set in around the statistic. In general, I wouldn't advise trying to use Expected Goals to show a difference in two players' finishing abilities when there is a one xG or less difference (other stats may come in handy to show differences in the player's style or ability, like xG per 90, shots per goal, xG per shot, etc.). But looking back at Mané's record when compared to the other golden boot winners, it is still reasonably safe to say he was more clinical this season.

Applications

Expected Goals can actually go a lot further than just looking at an attacker's finishing ability. And I'm not talking about just xG per shot or other rates. In assigning Expected Goals to different players involved, there are tons of new ways to assess players using the stat.
Expected Assists (xA) - Assists can also be described as variable. Some assists are better than others. No one marvels at Sergio Busquets setting up Lionel Messi’s solo goal vs. Real Madrid. That’s where expected assists (xA) come in. It basically takes the expected goal value of the shot and gives that value to the assister. This stat doesn’t work as well as xG in my opinion, considering that the difficulty of the pass isn’t really considered outside of just being described as a cross or a through ball or what not. However, all of the same inputs from xG are carried over, so it’s still a good general measure of the quality of a chance. Expected Assists actually works the opposite of xG when comparing the metric to the one it’s mimicking. Having a higher xA than assists could show that a player is creating good chances that their attackers just aren’t finishing. Likewise, having a lower xA than assists could inform that a player was fortunate to have their attackers be so clinical. At the extremes, this seems likely. Let's compare two (now former) Chelsea teammates, Eden Hazard and Jorginho, and their Expected Assist tallies.

https://preview.redd.it/p71jj75gwv431.png?width=836&format=png&auto=webp&s=be11e08edff6023eb6ee98594250470eb6dd56f9

But again, there are a lot of other factors that go into chance creation, so don't hold Expected Assists in the highest of light.
Goalkeeper Shot Stopping (Expected Goals Saved) - While Expected Goals don’t account for strikers being stopped by individual performances from goalkeepers, it can assess a goalkeeper’s performance over a season. Goalkeepers that concede less goals than expected generally perform well in shot-stopping. Again, fine margins aren’t the best indicators, but at the extremes, you can see that a goalkeeper performed well that season (shown by David de Gea conceding over 12 less goals than expected as of March 13th in the 2017/2018 season). There are still a lot of factors going into how many shots a keeper will face (defense style, decisions to come out, etc.), so it’s not refined or a perfect measure. But xGOT will again massively improve this stat’s reliableness, perhaps even more than for attacking purposes. Seeing which keepers face more difficult shots and save them on frequent occurrences will aid in assessing goalkeeping performance.

Expected Goals Buildup - This last one is a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but Expected Goals Buildup still has some value. The stat essentially assigns the Expected Goal value of a shot to every single player who made a pass in the possession leading up to a shot except for the assister and shooter. That way, it focuses more on the buildup of the play than the end result, and can shine some light on some unsung heroes. I'm still a bit skeptical on the matter, as trying to quantify the pre-assist (and everything before that) will have a crazy amount of statistical noise. If a player stands out in this category above the rest, then maybe there is something to compare. I would still heed caution though around this stat.

But again, even if they aren't the most reliable stats, these are just three of the most basic applications done by simply assigning xG to different players. I suggest you read this article detailing xG added, and start thinking of all the ways xG could be applied. But it is still important to remember the potential flaws in reliability and interpretation, and how they play a part in the future of the stat.

Conclusion

It’s clear that Expected Goals still need to be a bit more refined, but it is still an important stat. In more precise areas where the difference between two players is slim, it’s probably not the best to make too many conclusions. But in general, it does a good job of assessing a player’s finishing efficiency over a season, better than goals and goals per shot. The applications of the statistic are impressive as well, although perhaps xG is not as well suited to covering other topics than just finishing. I’d be on the look out for Expected Goals on Target, though, as it should vitally eliminate a lot of the noise surrounding Expected Goals. The stat works well in accordance with other stats, and is rightfully used in assessing a part of finishing ability. But the most important thing is to remember what xG is truly measuring, because misinterpreting the stat will render it useless. Just like most modern stats, it all comes down to how to take what is given to you, and use it in a productive and correct manner.

How common is chronic pain after vasectomy?

Your doctor will probably admit that chronic pain is a possible complication resulting from vasectomy, but most will say that it happens rarely, or even very rarely.
What exactly does very rarely mean?
Before you decide to have a vasectomy, stop and ask yourself what odds of chronic pain you are willing to sign up for. To get some idea of what this would be like, just imagine being mildly nauseated every day and not knowing whether or not it would ever stop.
Here are the chances for chronic pain caused by vasectomy given by several national level health organizations. These are the professional societies and experts that the urologists are supposed to be getting their statistics from:

Canadian Urology Association give the chronic pain outcomes for vasectomy at between 1-14% (Link)
American Urological Association says chronic pain serious enough to impact quality of life occurs after 1-2% of vasectomies. (Link)
British Association of Urological Surgeons, patient advice reports troublesome chronic testicular pain which can be severe enough to affect day-to-day activities in 5-14% of vasectomy patients. (Link)
UK National Health Service says long-term testicular pain affects around 10% of men after vasectomy. (Link)
11th edition of Campbell Walsh Urology (2015) cites 10% incidence of chronic scrotal pain caused by vasectomy. (Link)
European Association of Urology (2012) cites 1-14% incidence of chronic scrotal pain caused by vasectomy, usually mild but sometimes requiring pain management or surgery (Link)
Royal College of Surgeons of England says significant chronic orchalgia may occur in up to 15% of men after vasectomy, and may require epididymectomy or vasectomy reversal. (Link)
Journal of Andrology cites large studies that find Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome 2-6% of the time (Link)
UpToDate says "surveys have found that the incidence of "troublesome" post-vasectomy pain is reported by approximately 15% of men, with pain severe enough to affect quality of life in 2%. However, survey respondents may not have been representative of all men who have had a vasectomy." (Link)
European Association of Urology says Post-vasectomy scrotal pain syndrome is a scrotal pain syndrome that follows vasectomy. Post-vasectomy scrotal pain syndrome is often associated with negative cognitive, behavioural, sexual or emotional consequences, as well as with symptoms suggestive of lower urinary tract and sexual dysfunction. Post-vasectomy pain may be as frequent as 1% following vasectomy, possibly more frequent. (Link)
German Federal Center for Health Education says "The information on how many men seek medical treatment because of this fluctuates between one and 14 percent." (Link)
American Family Physician says "Recent studies estimate the incidence of severe postvasectomy pain syndrome to be between 1% and 6%" (Link)
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a meta-analysis in March 2020 to determine the incidence of PVPS, which examined 559 peer-reviewed studies and concluded that "Post-vasectomy pain syndrome occurred in 5% of subjects" (Link) The authors determined that "the overall incidence of post-vasectomy pain is greater than previously reported."
StatPearls says "about 1% to 2% of all men who undergo vasectomies will develop constant or intermittent testicular pain lasting greater than 3 months which is then defined as post-vasectomy pain syndrome." (Link)

What do "rare" and "very rare" normally mean when describing side effects of a medical intervention?
The World Health Organization provides specific definitions for using these words when discussing medical side effects:

Very Common = Greater than 10%
Common = 1% to 10%
Uncommon = 0.1% to 1%
Rare = 0.01% to 0.1%
Very Rare = Less than 0.01%

(Link 1) (Link 2)
Based on these definitions, chronic pain is not a very rare, or rare side effect of vasectomy. It isn't even uncommon.
Rather, chronic pain is a common side effect of vasectomy. Sometimes it is called Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome (PVPS). This pain may go away after several months or years, or it may be permanent.
Before they modify your body, your surgeon should make sure that you:

Know about Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome
Understand the impact it would have on your life
Understand that it may be permanent
Know that the risk is at least 1%
Explicitly accept the risk

If your surgeon does not communicate the above points to you, they are operating on you without your informed consent.
Vasectomy works out well for most men. Those who have an uncomplicated vasectomy may be back to feeling normal in as little as a week and are quick to encourage others to "get the snip." They may reject stories about men who have chronic pain or other permanent complications as exaggerations. Sometimes they make the mistake of reasoning that if a bad outcome did not happen to them, then it must never happen to anyone. Health providers market the procedure as quick, effective, and safe. Men who worry that their health or sexual function may be permanently damaged by a vasectomy are repeatedly assured that after a few weeks they will feel and function exactly as they did before the surgery. Reports about the downsides of vasectomy are frequently dismissed as unreliable. They are disparaged as exaggerations, products of hypochondriac imagination, or myths being promoted by fear-mongers. Men are told that not only is it practically impossible for vasectomy to harm their sex lives, it is likely that their sex lives and even their orgasms will improve because of the surgery.
Unfortunately, the science shows that negative health impacts of vasectomy can happen and they are not rare. That might not surprise you after you consider a few key facts:

Before vasectomy, sperm is kept separated from the immune system. After vasectomy, the immune system typically creates antibodies that cause it to seek out and kill sperm. In other words, men commonly become allergic to their own sperm, and a chronic auto-immune response can cause inflammation, making the area feel swollen and raw on the inside.
After vasectomy, the testes continue producing sperm, but since the sperm cannot escape, they can create pressure inside the epididymis and vas deferens. In fact, the pressure can get high enough to rupture these tissues, releasing the sperm and allowing it to form a bubble in the scrotum called a granuloma. Anyone who has experienced epididymitis will immediately recognize the nagging ache of a swollen epididymis. If you haven't had this experience, you can compare it to the painful pressure an ear infection can cause.
Approximately half of the nerves that travel through the spermatic cord are in the vas deferens and therefore get severed during vasectomy. (Link) These sometimes heal poorly and interact with scar tissue and auto-immune inflammation, irritating the nerves and causing pain called neuralgia, which in PVPS is usually described as a burning sensation that is hard to localize but centered in the groin.
The vas deferens is not just a passive tube--it is lined with muscles that contract during ejaculation to move sperm along. Presumably, motor and sensory nerves that connect to these muscles are cut when the vas is severed. The epididymis, particularly the tail of the epididymis which is at the bottom of the testicle, is wrapped with smooth muscle which contracts to expel sperm during ejaculation. Ejaculation involves many muscles in the scrotum, including the cremaster, the vas deferens, and the epididymis. (Link) After vasectomy, these muscle contractions may put pressure on an already swollen and irritated part of the body. Some men find to their dismay that ejaculation is uncomfortable -- even painful -- after vasectomy.
The groin is a very complex region of the body, constantly under mechanical stress whether you are sitting, standing or walking. Multiple organ systems work in close proximity, so that problems in one system can spill over to cause problems in other systems. Nerves that enter the inguinal canal can refer pain to the inner thigh, stomach and lower back -- disrupting the normal functioning of muscles in those areas. For a point of comparison, surgery to repair an inguinal hernia results in chronic pain even more frequently than vasectomy. 16% of the time based on this study. Another study puts chronic pain at 28% post hernia surgery, with 11% saying it interfered with work or leisure activity. Chronic pain is not unique to groin surgery -- it is a common complication of many kinds of surgery, which is why you should avoid surgery unless you need it!

Given these facts, perhaps the real surprise should be that the percentage of men who suffer from long term health problems as a result of this surgery is so low.
For the unlucky minority, vasectomy opens a Pandora's box. Part of the pleasure of sex is taken away and replaced with pain. The constant discomfort reduces their quality of life, interferes with the activities they previously enjoyed and may frequently intrude on their thoughts. They try one therapy after another before finally giving up in exasperation. As months pass with no relief, they come to grips with the fact that pelvic pain is their new constant companion and may never leave. There are few opportunities to warn others about the danger. Bringing up the topic in conversation results in a social penalty and has no benefit -- even among close friends. They may feel reluctant to express their feelings to their partner, fearing it could have a negative impact on their relationship. Some men worry that by telling their partner that sex has become painful or disappointing, they could irreparably damage the attraction and desire their partner feels toward them. Instead, they pretend like nothing has changed.
Men initially complain to their doctors, who are reluctant to attribute the problems to the vasectomy and who are unwilling to warn the public that a problem worth taking seriously may exist.
In many ways, PVPS manages to have just the right properties to help it hide in plain sight.
Doctors who have not personally experienced PVPS seem dismissive of the scope and seriousness of the problem. They grudgingly acknowledge the published rates of chronic pain but claim it doesn't match their own observations. Even if they have done thousands of vasectomies, they claim they have only seen PVPS once or twice in their career.
Vasectomized men may be hesitant to continue to pester their doctor about discomfort that is not going away, especially if it is the same doctor who performed the vasectomy. When they do seek help, they are seldom diagnosed as having a chronic pain syndrome that is a complication of their surgery. Instead, they are given various therapies and admonished that healing can sometimes take many months. Urologists avoid discussing the possibility that the problem is a chronic pain syndrome, preferring to focus on the symptoms and making it difficult for men to realize that what they are experiencing is part of a pattern that many others have experienced. After several fruitless doctor visits, men who are nevertheless still in pain may view further appointments as a waste of time and money. When they stop making appointments, doctors are tempted to assume that the problem has been resolved successfully. PVPS also tends to fade away and then come back, so men may report that things feel better to the doctor and stop making appointments, but the pain comes back again later.
For men whose symptoms appear months or years after their surgery, nothing can persuade the urologist to conclude that the vasectomy was the ultimate cause. The symptoms sound similar to age-related problems that begin to afflict men in their 40's and 50's, which gives doctors who want to avoid blaming vasectomy a convenient scapegoat. There is no specific medical code with which to classify and track PVPS. Men typically fail to mention that they have had a vasectomy, even if they are directly asked whether they have had any surgeries. They assume vasectomy is irrelevant, or have forgotten about it, or feel like it would be weird to mention it. The failure to gather statistics, low incidence rate, long time-spans and confounding age-related factors make scientific investigation into PVPS tricky and expensive.
Men who are notified about the risk of PVPS before their surgery are often reassured that residual pain would be a trivial inconvenience and that few who have PVPS pursue surgery to cure it. They are not made to understand that none of the surgical remedies are guaranteed to work, and all of them have the potential to make the chronic pain worse. The option with the best results, vasectomy reversal, is very expensive, usually not covered by health insurance, painful to recover from, likely to restore the unwanted fertility, and fails to fix the problem about 20% of the time. Many men are emotionally traumatized by their vasectomy and too afraid to take the risk of another more surgery, choosing instead to cope with the pain indefinitely. (Example)
One of the factors that blinds practitioners and the public to the danger is that vasectomy has a lot of good things going for it. The majority of men recover very quickly and do not have residual pain or any noticeable change to their sexual function. They can have spontaneous sex without any fear of causing unwanted pregnancy. They protect their partner from all of the pain and risk of pregnancy. It seems like an almost ideal solution to many serious problems. The majority of men who have had vasectomies consider it one of the best decisions they have ever made and are pleased to boast about how little pain was involved and how quickly they returned to their normal activities.
Vasectomy is understandably seen as an indispensable tool to reduce the disproportionate risks women face. Vasectomy is viewed by many as an essential brake on a human population that is growing far too rapidly. In light of all this, the existence of PVPS is a very unwelcome fact, provoking in many a reflexive and unshakable assumption that PVPS cannot be a serious problem.
The lack of enthusiasm for discovering the truth about PVPS has lead to a situation where widely published figures for PVPS have been incorrect by at least factor of 10 and have only been recently corrected:
Example 1: Uptodate
Example 2: Campbell Walsh Urology textbook
Both of these sources were corrected in 2013. Urologists have not made it a priority to disseminate the correction and many still quote older, incorrect statistics.
Vasectomy is unusual, in that it is a surgery that is not performed to make the patient healthier. In fact, the patient's health can only be harmed by this procedure. Vasectomy is performed to protect the health of the patient's partner. Part of the reason it is labeled "safe" is because pregnancy and tubal ligation are more dangerous. Many in our culture see vasectomy as a man's obligation to his partner. A man who will not endure (what is thought to be) the trivial pain and risk of a vasectomy is often judged to be selfish or cowardly. A doctor who is advising a man on the risks of this surgery is thus placed in a delicate situation. Say too much, or say it the wrong way, and a man might decide to protect his own health at the expense of the health of his partner.
Doctors who believe PVPS has a psychosomatic component may feel that warning men in plain language could harm the man by creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. When telling people the naked truth has so much potential downside, what is a doctor to do? Most doctors choose to thread the needle by using the written and verbal equivalent of fine print to discharge their obligation without raising any undesirable alarms. Many men describe feeling reassured after discussing their upcoming vasectomy with their doctor, and indeed doctors may have the goal of reassuring an anxious patient. This may be good general practice, but in my opinion, it is a misguided approach to elective body modification. Rather than reassure the patient by underplaying the risks, urologists should pull no punches when describing bad outcomes. Most men will not be reassured after hearing an honest description of the risks they are taking with vasectomy. Rather, a neutral description of common bad outcomes would hit most like a splash of cold water and prompt them to carefully reevaluate their options in light of all of the relevant facts so they can be sure that is the right choice before they proceed.
Doctors are not the only ones who treat facts about vasectomy complications as a kind of "hazardous information." Other examples include:

Women who hope their partner will have a vasectomy: "Don't tell my husband about that, I'll never get him to go."
Men deciding whether or not to get a vasectomy: "I stayed away from the horror stories. Didn't want to freak myself out."
Men who are experiencing PVPS: "I need to focus on the positive."
Men considering whether to warn another man who is getting a vasectomy: What happened to me was a one-in-a-million freak accident, and not relevant to his decision.

As a result of the risk and impact of PVPS being downplayed by virtually everyone, including trusted authorities and the very men who suffer from PVPS, men with this disease find themselves in a situation that many find difficult to fully acknowledge as real. The mismatch between the pain in their own bodies and the public consensus about vasectomy can be a source of significant frustration. Their partners, hearing ubiquitous assurances that vasectomy is safe and cannot affect sexual function, are left to wonder if there is some other explanation as to why their man has become less emotionally available and suddenly ambivalent toward sexual contact.
The widespread misunderstanding about vasectomy also hampers the ability of doctors and scientists to improve the situation. How can you study a problem, such as diminished ejaculation sensation caused by vasectomy, if you don't dare admit that the problem exists? How can you recommend getting a vasectomy reversal to a man who is suffering without admitting that there is something fundamental about vasectomies that makes getting them reversed curative? In other words, you are admitting that getting a vasectomy is risky not just because it is surgery -- it is risky because it permanently changes the body to function in a way that sometimes causes disease. Many men report that their doctors do not mention reversal as a treatment option unless the man specifically asks them about it.
At the age most men seek a vasectomy, most do not have any experience with chronic pain, and cannot appreciate what an enormous psychological stress it can be. Having a chronic disease of the nervous system is not like breaking your leg. The permanent character, the disruption to your life, mental state, and personality make it more analogous to having a brain injury. For some it feels like being trapped and subjected to torture in slow motion over many years. Social media has provided a rare forum in which some men feel comfortable talking candidly and in detail about their experience with PVPS. Their stories have many similarities and common themes. By reading them you can get a detailed picture of what it is like to lose this bet. Some cases are mild. Some are severe. There are hundreds of stories in this sub. I do my best to avoid posting the same person's story twice.
More study needs to be done so that we can know the rate of this complication with more precision. Men who are still sore 3 months after their vasectomy want to know what to expect and what to do. Should they get additional surgery? How long should they wait before making this decision? They deserve to be taken seriously and given advice that is well-grounded in scientific study.
Finding and testing new birth control techniques for men and for women should be made a higher priority. Exaggerating the safety of the currently available options makes it harder to be motivated to search for real improvements. Perhaps a technique like Vasalgel could be seen as a better risk trade-off since it may have a lower incidence of PVPS or be easier to reverse if the man ends up with chronic problems. Perhaps the choice of vasectomy technique (open/closed, scalpel/no-scalpel, bilateral/midline) makes a difference in how likely chronic pain is to result.
This subreddit is a place to post stories or links to stories about what it is like to have PVPS. Scientists and doctors have not yet done an adequate job of measuring this problem and communicating it to the public, so the task falls to the people who have the most reason to care about the issue -- the people whose lives have been negatively impacted.
I have no ideological problem with vasectomy. In fact, before I had a vasectomy, I thought it was easy to see that it was the best choice for my family. I didn't investigate the procedure at all before having it done, trusting that my urologist would advise me of any relevant risks. My urologist did not give me an accurate idea of the frequency and impact of chronic pain. Unfortunately, I have been in pain every day since my surgery. My motive for working on this subreddit is that I want men to get a proper warning about the risks, and to disrupt the complacency that surrounds our attitude toward vasectomy so that we will be interested in developing a technique that is actually as safe as most people erroneously believe vasectomy to be.
It is true that there are many myths about vasectomy. One of them is the myth that vasectomy will not permanently damage your sexual health. The reality is that while it usually doesn't, sometime it does.
Men who are willing to step up and voluntarily risk surgery that benefits others, including their partners, doctors and all of society deserve better than to be mislead about how safe it is. They deserve better than to have their complications remain understudied and poorly understood. We need to see effort put into understanding how common chronic pain is after vasectomy, and into learning what can be done to prevent it, and what the best treatment protocol should be.
If you had a vasectomy in the last 12 months and are still in pain, I would not recommend getting additional surgery right away. I think it's better to wait it out and take some time to educate yourself about the alternatives, both surgical and non-surgical. See how you feel at 1 year. Waiting won't make things worse, and many guys experience improvement for a year or more.
Here is a good video from the Mayo Clinic describing treatment options.
Here are some other treatment ideas.
If you want to get a vasectomy and minimize your chances of developing PVPS, here is some advice from Dr. Sheldon Marks:

Any good urologist should be fine. When you go in for your pre-vasectomy consultation be sure to ask about your concerns - explain you have done you reading and ask him or her to explain the technique they use - then you can ask that small piece only be removed, as high up the vas as they can away from the testicle, minimize cautery, no clips, no ties and use plenty of long acting local anesthetic. Some will say sure, others will tell you they want to do it the way they do it…It may take a few doctors visits to find a urologist that does vasectomies the way you want. Don’t be in a hurry and don’t go to the first urologist you see if you have bad feelings. It would be great if you could call around and ask but I cant imagine anyone giving you that information or assurances as a nonpatient over the phone.

https://www.postvasectomypain.org/t/minimizing-risk-of-post-vasectomy-pain/77/5
Other long-term complications of vasectomy:
Vasectomy is correlated with an increased rate of prostate cancer. Scientists argue about why this is the case. For a long time, the consensus view has been that vasectomy does not cause prostate cancer. However, recent studies strongly suggest that a little more than 1% of vasectomies result in prostate cancer.
https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/jco.2013.54.8446
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31119294
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32772072/
If these studies are correct, then prostate cancer is another common complication of vasectomy. The studies show a "relative risk" of at least 1.1 for prostate cancer, with similar numbers for the aggressive, life-threatening type.
A recent study found that although vasectomy does cause men to have prostate cancer more often, men with a vasectomy nevertheless are less likely to die of the disease. I would presume that this is because the type of man that is more likely to get a vasectomy is also the type of man that is more likely to show up for his prostate exam.
A fact that tends not to get counted when comparing vasectomy with the female alternative salpingectomy is that salpingectomy can reduce a woman's risk of ovarian cancer -- possibly by 30% to 64% (Link)
Vasectomy also raises your risk for kidney stones by about 10% if you are under 46 years old:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9016891/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2891890/
Vasectomy may be a simple, quick snip, but long term consequences can extend far beyond the scrotum and affect many other parts of the body, including the prostate and kidneys, in surprising ways.
Check out the list of top stories here:
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/wiki/top_stories
Also check out the timeline for a chronological list of stories on this subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/wiki/timeline
A list of other online projects that have collected PVPS stories:
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/wiki/websites
The wiki has these and other interesting lists:
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/wiki/index

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