I have done a poor job of curating the Sudan community page on Metaculus. I was pulled back into humanitarian policy work. But here is something I have been thinking about since October.
Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms were front-runners for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. They led Polymarket at 33% through October 9, topped the PRIO Director's shortlist, and won both "alternative Nobels": the Rafto Prize and the Right Livelihood Award. They lost to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.…
"If you have a director of football, I still think the director has to defer to the manager/head coach. In the end, it's quite simple, right? You live or die by your results. And how do you get results? Through the players."— Jamie Jackson, on the Amorim firing and United dysfunction
"It's a good system. It can be adversarial, but it creates accountability. Whether a team are playing well or not, it puts those who are truly responsible for the side's construction under the spotlight. They are the people best equipped to answer most transfer-related questions."— Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, on German sporting directors in the mixed zone
There was an era when running player personnel was not a full-time job. A manager could lead both coaching and recruitment because neither demanded what they demand today. That era is over.
The player market has become bigger and more efficient. The best players find their way to top clubs at a higher clip, from more origins, than ever before. Missing on a player costs more than it used to. Hitting on one is a bigger reward. Personnel now requires full-time, specialized attention…
Sudan faces five concurrent disease epidemics, with cholera spreading fastest. The combination of displacement, armed conflict, flooding, and collapsed infrastructure has created strong conditions for transmission.…
For the past few months, I've been neglecting the Sudan community page on Metaculus. I think it's important that I be a more active curator and push the user base's talent towards the most important dimensions of the war: hunger, displacement, and the peace process.
This platform could be a strong complement to the uptick in interest because information gaps (like the lack of data on food security and nutrition outcomes) and disagreement about the scale of need is the sort of uncertainty forecasters can help cut through.…