DisclaimerI want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it. Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it. Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions: For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month! For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k. I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device. Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system. Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section. Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox. Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like. Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird. Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device. For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV. Anime If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two. PC Centric software If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12. Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development. The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals. Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap. Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam. **BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however. IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff. Game Store Fronts
Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with GoldBleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that. Audiobooks & Ebooks
Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Sign LanguageBSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesizehere is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the detailsAccording to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment. Hope it helps someone at least PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75! tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books Learning Language Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments: TogtogtogGives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games ilyemco suggested these HEALTH I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix. Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7. If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery. HELP & ADVICE The lockdown Rules. Reasons to leave home include:
Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THEROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though) _riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen. Office suit software A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
LibreOfficeThis has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software. Games development D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
I wrote a long reply on why gambling, and loot boxes in particular, are bad...
So, inside some other post, I was asked why gambling is bad... My reply ended up being really detailed, so I'll promote it to a post of its own (just copy-pasting it here; no new words)... [Note: list of 3 points about loot boxes at the end...] (I work at a company that sells gambling services... I see how the sausage is made...) By the way, I love PoE and GGG. Still, loot boxes are bad. I personally get to see the statistics side of oddsmaking. It's always about suckering you out of your money, because by definition all you are doing is paying more money as the price of getting less money (on average), but you also need to feel like you have a chance at getting the upper hand, even though in the long run you don't. For example, sometimes, if you're really "good" at betting, you just end up working for the oddsmaker on a bad deal. It's really hard for them sometimes to get the odds perfectly right (although the profit margin still takes care of 99.9% of punters). So, if you're a professional gambler making a regular profit, what's basically happening is that you are investing an enormous amount of time and expertise to try and make tiny profits at the margins, and the bookmaker monitors your activity and learns about the market from you, at what ends up being a lower cost than if they hired experts to give them the same info on a salary. Plus you constantly run high risks! Which is why my company is full of ex-gamblers who were able to make a profit for a while, and intelligent enough to realise that they were still getting a bad deal, and come to the company and offer their services directly. (For another way gambling companies guarantee their own profits by passing on the risk to gamblers, research "balancing the books": yes, a professional gambler could make some profits this way, but if you're possibly making profits by taking on a risk that a large gambling corporation wants to get rid of, do you really think you're getting a good deal, especially considering how much time and expertise you sink into the activity? EDIT: more info) The only way I know of to make a consistent and considerable profit off gambling is when a pro gambler is allowed to make a profit off other gamblers, in a move that a company makes to increase total amounts played. So, for one person to profit, many others are being seriously scammed, and the company is safely skimming its percentages off the top. There are many different ways a gambling company presents bad deals to you, hoping that your intuition misfires about one of them and you decide to throw away your money. Examples... There are single bets, of course. But then there are also combinations, and these screw with your intuition--you can convince yourself based on a narrative (e.g. team 1 wins first half, team 2 comes back in second half), where in fact the actual hard cold odds are against you. There is "cash out" where you take a fraction of a likely-seeming win early (but at a loss), which of course simply taxes you for your risk aversion. There are "systems", creating more and more complex bets, until you convince yourself you've set up the perfect deal, and yet the company's profit margin keeps growing the more complex you make it. Anyway, those are the parts I work on as a software guy. (By the way, this isn't the worst thing in the world, it's not as bad, as, say, the military industry or the military itself, or say religions or banks, because at some level gambling is voluntary. And making gambling illegal is a terrible idea-we should fight it through education, not prohibition. Still, I only work there because I'm currently a completely non-creative software grunt (and currently satisfied with that). If I get to the point of pursuing higher-level jobs, I'll look elsewhere.) But the most nefarious part of all is the psychological work they pull on you. That's not my area of expertise, so if you want it explained you need to look elsewhere (recommended book: Thinking Fast and Slow--it's not about gambling, it's about psychology). They are constantly doing things to 1) give you false hope and 2) artificially trigger some pleasure response in you. E.g. most people are naturally risk averse and loss averse, e.g. losing $10 brings more pain than winning $10 brings pleasure. In reality, a gamble is about paying, say, $10 to win an average of, say, $9, so that's a terrible and painful deal. In addition to all the advertising and bright colours and encouraging sounds and making you read success stories and all the other psychological manipulations, they can also straight up befuddle you with numbers. So, losing $10 brings more pain than winning $10 brings pleasure, but what if you pay $10 but you're not really at a risk of losing that much, because on average you win $9 back, so you're only really risking a single $, and yet if you get lucky you won't win a mere $10 but millions? Suddenly that sounds good, right? Risk $1 to win $10000000? Of course not: you're still risking $10 and taking $1 losses on average each time you play, and the high rewards are vanishingly rare and built into that average. That's it about gambling for money. On loot boxes I'm no expert, but, beyond the basic problems (encouraging addiction, exploiting minors who beg money from parents and don't understand how they're throwing it away, generating gambling "pleasure" while giving you "bits" instead of any real value, etc), I can point out a couple of extra scummy aspects:
They can say "the box costs 30 points but all the possible rewards are worth at least 50, the average reward is worth 70 and the best is worth 400"... really??? Those prices are completely arbitrary... Who says the footprints are "worth" 50 or some random hideout decoration is "worth" 200? Talking about average microtransaction point values in a loot box is completely misleading.
Either you (a) lose on the statistics of getting complete sets or you lose on (b) being psychologically manipulated into buying extra stuff you didn't actually want so much (or (c) you just lose by getting useless stuff). Let's say you decide to pick up a couple of boxes and see what you get before buying more stuff. You might just get useless stuff, of course (case c). But what if you get the body armour or wings? Now you might say "I'll get more boxes to complete the set". But the chances of getting any one part of a set are not anywhere near as bad as your chances of completing a set (like map lab trials, but much worse because loot boxes contain many more items), so you are getting totally fleeced (case a). Alternatively you could go "oh look, I got x in the box, I'll buy matching items y and z from the shop later" so you think you got x cheap and y and z at normal prices. But you are being manipulated into buying y and z. Would you really have bought x and y and z from the shop if there had been no loot box? Only rarely. The rest of the time you are overspending (case b).
Loot box gifts are another scummy behaviour, considering people don't have good intuitions about statistics. Most of us get bad results from the gifted boxes, but some will get lucky. Those of us who are already gambling on loot boxes won't be affected by the outcome of a few extra boxes. Those who wouldn't ever buy them normally, and get bad results, who cares. But those who wouldn't normally buy them but get lucky a few times in a row might decide it's a good deal after all. So, it's manipulating us psychologically in a way that is statistically designed to fail at no cost most times and succeed sometimes, which makes money. (While also giving everybody holiday presents or race prizes, making the company appear generous.)
TLDR; taking on huge risk and betting everything makes you more prone to paper handing your position at the slightest red. Be smart about your position and your profits. 🦍🦍 💪💪, GME 🚀 🚀 🚀 Alright retards, put on your helmet and take that crayon out of your nose because it's time to get serious. Diamond handing is important. It's been the most important part of our strategy, no doubt. The concept's easy, but this volatility is enough to age us all 40 years. Not everyone, especially the newer people, are capable of stomaching these drops, so I'd like to offer a more practical (more realistic maybe) guide to diamond handing. At the very least, this guide will help you be more confident in your positions and greatly decreasing your odds of being a little bitch that sells at the first sign of red. If you're just joining us now and bought any of the hyped stocks at current prices or higher:
Educate yourself. You bought a stock, which is ownership of a company. Understand the fundamentals behind what your company. DD is not something WSB is lacking in. You have a searchbar. You have eyes. (I mean, unless you don't. That's cool too. Have someone read you DD out loud like a bedtime story. :) ) I really like this DD on Gamestop if you want to learn some more about Gamestop. I don't know (and don't care) about any of the other stocks, so you're on your own. Educate yourself on the company you own a portion of and you'll be less prone to paper hand.
Don't sell at a loss. It's just retarded. Fear is one of the worst human emotions and you'll never make money in the market if you're scared of a little red. So if you can't stand that you're down 10% on a stock that swings 50% a day, why did you buy it in the first place? Similarly, if you're down 50% on a stock, it makes no sense to sell it when it pretty much can only go up from there. This isn't to say that stop loss isn't important but I feel like I'll do more harm by trying to explain to you retards on when to use it. So for now, while the hype is still there, just hold.
Only invest what you can afford to lose. Don't overleverage. Don't use margin. Seriously, if you're struggling to put food on the table and your last $10 are in AMC like a retard, this game really isn't for you. The reason is that you're so scared for your money that you will make the worst possible decisions at the worst time and lose that money. Don't underestimate fear and desperation. This isn't just a get rich quick scheme.
When you're up bigly, congratulations! You win. Follow the advice for OGs.
If you're an OG and bought Gamestop when it was double digits:
Congratulations you big chad! :)
Consider taking a little bit of profit. If you bought Gamestop at like $12, you are up bigly, no doubt, but it can be extremely nerve wrecking to watch your portfolio erase three years of your Wendy's salary in an hour and so you can be prone to paper handing. It will really be much easier if you sell a tiny portion of your shares to at least cover the initial deposit. That way, if Gamestop goes down to $0 (when hell freezes over, but you never know), you at least break even. It'll be easier to sleep at night. I mean, even Deepfuckingvalue does it. Be smart about it.
Anyway, it's hard to diamond hand consistently if you have trouble sleeping at night due to how overleveraged you are. It's like a diet fad. The chad that limits himself by 100 calories but sticks to it consistently will do better than the retard trying to fast 72 hours when he's never gone 30 minutes without a sugar donut. Be realistic and take care of yourself. It's far easier to stay consistent by doing that. If anybody has any questions on Gamestop, stocks, or options, feel free to ask in the comments. My DMs are open too if you're shy 😳 👉👈. Positions: A fuckton of GME, bought both at $14 and at $300. I buy every dip and hold, I've sold my entire portfolio to feed my GME gambling addiction but I've also sold 8% of my shares to cover my initial investment so it truly doesn't matter anymore if it goes tits up. Not investment advice. I have one braincell.
Disclaimer I am posting this here because I got a message from the mods asking me to. I'm not from London so links aren't London centric (but hopefully still of help) and the main post is here so any updates will likely be there (I will try here but it's hard to keep up with the amount of suggestions) Thanks. Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it. Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions: For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month! For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k. I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device. Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system. Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section. Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox. Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like. Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird. Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device. For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV. Anime If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two. PC Centric software If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12. Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development. The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals. Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap. Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam. **BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however. IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff. Game Store Fronts
Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
Games with GoldBleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that. Audiobooks & Ebooks
Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
Sign LanguageBSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
BBC's Bitesizehere is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the detailsAccording to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment. Hope it helps someone at least PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75! tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books Learning Language Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments: TogtogtogGives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games ilyemco suggested these HEALTH I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix. Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7. If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery. HELP & ADVICE The lockdown Rules. Reasons to leave home include:
Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
Communal religious worship
Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THEROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though) _riotingpacifist wanted this links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen. Office suit software A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
LibreOfficeThis has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software. Games development D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
AKA gacha-ing responsibly within your means. With the Zhongli banner coming up, I'm making this post to warn and help people from itchy fingers and the urge to 'get just... 1 more constellation!!'. For context, I've played FGO, Arknights, SinoAlice, FEH, and Onmyoji, and am fully F2P with other games, and I've seen how far itchy fingers can go - with this game, people are being introduced to the gacha mechanic for the first time and may find it difficult to 'just stop', especially with the constellations. Here are some tips to avoid over-spending and I'll use Zhongli as an example of a limited character you wanna get.
Define your goal clearly and budget how much is needed with the worst-case scenario
Worse-case scenario is you don't get Zhongli within the soft pity for accumulated limited banner pulls. At 90, it's a 50-50 chance at the banner character. So let's say you 'die-die' want Zhongli, meaning you're pulling until you get him which, if you're unlucky, is at 180 pulls. Budget for 180 pulls. With normal purchases, that's USD100 for 50.5 pulls with the most expensive and most 'worth it' crystals per dollar. If you're buying just enough crystals for 180 pulls, you need 3 x the USD100 pack, then 1 x USD50 pack and 2 x USD5 pack and 1 x USD1 pack for a total of USD361 = 28840 crystals = 180.25 pulls. If you anticipate future whaling, then 4 x USD100 packs will cost you USD400 = 32320 crystals = 202 pulls. So if you want constellation 1 Zhongli, you need 2 x the above as an absolute minimum. Due to the exchange rates, it's gonna be more expensive in other regions.
Buy before you gacha
Impulse purchases don't add up until you look at your card history and realise 'Oh shit'. After budgeting and before the banner releases, buy the exact no. of genesis crystals you want to gacha on for this banner and no more. That way, when you run out, you should have accomplished your main goal of getting the character + the constellations you want. Seeing there's not enough to gacha more with and having satisfied your goal, this prevents you from spending even more especially since you need to go through an additional step to purchase more crystals first. If you still get itchy fingers afterwards -
You don't need higher constellations
Sure, it's nice, but do you really need a constellation 6 Zhongli? If you're financially secure and have money to spare, whatever, but if you also want Xiao or Ganyu, consider that with shitty luck, you'll need to reserve a minimum of USD361 for each of them and their constellations as well. I suggest you use a financial planning calendar at tentatively 1 new 5* being released every month to save up accordingly.
Read people's personal stories/Call your gambling addiction hotline
After achieving your goal and hitting pity, it's just gambling. Unless you have enough to guarantee another Zhongli, you're just betting on rng. If you don't have enough for 180 pulls, I would argue it's also gambling cuz it's still not guaranteed at 90 pulls - it's still a 50/50 for your husbando. If you still wanna go, read some people's stories about gacha in Genshin first then carefully consider - this will help save you money as you evaluate if it's really 'worth it'. Example: https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/jp2cmk/i_amwas_addicted_to_spending_money/ If you still have that urge, call your gambling addiction hotline - it's not just for people addicted to casino gambling. There's no shame in admitting you need help in stopping, and they'll provide you with the advice to do so. And remember -
Gacha is predatory, but we can avoid falling prey to it.
If you wanna gacha even without having enough for 180 pulls, you can still go for it. But do not become desperate and splurge to get just 1 character - financial planning is a must with a gacha game. Plus, chin-up - there's always a re-run of the banner; limited characters are only limited in that they have a tiny chance to appear on specific dates. Just save your primogems accordingly. Have fun, and all the best for your wishes! EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not F2P in Genshin plus the aforementioned games, in case there's any confusion, but I *have* been F2P in other games aside from the mentioned ones.
Why GME’s closing today is a sign that it will spike even more next week
Listen up retards. Emerging addict here. Let me tell you why I think today’s closing price is a sign that GME is yet to rocket! Why do you think the spike dropped to $60 and stayed there the rest of the day? Because the fuckton of $60 option calls that just expired. PlayFree_Bird explained it well right here. Today wasn’t a margin call, it was a gamma squeeze. The four-hour war at $60 is huge evidence of this. Basically, as the stock price increased, call writers realized they might have to provide stocks for the $60c option owners. Greedy bastards didn’t want to payout. What do they likely do instead? Fucking borrow more GME and short-sell the shit out of it to drop it below $60 and keep it there the rest of the day. If they succeed, they don’t have to provide shit on the butt-ton of 1/22 $60c options. If it closes above $60, they get fucked. For four hours today, every time the stock jumped above $60, call writers bought MORE SHORTS to drop the price back under $60. Again, today wasn’t MM dumping shorts, it was options contracts buying MORE shorts attempting to save their ass (at least that's what my dumb ass thinks). But guess what? The stock closed at $64.75! Fuck! They lost! So why does this mean GME 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 in the future? 1) This wasn’t the short squeeze, old shorts are likely still there bleeding fuck and filling the rocket with fuel. 2) Short holdings probably INCREASED today because the gamma squeeze above. More rocket fuel. 3) They lost the fucking bet on number 2, and have to fulfill the calls that expired today. More rocket pressure. Notice: Aftermarket is up to $68. No more panic-pressure to keep it down. It seems to me that GME is actually in a better position to rocket AFTER today, not worse. To the moon you retards! 🚀🌚 Pathetic Position: 23 sharse GME
Almost 5 million in 5 days. Listen up retards, because nobody gets the luxury of an intel brief like this. This isn’t AskReddit. Some people’s kids aren’t going to eat as well because of this movement, some of your kids. A lot of you are brand new to being exposed this way, and being sensationalized into doing it harder and faster than you ever would’ve. The people who control the game are salivating over this. Learn these 3 lessons as fast as possible, I’m not saying they will save you money, but they might save you from being blindsided by reality.
WallStreetBets does not care about you. You are nobody. Occasionally a person accomplishes enough to be recognizable, but it’s such a small fraction it’s negligible. You are completely and utterly alone in this game. The times that this subreddit has served as a haven for confirmation bias in times of uncertainty are the times that the most people have walked away with horrible losses.
Nobody is a prophet. Nobody here is powerful enough to make plays with 100% certainty. The majority of prophets and astrologists here have ended up major losers and hated by the community.
Only putting in what you can afford to lose is a fairy tale, the only ‘unrealized losses’ are the losses you haven’t realized you’re not getting back yet, and there’s no such thing as only playing with house money. Any “unrealized” gains are YOUR dollars, not the house’s anymore. And you could spend years convincing yourself you could afford to lose what you lost. That’s if you don’t pick up an addiction on the way and lose more.
Welcome to the casino. Oh and in a week, it’s back to date and strike. For now- Good luck. 24@353 🚀 holding
[Review] Cartier Ballon Bleu Rose Gold/Diamonds from TS Anna
[Review] Cartier Ballon Bleu 42mm Rose Gold/Diamond Watch from V6 Factory via TS Anna Hi Ladies! This is my first review here, I’ve had so much fun reading and learning, and awaiting the mailwoman as this is literally, my only covid acitivity now besides grocery shopping, wine consumption & work 🍷 I’m fully addicted, already plotting and planning what to order next 🐯 as well as waiting for like, 4 more packages to arrive 🙃🤪 So why the Cartier Ballon Bleu I’ve always admired it from afar, but only wanted Rose Gold and the price is insanity genuine. So it just wasn’t going to happen for me other than getting a Rep. Seeing that a V6 Factory Ballon Bleu is NWBIG (not worth buying genuine) according to The Reptime Reddit sealed the deal for me to take the plunge. I also really love oversized watches on women so 42mm was the size for me. My wrist is 15cm. Also worth noting: I QC’d this watch in Reptime thinking they would know more/help more but no one would really touch it since I bought from a RepLadies TS without Timegrapher numbers. After I posted the watch over in Reptime, several ladies messaged me asking for modeling pics as 42mm isn’t as typically ordered for women. I posted that here: 42mm mod shot, 5’4’’ for scale To which I got both positive as well as horrific demeaning, misogynistic responses, so the thread was locked. It spun into another post with a guy mocking me by copying my outfit and stroking his body, (https://www.reddit.com/RepTime/comments/l2prhj/full_body_shot_for_scale_of_this_gmf_dj41/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) and after that, a bunch of ladies encouraged me to actually jump over to RepLadies, get over my fear of screwing up the formatting, and share this review (and future reviews!) here, in a safer, more positive space, where I wouldn’t have my body picked apart or be called a slut/thirsty etc. Why TS Anna? I ordered this watch from TS Anna instead of a Reptime dealer because of the review below and her price was better by like $100 USD. The photos in this review looked so yummy I could not resist 🤩 but it was widely accepted knowledge that V6 factory is the best for Ballon Bleu’s, so I knew I had to go that way: (https://www.reddit.com/RepLadies/comments/kaavti/review_rg_sm_juc_wdiamonds_from_ts_wenzhi_ballon/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) Disclosure - 10% off for CNY Seller: TS Anna Price: 1880 CNY - 188 (discount) Payment method PayPal FF Price of shipping: 200 CNY Carrier: Fedex TS Anna Order timeline 1/1/21 happy new year! Made initial WhatsApp contact 1/2/21 paid via PayPal ff 1/6/21 PSPs received 1/7/21 shipped 1/18/21 arrived on my wrist! Constructive Criticism welcome! Would be good to know before I parade outside the house in this.
There is not much I can say that’s wrong here. The watch was packaged so carefully, so intensely, that the only thing I can deduct was that a plastic protector on the case back left a mark where the metal oxidized slightly differently as I bet it’s been sitting for over a year all wrapped up. Like when I say super wrapped, it took me more than 10 minutes to get it all off! (-.5) other than this the quality of the watch is beautiful. The watch works properly, the movement is very smooth, I see no issues whatsoever here. Stones set perfectly, metal plating finish super smooth, no flaws.
Accuracy -9.5/10
Pros: I cannot find a single thing inaccurate when you look at the watch. The hidden cartier word in the VII marker is perfect, the guilloche pattern correct, the rose gold color almost exact to my with cartier love (which probably has changed over time with wear), the engravings on the back perfect. Even the little fake diamonds look amazing to me- I cannot tell the difference. Cons: I’d say the single one is the weight of the watch- you just can’t fake solid gold weight. (-.5)
Satisfaction -10/10
This watch exceeded my expectations. I figured the gold color would be off, you could tell it was plated, or the diamonds would look cheap. None of the above. Anna made the experience, simple, pleasant, easy. Already talking to her about my next watch 😈
**Seller Communication and Service -10/10
Anna was very responsive and patient to all my questions, clarifications and worries on my first purchase. No issues at all. I hope you guys enjoyed this review! I also really hope it helps seeing a 42mm on a smaller wrist. If i didn’t totally screw it up, I’ll work on my next review from TS Wendy of Chanel/Dior delights later tonight 🛍
GME Gang: On the Subject of the Golden Bridge and Its Inevitable Destruction By Fire 🚀🚀🚀
Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across. Sun Tzu, Art of War Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn I was wrong! Blow the bridge! Blow the fucking bridge! Tugg Speedman, Tropic Thunder Hello again GME Gang! It’s been a while since I last ranted at you, but I know we’ve been in some very good hands here at WSB with all the great DD folks have posted over the past few weeks. So no need for CPT Hubbard to go for 11 again on the Thumbscroll Dial (until today, that is). I’ve enjoyed a lot of these posts very much, so thank you on behalf of myself and the attention-deficient Rocket Children for continuing to deliver that 100% Chaff-Free GME-grade Wheat at such a feverish clip. Now, I am going to get to Hong Kong’s Lamest Outlaw and his disconcertingly vacant eyes here shortly. But first I want to take you on a journey back to Christmas Eve, in the year of our lord 2020—a heady time in all our lives. We were all so young and innocent then, weren’t we? Fresh off the run up to 22. Blissfully oblivious that we were living in the last moments where the question What is The War of 1812? was the only acceptable Jeopardy question for the answer: The Last Time the Goddamn U.S. Capitol Was Stormed. This was also before we all became irresponsibly overleveraged in Cathie Wood’s Ornamental Gourds ETF. It was a wondrous, confusing time. But before we get too off topic, let’s all hop in my 1985 DeLorean (purchased with proceeds from my Jan 15 calls – thanks RC!), fire up the ol’ Flux Capacitor, and get that shit to 88 because something happened that evening that is Worth Pondering—particularly in light of recent events. And just as a friendly reminder: even though you’re going back in time in a DeLorean, no one here has to deviate funds away from GME shares to Save the Clock Tower and you are under no obligation to fulfill a scenario where you wind up making out with your Mom (unless your Mom is Cathie Wood like mine—in which case maybe just some quick over-the-clothes stuff). On the Subject of How It Once ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas So what in the holy fuck happened on the night before Christmas, Captain? Well, while all you Gentiles were sleeping soundly after lying to your children about benign home intruders and before gorging yourself on the teat of late-stage capitalism, me and the rest of the Chosen People were up late eating Chinese food and thinking about tendies (self-hating Jew Joke! Ba-zing!). But then: when out on the electric twitter machine there arose such a clatter, I sprang to my phone to see what was the matter. And what to my wondering eyes did appear, a mysterious tweet from a Rich-Ass Viking who had a lot of fucking interesting things to say about this whole GME situation that’s what. This tweet, buried as a reply to a tweet sent by Mr. Rod Alzmann (@RodAlzmann or u/Uberkikz11), simply said: “Merry Christmas. Shhh.” But it included this screen shot: [**Image Deleted Due to the Mods - check the link below where someone transcribed it - I'll try to add later**] Now, this tweet to Rod, sent late at night and likely after a strong Mead or three, was very promptly deleted. But your intrepid cub reporter saw this here tweet that night with his own two eyes—seeing as I am a degenerate GME addict and devoted follower of Mr. Rod Alzmann (Hi Rod!). And I took screenshots, of course, like any responsible records custodian might. And so did the dude who wrote a somewhat-overlooked WSB post on this, which included the most pertinent text of the message if you are having trouble reading it here: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kk0omp/christmas_miracle_gamergate_2020_gme_shorts/ Now, what are we to make of this? At the time, I thought it was very interesting. But I did not give it too much attention seeing as how the internet is overcrowded with anonymous weirdos claiming to know more than they do about all sorts of subjects (and now I feel your judging eyes…). Also, there was some very good commentary in that WSB post from some sharp folks about the screenshot author’s questionable use of the shorthand PE/IB—given that private equity and investment banks wouldn’t apparently be involved in a behind-the-scenes transaction with the short funds like what was being discussed there (don’t ask me, I just string together silly words here). But maybe you poke around his Twitter a bit and see for yourself. Still, plausibility assessments based on preferred nomenclature aside, it seemed to me that some version of that conversation had to be taking place behind the scenes in a situation like this—given the batshit insane short interest, the funds supposedly involved, and the rapid rise in SP coinciding with RC’s share accumulation, December 21st amended 13D filing, and new status as a GME Insider and Board member (just love saying all that in a row, don’t you?). So the Viking’s screenshot tweet, and the very likely possibility that shorts are in so deep that they’re attempting to negotiate peace with large shareholders behind the scenes, stuck in my tiny little baby brain as a pretty plausible set of scenarios. And from the look of it, it seems like some funds were at least willing to discuss offering these shorts a Golden Bridge away from Certain Fucking Destruction on the open market. And if the words on the screenshot are at all aligned with reality, these short funds have no good options. Yet it seems like they are still playing hardball to negotiate the carat on this generous bridge offer they’re getting. Why? Maybe they’ve been getting high on their own supply for so long and they don’t know how to see this situation for what it is. Who knows? Maybe there is no Ryan Cohen and we’re all living in a simulation. But if the recent low-rent anti-GME articles and market manipulation efforts we’re seeing are any indication, these overleveraged short fuckers seem to think they’re going to be able to spin out of this hold and drive the SP back down to even smaller peanuts than it’s at now by sheer force of will (and some deployment of well-honed tricks of the trade amirite?) to emerge unscathed. Or even victorious? I dunno—it’s their delusional fantasy sequence. But do you know what this scenario reminds me of? And this is just coming to me so please bear with me as I’m not showing this to my editor before we print (I haven’t seen this movie in ages – don’t know what made me think of this!). Fuck it, I’m just gonna start riffing here. The shorts trying to thread this needle, against all odds and logic and common sense, reminds me of that hilarious scene in Dumb and Dumber where haplessly delusional Jim Carrey thinks he has a chance with Mary Samsonite Swanson. But the scene is funny because he really doesn’t. Have any chance. At all. Now, I know this is a 1990s movie originally released on VHS that we haven’t seen it or even seen it referenced in ages. But now that you’re thinking of it again after all this time, doesn’t it remind you of this too? I know, I get it: You’d have to have fucking peanuts for brains for it not to. (https://twitter.com/ryancohen/status/1350877969816956934?s=20) On the Subject of the Continued Internet Bumbling of Mr. Justin Dopierala Now that screenshot came to mind this past week when something kind of weird happened while we were all enjoying our quick rocket ship ride. And yes, we are briefly going to talk again about Seeking Alpha’s second finest pro-GME author (always been more of a Dmitriy man myself) and recurring CPT Hubbard character, Justin Dopierala (and no, Angela, I do not want to have like 10,000 of his babies). Last Thursday, after we were all virtually high-fiving one another and counting our future Lambos, Mr. Justin Dopierala, head of Domo Capital and longstanding uber-bull GME shareholder and author at Seeking Alpha (last seen arguing pithily with our own Rod Alzmann about the conservative nature of Rod’s holiday earnings projections. Hi again Rod!), made it known that he sold all of Domo Capital’s 500,000 shares for around $42.50—at the very top of the run up last Thursday morning. Now, Domo Capital’s business decisions are none of my goddamn business. And there are plenty of market opportunities right now. Shit, I hear there is even a new Cathie Wood Gourd ETF coming online soon that people are really excited about and that I’m sure Justin’s clients would find intriguing. But Domo’s decision to sell seemed curious given a few things: (1) on Wednesday, when the rocket is mid-flight, he got a twitter follow from Gabe Plotkin, head of Melvin Capital, which he promptly tweeted about with a “get a load of this fuckin’ guy” vibe (oh the sweet, intoxicating arrogance of tendie victory, I too love it so); (2) he had also tweeted that day comparing GME’s rise to Apron’s short squeeze that lasted 4 days—where he also stressed to his followers that Apron had a much lower SI than GME; and (3) he then promptly deleted all of these tweets and almost everything else GME-related on Thursday after apparently introducing 500,000 shares of liquidity into the height of a stressed market up and through the Thursday reversal and down into his own personal tendie town. Now, after seeing all this, I mouthed off a bit to Justin on the electric twitter machine because that’s kind of my thing. And if you are familiar with my prior ramblings, you know that he and I go way back. In response, Justin talked a bit of shit about your intrepid cub reporter here in a comment on Dimitry Kozin’s October 21, 2020 article about a possible sony revenue share deal or something, the comment section of which has become the preferred SA water cooler over there. (And I can’t link that because Thems The Rulez). And Justin hurt my little feelings a bit with his very sharp denial. And by all means have at it over there to check out his comment about why he sold if you give a shit. That is if Justin hasn’t deleted it yet. Free country and all. But to summarize, on the subject of treacherous coordination with Melvin Capital, Justin said he would not could not in a boat and he would not could not with a goat. And I for one believe him. And do you know why? Because even though Justin seems like a very smart guy in some ways, he’s also a well-known internet bumbler who blurts out things to his internet friends that a person with better self-control would keep to themselves. And so I do not think he is capable of pulling that off or keeping a secret like that. Also: he said he didn’t so I am more than willing to give someone the benefit of any doubt in that area and you should too. I think we keep Hanlon’s razor firmly in mind here about never attributing to malice that which is explained by stupidity. That is unless, of course, you’re Andrew Left and you’re actually trying to convince people that you didn’t realize there was a US presidential inauguration planned for the same time you announced your Super Important TeeVee Yammerfest ‘21 about GME not being a good candidate for an imminent short squeeze no way no how not if my name isn’t Andrew Left short seller expert extraordinaire and Hong Kong’s Most Misunderstood Ethically-Minded Businessman. You can ascribe the fuck out of malice to that one. No, even though I really have no idea, I think the most likely thing that happened there was that Gabe Plotkin, Master of the Universe, Head of Melvin Capital, and Acolyte of Perennial Most Ethical Business Man MVP candidate, Steven Cohen—got into Justin’s head when Plotkin followed him on twitter during the 57% (at one point 94%) day last Wednesday and then Justin got a bit chippy about it. And this is the real reason I’m bringing this up. Because I honestly care very little about the Nervous Investing Habits of the Wisconsin hedge fund voted most likely to prompt a Mr. Roboto reference. No: I think that Gabe Plotkin sent a message with that follow. Without even ever having to say it directly. And I think that after GME’s huge run and getting a little overexcited while working the twitter machine, Justin maybe had a chance to relax with a warm glass of milk that night and reflect on that message. Which I believe was: I’m watching you, motherfucker. And the only reason I’m paying any attention to some shitstain Wisconsin pseudo-fund on a day like today when I am getting my ass fucking torched is because I want you to know that if this GME shit blows up on me, I’m going to fuck your ass up.I will remember the name Domo Capital forevermore.And when you least expect me, I’ll be there. Now: your move, motherfucker. And once I realized what might have happened there, that made me feel kinda bad for Justin if he felt that way. Definitely a puss move because fuck you Plotkin I drink your fucking milkshake, right? But bad because that’s a mean message for a business colleague to send, Gabriel. Shame on you if that's how you roll like a big New York bully and scaring our poor Justin like that. And if you just wanted to follow him to shoot the shit or swap listicles and Star Wars Prequel memes with a respected contemporary—even in the very midst of getting fucking annihilated while short GME—well Justin has a totally different account for that and he’s not allowed to access it during work hours. On The Likelihood That The Most Heavily Shorted Stock in History Is Not Being Subject to Continued Market Manipulation When A Steve Cohen Acolyte Is Losing His Fucking Shirt Have you heard about Steve Fucking Cohen? The guy who looks like he’s tip top of the list of the premier Hollywood casting agency’s rolodex for Saddest Dipshit Still At the Strip Club After Everyone Else Has Already Gone Home? I’m sorry, that’s mean and my mother told me to always be kind to the truly hideous looking because they’re probably still beautiful on the inside (spoiler alert: he’s not!). Get a load of this guy: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-02/why-sac-capitals-steven-cohen-isnt-in-jail https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-09-02/controversial-hedge-fund-billionaire-steven-cohen-takes-on-hollywood https://www.marketwatch.com/story/steven-a-cohen-among-the-million-dollar-donors-to-trump-inauguration-2017-04-19 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/steve-cohen-trump https://nypost.com/2015/06/17/billionaire-steve-cohen-bros-out-with-guy-fieri/ Are you back? I’ve missed you. That was scary, wasn’t it? But allow me to TL/DR all that for you who decided to avoid all that unpleasantness: the dude just has all this bad luck and keeps finding himself into these really awkward situations where someone could potentially question his commitment to ethical business and life practices as well as adherence to the laws of the United States and it’s just not fair and nothing’s fair and Nice Guy Steve Cohen Is The Victim Here So Just Stop Right There Mister I See What You’re Doing. He's also bros with Guy Fieri. Cool. But why am I talking about a guy who would so clearly pass Billy Madison’s Final Question about Business Ethics without even breaking a sweat? Because Steve Cohen once had a young Ace Protegee that he loved very much. With the name of an Archangel, so tender and pure. And one day this young man decided he wanted to Prove Himself and Leave Steve’s Nest. And thus was born Melvin Capital, seeded financially by Steve Cohen but named after famed Crooner Melvin H. Tormé, which Gabe’s esteemed mentor Steve would play in his office, over and over, all those years ago. Now let’s fast forward a bit because I’m boring myself with all that fucking Cohen reading (the bad Cohen—don’t you dare get anyone confused here). As I was saying: Gabe Plotkin, head of Melvin Capital, has by all accounts gotten himself into a bit of a pickle here being so deeply short GME. Lots of people have analyzed and overanalyzed it, and I’m not going to do it again here; that dead horse is well and truly beaten. But to bottom line it: we’re all just staring down what is essentially an unprecedented math problem that will, at some point, resolve itself. And if it revolves itself in favor of the Good Guys, then the Bad Guys will lose a Fuck-ton of Money. That’s your money block quote, WSJ, so fuck off and stop calling me. Now: picture yourself as a Steve Cohen acolyte that just bought a $44M Miami Compound and who cannot stop talking about how co-owning the Charlotte Hornets is worth it just for the courtsides alone bro once basketball is a thing again and so what if Michael Jordan keeps calling him Gary it’s close enough. Are you feeling the most financially secure that you have ever felt in your young rich life right about now? Or might you be a wee bit worried that you’ve pursued an investment thesis so reckless, so irrationally and intentionally destructive of equity, that even Melvin H. Tormé himself must be rolling in his fucking grave that you would ever dare put at risk your ability to continue being Michael Jordan’s Gary? And so here is when I again link my good buddy Jim Cramer’s Great Unveiling of the Tactics Deployed by Short Sellers hoping to change the narrative and construct a “new truth” to suppress the SP in the face of, oh, let’s just say: a very promising turnaround story in a high-growth industry by an e-Commerce Canadian Genius who does not fuck around and who knows what he’s fucking doing and aims to sell more and better video games experiences to crackhead video gamers and there’s a million things he wants to do but just you wait, just you wait. Is this plot that hard to follow? And I’ll also say this: I know fuck-all about monitoring order flows or how funds continue to create synthetic shares to short shit into oblivion. But I’m just stepping back and thinking of the broader narrative and tactics on this. Spit-balling here again—bear with me. Now, if you were massively short a security while paying out your ass in borrowing fees for the privilege of entering the most crowded short trade in the market and you’re now opposite a massive business turnaround story, Ryan Cohen, numerous institutions, funds, retail whales, Norwegian HNW Freemason Consortiums, and the energy behind the Finest Rocket Children Ever to Grace Planet Fucking Earth—and you’re taking it in the ass week after week here—Do you then play this straight? Do you set aside all of these illegal and deceptive short tactics Jim Cramer candidly outlines in that video even though they’re impossible to enforce and are in fact not enforced? That Jim basically says you’d be professionally negligent if you were short and didn’t do this shit because fuck it whosgonnastopyou? And now you fucked up and that steamroller is barreling down upon you and there are all these things you could theoretically do try to get yourself out of this jam if you were That Kind of Person? Do you set this all aside and, at least in Jim’s view, tie one hand behind your precious ethical back? On the most heavily shorted stock off all time where you are bleeding Real Life Big-Boy Money? Just buying and selling you know, just a job, honest living, nothing much to it, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, can't get too carried away with it. Or is it something a little bit fucking different than that? I don’t know. I’m not in the industry myself. And I would never accuse anyone of doing anything so clearly contrary to the values upon which their professional career as Master of the Universe was built. So Gabe: chill. Don’t follow me or something on twitter man, since for all I know that’s Plotkinese for I Hope You Don’t Mind Sleeping With This Severed Horse Head in Your Bed Motherfucker. It’s just money, dude. You seem pretty well taken care of. But man would I be sweating if I were short right now staring down the barrel of your new neighbor Ryan Cohen’s whims and patience and polite Canadian manners and ambiguous emojis that we all lose our shit for. I mean, fuck man: are you ok? Don’t forget to exercise and eat well during all this. Maybe switch to green tea or something. And remember: you’ll always—always—be Michael Jordan’s Gary. But here is where we return to our good friend Andrew Left from Citron Research. Do you remember the excitement you felt this past weekend? I’ve never seen WSB so jacked. People were coming out hot on Tuesday—an uptick day! The new phone book’s here! The new phone book's here! What luck to be free of Gary’s tomfoolery for one fine day. And then GME spiked right away—reaching a high of over $45 that morning. But then something happened. We all know what it was. But here is where any SEC lookie-loos need to close those Pornhub links and pay closer attention. Because in the moments before the Citron tweet that morning about Andy’s upcoming BuzzFeed Listicle call on Why GME is Scary Investment GRRRR, total short shares available dropped from 1.2M to 0. And a $300K put bet was placed on a weekly with a strike price well over 10% out of the money at the very moment that GME’s price was accelerating rapidly. (H/t u/FatAspirations). That’s some WSB-level shit right there. And yet they pull it off! GME immediately shoots down nearly 30% intraday, and eventually climbing abck up above 10%, making us all feel a little weird and like ungrateful millennial brats for feeling so shitty about a 10% day. But we all know what fucking happened, now don’t we? So what can we say about ol’ Andy? Now, many of you know Andy as the dumbshit who shorted TSLA until he was ground into little bits of dumb dumb dust and made to look ever so foolish over and over again until he finally cried drunk uncle and flipped to being long TSLA and now he’s cool to you or whatever. Or you might know him as the guy who puts out really shoddy research that often, by pure happenstance, drives a new narrative to control the orderflow and SP on a WSB-beloved security like PLTR? You know the guy I’m talking about. Once in hot pursuit by Hong Kong fuzz, an International Man of Obviousness with a face that says: why yes, I will have another vodka tonic thankyouverymuch. That’s him. Well, just like future call-back candidate for the role of Frightened Inmate #2, Mr. Steve Cohen, Andy is also but a Caveman—frightened and confused by your modern concepts of “ethics” and “rules.” No! No!—He’s a straight shooter! Devoted to rooting out obvious frauds, like Lukin Coffee and TSLA (Do not fuck with Elon or my Hot Mom’s ETF, Andy). And like the aspirations of Antoine Bugle Boy when he entered the blue jeans market, Andy saw an overcrowded short trade here based on an overly simplistic and obsolete short thesis about GME and said: “Me Too!” And as this thing is ripping to the stratosphere, Andy starts ringing his dumb dumb twitter bell and saying hear ye, hear ye—Inauguration Day and time it shall be for all my Big Brain thoughts about GME! Nothing weird about that. No sir. So Andy Citron or whatever the fuck his name is will be putting out some dumbshit video or something today in what seems to be a pretty clear attempt to scare my poor Rocket Children and get those pesky computers to high frequency this shit to drive the SP down to more acceptable loss levels (cause let’s be honest: they’re still taking a fucking bath here) for Mel Tormé’s namesake hedgefund and all the other cretins that are dug into short position here. And they’re gonna try to scare ya’ with the color red! And they know that no one here likes the color red. But do see what’s going on here and who we’re dealing with. This really ain’t rocket science, Rocket Children. The dude actually tried to claim he forgot about the Inauguration. In 2021. He has not been in a coma, to the best of my knowledge. But you do look a little bleary eyed, Andy. Must have been all that staying up super late working on those last few bullet points to fill out the powerpoint on that GME listicle of yours, eh sport? Conclusion: On the Subject of Patience and The Arc of The Universe Bending Toward Ryan Fucking Cohen In my youth there was a period of time where I went out on boats that would drop crates into the waters of the Arctic. Bundled inside them were raw pieces of meat. In the coming days the boats would head back out to the frigid seas, hook the floats bobbing upon the waters, and pull the crates up. Packed inside would be many crabs. They were so delicious & made a good price at market. The difference between the crate that was empty and the create full of bounty was a mystery even the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger pondered at much length. But the hearty fishermen of my youth already knew the answer long ago. Why did the trap fill up? Time. In time, all traps fill. In time, all things pondered shall be revealed. --The Fucking Viking, That’s Who Now look, you all know I have a soft spot for Ryan Cohen. Hell, we all do. He’s a good dude. And the man has played this flawlessly so far. He really has. The fact that we are all sitting here with Ryan Cohen having successfully negotiated three seats on the Board—a bloodless coup as my man Rod Alzmann says—here in January? It’s amazing. His vision for GME is dialed-the-fuck in and extremely exciting. This misunderstood business is on the threshold of an exciting turnaround with Ryan Cohen at the helm. And though I was very much looking forward to the potential repercussions of a vote being called at the annual meeting and what that might mean for the short-term share price, this result is infinitely better. Whatever their motivations, that Board and George Sherman saw the writing on the wall here and accepted the Golden Bridge that Ryan offered them. And Ryan Cohen has done everything he’s set out to do here. And he’s clearly been having fun while doing it. Read up on the guy at some point if you haven’t–there’s lots of good DD out there on him, obviously. And while you’re reading and thinking about Ryan Cohen, think also about guys like Steve Cohen (nofucking relation) and Gabe Plotkin and Andy Left and how lucky we are that we get to roll with RC against that motley crew of fuckwads. And do you know what? I’m guessing that RC, and maybe even the funds being discussed in that screenshot, have been very patient with Mr. Plotkin et al in recent weeks. You don’t go around bankrupting hedge funds willy nilly, you know--bad form and all that old chap. People tend to remember that. And guys like Steve Cohen and Gabe Plotkin seem like they play for keeps. So now you try to build them a Golden Bridge to cross—maybe not their preferred route of travel, but could be worse and all that, right guys? But for whatever reason it seems like the natural instinct here on the short side is fight over flight. And these short FUD tactics are getting increasingly ridiculous to help slow down the inevitable march toward the detonator right next to that bridge. So relax everyone! And let’s not fool ourselves: All those Masters of the Universes are well aware of the math problem they’re all facing here and they must have a vague grasp of the odds that this goes off in one direction over the other. And what that could mean for the size of their money pits and how many sports teams they can buy this year. Shit, I assume Steve Cohen is counseling his young acolyte about how many sads he himself felt deep down in his man heart on that fateful day in 2008 when he lost $250M on a short when Volkswagon squeezed to infinity—a sadness that he will continue to draw on when his agent finally finds him a role that calls for it. But my point is: the longs here can afford to be patient and let this play out. When this thing moves, the Viking’s Schrödinger crabs will only be in one pot. And I’m guessing that pot is the one being held by the guy who is actually in total control here: Ryan Goddamn Cohen. So enjoy the show today. If you’re anything like me, you’re feeling relaxed after gorging yourself on lucky space peanuts all week.(https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/10022/lucky-peanuts/) And though these silly wabbits with their cumbersome FUD efforts can get a bit tiresome, I’m still very much enjoying this GME show at this point and almost do not want it to end—what with all these Sorkin-esque twists and turns and my Cohen Tweet Decorder Ring getting all this sweet action. But just remember who Ryan Cohen is, what he cares about, and what, so far, he has told us he intends to do here. And then you might realize, as I have, that Ryan Cohen has had the Gray’s Sports Almanac here all along. This story has already been written. He’s already won. And Melvin Capital’s Schrödinger-ass crabs are dead as fuck. The only question now is: what causes that Golden Bridge to blow? I, for one, am content to wait on RC while counting my good fortune that I can continue to accumulate until whatever happens here happens. So pass the rocket peanuts. It’s just money after all. Right Gabe? TL/DR: Psst: a Mysterious Viking once told me about behind-the-scenes Golden Bridge negotiations that are likely taking place that give shorts no chance but the shorts seem to think they’re saying there’s a chance but there really is no chance; Gabe Plotkin, Steve Cohen and Andy Left are misunderstood Straight Shooters who probably answer typical interview questions about their own perceived weaknesses by saying “Sometimes I just care too much about doing the right thing”; and Ryan Cohen is the Goddamn Man so we can all relax and not worry so much about all this dumb short FUD bullshit, ok? OK. 🚀🚀🚀 **If you construe any of the above as investment advice without doing your own DD or at least Googling Ryan Cohen then you are a fucking idiot and may God have mercy on your soul. You too, Andy.
My fiance believes I am addicted to Reddit and bet me I can't go a month without visiting. What should I wager to win/lose?
I definitely do not think I am addicted, but who really knows. I think this is an easy bet for me to win, so I am really just trying to figure out what my prize should be. I have to go four weeks without visiting reddit in any shape or form. Obviously it has not started yet. Just looking for ideas and I figured this would be an ideal first post. Gimme what you got!
Money is never enough, it's because of our greed...
Hey Reddit Fam, Thought I wanted to share this... I have been a long time lurker but never really posted anything... A little bit about myself I'm 27m and from Australia... I grew up with out having much money and pretty much living at the poverty line. Over time I started to learn and understand the concept of money, but one day thing's decided to take a change it's when I had a craving for more as my pay check wasn't enough. In Australia we have the lottery and bookies, such as sports betting etc... The first few rounds you get a thrill and a rush that this is easy. Why work when I can just gamble a bit and win a days worth of pay with out breaking a sweat... ? A small addiction at 18 years old till 21 lost me several thousands of dollars which could of been pocketed for better use... At the age of 22 I didn't really know anything about stocks but crypto currency was the hype. I decided to put money on crypto and would try to arbitrage and sell coins, win, loose, win and loose it all once again. Once again I had lost several thousands... I decided to leave the space all together and decided to not gamble and touch crypto for 4-5 years which I had done very well. The next biggest phase was putting money into the stock market. Stock's is another different ball game as you can evaluate business and re-invest dividends or put money into index funds which are all forms of passive investments... The issue is that over the year's I have learned to turn off my emotion's when investing as it's more of a future outlook... But the issue is when you become extremely greedy and just wanting more and more... You see a stock dropping 20%, 30%, 40%, instead of putting a few grand, you start to put $10K+ down and trying to break even or even 6 month's worth of your wages... You start to realise that us little investor's are getting fucked over and over everyday by these big banks and investment firms... My portfolio is very aggressive seeing swings of up to $2000 to -$2000 a day.. With the amount of money I currently have in investment's its more than enough to start a family and a house deposit... I'm not to worried about my stock market portfolio as it's not a form of gambling, but more of a greed addiction trying to accumulate as much capital as I can... I later decided to get back into Cryptocurrency again and loosing a few hundred dollars triggered my brain, I was staring into charts for 8 hours today and yesterday trying to arbitrage and get my money back but in a logical sense I had no control as the market is yet being manipulated... I get frustrated loosing a few hundred dollars, but not frustrated if I loose several thousands on a stock... Getting back to the point, over the years I have realised that no matter how much money I have I will never ever be happy... My happiness level at $0.00 and now which is pretty much the same... The reason is greed. The reason we gamble is all about greed, chasing our losses, stimulating our dopamine levels and just wanting MORE AND MORE... You have to understand our own psychology and control our own emotions and greed other wise it will just destroy us. Happiness is within inside of us, it's about giving and receiving love... Don't ever let money take over your life, because money mean's nothing just a means to control our capitalist society... I had posted a thread here that how I could of died in a car crash...https://www.reddit.com/offmychest/comments/l0ejza/i_could_of_been_killed_today_but_some_how_i_am/ If you read my post, I thank you for your time. If any one would like to discuss or chat I'm more happy too... Stay positive and try to be happy. :)
There exists a user named Catd who has founded the Church of Kikyo (in opposition to my Church of Isuka). We enjoy poking fun at each other although Catd will probably deny it because he's a tsundere. Also, he's been trying to escape the clutches of Hololive (and Vtubers in general) for quite some time now.
There exists a second user named Harish who has founded the Church of Rosetta (also in opposition to the one true Church). I've been poking fun at the fact I would probably upload AS Rosetta's character video before he could even pull her.
There exists a bot called "Mudae" which is basically an anime/manga/game character collector gacha minigame, but the characters are unique so only one person can own a given character at a time. Naturally, I've pulled Isuka and have her in my roster. And duped her 25 times since then. No, I'm not addicted.
I've already made twobad bets due to the Discord and had sworn off of making any more. I think you know where this story is going.....
So I'm just minding my own business at work when I get a ping on Discord from Catd. I ignored him and read a conversation about how Harish has somehow managed to burn half of his 6k saved chronos on the Heena and Hismena banners when AS Rosetta was literally around the cover. Heh, fake Church. Can't even properly save for the proper banner. But Catd is nothing if not persistent and finally caught my attention with the following line:
Palo if you win this bet you can force me to watch vtubers streams on will for 1 week
Well now, that certainly was a tempting proposal. I guess there's nothing to lose in just hearing him out, right?
Let's pull 1k on regular banner And see who has the better pull
Okay, pretty straightforward. So what was I supposed to wager?
No mudae for 1 week
Nopenopenopenopenope. You can't take away my #mudae-spam! That's my lifeblood! How am I supposed to survive if I can't keep trying to pull dupes of Isuka?
Fine you can force me to watch holo For 3 weeks I'll become church of isuka for 1 week as well Fine church of isuka and watching holo for 1 month Come on Palo do you agree now
Being able to convert my greatest enemy over to the true Church AND getting him to watch Hololive? Well, how could I resist?
Fine, name a time and place and we'll duel
The bet was sealed and the rules were set:
If the number of 5*s present in one party's pulls is higher than that in the other's, the party with the higher amount is defined the winner
In cases of a tie for the above, whether no 5*s or equal number of 5*s, total stars will define the winner
If the resulting total stars for the immediate previous are equal, it will be defined as a tie
4.5s are counted as 4.5 stars, do not fulfill the 5* condition, and do not include 3 or 4* characters with an AS or story-based 5*
3.5 stars will be defined as the value for 3* characters pulled that possess a 4* version, excluding Bria
We also agreed to lower the penalties to 3 weeks vs 5 days respectively. With that settled, we entered the Discord VC to stream our showdown... or we were supposed to but I was still at work and ended up delayed. Catd on the other hand began his 10 pull in front of an audience of about 20 users and managed two 4* and a 4.5* Radias. Two hours later and it was my turn. I had already been informed of Catd's pull and was mentally preparing myself for my exile from Mudae (and the associated withdrawal symptoms).
3 star (This is fine)
3 star (This is fine?)
3 star (This is not fine)
3 star (Oh no)
3 star (Oh no no no)
3 star (RIP me)
4 star (Oh?)
GOLD DOOR AS BERTRAND LETS GO!!!!!
4.5 star Mighty (I'm laughing so hard right now)
4.5 star Dunarith (RIP Catd)
And so I won the bet and forced Catd into servitude under the banner of Isuka for 3 weeks. Not the ending you were expecting, was it? But of course, the story isn't over. About 6 hours later came the release of AS Rosetta's banner. As the Church of Rosetta, Harish was given the privilege of streaming his pulls first. All 3k stones worth. Hah! Shouldn't have spent them on Heena and Hism..... MOTHERF%^#$@ Pulling his one desired character in 2k chronos? After wasting half his stash just hours before? Not fair! How can one be so lucky? Well, I certainly can't let him out do me now can I? And so I turned on my stream and began pulling..... And pulling..... And pulling..... And my chronos stones kept ticking down..... .....as I kept pulling. By the 20th multi, I was "slowly" descending into madness. Unlimited Poms, Krervos, and Nonolds had graced my presence, dropping off a few Guiding Light (Staff) before going on their merry way. But as the clouds slowly crept over my vision, a thought struck me like a bolt of lightning. It was a flash of sanity, and in that moment I did what any sane person would do. I dumped all my light staff items on Levia. Because that's the sane response. Naturally. You know what else is a sane response? Writing poetry.
One Rosetta, Two Rosettas, Three Rosettas, Four. The wrong style of Rosetta keeps coming out my doors. I must have used all my luck on the previous pull. Why'd I listen to Catd? I am such a fool.
Speaking of Catd, by the 30th pull he decided to challenge me to another bet. The conditions? Same as last time. This time a year of Hololive from him versus 5 days of Mudae ban from me. Not a bad deal, right? It certainly seems like he's giving up more. But no, I wouldn't be tricked. I could sense the universe conspiring against me. My sixth sense told me there was no way I could beat him in a bet twice. Yes, I'm still sane. Why do you ask?
No, I don't take your bet I bet against myself If I get AS Rosetta this multi, I'll thanos myself in Mudae
For the uninformed, a thanos is exactly what it sounds like. A random half of your roster gets snapped and returned to the pool so other people can try to claim them. Can you guess what happened next? Can you? Yeah, screw you too RNG. So what happens if I get two of them? Do I have to thanos myself twice? Fine, I'll do it. But I beg of you, please don't take Isuka away from me Mudae..... Mudae: LUL > Isuka is now unclaimed. And thus began the most stressful 2 hours of my life as others, Catd included, streamed into Mudae to see if they could snipe Isuka for themselves. A massive war* broke out with countless alliances, backroom deals, and a final battle of reflexes. But that is a story for another time..... *May be slightly embellished.
I Made a Post About Someone Trying To Sell Me Drugs At Work, and Now Six People Have Threatened To Kill Me
Link to the post in question: https://www.reddit.com/RBI/comments/ldjgc4/a_coworker_of_mine_seems_to_be_speaking_in_code/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share EDIT: Death threats are up to elevenfourteenseventeentwenty fivethirty three thirty seven now. It's been a weird day. I posted to RBI about a weird series of messages a coworker sent me with a company Skype account over the course of six days. With their help, I was able to figure out that she was trying to sell me drugs. Opiates and Ecstacy. I reported her. I've seen addiction destroy someone's life, and I wasn't about to enable a drug dealer at my own job. I work for a shipping company, so they could have been using company resources to distribute, too. It took redditors no time at all to label me a narc, and tell me to kill myself, or that I'm a terrible person for ruining this person's side hustle. Got called a class traitor, a boot licker, and a myriad of other things. What people don't understand is that addiction is an illness. We should decriminalize drugs, and rehabilitate the sick. Enabling drug pushers isn't a good way to help anyone. If addicts want drugs, they'll get them no matter what. Pushing drugs on people who didn't ask for them, at work? That ain't it, chief. To my surprise, so many people hoisted this person up as the second coming of Florence Nightingale. One person actually said she was just medicating people. I have a feeling all these people telling me I'm a narc have never watched a perfectly happy 17 year old get pressured into taking Xanax at a party, and watch their addictive personality kick in to the tune of three straight years of addiction, then OD in an abondoned strip mall in a puddle of his own piss. I take it they've never watched someone move from recreational drugs, to hard stuff, to harder stuff, until they're a walking skeleton, begging for drug money in front of a Walmart. Treating drug dealers like they're struggling artists isn't cool or punk, it's stupid. They can get a legitimate side hustle and earn money in a way that doesn't put people at risk. Anyway. After those posts were up all day, I got a lot of PMs. Most were people thanking me for doing the right thing, and sharing their own stories of addiction. Then there were the people telling me to kill myself. The people telling me they'd find me and kill me themselves. The people calling me a tool of the patriarchy. A racist. One person's words: "You hate the drug dealer, but I bet you didn't care if Brock Turner went to prison or not." Brock Turner the rapist aside, it made me so sad to see all these people unable to understand what addiction actually is. How drug dealers are a symptom of a bigger problem. How that symptom still can't go untreated. How that bigger problem fuels the suffering in our society. It made me feel sick. If someone you know is struggling with addictions please reach out to them and offer to be by their side on a road to recovery. Show them love. Show them empathy and kindness. Help them. Don't shake their dealer's hand.
I’m on a baseball card, but I’ve never played baseball
The mint condition and properly sleeved Isaac Bradley baseball card that I needed for my collection turned out to be listed from a seller in an absolute eyesore of a town. Sure, I’m legally obligated to wear my prescription glasses when driving, but in Gary, Indiana, I’ve never ripped them off my head faster than when I was driving round that shithole. It was an utterly haunting hellscape filled with abandoned ruins of houses and lost hope left, right and center – if I was breaking the law or not, I simply didn’t care anymore. My eyeballs couldn’t goddamn breathe. My GPS ended its journey with a ping. Gravel crunched and popped under my tires as I rolled into the driveway around half-past five. The place was downright decrepit. Cut brown fencing had fallen away from around the property, leaving sharp posts that could have been fit for Vlad the Impaler. Mossy fingers and growth climbed the dilapidated building, covering its wooden boarded walls in splashes of sage. My years of searching for the end to my collection with no avail had brought me here: Staring into the abyss of an abandoned house’s open screen door. God help me. “Hey man, here to pick up the Isaac Bradley card.” I closed the car door behind me as I planted two shoes onto gravel. The seller was a sickly pale and plump man with two sunken eyes. Bloated slimy flesh held up his baggy shirt and slicked hair greased his round face. Bodies pulled from the river never looked far off from how this creep did. I should have turned around and left when he didn’t reply and only stared at me unblinkingly in the shadow of the doorframe. Yet, my collection beckoned me to step forward. Isaac Bradley beckoned me. “From eBay?” I prodded him with more details, hoping for both a response to my question and an ease to my nervousness. This guy is exactly the guy you would have expected to be listing auctions from an abandoned house. Intuition is a powerful thing. With every stride closer to the mute man, my subconscious zapped with me with a jolt as if to say: Hey, you’re risking it all for a piece of cardboard, man. Not just any cardboard, brain, it was the cardboard. If you’re ever at an unfortunate and unlikely turning fork in your life where you feel the need to burn your money with addiction by either collecting cards or starting to smoke crack, make sure to choose crack – it’s cheaper that way. Looking ahead as I approached, I saw his eyes that were vacant, glossy globes. They had sunk ghoulishly into his cheekbones, making my heart race as I closed in for a handshake. I was a couple meters away from him when he abruptly reanimated and extended one arm, inviting me with a wide, artificial grin. “Name’s Earnie. Card is right inside; did you bring cash?” My hand almost slid out of his grip; it was as greasy as his face. The smile said earnest Earnie, the eye’s said Jack Torrance from The Shining. “Yep. All here.” I patted my pocket, leaving some sort of white gooey paint from his hand upon my jeans. Inside we went. The place reeked of dust that littered unkempt furniture; broken floorboards creaked with the raspy gasps of a building never meant to be stepped through again. “Take a seat while I grab it for you.” He gestured to one dull, grimy couch. I hadn’t really put much thought into it before, but his face was rather deformed – the bridge of his nose was almost non-existent, skin from his face met the immediate snub holding two nostrils. He quite frankly looked like a gruesome boar, and when he spoke his voice was high pitched like the strange artificial whine of a farmer trying to draw in a group of livestock. I sat down and pillows collapsed inward, flicking years of dust into the air. If I wasn’t entirely convinced it was a crack den, I was by the time I itched my arms as a cockroach scurried under a broken television cabinet. Floorboards soon creaked above me, too. He was searching around for Isaac Bradley with his two meaty legs. As least, I hoped he was. For a while, I waited and stared out through one of the shattered windows and ripped curtains as I contemplated my life choices that had brought me to this moment. Light streamed through – dust sparkled and looked like small mosquitos in the setting sun. That’s when I saw something quite peculiar and rectangular shine. I lifted myself out of the seat and adjusted the cushion. Underneath was a handful of sleeved cards sprawled out across the springy bones of the sofa in between balls of lint. I swooped my hand across the bumpy springs and collected them in a pile before drumming the dust away from my fingers. When I stared at the cards, my lunch lurched at my throat from my stomach. On the card was a polaroid portrait painting of a poor, decomposing soul that rested one protruding cheekbone upon a stiff, contorted fist. He had two open eyes that still screamed. Above: LAZY BONES. My heart rang in my ears and pounded my head, I couldn’t hear him upstairs anymore. I swallowed a lump of sour that tickled my throat. I almost couldn’t bring myself to look at more. My fingers shuffled the next card to the front. The polaroid in the middle of the card was a shoddy, blurry camera shot that depicted a woman sprinting towards a door outside of a house, one hand clutching the gaping knife-holes in her back, the other stretching out, begging to be let inside before it was too late. I was shaking the card as I read it: HOME RUN. Launching to my feet, I nearly tripped over bits of perked up rotten floorboard. One of nails that came out of the wood shot through my rubber shoe and into my flesh like a hot iron, sending a stabbing pain up through into my ankle. I made it to the front door. I twisted the knob and pushed, but it didn’t budge. Back to the living room I went, leaving a long line of blood that gushed out of my shoe like the oil from a leaky truck on a long highway. My elbow snaked around the metal borders of the smashed window, one hand feeling around for what I couldn’t see. My hand touched metal. Barred in. From the creaking staircase, a bright camera flash lit up the dim room. And again. He was coming, and I had nowhere to run – my foot ached, yet I clutched my tight chest as I limped towards the kitchen. Click, snap. More flashes of his camera followed behind as I held one limping leg in the kitchen doorframe. On the kitchen counter: Photos of me, my wife. Eyes closed, in our bed. Beside his rusty hammer, I caught sight of a card and what was untidily scrawled at the top: SLEEPING BEAUTY. Click, snap. Thoughts stuck with me about grabbing the hammer, but it was already too late. I was limping forward. I circled back to the hallway next to the stairs that he had come down from. It was strange, sure, but in that moment, I couldn’t help but still think about the collector’s item I had come to pick up. I would grab Isaac Bradley and we would both make it out of here, alive. Without warning, one arm reached around and pulled mine. Turning, I saw the hammer in his other hand. I wormed and twisted to free myself as white flesh came away from his bloated hands from where he grabbed me, just like when I had shaken his hand earlier. He glared up at me with vacant white eyes over a revolting bloated body that must have been filled with vile, decomposing goo. I kicked and kicked before he tumbled down the stairs. I climbed the staircase swiftly, spotting polaroid’s and bits of cardboard he had been stitching together moments before. Photos of my thin trail of blood upon the moldy wooden floor, photos of the back of my head turning and limping away. I kept hobbling forward in the hallway, and the camera behind me kept snapping, snapping. Webs got caught around my arm as I sluggishly shuffled into the bedroom. My heart that had been pounding in my chest soothed quickly as I caught sight of him, and a warmth of relief spread through me. There he was, upon one disintegrated bedside table. Isaac Bradley. He was so beautifully unique, nothing I had ever seen before. I took the card with two shaky hands, but deep down I knew I would be needing more. More cards for my next perfect collection. Steps sounded beyond the bedroom door I had shut behind myself; a thin black line bloomed in the space beneath it. He was outside. Through the window I tumbled, sliding off roofing and hitting the lawn with a thud. Still wincing and struggling from my slip and fall, I almost dropped Isaac on my way to the car when I fumbled my keys. I flung myself into my vehicle and roared off into the setting sun, the man watching me unblinkingly from the screen door through gravel and dust that kicked up behind my trail. Taking a long route home was my best bet in case he gave chase. Though, reflecting on the cards of me and my wife sleeping meant he already knew where my apartment was, and my stomach turned. The drive was long and when I was home, my wife was already sound asleep. I cleaned my wound thoroughly with alcohol and sat on my couch, trying my best to recompose. I pulled the six cards out of my pockets, slipping the top one into my leatherback folder in the last space between all the dated faces of baseball royalty. Bradley was the perfect fit after all these years. My excitement had passed, however. There was something else plaguing me now. I found something more important than Bradley and baseball: The other cards I had found in Indiana. I slipped them into my hands. THE PITCHER was one of them. The face of the person in the polaroid wasn't recognizable, however the card’s beauty certainly was. Her features had been distorted to a sickening mush by the impact of the rusty hammer. Beside her head was a large punchbowl filled with a maroon drip that had flowed from her scalp like a tap. Filled halfway, and to the right of the polaroid, was a tall glass pitcher. My baseball card collection was incredible, but my new collection was turning out to be perfect. Many weeks had passed living in my apartment north of Indiana. I surfed eBay for cards occasionally – yet there were none as rare and as beautiful as the pieces Earnie had blessed me with. I loved my wife, but he turned her screaming mug into the rarest card in my collection. I didn't entirely mean for her to die, but her death wasn't in vain. The seller was slowly but surely helping me build my bigger, better collection - baseball cards were just a memory, common junk out of the garage to sell at a pawnshop or a thrift store. If you ever order anything from Gary, Indiana, always opt for postage. But most importantly, don’t open your eyes when you wake up and hear the high-pitched whistle coming from the snub where you think a nose should be. I usually pretend to be fast asleep on the nights that I wake up finding him standing over my bed painting or taking photos of me. Those make the rarest cards, he tells me, so I leave the door unlocked so he can come in and work. He needs to work on my new collection. My rarest collection. Though, just as my wife had done, there are times I open my eyes when he’s at the foot of my bed. The times he brings the hammer. Those are the times I scream. [SS]
I've Found 929 Discs Over 4 Years - Here's Some Data!
Over the last 4 years I’ve collected data on the discs I’ve found, broken it down into chunks and trends I thought were interesting, and shared it with the community. Previous year’s posts can be found 2019 Post and 2020 Post. This post deals with averages for the entire data set collected over the years. There are some comparisons from the previous years’ averages just for giggles here and there but if you’re looking for trends by comparing old posts you’ll need to remember that all of the data keeps getting rolled over into a larger and larger aggregate. I do plan on breaking finds down by year as well as location in future posts. Lots of neat data so may as well play with it, right? I’ve explained my data collection a bit more near the end of this post. If you notice some math and number discrepancies, it’s likely due to rounding or an incomplete data set. Or maybe it’s just me. As is tradition, I’d like you to ask yourself some questions about found discs. Take a guess, maybe ask your buddies what they think, and see how close you get to the actual data. Put a couple of bucks on it if that’s your thing. I’ll give you a little location context so you know what you’re working with.
Where were these discs found? Basket - 2 Brush - 9 Fairway - 43 Marsh/Mud - 17 Woods - 91 On Ice - 7 Roof - 2 Water - 429 SCUBA - 323
Summarized into some cleaner percentages: Water - 81% Land - 19%
I’ll talk about some thoughts on the locations a bit later. I split Water and SCUBA in the table even though there’s some overlap. If a disc was listed as found in the water, it was recovered either using a retriever or wading. SCUBA is self explanatory. While there are no doubt some SCUBA discs that were found close enough to shore for wading, these were generally deeper and more inaccessible for somebody out just playing.
Here are your questions. 1. How many discs were marked with a name and number? 2. What’s my disc return rate? 3. What brand/manufacturer was lost most frequently? 4. What speed of disc was lost most frequently? 5. What color of disc was lost most frequently? 6. What type of plastic was lost most frequently? 7. What molds were most commonly lost?
I don’t recommend scrolling down much more prior to taking your guesses.
1. How many discs were marked with a name and number? This, along with return rate, was actually one of the pieces of information I wanted to know about when I first started thinking about the discs we were finding. It’s certainly a populacontroversial topic on discgolf.
Discs marked with number: 47% Unmarked discs: 51% Marked, but no number: 2%
So basically half of the discs I find are uninked. That number has fluctuated a bit over the years by a % or two but has really been consistent. The marked but no number discs usually have a PDGA #, but sometimes it’s just a name. In retrospect, I wish I kept track of how many times a bad number was present on the disc but oh well, that ship has sailed.
2. What is my disc return rate?
Total Return Rate (All Discs): 30% Total Return Rate (Marked Discs Only): 65% Total Return Rate (Unmarked Discs): 9%
We text the numbers on the discs we find. Ideally we get it done immediately when we find it as it makes meet-ups easier, but sometimes they’re too dirty and need a good scrubbing before we can read the number. If the text doesn’t work, they get a call. We also scan the local league page, which has a running lost disc thread, and see if we recognize anything. From there we either meet up at a course, arrange a drop-off location like under a trash can, or give it to a league person that can run the disc to its owner. We increased our efforts quite a bit to run “iffy” discs back this year. Last year we only bothered with numbered discs. This year we tried to run back pretty much everything. There’s a story behind it but figured I wouldn’t clutter up a data post too much. There’s actually a lot to unpack with these numbers. For example, 65% of marked discs are returned. Seems kind of low, right? But many of those owners tell us to keep the disc. My numbers on this data isn’t great as I only kept track of it this last year, but I have records of being told to keep a found disc 49 times - that’s 12% of marked discs. If we consider those discs “returned”, our rate goes up to 77%. Those numbers are low - I’m guessing if I had kept better records of “keep its” it would bring us closer to 80% but that’s speculation. Additionally, my buddy has a duffle bag of marked discs waiting to be returned sitting in his car. There’s 35 of them in there that have had positive contacts and are pending being returned. That’s another 9% if they ever get around to trying to get their stuff back (I know, it’s COVID, we’re trying to be understanding - most of these discs have been in there for months though). Anyway, moral of the story? 86% of marked discs are “accounted” for per their owners wishes and a good chunk of the 14% that’s left just had bad numbers. Others never get back to us and a few drop off the face of the earth after replying once or twice. A couple of times the owner had passed. It’s an unusual feeling when you find one of their discs. That still leaves us with a lot of unmarked discs. This year we got a small chunk (9% of all unmarked discs, 4% of total discs found) of them returned. Part of it was coordination with the local league. Part of it was just conversation with other players on the course. My buddy is a talker and likes meeting people. One of the first things he asks is if they’ve played a given course before and if they’ve lost anything. Surprisingly, we’ve returned quite a few discs from these conversations. What do we do with all the unreturned discs? After a few weeks I suppose we take ownership of them and do what we want. Usually we end up giving them away. We adore giving families and groups that are just starting piles of discs. One of the new things we picked up doing this year is making people whole when they’ve lost a disc. Sometimes we haven’t found the specific disc somebody lost but have an identical(ish) unmarked, unwanted, or unclaimed mold that we found that we can give them as a replacement. Sometimes we’ll sell a batch off if we’re getting ridiculous on storage. Helps pay for gear and gas and keeps the clutter down. It’s pretty rare we need to do that though - we’d rather give them to new players but that becomes a tricky proposition with the high speed stuff. A few we’ll keep and bag ourselves, but it’s pretty rare beyond maybe just trying a new mold out for a round or three.
3. What brand/manufacturer was lost most frequently?
Innova holds a commanding lead with Discraft being the only other significant contender. Merging companies like Trilogy and the MVP/Axiom/Streamline narrows things a bit, but not much. Last year I chunked the companies together based on who was manufacturing what, but with Discmania shopping around their sourcing I’m no longer certain who’s making what nowadays.
Data was taken from Infinitediscs’s flight information for each disc. I know there’s occasionally discrepancies between them and the manufacturers but I figured it would be best to pull information from one source.
Top 5 lost speeds: Speed 13 - 20% Speed 12 - 15% Speed 9 - 13 % Speed 5 - 9% Speed 10 and Speed 11 - 7%
Loss % By Type: High Speed Drivers (11-14) – 47% Fairway/Control Drivers (7-10) – 28% Mids (4-6) – 18% Putters (1-3) – 6%
As is tradition, the high speed drivers dominate the lost disc category. I’m looking forward to breaking the land and water data apart as nearly all of the water holes I find discs on are under 300’ from tee to basket but hey, people are going to throw what they’re going to throw. It’s also a bit of a nuisance that putters and mids are the least frequently lost but the most useful disc to give to new players. If y’all could start trying to emulate Lizotte with some unmarked putters on water hazards I’d appreciate it. If he can clear nearly 500’ of water, surely you can manage 250’, right? Go for it... cough
5. What color of disc was lost most frequently?
Blue - 18% Red - 14% Yellow - 13% Orange - 12% Pink - 11% White - 10% Black - 9% Green - 8% Tye Dye - 4% Purple - 3% Gray - 2% Violet - 2% Brown, Clear, Copper, Gold, and Peach each represented less than 1% of found discs.
From year to year, the color averages seem to change the most with the exception of blue being on top. One thing I noticed, however, is that I lump all blue discs together regardless of shade while most of the other colors have a “lighter” and “darker” version so that is likely bloating its numbers a bit. I’m not certain why I recorded them that way. Lord knows I got creative with plenty of other shades. For the purpose of simplicity, all discs marked “burgundy, wine, chartreuse, seafoam, turquoise” or any other oddball description got shoved into an arbitrarily “close enough” color category. Apparently some days I must feel poetic while recording these things.
I lumped all the different plastic brands into “close enough” varieties. Flexy, glow, and lightweight discs all got dumped together regardless of what plastic variety they were built into. I’m guessing a lot of folks thought base plastic would be the most common, but turns out it’s fairly rare in comparison to the premium plastics. I wonder if a lot of it gets retired into peoples’ garages and basements when they decide they like the game and upgrade. Those starter kits have to end up somewhere….
7. What molds were most commonly lost? As is tradition, I’ll be listing these according to the total number found instead of %. Unfortunately there wasn’t a clean “break” point so I’ll just arbitrarily pick...double digits I guess.
Ah, Destroyers - I knew you were the disc we were finding the most of, and every year you prove me right by preposterous ratios. Actually, I’m a bit surprised to see so many Innovas firmly entrenched in the top 10. The list has definitely shifted through the years. Heck, the first year Drones (of all discs) made the top 5. I don’t think I’ve found one since…. Anecdotally, the Kong/Zeus/McBeth Driver just barely missed the list - it’s definitely trying hard to catch up. I have a sneaking suspicion it may actually have made the double digit list but I think two “Prototypes” got marked as Hades due to what the owners indicated they thought they were, but I’m not so sure they weren’t Zeuses. Eh, who knows - we’ll see it on the list next year I’m betting. For the morbidly curious - there were 118 “Unicorn” discs, of which only one example of that given mold was found. Definitely not bitter about having to look up the flight numbers for every single stinking one of them…. A grand total of 271 different molds were found. 4 discs I was unable to identify - two oddball Innovas that had no markings and I just couldn’t figure out and 2 generic ones that probably came out of a Costco “Frolf” set or something.
And some stats for funsies…. Total discs I’ve found courses on: 23 out of 43 played - or 53% of courses played I’ve found a disc on. Disc finding rate: 606 discs found over 503 rounds played = 1.2 discs a round Note: I’ve removed the SCUBA discs from this but there were instances we went out just to wade instead of playing a course so this number is inflated a bit. We do find a lot of discs while playing - 2 or 3 isn’t all that weird. More if we have to go into the water to get one we lose ourselves. Also, this is not accounting for rounds played prior to U-Disc, but I wasn’t finding them at nearly the rate I do now. It’s accurate enough for a hipfire statistic. Most discs found in one day: 73 - SCUBA diving, two tanks of air
Average Discs Found on 1 Tank of Air - 25
u/mechanickzilla made a comment in a recent thread about lugging out a bunch of gear to a pond and searching for hours for 30 discs. It amused me because it sounded right. Turns out to be a pretty darn close estimate! A tank of air lasts roughly an hour. If I average out all SCUBA time it works out to be 25 discs per tank/hour in the water. I did refine my technique from early days and upped my efficiency quite a bit this year - turns out if I bring a salvage bag and don’t rise to toss discs to shore every time my hands were full I get a LOT more search time out of a tank and my average rises to 32 discs per tank, or about a disc every 2 minutes. There is some prep and cleanup time involved so I suppose strictly speaking the rate is lower if I want to account for the entire process instead of just time in the water.
Where discs are being found - 34% on one course, 48% on another, so 82% of discs were found on only two courses.
Most discs returned to one person - I’ve honestly lost count. I know he’s up to 12 or 15 and that’s a conservative estimate.
Most frequently found disc - A blue teebird we’ve returned 4 times. Haven’t seen the previous champion blue Rogue for quite some time. I’ll have to ask the owner what happened to it.
Find anything else interesting? A half dozen vape pens, a jar of marijuana, 8 golf clubs, hundreds of golf balls, 4 golden retrievers (the disc retriever, not the dog), 3 sunglasses, a couple of cell phones, 3 unopened beers, a couple of rakes, untold millions of towels, a bluetooth speaker, 3 sets of car keys, 1 pair of kid-sized glasses, 5 bicycles, and a rifle case.
About Location Location turned out to be a bit trickier to classify than I thought and I’ve changed and reclassified things several times now. For a while it was just woods and water, but that really didn’t do a good job of describing finding something on shore or in a basket. Here’s what I ended up with: Brush - anything not mowed without trees. Includes briars, bushes, and long grass. You’ll notice there are not a lot of these - that’s because I HATE walking through these areas and avoid them. A lot of the ones we found in this condition were there because we were looking for one of our own or we were cleaning up the course and happened to stumble across one while brushwhacking or something. Seriously, long grass is the WORST to look through. I feel for those of you that fight with it and really, really appreciate the courses that cut search paths through it. Marsh - the swampy, mucky crap that disc golf courses love to get built on because what else are you going to do with the land? Not quite enough to be able to submerge your disc, but plenty soggy enough that you’ll ruin a pair of shoes trying to walk through it. A lot of shore finds were reclassified to this. Fairway - anything mowed. I’m always surprised at how many discs we find on the fairway. I suspect some of them are blown down from being stuck in trees. Others are no doubt forgotten. A few are probably bad throws that rolled to someplace ridiculous. A lot of times we get these back to groups actively on the course, but a surprising amount of times we don’t. I think the rest are pretty self-explanatory.
Why? Just...why? Nearly 1000 entries is a lot to monkey with (believe me, I entered every damned one of them - many of them two or three times as I revised and improved my organization). The data collection started more or less by accident. My buddy and I were playing nearly daily and we were stumbling across a steady stream of discs. We speculated about what disc we were finding the most of (there were three or four reasonable contenders) but really didn’t have firm answers, just hazy recollections and some finger counting. In an attempt to answer our whimsically discussed question, I dug through my storage bin and counted. That left me with some numbers, but not the whole picture. I realized that there were quite a few discs that we’d returned, given away, or sold over the year prior. Fortunately, I had been in the habit of texting numbers to try and return discs and we both tended to take pictures if we found something on the course to show our friends. I had also started a disc golf journal I was keeping on Google Calendar and, for whatever reason, had been noting when we found a disc on the course. Between that documentation and memory (there were less than a hundred or so discs at the time, so it was easy to remember where I had found a given disc) I was able to put together a fairly decent, but somewhat incomplete, starting point for data. Sometimes data was missing, like color or plastic, but it was something to work with. I did what I could to keep the data “true” and no doubt neglected to account for some discs simply because I didn’t have documentation for them. I guarantee, for example, some discs were found on the course that were left by the group ahead of us and returned nearly immediately that did not get recorded. I also didn’t record discs lost and found from my own party. When in doubt, I left it out. It means some of my numbers are a bit different from one category to another as well. For example, I may have had documentation on the mold found, but not its color. As I collected the data and put them into an actual spreadsheet (Let me assure you, tracking data in Google Calendar is...not recommended) I realized there was certain data I wanted and began making a concentrated effort to keep track of it. There’s still mistakes and omissions, no doubt, but it should be pretty darn solid. Is the data good for anything? Hard to say. It’s a significant data pool, but the questions that can be asked of it are not always clear. The reason we find so many Innova discs, for example, is probably not because they are more prone to being lost than other brands, but rather that they are more popular and more thrown, and thus more likely to be lost and found. Color becomes more tricky - am I finding a lot of blue discs because they are more popular or are they easier to see and thus be found? Discs found with SCUBA are usually felt rather than seen, is there a difference between colors found on land and water? Finding trends may also be possible. It’s possible to isolate discs found by park per year they were found (heck, down to the date if need be) so perhaps we can find changes from year to year in a given location. It’s something I plan to dig into and post about from time to time. One area I could use some advice on is classifying discs by stability. The spreadsheet currently includes Speed, Turn, and Fade numbers along with quantity. For each mold of disc. I had planned on identifying discs on stable/neutral/understable but those definitions are not particularly clear. If anybody has thoughts on how this could be organized I’d love to hear them. Right now I’m looking at maybe displacement from 0 or something but I have a hard time calling a -2/2 disc like a Valk “Neutral”. I suppose I could break them down strictly by the listed fade/turn numbers. Shouldn’t be more than a dozen combinations. Anyway, I suppose there is no “why” other than curiosity and a desire to contribute to the community. I think it’s interesting so I’m posting it. Not going to lie, I like seeing if it’s enough to earn a “Quality Post” tag as well. As bad as a kid with a sticker chart, I swear. Feel free to ask questions - I do plan on breaking down data by year, location, and stability (once I figure out how to organize it) so there will likely be a few extra posts this year.
The Sports Betting Forum at Reddit r/ sportsbetting. Join. Posts Wiki Bovada Sportsbook Intertops Sportbook BoDog Sportsbook. Hot. Hot New Top Rising. Hot New Top. Rising. card. card classic compact. 196. pinned by moderators. Posted by. sharp like a knife. 1 month ago . Moderator of r/sportsbetting. 2 & 2 More. Reddit's Sports Betting Chat. 196. 1.3k. share. save. Live Discussion. 5. Posted Now im betting again with scraps (50$ and 100$) and i just loaned money from my friend again. He gave me 160$ and i just asked for 160$ again because i lost everything in my bank account. My brother thibks i have 80$ in my bank account, but its gone. Imagine if he finds out. I will be kicked out 100%. Now that the Supreme Court has eliminated the federal ban on sports betting, a costly national gambling addiction crisis could be around the corner. Betting while the kids were in the bath. At the zenith of my addiction, I was married with two beautiful young children and working as a finance manager at a local council. When I was with my Shift Addiction and Online Betting . It’s accessible anytime, anywhere. Hundreds of thousands of gamblers are at risk all over the world. Online sports betting may be addictive. Indeed, in Addiction by Design: Pete Rose The former Cincinnati Reds player and manager, who faces a lifetime suspension from baseball for betting on his own team, once incurred a debt of $400,000 to a bookmaker over a three-month period in 1987. John Daly The so-called bad boy of the PGA Tour has put his gambling losses at more than $50 million over 12 years. Gladys Knight The Empress of There are many sports betting websites that make you want to get into betting after learning how easy it is to bet. If the three signs of a gambling addiction sound like you, talk to your doctor as soon as possible. The bad news is that gambling disorder is a serious mental illness that could take control of your life. The good news is that gambling disorder is treatable through a combination Addiction Resource is an educational platform for sharing and disseminating information about addiction and substance abuse recovery centers. Addiction Resource is not a healthcare provider nor does it claim to offer sound medical advice to anyone. Addiction Resource does not favor or support any specific recovery center nor do we claim to ensure the quality, validity or effectiveness of any Reddit’s only one example. With one Google search for “problem gambling stories”, you’ll come across a list of sad stories here. Or, you can read about Justin here, where you’ll learn about his sports betting addiction – including how he ultimately lost $80,000 riding the highs and lows that come from betting on sports. The point of sharing all this is to show you how dangerous The word addiction comes from a Latin term meaning “bound to” or “enslaved by.” And anyone who has suffered/suffers from an addiction—or has tried to help someone with an addiction—can attest to the powerful, prolonged grip it exerts; the personal, professional and other damage it causes; and the challenges to quitting. This is especially true of online gambling, which is diagnosed
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