🚨🚨NOK vent thread. NOKle HEADS GET THE HELL IN HERE. WE NEED TO TALK. 🚨🚨
Ok so, first things first you assholes, I am not a bot. I have been in the fucking game for about seven years now. I don’t typically do posts like this and so this is fucking new to me. Anyways, it seems like a shit ton of you are falling out of favor with NOK. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you if you expected to gain a shit ton of money in a day, but what the fuck I have never seen such 🧻🤲🏻 in my fucking life for the past two days. Are you guys really just going to stand there and let the enemy beat the fuck out of us. And of course some of you are going to mention the total float as if that fucking matters because the stock is still cheap as fuck (for now lol 🚀) and because we managed to trade one fucking fifth of all the NOK stocks in circulation. They literally had to stop our asses from buying a couple of times. Just like you autistic retards I have lost thousands of dollars in this shit. My paychecks, birthday money, dividends, money from the sale of blue chips and Ark ETFs, etc. So where’s the upside? Well let me fucking tell you where the upside is and when you can expect to pull off the biggest fucking heist alongside GME and AMC Wall Street will have ever seen. 🔥🚀💸 NOK is well known to be the bigger beast when it comes to the BANG stocks (BB, AMC, NOK, GME). It has a fuck load of shares to go around and there’s a lot of paperhanded pussies out there, so I understand why it may be daunting to expect a Juggernaut like NOK to moon anytime soon. But it doesn’t have to be. NOK releases its earnings on Thursday and its expected to blow the competition out of the fucking water. I wouldn’t even be surprised at all if it were to get a higher price than ERIC in two weeks (hell, possibly by EOW). NOK even plans to merge with top tier companies in the near future due to their prowess in the 5G tech that they’re developing. The 🏳️🌈🐻 have had their big meaty claws ever since its ATH of $62 all those years ago. Do you really expect a change if you don’t fucking BUY and fucking HOLD. No, with a team of fucking retarded superstars in this sub, NOK is prepping for a fierce comeback in the upcoming weeks. GME is top dog right now, but let’s be honest. GME hype can’t last forever (even tho it can for a long time as long as we remain retarded). However being on team NOK makes me feel like I’m on a loosing, shitty ass baseball team and no one is hitting over .100 What’s the plan, Stan? The fucking plan is that you don’t buy market price. You look at the ask price and you fucking buy it. This is how we destroy walls. The $5 barrier battle today was hard fought and we fucking lost to the hedge funds. This next week is going to be fucking spectacular 🪄🚀🤲🏻💎 and I need to know if my fucking NOKle heads are even in it to win it or just downright frauds. You say NOK was a plan by the bots? Take a look at fucking BlackBerry. That shit took the same swerves NOK did that it’s pretty much identical. If NOK is a sham, then the idea of the BANG stocks is a sham. I know for a fucking fact you don’t believe that. I know that there’s dreamers in this sub. I dream just like you. I am trying to build a life just like you guys are. We are in something way bigger than ourselves so if you can for ONCE IN YOUR LIFE consider that maybe that the process is a trustable process then maybe we can win this shit. If NOK hits $50, I will literally buy new fucking silverware (like expensive handmade shit with sterling silver cutlery) and eat my own shit. I don’t give a fuck whether you’d want to see it or not, because honestly boys I’d eat my shit to go to the moon and I am 200% willing to take one for the team. This year, BANG is for real. So hedgefunds, keep your ears out for the NOK NOK sounds on the door. We’re pissed and we’re armed to the teeth. EDIT: General cheese reporting. Post this shit everywhere. I dont give a fuck. I WILL be producing a flank strategy tomorrow. People have to know goddamn it. Monday/Tuesday will close at $7 just give it time The bell doesn’t fucking ring until WSB says it fucking rings. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🥵🥵 EDIT 2: some of you pussies are asking where you can buy NOK. The easiest way to buy it is with that fucking app all the whores on Tinder beg for food money on: Cashapp. There are literally no fucking limits and if you want an extra 2 fucking shares then use this shit when you sign the fuck up and get $10 extra buckaroos: BKXDNGQ. I also want to make it clear that everyone should share their cash apps so that we can get that $10 extra to put into NOK. I’m only doing this for the small wagecucks so if you have the money to do so, then don’t bother. This is just the only thing on the top of my head that would help out in any way List of reasons to buy:
Most essential 5G patents in the world
Fastest 5G speeds recorded
Controls over 27% of the 4/5G market
First company contracted to set up internet on the moon (NASA)
Will receive MULTI-BILLION dollar settlements from ongoing litigations with Mercedes Benz and Lenovo
Technology provider and main collaborator of the National Security Center of Excellence 5G Cybersecurity Project (Federal 5G project)
Selected to be the main collaborator of the Hexa 6G European Union Project
Has pending Department of Defense contracts yet to awarded
Just sealed a contract with TMOBILE for US 5G roll out.
Has and will take market share from Huawei, already has secured multi-year deals with important Chinese companies
Blackrock increased their position to 333,000,000 shares during 2020, an increase of 21 million shares held from the year before (7% increase)
May also be getting back into the phone business as they are manufacturing phones in India
Vanguard Capital owns 160,000,000 shares and is continuously buying
Google Cloud announced a partnership with $NOK to Accelerate Cloud-Native 5G Readiness for Communications Providers
Friday 1/29/21 GME Expiry Date Means Nothing. Don't buy into the hype - shorts aren't just afraid of this Friday. Come down the rabbit hole with me.
Note: I am mostly summarizing the aggregate of explanations currently floating around about the 1/29/21 option expiry date. I don't claim any knowledge. This is not investment advice. Do your own research, don't invest what you can't afford to lose, and if something feels wrong it probably is. TL;DR: This isn't about options (yet), it's about shares, and Institutional Investors are playing a dangerous game by convincing us (some of y'all have bought in without realizing it) that a magical short squeeze has some 3-day time limit, that Friday is somehow the end game, and are hoping that when investors don't see a $5,000 short squeeze by next week they will fold and take their gains at a "reasonable" double-digit stock price. Don't believe them. They can survive through mid-late February before the true short squeeze smashes upward. And I'll be ready. I like this stock and believe in it's long term potential, and I think it's undervalued. THESIS: If institutional investors can (1) convince retail investors to sell stock at low prices and (2) convince their lenders to wait, then the 0.01% get richer. JUSTIFICATION: There is so much public sentiment (passion, enthusiasm, excitement, anger, whatever) surrounding short (~1 day) price movements*, and Friday's expiring options (these are also end of month contracts), that it seems like big clever money may be trying to artificially create a sort of bear trap for shareholders. Whatever happens in the next week or so (crest to $700? crash to $60?) almost means nothing in the long term, but could fool investors into giving these guys CHEAP ways out of their 140% float short interest positions. Remember, these are people who have been dumping tons of money for a long time, shorting the stock when it was in the single digits. They've been hoping for a GameStop bankruptcy, and manufacturing one as best they can. IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME: Remember the VW infinite squeeze, where we saw weeks of crazy price movement before the actual peak. And that is a mild case, as most of the shares were held by an entity with legal, competitive, and strategic reasons and obligations forcing them to hold shares and artificially reducing the float, or available shares for trading. This reduced supply caused the short squeeze. However, this time around we've got a huge short interest, much much larger by comparison than that from VW's 2008 peak, to the tune of 140% of shares available for trading (float). They've massively overreached, and are going to pay the price for that. But they haven't yet. SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE'S A CHANCE: This time, however, if the big dogs can shake shareholders hard enough, weak links break and paper hands fold and a fantastic long term play starts to seem out of reach. The market manipulation wins. DARE TO BELIEVE: Unfortunately for the shorts, GME has real long term prospects to revolutionize the gaming industry for consumers, and now has the attention and potential equity momentum (if they play it smart, which I think the new leadership will) to make this a reality. From that link above:
In GME's case the rise in the stock price itself will likely result in fundamental improvements to the underlying economic metrics of the company.
I believe. However, if the shorts can fight, sneak, manipulate, and otherwise adjust the share price down this week then they start to see light at the end of the tunnel. They make 2-3 week plans for doing the same thing. For them, prices don't have to bottom back out, they just have to convince enough people to sell that they buy thrmselves a few weeks before a short squeeze really takes them all under. *Some of this price movement is shorts covering, but much is actual legitimate investment between retail investors and other institutional investors who have seen the light. Remember, TSLA didn't get to where it is because one company made some bad short positions. But if GME shorts can convince everyone that a 3-day squeeze is all they get until GME crashes to some "normal" level, then they win. Everyone getting hyped about Friday is playing into their hands. Yeah maybe some will need to take gains after a Friday pop, but a smart long-term hold position on GME is what they're really afraid of. And I want to be a shareholder in GME's future, as many wanted to be with TSLA. And sure, maybe if everyone else thinks that way too, there may be an incidental short squeeze that wrecks the uber wealthy in mid-late February along the way. Again, I am not claiming to be knowledgeable or insightful, just commenting my best guesses. Nobody knows the future. This is not investing advice. 🚀
$SLV is not going to get squeezed...$SLV is the Trojan Horse for the squeeze THAT'S ALREADY HAPPENING
I have no horse in the GME "fight" right now. I wish you all the best, and it is the biggest trading mistake of my life so far. I was talking about GME with my friends in March 2020, and even did trade some options then for a loss. I must have read DFV at some point, as we were discussing Burry and a "technical short squeeze" happening. But I missed the real boat, so good on DFV and all of the rest of you degenerates. Instead, I focused my market attention during quarantine on precious metals. My opinion is that in the long term (10+ years) they will provide the only real hedge against inflation in the world as every CB on the planet is exploding the supply of fiat to deal with COVID economic disruption. In the short term, I believe that the "powers that be" are engineering the largest short squeeze in the history of markets. We do not have the power to effect whether this happens, it is simply an inevitability. HFs, banks, and other large institutions are going to extract an enormous amount of wealth from the world during this squeeze. This money will be taken from the future pocket of every consumer of industrial goods for the next several decades in the form of inflated prices on everything: batteries, electronics, solar panels, EVs...even jewelry and silverware. We cannot stop them, but I have decided to try to hop on for the ride. The last few months aside, I never saw WSB as a force for societal change, because the people who control the money are always going to win the most in the end. WSB is a place where we can learn the tricks of a market that is structurally rigged against us, and use those tricks to our advantage. To use an analogy that I think we all know: I am not, and will never be, Ender. But I can learn that the Enemy's Gate is Down, and play The Game that way. The tl;dr is this: the market for silver is the most manipulated physical market in the history of the world. $SLV is the vehicle that is currently being used behind the scenes to vaccum up ownership of every available physical bar of silver in major bullion vaults in the world. When it has completed doing that, the "paper" markets that have held down the price of silver for decades will become disconnected from the physical markets. The energy that has been artificially held back for decades by this paper will explode the price of physical silver, and I have no idea how high it will go. $SLV will stand (mostly) alone as the world's exchange traded product for electronic trading of physical silver.
LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING: WHY IS SILVER IMPORTANT?
Silver has been used as real currency for thousands of years, and there is an argument to be made for returning to "sound" money through the use of silver and gold. However, that is not the argument that I am making. Silver is a highly industrial metal, and it's usage for industry will only continue to expand as we electrify the future. Silver is important for electrical applications b/c it is the most-conductive / least-resistive metal in the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_and_conductivity_of_various_materials). It is used heavily in all electronic applications (even more since RoHS has pushed us away from Tin/Lead and towards Tin/Silver solder blends, with silver being added to mitigate the longevity problems of 100% Tin solder growing Tin whiskers and shorting out components). But the largest new demands on silver are going to come from solar panels and EVs. Utility-scale solar is now virtually tied with wind as the cheapest new sources of energy in the world and is only getting cheaper every year. As fossil fuel plants continue to reach the end of their service life, they are going to be replaced with solar and wind technologies. As EVs become more prevalent, their components (ESPECIALLY their batteries) will produce additional demand for Silver. As smart investors are wont to do, this coming demand for industrial silver has been front-run and large quantites of silver have been sucked into investment products so that they can produce financial returns when demand begins to increase. 2020 showed remarkable investor interest in silver, to the tune of an estimated 350Mtoz moving into exchange traded products like $SLV. $SLV alone added ~200Mtoz of silver to it's holdings in 2020. Unfortunately for the market, supply cannot meet demand: Of the 930.9Mtoz estimated for 2020 demand, only 236Mtoz was available for physical investment, because the rest was consumed by industrial uses. This means that $SLV alone absorbed almost the entire world's capacity for silver investment in 2020, and as you'll see soon, this is only accelerating in 2021. Source for demand/supply/investment numbers: https://www.silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SilverInstitute2020InterimPR.pdf
LETS GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL
Now it's important to understand that huge amounts of "silver" is traded on "paper" markets, and these markets have historically decided the approximate cost of physical silver in the world, in the form of the "spot price". I'm not going to give anyone a primer on how this works, go read about the London Fix and COMEX paper on your own time. But the important thing to know is that there are a bunch of silver bars in vaults in London and in the U.S., and electronic claims on them are traded on the LBMA and COMEX continuously, without the silver ever leaving the vaults. However, these vaults have concrete numbers of physical bars in them, and trading contracts against them technically means that you can show up at a window somewhere and demand your 5x 1000oz bars that a COMEX warrant entitle you to. This redemption happens all the time, and it can be used to extract physical silver from the unallocated storage at bullion vaults and release it to industrial or consumer bullion uses. However, these bars can also be moved into "registered" or "allocated" accounts without them leaving the overall vault storage. This means that a quantity of individual silver bars that an owner holds title to can be physically moved inside the vault onto a different rack, and the owner has individual serial numbers of bars that they own. These bars can be withdrawn on demand only by their owner and are not available for general redemption of a COMEX warrant. So how many bars are there? Well between LBMA and COMEX, there are 1480.3Mtoz sitting in vaults (sources below when I start doing math). This includes all allocated AND unallocated bars. Now, obviously London and NY are separated by an ocean, but people always like to bring up that bars could be moved b/w London <-> American COMEX vaults. This is an enormous undertaking, but let's make a "spherical chicken in a vaccuum" level assumption and say that LBMA + COMEX vaults are a singular source of inventory for both $SLV and other market participants. If you read the $SLV S-1 (which I did: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1330568/000119312505127244/ds1.htm) you would learn that the custodian of the $SLV trust is required to hold all silver weight (with an exception for 1100toz of unallocated, lol) that is owned by the trust in allocated accounts, where the individual bars are physically segregated inside the vaults, and the serial numbers of the owned bars are explicitly recorded. The idea that there is "no physical silver" backing the SLV trust and "you could get settled with cash" is ridiculous. iShares publishes a report listing every serial number of every bar that is owned by the trust, along with the total weight contained in the bars. It is 10847 pages long (you can read it here if you have trouble sleeping at night: https://emea-markets.jpmorgan.com/metalicsWebAppJanus/publicUnauthenticated/BONY_SLV.pdf) and is updated frequently. The underlying silver is owned by the trust. It cannot be removed from the trust unless "baskets" of 50000 shares are redeemed by an "Authorized Participant" which is only a few large brokers. It cannot be removed by the bullion vaults and given to other customers because it is physically segregated inside the vaults. People who have recently beaten down the idea of a silver squeeze love to talk about how JP Morgan is the custodian for the SLV trust. And because JPM just paid a $1B fine for historical manipulation of the paper silver market, they aren't going to be honest about this. This is crazy talk. When it comes to the dishonesty of a big bank, there is "fraud" and there is FRAUD. "Fraud" would be them saying "Oh sorry, we didn't realize that a laundromat bringing in $300k/week of dirty dollar bills was out of the ordinary". "Fraud" happens all the time, and the banks get away with it regularly. FRAUD would be them saying "Oh yes, 3rd party customer (iShares) who services dozens of other large banking institutions in the world, here is objective evidence, with serial numbers, that we have these silver bars in the vault" and then just making up the data. It is QANON-level crazy, IMHO, to think that JPM is going to commit FRAUD by publishing a list of serial numbers that is completely fake. I believe the exact opposite: since they have just gotten caught, they are playing it straight this time and have just switched sides in order to go long. On the COMEX alone, JP Morgan Chase is long 193.9Mtoz, or just north of $5B. (COMEX depository data by weight: https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls) The problem for the futures and options markets is that their continual trading of paper contracts is chasing a smaller and smaller amount of physical silver that is not owned by $SLV. And the market participants (minus, now, JPM) who have gotten away with naked selling of paper contracts and mostly settling them for cash are going to soon find the underlying vaults empty and no metal to give to warrant holders who come looking for it.
HOW BIG OF A PROBLEM IS $SLV FOR THE NAKED SHORTS IN THE PAPER MARKET? LET'S DO SOME MATH.
$SLV inventory math: $SLV is holding 669,357,789.40 troy ounces in trust, and has 720,500,000 shares outstanding. (If you are curious why $SLV/share trades below the spot price, it's because: 669.4Mtoz / 720.5M shares = .929 toz / share) ($SLV data from here: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund?qt=SLV#/ ) (screenshot from tonight for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/0sqcMFr) Bullion vault inventory math: London (LBMA) silver stocks are 1080.5Mtoz (http://www.lbma.org.uk/london-precious-metals-physical-holdings-statistics) US COMEX silver stocks are 399.8Mtoz (https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls) 669.4/(1080.5 + 399.8) = 45.2% of the vaulted silver in the world is already owned by SLV Subtracting what SLV already owns, leaves us with: (1080.5 + 399.8) - 669.4 = 810.9Mtoz (This is completely ignoring the fact that a lot of that remaining silver is owned in registered or allocated accounts by individual owners. E.g. there is 150.2Mtoz in "registered" on the COMEX which means those bars are already specifically deeded to an individual owner. But they could theoretically sell it to SLV so I included it as available.) 810.9Mtoz is the ABSOLUTE THEORETICAL MAXIMUM available in LBMA + COMEX silver that is not already owned by SLV. Now how short are the shorts? Some more math: OI on COMEX futures: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver-futures-and-options.html
in currently open interest that could be demanded for delivery. Just on the COMEX, there could be demand for twice as much silver as there is in the combined LBMA + COMEX vaults that is not explicitly owned by $SLV right now. Caveats:
I have not included any London futures contracts that may have claims on metal here. I am not versed in their contracts at all and don't have a good data source right now. If anyone knows how to calculate the short obligation for London I would be glad to add it.
I have not analyzed any of the strike prices on COMEX options or dates on COMEX futures...some of them could be way out of the money or way in the future. Many silver producers sell futures years in advance to lock in prices, and then deliver the physical to satisfy the contracts.
Using the same basic methodology–total shorts divided by shares [toz in this case] outstanding–as is used on a stock to calculate short interest (and gave us the infamous 140% short interest on GME) we get......drumroll please: 1563.9 short / 810.9 physical = 192.9% short interest. OPEN INTEREST ON COMEX SILVER FUTURES AND OPTIONS IS EQUIVALENT TO A 192.9% SHORT INTEREST AGAINST ALL LONDON AND U.S. AVAILABLE INVENTORY. But it gets even worse.
WANNA ADD A GAMMA SQUEEZE??
I pulled the data for all current OI in SLV options. There is a large number (5.7 million) of call contracts open (here are the totals: https://imgur.com/tiqPA34) Using the .929toz/share number, we can calculate that there are up to 527.2Mtoz that would have to be bought during an absolute runaway Gamma Squeeze. Call options on $SLV max out right now at $55, so the spot price would only have to increase by around 122% to reach the point that all of that weight would need to have been purchased. But at some point, it could become self-reinforcing, and the gamma squeeze continues to cause more gamma squeezing. I believe that this almost happened Sunday evening (2021-01-31) as evidenced by the huge premium that $SLV was trading to the futures price for a few minutes when trading opened. (My comparison chart: https://i.imgur.com/UPjL3zm.png) The Silver ETF that trades on Sunday in Tel Aviv (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/TCHF82:IT) closed up >6% (and was consistenly rising for the entire session) before any american spot markets opened. I believe that hedging algorithms at MM firms that write options saw this spike as a need to buy shares in $SLV to cover their deltas, and so they bought the opening of $SLV like crazy. $SLV opened up 17.6%, while paper only opened up about 6%. Paper market players had to sell 23.8Mtoz of paper in the first minute of trading to keep the price under control. I have never seen an imbalance like this before, and it was covered up quickly (within 2 hours of trading). But to me, it sounds like Vincent's heartbeat monitor in GATTACA when he runs out of fake signal: there was a cover up required to hide this explosion. When the day comes that this cover up is not executed properly, stuff is going to get ugly, b/c $SLV won't just gamma squeeze like a normal stock...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! A TRADITIONAL GAMMA/SHORT SQUEEZE WILL SEEM LIKE NOTHING IN SILVER
The squeeze in silver will be FAR WORSE than the combination of a gamma and short squeeze in a stock, because shares of stock cannot be removed from the market. Eventually somebody holding $VW or $GME is going to say "sure, I'll sell at $42,000.69 per share" and that share can go back to cover a short. But if instead of doing that, the holder of that share withdrew it from the market by converting it to a physical token b/c they thought that the physical token would be more valuable than the share (the retail premium on physical silver vs. paper silver), the short interest would INCREASE as shares were converted into tokens. And since there are currently more "shares" of silver than there are bars of silver in the vault, the shorts can be caught with a literally illiquid market that has nothing to buy. Zero. Zilch. No silver available. The doomsday scenario (for paper silver holders and writers) is the following combination:
holders of COMEX warrants will see the rising premium of physical bullion to the spot price and decide to redeem their warrants for physical
a rising spot price will Gamma Squeeze the writers of $SLV options into buying more shares in a runaway fashion and the trust will absorb all available vault inventory as it issues new shares
COMEX warrant holders who try to demand metal that doesn't exist will literally break the market. The CBOE will probably step in and decide to force settle the contracts for cash at the last known good price, and COMEX paper warrants will cease trading forever. The physical market price will then be disconnected from the paper market, and $SLV as an exchange traded product will stand (mostly) alone as the new "paper" market for silver.
SO WTF DO I DO? [NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE]
Well I could always buy physical silver, if I can stomach the premium and wait 8 weeks for it to show up. Or, I could just get long on $SLV. Since I believe that $SLV will stand alone after the dust settles as the one true claim on bars in the vaults, I could be long the actual $SLV ticker in several ways:
Buying shares (duh, but it worked for $GME)
Buying long dated calls (Gamma Squeeze go BRRRRR, but who knows when)
My name is Jared A. Brock. Having just turned 35, I sat down to reflect on everything I’ve learned so far and made a list of the things I wish I learned far sooner. None of these are rules or commands for you to follow, just personal reflections from a decade of journaling. I hope they save you a lot of time, energy, and struggle:
1. “Save the best for last” is terrible advice.
A French monk taught me this one. Every morning, I put on the newest pair of socks in my drawer. Why wear the rattiest pair? When I sit down to eat, I eat the tastiest bits first. Why let them get cold? After every shower, I put on my favorite clean t-shirt. I have a great bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig scotch in my cupboard, but I probably won’t drink it for months because I received two bottles of reactor-aged Lost Spirits single malt for Christmas. Why? Because life is hard enough and we aren’t promised tomorrow. This doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind and “live in the moment” at all times, but it does mean we should try to find the golden middle and glean a little bit of pleasure from every day we’re blessed to live. “Save the best for last” is poverty-mentality thinking. It expects worse in the future. Enjoy the best right now — in your marriage, parenting, work, travel, faith, friendship, contribution. Keep all the chips on the table. Be ready at all times to leave without regret.
2. Tools use us.
A hammer literally cannot hit a nail without using a human. A saw cannot cut through a board without using a human. A phone cannot deliver ads without using a human.
3. Avoid false dichotomies.
When given two great options, choose both. When given two horrible options, choose neither.
4. Failure is overcome by one word.
“Next.”
5. Ambition is ruinous for your happiness.
Most goal-setters (myself included) live much of life in anticipation of tomorrow, and when that day arrives, they’re either disappointed by their failures or underwhelmed by their successes. Instead: trust the process. Whiskey, pasta, bread, beer, and cereal all require just two ingredients — wheat and water — but the outcome is completely different based on the process. Identity precedes action. Determine what you want to be, then find the process that will get you there every single time.
6. Forget what the market wants.
Listen to your gut. Your body knows the difference between good and great. Someone said you should never record a song or code an app or write an article unless it makes you laugh, cry, or orgasm. If an idea doesn’t move you, it won’t move an audience, no matter how “commercial” you think it is.
7. Give yourself a shove.
The best way to eat more candy, drink more vodka, and smoke more cigarettes is to leave them in the middle of the kitchen counter. You get it. Willpower is useless. Instead, line up a series of little nudges to automatically get you through your day. If you want to work out, leave your shorts by the door or your cleats in your fridge. My blue diode glasses rest on top of my laptop so I have to protect my eyes before logging online. I can’t not see my vitamins when I brush my teeth, or chia seeds when I reach for the Brita. There’s a book beside my bed, toilet, desk, and car’s gear shifter. Line up enough nudges and you can shove yourself in the right direction.
8. Grandma didn’t use toilet paper.
She used pages from the Sears catalog. Splinter-free wasn’t available until 1935. The Romans used sponges. The Greeks used clay. Francois Rabelais recommended using “the neck of a goose.” Arabians used their left hand. Never assume our extremely unique cultural moment is “normal.”
9. Ninety-nine isn’t enough.
Water boils at 100 degrees Celcius. The difference between 99 and 100 is the difference between zero and one. Not-boiling, boiling. Corollary: 101 doesn’t make it any more boiling.
10. Old people know better.
Honoring our elders is one of the most underrated practices in our newness-obsessed society. Sure, there are a ton of old crazy far-right conspiracy theorists, but there are also good people who have survived four wars, six recessions, and twelve presidents and are somehow still smiling. Get to know them. Also: meet your old-person self. I try to invent a new word every week — one of them is preflection. To ponder the present through the eyes of your future self. Take an hour in silence to listen to your eighty-year-old self. They might know something you don’t.
11. Fire all your employees.
The employer-employee relationship creates an unhealthy power dynamic between humans that simply didn’t exist when we worked cooperatively to feed our clan or village. I love my work life so much more now that I only work with independent entrepreneurs who are my equals. For me, it’s either a one-man show (my writing business), an equal partnership (my film company), or a co-operative endeavor. Life’s too short to be a boss or be bossed around.
12. Accept that you are a voracious locust of doom.
Nail a roll of paper to the wall and write down everything you consume for a year — food, toilet paper, electricity, car fuel, movies, music, social media content, other people’s time, everything. See what I mean? Saint Augustine said that the human heart can only fully be satisfied by one thing aside from God himself: everything. All the sex, all the money, all the power, all the possessions, all the glory. All of it. Nothing short of everything could ever fully satiate the human heart. We are wired for more. Understanding this truth is the first step toward real contentment.
13. Awkward is awesome.
My best friend says that The Office gave society a beautiful gift: the ability to embrace cringe. When you meet someone new and it’s slightly weird, pretend you’re Michael Scott. Just glory and bask in the discomfort. You can awkward-proof your life by being bold: Ask for discounts. Ask for refunds. Ask for phone numbers. Ask for pay raises. Ask inappropriate questions at inappropriate times. Lather yourself in awkward and pretty soon nothing sticks.
14. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life.
Hitler really was following his bliss by offing millions of Jews. I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer genuinely enjoyed the taste of human flesh. Bernie Madoff seemed content to bilk charities for decades. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life. It’s not even in the top ten. Happiness is a seasonal fruit, not a foundational root. Find firm and fertile ground.
15. There is no ugly.
My grandpa re-proposed to my grandma on their fiftieth wedding anniversary and called her the most beautiful woman he’s ever known. Old wrinkly grandma? Yes. Because we choose our definition of beauty through our thoughts, disciplines, habits, and patterns, be they conscious or otherwise.
16. We are what we consume.
The statistical average American is a walking bodybag of sugar, alcohol, caffeine, porn, pills, and digital stimulus. Imagine how different life would be if our only inputs were nature, sleep, sunlight, organic food, and embodied human interaction? Guard your inputs carefully.
17. We’re going to die quite soon.
Make sure you live first. Practicing memento mori will help.
18. Fame is poison.
One in four Gen Zers thinks they’ll be famous by age 25. One in 3.9999999 Gen Zers are going to have a miserably disappointing life. Why do people desire the attention of strangers? Because we all need to love and be loved, to know and be known, but are too afraid to risk personal heartbreak to seek it out. Attention is not affection. Influence is not intimacy.
19. Boomers are to blame for half our troubles.
The Me Generation took a free ride at the planet’s expense and are hellbent on taking the rest of it with them. They’re statistically low on empathy — blame the lead, asbestos, and hairspray if you must — but at least acknowledge the reality that life is hard for everyone, and no one has it easier.
20. Children are dope.
Kids are the blood transfusion in our sick system. We need to stop manipulating, brainwashing, colonizing, and propagandizing them, and learn from them instead.
21. It doesn’t have to hurt.
Joy is a choice.
22. Watch comedy before calls and meetings.
Five minutes of gut-busting laughter will prime you for even the most tedious conference call. Your co-workers and customers all have tough lives like everybody else, so brighten their day by pre-brightening your own.
23. No ragrets.
Tattoo it on your neck. Most people play it far too safe. Instead: optimize your life for the least number of regrets and the most amount of selfless contribution.
24. There are better ways to vote.
I’ve manned several local voting stations, and I’ve also hob-nobbed with politicians in Canada, America, and the UK. The reality is that they don’t work for us. They work for their corporate sponsors and private interests. Democracy isn’t dead. It just hasn’t happened yet, with all attempts to date being stillborn or aborted. Democracy = one voice one vote. Athens wasn’t a democracy — women, slaves, and tenants had zero say. America isn’t a democracy either — no representative system is, because it’s far too easy for private interests to buy politicians. The charade of voting is illusory. All elections are sham elections. So what to do? Vote with your money and time and attention. One sham vote every four years versus tens of thousands of dollar-votes each year? It’s a no-brainer. My wife and I haven’t stepped foot in a Walmart in more than a decade because thousands of its suppliers are based in China, the billionaire heirs are anti-democratic tax-avoiders, and they treat their employees like indentured servants. Vote for pro-democracy third-party candidates if you must — just understand the game, and vote in the ways that actually matter.
25. Everything easy has already been done.
So run a little further. And if it hasn’t been done, it won’t be as easy as it appears. The question to ask is: what’s been standing in the way this whole time? Achievement is all about knocking down obstacles. Just make sure what’s on the other side is rightly worth the effort.
26. Broccoli still tastes terrible.
But you’re not a child anymore. Adults do hard things.
Discipline is great, but it’s also subject to the law of diminishing returns. Life is just too dynamic to schedule with military precision. Free yourself from the tyranny of “only people who wake up at 5 AM are successful.” All hours are not created equal. It depends on your sleep drive and chronotype. Know yourself. Unapologetically get more sleep, then do your best work at your best time in your best state.
28. “Freedom” isn’t freedom.
America wasn’t founded on freedom. America was founded on violent autonomy. The ancient Greeks had an entirely different definition of freedom: it was the ability to choose the right regardless of circumstance.
“We talk about freedom all the time, but we’ve stopped talking about freedom a long time ago. Now we’re talking about autonomy. Freedom is different than autonomy. Freedom has boundaries. Truth is one of those boundaries. And morality is one of those boundaries. Autonomy is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want in whatever way you want. The problem is this: If I’m autonomous and another person is autonomous, and I have preferences and those matter more than the truth, and that person has preferences and their preferences matter more than the truth, when two autonomous preference-seeking beings come together and their preferences don’t match, who is going to win? If truth is on the bottom shelf, truth won’t decide. What will decide will be power. And isn’t it ironic that in our quest for “freedom”, someone gets enslaved?” — Abdu Murray
29. The Marines were right: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
As teenagers, my friend Tyler and I were in a hurry to get somewhere quickly so we drove 120+ miles per hour for forty-five straight minutes before nearly crashing when the speed burned a footlong gash through the tire. By the time we replaced it with a spare, we were late to our destination by more than an hour. But nevermind driving. Pump the life-brakes sometimes, or at least, let off the gas. You might get there faster, with less wear-and-tear on the engine.
30. The quest for wealth is destroying life.
We’ve commodified land, water, shelter, clothing, art, time, and nearly everything else. Very little remains, and it’s amassing into fewer hands. We need a shared global vision. My invented word for it is benevitae: the sustainable flourishing of all creation. Our collective goal should be socioenviroeconomic sustainability. Where to start? We’d do well to let biology determine ecological sustainability and real democracy to determine economic fairness. Our current trajectory is worse than the Space Shuttle Challenger.
31. Most “leaders” aren’t leaders.
Celebrities, politicians, and book-hocking business gurus all call themselves leaders. They’re not. Real leadership is influence that serves. True leaders are selfless and servant-hearted. They put the best interests of others ahead of their own. Politics and media, by comparison, attracts sociopaths like flies to firelight. Never give power to those who seek it. Nearly everyone worth following is dead.
32. Divide-and-conquer is a business model.
Near the end of high school, dozen friends and I binge-watched multiple seasons of LOST in our friend Mike’s basement. It was one of the most hilarious, riotous, enjoyable experiences we had as a group. And it was the last show we ever watched together. People used to go to restaurants in large numbers, to the movies by the dozen, climbing over each other for one of the limited video game controllers, packing out our churches, cheering on our sports teams by the busload. We were almost never alone, and we were far happier. Now we order in, watch Netflix, stream Minecraft, catch the highlights, watch porn, and go to bed. It’s killing us. Resist the urge to be alone. It’s too easy, and it’s the exact opposite of what we really need. The #1 thing that’s correlated to human happiness is human togetherness.
33. Self-improvement won’t save us.
The great lie of individualist-consumerist culture is that we can improve our way to personal perfection and communal utopia. But it’s incrementalism at best. It’s just chasing infinity.
34. We know nothing +/-.
On the scale of all that is known, and all that is knowable, our individual understanding is essentially mathematically zero. The entirety of human knowledge is a rounding error. This is the beginning of humility.
35. The sun is not on fire
I was at an observatory in the Davis Mountains in Texas, and it was the first time I’d paid attention to astronomy since grade school. For three decades, I’d wrongly assumed the sun was a giant ball of flames. But there’s no fire in space because there’s no oxygen in space. (It just looks like fire because of how our eyes perceive light through the atmosphere and prism.) As I stared at the real-time image of the sun on the observatory wall, I nearly wept. The sun actually looks like a giant, boiling, grey brain. And then it hit me: I have so many assumptions to set aside and so much left to learn. So pay attention. Don’t worship the “question everything” mantra, but instead spend your life seeking truth, and wisdom, and understanding. You know what you need to do to get where you want to be.
"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)
I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to. Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547 I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can. I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts. Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T
Intro
"The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
"I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
"For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
"We're spread way too thin."
"If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
Widespread match fixing
The Pandemic
"People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
"People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
"To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
"Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
"People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
"It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.
CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association
"Who does this union really fucking serve?"
RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
"and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
"We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
"They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
"I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
"Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
"Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
"That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
He also says their rankings are a joke
"Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
"Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission
"They have been put in an impossible position."
RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
"ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
"Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
"Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
"They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
"They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
Also says more coaches being banned are coming
He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
"I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
"So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
"Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
Stream Sniping
"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"
RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
"Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
"ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
"All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?
Match Fixing
"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."
RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
"Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
"Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
"I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
"Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
"There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
"It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
"It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
"I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
"That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
"All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
"I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."
North America
"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."
RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
"was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."
Talent
"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."
RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."
Valve
"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"
Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
"It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
"Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
"People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."
Closing Statements
"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."
RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
"We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
"There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
"How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
"Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
"The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
"If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
"They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
"Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
"This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
"You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
"Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
"Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
"You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
"I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
"I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
"I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."
Imagine you’re a hedge fund CEO or senior executive. You’ve always had an inflated ego, and going to Wharton for an MBA definitely didn’t help in that regard. You interned at GS for the summer of 2003 and told all your friends about it, probably even brought it up oh so casually on dates. When you were hired as a trader by a moderately good to great fund, you probably lost a good deal of friends from your previous life, because they “just don’t get you now.” You’re in a different league than them, even your classmates that now work at lesser funds. You act friendly, liking Facebook posts, returning their calls, but there’s a nagging feeling that they’re holding you back. That you’ve made it, and you don’t need some loser that doesn’t even work on the East Coast. Jump ahead a few years It’s September 20th, 2008. Bear Stearns closed months earlier, Lehman went bankrupt a few days ago. "Buddies" of yours from both funds have been texting you, some you know from college. Maybe you’ll take pity on them and put in a good word, maybe you’ll tell them nothing’s available right now and that you’re sorry. You don’t tell them you were part of your fund's effort to short sell theirs into oblivion. Maybe you really are sorry though. What you’re more sorry about, however, is that your bonuses are probably going to be shit for a few years. They could even dip into five figures, god forbid. Your thoughts are of course directed to the millions of people losing their jobs across the country by the news, but inevitably your bonus reduction resurfaces as your biggest concern. “It’s not like I can do anything,” you say, after downing some wine. You go to sleep fairly easily, while across the country, innumerable people are forced to contemplate moving. Let’s jump ahead a few more years It’s mid-March, 2020. At this point, its become evident that COVID-19 is going to ravage the world, in some capacity (not gonna put politics into this because that’s not the point). As either a CEO or senior executive at a mid-range hedge fund, your thoughts gravitate towards your craft. It’s clear the market is going to tank, so you do what you do best. You short the shit out of several clearly sinking industries (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/31/investing/short-sellers-market-coronavirus/index.html). But you don't stop there. You go on CNBC, Fox Business, maybe even the BBC, and announce doom and gloom. Doing this will get people to dump their stocks, meaning your shorts print even more money. Oh well, if there’s a positive to be gained from this whole thing it’s your fund making good money, right? By late March or early April, your wife convinces you that going with the kids to the Hampton’s would be the best choice, since the upper east side is getting a little claustrophobic. You’ll need to cancel your two week St. Barts vacation, what a bummer. You rent out a nice beach house in Sag Harbor for 125k a month, managing to beat out the other bidder by upping them by 10k. Once again, millions of people are losing their jobs, and you’re shorting the companies they work for. What else should you do? Only a few months forward this time It’s October. Weeks turned into months, and while you’ve started getting back to the city more and more, you’re still staying in Sag. Sometimes you have family friends over for an ostensibly socially distanced wine + cigar. You don’t think much of the events of the summer, aside from that one tweet you had PR send out in July. Your kids might have thoughts, you haven’t asked. Just a few more months, I promise It’s January. For really no other reason than the prospect of making more money, you along with a few other funds have decided to open naked shorts on GameStop. While technically not allowed, there are loopholes. Why would the loopholes be there, if not to be exploited, right? Not like you don’t do the same thing with your taxes. Then, the unthinkable happens A bunch of retail investors, led by a specific part of Reddit, decide to fuck your position by dramatically raising the share price. Since you firmly believe these people incapable of sticking to such an audacious play, you do nothing. Before long though, you start to become slightly unnerved by how steady the growth of the stock is. It's approaching $100, and you're losing hundreds of thousands to millions every day on short interest. So, you decide to take action. You get on CNBC, and cry about fundamentals. About volatility crushing these people. They don't listen, and keep buying. A week passes with you and your rich friends trying various strategies, none of it working. You're aware of another fund leaning on a popular trading app to force them into not accepting buy orders for GME, amongst others. You're not above sacrificing pride for money, so you announce your fund has closed its shorts. You're lying, of course. What kind of looks what you get at future parties if you cowed to these people? No, fuck that. You've read all the right books, been to the right schools, made the right friends, networked at the right parties and functions. You will not close, everything in your life has conditioned you not to. In fact, you'll double down. You go on CNBC some more. Artificially lower the stock price by trading between a few other funds. None of it's working, and you're intensely aware of another potential gamma squeeze on Friday. Restrictions on buying help during the day, but after hours, the stock jumps. That momentum carries it into a solid Friday. You won't budge, but at this point you're losing millions of dollars a day. So, here we are These people do not care about you. You're the least of their concerns, actually. They care about money and fund image, in that order. We have a real chance to make guys exactly like this hurt where it counts (for them), and I want people to understand that. I'm not saying throw your rent into GME. I'm saying you have the chance to really be a part of something, to screw the people that have been doing the screwing for your whole life. The house has been running a fixed casino, and you have the chance to hit back. Do not close. We have them, and they know it. We're winning, and if we keep winning they will give in.
Questions on Short Float, Short Ladder Attacks and Short Squeeze.
Here are the main questions many have. Post will be updated with more answers and questions from the comments. This will help a lot of people!
Q1) The short float % seems to be going down from a number of sources. Why are these not correct?
Responses:
From u/kevinjing11: Short float % is what's publicly reported. Many ways that MMs and hedge funds can essentially fake this number through unreported phantom shares
From u/Candle-Sticks: The short float % numbers we've been seeing are all estimates. The official reports don't come out until 2/9.
From u/JesusHimself69: There's no way the hedges could have paid out their shorts that fast without the stocks rocketing up. Some on Thursday/Friday? Sure. But not over the weekend. It's just a scare tactic.
From u/ whateverathrowaway00: http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-09/s70809-407a.pdf The documents listed here show that the DTC ( central clearing house for stock trading ) has allowed counterfeit stock trading to occur for a long time. It is this environment that allows naked shorting to occur. The SEC article above is from 2008 basically laying out how the restrictions put in place could be side stepped and it lines up. With this explanation, no one needed to call the DTC. There are no more shares of GME... period. That’s why even though short interest is being manipulated exactly as spelled out in the SEC paper above, there are no available shares to short in most brokers. The DTC raised deposit prices. They didn’t need a phone call. They’re not doing it to help any brokerages or hedge funds. They’re doing it to save their own ass. This is an opaque company that has the ability to shrug off congressional subpoenas. Independant actors all acting for their own gain is a much more likely explanation then widespread collusion. This is what makes sense to me. DTC raised deposits, allowing the shorts to unwind over time. The media will vilify the brokerages and hedge funds and no-one will ever ask where all the shares are. If that tactic does not work they will crash the economy in response.
Q2) Can't the hedge funds just keep doing more short ladder attacks and drive the price down?
Responses:
From u/FudgieThaWhale: No, because they're losing money doing ladders in an attempt to acquire additional shares. If investors don't sell a dip then they just flat lose the money. They won't keep doing it because they can't.
From u/Candle-Sticks: The ladder attacks rely on the HF holding shares, they can keep selling and laddering until they run out of shares. Of course they can easily buy more at the dips they artificially create.
From u/storyhungry: Interactive Brokers currently says that the borrow rate is 16.97% for HFs
Q3) All these hedge funds are saying they're out of their short positions to align with question #1, we obviously don't believe them and they're probably racking up a ton of fees. How long can they really last?
Responses:
From u/FudgieThaWhale: It can last as long as they want to pay margin fees. I imagine that won't be for very long.
Q6) What % of the float do we need to own before this starts to squeeze (and is this publicly available)?
Responses:
From u/thejewsdidnothing :It is possible (and likely imo) that we already hold over 100% of GME’s float. Why haven’t we squeezed? Because the shorts are able to dilute the float with fake shares as much as they want. The real question that should be asked then is “at what point does the government step in to stop them, or when do the shorts accrue such heavy losses that they have to cover?” The answer is that we don’t know, but it’s only a matter of time.
Q7) Why can't I buy more on Vanguard (relevant to other brokers too)
Responses:
From u/Tainthairtwizzler : Vanguard no longer allowing you to use money transferred immediately. Just got off the phone with support and the funds need to be cleared through the 7 Day Hold before you can spend them. Must have been set over the weekend/today because I was able to buy BB from the same account but wasn't allowed to buy GME all during this morning.
Q8) Isn’t it plausible that HF have been shorting at 300- 400$ level and are now taking in big time on their own ladder attacks to around the 250$ level?
Responses:
From u/Thefsm93: It is possible that they have been shorting at 300-400, except that the volume of shares being traded doesn't match the volume of shares needed for the short. If the question is more geared at them buying in at 300-400 and trying to short at 250, that would just make this situation worse because they would still then need to BUY. Plus, why would they be artificially driving the price down with ladder attacks?
Q9) How does the short % of the float matter if there are approximately 10M shares to cover with?
Q10) (from others) I’m trying to get into the gme/amc craze but public / webull apps is taking anywhere between 1-7 days to confirm deposits before i can use the funds in my bank account. is this new? is there a way to expedite the process?
Responses:
From u/waqas961: If you have a cash account linked to your bank on webull and you transfer an amount it will be available same day if did in morning or available next day as provisional funds to trade with until your actual deposit goes through which can take upto 5 days. I bought on 27th and 28th Jan but my actual deposits still show pending. Wire transfer however is different and for that you need to actually wait the whole time till it gets processed.
From u/sutsusame: If you want to invest money right away, see if the brokerage will let you do a wire transfer. I use E*TRADE and incoming wire transfers usually clear within minutes, with no hold period. You will probably need to pay a fee to your bank.
Q11) What are some in depth posts that people believe should be read?
Q12) I've read a couple of posts that casually mention the possibility that GameStop could issue more shares, pulling in a bunch of money and essentially letting the shorts off the hook. Can GameStop do that? If so, why the hell wouldn’t they?
Q13) What happens if HFs have artificially created the counterfeit shares to the amount we hold which they exactly need and then when the short squeeze takes place, restrict all of us 🦍 and basically resell it to themselves and make our shares burn to the ground?
Q14) What happens if the short squeeze takes place and all of the brokerage houses crash, as we have seen they have restricted us from buying? Wouldn’t be surprised of seeing them not allowing us to sell at the most important moment. Btw, as we see that there is an insane amount of counterfeit shares, does that mean that this is hope they will save their asses by restricting the fake shares to be sold?
I really want this to be helpful for everyone. If you are an expert or have other questions for me to ask, please comment and I will update this post. Holding 10 GME shares from $90/share. Got another one on Friday at $320 a share. I can't buy anymore but wish i could! UPDATE: Keep the responses coming please, and note: we are not financial advisors, just awesome retards!
**I think I'll start doing this as much as I can. A kind of information gathering piece until we are a $0 or the moon. I am not a financial advisor nor trying to influence how you trade. Always do your own research when buying and trading stocks. This is meant for me to organize my own personal thoughts and share things that I've been researching. I own 300ish shares of GME and will continue to keep buying until I see something that changes my mind. Hi all, I wrote up some thoughts yesterday morning here. I'm in because I don't understand the complete picture yet and I'm someone who has been trading everyday for years. I've never seen stocks react and get treated the way these meme stock have so it's peaked my curiosity. It's why I keep acquiring more shares in GME especially. I'm not delusional and I try to separate the bullshit from real numbers. https://www.reddit.com/GME/comments/lfb0bj/needs_to_be_readwatched_before_gme_opens/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 It got some good responses so I'll keep this going. I'm not on WallStreetBets as of right now, as I was banned during the run up for posting DD with a copy and paste. They gave me 30 day ban for that. Feel free to cross post if you like what you read to them.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gap down- Today is starting out a little rough we have gapped down to 54.90's area this morning in Pre-Market. I picture us being a bit range bound between 49 and 65 for at least the next 2 to 3 days. We are in a game of chicken right now. The shorts (I'm not even sure the original players of Citadel, Melvin, Point72, Citron) have those early positions anymore but I can tell you there is probably a mix of new/old players who have much better positions now in the 200,300,400 range. Does that mean it's impossible for us to win, nope, we absolutely can win with some patience and trust in what we are doing.
Holding or HODLING (Holding On for Dear Life or just a drunk guy misspelling) - Today might be scary for those on the fence. So you bought in the 400, 300, 200, even 100 range and you are kicking yourself for not selling. Hey, we all are now that it's sitting in the 50's, but you can't change that. We were cheated from a true victory by a corrupt system designed to protect the elites. They increased all the margin requirements, pulled one side of the trade allowing only selling pressure. We got fucked and it's part of the reason I'm still holding. These guys got let off the hook and if I'm causing them some discomfort just by holding onto some shares, then it's worth it. My estimate is they will do something similar to yesterday, constant downward pressure from adding more puts / shorts (It's possible short ladder attacks but I'm not going there since those are illegal and I'd be speculating) and coordinated drops to shake out the retail tree.Their entire goal is to be able to buy back shares as low as possible. Without a ton of people buying, they are driving down the price by adding puts, shorts, possibly ladder attacks, etc. Whatever they are doing, it's counteracting the buy side. Most of us are already in our positions just waiting this out. This means their techniques are working because there isn't enough buy volume to offset the constant pressure on the stock.
This means they are driving the price down without any competition but that does not mean that is what the stock is actually worth. You see, they need the shares to be able to buy back and if nobody will sell to them, the price starts rising quickly. They need to buy back more than it exists in circulation at the moment. So it can say 20 a share but if nobody will sell it at $20.....then say the next person willing to sell is at $284, then that is what they will have to buy it back for in that moment if they were forced to buy back from the people that lent them the shares. I've seen the retail get shaken out each run down because I don't think they understand that that price can say $10 but if nobody is willing to sell it at that price, then it will go up from there. We and the big institutions actually hold all the power. We actually own the shares that they need.
Just take a second to collect yourself. If you need the money now for bills etc, get out. You shouldn't have been playing with money you need in my opinion. That's responsible thing to do. If you are holding and you don't need the money today, then I'd hold out until we get some clarity. Today is going to be them kicking the retail tree down. I think the price action will rise tomorrow if we can hold strong today. They need these share and are getting more desperate. Their play was always going to be today. They want everyone to think their not in it anymore and are banking on us leaving. Today we get the big swings which will shake out more retail traders. They already plunging it 2 mins before the market opens as I'm writing this.
Stay strong and buy if you can afford it. Beg Elon, Chamath, Cuban, any celebrity, your rich uncle to buy a couple shares. It's already looking just based off volume to have shaken out a couple of paper hands this morning. Not a ton but like the volume was like 1.02 or 1.03 compared to yesterday morning 4.7 mill. So most people are holding strong.
Looks like they are going for it today we are down 21% by 11AM. That tree is shaking out a lot of retail from what I'm seeing on volume. I'm curious if a bigger player swoops in the 40 dollar range like the other day. I'm going to be looking at buying more in the high 40s today. Also if you are like me and have TD' ToS up. Put up NOK, AMC, GME all right next to each other. They are exactly the same. The buy patterns and the sell off patterns. This makes me think this is all about the Sharks and Whales. We are just along for the ride.... https://youtu.be/SPenJRN4QM4 ******** Must read. This explains so much. ****** https://www.reddit.com/stocks/comments/lghhkv/gamestop_institutional_broker_trades_off_the/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
I am in my early 30s, make $75k a year ($120k joint), live in the South, work as a Development Director, and hate capitalism but love a little luxury!
Edited to remove the tables because when I obsessively checked this post on my phone I couldn't read them?? Also I tried to, but was prevented from, editing the title. I know it looks sanctimonious but that's just one small part of my personality I swear. D: ❤️ Section 1: Assets and Debt Total Net Worth: $30,875 - all equity. Retirement Balance: $0 for me; $20,500 for my husband in the state pension program for teachers. (My partner, L, has been paying into the state teachers' pension system for 5 years. For most of my 20s, I either worked at very low-paying jobs, or supported myself and others on a teacher’s salary, so no retirement for me. My current job does not have a retirement program, but one of my goals for this year is to either start a Roth IRA or get a new job with a 401k match… or maybe both?) Savings Account Balance: $23,733 We’re moving this summer to a city closer to our families, and are saving all we can for a down payment on a dreamy spot. After we move, some amount of what’s left over will go into a retirement fund, and the rest will stay in this HYSA as our emergency fund. For us, three months of expenses, including childcare, is about $18,000. Checking Account Balance: $455 Credit Card Debt: n/a, pay off each month Student Loan Debt: $80,000 for L’s undergrad and MAT. $18,000 for my undergrad and (unfinished) MAT. (My undergrad degrees were mostly covered by the Pell Grant, scholarships, and a $10,000 529 from my parents. L was a nontraditional student - didn’t start undergrad until he was 24 - so none of his was covered. Most of my debt is for a MAT program I dropped out of after one year. I was trying to find any way out of teaching at the time (it is demanding, all-consuming, and carceral at once) and thought a PhD would be my only route. When I got my current job I promptly left the program and any dreams of a PhD behind.) Equity: $83,875 (This number is from an online equity calculator, and is for our house in a very popular neighborhood in a very popular city. Our outstanding debt on the house is $295,000. We put our whole savings down in 2019, which was $9,000 at the time.) ❤️ Section 2: Income Monthly Take Home: My base pay is $65,000, and L’s is $45,000. I worked a side gig last year that totaled about $10k in additional compensation; all of it went to savings so we don't budget for it. My take home is $4096/month for my full time job, and my current side gig income (grant writing) is variable, between $300 and $600 a month. L’s take home is $2262/month. My health insurance is paid in full by work. L’s insurance and B’s come out of L’s paycheck, as does L’s retirement contribution. Income Progression: I’ve been working since I was 15 years old, moved out for college at 18, and paid my own bills starting that year. I won’t include that money here though (it was like $12,000 a year as a college student, for reference). Income below starts when I graduated with two BAs that had nothing to do with teaching. Year 1: $15,600 (part time ABA therapist, full time baby anarchist) Year 2: $32,000 (year 1 teacher salary: I accepted a spot in Teach for America for this giant salary even though I thought it was an obnoxious neoliberal org. Yes, I was also obnoxious at the time.) Year 3: $33,000 (teacher, step increase) Year 4: $34,000 (teacher, step increase) Year 5: $35,000 (teacher, step increase) Year 6: $15,000 (community organizer; at the time this felt like a dream job) Year 7: $20,000 (community organizer & cafe worker) Year 8: $40,000 (back to teaching, felt rich; this includes a side hustle writing grants on the side for $50 an hour) Year 9: $45,000 (left teaching for my current job, quit the grants side hustle) Year 10: $55,000 (got a raise, got pregnant) Year 11: $65,000 (got a raise and promotion, had a baby) Year 12: $75,000 (was promoted again in January but waiting on the pay increase to hit, hopefully with backdating. This money diary doesn’t reflect this salary as it hasn’t been reflected in my check yet) ❤️ Section 3: Expenses Mortgage/PMI/Insurance: $2,110 Retirement Contribution: n/a (L’s retirement is pulled out of his check before he receives it: it’s $169 a month. Right now, I don’t have a retirement contribution) Savings Contribution: $1000 to main savings, $400 to sinking fund (This is a super aggressive goal for us and is only possible because our childcare costs are covered by work) Debt Payments: n/a right now (We have student loans to the tune of $100k but haven’t been paying a dime since they were paused due to COVID. But then the other day I checked and saw they've gained interest? Should we be paying them then? WWJD? I legit don’t know.) Electric: $130 Internet: $100 Cellphone: $65 (For L & I both. We are on a bigass family plan with 40 gajillion other people.) Subscriptions: $45 ($10 Spotify; $10 Youtube music; $2.99 Apple data (Why?!); $22 NYT (for newspaper and cooking app); also have a split subscription to the New Yorker with bestie F but we paid for a yearly deal.) Car Payment and Insurance: $150 for a car payment; $202 for insurance (Insurance covers both of our used cars and my dad’s used handicap van. Our car payment is for our used Honda. We only owe $6,850 on the car and I’m back and forth on whether to pay it off with savings) Medical/Therapy: $0 (My therapist is $140 a session, and I just started seeing her again once a month, but this is reimbursed by work. I also get an inhaler at least twice a month - that’s reimbursed too, costs $60 total.) Misfits Market: $120 (For a weekly box, which really helps us cut down on overall grocery cost) Gym membership: $30 (For my intense local yoga studio’s app which is so great in the winter. We also run and bike a lot, as long as it’s warm enough) Donations: $100 (We give monthly to our local Democratic Socialists of America; the Working Families Party; and a small, local org. I’m also on an organizing committee for that org. We’ll give them one big gift of at least $250 this year, probably in May. I support a couple organizations with grant writing and grant-finding support as much as I can, which usually amounts to a few hours a month.) Childcare: $0 B goes to a very precious Montessori preschool, and we can walk him there. It’s pricey af ($1300/month). The other $200 is to account for some babysitting from my little sister when L or I have to work weird hours. For now, work reimburses this full amount as a COVID perk; if that changes, we will have to cut costs significantly. House cleaner: $160 (They come twice a month and charge $80 each time.) ❤️ Section 4: Money Diary NOTE: We are masked and afraid everywhere we go. ✨DAY 1: THURSDAY✨ 4:20 am: Good morning world! I shuffle into the kitchen in my panties and my slippers to fill up the gooseneck kettle. I recently got into pour over coffee even though it’s quite a commitment. With a toddler, a full-time job, and a Libra sun, I don’t really have time for meditative morning routines. This lengthy, half-naked coffee regimen is my closest attempt. As soon as I get the coffee brewing, our 18 month old, B, starts making noise. I open the door and see he’s got his pacifier in his mouth and his pillow in his arms. He wants to lay with Dada. I help him get in the bed with my husband, L, as quietly as possible. Last week L was super sick and we thought for sure he had picked up COVID. Blessedly all of our tests came back negative, but on the heels of that, he started having major tooth pain and had to have an emergency tooth extraction, AND he got an ear infection as he was coming down from whatever virus he had. I hate it :( I get dressed and do some chores while they snooze to ease L's morning. I start the diaper laundry (usually his job - we use cloth), put away the dishes, start the Eufy vacuum, and get B and L’s breakfasts together: sunbutter and a little bit of syrup on some banana pancakes I prepped earlier this week. 6:30 am: B and L are up! The hour before we take B to preschool is kind of a marathon. L eats with B (and supervises his syrup consumption) as I clean out some more dirty diapers, brush my teeth, make another cup of coffee, strip our sheets, spray my hair with water to refresh the curl, return a few group texts, and wash some breakfast dishes. Somewhere in here I also eat two boiled eggs with Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and a bunch of grapes. I help L get B loaded up in the car, and just as they pull off, my parents Facetime me. They’re calling to see B but are polite enough to talk to me for a few minutes. They live a few hours away, and are divorced, but cohabitating. The full story is long and spiritual for me so I’ll spare you. Anyway, my mom and I talk for a while about this couch she thinks I should buy from one of her friends, but it’s two hours away and we’d have to rent a U-Haul, so I think we’ll pass. I do hate our current couch though. Please drop comfy toddler- and dog-friendly recommendations in the comments! 8:15 am: I set out to walk the dog and listen to the Daily’s recent update on the coronavirus. Donald G. McNeill, Jr., says we’re in this through the summer, which is a bummer on the personal and global front, but I suppose it could be worse??? Maybe?? As soon as they finish talking I switch over to You’re Wrong About. I’m deep in the Jessica Simpson series and highly recommend this pod for any other nerdy, lefty, kinda burnt out millennials, especially those of you that are queer or queer-adjacent. Once home, I take my whole operation onto the front porch to work, since the cleaner will be here soon and I don’t want to crowd her in this time of COVID. I LOVE a clean house and I love paying someone else to do the big stuff, which is a recent luxury for us. 11:00 am: I’ve been working steadily in my email and google docs for a couple hours now, and it’s COLD out here. The cleaner leaves and I am grateful to go back into the heat. I Venmo her $80 for the cleaning (included in monthly expenses). I take a break from work and check out the job boards. My current job is the best, and highest-paying, gig I’ve ever had, but I’m planning to leave some time this year for several reasons. The premier reason: I recently learned that I’m qualified for several positions that pay over $100k at similar organizations. With that kind of money we could pay off our student loans, help our families out more, make sizable donations, and L could explore a career outside of teaching without freaking about a slight cut in his pay for a few years as he finds his niche. Or - maybe he’ll get into Edtech somehow and we’ll join Resource Generation. Who knows. 12:30 pm: I have a quick break and pull together lunch: half a cheese quesadilla, a big bowl of Smitten Kitchen’s roasted tomato soup, and a LimonCello LaCroix. L is on his planning period and asks me to edit his most recent job application, and I oblige. Since we’re both job hunting, I ask him if I can buy a resume template and guide on Etsy. I have sworn off online shopping for the year to curb my impulse spending, but he says we’ll just count this one as his purchase. Great news because I hate the formatting of my resume from 2016 and don’t want to fix it myself! $9.95 3:30 pm: My Zooms are over, my inbox is at 0, and I put up my out of office message because I’m taking the day off tomorrow to work on my resume and do some things to prep our house for sale. My high-functioning anxiety created an ambitious backwards timeline for this process back in December, and that timeline currently runs my life. I work for a few more minutes to tie up loose ends, and then walk O to a nearby shop to buy my favorite candle, curbside-style. When I get there the owner gives me some percentage off because it’s slightly discolored from the sun. Huzzah! $27.25, marked down from $40 4:45 pm: My angel of a baby sister, J, who lives just a few blocks away and is in a pod with us, comes to hang out with B for an hour so L can rest. I head to my good friend D’s place for my investment overalls appointment. She's going to alter their awkward wide leg into more of a tapered, mom jean shape. I have a capsule wardrobe which means I’ll wear these babies at least once a week, and plus I get to pay my friend, so I’m fine with the extra expense. When I arrive, she and her partner have the fire pit going, and we drink a couple glasses of wine together, yet more than 6 feet apart. I learn they are planning to move to the same new city as us in the next couple of years and legit cry happy tears. Afterwards, I head out to pick up dinner for tonight. We are getting burgers from L’s favorite place as a treat. On my way, the WOLF MOON appears over the water and my stomach does triple flips. Then I pick up our dinner: a veggie burger with eggplant jam and kale for me; a real-meat burger with mushrooms, bacon, swiss, carmelized onion, and horseradish mayo for L; and an appetizer plate with pretzels, pimento cheese, onion jam, pickles, and chips for B. Delicious and unhealthy. The total is $34.54. 6:30: Home and eating dinner. B loves his meal, especially the “chokes.” He calls pretzels “chokes” because when L first started feeding them to him, I worried aloud that he would choke every time. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how a pretzel almost took out George W. Bush. Turns out our toddler is better at chewing than George W. Bush. After dinner, L gives B a bubble bath while I do my own, very minimal, bedtime routine. Then L and I lay down with B to put him to sleep. He has a floor bed, which is a Montessori thing I learned about on mom blogs. L is a very hot and talented woodworker, so he took my floor bed dream to the next level by building a lovely house-shaped frame. The top beam is wrapped in twinkle lights and fake ivy. It’s a nice place to sleep, and we pass out here all the time. 10:30 pm: L wakes me up and we wander to our own bed. 🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 71.74 ✨ DAY 2: FRIDAY✨ 4:15 am: Wake up and go look at the clock. Decide this is a silly time to get up on a day off, drink some water, and go lay back down. But once in bed all I can think about is how much I want to read the news, organize my resume, and update this money diary. This is the problem with falling asleep at toddler time. So I get up again at 4:45, make my coffee, read a New Yorker article about Biden’s pandemic response on my phone, and sit down to work on this diary. 6:00 am: L wakes up! He works on breakfast for himself and B and I start meal planning for the month. This is one of my best and most recent life hacks. I found that if I chart out our cooking, weekly takeout, and leftovers at the start of the month, we save lots of money and are so much less stressed about the labor that goes into feeding ourselves. I pull out Smitten Kitchen Every Day and use it to inspire the month’s meals. So quaint to cook from an actual BOOK. 6:45 am: B walks out of our room and announces that he drank my water off the side table. He’s so proud! And so ready to eat. While he eats breakfast, I snack on some grapes and, at B’s request, blast 7 Days A Week by They Might Be Giants. This is the consummate children’s song for any household that dreams of a self-determined world. Over the next hour I take B to school; make myself a real breakfast (a soy chorizo and egg taco); and browse TikTok. Eventually I find a series about this Gamestop situation by a smart Irish woman and L and I watch it together. When it’s over we feel like shrewd stock brokers ready to win money, and L gets to work teaching virtually. I spend the morning painting our front door and our kitchen wall to prep our house to sell, and talking to my (other) little sister on the phone. She’s an HR person with a job that’s taken her far away from our family, and we don’t talk that often. It is so good to catch up on her life. After that I have a fun, day-off Zoom call with longtime bestie and coworker K. We drink coffee and talk about The Future. 12:30 pm: I make lunch (tomato soup with goat cheese on top, and a savory scone on the side) and get a text from another bestie, M, who offers me a little grant writing contract work this week. Yay! I love them and love working with them. Next, I order our groceries for the week. I get baking powder, eggs, cremini mushrooms, vegan sausage patties, oat milk, ginger root, shredded cheddar cheese, plantains, black beans, doggy bags, broccoli, vegan chicken strips, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, capers, ciabatta bread, grits, bananas, avocados, greek yogurt, and on impulse, a pineapple on sale (?!). Maybe B will love it. The total comes to $94.08. 1:15 pm: I do a brief power vinyasa class in B’s room and take a shower. It takes me approximately two Drake songs to shower and dry off, as I don’t have to wash my hair today and I never shave. I work on my resume until L and I leave to pick up B. On the way home we stop at the park to play, and then we all get in the car to pick up groceries. 6:30 pm: We get home later than planned and eat together: leftover tofu ramen for us and veggie lasagna for B, who is so sleepy that he hardly touches his lasagna. L gets him in the bath around 7:15 and I run through my evening routine. There’s a lot going on in the house - preschool lunch and clothes to put up, a mountain of laundry in our room, all of the groceries for the week waiting to be put away, and dinner dishes are languishing in the sink. L starts on chores while I get B dressed. As I’m dressing B, my mom Facetimes and B shows her several of his board books. While we’re talking my dad texts me a heart emoji - he overheard B and my mom talking from his room. He lives with a disability and a painful illness, so he goes to bed very early. We hang up with my mom and record a video of B making “P” sounds and saying “I love you” to my dad, and send it over. This is the first time B’s ever said “I love you!” Huge news. We read books and fall asleep next to B. 9 pm: I wake up and nudge L but he wants to keep sleeping. I go clean the dinner dishes, put away the food and reorganize the cabinets and fridge, and mop the kitchen floor while I listen to The Daily’s latest reporting on QAnon believers who are at once totally bananagrams and also remind me very much of my aunt. L wakes up at 9:30 because he and Y, my sister’s boyfriend, are gonna game. Cute! He finishes the laundry and I fold a few diapers to help out. Then we lay in bed together until game time, when I fall asleep. 🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 94.08 ✨DAY 3: SATURDAY✨ 5:40 am: Wake up at a ~*~weekend hour~*~!! Start my kettle, clean and moisturize my face, pull out the ingredients for waffles, and pick up around the house while I wait for it to boil. I try to read some, but get bored a few pages in. I’m currently readingHow to Do Nothing and it’s good enough, but I think I need to chill on the nonfiction and read, like, saucy romance novels with hot bisexual leads. Send me your recs please! Waffle time! This recipe is my go-to. I recommend whipping the egg whites first. B wakes up around 7:15 and helps me cook which is cute and very messy. He eats his waffle with honey, peanut butter, and grapes. L wakes up after him - he had a late night gaming! 8 am: I open yesterday’s mail and find an anti-abortion DVD from L’s grandma. It’s Abby Johnson’s “memoir.” Abby Johnson is an opportunistic right winger and documented liar who once moonlighted as a Planned Parenthood clinic manager. L is a preacher’s kid, so we’re not surprised to receive this from his grandma. For example: 10 years ago, when L and I were a couple years into our relationship, her Christmas gift to me was a book about how one can recover from being a slut by getting married and finding Jesus. This particular package really sends me over the edge, though. I decide to write them a short note later that states my own experience with abortion and sets a clear boundary on this kind of propaganda, and includes an article about Abby Johnson’s bullshit life. It’s unlikely this will change their minds - they are septuagenarian Southern Baptists, after all - but at least I’ll be in my integrity. In the meantime, I group text L’s siblings, and they commiserate with us. His one sibling who is transitioning shares that grandma recently sent them a book about how to tell your gay friends they’re sinning. We agree that’s hilariously dense (and fucking rude) of her, and talk about how everyone under forty is a gay slut living their best life, so really it’s grandma’s loss. During this time I clean the kitchen, finish the waffles, and freeze them for B’s weekday breakfasts. 9:30 am: B asks to use the potty and does a great job peeing on his own! He’s geeked about it and is especially excited to have my parents on Facetime cheering him on. After that we head out on our morning walk. L takes B to the playground and I take O to the dog park nearby. She gets tired pretty quick and we all head to the thrift store. We need chairs for our hand-me-down kitchen table. The ones that came with it are awkwardly wide. L spots two sturdy ones that are just $5 each. Score! $10 11:30 am: B and L are both wiped out once we get home. They eat lunch and go to sleep. I clean up the kitchen, repot one of my plants, water our porch plants, and eat some leftover ramen for lunch. The Marie Antoinette episode of You’re Wrong About keeps me company all the while. 10/10 would recommend. 2 pm: B wakes up and eats some lunch. We watercolor together for a while (he on his big paper, I in my bullet journal), then walk down the street to the local high school while L preps potatoes for our fondue. The high school grounds are open on the weekends, and there’s an amphitheatre on site. B loves the echo in there. 4:30 pm: L joins us in the amphitheatre and together we drag B two blocks back home. I prep the fondue: brie, gouda, and more gouda with white wine. It ends up being a little clumpy but so delicious. My sister, J, and her boyfriend, Y arrive while I’m cooking. Y brings yummy baguettes from his bakery job for the dipping and we prep broccoli, green beans, and tempeh too. We sit down in our new chairs to eat and for the zillionth time I am so thankful we’ve been able to make a pod together this year. Fondue would be a terrifying proposition with anyone else, really. While we eat, Y tells us he put in his two weeks at the bakery because their COVID protocols aren’t so tight and his coworkers are continuing to go to bars and out to eat. His plan for now is to get back on unemployment and find a virtual job sometime soon. Both he and my sister have worked food service their whole adult lives so the pandemic has been tough on them. Besides the fact that they’re delightful and perfect, this is one key reason we’re planning to move with them to our new city this summer: L and I will be able to easily afford the majority of the rent, deposits, and utilities on a pretty big, and centrally located, house. Living together will allow us to grow our savings and take our time looking for a Forever Home, and will allow J and Y to pay really low rent as my sister goes back to school full time and Y looks for a full-time job. I’m really looking forward to living with them and know it’ll be good for B, too. They leave around 7 pm and we put B to bed, this time without falling asleep ourselves! 8:30 pm: Turn on How I Met Your Mother in bed and the episodes are baaaaad bad. One entire episode casts sex workers as a punch line. Ick. L and I agree to find a new show, and fall asleep around 10. 11 pm - 2 am: B is up and between our two beds. Wahhhh. 🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 10 ✨DAY 4: SUNDAY✨ 6 am: Up and at ‘em! Discover I’m out of my fancy coffee and don’t want to emphasize the flavor of our grocery store beans with a slow pour, so make a french press instead. B wakes up too early so we watch toddlers together on TikTok while I drink my coffee, then read books while L makes us all eggs for breakfast. We head out for our morning walk around 9 am and stop at a coffee shop a few blocks away. I pick up Counter Culture’s Iridescent beans, buy an espresso brownie on a whim, and tip the cashier because she’s so sweet and tipping is good. The total is 23.03. L takes B to the playground and I drop my purchases and O back at the house before I head out for a run. 9:45 am: It’s 65 degrees and my run is glorious. I run to the water and pause Lil Yachty for a minute to take it all in. Once home I shower and put on a black LA Apparel catsuit and a marled black and white cocoon sweater from AA of the past (I like what I like!). We feed B lunch and then L puts him down while I clean up. Around 11:30, J comes over after to watch B while we remove the storm windows from our whole house and clean the windows underneath as part of our work to prep the house for sale. We’re a solid team: L removes the storm windows and caulks all the gaps in the wood while I follow behind him and wash the windows inside and out. Our sweet neighbor catches us cleaning and offers to let us use her power washer for free next weekend to clean up the front of the house. I resolve to bake them some cookies. 2:30 pm: We are done with the window operation and it’s time for me to water all 57 plants in the house. Along the way, discover that I overwatered B’s hoya last week and it’s rotting. Noooo! I unpot it on the porch to dry the roots, but it’s raining so this might not work. There’s only one surefire solution: buy a replacement plant! I try to convince L we should go to the nursery, but he’s not so into it. I walk around dejectedly with a towel to clean up all the water I spilled, and Zelle J $70 for babysitting even though she insists she would do it for free. Next B, L, and I share a snack: crackers with goat cheese and harissa. Mmm. B skips the harissa but loves the goat cheese. Meanwhile I begin to stress about making dinner. We’d planned goddess bowls but L and I just aren’t feeling it after our marathon of house work. L requests Chinese and is suddenly more amenable to visiting the nursery, which is near our favorite Chinese takeout spot. Score! 5:00 pm: We leave the plant shop with a heartleaf philodendron for B’s room and a giant, lovely, perfect monstera deliciosa just because. The total comes to $53.24. Then we pick up our food: $33.08 including the tip. L ordered a large veggie lo mein to share with B and General Tso’s chicken, and I got family style tofu and vegetables. We start B’s bedtime routine at 6:30 and he’s out by 7:00 - early for him! After he’s down, L preps his breakfast sandwiches for the week and I do some dishes. Then we take mutual advantage of the extra hour we have together. Even after 12 years it’s always so good with L. I fall asleep around 10 pm feeling blessed. 🌿 Daily total: 179.32 ✨DAY 5: MONDAY✨ 5 am: I make my pour over and get started on work first thing. I have a couple of deadlines this week and the side gig to balance so I’m already feeling pressed for time! I wrap up an entire grant report before 6 am and feel very accomplished. Then I pause work to start our breakfast, which is all pre-prepped, hallelujah. While L and B eat breakfast, I get dressed in a black turtleneck minidress, busted old tights, black ankle socks, and my Doc Martens. I help L load up the car with B and all his gear, and tell L to be careful. Today is L’s first day back teaching in person since December, and we’re both nervous since COVID is still running wild in our red state. On the way to work he fills up his car for $18.33. 2:30 pm: After another grant report, seventy gajillion emails, forty Slack messages, and several hours of Zoom calls, I’m ready for a break. I finish eating the quinoa salad I prepped during Zoom call #2 and then eat a pear too. I see our Misfits box has been delivered. It’s $30 a week, and is included in our monthly expenses. I unpack it, clean the counters, wipe down the bathroom sinks, take O for a walk, and sit down to work on my side gig grant report, which is due Wednesday. I set a 30 minute timer because I don’t want to be too late picking up B. 4:25 pm: Worked longer than I meant to! Pack some snacks and pick up B. On the way home we get a giant bag of potting soil so I can repot those plants. It’s $18.52. Come home and engage in B’s favorite winter activity: pressing all the buttons in the turned-off car. Meanwhile, in another car across town, L picks up a big bag of Purina One, butter, maple syrup, and applesauce. That total is $28.64. 5:30 pm: The whole family is home and we kick it inside until it starts to get dark. L and I gather all the things and take the creatures out for a walk even though there’s a light, but very cold, rain happening. B is cranky and so are we, so the walk is quick. We eat leftover Chinese food around 7 and start B’s bedtime routine. B falls asleep at 8 and I update this diary for a while, then go watch Ted Lasso in bed with L til about 9:30. It’s much better than How I Met Your Mother, for the record. 🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 65.51 ✨Day 6: TUESDAY✨ 3 am: B wakes up and needs a diaper change. I have the hardest time falling back asleep after: I can’t stop thinking about how I left B’s hoya out in the cold with its roots exposed most of the day yesterday and into tonight. But it’s too cold for me to get up again and pull it inside! So instead I toss and turn and hope it’s not dead yet. 6 am: L’s alarm wakes me up! No early morning reading and writing time for me. I get right up, make a giant pour over, and get breakfast together while L wakes up B. Then I actually sit down with them to eat: B and I both eat boiled eggs with everything but the bagel seasoning and some coconut milk yogurt, and L sips his coffee while his breakfast sandwich heats in the oven. I get dressed in my workout gear and walk the dog while L gets B ready for school. They leave, and I finally bring the hoya in, and start work, around 7:30. L buys coffee and snacks from the gas station on his way to work: $6.88. 9:30 am: I grab some crackers and peanut butter from the kitchen and notice a DMV bill on the fridge I’ve been meaning to pay, but don’t totally understand. I call them up and respond to emails while I sit on hold. Turns out I owe the DMV $10 for paying my Dad’s van insurance late. With the “processing fee” it comes to $11.17. 1:30 pm: Been on Zoom calls all morning, and decide to switch over to the side gig work for a bit. Meanwhile I eat that quinoa salad I prepped yesterday. At 2 pm, my longtime bestie and neighbor F comes over and we take O for a walk in the park together and have such a good conversation. While the context is (very) different, I’m reminded of the Toni Morrison quote when I think of F: “She’s a friend of my mind.” Such a gem, and such a smartie. At 3:30 I start a HIIT yoga class and it kicks my butt even though it’s only 20 minutes long. Afterwards, I shower and pick up B. 5:00 pm: L arrives home while B and I are playing, and we get in the car once more to check out a cute couch L scoped out on Facebook marketplace. It’s a sweet vintage brown velvet actually-for-real midcentury situation. Unfortunately we discover it’s also small and very uncomfortable. $200 not spent. Once home, my family goes for a walk and I make dinner - this grits and beans recipe from NYT cooking. It’s blessedly quick to pull together. Meanwhile D texts me and says my overalls are ready! YAY! She’s gonna drop them off in a couple of days. She says the total is $30. I include a tip and Venmo her $40. 7:00 pm: At bedtime, B cannot get enough of his books and we read All The World several times. He finally falls asleep around 8:20 and L and I eat dinner on the couch, with Ted Lasso. I drink a glass of red wine, which is a mistake: my anxiety spikes right after, my stomach hurts, and I can’t sleep. This is very upsetting as I want very much to be a wine mom. Does this happen to anyone else? 🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 58.05 ✨DAY 7: WEDNESDAY✨ 5:45 am: Wake up with B cuddled into my back - L moved him to our bed in the middle of the night after his second wake up. Get my coffee and breakfast together and sit down at my computer to work on the side gig grant while everyone's asleep. Then L and I manage the morning rush together. I eat sourdough toast, two scrambled eggs, and some pineapple along the way. 7:30 am: Take O out for a walk and on a whim decide to listen to one of my favorite easy-listening pods: A Beautiful Mess. Normally the two sisters and co-hosts, Elsie and Emma, chat about things like home decor or craft making or how to balance kids and work. This episode is about the host’s evangelical upbringing, though, and is a real raw and honest tear jerker. Pair it with this, one of my top reads of 2020: “What Does the White Evangelical Want?” It gets me thinking about L’s upbringing in the church. He and all his siblings are all agnostic now. Finally sit down at my desk and debate taking Adderall. I used it regularly in college and for a few years after in order to Do All The Things. I try to stay away from it now - I’m not trying to live an impossible life any more - but I also really want to pick B up earlier than normal today, and that means I need to meet all my deadlines and make it through two Zoom calls with my direct reports by 3 pm. I decide to take 4 mg. Right after I take it, three different friends text me at once and then, suddenly, I’ve spent an hour catching up via text. Get to work for real around 9 am. 3:00 pm: Wrapped all my calls, answered all my emails, washed all the dishes, ate some lunch, and finished the side gig work! OK Adderall, you beautiful bitch. Spend a few more minutes tying up loose ends and then gather my things to pick B up from school. The plan today is to go “play basketball” in the park near his school because he is OBSESSED with balls, and I’m trying to do more magical things every day with him. It’s cold but I’m ready to brave it on his precious, curly-headed behalf. At 4 pm J calls and asks to go pick him up with me. Hooray, things just got even more magical! We head to a different-than-usual park together and run around until B sits in, and then drinks from, a puddle. We panic and J googles “What happens if my baby drinks from a puddle?” The search returns lots of stories of babies eating muddy rocks and surviving, so we decide it’s ok. 5:00 pm Head home and L is back from work! We take the smols on a walk and I tell L that I think nighttime screentime is making me anxious. I’m a sensitive creature and I really don’t want to blame the wine. He’s very perfect so he helps me think through an alternate plan for this evening: hot tea and book reading in bed, and maybe sex, too! Fun. Next, I head home with O to pot the plants we bought the other day, and L takes B to the playground. They get back around 6:30 and I am very excited to reveal my new plant placements. Everyone feigns interest except O. Then we eat leftovers together and B gets in bed around 7:30. L and I promptly fall asleep next to him and don’t wake up again til 11 pm. Guess our new nighttime routine will have to wait til tomorrow! 🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 0 ❤️ Section 5: TOTALS Total Expenses:$478.71 Food & Drink: $220.25 Fun & Entertainment: $0 Home & Health: $109.01 Clothes & Beauty: $40 Transport: $29.50 Other: $79.95 ❤️ Section 6: REFLECTION This week reflects a new normal for us, I think! We just set the goal of saving up for another down payment in December, and that’s when I swore off online shopping both to save money and to stop lining the pockets of evil billionaires like Bezos (no shade to anyone who uses Amazon, this is purely a personal goal & I’m not sure I can meet it). This self-imposed rule is helping me reign in my discretionary spending overall. L and I have only been living a two-income, middle class life for a few years, and my lifestyle creep was a little out of control in 2020. That said, I can and do still regularly justify spending money on things that make life more luxurious and beautiful - like a $40 candle or a totally unnecessary but very lovely plant. There are a couple of things not reflected in this diary that we regularly spend on: gifts (my achilles heel - for example, we spent three! thousand! dollars! on Christmas gifts in December), and medical bills. Both B and I had to visit the emergency room in 2020 and we are still getting random bills in the mail as our insurance company and the hospital duke it out. As I was editing this diary on Thursday, I received one for $787. Wahhhh. I think I’m gonna get on a payment plan, but even so that it will be over $200 a month. Last thought: this process got me thinking in some detail about the contradiction of organizing for the fall of capitalism (and the rise of a more gentle and just economic system), yet believing everyone - including ourselves and our own families - deserve to live full and abundant lives. This means I compromise my own anti-capitalist values and beliefs every day, in big and small ways. Discuss?
How to break Wall Street. And what to understand about GME and the markets.
Hey apes, tl;dr Please read this whole post. This is how we can win and why Wall Street is so scared of us. I've still got these diamond hands and I like GameStop even more. Why? Because our favorite company has received the biggest injection of consumer capital a brand has likely ever received. Our favorite company is literally the storefront battle line where the little guy is taking on Wall Street, won but got cheated out of victory, and has codified memes like "diamond hands" into a modern version of David vs Goliath. And we still just want to go to the moon. The rest of this post is going to explore 2 certainties: 1) we can go to the moon with GME, and would have already except for blatant market manipulation and fraud, so we have to recognize that this is a war and we have to innovate to get to the moon, and 2) it's actually really easy to go to the moon and we figured out the legal cheat code to get there. Why do we know we can go to the moon with GME? Because Wall Street cheated to crash our rocket ship. But the important thing to recognize is that they crashed our rocket ship to the GME moon by shutting off consumer demand then colluding to flood supply and use short ladder attacks to impose a downward stock trend. But media pundits (who are paid by Wall Street interests) are saying "fundamentals" and presenting talk of "Reddit guys are the bad market influence video game players because they don't know what they're doing, like we do, the experts." No. Supply and demand. That's how the market functions at its most basic parts. We had them in a squeeze and they turned off demand because they have advance data that showed them how fucked they were if they didn't turn off our ability to buy more GME. How do we know that supply and demand drives stock price? Let's assess recent trends that don't concern GME. Here are two examples off the top of my head:
Signal Advance. One tweet from Elon Musk about using the Signal App drove people into a company not related to the Signal App. A small cap company that trades on the OTC (remember that for later - it's important for winning a war against short sellers while playing within the legality of market rules). A sudden demand for just 2 million shares of Signal Advance spiked the share price 5,643%... yes, demand of a small cap stock pushed a price up 5,643%. Demand. The thing Wall Street shut off when we were buying GME. Here's an article about Signal Advance. I think this moment is incredible information for us and it's worth a read to solidify the idea that supply and demand drives price.
https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/finance/musk-signal-advance/ 2) Dogecoin. Again, Elon is providing us incredible information here. The exposure of and resulting demand for Dogecoin, even though the market cap is huuuuuuge and the cryptocurrency was actually intended as a joke, is driving the price through the roof. The last time I checked my dogecoins they went from fractions of a cent per coin to about 8 cents per coin. That is a huge gain based solely on consumer demand and psychological willingness to join into a meme attached to the perception of potentially life changing financial gains. So what does this tell us about GME? The squeeze isn't squoze, apes... here's some high level confirmation of this fact in an interview that u/rekoms12 alerted me to that is actually an attempt to say the squeeze already happened. This video is an interview with Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head guy at S3, the agency that has been blasting reports that short interests in GME covered, uses a statistical model that doesn't account for naked shorting as a possibility (he actually gives the game away by explaining how short selling is supposed to work considered with data of a GME short interest above 100%), and is paid by hedge funds for market data. Keep all of those things in mind. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/22r48IVx7c8 As u/Rekoms12 observed, Ihor contradicts himself in the interview at a critical juncture. He says the upward movement of GME was retail demand, not a short squeeze. Supply and demand... But then he says that the squeeze happened at around $300, and then the price corrected. So was it a squeeze or not? And what's very telling to me is that Ihor and the interviewer don't talk about Robinhood and other brokerages artificially turning off consumer demand at the same time hedge funds turned up supply, the point when the price starts to dip. What else do we know that's critical to understanding that the squeeze isn't squeeze? We're getting gaslit with a mass media narrative that says GME is a bad investment. Because fundamentals... but let's dissect that:
again, GameStop is literally the face and rallying point where we occupied and fucked with Wall Street in a real and serious way. So seriously that they cheated markets in broad view of the world. That is an injection of consumer capital and potential loyalty spending that has unfathomable value. The fact that none of the GME hit pieces mention the demand side market manipulation as the catalyst for a price drop or offer honest consideration of GameStop's new WORLD profile as the face of small consumers resisting rich assholes fucking us and our wives as a value add to the fundamentals definitely shows that they're lying.
I've read reports that the real short report scheduled for February 9th will now be delayed until Feb 25th. Hmm. What that tells me is that they haven't settled their short positions at all. The greedy fucks actually, most likely, increased their short positions while they were cheating us. So why the delay? Simple. Their only out from the short squeeze is to turn market sentiment against GME, against us, and wait us out. It's a delay tactic. They think they can win a game of patience with us where they have an options deadline they're trapped in. They need us to let them out of the trap. But I'm no Portnoy because I have diamond hands.
here's how bullshitty these pricks are actually being when they say their superior understanding of "fundamentals" justify them not letting us do what we want. This article is from Bloomberg. It is literally called "Is the Key to Beating the Market Written in the Stars?", stars by saying "Henry Weingarten invests his clients’ money by charting the movement of heavenly bodies," and includes line like:
By grounding astrology in the less mystical-sounding business cycle, Williams inspired a new generation of financial astrologers. The most decorated isArch Crawford, 77. Mark Hulbert, a ranker of financial newsletters, has rated Crawford the country’s top stock market timer a number of times. One of his biggest wins came in 2008, when he essentially called the crash. Crawford, a veteran of Merrill Lynch & Co., nails his CNBC soundbites and comes off as only mildly eccentric when discussing his craft. “I have the moon on the midheaven in Capricorn, which means I gain the attention of people without trying,” he tells me. “I have been written up in all the best places.” And the article gets deeper: US MARKETS ARE ‘EASY’ IF YOU REMEMBER THAT TRUMP’S 2018 HOROSCOPE IS STELLAR Here's the article; PLEASE READ IT to understand the truth of HOW FUCKING MANY (even places like Merril-Lynch!!!) HEDGE FUNDS INVEST AND JUDGE COMPANY FUNDAMENTALS BASED ON ASTROLOGY!!! And they're chastising retail traders ABOUT FUNDAMENTALS!!! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-27/is-the-key-to-beating-the-market-written-in-the-stars Would you trust an astrologer to tell you what to do with your hedge fund and call it sound fundamentals. Please take the time to google how widespread "financial astrology" is on Wall Street. It really tells us how full of shit they are about GME fundamentals... I wish this was a joke. It's not. And, again, my hands are fucking diamond. How do we win? It's the Age of Aquarius, baby. I learned that on MarketWatch, though this isn't an official MarketWatch article, like the official Bloomberg article above: https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/age-of-aquarius-final-activation-on-december-21st-at-622-pm-utc-2020-12-14 And how does that help? It helps because of something we learned, the real thing Wall Street is so terrified of us figuring out because it breaks their short selling game: pump and dumps are illegal, but our diamond hands pump and pump strategy isn't regulated, and it's legal (and fyi, I trust diamond hands with my money way more than Tina, my wife's boyfriend's tarot card reademarket astrologer). How do we know pump and hold is legal? Two things:
Here's the definition of Pump and Dump from Investopedia:
Pump-and-dump is a scheme that attempts to boost the price of a stock through recommendations based on false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements. The perpetrators of this scheme already have an established position in the company's stock and sell their positions after the hype has led to a higher share price. This practice is illegal based on securities law and can lead to heavy fines. But what if you just say "I just like the stock. Want to like it with me and hold onto it with me because you have diamond fucking hands, you beautiful ape baby." Or what if you say, "I'm into this stock for the memes instead of the Wall Street star chart fundamentals." Or just "I don't care what you say about it. I like it and I want it and I'm keeping it." And what if you have that market perspective about a stock and identify some legitimate underlying potential in a stock like u/deepfuckingvalue saw in our favorite stock, GME, that now has a ride or die consumer base motivated by decades of getting fucked over because we finally figured out how to say, "Apes angry. Apes together strong. Game stop." 2) And to reconfirm that our Pump and Hold Diamond Hands (PHD-H) ape market strategy is legal, I got this Wall Street Journal article on Robinhood titled "GameStop frenzy is tough call for regulators focused on transparency"; here's the link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-is-tough-call-for-regulators-focused-on-transparency-11612693802 The key takeaway for me in this article is when a very important Wall Street astrologer says: “You can sell garbage to the public as long as you say to the public, ‘This is garbage and you’d be an idiot to buy it, but would you like to buy it?’” The Wall Street astrologer who said that is Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. An SEC chairman told us that... WE FIGURED OUT THE CHEAT CODE APES. THE WAR WE'RE IN IS LITERALLY MARKET ASTROLOGY vs DIAMOND HANDS. AND WE HAVE THE ADVANTAGE BECAUSE WE CAN DO DIAMOND HANDED MEME PUMPS LEGALLY WHICH DISADVANTAGES HEDGE FUNDS IN SHORT POSITIONS. AND WE HAVE THEM TRAPPED IN SHORT POSITIONS!!! They literally told us how to beat them at the market game. How do we beat and humiliate Wall Street? Let's fuk these fuckers who have humiliated and shamed us for not being educated like them over their GME manipulation while they're investing billions of dollars (maybe trillions) based on star charts. As MarketWatch told us, it's the Age of Aquarius. And we're currently under Aquarius Zodiac sign. Something else I found out while researching for this post is that the Aquarius Zodiac is ruled by Saturn and Uranus. So let's ride a rocket together. Let's say/protest market cheating as a community and tell Wall Street: "it's Aquarius (which you know better than us because you're about fundies, not tendies), so we decided to ride a diamond hands rocket past Saturn and straight to Uranus." Here's the small cap stock we can do this with: Aquarius AI INC As SEC chairman Harvey Pitt told us to do, I'm pretty sure this stock is complete garbage. I bought some because I'm an idiot. I literally bought this stock because I want to tell Wall Street "I rode an Aquarius rocket to Uranus, I fucked, then I rode the rocket back to earth. That's the main reason I like the stock. Why else, though:
Aquarius AI has AI in their name. This is definitely a stupid reason to like and buy this stock, but I made a few grand on Dogecoin stalking Papa Elon's Twitter, and he's so into AI that I think he's a robot. So this is for Elon.
Aquarius AI is involved in E-Sports Betting. Here's an article about it:
https://www.aquariusai.ca/aquarius-ai-announces-transition-into-esports-betting-management-changes-private-placement-financing-and-proposed-shares-for-debt-transaction-2/ So this is definitely stupid because Wall Street told me liking GME with diamond hands is a dumb ape strategy (which it says in their star charts), but DraftKings made huge Super Bowl money, E-Sports is getting bigger and bigger, and Aquarius AI being involved in E-Sports Betting means it fits with my love (and future consumer spending habits) that are fixated on GameStop. Also, I'm on Reddit and play video games and Wall Street mocked me for that. In fact, I didn't even know I could bet on E-Sports!!! Fuck buying my wife's boyfriend more stamina crackers. I'm betting on Starcraft. So this is for elite video game players and GameStop. 3) Aquarius AI trades on the OTC. Why is that important? Because it's very uncommon for an OTC stock to get shorted, so it's largely outside the schemes Wall Street conspired with to cheat us out of GME tendies. 4) The CEO of Aquarius AI has crazy eyes. That's probably a stupider reason to invest than Trump's horoscope like that hedge fund manager in the Bloomberg article, right? 5) Aquarius AI trades for $0.07 right now, there are only 22.3M outstanding shares, and the market cap is only $1.5M. That's way easier to rocket with a PHD-H community investment strategy than Signal did after Elon's tweet. WAY EASIER!!! And this is also a totally stupid reason to invest in this garbage stock, but that makes it easier to ride an Aquarius rocket to Uranus, then back to Earth. And that sounds fun. 6) Also, I have diamond hands. I want to see how much I lose after the Aquarius AI peak so we can extrapolate real market research about the impact of turning of demand side for GME to halt price momentum. That's such a stupid idea it isn't even regulated because no one smart enough to regulate the markets has ever been stupid enough to want to do that. So... is it stupid to invest in a garbage stock to get less stupid? Definitely. You'd be stupid to invest. Are you stupid? I am. 7) Also, I just like the stock. Apes, let's rocket the fuck out of Aquarius AI INC and mock these hedge fund cheaters. It's legal. And it's a legitimate protest. And I want us to be able to look back at this moment and say, "Diamond hands, Wall Street. You fucked us on GME. But we rode an Aquarius AI Rocket straight to Uranus, then we rode it back home, you astrology fundamental fucks." Who's with me? I'm in. I'm staying in. Diamond Hands. It won't take many of us. p.s. I know some of you apes will go full paper hands and jump off the Aquarius AI rocket at Mars, or wherever. But whatever. I'madvocating you be stupid enough to not profit from this Pump and Hold strategy about this garbage stock I like that I'm not selling. But if you're less stupid than that, I implore you to be so stupid that you reinvest you're Aquarius AI rocket tendies back in GME, for totally stupid reasons, like you just want to.
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