chenGOD

some have obviously cashed out partially or a few fully i’m sure. most are keeping all or most of their spend in. you’re not a total fucking idiot chen, quit acting like one when it benefits your momentary argument. Sure yes some - I meant like on a large scale, but fine. Like redditors are talking about "the largest transfer of wealth ever" blah blah. why would anyone continue to show up at WATMM? i can just follow Warp on Twitter and buy directly from Bleep or discogs.com. a forum...for IDM nerds? in 2021? lol as if. ..... but sometimes things just happen and (sorta) keep on despite all reason and logic predicting otherwise. WATMM offers a different service than either of those, where else would you be able to follow a 4 page argument on a comma and still get IDM references.

a) I'm not a capitalist (at least not in the sense that you probably consider), b) you understand that all that money is imaginary right, and just like the "value" of BTC, is only based on fairy dust and wishes. So yeah, it's not a good investment. It's a good gamble, maybe. And as you're so intent on cheering this on:

Nobody has made big money. You need to sell if you want to realize gains, and what is the rallying cry over on WSB? Hold it until they die. Gamestop net sales continue to decrease, even as they continue to "de-densify" (read close stores), and while they have made a switch over to e-commerce, why would anyone buy games from GameStop when they can purchase direct from the marketplace of their console? And with the PS5 and XboxX or whatever the fuck it's called offering discless machines....do I need to keep going? As an investment, it makes no sense. Writing is on the wall. You can't compare them to any company that manufactures things, because gamestop doesn't, they are a service provider that's been overtaken by technology. As a gamble sure. That WSJ article talks about hedge funds, but the real players are the mutual funds like Vanguard, Blackrock, Fidelity etc. Look at Vanguard (I like Vanguard, sue me) - they own 1.2M shares of GME spread over 40 funds. At the current price of $200 (rounded up slightly), that would be $240M. Which sounds like a lot, but Vanguard has $7.1T in assets under management. Blackrock has over $9T in assets under management. So yeah, the hedge funds will get fucked, but that's good - they don't invest, they gamble. So fuck em.

My kid is 6 now, she thinks "The Bells" is a perfect song. My work here is done.

Lol I have a pretty decent idea of what’s going on with this particular short squeeze, but I’m not offering any investment advice. Heres a good explainer:

GameStop the company is a terrible investment. GameStop the idea on the stock market is a risky gamble that could cause people to lose their complete investment. You can’t hold GameStop, it’s going broke and doesn’t look like it has any intention of changing its business model. If it declares chapter 11 (or even chapter 7 I think) then shareholders receive nothing. For people to realize gains, that means selling. Once major shareholders (which are primarily other hedge funds) start selling off, panic selling will occur. It’s ridiculous to think that causing one hedge fund to crash will mean anything. And what they’re really doing is increasing the wealth of Vanguard and a couple of other hedge funds. But yeah, that deepvalue guy might make $20M so good for him? If I were a gambling man, I’d short RH (if they were publicly traded).

Yeah and now you have people on there saying “we like the stock”. Please don’t misconstrue what I’m saying: I’m 100% against what the hedge funds are doing (and I don’t even think shorting should be legal), but if there is a hint of coordination to manipulate a stock (i.e. pump and dump), the SEC will come down hard on retail investors.

i've seen some takes that because it's just openly coordinated 'we think these stocks are good and so we're all buying/optioning them' it's totally legal. think of an IPO...everyone is made aware that it's going public next month, and everyone chats publicly or privately to decide what they think it is or is going to be worth...a bunch of people all buying in on that on day one, or halfway through day one if they see movement downwards or if certain key players don't buy in or whatever...that's all legal and expected. the illegality comes in when you're creating or promoting false information in order to try to and boost/sink something. just thinking or acting as if you think Gamestop is worth more than others think (even if there are ulterior motives) is legal. doing things whilst also having ulterior motives for doing them is basically the entire shortselling/misc industry beyond the basic buy/sell tick tock of stocks. at least that's my understanding as a person who has zero stocks and does not work in the industry lol there's never going to be any revolution. especially not with the financial system, the general American populace is far too fucking stupid to get and stay motivated for such a thing. Yeah - and saying that GameStop is a good investment is completely false information. I agree on the second part - must have been more sleep deprived than normal when I wrote that an hour ago lol.

It was exactly the same attitude that Louis Dejoy had when appearing in front of congress. "I don't give a fuck, get me out of here."

Also AOC:

SEC will go after anyone who isn't a market maker hard if there's a hint of this kind of activity. If there isn't a massive investigation into Citadel and Robinhood, that might be the kicker to start the revolution.

Absolutely this. They need to eliminate short selling altogether. Lot of people getting wrecked right now though with trading halted on all platforms basically. Senator Warren:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/01/china-xi-jinping-business-entrepreneurs/617777/ Mmmmm here's how you crush capitalism.

I mean the good thing is it's brought into the public eye again the issues of market makers and short selling, which is clear market manipulation. The WSB redditors who saw an opportunity for a short squeeze, good on them - but it doesn't change how fucked up the market really is. No long term change will come of this (except maybe institutional investors will find out new ways to hide short plays), and really, how could it. The real worry is that lots of individual retail investors will see this, and start trying crazy plays themselves, without seeing the risk, just like we saw in crypto. The play by the redditors is absolutely insane, GameStop fundamentals haven't changed, the only surprise is that they didn't go the way of blockbuster long ago. When they file for Chapter 11, best hope you've pulled out. On a related note, I had a friend (well we don't talk much these days), who sold BTC to gamble on Trump getting re-elected. When he lost, this friend doubled down and pulled out more BTC to bet on Trump winning it in the Supreme Court. Just ridiculous. Hope he didn't lose too much.

Have you noticed increased advertising for Microsoft products? I heard that's one of the potential side effects.

So much love for Jello. I saw him when he came through Edmonton for his “High Priest of Harmful Matter” spoke word tour. I think I was 15 then, maybe 16. Such a massive influence on my outlook on life at the time. I met a bunch of punks in Myanmar when I was there. Sad to say, most of them were just assholes. As in they saw punk as an excuse to be an asshole to all. An example of how the internet has changed things: back in the day when skating was going through its big first wave outside of Cali, some reporters from the local rag interviewed a bunch of older kids, who proceeded to give their names as Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Christian Hosoi (maybe, not sure on the last one). So of course the paper ran the story that these guys were skating in Edmonton, and people lost their minds. Great prank that wouldn’t be possible these days.

I'm glad to hear this - I got my first exposure through university radio. An instructor at the college where I was studying music knew one of the DJs, he put me on playing some of my electronic music, and we subsequently formed a post-punk-trance-synth band with some other people. Anyways - yeah. university radio was and still is cool as fuck.

Degrassi (og that is) was just awful CanCon that you had to watch because it was basically on right before something good. Agreed on the Simpsons. X-Files was also an incredible show. Oh snap, I just remembered - Sega Channel - used to sit around my friend's house in 95 getting mad high and playing Ecco for hours.

Yeah I don't ever listen to the radio these days, but I know it still exists. Just so many other ways to discover music.

Your public libraries were your internet basically. I still think one of the key turning points in my musical development is finding the Dead Kennedys' record "Plastic Surgery Disasters" in the main branch of my public library when I was in grade 4 (so 1984-85) and taking it out cause of the weird cover. Up to then my listening had been highly influenced by a friend who was like 3 grades ahead (family friends), so it was all Duran Duran/Madonna/Prince type stuff (although he got into the Art of Noise early). Then my friend's older brother got the Korg M1 in 1988 when it first came out and that was it. My dad took me to the library every weekend without fail, I would always take out stacks of books. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever caught my interest. Lots of time to delve into reading, cause most TV was trash (except saturday morning cartoons obviously) in the 80s. No binge watching on streaming services either, so I think that really played into my own education. Luckily, where I live still has some decent second hand book stores that are so much fun to just go in and browse and browse, finding all the weird and esoteric shit that never gets sold on Amazon. Things I miss - Apple ][e, LOGO, good tasting fast food, recording songs off the radio, masturbating in the woods freely, 8-bit nofriendo, my neon pink Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck (w/ gullwing trucks and matching rat bones), university radio station.

Didn't you post on joyrex.com?

This shit needs the ability to multiple emoji react....

A) It is not routine to blindfold prisoners for mass transportation. B) Ethnic concentration doesn't indicate a concentration camp. It's the fact that the people interred there are held without trial, and with harsh conditions. Now you may say that US prisons are harsh - and they are no picnic to be sure. But compared to prisons in East Asia, they are a walk in the park. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chinese-prison-americans-perspective/ In a completely wonderful piece of fucking ridiculousness, the difference in the detainment conditions between Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver BC and Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor show you a little bit more about how Chinese authorities view prison: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/meng-wanzhou-bail-covid-extradition-1.5870636 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/michael-kovrig-spavor-consular-access-1.5883882 Anecdotally, I had a friend arrested in South Korea for selling hash. He spent 9 months in a South Korean prison. If friends or family didn't bring him food, he would get one bowl of gruel a day. His cell was a room with 10 or 12 other individuals, all with a communal toilet. Another friend from Myanmar was incarcerated in one of the most notorious prisons in the world as he was a journalist who wrote things about the government that were not too flattering in their truth-telling. He was put in Insein Prison for 3 years. He's a pretty quiet guy as a result. C) China calls these camps: "re-education centres". Here's a description: https://wiki.ubc.ca/Racism_and_Persecution_against_Uyghur_Muslims_in_China#Concentration_Camps Now of course, by placing all these people in the camps, this leaves thousands of children to be sent to boarding schools. In Canada, we have our own shameful history of the residential schools that was part of the attempted genocide of First Nations peoples here. Reading about the tactics used by the Chinese government on the Uyghurs, I am very much reminded of this history. You have this opinion that the US is the worst evil ever seen by the world, and there are many flaws in America, but I can't help but feel you have very little knowledge about places where much worse atrocities are visited upon people on a regular basis. Have a read of this twitter feed. I know and trust the academics who oversee this work:

I mean those same fundamentals were in play before, and there was still plenty of FDI. It took a very badly handled pandemic and an obvious petty dictator to finally knock the US off it’s perch, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that opinion will swing back the US way in the next couple of years.

I’m not saying it was developed by the Russian government. Neither was VK. They were both developed by the same guy and they both face issues around censorship. You should use signal instead.