Jay - thank you for having the audacity to write this. Like a lot of other folks, I'm pretty salty about these results. Yes, I'm totally being a sore loser but the reality is that the winning entries aren't great pieces of writing. I thought my piece had a legitimate shot at being a contender (and after reading some of the winning entries, I still do). I do wonder how Medium and their judges could have read all 9K+ entries in about a month. It doesn't really add up. Something is off.