{"id":10020,"date":"2026-08-20T11:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=10020"},"modified":"2026-08-21T10:30:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T15:30:48","slug":"better-than-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=10020","title":{"rendered":"Better than gold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What\u2019s about the only thing more badass than a 17-year-old winning a gold medal at the <a href=\"https:\/\/ioinformatics.org\/\">International Olympiad in Informatics<\/a> (IOI)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That 17-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishnews.co.uk\/israeli-teens-medal-revoked-for-wearing-national-flag\">intentionally forfeiting his gold medal<\/a> by wearing an Israeli flag while the medal was announced, defying the IOI\u2019s boycott of Israel (for background on this boycott, <a href=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=8356\">see my post from 2024<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"499\" height=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10021\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-1.png 499w, https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-1-234x300.png 234w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kol HaKavod (mad respect) to Yotam Budnik, who incredibly, has <em>also<\/em> won a Gold Medal (which he was allowed to keep, apparently) at the International Math Olympiad.  And congratulations to the entire Israeli team, which (incredibly) would apparently have had a higher overall score than the US team, had it been allowed to compete as an official team at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s about the only thing more badass than a 17-year-old winning a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)? That 17-year-old intentionally forfeiting his gold medal by wearing an Israeli flag while the medal was announced, defying the IOI\u2019s boycott of Israel (for background on this boycott, see my post from 2024). Kol [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","category-rage-against-doofosity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10020"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10031,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10020\/revisions\/10031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}