I have no horse in the GME "fight" right now. I wish you all the best, and it is the biggest trading mistake of my life so far. I was talking about GME with my friends in March 2020, and even did trade some options then for a loss. I must have read DFV at some point, as we were discussing Burry and a "technical short squeeze" happening. But I missed the real boat, so good on DFV and all of the rest of you degenerates.
Instead, I focused my market attention during quarantine on precious metals. My opinion is that in the long term (10+ years) they will provide the only real hedge against inflation in the world as every CB on the planet is exploding the supply of fiat to deal with COVID economic disruption.
In the short term, I believe that the "powers that be" are engineering the largest short squeeze in the history of markets. We do not have the power to effect whether this happens, it is simply an inevitability. HFs, banks, and other large institutions are going to extract an enormous amount of wealth from the world during this squeeze. This money will be taken from the future pocket of every consumer of industrial goods for the next several decades in the form of inflated prices on everything: batteries, electronics, solar panels, EVs...even jewelry and silverware.
We cannot stop them, but I have decided to try to hop on for the ride. The last few months aside, I never saw WSB as a force for societal change, because the people who control the money are always going to win the most in the end. WSB is a place where we can learn the tricks of a market that is structurally rigged against us, and use those tricks to our advantage. To use an analogy that I think we all know: I am not, and will never be, Ender. But I can learn that the Enemy's Gate is Down, and play The Game that way.
The tl;dr is this: the market for silver is the most manipulated physical market in the history of the world. $SLV is the vehicle that is currently being used behind the scenes to vaccum up ownership of every available physical bar of silver in major bullion vaults in the world. When it has completed doing that, the "paper" markets that have held down the price of silver for decades will become disconnected from the physical markets. The energy that has been artificially held back for decades by this paper will explode the price of physical silver, and I have no idea how high it will go. $SLV will stand (mostly) alone as the world's exchange traded product for electronic trading of physical silver.

LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING: WHY IS SILVER IMPORTANT?

Silver has been used as real currency for thousands of years, and there is an argument to be made for returning to "sound" money through the use of silver and gold. However, that is not the argument that I am making.
Silver is a highly industrial metal, and it's usage for industry will only continue to expand as we electrify the future. Silver is important for electrical applications b/c it is the most-conductive / least-resistive metal in the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_and_conductivity_of_various_materials). It is used heavily in all electronic applications (even more since RoHS has pushed us away from Tin/Lead and towards Tin/Silver solder blends, with silver being added to mitigate the longevity problems of 100% Tin solder growing Tin whiskers and shorting out components). But the largest new demands on silver are going to come from solar panels and EVs. Utility-scale solar is now virtually tied with wind as the cheapest new sources of energy in the world and is only getting cheaper every year. As fossil fuel plants continue to reach the end of their service life, they are going to be replaced with solar and wind technologies. As EVs become more prevalent, their components (ESPECIALLY their batteries) will produce additional demand for Silver.
As smart investors are wont to do, this coming demand for industrial silver has been front-run and large quantites of silver have been sucked into investment products so that they can produce financial returns when demand begins to increase. 2020 showed remarkable investor interest in silver, to the tune of an estimated 350Mtoz moving into exchange traded products like $SLV. $SLV alone added ~200Mtoz of silver to it's holdings in 2020.
Unfortunately for the market, supply cannot meet demand: Of the 930.9Mtoz estimated for 2020 demand, only 236Mtoz was available for physical investment, because the rest was consumed by industrial uses. This means that $SLV alone absorbed almost the entire world's capacity for silver investment in 2020, and as you'll see soon, this is only accelerating in 2021.
Source for demand/supply/investment numbers: https://www.silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SilverInstitute2020InterimPR.pdf

LETS GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL

Now it's important to understand that huge amounts of "silver" is traded on "paper" markets, and these markets have historically decided the approximate cost of physical silver in the world, in the form of the "spot price". I'm not going to give anyone a primer on how this works, go read about the London Fix and COMEX paper on your own time. But the important thing to know is that there are a bunch of silver bars in vaults in London and in the U.S., and electronic claims on them are traded on the LBMA and COMEX continuously, without the silver ever leaving the vaults.
However, these vaults have concrete numbers of physical bars in them, and trading contracts against them technically means that you can show up at a window somewhere and demand your 5x 1000oz bars that a COMEX warrant entitle you to. This redemption happens all the time, and it can be used to extract physical silver from the unallocated storage at bullion vaults and release it to industrial or consumer bullion uses. However, these bars can also be moved into "registered" or "allocated" accounts without them leaving the overall vault storage. This means that a quantity of individual silver bars that an owner holds title to can be physically moved inside the vault onto a different rack, and the owner has individual serial numbers of bars that they own. These bars can be withdrawn on demand only by their owner and are not available for general redemption of a COMEX warrant.
So how many bars are there? Well between LBMA and COMEX, there are 1480.3Mtoz sitting in vaults (sources below when I start doing math). This includes all allocated AND unallocated bars. Now, obviously London and NY are separated by an ocean, but people always like to bring up that bars could be moved b/w London <-> American COMEX vaults. This is an enormous undertaking, but let's make a "spherical chicken in a vaccuum" level assumption and say that LBMA + COMEX vaults are a singular source of inventory for both $SLV and other market participants.
If you read the $SLV S-1 (which I did: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1330568/000119312505127244/ds1.htm) you would learn that the custodian of the $SLV trust is required to hold all silver weight (with an exception for 1100toz of unallocated, lol) that is owned by the trust in allocated accounts, where the individual bars are physically segregated inside the vaults, and the serial numbers of the owned bars are explicitly recorded. The idea that there is "no physical silver" backing the SLV trust and "you could get settled with cash" is ridiculous. iShares publishes a report listing every serial number of every bar that is owned by the trust, along with the total weight contained in the bars. It is 10847 pages long (you can read it here if you have trouble sleeping at night: https://emea-markets.jpmorgan.com/metalicsWebAppJanus/publicUnauthenticated/BONY_SLV.pdf) and is updated frequently.
The underlying silver is owned by the trust. It cannot be removed from the trust unless "baskets" of 50000 shares are redeemed by an "Authorized Participant" which is only a few large brokers. It cannot be removed by the bullion vaults and given to other customers because it is physically segregated inside the vaults.
People who have recently beaten down the idea of a silver squeeze love to talk about how JP Morgan is the custodian for the SLV trust. And because JPM just paid a $1B fine for historical manipulation of the paper silver market, they aren't going to be honest about this. This is crazy talk.
When it comes to the dishonesty of a big bank, there is "fraud" and there is FRAUD. "Fraud" would be them saying "Oh sorry, we didn't realize that a laundromat bringing in $300k/week of dirty dollar bills was out of the ordinary". "Fraud" happens all the time, and the banks get away with it regularly. FRAUD would be them saying "Oh yes, 3rd party customer (iShares) who services dozens of other large banking institutions in the world, here is objective evidence, with serial numbers, that we have these silver bars in the vault" and then just making up the data. It is QANON-level crazy, IMHO, to think that JPM is going to commit FRAUD by publishing a list of serial numbers that is completely fake.
I believe the exact opposite: since they have just gotten caught, they are playing it straight this time and have just switched sides in order to go long. On the COMEX alone, JP Morgan Chase is long 193.9Mtoz, or just north of $5B.
(COMEX depository data by weight: https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls)
The problem for the futures and options markets is that their continual trading of paper contracts is chasing a smaller and smaller amount of physical silver that is not owned by $SLV. And the market participants (minus, now, JPM) who have gotten away with naked selling of paper contracts and mostly settling them for cash are going to soon find the underlying vaults empty and no metal to give to warrant holders who come looking for it.

HOW BIG OF A PROBLEM IS $SLV FOR THE NAKED SHORTS IN THE PAPER MARKET? LET'S DO SOME MATH.

$SLV inventory math:
$SLV is holding 669,357,789.40 troy ounces in trust, and has 720,500,000 shares outstanding.
(If you are curious why $SLV/share trades below the spot price, it's because: 669.4Mtoz / 720.5M shares = .929 toz / share)
($SLV data from here: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund?qt=SLV#/ )
(screenshot from tonight for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/0sqcMFr)
Bullion vault inventory math:
London (LBMA) silver stocks are 1080.5Mtoz (http://www.lbma.org.uk/london-precious-metals-physical-holdings-statistics)
US COMEX silver stocks are 399.8Mtoz (https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls)
669.4/(1080.5 + 399.8) = 45.2% of the vaulted silver in the world is already owned by SLV
Subtracting what SLV already owns, leaves us with: (1080.5 + 399.8) - 669.4 = 810.9Mtoz
(This is completely ignoring the fact that a lot of that remaining silver is owned in registered or allocated accounts by individual owners. E.g. there is 150.2Mtoz in "registered" on the COMEX which means those bars are already specifically deeded to an individual owner. But they could theoretically sell it to SLV so I included it as available.)
810.9Mtoz is the ABSOLUTE THEORETICAL MAXIMUM available in LBMA + COMEX silver that is not already owned by SLV.
Now how short are the shorts? Some more math:
OI on COMEX futures: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver-futures-and-options.html

+ 179786*5000toz + 130402*5000toz + 8245*1000toz + 1903*2500toz ---------------- 1,563,942,500 = 1563.9Mtoz 

in currently open interest that could be demanded for delivery. Just on the COMEX, there could be demand for twice as much silver as there is in the combined LBMA + COMEX vaults that is not explicitly owned by $SLV right now.
Caveats:

• I have not included any London futures contracts that may have claims on metal here. I am not versed in their contracts at all and don't have a good data source right now. If anyone knows how to calculate the short obligation for London I would be glad to add it.
  
• I have not analyzed any of the strike prices on COMEX options or dates on COMEX futures...some of them could be way out of the money or way in the future. Many silver producers sell futures years in advance to lock in prices, and then deliver the physical to satisfy the contracts.
  

Using the same basic methodology–total shorts divided by shares [toz in this case] outstanding–as is used on a stock to calculate short interest (and gave us the infamous 140% short interest on GME) we get......drumroll please:
1563.9 short / 810.9 physical = 192.9% short interest.
OPEN INTEREST ON COMEX SILVER FUTURES AND OPTIONS IS EQUIVALENT TO A 192.9% SHORT INTEREST AGAINST ALL LONDON AND U.S. AVAILABLE INVENTORY.
But it gets even worse.

WANNA ADD A GAMMA SQUEEZE??

I pulled the data for all current OI in SLV options. There is a large number (5.7 million) of call contracts open (here are the totals: https://imgur.com/tiqPA34)
Using the .929toz/share number, we can calculate that there are up to 527.2Mtoz that would have to be bought during an absolute runaway Gamma Squeeze. Call options on $SLV max out right now at $55, so the spot price would only have to increase by around 122% to reach the point that all of that weight would need to have been purchased. But at some point, it could become self-reinforcing, and the gamma squeeze continues to cause more gamma squeezing.
I believe that this almost happened Sunday evening (2021-01-31) as evidenced by the huge premium that $SLV was trading to the futures price for a few minutes when trading opened. (My comparison chart: https://i.imgur.com/UPjL3zm.png)
The Silver ETF that trades on Sunday in Tel Aviv (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/TCHF82:IT) closed up >6% (and was consistenly rising for the entire session) before any american spot markets opened. I believe that hedging algorithms at MM firms that write options saw this spike as a need to buy shares in $SLV to cover their deltas, and so they bought the opening of $SLV like crazy. $SLV opened up 17.6%, while paper only opened up about 6%. Paper market players had to sell 23.8Mtoz of paper in the first minute of trading to keep the price under control. I have never seen an imbalance like this before, and it was covered up quickly (within 2 hours of trading). But to me, it sounds like Vincent's heartbeat monitor in GATTACA when he runs out of fake signal: there was a cover up required to hide this explosion.
When the day comes that this cover up is not executed properly, stuff is going to get ugly, b/c $SLV won't just gamma squeeze like a normal stock...

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! A TRADITIONAL GAMMA/SHORT SQUEEZE WILL SEEM LIKE NOTHING IN SILVER

The squeeze in silver will be FAR WORSE than the combination of a gamma and short squeeze in a stock, because shares of stock cannot be removed from the market. Eventually somebody holding $VW or $GME is going to say "sure, I'll sell at $42,000.69 per share" and that share can go back to cover a short. But if instead of doing that, the holder of that share withdrew it from the market by converting it to a physical token b/c they thought that the physical token would be more valuable than the share (the retail premium on physical silver vs. paper silver), the short interest would INCREASE as shares were converted into tokens. And since there are currently more "shares" of silver than there are bars of silver in the vault, the shorts can be caught with a literally illiquid market that has nothing to buy.
Zero. Zilch. No silver available.
The doomsday scenario (for paper silver holders and writers) is the following combination:

• holders of COMEX warrants will see the rising premium of physical bullion to the spot price and decide to redeem their warrants for physical
  
• a rising spot price will Gamma Squeeze the writers of $SLV options into buying more shares in a runaway fashion and the trust will absorb all available vault inventory as it issues new shares
  

COMEX warrant holders who try to demand metal that doesn't exist will literally break the market.
The CBOE will probably step in and decide to force settle the contracts for cash at the last known good price, and COMEX paper warrants will cease trading forever.
The physical market price will then be disconnected from the paper market, and $SLV as an exchange traded product will stand (mostly) alone as the new "paper" market for silver.

SO WTF DO I DO? [NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE]

Well I could always buy physical silver, if I can stomach the premium and wait 8 weeks for it to show up. Or, I could just get long on $SLV. Since I believe that $SLV will stand alone after the dust settles as the one true claim on bars in the vaults, I could be long the actual $SLV ticker in several ways:

• Buying shares (duh, but it worked for $GME)
  
• Buying long dated calls (Gamma Squeeze go BRRRRR, but who knows when)
  
• Buying option spreads (my personal favorite)
  

If I wanted to maximize my contribution to the Gamma Squeeze, I'd probably buy as much Delta/$ as I could get using weeklies, which would be 2/5 $26.5C or 2/12 $28C
(Max delta/$ calculations: https://i.imgur.com/Az3o85v.png and https://i.imgur.com/eRPQo6k.png)
Current open positions for me are: (https://imgur.com/vWZrziG)

• Jan'22 50/55 call spread (costs .17, moonshot pays $5, 29x)
  
• 4/16 40/55 call spread (costs .18, moonshot pays $15, 83x)
  
• 2/5 $26.5 call (to maximize delta/$)
  
• jan'22 $40 call (to minimize risk of missing the big one)
  
• $AG shares and jan'23 10/35 call spread (added, sorry i forgot this one: https://imgur.com/fz80V6J)
  

Footnote, all the pictures I think I used, in case i missed something: https://imgur.com/a/0sqcMFr

My name is Jared A. Brock. Having just turned 35, I sat down to reflect on everything I’ve learned so far and made a list of the things I wish I learned far sooner. None of these are rules or commands for you to follow, just personal reflections from a decade of journaling. I hope they save you a lot of time, energy, and struggle:

1. “Save the best for last” is terrible advice.

A French monk taught me this one. Every morning, I put on the newest pair of socks in my drawer. Why wear the rattiest pair? When I sit down to eat, I eat the tastiest bits first. Why let them get cold? After every shower, I put on my favorite clean t-shirt. I have a great bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig scotch in my cupboard, but I probably won’t drink it for months because I received two bottles of reactor-aged Lost Spirits single malt for Christmas.
Why? Because life is hard enough and we aren’t promised tomorrow. This doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind and “live in the moment” at all times, but it does mean we should try to find the golden middle and glean a little bit of pleasure from every day we’re blessed to live. “Save the best for last” is poverty-mentality thinking. It expects worse in the future. Enjoy the best right now — in your marriage, parenting, work, travel, faith, friendship, contribution. Keep all the chips on the table. Be ready at all times to leave without regret.

2. Tools use us.

A hammer literally cannot hit a nail without using a human. A saw cannot cut through a board without using a human. A phone cannot deliver ads without using a human.

3. Avoid false dichotomies.

When given two great options, choose both. When given two horrible options, choose neither.

4. Failure is overcome by one word.

“Next.”

5. Ambition is ruinous for your happiness.

Most goal-setters (myself included) live much of life in anticipation of tomorrow, and when that day arrives, they’re either disappointed by their failures or underwhelmed by their successes.
Instead: trust the process. Whiskey, pasta, bread, beer, and cereal all require just two ingredients — wheat and water — but the outcome is completely different based on the process. Identity precedes action. Determine what you want to be, then find the process that will get you there every single time.

6. Forget what the market wants.

Listen to your gut. Your body knows the difference between good and great. Someone said you should never record a song or code an app or write an article unless it makes you laugh, cry, or orgasm. If an idea doesn’t move you, it won’t move an audience, no matter how “commercial” you think it is.

7. Give yourself a shove.

The best way to eat more candy, drink more vodka, and smoke more cigarettes is to leave them in the middle of the kitchen counter.
You get it. Willpower is useless. Instead, line up a series of little nudges to automatically get you through your day. If you want to work out, leave your shorts by the door or your cleats in your fridge. My blue diode glasses rest on top of my laptop so I have to protect my eyes before logging online. I can’t not see my vitamins when I brush my teeth, or chia seeds when I reach for the Brita. There’s a book beside my bed, toilet, desk, and car’s gear shifter.
Line up enough nudges and you can shove yourself in the right direction.

8. Grandma didn’t use toilet paper.

She used pages from the Sears catalog. Splinter-free wasn’t available until 1935. The Romans used sponges. The Greeks used clay. Francois Rabelais recommended using “the neck of a goose.” Arabians used their left hand.
Never assume our extremely unique cultural moment is “normal.”

9. Ninety-nine isn’t enough.

Water boils at 100 degrees Celcius. The difference between 99 and 100 is the difference between zero and one. Not-boiling, boiling.
Corollary: 101 doesn’t make it any more boiling.

10. Old people know better.

Honoring our elders is one of the most underrated practices in our newness-obsessed society. Sure, there are a ton of old crazy far-right conspiracy theorists, but there are also good people who have survived four wars, six recessions, and twelve presidents and are somehow still smiling. Get to know them.
Also: meet your old-person self. I try to invent a new word every week — one of them is preflection. To ponder the present through the eyes of your future self. Take an hour in silence to listen to your eighty-year-old self. They might know something you don’t.

11. Fire all your employees.

The employer-employee relationship creates an unhealthy power dynamic between humans that simply didn’t exist when we worked cooperatively to feed our clan or village. I love my work life so much more now that I only work with independent entrepreneurs who are my equals. For me, it’s either a one-man show (my writing business), an equal partnership (my film company), or a co-operative endeavor. Life’s too short to be a boss or be bossed around.

12. Accept that you are a voracious locust of doom.

Nail a roll of paper to the wall and write down everything you consume for a year — food, toilet paper, electricity, car fuel, movies, music, social media content, other people’s time, everything. See what I mean?
Saint Augustine said that the human heart can only fully be satisfied by one thing aside from God himself: everything. All the sex, all the money, all the power, all the possessions, all the glory. All of it. Nothing short of everything could ever fully satiate the human heart. We are wired for more.
Understanding this truth is the first step toward real contentment.

13. Awkward is awesome.

My best friend says that The Office gave society a beautiful gift: the ability to embrace cringe. When you meet someone new and it’s slightly weird, pretend you’re Michael Scott. Just glory and bask in the discomfort.
You can awkward-proof your life by being bold: Ask for discounts. Ask for refunds. Ask for phone numbers. Ask for pay raises. Ask inappropriate questions at inappropriate times. Lather yourself in awkward and pretty soon nothing sticks.

14. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life.

Hitler really was following his bliss by offing millions of Jews. I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer genuinely enjoyed the taste of human flesh. Bernie Madoff seemed content to bilk charities for decades.
Happiness isn’t the purpose of life. It’s not even in the top ten. Happiness is a seasonal fruit, not a foundational root. Find firm and fertile ground.

15. There is no ugly.

My grandpa re-proposed to my grandma on their fiftieth wedding anniversary and called her the most beautiful woman he’s ever known. Old wrinkly grandma? Yes. Because we choose our definition of beauty through our thoughts, disciplines, habits, and patterns, be they conscious or otherwise.

16. We are what we consume.

The statistical average American is a walking bodybag of sugar, alcohol, caffeine, porn, pills, and digital stimulus. Imagine how different life would be if our only inputs were nature, sleep, sunlight, organic food, and embodied human interaction?
Guard your inputs carefully.

17. We’re going to die quite soon.

Make sure you live first. Practicing memento mori will help.

18. Fame is poison.

One in four Gen Zers thinks they’ll be famous by age 25. One in 3.9999999 Gen Zers are going to have a miserably disappointing life.
Why do people desire the attention of strangers? Because we all need to love and be loved, to know and be known, but are too afraid to risk personal heartbreak to seek it out. Attention is not affection. Influence is not intimacy.

19. Boomers are to blame for half our troubles.

The Me Generation took a free ride at the planet’s expense and are hellbent on taking the rest of it with them. They’re statistically low on empathy — blame the lead, asbestos, and hairspray if you must — but at least acknowledge the reality that life is hard for everyone, and no one has it easier.

20. Children are dope.

Kids are the blood transfusion in our sick system. We need to stop manipulating, brainwashing, colonizing, and propagandizing them, and learn from them instead.

21. It doesn’t have to hurt.

Joy is a choice.

22. Watch comedy before calls and meetings.

Five minutes of gut-busting laughter will prime you for even the most tedious conference call. Your co-workers and customers all have tough lives like everybody else, so brighten their day by pre-brightening your own.

23. No ragrets.

Tattoo it on your neck. Most people play it far too safe. Instead: optimize your life for the least number of regrets and the most amount of selfless contribution.

24. There are better ways to vote.

I’ve manned several local voting stations, and I’ve also hob-nobbed with politicians in Canada, America, and the UK. The reality is that they don’t work for us. They work for their corporate sponsors and private interests.
Democracy isn’t dead. It just hasn’t happened yet, with all attempts to date being stillborn or aborted. Democracy = one voice one vote. Athens wasn’t a democracy — women, slaves, and tenants had zero say. America isn’t a democracy either — no representative system is, because it’s far too easy for private interests to buy politicians. The charade of voting is illusory. All elections are sham elections.
So what to do? Vote with your money and time and attention. One sham vote every four years versus tens of thousands of dollar-votes each year? It’s a no-brainer. My wife and I haven’t stepped foot in a Walmart in more than a decade because thousands of its suppliers are based in China, the billionaire heirs are anti-democratic tax-avoiders, and they treat their employees like indentured servants. Vote for pro-democracy third-party candidates if you must — just understand the game, and vote in the ways that actually matter.

25. Everything easy has already been done.

So run a little further.
And if it hasn’t been done, it won’t be as easy as it appears. The question to ask is: what’s been standing in the way this whole time? Achievement is all about knocking down obstacles. Just make sure what’s on the other side is rightly worth the effort.

26. Broccoli still tastes terrible.

But you’re not a child anymore. Adults do hard things.

27. Fixed-order scheduling > fixed-hour scheduling.

Discipline is great, but it’s also subject to the law of diminishing returns. Life is just too dynamic to schedule with military precision. Free yourself from the tyranny of “only people who wake up at 5 AM are successful.”
All hours are not created equal. It depends on your sleep drive and chronotype. Know yourself. Unapologetically get more sleep, then do your best work at your best time in your best state.

28. “Freedom” isn’t freedom.

America wasn’t founded on freedom. America was founded on violent autonomy.
The ancient Greeks had an entirely different definition of freedom: it was the ability to choose the right regardless of circumstance.

“We talk about freedom all the time, but we’ve stopped talking about freedom a long time ago. Now we’re talking about autonomy. Freedom is different than autonomy. Freedom has boundaries. Truth is one of those boundaries. And morality is one of those boundaries. Autonomy is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want in whatever way you want. The problem is this: If I’m autonomous and another person is autonomous, and I have preferences and those matter more than the truth, and that person has preferences and their preferences matter more than the truth, when two autonomous preference-seeking beings come together and their preferences don’t match, who is going to win? If truth is on the bottom shelf, truth won’t decide. What will decide will be power. And isn’t it ironic that in our quest for “freedom”, someone gets enslaved?” — Abdu Murray

29. The Marines were right: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

As teenagers, my friend Tyler and I were in a hurry to get somewhere quickly so we drove 120+ miles per hour for forty-five straight minutes before nearly crashing when the speed burned a footlong gash through the tire. By the time we replaced it with a spare, we were late to our destination by more than an hour.
But nevermind driving. Pump the life-brakes sometimes, or at least, let off the gas. You might get there faster, with less wear-and-tear on the engine.

30. The quest for wealth is destroying life.

We’ve commodified land, water, shelter, clothing, art, time, and nearly everything else. Very little remains, and it’s amassing into fewer hands.
We need a shared global vision. My invented word for it is benevitae: the sustainable flourishing of all creation. Our collective goal should be socioenviroeconomic sustainability. Where to start? We’d do well to let biology determine ecological sustainability and real democracy to determine economic fairness. Our current trajectory is worse than the Space Shuttle Challenger.

31. Most “leaders” aren’t leaders.

Celebrities, politicians, and book-hocking business gurus all call themselves leaders. They’re not.
Real leadership is influence that serves. True leaders are selfless and servant-hearted. They put the best interests of others ahead of their own. Politics and media, by comparison, attracts sociopaths like flies to firelight. Never give power to those who seek it. Nearly everyone worth following is dead.

32. Divide-and-conquer is a business model.

Near the end of high school, dozen friends and I binge-watched multiple seasons of LOST in our friend Mike’s basement. It was one of the most hilarious, riotous, enjoyable experiences we had as a group.
And it was the last show we ever watched together.
People used to go to restaurants in large numbers, to the movies by the dozen, climbing over each other for one of the limited video game controllers, packing out our churches, cheering on our sports teams by the busload. We were almost never alone, and we were far happier. Now we order in, watch Netflix, stream Minecraft, catch the highlights, watch porn, and go to bed. It’s killing us.
Resist the urge to be alone. It’s too easy, and it’s the exact opposite of what we really need. The #1 thing that’s correlated to human happiness is human togetherness.

33. Self-improvement won’t save us.

The great lie of individualist-consumerist culture is that we can improve our way to personal perfection and communal utopia. But it’s incrementalism at best.
It’s just chasing infinity.

34. We know nothing +/-.

On the scale of all that is known, and all that is knowable, our individual understanding is essentially mathematically zero. The entirety of human knowledge is a rounding error.
This is the beginning of humility.

35. The sun is not on fire

I was at an observatory in the Davis Mountains in Texas, and it was the first time I’d paid attention to astronomy since grade school. For three decades, I’d wrongly assumed the sun was a giant ball of flames.
But there’s no fire in space because there’s no oxygen in space. (It just looks like fire because of how our eyes perceive light through the atmosphere and prism.) As I stared at the real-time image of the sun on the observatory wall, I nearly wept. The sun actually looks like a giant, boiling, grey brain.
And then it hit me: I have so many assumptions to set aside and so much left to learn. So pay attention. Don’t worship the “question everything” mantra, but instead spend your life seeking truth, and wisdom, and understanding.
You know what you need to do to get where you want to be.

Ahh lovely February is upon us. The January swoon is fading.. and I have to totally redo my reddit code table.. damn... Glarg... All this as I wonder if anyone is reading this or if you all are over at wallstreetbets doing crazy stuff.     January sucked for me in this realm of beermoney. (Yes I copied and pasted that line from last month) This again is on me. My focus is shifted away from the beermoney realm to a different realm that could be very big for me. I hopefully have more details on that next month. I mentioned last month about selling game resources (legally) and that exploded this month. So thats been sustaining me some while my focus is elsewhere. Ive gotten asked many times what game it is. Its 12 year old facebook game that I thought would be dead 5 or 6 years ago. Hasnt been updated in that long.. and there are about 100 people still hanging on and spending money.     But despite my January malaise (copied that too from last month. Im rushing for time. Threw_it_to_ground punishes me severely when I get this post up late. ) im still working toward my goals. Im still working on the day trading. Slowly but surely. Thinking about starting a daily youtube stream showing me struggling to day trade and throw in some beermoney talk. Thoughts on that gang?     This month I have my main focus on my thing Ill mention nexxt month and doing beermoney as much as I can. Sleeping about 4 hours a day right now on average. Sometimes you have to sacrifice for your goals and dreams. Enough about me. This isnt supposed to be about me. And I made it about me. And im sorry.     Reply with your earnings and tell me what was hot and not this month. Are you seeing a Jan slowdown? Tell me what the pulse of beermoney is like right now.
  How did you all do in January?    

Program	Jan		2021 Total
Mturk	$650		$650
Swagbucks	$141		$141
PhonePayCheck	$44.59		$45.59
Prolific Academic	$41.99		$41.99
InstaGC	$5.75		$5.75
PrizeRebel	$2.21		$2.21
Totals	$905.54		$905.54

  FOOTNOTES 1. Does not count Ref earnings 2. Registration is closed for this app  
So thats my list. How did you do in January??
        FAQ
 
I live outside the USA. How can I earn? Unfortunately most of the stuff I do is either USA only or US/UK/CA/AU. So its hard for me to advise whats available to people outside of those areas. If you live outside those 4 countries I really dont have advice for you. And I dont have much advice for even outside the USA.
 
How Much Time do you spend with this? Its Hard to quantify. I am in front of a computer ALOT but its not always focused on making money. I have games I play and have scripts that watch for HITs ON Mturk so if something pops thats good I switch over. Plus Im often doing multiple things at once. That said.. there are people who make more then me with less time. Im actually very inefficient.
  Why dont you get a real job? Health issues.. and I can nap at 1PM.. and I dont have a boss looking over my shoulder... and I can work naked (I dont.. or do I....)
  You must have a ton of referrals to make that much! All the totals above represent only personal earnings. I seperate out ref earnings.
  OMG! You must cheat somehow to make so much! I do nothing outside the TOS of any of the programs. I consider this income to be a blessing and wouldnt do anything to jeopardize that. Plus cheating just kills programs and defrauds the companies that are allowing me to make this income.  
Do you have to pay taxes on all of this Yes on most of it. There are some exceptions but the majority of this income is taxable. Most of these companies dont issue 1099s but that doesnt mean you dont have to pay taxes. Please consult a tax professional if you have questions on how to handle taxes on "beermoney" income

Finding the repworld has changed my life. I recently got a bonus at work and was ready to treat myself to a new bag, maybe a Chanel. I have a few auths (Classic Chanel flap lambskin SHW, Gucci Mini, LV Pochette etc), but have never bought my own, instead my husband usually buys me them for birthdays/Christmas.
Finding this forum changed my views. I used to be quite against reps because I didn't see the point - surely it was better to find the real thing? I don't think so anymore. I have taken my auth Chanel out of the house 5 times in 5 years. What is the point? I am so scared of being mugged (London life) or of hurting her. I have since had 2 LV reps from TS Anna which I'll get round to reviewing. But first I wanted to show you a mini haul / some great finds on AE. This is my first post. I have never used Reddit before. Please let me know what I do wrong!
Just an FYI, when I buy from AE on a laptop I pay in USD and my credit card coverts it to £ (it is too hard to then tell you the converted price as I buy more than one thing at once, but it will be the Mastercard day rate with no extra charges or fees). If I buy on the app it is in GBP. This will be why some items are different currencies :)
I will not be reviewing the items to the extent that I would a bag from a seller, rather than AE. All items I've purchased are relatively low cost and I don't expect the quality to be outstanding.
​

• Disclosures. All of these items were found through this forum or through late night AliExpress scrolling. I was offered no incentives from any seller.

Branded items:

• Tiffany bracelet [Link]:
  • Review: The heart is definitely 925 silver and looks shockingly similar to the real thing, the beads are plastic(-1) but look fine from afar. I used to have the auth (sold it because it was from my cheating ex) so I know the beads are off. I think it's nice to wear and not call-outable on your wrist, but probably if someone looked close (-1). All hallmarkings are the same as auth. 8/10
  • Price: $19.66 including VAT (UK)
  • [auth]
  • [my pics]
• Chanel caviar wallet [shop link]:
  • Review: the CC is definitely noticeably different, on the auth, there is a line where the CC cross (-1). But this doesn't have this. It is definitely not real lambskin (-1), but I didn't expect it. For the price I love it and think it's a nice little purse that spends most its time in my bag anyway! 8/10
  • Price: £20.88 including VAT
  • Order timeline: ordered 23/01 arrived 02/02.
  • [auth]
  • [my pics]
• LV key holder [shop link]:
  • Review: This is so accurate. The only slight issue I see is on the gold hardware - it seems different from pictures (-1). The canvas is similar to my auth. It does the job and I love it. 9/10
  • Price: $14.99 (without VAT)
  • Order timeline: 15 Jan 2021, arrived 31 Jan 2021.
  • [auth]
  • [my photos]
• LV Coin Purse [shop link]:
  • Review: I cannot tell a single difference with this purse. I have compared to my mum's authentic and I just can't see the issues. 10/10
  • Price: $18 (without VAT)
  • Order timeline: 15 Jan 2021, arrived 31 Jan 2021.
  • [auth]
  • [my pics]
• Dior bracelet [Link]:
  • Review: I love this bracelet. I can't tell the accuracy as I've never seen it IRL, but I've compared to the ones on the website [auth] and can't see the difference. I love them, they're so cute and I cannot believe these should be £330 - that feels like more money than sense! 10/10
  • Price: $7.80 including VAT
  • Order timeline: 09 Jan 2021, arrived 22 Jan 2021.
  • [my pics]
• LV Favourite MM [store link]:
  • Review: I think this is adorable. No fufu smell like I expected. The canvas is similar to my auth, but maybe a little darker (-0.25). The strap is so light and definitely obvious (-1) but it is changeable, so I will use my auth Pochette strap on this and I think it'll easily pass. I also have seen auths that are a bit older and they look just like mine. 8.75/10
  • Price: $36
  • Order timeline: 15 Jan 2021, arrived 31 Jan 2021.
  • [auth pics]
  • [my pics]
• Chanel earrings [store link]:
  • Review: these don't seem to have an auth, there's similar but these are off. I have a couple of pairs of real Chanel costume jewellery earrings - there's 0 valuable metals and they easily break, but they are beautiful. These don't have the same wow factor in some sense, they have none of the markings auths do (-1) and they feel lightweight (-1), the actual earring fits well though and I think they are a nice piece to add to an outfit, so I am happy overall. I am surprised I didn't get a bit more for the price... 8/10.
  • Price: $35.88 (inc VAT)
  • Order timeline: 11/01 ordered, delivered 18/01!
  • [photos]

Other items:
[silk pillowcases] 10/10 - I had just bought 2 pillowcases for £75 each from The White Company, and I realised I needed more, so thought I would try these as most silk sellers buy their stuff from China. Great quality, no faults. ($36.53 inc VAT).
Pyjamas from [here] 10/10 - great quality ($22.50 inc VAT) -
GUCCY top from [here] 9/10 - great quality for the price ($8) and looks similar to auth. Cannot find the exact top anymore :(
Awaiting arrival:
[YSL tee] paid $13.78 (inc VAT)
This arrived today! I think the quality is great. The fabric style is thick cotton whereas auth is jersey. Logo is accurate though. I love it! [my pics]
Gucci earrings [dead link]
[Silk hair ties] paid $0.99 each (exc VAT)
[Anti Social Puppy Club] dog jacket £3.44 (inc VAT)
[VCA style earrings] £2.47 (inc VAT)
[Hairband] £2.06 (inc VAT)

• Satisfaction: Overall, I am happy with all of my purchases, I never expect too much from AE and I feel that way you can't be too disappointed. It all seems like good fun and I enjoy buying things to see what turns up. 10/10 for the fun of the postman's arrival every day alone.
• Service and/or Communication I did not communicate with a single person. I pressed buy and that was it.

1st, apologies for being AFK recently.
2nd, thank you to FatAmericanFuck for gathering info into a neat organized comment while I was gone :)
Tester has been added, germination complete, added a mini description for cosmic revival, check below.

Added new userflairs :)

DROP IS OVER, CHECKOUT SEEDBANKS BELOW FOR HALLOWEEN LEFTOVERS

STAY CALM AND PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH THIS DROP!

NEW EMAIL FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE, OWLENTINES AT GMAIL DOT COM

READ THIS, DARKHORSE GENETICS GIVES UPDATE ON TSB

Link to new thread for descriptions.

DONT FORGET DAZ IS NOW ON THE EAST COAST, NO MORE CENTRAL TIME DROPS.

Valentine's Drop 2/12 at 12:01am Eastern Standard Time

Valentine's Drop

Hey guys, Daz here! I'm sure most of you are aware that things have been delayed with the licensing process at my new spot, resulting in delays in the release of my new photo x auto projects. Well, I hope this makes it up to you! I've dug deep to try and bring a little bit of what everyone has asked for to the table for this Valentine's weekend drop! Collabs with Ronin, Full Duplex/Mandalorian, and a Premium exclusive collab with Binary Selections (Ronin and Magic's line of shared work)!!! I've brought out the last of the Space Station Orange v.1, the last of the Squanch Stomper, the last of the Shekinah, and the last of the Cheech Biggums. I'm introducing a new CBD cross, Cosmic Revival, and releasing the last of the F3 Legacy Regs of both Wizard's Apprentice and Zamadelica Express (*pending current germination testing)... Not only that, every order will receive Seedopoly game pieces, brand new Night Owl plant ID stakes, Night Owl jar and jar lid label stickers, Valentine's day sticker set, and Valentine's day keychain (keychains may run out, all goodies are while supplies last) as well as the usual slaps you know and love! On top of that, if you grab 3 Secret Owl Society packs you'll receive a Secret Owl Society patch. If you order 4 Secret Owl Society packs you will receive the patch and a new glow in the dark Masked Owl ashtray! I'm also working on having the new black on black shirts in time for the drop, but as is life, all of this could change at any given moment. If you made it this far and are still reading, thank you. This drop is the last of my stock, and the next drop will not be until, realistically, July. If you need any Night Owl after this drop please go support the seedbanks that support me, and also show some love to the other auto breeders that are doing real work. I appreciate the continued love and cannot wait to continue on this journey with you.

DazNightowl
🙏🌱🦉🌱🙏

Promotions WHILE SUPPLIES LAST

Every order will come with Valentine's pin, keychain, and sticker combo, lid and jar stickers, nightowl limited or secret owl society stickers, and night owl plant ID stakes.
The Collaboration drops will include everything above and come with their own corresponding stickers.
For every pack ordered, earn 5 plant stakes.
If you order 3 packs of secret owl society to earn a SOS patch.
*USA ONLY\* Order 4 packs of secret owl society and you'll get the patch and a glow in the dark night owl ashtray too.
Spend $250 total value from order(s) to earn a tester pack, Pink Panama x Cosmic Queen.
*USA ONLY\* All premium packs come with 2 seedopoly scratch off cards per pack, all regular packs come with 1 scratch off per pack.
The new secret owl society packaging will go out with this drop.
And please be patient with this drop, there are so many moving parts, it's gonna be hectic!
The crew is coming out to help, but still...

Premium Drop 2/10

• Bubblegum Queen- Hubbabubba Haze x Cosmic Queen, previously released as a tester -SOS Pack
• Cosmic Revival- Little Giant CBD x Cosmic Queen -SOS Pack
• Heartbreaker- (White Triangle x White Stomper) X Wizard's Apprentice, my second collab with Ronin
• Mambo Sauce- Mango Smile x Wizard's Apprentice -SOS Pack
• Purple Pope- Anvil x Wizard's Apprentice, my first collab with Full-Duplex aka Mandalorian Genetics
• StarFox- Foxy Purps x Cosmic Queen, previously released as a tester -SOS Pack

Exclusive to Premium Members:

• Cosmic Queen F4 S1- Super Sativa pheno- Daz' personal stash, the same one used in Karmic Connection, Mango Sunrise, SSO v.2, and Shekinah -40 packs or less :)
• Funk Potion- Funkadelic x Wizard's Apprentice, Collab with Binary Selections (Ronin and Magic's combined forces)

Tester pack If you spent a total of $250

• Pink Panama x Cosmic Queen

Valentine's Drop 2/12

• Bubblegum Queen- Hubbabubba Haze x Cosmic Queen, previously released as a tester -SOS Pack
• Cosmic Revival- Little Giant CBD x Cosmic Queen -SOS Pack
• Heartbreaker- (White Triangle x White Stomper) X Wizard's Apprentice, Second collab with Ronin
• Mambo Sauce- Mango Smile x Wizard's Apprentice -SOS Pack
• Purple Pope- Anvil x Wizard's Apprentice, First collab with Full-Duplex aka Mandalorian Genetics
• StarFox- Foxy Purps x Cosmic Queen, previously released as a tester -SOS Pack
• Cheech Biggums- Wizard's Apprentice x Tyrone Stomper
• Galaxy Brain- Zamaldelica Express x Cosmic Queen
• Karmic Connection- (Chem City Blues x Chemdogging) X Cosmic Queen -SOS Pack
• Mango Isle- Mango Smile x Zamaldelica Express -SOS Pack
• Oh Geeze!- 3 Bears OG x Tyrone Stomper -40 packs or less, SOS Pack
• Sage Scout- Forum Stomper x Wizard's Apprentice -40 packs or less
• Shekinah- Supernatural OG x Cosmic Queen, blessed by Hoodoo Moses -40 packs or less, SOS Pack
• Space Station Orange v.1- Orange Diesel x Cosmic Queen -40 packs or less, SOS Pack
• Squanch Stomper- Samsquanch OG x Tyrone Stomper -40 packs or less
• Wizard's Apprentice F3 Legacy Auto Regs (3 seeds) -40 packs or less
• Zamaldelica Express F3 Legacy Auto Regs (3 seeds) -40 packs or less
• Owl Pellets- ??? x ???- 10+ Seeds

Tester pack If you spent a total of $250

• Pink Panama x Cosmic Queen

Drop Descriptions

Link to new thread for descriptions.
Cosmic Revival - Cosmic Revival has not been tested, but I'm hoping to find some nice 1:1, 2:1, and 4:1 examples once I pop them for further line work and based off of what some hemp breeder mentors have been telling me. Currently they should run the gamit. Her flavors ranged from earthy, kushy, and there was even a milk chocolatey finisher in the mix, along with the beachy flavors found in Cosmic queen.

Seedopoly US Only

Link to Seedopoly's board, rules, prizes.

Photo X Auto Project Info

Copied from Daz's IG post.

Thank you all for your patience with me these past few weeks. I've been handling a lot of business behind the scenes in preparation for big things next year. 2020 was the year of staying off the radar with most of my big projects and not drawing any unnecessary attention. 2021 is the year of getting licensed and really showing you what it's all about! Thank you for your trust and faith in me during my overly cautious past few months/years. I won't let you down.🙏🌱🦉🌱🙏New photo to autos scheduled for the first half of 2021:
Pre '98 Bubba Kush x Auto Skywalker F4
Dosidos x Forum Stomper F4
Purple Punch x Forum Stomper F4
Sunset Sherbet x Forum Stomper F4

Secret Owl Society Text Club

The old phone number 474747 isn't in service anymore. If you'd like to join the Secret Owl Society Text Club, then text "nightowl" to (760) 670-3130. This feature SHOULD work for international users, use +1 if you're having trouble! If it still doesn't work with your telecommunications provider, it's rumored to work with a separate messaging application like Whatsapp.

NightOwl Sweaters New-ish Info

Although the new photo x auto crosses are still on hold, I will have some new collabs and maybe even a new SOS variety for the Valentine’s weekend drop. I’ll probably put up the last of the Shekinah too. 🙏🌱🦉🌱🙏

Daz's recent comment two weeks ago

NightOwl Sweaters Older info

Since they were so well received, I'm planning on having more Varsity hoodies made in a different variant. I'd like to make one with the blue and white portions switched, and/or one using the burgundy/maroon color from the Secret Owl Society logo. I'm swamped right now but should have some time to dedicate to new merch after Christmas. 🙏🦉🙏

Daz commented in a thread asking about sweaters

Seedbanks Carrying Nightowl

Halloween Leftovers
So far Hembra Genetics and Insane Seeds has received some leftovers from the recent Halloween drop. They only have a limited quantity of certain cultivarI so check their sites, both ship internationally.
---------------------------
Seedbank Exclusive Culitvar

New vendor exclusive limited-edition drop, live now!! I've spread these three new varieties out to my vendors in hopes of giving all of you a greater chance at getting them! They are a small batch and WILL NOT BE REMADE. Go support them because they've supported me. AT LEAST 4 SEEDS IN EVERY PACK, keychains, and slaps (while supplies last).

Strain Descriptions
Foot Cheeze (Northern Cheeze Haze (UK Cheese pheno) x Tyrone Stomper)
Extra frosty medium-large plants with sturdy side branching, dense golf ball nugs running up each branch, and a cheesy fruity smell ranging from citrus to red fruit. She finishes around 75 days from sprout, yields 2-4 ounces, and has a heavy narcotic affect.
Head Cheeze (Northern Cheese Haze (Haze pheno) x Tyrone Stomper)
A sweet lemony, uplifting pheno of Northern Cheese Haze met up with an extremely greasy Tyrone Stomper resulting in long greasy colas of piercing grapey haze flavors and effects. Heavy indulgence can lead to a lingering paranoia, so plan accordingly ahead of time. Finishes in approximately 70-75 days from sprout and yields around 2-4 ounces.
Squanch Queen (Samsquanch OG x Cosmic Queen)
Some people say creamy sweet gas doesn't exist, but it can be found within these large plants. Satellite branches will take off almost immediately and will require staking or training to make the most of them. Dense disco ball nugs climb up her branches, leading to beautiful flower clusters at the tip of each. Stepping back from the plant, you will see her overall crown shape right before your eyes. This is a heavy-hitting hybrid. The more you use the less productive that you will be. Happy and euphoric in smaller doses, she can create heavy eyelids and a severe lack of motivation when overdone. Finishes around 75 days from sprout.
​

SeedBank	Squanch Queen	Foot Cheese	Head Cheese	Payment	International	Carry Mephisto	Freebies
Neptune Seedbank	No	Yes	Yes	Credit Card (US Only), Bitcoin, PMC Gold, Cash	Yes	Yes	*Need User Input
Supreme Seedbank	No	Yes	Yes	Money Gram/ Venmo/ Cash App/ Zelle, Money Order, Debit/ Credit (US ONLY 3.5% fee), Custom payment, Bitcoin, eGiftCertificate	Yes	Yes	*Need User Input
Treestar Seedbank	Yes	Yes	Yes	Credit Card, Bitcoin, Money Order, Cash, Western Union, Cash App, Zelle	Yes	Yes	Yes
Harvest Mutual Site Renovating, Not open	No	Yes	Yes	Cash, Money Order, Credit Card, Paypal	Yes	Yes	Yes
Insane Seeds	No	Yes	Yes	Bitcoin, Cash, Credit Card	Yes	Yes	Maybe
DC Seed Exchange	No	Yes	Yes	Debit Card, Cash, Money Order, eCheck, Cryptocurrencies	No	Yes	Sometimes / Use "5%DCSEEDS" for 5% off
Oregon Elite Seedbank	No	Yes	Yes	Cash, Money Order, Cryptocurrencies	Yes	No	*Need User Input,
Hembra Genetics	No	Yes	Yes	Cash, Cash App, Venmo, Bitcoin,	Yes	No	Check site for promos
RMH719 SOLD OUT	No	No	No	Cash, Bitcoin	No	No	Sometimes
RMHCA SOLD OUT	No	No	No	Cash, Bitcoin,	No	No	Sometimes

--------------------------------

F.A.Q

"Do seed bank packs have more than 3 seeds?"

You will get what you paid for 3 fem seeds, there's a chance you could get more than 3 seeds unless it says otherwise.

"My pack has a blank label, how do I know what I have?"

Those are the "Secret Owl Society" packs, they come labeled with UV ink. Daz almost always provides a small blacklight keychain, use it to reveal the pack name.

"Is there any freebies?"

Like Mephisto, Nightowl will give you 2 extra seeds on 3 seed pack orders. Same cultivar. No freebie tiers like Mephisto.

"I got a confirmation email, it still says "processing", should I be worried?"

As long as you have a confirmation email, then there's nothing to worry about your order has been received.

"Received tracking, no movement on the order since being scanned into Denver, or not scanned at all"

Email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
OWLENTINES AT GMAIL DOT COM

Order related issue?

Email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
OWLENTINES AT GMAIL DOT COM

"Do I need TSB Premium to make a purchase, or do I purchase through Premium?"

No, you don't need TSB Premium to make a purchase. This was an option for paying members to get a chance to access the drop early. Nothing was exclusive to premium, everyone has access to all the strains. Go to the regular store page

"How do I register for a free account?"

There should be a sign-in button at the bottom of the page, or the NightOwl Store page. Look at this image to help.

"What do I do with my scratch card?"

Mail it in for the next drop, or any future drop NightOwl has specifically on TSB. When checking out select "mail-in cash/ money order". Once you complete the order, you should then get an email with mail-in details.

Привет идиоты,
I have returned to inflict more psychic damage upon you about the sick fucks that make up the worldwide disease that is Big Capital. Today, I would like to talk to you about Kenneth Cordele Griffin, the founder and CEO of a little company called Citadel LLC.
Now unless you have been living under a fucking rock for the past week or have drank yourself to the point of amnesia for one reason or another (forgivable), you are probably by now at least vaguely aware of what Citadel does and how it relates to current events surrounding GameStop and WSB's new favorite hedge fund, Melvin Capital.
Seeing as how there's a few million more of you here now than there were last month when I was emptying the contents of the bowl of oatmeal that is my brain on these pages about present day financial crimes perpetrated by Citadel and their ilk and the ouroboros of Western intelligence agencies and Big Capital, let's do a quick recap. I do hope you take the time to read the full posts, because you may learn something interesting. ^{PSTH = Stripe 🚀🚀🚀}

1. The markets and the flow of capital around the world are rife with financial crime.
   
2. The vast majority of this crime is perpetrated by large institutions like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank. Some of this crime takes the form of laundering money for drug cartels, terrorists, pedophiles, and sex traffickers. Some of it involves manipulation of the markets.
   
3. The regulators in charge of dealing with these fucks are utterly spineless, to the point that any honest person must wonder out loud if they're in on it and getting a take. This phenomenon is known as regulatory capture and is a particularly insidious form of political corruption.
   
4. The CIA, since its inception in 1947, has acted as a sort of parallel government within the broader United States government, and has been the primary ideological engine of its foreign policy through its ties to Big Capital. That foreign policy has always kept the interests of business as its top priority. One might even call this the Deep State.
   

Who is Ken Griffin?

Ken Griffin is the absolute epitome of the archetypal scumfuck egomaniac asshole that embodies everything that is wrong with the ultra-rich class of Big Capital. Ahem, sorry. Let's try that again.
Ken Griffin started his career out as a 🌈🐻 at the age of 19 while an undergraduate at Harvard, shorting the convertible bonds market and making a bunch of money off of the October 19th, 1987 crash, more commonly known as Black Monday. He graduated in 1989, supposedly returned 70% in his first year as a professional fund manager, and went on to found Citadel in 1990. Citadel has swelled to gargantuan size in the last 30 years. It apparently almost went under in 2008 during the financial crisis, but they were fine after the empty suit known as Barack Obama reneged on his campaign promises and fully sealed the transfer of the United States to Wall Street and the rest of the 1%. The hedge fund managed $35 billion as of October 2020 (probably less now LOLOLOL) and a little more than a quarter of all equity volume flows through Citadel Securities in their capacity as a market maker.
He lives in Chicago, but that's not very important. I will note that Chicago has been a historically CIA rat-infested city, as evidenced by the group of University of Chicago-trained economists that helped carry out the regime change ops and aggressive neoliberalization of South America in the 20th century. He's not a complete political partisan, but he does tend to favor Republicans. He has donated to Democratic Party luminaries like Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel, libertarian psychopaths like the Koch Brothers, and neocon war hawk freaks like Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove. His most recent political contributions were to Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the two imbecilic former Senators from Georgia who were both busted for dumping stocks on insider information shortly before the Great Beer Virus Crash of 2020. The thread tying these fine folks together is that what most people in the United States think of as politics is more akin to a game show than a real system of governance, and the ultra-rich value their class allegiance much higher than their allegiance to any one political party. As a slight aside, Loeffler's husband is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. How in the fuck is the spouse of a (formerly) sitting Senator allowed to hold that position? Yuck.

The Ken Griffin Real Estate Portfolio

(Disclaimer: Griffin may not still own every property in this section and I don't care to find out which, if any, he has divested himself from, because frankly, the levels of opulence make me feel fucking sick. Also, if this is considered d0xxing or something because some of these may be personal residences, I will remove them upon request. This is all publicly available information, though.)

• 132 East Delaware Place in Chicago, Illinois -- luxury high rise with residential units, office space, and retail stores
• 800 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois -- penthouse unit
• 820 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York -- overlooking Central Park in Manhattan
• Big Ass Mansion in Aspen, Colorado
• Two properties at the Hualalai Resort in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
• Multiple mansions at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 Blossom Way in Palm Beach, Florida. Further links here and here.
• 12,500 square feet of penthouses at Faena House in Miami, Florida
• 1290 South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Florida
• 3 Carlton Gardens in London, England -- former home of Charles de Gaulle, former President of France
• Numerous units at 220 Central Park South in New York City, New York -- a four-floor penthouse and two adjacent apartments on the 20th floor
• 650 Meadow Lane in Southampton, New York -- purchased from Calvin Klein
• Vacant double lot costing $37 million Star Island, Miami Beach, Florida

The Ken Griffin Art Portfolio

Many of the pieces listed here are not held personally by Griffin, but are loaned out to institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. For the extreme smoothbrains among you, the reason Griffin blows giant bags on horrible pieces of art and puts them on public display is so that he can use them as tax writeoffs.
Herein lies the part where you may call me a conspiracy theorist if you please, but I think Griffin's art portfolio is indicative of some type of covert relationship with the intelligence agencies. I sincerely do not believe that any person can reach these strata of society without at least brushing elbows with some glowies. The most expensive pieces in his collection come from the school of art known as abstract expressionism, which was quite literally a CIA-sponsored project meant to counter the influence of Soviet realism during the Cold War. The idea was that the Soviets would see the wacky vomitus that people like Jackson Pollock would spew all over a canvas as an expression of the ideals of freedom and individuality and break free of the bonds of Communism.

• False Start by Jasper Johns. Housed at the MoMA, purchased by Griffin for $80 million.
• Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl by Paul Cézanne. Housed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Purchased by the previous buyer at auction for $60.5 million -- Griffin's purchase price is not known.
• Self Portrait by Paul Cézanne. I think this is the correct one. He did a whole bunch of these over the course of his life. Price unknown.
• Water Lilies by Claude Monet. He did like 250 of these, this is the one that comes up when searching it with the year of the one Griffin is known to own, 1905. Price unknown.
• The Green Dancer by Edgar Degas. On display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain
• Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by Edgar Degas. An extraordinarily ugly wax sculpture on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
• Interchange by Willem de Kooning. Abstract expressionist trash purchased for $300 million from noted Jeffrey Epstein associate and suspected pedophile David Geffen. Recall that Epstein is highly suspected of being some type of intelligence asset tasked with blackmailing rich scumbags by anyone who has studied his story closely.
• Number 17A by Jackson Pollock. More abstract expression trash, also purchased from David Geffen for $200 million.

How does Citadel spend its money?

Good question! They buy politicians. Remember regulatory capture? Here's Citadel doing just that: current Secretary of the Treasury, former Chair of the Federal Reserve, and sentient potato woman Janet Yellen took more than $800,000 in speaking fees from Citadel. In fact, Yellen "earned" over $7 million in speaking fees from various other financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup between her stints at the Fed and at Treasury. What do we think? Is she just such an enrapturing speaker that she's worth every penny? Or is she getting a kickback for helping to deregulate financial markets and a bribe to look the other way when short sellers and market makers collude to shut retail traders out of the market en masse, like they did yesterday with GME?
They also buy stakes in distressed hedge funds, apparently. Remember the $2.75 billion bailout that Citadel and Point72 gave to Melvin Capital on Monday, which they promptly pissed away doubling down on their GME short? Isn't it weird that Robinhood shut down trading on the very stocks that the hedge funds were bleeding out from and then forced people to liquidate their long positions at the very bottom of a coordinated short seller attack? Doesn't it seem a little strange that the hedge fund branch of Citadel is allowed to own part of another hedge fund that's being bled dry, as Citadel Securities buys order flow from Robinhood to illegally front-run retail orders?
There's also this, on the topic of Melvin Capital and pedophiles and sex traffickers: Melvin Capital's 5th largest long holding is a company called L Brands, which is the parent of Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works. Victoria's Secret, as seasoned Jeffrey Epstein gumshoes will know, was founded by one Leslie Wexner, who had a very troubling relationship with Epstein. Epstein was Wexner's personal money manager and Wexner was Epstein's only known client. Wexner and Epstein were so close that Wexner gave Epstein a mansion on the Upper East Side in Manhattan in 2011, years after it was already known that he was a pedophile creep. Epstein would tell the girls he was sexually assaulting that he was a modeling scout for Victoria's Secret. Jean-Luc Brunel, another Epstein-associated "modeling scout" and sex criminal who was recently arrested in France, would supply models to Victoria's Secret through his agency MC2 Model Management. Basically, what I'm saying is that Melvin Capital, and now Citadel by extension, are long sex trafficking pedophiles.

How can I poke this asshole in the eye?

It seems like there's two big things you can do to do your part.
The first is to 💎👐 GME. The institutions are clearly scared shitless at how much blowback is coming their way or they wouldn't be taking such drastic measures to try to tip the scales in the favor of the shorts at the expense of everyone else. Turn off share lending in your brokerage if you can and still haven't.
The second is to transfer your assets out of Robinhood yesterday and graduate to a big boy brokerage. Citadel Securities (remember, this is the market maker, not the hedge fund) banked a record $6.7 billion in profit last year. You can bet that this has at least a little to do with the influx of Robinhooders pressing the market order button on their phones and letting Citadel front run their orders while Robinhood gives them a garbage fill.

TLDR: Ken Griffin final boss. Citadel bad. Robinhood bad. GME go up. Stop FOMOing into other dumb shit and stick to the plan.

I am 29 years old, make £23,500, live in North East England and work as a service advisor for a bank (Fair warning if you find chat about buying houses boring you may want to sit this one out)
Section One: Assets and Debt
Savings account balance:
Help To Buy ISA- £6,590.57 (when I come to buy a house the government will give me a 25% bonus for balances up to £12,000- it pays 2.05% interest at the minute as well as the eventual bonus)
Marcus Savings - £5,009.67 (pays 0.5% interest which isn’t great, but it’s handy to have my savings somewhere I can keep them out of my mind)
Pension - £14,676.01 (have to be honest I only looked this up to have a figure to put in here and it gave me a small panic attack when I checked)
Checking account balance - £12.64 (this is the amount of money I have left in bills this month)
Credit card debt - £0.00
Student Loan - 20,978.46 (again I only looked this up for the diary!)
Section Two: Income £1,937.50/month - £1,534.04 take home
(£188.00 Tax
£137.46 National Insurance
£28.00 Student Loans
£50.00 sharesave scheme)
Section Three: Expenses
Savings contribution: £1,506.45
Union: £14.95
Phone Insurance: £10.15
iCloud: £2.49
Debt payments: £0
SIDE NOTE: Me and my partner have recently changed how we manage our finances as we are saving for a house- I moved into a flat that he had already been living in for a few years, so all of the bills came out of his account already- previously I would transfer him half of the rent/bills each month & then we would separately pay for our food [I’m veggie/he’s not] and subscriptions & separately put aside savings. From January’s payday I transfer almost all of my money into savings each month -only keeping bills from my account that need to stay for discount/membership reasons- and he pays all bills/food/expenses from his wage, transferring over any leftover to savings at the end of the month. I can pop the costs that I would traditionally have paid in the comments if people would like to see though.
ABOUT ME- I live with my partner J and my dog, who will be referred to as “the boy” throughout because that’s what we call him most of the time anyway I was sent to work from home in May of last year, my partner still works out of his office.
DAY ONE: 7:30 - sunlight alarm goes off, promptly shut it off and snuggle with the Boy, I have been really crampy the last few days & having a Velcro dog that basically sleeps on top of me has been like having an expensive, farting hot water bottle that eats slippers.
8:00 - the Boy stretches out and sticks a paw directly into my eye, okay I guess I’m getting up now! Feed him breakfast, eat a yoghurt, a mini soreen Malt loaf & drink a coffee, it’s the 1st of the month so I log in to my mobile banking & move £200 to my Help To Buy ISA (I get paid around the 23rd of the month so I transfer £200 to a random savings account on payday & keep it there until the 1st when I’m next allowed to pay money into the ISA) my phone insurance has come out today (£10.15) so my current account balance now sits at the grand total of £2.49
9:00- J heads off to work, I have another coffee and eat a mini pack of jammie dodgers.
12:50- Oo J is home for lunch! Work has been manic all day &I haven’t managed to take a break yet, take this as a sign to have a rest, make myself lunch (fried egg, avocado & quorn ham sandwich, pickled onions, gherkins & a packet of salt and vinegar crisps) J tells me about a doggie subscription box ran locally & we decide to sign up for it for the Boy (£11.99/month but it won’t be charged this week) J heads back to work & I take the Boy out for a walk. Browse houses on Rightmove & enjoy the sunshine & fresh air.
16:18- work has gotten no less manic, grab my last break far too late, eat more mini jammie dodgers & have another coffee (believe it or not I am on a diet and have lost 59.5lbs so far, but the joys of CICO mean as long as I have “budgeted” for snacky snacks I still lose weight!) Chase the Boy around the house for a bit, immediately regret it because he is HYPED up and I will have to do another hour of work soon...
19:11- I am in the bath! Excitement has happened, We have found a house! It’s in the right area (we are verrrry specific about where we want to live, it’s basically either this estate we are on now or “the fancy” estate next to us) this house is on the fancy estate! In our budget! I show it to J and he loves it too! We have done some furious scribbling some scrap paper and we can afford it with our finances as they are, okay things would be TIGHT, (we weren’t planning on buying for another few months) but it’s not outside of the realms of possibility, immediately share the house listing with all my friends and start mentally moving in, I have called to arrange a viewing and they’re calling back to sort out a time tomorrow morning! Exciting! I realise I shouldn’t be over excited but am allowing myself an evening of giddiness before my serious “29-year old home buying with my long term partner”face comes out. (In case people would like to know I had a home made cottage pie and veg for my tea while doing maths)
20:56- spend the evening stressing out about minute things- what do you wear to a house viewing? What if they realise I’m not a real grown up?? What kind of questions do I need to ask so they don’t cotton on that I am a Pretend Adult? Head to bed and fall asleep by about 10:30
TOTAL SPEND DAY ONE: £0.00
DAY TWO 7:30 - alarm, snuggles with the boy - eventually get up, eat a yoghurt, a banana and a malt loaf, drink two cups of coffee.
9:30 - work starts, my computer hates me so while it plays up I google some more house related things- solicitors costs/surveys/all sorts and play about with the budget spreadsheet- it’s all a bit precarious if we go ahead with this house we have found but we can definitely make it work.
11:37 - estate agents call! They call a few times today as there was a bit of confusion about when the owners would be able to let us view the property, it’s eventually confirmed for Thursday at 6:30, we are to wear masks (of course) and I will take me and J a hand sanitizer each to use in case we accidentally touch anything. Estate agent adds me on Facebook -bit weird? But it actually works out for the best as I had a few little questions about the property that she’s able to fire back at me with in between doing my work.
13:10 - make lunch, same as yesterday, quorn ham, fried egg and avocado sandwich, walk the boy, it is FREEZING and snowing/sleeting the whole way around our normal lunch time loop. Text with J about the house viewings, he reminds me not to get too over excited which is honestly a fair assumption, I am a known panic buyer & we can’t really afford to panic buy a three bed semi... agree to do an AIP (Agreement In Principle) tonight to show the estate agents if they need it soon.
17:45 - I finish work late as I am stuck on a webchat with a client, it ends just a few minutes before I would have been able to log it as additional time worked. I oven a veggie cottage pie and microwave some mixed veg, we fly through the AIP & we check into the wait times for a mortgage appointment (might be a little premature but Mortgage Appointments were like hens teeth until recently with the government announcing the Stamp Duty holiday- the rich get richer...) they have loads available to book for next week so we hold off until after actually viewing the house (see! Sensible me)
19:02 - I am a creature of cramp & habit so I am in the bath! Message with my friend Z who lives in Canada- I miss her so much, her parents are applying to adopt some kittens! I am very excited for them. (UPDATE- they were accepted! They get 2 kittens soon, the pictures I have seen of them make them look furious, I love them intensely already)
21:30 - bed with the canine hot water bottle- still crampy.
TOTAL SPEND DAY TWO: £0.00
DAY THREE 7:30 - alarm! The Boy decides today is not a day to lie in so I get up, let him out, feed him and then myself (he gets dog food I, shockingly, eat a banana, a yoghurt, a malt loaf and drink some coffee) I start researching local conveyancing solicitors, a few have auto quote options on their website so I run our scenario through them and get a few ideas.
9:30 - work starts, I am still idly researching house things while speaking with clients- I work in a mortgage related job so it’s fairly easy to have a little nose at things and see how they would impact our (theoretical) purchase. The Boy trots up to me part way through work and somehow has found a glass ear plug that I lost about 5 weeks ago, we had torn the house apart looking for it and no joy, no clue where he has found it, the weird little hoarder, but I’m happy to have it back!
12:20 - make myself lunch, quorn ham, fried egg, avocado sandwich, make the boy lunch (dog food) and take him out for a very quick walk, it is freezing cold and sleeting/snowing/raining but he tends to get sassy in the afternoons if he doesn’t get out for at least 15 minutes. Text with friends about my general house worries- I am very good at arguing myself in circles (what a useless skill) and spend all day flip flopping between believing that we (me, the Boy & J) need a 4+ bedroom house with multiple reception rooms, and believing that is total lunacy and far more than we would ever need and that a 3 bed is just right for us.
17:30 - finish work for the day, check in on J and the Boy, J got home from work about 15 minutes before I finished so I catch him up on today’s mental gymnastics, I spent all of my remaining breaks today putting together scenarios of what our costs would look like if we went for this house/a house of a similar price vs a largemore expensive house so I run down the figures with him- he’s on board that a 3 bed should be plenty (child free life simplifies things a little) and points out that my justification for a 4th bedroom (I want a dedicated guest room, not a guest room/office) would be the equivalent of paying £40,000+ interest for the sake of my laptop not being in the same room as the spare bed... he makes a good point that man. & honestly... how often do I have guests? AND when Z, my Canadian pal comes to stay... I will obviously not be at work/needing to use the office anyway as I would be taking annual leave.
18:30 - I oven myself some veggie sausages and mash, make J an omelette, keep my now daily tradition of taking a bath & google lots of versions of “how to buy a house”
22:00 - I’ve spent the evening looking at interior design instagrams (why is everything grey??) and watching my new comfort show (the new season of drag race- just those episodes on repeat) and occasionally shouting ideas through to J who is in the games room/office shooting things?
TOTAL SPEND DAY THREE: £0.00
DAY FOUR 7:30- It’s house viewing day! The Boy is awake, feed him dog food, feed me a banana, a yoghurt and a malt loaf- the Boy has clearly figured out that something is afoot with the house viewing excitement and reacts to this by screaming into the void for two hours. Try and find clothes with no holes in that vaguely fit for the viewing, I feel like I want to be taken seriously but also that it feels respectful to be dressed ...not like a womble when we are going to someone else’s home.
9:30- faff about at work, mainly chat to work friends about the house sitch, eat more malt loaf, fail to pay attention to anything
13:30- walk the boy, text my friends incessant count downs to the house viewing, I am insufferable, I had quorn ham, avocado and fried egg sandwich because of course I did - run into a lady I see often see walking her boy (a border terrier baby!) and have a very distanced chat about the house viewing- she immediately knew what house I was viewing and so I told her I would never forgive her if she bought it.
18:10 - work is over, shoes are on and we are off to the viewing!
19:03 - back from the viewing, we loved it, perfect size for us, had clearly been taken care of, good garden, planning permission for a garage conversion! It’s gorgeous, we are going for it! J chats with his parents and I chat with mine, fill them in on the viewing and the lovely vibes we got. Message the estate agent saying we loved it and want to talk more about the next steps tomorrow.
TOTAL SPEND DAY FOUR: £0.00
DAY FIVE 03:30 - I am suddenly wide awake and WORRIED, where will we put our coats in the new house? Where will the coats go??? Panic about this for roughly two hours, finally get back to sleep and it feels like I just close my eyes when the alarm wakes me up.
07:30 - up and at ‘em, feed the Boy, feed the Me, drink a load of coffee, tell J about my night time panic, he reminds me that hooks exist... god love that man.
10:23 - call the estate agent to confirm we are going to be calling together later to discuss, she sends over a pack of information to read, read through it and send J a rough idea.
13:00 - an offer has been made! We offer asking price, I had googled a load of nearby sold prices and estimates and it seemed like a really fair price for what we are getting, they say they will call back when they have spoken with the seller
14:12 - the estate agent calls back, the sellers are happy to accept the offer but want help with the selling fees (£1000), it’s not really something we tend to do in the UK but agree to speak with J about it. We check the terms of the fees & it’s refundable if the sale falls through.
15:32 - me and J have discussed the fee (& Js dad for a bit of an outside view- Js dad lives alone so is part of our “bubble” but he also loves his own company so we don’t see a great deal of him, before this week we last saw him on Christmas Day) we agree that if the seller had just priced the house at £1,000 more than what we had offered initially, we still would have viewed the house and offered asking price... so a bit of a weird way to do it, but we agree to pay the fees and asking price- we get an invoice sent through to pay and the house is officially off the market! It is ours! No more viewings allowed, no gazumping! Ours... subject to actually getting a pesky mortgage! (J and his Dad disappear at this point as he needs to get his car dropped off for his MOT which is why he came over)
18:30 - (J is back, his dad will take him back to pick up the car tomorrow) we have spent some time checking and rechecking figures, it all works but I like to make sure- agree to tighten our budget up to give us some more breathing space, we are aiming at spending less than £50/week on food for us and The Boy, should be doable, but tight. I ring up the bank to see how to get an appointment with a Mortgage advisor, they say it’s easier if J opens an account so he’s considered an existing customer- that they can book an appt for us if he isn’t a customer but that we would need to visit a branch which feels unsafe to do when we have another option. I feel like we should celebrate a little & remember I have £20 on the mantelpiece from my birthday- I buy us a takeaway, mushroom pizza and garlic sauce for me, kebab for J (£13.50) have a glass of coffee liquor & J has a rum.
22:30- we have made a list of all the things we need to do next week, find a solicitors, book a mortgage appointment, have a nervous breakdown, I head to bed, shockingly mixing pizza, coffee booze & excitement does not end well and I get about 3 hours of sleep.
TOTAL SPEND DAY FIVE: £1,013.50
DAY SIX 8:30 - the boy has no real concept of a lie in, demands to be fed, I get up with him to give J a lie in (he’s just worked 7 days in a row so I feel he deserves one) I eat my yoghurt/malt loaf/banana aund sit down with my coffee, the boy immediately falls asleep on me on the sofa, I watch the new episode of drag race while texting with friends about it/the house sitch.
10:30 - the boy is demanding his walk, so I get ready and take him out, call a family friend, S, and fill her in on the whole house situation! I’m not really paying attention to where we walk and we end up on the same street as the new house - so I take the boy to visit (the outside) of our new house!
11:45 - back from the walk, J has been told his car will cost £120 to get up to scratch, cracking- just what we needed- he pays for this but the lines between his and my money is admittedly blurring more and more these days. He goes to pick up the car.
15:00 - off to do the weekly shop, I have made a list of things to buy and have planned out the weeks menu to keep it under budget. We buy yoghurt, malt loaf, milk, 2.5kg potatoes, 1kg of pasta, tinned tomatoes, treats for the boy, bananas, biscuits, bread, eggs, bubble bath, veggie meatballs, a frozen pizza, frozen vegetables, coffee , cherry Pepsi max (my true weakness- I am going to cut back though as this was 16.6% of our shopping cost this week! These cans must last me until the end of the month at least) the shop comes to £51.25
18:00 - me and J watch a film together (hotel Artemis, it’s actually really good) and chill out on the sofa, he has been working the last 7 days on the trot so I feel like we haven’t had much quality time together, it’s nice to lie down and chill out, we chat about what our priorities are in doing up the new house, what we need to buy first and what can wait & start looking at sofas and beds that we like.
22:00 - bed time for me as I am knackered, the Boy stays up with J, little turncoat.
TOTAL SPEND DAY SIX: £51.25 (not counting the MOT as it’s not my car!)
DAY SEVEN 9:30 - oh frabjous day! A little lie in! I am apparently now of the age where waking up any time past 9:00 feels incredibly decadent! The dream, I get up, eat a malt loaf, drink a coffee, feed the boy & turn on Sunday Brunch (a sort of ...cooking chat show? It’s 3 hours long and I watch it every weekend because I am an old lady)
12:30 -Sunday brunch is over, J is up and has logged into the app the bank told us to use to be able to book an appointment, it actually seemed really easy! I call up straight after it is booked and make an appointment for Thursday, they send out a link with some information we have to read and “e-sign” and they request some documents from us, I log in and upload them right away, J has to get some documents from work so he will do his on Monday.
13:45 - we both take the Boy out, fully intending to take him on a very long walk, it is FREEZING though so he gets a few loops of our standard lunch time walk and I promise him that when it is not so cold that my eyebrows hurt I will take him on a long adventure.
16:00 - we have picked our solicitors out, need to call them on Monday to make sure they can work for us, they were suggested by a friend and Js dad also mentioned he had good experiences with them- good enough reason for me!
18:30 - watch some twitch with J and the Boy, have a small wobble about whether the house is right for us, talk it through with J & I realise that it’s not that the house isn’t “right” it’s that I am catastrophising in my head and trying to talk myself into not wanting the house so I don’t get disappointed if it falls through, think about the house some more and realise that when the anxious part of my brain quiets down I do feel really calm and positive about the house. And if it isn’t meant to be, it isn’t meant to be, but that the universe does not need my bad vibes encouraging something to go wrong- remember my dad always used to say “PMA” at times like this- Positive Mental Attitude, take that memory on board and feel a lot calmer.
23:30 - the Boy fell asleep on me on the sofa and I didn’t have the heart to move him, J rustles something in the games room, the dog assumes it’s crisps and wakes up to investigate, I seize my opportunity and head to bed.
TOTAL SPEND DAY SEVEN; £0.00
Week total: £1,065.02
Food + Drink: £64.24
Fun / Entertainment £0.00
Home + Health: £0.00
Clothes + Beauty: £0.78 (bubble bath)
Transport: £0.00
Other: £1,000.00
Reflection: I started this diary with the caveat that it would be incredibly dull... and it’s still not been the most wild of rides but I definite did not think that I would be making strides to buying a house this week! Except for the (obvious) non-standard spending, I would say the week was about normal money wise- although we wouldn’t usually buy a takeaway every week, and J wouldn’t have to pay for his MOT any other week.
I have been making a note of dates/amounts/appointments for home buying things and hopefully I will be able to put together a home buying diary!

Original Post
Where I found it
Includes mentions of rape, abuse, violence, racism, misogyny, homophobia, child sex abuse, pedophilia, etc.
Porn use:
There are over 420 million pages of pornographic material online worldwide. (IFR)
72 million searches for porn are logged monthly. (IFR)
25% of all daily search engine requests are for pornography (68 million searches daily) (IFR)
42.7% of internet users view porn (IFR)
100,000-plus websites are devoted to child pornography. There are over 116,000 daily requests for this material. (IFR)
20% of men admit to accessing pornography at work (IFR)
35% of those purchasing online porn make $75,000-plus annually. (IFR)
The United States is the top producer of pornographic web pages with 244,661,900, or 89 percent (IFR)
Worldwide revenue from mobile phone pornography is $1 billion-plus and growing (Bryan-Low, Cassel and Pringle, David. “Sex Cells: Wireless Operators Find That Racy Cellphone Video Drives Surge in Broadband Use.” The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2005)
Ex-porn star testimonies:
Corina Taylor: ”When I arrived to the set I expected to do a vaginal girl boy scene. But during the scene with a male porn star, he forced himself anally into me and would not stop. I yelled at him to stop and screamed ‘No’ over and over but he would not stop. The pain became too much and I was in shock and my body went limp.”
Jenna Jameson: ”Most girls get their first experience in gonzo films – in which they’re taken to a crappy studio apartment in Mission Hills and penetrated in every hole possible by some abusive asshole who thinks her name is Bitch.”
Alexa James: ”The first shoot I did was with a man who was probably 40 and he was as thick as a soda can. He held me down and shoved it in me with no lube tearing my vagina. When I started to tear up and cry he flipped me over and continued from behind be so they wouldn’t get me crying on film. He pulled my hair and choked me over and over again even when I told him it hurt and I could barely breathe.”
Linda Lovelace: ”My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. Traynor. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn’t go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me, they were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed.The lives of my family were threatened.”
Andi Anderson: ”After a year or so of that so-called “glamorous” life, I sadly discovered that drugs and drinking were a part of the lifestyle. I began to drink and party out of control! Cocaine, alcohol and ecstasy were my favorites. Before long, I turned into a person I did not want to be. After doing so many hardcore scenes I couldn’t do it anymore. I just remember being in horrible situations and experiencing extreme depression and being alone and sad.”
Alexa Milano: ”My first movie I was treated very rough by 3 guys. They pounded on me, gagged me with their penises, and tossed me around like I was a ball! I was sore, hurting and could barely walk. My insides burned and hurt so badly. I could barely pee and to try to have a bowel movement was out of the question. I was hurting so bad from the physical abuse from these 3 male porn stars.”
Jessie Jewels: ”People in the porn industry are numb to real life and are like zombies walking around. The abuse that goes on in this industry is completely ridiculous. The way these young ladies are treated is totally sick and brainwashing. I left due to the trauma I experienced even though I was there only a short time.”
Genevieve: ”I had bodily fluids all over my face that had to stay on my face for ten minutes. The abuse and degradation was rough. I sweated and was in deep pain. On top of the horrifying experience, my whole body ached, and I was irritable the whole day. The director didn’t really care how I felt; he only wanted to finish the video.”
Jersey Jaxin: ”Guys punching you in the face. You have semen from many guys all over your face, in your eyes. You get ripped. Your insides can come out of you. It’s never ending.”
Elizabeth Rollings: ”I didn’t want to feel the pain of penetration from an over average sized man, being told to freeze in a position until the camera man was happy with his shots was very painful. I had peoples body fluids forced on my face or anywhere else the producer pleased and I had to accept it or else no pay. Sometimes you would get to a gig and the producer would change what the scene was supposed to be to something more intense and again if you didn’t like it, too bad, you did it or no pay.”
Lucky Starr: ”I was worried about my first anal scene for quite a few days … then the big moment arrived. It REALLY hurt! I almost quit and said, “I can’t do this”. When it was all over, I was so happy and relieved I was able to do it…”
Ashlyn Brooke: ”I honestly felt that if I had to have another strange man in my face, his hands (God knows where they’ve been all over me) him calling me his baby and having to exude some sort of forged passion for the world to see, I probably would have exploded. And what would have been stuck to the walls would have probably been nothing, just pieces of skin, bone, the brain of a robot, and what would have been left of what would have existed once as a huge and warm heart.”
Roxy: ”After only 30 movies I caught two sexually transmitted diseases. Herpes, a non-curable disease and HPV, which led to cervical cancer where I had to have half of my cervix removed. Porn destroyed my life.”
Anita Cannibal: ”Yeah, there are a lot of cover-ups going on. There is a lot of tragedy. There are a lot of horrible things.”
Tamra Toryn: ”As for myself, I ended up paying the price from working in the porn industry. In 2006, not even 9 months in, I caught a moderate form of dysplasia of the cervix (which is a form of HPV, a sexually transmitted disease) and later that day, I also found out I was pregnant. I had only 1 choice which was to abort the baby during my first month. It was extremely painful emotionally and physically. When it was all over, I cried my eyes out.”
Jessi Summers: ”I also did a scene where I was put with male talent that was on my no list. I wanted to please them so I did it. He put his foot on my head and stepped on it while he was doing me from behind. I freaked out and started balling; they stopped filming and sent me home with reduced pay since they got some shot but not the whole scene.
porn trends:
“teen” is the most commonly searched porn term
child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online.
how pornographers feel about women:
“I’d like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we [pornographers] serve a purpose by showing that. The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that, because they get even with the women they can’t have. We try to inundate the world with orgasms in the face.” - Bill Margold, porn industry veteran, quoted in Robert J. Stoller and I. S. Levine, Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-rated video; 1993.
“There’s nothing I love more than when a girl insists to me that she won’t take a cock in her ass, because — oh yes she will!” -Max Hardcore, interviewed in Hustler (June 1995).
“My whole reason for being in this Industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don’t much care for women and want to see the men in my Industry getting even with the women they couldn’t have when they were growing up. I strongly believe this… so we come on a woman’s face or somewhat brutalize her sexually: we’re getting even for their lost dreams. I believe this. I’ve heard audiences cheer me when I do something foul on screen. When I’ve strangled a person or sodomized a person, or brutalized a person, the audience is cheering my action, and then when I’ve fulfilled my warped desire, the audience applauds.” - Bill Margold, porn industry veteran and Free Speech Coalition board member.
“It might promote violence against women in the United States, but I say, ‘Good.’ I hate those bitches. They’re out of line and that’s one of the reasons I want to do this … I’m going through a divorce right now. … I hate American women.” - What pornographers really think of women (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 14 October 1999)
2010 study on popular porn films:
88% of scenes contained physical aggression, including spanking, gagging, and slapping. Women were overwhelmingly the targets of aggressive acts, and men the perpetrators. Following instances of aggression towards women, in 95% of cases the women expressed pleasure or neutrality.
cases of porn leading children to commit sexual assualt IN THE UK ALONE:
February 2014: A 13-year-old boy told a UK court that he raped his 8-year-old sister after viewing pornography at his friend’s house. The teenager told police he “decided to try it out” on his sister because she was small and “couldn’t remember stuff,” reported the Lancashire Telegraph.
November 2013: A different 13-year old UK boy pleaded guilty to raping an eight-year old girlwhen he was 10. A pornography addiction since age 9 was said to have played a significant role in his crimes.
March 2013: Two boys aged 14 and 15 admitted to a British court that they were re-enacting scenes witnessed in violent online pornography when they beat, brutalized, then raped a 14-year-old girl they had tied to a chair.
March 2013: A UK report found that thousands of British children had committed sexual offenses. In all, 4,562 minors – some as young as five – committed 5,028 sexual offenses over a three year period from 2009-2012. Experts blamed “easy access to sexual material.”
January 2012: Children’s aid and sex abuse organizations in Australia largely blamed 414 cases of children sexually abusing other children on the explosion of pornography made accessible to children.
August 2012: A 13-year-old Canadian boy pleaded guilty to repeatedly raping a 4-year-old boy who lived in his foster home. The boy said the idea came from watching “gay porn” on his foster parents’ home computer.
April 2012: A child therapist reported a case of a 13-year-old boy who raped his 5-year-old sisterafter developing a “complex fantasy world” warped by “two years of constant porn use.”
racism in porn:
Latinos and Hispanics: Pornography tends to stereotype Hispanic women as feisty, “hot and spicy Latinas”, sexy Señoritas, with a high sex drive and low impulse control. Many are portrayed as maids, illegal immigrants to the United States, or unfaithful wives. Since Latinos and Hispanics can be of any race (many are white Hispanic Americans, Mestizos etc.), cultural characteristics are sometimes portrayed via iconic items like South and Central American national costumes, sombreros, maracas, or Mexican dresses.
Asian women: Are viewed as sexually willing or submissive. Asian men are hardly portrayed in pairing with white women and not as common compared to white men with asian women porn. Asian women are mainly portrayed as the: “Dragon Ladies”, as servile “Lotus Blossom Babies”, “Innocent School Girls” in private school uniforms, “China dolls”, “Geisha girls”, war brides, or prostitutes. Japanese media have also at times sensationalistically promoted the stereotype of Japanese women overseas as “yellow cabs”.
Black performers: Large penis size in Black men is consistently emphasized in pornography, often by exclusively casting actors with larger than average penises such as Lexington Steele, Kid Bengala, Jack Napier and Mandingo. Men are often treated to stereotypes of gang affiliation, working class labor, and are overrepresented in gang rape fetish films. Also, they are represented as overly aggressive and demanding, and are performing with white women. Similarly, black women are often portrayed with large breast and buttocks, or ‘booty’. They normally play a submissive role while performing with a white male.
Kid’s access to pornography:
Youth who look at violent x-rated material are six times more likely to report forcing someone to do something sexual online or in-person versus youth not exposed to x-rated material. [12]
Middle-school aged boys who view X-rated content are almost three times more likely to report oral sex and sexual intercourse than boys who do not use sexually explicit material[13]
A study in the southeastern U.S. found that 53 percent of boys and 28 percent of girls (ages 12-15) reported use of sexually explicit media. The Internet was the most popular forum for viewing. [14]
The words “sex” and “porn” rank fourth and sixth among the top ten most popular search terms. [15] Roughly two-thirds (67 percent) of young men and one-half (49 percent) of young women agree that viewing pornography is acceptable.[7]
Nearly 9 out of 10 (87 percent) young men and 1 out of 3 (31 percent) young women report using pornography.[8]
Experts have warned that the rise in the viewing of pornography was implicated in a variety of problems, including a rise in the levels of STDs and teenage pregnancies. Additionally, males aged between 12 and 17 who regularly viewed pornography had sex at an earlier stage in life and were more likely to initiate oral sex, apparently imitating what they had seen. [9] [10]
Internet pornography was blamed for a 20 percent increase in sexual attacks by children over three years.[6]
One out of three youth who viewed pornography, viewed the pornography intentionally.[1]
Seven out of ten youth have accidentally come across pornography online.[2]
Nearly 80 percent of unwanted exposure to pornography is taking place in the home (79 percent occurs in the home; 9 percent occurs at school; 7 percent otheunknown; 5 percent at a friend’s home).[3]
Kids experience unwanted exposure to sexual material via:[4] A link came up as a result of an innocent word search (40 percent), Clicking on a link in another site (17 percent), A pop-up (14 percent), Other (13 percent), Misspelled web address (12 percent), Don’t know (4 percent), Pictures involving animals or other strange things (10 percent)
Type of material youth encounter when unwanted exposure to pornography occurs:[5] Naked people (86 percent), People having sex (37 percent), Violent pictures (13 percent)
Nearly 74 percent of pornography websites surveyed display adult content on their homepage (accessible to anyone) before asking if the viewers are of legal age. [11]
American children begin consuming hardcore pronography at an average age of 11 Four out of five 16 year-olds regularly access pornography online
Findings from the Youth Internet Safety Survey indicate that 15% of 12-17 year olds have purposefully looked at x-rated material online.
Data from the PEW Internet and American Life Project suggest that 70% of 15-17 year old internet users accidently view pornography “very” or “Somewhat” often.
Child Pornography:
Child pornography is a $3-billion industry. (Top Ten Reviews)
Child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online, and the content is becoming much worse. (Internet Watch Foundation) Internet Watch Foundation confirmed 1536 child abuse domains in 2008.
The fastest growing demand in commercial websites for child abuse is for images depicting the worst type of abuse, including penetrative sexual activity involving children and adults and sadism or penetration by an animal. 58% of child sexual abuse images depict this level of abuse. (IWF, 2008) 69% of all victims in child abuse images are between the ages of 0 and 10 years old. (IWF, 2008)
In a study of arrested child pornography possessors, 40 percent had both sexually victimized children and were in possession of child pornography. Of those arrested between 2000 and 2001, 83 percent had images involving children between the ages 6 and 12; 39 percent had images of children between ages 3 and 5; and 19% had images of infants and toddlers under age 3 (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Child Pornography Possessors Arrested in Internet-Related Crimes: Findings fro the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study. 2005)
Your brain on porn:
further decline in dopamine levels
further decline in opioids and endorphins
drop-off in GABA, which is an anti-anxiety
neurotransmitter
rise in brain stress hormones CRF and norepinephrine
elevated dynorphin which inhibits dopamine and lowers your pleasure response
one week after quitting the reward center sprouts new nerve cell branches, which correlate with cravings to use
More sources on addiction to porn
Common porn addiction withdrawal symptoms include:
Anxiety
Restlessness
Irritability
Insomnia
Fatigue
Headaches
Poor concentration
Depression
Social isolation
Loss of libido (Can take days to manifest, and last a long time)
Adult (>18 years old) exposure to pornographic media is connected with:
Believing a rape victim enjoyed rape
Believing women suffer less from rape
Believing women in general enjoy rape
Believing a rape victim experienced pleasure and “got what she wanted”
Believing women make false accusations of rape
Believing rapist deserve less jail time
More acceptance of the rape myth
More acceptance of violence against women
More likely to go to a prostitute and to go more frequently
Increasing their estimates of how often people engage in sex with violence
More self-reported likelihood of forcing a women sexually
More self-reported likelihood of rape
Creating more sexually violent fantasies to get aroused
Engaging in more sexual harassment behaviors
More likelihood of forcing a woman sexually
More likelihood of future rape
Using physical coercion to have sex
Using verbal coercion to have sex
Using drugs and alcohol to sexually coerce women
Having engaged in rape
Having engaged in date rape
Having engaged in marital rape
Being an adult sex offender
Being a child molester
Being an incest offender
Engaging in sexual abuse of a battered spouse
More willingness to have sex with 13-14 year olds
More sexual attraction to children
Having sexually abused children
Life and death of a porn star:
all the women who don’t make money from the porn industry.
the women who are kidnapped, tortured, and forced into snuff films.
the skeletons that NAFTA keeps hidden in cobweb-ridden closets on the U.S.-Mexican border: their average career length is 3 months.
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What do you think of this?Are deviant acts getting more mainstream? Is the number of soft porn and act sexy attitude on places like Instagram a result of the hiperstimulus ? Are men and women to blame? Should we have more control over access to porn? Does it affect deeply relationships and expectations over bodies and ideal people?