Obligatory this happened 9 years ago but I still think about it every day.
It's a long one so buckle up.
(Apologies about the grammar and such, writing is not my forte.)
Me: $D
Friend/Co-Conspirator: $F

This story starts with me, a 'quiet but well liked throughout the school' 17 year old in IT class at my High School in a large suburban, two city public school district. We had one of the best high school IT programs in the country at the time for many reasons. Part of our class (of about 35) involved us going around the school to do basic maintenance on school computers. Although with the exception of myself and $F, our class never touched staff computers.
Myself and $F were the two students always finishing our two week classwork cycle in about two days. So we were always tasked by our IT Teacher with helping the school IT guy (district employee stationed at the school in the IT lab) to go around and fix issues throughout the building while everyone else worked on their classwork. Often, we were loaned the IT guy's keys and district keycard to go around the school and take care of business. (This is important later) Over time, myself and $F became well known by staff around the school for being able to fix "anything" so we eventually gained a lot of trust from our IT Teacher and District IT guy. To the point that we knew passwords we ABOSOUTELY should not have known.
We knew everything from the password to the surveillance system to the master (domain admin) password district IT used to access everything from HR files to grades to mechanical systems. This password literally let us access anything on any computer in the entire district. And before you ask, yes all buildings in the district (including admin) were linked together and no they weren't firewalled off from each other. Now we never used our powers maliciously as we loved our school and never would've done anything to harm anyone or damage any systems.
One day I thought to myself "wow, Information Security (InfoSec) in this district is atrocious, I wonder how easy it would be to test it from a student perspective, then present my findings to the district IT guy". This, would be the beginning of the biggest fuck up of my life.
(I'll try to keep the technical stuff to a minimum)
My mission started one day when I was tasked to grab a computer from a classroom and bring it to the lab. Easy enough. I was given IT guy's 35+ keys and sent off. While walking to the room, I dropped the ring, it took me a minute to find the right key on the ring. When I found it, since I was looking bit harder than usual at each key, I noticed something peculiar about the key he used to open doors inside the school. It was stamped DGM and looked different than the usual *M stamp master key for this one high school building. Not seeing this abbreviation before, I thought, "ok this must be an important key since it works like a school master but looks different".
I opened the (empty) classroom, fired up a locksmithing app on my phone and took a digital impression of the key that gave me the bitting code so I could duplicate it later on, grabbed the computer, went back to the lab and gave the keys back. Curious about what this DGM stamp meant, I started googling on my phone, "DGM [Key Manufacturer]". It came up with GM as "Grand Master", the key above the master key. Nothing with DGM came up in the search. I thought "ok this is just the "grand master" key that opens all three buildings on the school property, NBD. (Main School, Theater, and Aux Gym buildings)
"Ok. but what does that D in DGM stand for? Nothing in the school district starts with a D, except... District. Holy shit, it must mean "District Grand Master. But they can't be stupid enough to make one key that opens doors in all 15 schools. Right?"
I get home and order a key duplicate on the website that built that locksmithing app. A week later it shows up and I bring it to school. Before gym class I tried it on one of the doors in the Aux gym and low and behold, it worked. Great! Part one of my test plan is complete. Someone with this key could cause a lot of damage if they wanted to, but how would they get past the alarm systems in each building? Because it would be difficult to discreetly do a lot of damage if the building was full of people. Naturally someone with ill intensions would carry out their act at night while the building alarms are armed.
I already knew that the alarm systems were controlled by keycards that every staff member in the district had. (It was an antiquated system with flaws known to the IT world) Their cards only worked for the buildings they worked in. So the cards, electric doors, and alarms must be controlled at the school level, not at the district admin office. Right?
So how was I going to get a hold of a keycard long enough to scan and duplicate it onto a new card? It required a laptop and a special piece of equipment that I couldn't just bring to school while everyone was there. I thought "I can't access the security system and lookup badge codes with the IT master password I know, that defeats the whole purpose of this test. Where's the next vulnerability in this system?" Then I realized, there's a gate to the staff parking lot that's opened with keycards, but not their district cards, they had separate cards for the gate. I scanned the entire network for this gate controller, but couldn't find it anywhere. "Good Job school district, leaving your gate system closed circuit. It's inconvenient to program, but definitely more secure."
Okay, so where is this gate controller located? I've got a district master key so when I find it, I can access it locally. I look at the gate itself and see a freshly paved line in the concrete leading from the gate motor to the Aux Gym. "Okay, its somewhere in the Aux Gym."
I wait until Saturday during Football practice, the Aux Gym is disarmed and the front door is open. Everyone's out on the field so no one will see me enter the building. "Hey there's a closet by the front door I'll try this one first." There it fucking is. The gate controller is mounted on the wall. I open up the panel and attach my laptop. "Fuck there's a password, what could it be? It's not going to be the master password, this isn't connected to the network." I look at the circuit board, there's a label with "admin - (name of city school is located in)". Unbelievable, that's the login. "District IT People are paid six-figures to make this shit up? Seriously?"
I accessed the swipe log and I noticed an interesting trend. Half the time someone swipes into the parking lot, there's an access denial that immediately precedes a valid gate card swipe. "They must be swiping their district cards first instead of the gate card!" Lucky for me, this system records badge numbers when access is denied. So I had access to several district keycard codes, protected by a password that is the name of our city. Wonderful. I sift through the logs and notice the names of three district janitors, all three with the preceding access denied messages and codes, followed by their valid gate cards. I remembered these people from my previous schools, so their district cards must open multiple buildings. (Remember when I mentioned that district buildings weren't firewalled off from each other on the network?)
I took one of the codes and encoded it onto a blank keycard with that special piece of equipment that cost me $20 on eBay, walked out the front door and scanned the card. I heard a loud click and the reader light turned green. Holy shit, I now have a DGM key and a keycard that disarms EVERY school alarm system in the district. Nothing is off limits to me. Part 2 complete.
I call up my friend $F who somewhat knew what I was doing, and once nighttime rolled around, we decided to visit almost every school in the district. Just to see if it actually worked. And boy it did. We easily swiped into each school, the alarm automatically disarmed, and the DGM key opened every door in every building we visited. I found myself thinking "Good Lord, security here is even more atrocious than I thought". We had the decency to rearm each building before we left and once we were done, we planned on telling the IT guy on monday when we went to class.
Well, my dumbass decided to try one more school the next day (Sunday Morning), I swiped in and within 10 seconds, the (middle school) principal walked through the door and asked "Who are you?" I could've bolted out the front door, but I wanted to be honest because they were gonna find out on monday anyways. So I told him who I was and what I was doing (very short version).
He took me to his office and had me sit down while he made a phone call. It was someone at the district office. All I heard him say was "I can't distinguish this from my own badge, its a perfect copy but it has his name and photo on it". He hangs up. Asks me more questions and it eventually leads to the DGM key. This especially panics him because he knew what it was but didn't know anyone other than the District Ops manager that had one. He makes another phone call, "This is (principal name) at (middle school) I need someone to come down here now." I'm thinking "Okay, someone from the district will be here to ask more questions, cool."
Boy was I wrong, within a few minutes about six police officers show up and start asking me questions. I'm honest, I tell them my plan and what I did. They all looked utterly confused by the end of my short explanation. They took the keycards and DGM key and asked me to call my parents to pick me up. They search my car and find pot in the trunk (oops). So there's a charge right there. They said they'll notify us later once they talk to the district and I was released into my dad's custody.
A few hours later, my mom gets a phone call from $VP saying I'm not to attend school monday and we will have a meeting that evening at the high school. "Okay, understandable. I haven't been able to explain myself. They're playing it safe."
Whoops wrong again!

IT Teacher: $ITT
District IT Director: $ITLady
Vice Principal: $VP
Cops: $PD
We arrive at the school for the meeting, my IT teacher is sitting in the school office with a disappointed yet very proud look on his face. As we arrived we were called into the conference room, I expected it to be just $VP, lmao no. It was $VP, two cops, and some random district official. My IT teacher was there just to translate the technical terms. I explain my whole plan, being interrupted many times by everyone to ask their questions. At one point $VP says "Jesus $ITT you're not supposed to be teaching this stuff!"
$ITT: $VP, Do you realize the amount of critical thinking and work that went into this project?"
Well, after he says this, there's a knock on the door. "$VP, $ITLady is here"
"Random district official" leaves and $ITLady enters and sits down in front of me"
$VP: $M this is $ITLady, the District Director of IT. She has some questions for you.
$M: Ok
She proceeds to tear into me, asking "WHAT DID YOU BREAK, WHAT DID YOU HACK?!" I could literally see the veins popping out of her head. She was pissed the fuck off.
She couldn't accept that a bored teenage kid that just wanted to see if this was possible, was able to compromise her systems in one week. At one point the officers asked her to leave the room and take a break because she was getting so worked up.
Fast forward to after the meeting, the police took myself, my mom, $VP, and $ITT to my house and seized all of my electronic equipment. Everything from my cell phone, to my laptop, to my WiFi adapter and everything in between. My favorite part was when they were searching my computer bag. The police officer opened it, rummaged around for a bit, taking everything electronic out, then gently and over dramatically pulling a strand of condom wrappers out in front of everybody.
$Mom: *Glares at me* Previously not knowing I was having sex at 17
$Mom's new BF: *Leaves room immediately*
$Cops: *Looks at $VP not sure what to do*
$ITT: *Gently facepalms*
$M: Thinking "Fuck, this is bad"
$VP: *staring at the cops for about five seconds* "Okay well let's move on"
They all leave after seizing basically everything I own.

Fast forward to a few days later, I get a letter from the district saying I have been suspended pending expulsion. Great.
We attend the expulsion hearing, I say exactly what I said in the first meeting with $VP and the cops.
Get another letter two days later, I'm expelled. We appeal to the school board and the district's lawyers. They don't want to hear any of it. Appeal denied. They're pressing full charges. Okay I didn't know what the charges were but they were pressing them. Cool, great.

Two months later I meet with county Juvenile, I again explain to them my story, they're just as confused as the district people but my Juvenile rep is taken back by my calm demeanor and willingness to share all the details. By this point the district has done a through investigation and found no evidence that I stole or caused damage to property or their computer networks. They then Inform me I'm being charged with:
-- 9 counts of Felony Burglary 2
-- 3 counts of Class A Misdemeanor Computer Crime
-- 3 Counts of Class A Identity Theft
-- 1 Count of Poss. Controlled Substance on School Grounds
I'm also ordered not to use any electronic devices until I see the judge. This included something as simple as a TV remote.
Fuck Me

I have a few more meetings with the County Juvenile rep, she was actually a very nice person and was surprised I was assigned to her in the first place because she usually got the murders and rapists. She got to know me and my true intensions with the entire plan over the next month.
Before my first hearing, she (the county) recommended to the school district not to press charges. They felt this could be remedied in-district, since while crimes were committed, I wasn't aware of the crimes and there was obviously no bad intent.
During the hearing, my Juvenile rep and shitty court appointed lawyer explained my side and the district lawyer explained theirs. The judge was extremely confused by the whole situation, saying "we've never seen a case like this before, at this point I don't know how to proceed" The DA also looked equally as confused.
Judge asked the district's lawyer: "How do you want to proceed?"
Lawyer: We'll take this under further review
Judge: $M expect a call from your Juvenile rep this week. Adjourned.

Three days later, we receive a call from Juvenile. The district is pursuing all charges and wants $80,000 in restitution for a new district security system. Wonderful news.
I live in a constant state of panic for the next three months while waiting for the next court date. I end up going to the district's alternate school for a while while attending twice weekly meetings at juvenile.
Went a few more times in front of the judge, my lawyer, Juvenile, and district lawyers doing all the talking, explaining the entire case to the judge. The district still insisting I stole and damaged district property even though I never did and they ever found any evidence.
About seven months into this, the Judge had enough. She didn't want to hear anything more and was going to issue my disposition (ruling) at the next hearing.
She explained that $80,000 in restitution was ludicrous and the district was going to pay for their own security upgrades if they chose to.
She then looked at me and asked me to rise.
Judge: "I have three options here Mr. $M"
"Option 1, I dismiss all of the charges and we'll be done here
Option 2: I drop the marijuana charge, reduce all other Charges to Attempted (Misdemeanors), and sentence you to one year bench probation
Option 3: I send you to jail right now"
I almost lost it right there.
Judge: "Based on what I've heard from our Juvenile rep and read in the police reports, I'd like to go with Option 1 and dismiss the charges. But because of the sheer severity of the crimes on paper, I am unable to do that. So I am going with Option 2. I hereby sentence you to one year of bench probation and order you to pay restitution in the amount of $3,200 for district staff overtime. Good luck Mr. $M."
I don't remember what was said after that because I was so relieved I almost passed out.

After three months of thinking I was going to prison for 20 years, it was all over. I was numb for the rest of the day.
All in all, The whole experience only left me with severe depression and anxiety for a few years but hey I'm not in prison. Great, right?
Actually it ended up better than I thought. I ended up graduating from the alternate school's accelerated graduation program shortly after that. (The district wanted me out of their hair ASAP)
I received a full diploma from my regular High School at the end of my junior year. I got to essentially skip most of my junior and all of my senior year of HS. Ended up working my ass off and got a great IT job at a company I still work for today. And now I have IT Director as my title.
And that is how I royally fucked up by shaming the fuck out of my school district
Shove it $ITLady!

TL;DR I exploited security flaws in my school district's security system. They got royally pissed and tried to send me to prison. Instead the judge gave me a slap on the wrist and I graduated a year an a half early. Now have a great job in IT.

Edit: Some amount of proof that this isn't fake because I forgot people on the internet are asses
Edit2: random internet people, while yes, this story is extremely dumb and sounds extremely false, I swear on my life this story is 100% true. For the techies, I intentionally left out some details because they're boring to most people. If you have a question just ask.

$PLTR - The Big DDD

I don't get what you guys are worried about with PLTR.
Here's my personal DD on PLTR, you're welcome to read and do whatever you want. Other helpful info or pointing out mistakes in my DD is very welcome.
Fears preventing you from buying PLTR

Targeted ads on your phone from Yahoo Finance or Zacks telling you PLTR = BAD!!!1!eleven
Shills spamming "pLtR tO tHe MoOn" and :rocket: on PLTR thread comments.
Last quarter's seemingly bad financials/earnings.
Financials Moving Forwards
Soros who owns 21 million shares "threatening" to sell his shares upon DPO expiry.
DPO expiry 3 days after February's earnings and possible insiders and DPO holders sale and dip.
What does PLTR tldr.
Other Information

#1 Targeted Ads
Ads and articles are both paid for by someone.The fact that in the past 3 weeks i've been getting multiple multiple targeted ads on my phone related to PLTR since i love PLTR so much.
Ads are telling me that PLTR is bad, doesn't provide a dividend, they're telling me PLTR's fair price is 20 instead of 25 based on some financial model and have gone as far as to provide a list of alternative stocks to buy.
To me, this all screams: SCARE TACTICS
Additionally, the last few weeks of ups and downs in PLTR's stock price is another indication of the attempts to short the stock to sh!t and drive investors out. (For what reason? I don't know.)

#2 Shilling PLTR
I myself love to shill PLTR to people whenever i can. I do this because i legitimately think this company will do great. I work as a product manager in a software development house and understand what PLTR does. PLTR is not cryptic.Regardless, i think when people shill PLTR to you, they are right to do so as you're probably missing out on a great opportunity to make money in the long run. If you're looking for big gains short term, maybe try something else.
Shillery is OK, but at least give the facts.

#3 Last Quarter's Bad Financials
If you'd done your DD not by searching reddit posts but by checking PLTR's actual quarterly report, you'd know that PLTR's "bad" last financial quarteearnings were due to the costs of listing themselves on the New York Stock Exchange.~855million were spent on listing and stock related compensations and this is the big reason.
Direct quote by PLTR here: https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2020/Palantir-Reports-Revenue-Growth-of-52-in-the-Third-Quarter-Raises-Full-Year-2020-Guidance/default.aspx

We incurred a loss from operations of $847.8 million, which includes $847.0 million in stock-based compensation following our recent direct listing.

I would like to remind everyone that this is a 1 TIME THING. Put simply, this means that PLTR won't have as excessive losses next quarter as they did this last quarter.
Additionally, let me go into further detail on this and not just leave it to that.

PLTR's quarterly operating expenses for the past 3 quarters were at around ~260 million.
PLTR's operating expenses this quarter were ~987 million.

ADDITIONALLY...
PLTR also had a higher R&D cost this quarter that just passed. Normally they'd pay 80 million on R&D, but somehow ended up paying ~300 million this quarter. No one knows why, but this is another thing that influenced PLTR's earnings.
https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2020/Palantir-Reports-Revenue-Growth-of-52-in-the-Third-Quarter-Raises-Full-Year-2020-Guidance/default.aspx

On September 30, 2020, in connection with the Direct Listing, we incurred $769.5 million and $8.4 million of stock-based compensation using the accelerated attribution method related to the satisfaction of the performance-based vesting condition for RSUs and growth units, respectively, that had satisfied the service-based vesting condition as of such date.

#4 PLTR financials moving forwards
PLTR is deep in bed with the government and the Biden regime although may look like it would be against using PLTR is in fact secretly very pro-surveillance e.g pro Palantir.
Here's some of the known organizations in the US Govt that use PLTR:

CDC
Office of the Secretary
Food and Drug Administration
Immigration and Customs Enforcements / ICE
Internal Revenue Service / IRS
National Institute on Drug Abuse
DOD/ARMY - ACC Aberdeen Proving Ground
Coast Guard / DHS
DOD/NAVY - Naval Information Warfare Systems Command
US Attorney's Offices / DOJ
US Special Operations Command / SPEC OPS

Boys. The big institutional people know these things. You just found this out. See how deep PLTR is already in bed with the Government?????? Palantir IS the next Raytheon/Lockheed of DATA aggregation and visualization.
UPCOMING EARNINGS
I've done some quick maths and it looks like PLTR is more likely to be in positive earnings this quarter and with a 0.02 cent EPS target, we can easily assume that they'll destroy this with maybe 0.04 or 0.08 EPS. In the worst case scenario, PLTR's EPS this quarter could be somewhere around MINUS -0.05 ish due to interview costs and ad/campaigning costs that were not there before the company was listed.
WHAT CAN DESTROY PALANTIR
Now, there's big possible downsides and Palantir can fail IF contracts that expire are not renewed. That's biggest REAL reason for Palantir's balance sheet getting screwed.
I've seen a disturbing pattern with PLTR's financials and that's that every year, it's R&D cost is rising by between 150 and 350 million dollars. This is quite a bit of negative revenue and if new contracts are not constantly coming in, PLTR's balance can start going into the negative.
WHAT WILL NOT DESTROY PALANTIR
Some people may have concerns over the new left leaning government dumping PLTR. An article was posted that is behind a paywall EVERYWHERE that goes something like this:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cdc-officials-urge-biden-team-to-dump-palantirs-covid-tracker
In my opinion, i believe this is inconsequential and that a few people crying to daddy Biden to kill a multimillion contract with PLTR is a stretch. Also we know the current new Biden team has his hands full and will have them full for at least the next 1 year with what's going on.
There is no time to deal with a few crybabies and even if he did deal with it and did decide to kill the PLTR Tiberius Covid tracker contract with the CDC which he WONT, these things take months and years to deal with, and by then the contract/s will have already brought PLTR tons of money and revenue in.
HOW MUCH DOES KARP AND HIS GOONS GET PAID
Short answer is... A LOT. The amounts below are PER YEAR. That's a lot of money in the hole and contributes to annoying amount to why PLTR is always just at the edge of just barely being profitable.
https://preview.redd.it/ba58nqcurob61.png?width=2615&format=png&auto=webp&s=55d45833faad4d60ea8dc142a9601c44b4cc7395
Palantir's prospectus 311 page document's 130 last pages are almost all exclusively talking about extremely complicated options trading schemes that are made by Cohen and others to make sure they can squeeze out a LOT of money out of PLTR.
Mithril Investments has existed from before and is not a new company. Owned by Thiel/Cohen/Karp as a way to launder and exchange options for more options and more money for all 3 of them. Also Shyam Sankar to me feels corrupt which scares me a bit, he's had some very shady dealings and has brought his wife in PLTR that gets paid 200k per year.
Prospectus Document: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm
I suggest you skim through it, it contains EVERYTHING about Palantir.
Palantir is going to need to have to be getting AT LEAST 500 million in NEW contracts per year to REMAIN BARELY profitable. It's doable in my opinion, but just barely and it's why they made the company public to try and get more people's attention and increase the inflow of contracts.

#5 Soros and his 21 million shares
First of all, i think we can all agree that Soros can suck it.
If you've read a few articles here and there, you'll know that Soros owns/owned 1% of Class A PLTR shares. No one knows whether he's sold them yet or if he's an DPO holder who'll sell 3 days after February's earnings.
Whether he sells them or buys more will be mostly inconsequential in my opinion. We see dips and pumps every day. He legally cannot sell his shares all at once, he'll have to sell certain amounts daily and over time. This will create annoying sideways motion as shares exchange hands and consolidation starts for 2-3 weeks until his and insider shares exchange hands.
Nothing special to see here, move along just a little draw down resulting in some consolidation.
PLTR is exposed to OIL more than anything, so fluctuations in the general market and general market crashes affect PLTR much less than other stocks. Also PLTR does not track ANY benchmarks. NONE.

#6 DPO expiry 3 days after earnings in February
To my limited knowledge, this is how BIG plays who are holding DPO shares usually work:

If a stock has performed well up to earnings and investors are more than happy with the returns, they're more likely to not sell their stock or just sell less than they normally would.
If a stock hasn't performed as well as investors thought, these investors are more likely to sell stock or reduce their positions more than normal.

There's a total of 1.16Billion Class A PLTR shares currently (Give or take don't flog me). We are currently trading with ~250 million shares while the rest are locked away in the DPO.
When those shares are "unlocked" in February, the price of the stock won't be diluted. These shares already exist and are accounted for. They are simply locked. Also when they are unlocked, the share price won't simply multiply because all shares are now tradeable.

According to Palantir’s after-hours filing with the SEC this afternoon, the company has 1.16 billion Class A shares, 484 million Class B shares and 1 million Class F shares on its cap table outstanding today, or a total of roughly 1.64 billion. Only Class A shares will trade, and Class B and F shares are convertible to Class A shares on a one-to-one basis. On a fully diluted basis, which Palantir says represents 2.2 billion shares total according to its most recent S-1 filing, the company is valued at $16 billion. The difference between those two aggregate numbers comes from outstanding stock performance grants, warrants and other financial instruments.

What WILL affect stock price:

Employees exercising their non class A options into Class A shares. This IS dilution.
The bigwigs e.g Alex Karp, Peter Thiel and a few other bigshots exercising their options and then selling them for a profit.

To note, regular employees will barely affect the price of the stock with their miniscule share holdings. Alex Karp, Peter Thiel and a handful of other high ranked executives in PLTR are the ones that will create a tiny but manageable ripple in the stock price.
What COULD affect the stock price a lot:

Massive sell off by the big institutional holders.
Not shorters. (Citron and Citi can suck it, we're in control here)
People with weak spaghetti wet paper hands.
Everyone fomoing the same weeklies e.g like when everyone bought Jan 15 calls on everything.
Big but silent scare campaign (that's already going on) to scare off normies like us.

#7 What does PLTR do, tldr.
Imagine Facebook's database of everything about everyone & Youtube's Database of everything & Geolocation data in a database made by the US Army for known terrorist cells.
Palantir allows you to select and match varied data TYPES from several different database, combine it in any way you want and visualize it so that it's human readable by even the dumbest person in the room so that even they can see patterns and come to conclusion on a subject matter.
It's kind of like filling an excel sheet with data and then visualizing it with a bar chart, except the date you filled the sheet with can be anything and not just numbers or dates or countries and you can make various combinations using all the different rows of data to maybe come up with a pattern to something like how to best distribute the Covid vaccines in the counties in a very specific state in the US.
Literally what you see in SciFi movies where people combine random data by smashing keys on a keyboard and somehow find the murderer, the location of a terrorist or the percentage that someone will commit a murder in the future based on a lot of random data about that person or the area, country, family, history... anything.
While this all might sound super cool and amazing, it is. Maybe in 10 years time there will be a few more companies doing this, but for now, it's only Palantir, Circles, Alteryx and a few other private entities that do this type of thing. Many of them work with governments and are hush hush due to the kinds of things they use this type of software for (terrorist cells, warzones, etc) and the public backlash this could cause.
tldr: Glorified data aggregator and visualization platform/software with different access levels for different people.
PLTR is superbly positioned to offer their software to SLOW and Boomer like organizations like Governments.
Governments are stupid and don't have neither the time, nor technical knowledge to develop this software themselves for internal use. This is what PLTR capitalizes on and why Governments use them so much.
Governments could have spent the a fraction of the money they spend on PLTR contracts to make the software themselves but only for their own internal systems and use, but they can't and if they tried, they'd fail because technocracy in governments is not a thing. By the time they'd even complete a project like this, it'd likely be out of spec, unusable and would require further development and money and we know how slow and bad governments are at doing even the basics. Again PLTR wins because of this.
PLTR is likely NOT to be adopted by giants like Google or FB or other modern tech organizations of any size because they are not stupid. They have their own purpose built internal systems that they use to do everything related to data aggregation and visualization because they have the technical knowledge and resources. Buying PLTR for their use is a joke.
PLTR capitalizes on being general a general purpose tool and is set up manually by an engineer over the course of 4-10 days for each customer. The engineer customizes and configures the system for each company's custom use since the software allows you to do so. Regular aggregation and visualization software CAN do the same, but typically lacks data input types and features that PLTR has because PLTR has cultivated a special set of features over many years that were suggested by their existing clientele in battlefields and other places.

#8 Other Information
\*Big known PLTR Holders*\**
https://preview.redd.it/a404oalxrob61.png?width=1631&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c2dbcfac5a7ca207127771ec4e3133f8d943359
\*PLTR's Price List (2019)*\**
https://www.esi.mil/Download.aspx?id=7186

\*Personal TA and Crayon Mania*\**
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/PLTnrjqL4dw-PLTR-Risky-April-100-200-possibility/
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/PLT5YcdCye0-PLTR-Schizzo-Technical-Analysis/
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/PLTCkCTvtqM-PLTR-PLTR-train-leaving-the-station-get-ready/

\*PLTR stock pumping events*\**

7'th Jan - Interview
26'th Jan - Demonstration
11'th Feb - Earnings
~15'th Feb - DPO expiration - Havoc

\*Similar Companies*\**

PLTR - Palantir - Stock Price ~$25 - Market Cap 48bln
AYX - Alteryx - Stock Price ~$125 - Market Cap 8bln
Semantic Research - Private

\*Known Contract Info*\**

240 million Palantir Air Force contract expiring soon in 3 months. If it's re-signed, it'll be a big catalyst for a PLTR pump. If not, it'll be a sad dump day.
Mithril, investment/financial company owned by Karp and Thiel buys a 3.15million share stake in Palantir. Somehow this makes them major stakeholders.
Sompo holdings has 5% of all PLTR shares.

\*Past and new US KNOWN gov contracts. Source* govtribe.com\\**
https://preview.redd.it/kbim7afrrob61.png?width=1392&format=png&auto=webp&s=9abc99d9995c4972919e275f407e1bba6382dfdd

\*Quotes from Won and LOST contracts from Federal Agencies*\**
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH) - WON

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) intends to award a contract without providing for full and open competition to Palantir Technologies, Inc., 100 Hamilton Ave., Suite 300, Palo Alto, CA 94301.

Veteran Health Association - WON

The pandemic-related data management and operational decision-support requirements have led the program office to determine that the Palantir data management and analytics platform is the only viable solution that would maintain the current operational capability, without a degradation in VHA COVID-19 decision-support.

AFLCMC Wright Patterson AFB (DOD - USAF - AFMC - AFLCMC) - LOST

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) held meetings in January/February 2020 timeframe with potential vendors to determine their capabilities and their abilities to meet this mission requirement. They met with Palantir, Recorded Future, Altyrex, In-Q-tel and Semantic AI. From the information they gathered in those meetings it was determined that Semantic AI would be the only company that could fully meet the requirements of this effort without further delaying the project and incurring additional costs

Now friends, here's my position on PLTR. I'll be holding onto it for the next year. If it's not at least 300% by then, i'm selling it and moving on to the next stock. App i'm using is Revolut.
Also yes, i'm ALL-IN only on Palantir because i know my money will multiply itself in the short term. I'm not holding this till 2025 as others are supposedly doing. I'm selling in 2022 with 300% or more profit. PLTR is severely undervalued, underpriced because it's a DPO. Give it till EOY and we're going to be rich. If it was an IPO it'd be trading at 180+ already imho.
I've spent the last month and a half holding PLTR. I've gone full schizzo mode when it comes to PLTR. I lose sleep daily and i love it. I hadn't slept for 37 hours a few days ago because i spent so much time researching PLTR and scraping the internet for all possible information.
I come from an IT/Development background, so i understand what PLTR does completely.
My PT's for PLTR are:

48-89 by March or April.
75 - 125 by EOY.
200+ 2022 IF they solve their income and constantly increasing R&D cost issues.

https://preview.redd.it/4t0k1ujprob61.png?width=407&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b3a16265edafa290432e6b79f9009e3df99f495

Pass the bong and gather round, bros! We're gonna like....um....what were we doing again? Oh yeah, we're gonna talk about those Chronic stocks and how you Ganja Gorillas can avoid becoming Game Gibbons

Hay hay, Ay, listen up, B, lemme holler at you a minute. I notice you been eyeing that portfolio real luscious like, almost like you found a couple extra bananas under your tree, am I right?

Cool, cool. So whatchu holdin', homey? Tillllllray? Aw yiss. Aphria? Yeah, she fine as hell. CGC? Oh lawd, dat ass is bangin'. ACB? Aw man, you like the classics, that's dope. OGI? Into the up and comers, respect young blood. SNDL?

SNDL? For real? Dude....

Hi all, NrdRage here. You might remember me from such hits as "pegging $GME dead right multiple times during its bubble, making everybody rich on $RIOT, exposing the $PLUG infinite money glitch, accidentally helping start the $BB craze, never getting an $AMD weekly call right and being in an abusive relationship with the VIX" or maybe "The SEC and you: How you can just say no to having them shove a Mister Fister up your ass". Alright, apes, it's been a great few days being able to throw a dart at a wall of weed stocks and no matter where it sticks, you make money. It's been a great run. But if you're going to expand the acreage of your jungle and the amount of lady gorillas you earn the right to mate with, you gotta start thinking a bit. And that means - hear me out - thinking of how the hell you plan on getting out of SNDL alive. And yes, I realize I'm saying this right after it spiked almost a hundo percent in the last 24 hours. Look, I was playing it, too. I grabbed some 2/19 3c's and a shit ton of 1/22 1.5c's on Tuesday. I also got out of both of those today, though not as high up as I could have. If you check my history, you'll see I even said I was goingt to eye a re-entry. Then the market took a giant dump and gave me that entry, but I passed on it because I had done some research by that point. Whatever, profit's profit.

Here's the TL:DR: It's basically a penny stock that's gotten pumped to hell. But the smart ape realizes when something has gone too mainstream and gets out of the way before the bulldozers wipe out his trees.

Hey, I love shoving a share price around a bit as much as the next guy, I ain't gonna talk shit about that. But it seems like nobody has an exit strategy for this, and I'm starting to see a lot of really stupid shit about Holding to 42.69 and all the other ridiculous bullshit from people who clearly don't even know what they fuck they've invested in that the GME Gibbons fell for.

Here's the reality of SNDL:

The company was on the verge of bankruptcy around Thanksgiving, they have no other markets other than Canada, which is ridiculously oversaturated with weed to the point that wholesale prices are less than a dollar a gram. And they recently got forced to admit that their product fails to meet THC content requirements.

In case you're wondering what that means, it means they sell skunkweed that they cut with paper and sawdust to make it cheaper. They sell garbage. And everyone knows it - their brand is associated with low quality crap.

Plus, they actively solicited us to buy their stock to drive up the price, then diluted it to fuck with a billion share offering. Now, to their credit, this not only enabled them to become debt free, but also up their marketing budget and spend some time trying to create a brand. Don't get too excited, fucking Sam's Choice at Wal-Mart is a brand, too, doesn't mean you should stick a chub of their ground beef up your rectum. By reason of them selling skunkweed, their margins lag well behind that of their competitors.

Looking at their financials, they've got 615 million in cash laying around. That's pretty good - except they're a company that burns 250 million a quarter. Which means they're going to dilute the fuck out of everyone again next month. They've got no exposure to the US market, but had no problem dropping "rumors" that they were going to break in to the US market through licensing deals - which turned out to be 1 pot shop in Bellingham, Washington. They have no real expansion plan anywhere in the world, for that matter.

B...bu.....bu.bu....BUT NRDRAGE! Stonk go up ! Look at it! SNDL to the moon! 🚀 🚀 🚀 ).

Yeah, I know. It's fucking crazy to talk shit about a stock when it's seemingly mid flight. But here I am anyways. Not to talk you out of the weed party - you should totally keep playing that for all it's worth - but rather to get people to see that they've probably outgrown skunkweed now.

Look, the reason this thing mooned is because it was like a dollar. Hell, it was 13 cents not too far back. With a stock worth a dollar, it's easy to get a lot of other apes to throw a couple of bananas at it for the lulz. It's easy to shove around a penny stock with an extra 10 bucks you have laying around from another trade somewhere. But as the price goes up, so too goes up the perceived cost of entering. I can make a strong (unassailable, in fact), argument that $APHA at $25 is cheaper than SNDL at 3.25. But people are conditioned to like smaller numbers. Unfortunately, as the GME Gibbons learned, eventually you run out of buyers, and then things go tits up real fast.

As the Prophet Biggie Smalls once said, Mo' Money Equals Mo' Problems. We all know this equation to be true. And here you are, sitting on bags of bananas you didn't know you were gonna have a week ago thanks to some stonk you hadn't heard of before yesterday. You don't think you've got a problem, but you do. Because those bags of bananas aren't edible until you turn them in to the bank for real cash. If you're sitting on bananas from the gold standard of the weed world (that would be, $TLRY), you're resting pretty easy that no other ape is gonna come by and steal your bananas. There are gonna be lots of bananas to go around, and mostly we're just taking bananas from fools who think their bananas will be less later. But you don't have that with SNDL. All the bananas are currently sitting with people who think the bananas will go higher. You can't all be right, especially when there are billions of bananas, and now your grandparents are starting to buy bananas because some Boomer on CNBC told them it would make their dick bigger and their friends think they were cooler.

Again, I'm not telling you to leave the party

But, if you recall your dorm room years, the best pizza you could afford was the Tony's school lunchroom style shit for a dollar. Then you managed to hide a few bucks from the people who collect your student loans, and you upgraded to Domino's. Maybe by now you're ordering from a local joint that makes it's own dough in house and the sauce is made with the love of an old Italian grandma who accidentally dips her sagging tiddies into the pot 3 times while making it. That just makes it taste better. That's science. But I digress.

The point is, you can get better weed now. You don't have to smoke the skunk. So before you get the rug pulled out from beneath you and are stuck investing in shitty penny stocks again, maybe you should elevate your enterprise. Let's take a look at your options:

Canopy Growth

You could go with $CGC. They not only sell higher quality weed, but are an established brand and also sell oils and shit to those hippie fucks who still think Burning Man isn't just a brogrammer beatfest and go to an acupuncturist to enhance their "luck". They've captured that all important 65+ stoner demographic by marketing their shit as a cure for seizures, cataracts, and dry vag, so they've got a lot of revenue. They've also had a much more muted rise this week because they just haven't been on everybody's lips, which means they've got a lot of room to run. The downside here is they burn almost as much cash as SNDL, but they've also got more bullets.

Aurora

If you go with $ACB, you're going with a company that's already gone through its "shady as fuck" stage and has re-emerged healthy from it. You're also not only getting on weed, but the DIY urban chicken farmer types who want to grow their own weed. They, too, have had a strong run, but have a lot more runway than most because they've actually got a really strong path to dominance in the US market once it opens up to them.

Organigram:

Look, if your dick is still getting hard at the thought of playing a low dollar stonk or you've only got 28 dollars to invest, you could do a lot worse. They've got strong branding, large growth potential, a management structure that doesn't seem to act shady, and they've run almost as well as the other new generation of meme stonks, but lagged back enough because nobody can fucking rmeember their name to where they can rubber band a bit.

Tilray and Aphria:

I'm combining these because they're inexorably joined at the hip (or should be, more on that later) because the two of them are merging. For those who don't know, sometime in Q2, every share of $APHA you own will turn into .833 shares of $TLRY. Even though APHA is the one buying out TLRY. This is basically the gold standard of weed stonkery. When you start investing in these, you know you're a real investor.

Here's the interesting thing with these guys, though. Even though APHIA should be just slightly trailing behind TLRY in terms of stock price, it's currently trading at less than half. With TLRY sitting at 73 a share as I write this, APHA should be at just over $60. But it's at 29. Now, obviously, this means that TLRY has a lot more momentum, and some of that is due to the fact that there's a mini (don't flog me for using the word, but it's true) short squeeze going on with that one, which has turned it into such a strong momentum play. But APHA, by virtue of actual math, needs to be within about 17% of TLRY's price. Which means APHA either needs to moon dramatically, or TLRY needs to fall precipitously. Now either of those things could happen, but the momentum of TLRY is hard to stop, which means it's more likely that APHA rubber bands to catch up to it in the coming months. Even if TLRY does falter, that means APHA still has to come up a bit to meet it. Making APHA kind of a "can't go tits up" situation. TLRY also has the benefit of having enough market cap to where fund bois will buy into it, whereas SNDL is too small to meet most of their requirements. Which can further propel TLRY (and thus, drag APHA with it).

One of the interesting things that's been happening with this pair is that the order books, even though they should mirror one another, have completely inverted from one another numerous times in the last couple of days. This, of course, was a bull flag for TLRY every time it happened, leaving APHA to compensate to try and catch back up shortly thereafter. It's really easy money.

Fundamentally, these guys have one HUUUUUUUGE advantage over the others: They secured the UK distribution, and now have the inside track to be the supplier for the rest of the Europoors across the pond who need to smoke a bond to help forget all the things wrong with them. And if you don't think they won't be able to leverage that to be the front runners out of the gate when the US opens for business, then you definitely ain't black.

Or, you can just stay where you are and do the 💎👐 thing

Ask the $GME Gibbons how well that worked out for them. The ones still holding that stonk are like that one dude sitting at the edge of the bar of the Viper Room, still rocking his mullet and chain wallet, just convinced that Warrant and Slaughter are going to ring in the glory days of hair metal once more and that Queensryche is going to start selling out stadiums again. It's just sad. You're flying right now, but a rug is gonna get pulled out from under you and then you're gonna have your own daily thread where you reassure yourselves that it's gonna be OK and that you're gonna ride it to a thousand one day. Lots of us (myself included) made a fuck ton of money on GME. And we've made a fuck ton on SNDL and the rest of the Weedies this week. But there are always people who Melvin it and hang on to their position too long and get stuck. That's gonna be a lot of you, but you shouldn't let it be you.

TL:DR: Smart apes should look at their much bigger pile of bananas from SNDL while you're way ahead and upgrade them to plantains before the other apes. Plaintains equals breeding with better apes, not low quality apes that cannibalize fellow apes and give ape diseases.

All my love

-Chad Dickens

EDIT 1: I forgot to list my positions
CGC - None
ACB - None
OGI - 10,000 shares @ $4.23, 1000 1/22 5c, 500 2/19 7.5c
TLRY: 20,000 shares @ 18.74, 100 2/12 65c, 500 2/19 65c, 500 2/12 42c, 5000 6/18 43c
APHA: 500 2/19 26c, 500 2/19 25c, 5000 7/16 30c
SNDL: Opted out today

Vogue interview with ASP about Revival Rory

My (35M) wife (34F) recently came out as polyamorous and I don't know how to process the negative feelings i'm experiencing - anyone else have a similar experience?

Obligatory this-is-a-throwaway-account.
So I met my wife about 6 years ago in a video game. We lived in different countries, and after dating long distance I moved here to be with her. Total time married is about 3 years now, no children yet.
Last week, she told me that she thinks she is polyamorous, and wants to explore that facet of herself. This is defined as someone with a need for multiple romantic loving relationships, as in multiple lovers (so a level higher than an open relationship which is only physical, but lower than the level of polygamous which implies multiple life partners). She said that while I am her soul mate and primary partner, she feels that he has the capacity to love others romantically (though not to the degree she loves me). More info on it here: https://www.morethantwo.com/
She was nervous AF to tell me. She didn't know how I would react so she was anxious the whole time. I took that first conversation really well - we've briefly discussed having a third person involved with physical intimacy with the two of us at the same time, but it wasn't expected to be something either of us had alone, or even as a recurring thing. We never actually took that step but it's been out there being discussed for months now, and this line of thinking led her to this realisation. She didn't know this about herself before we were married so the timing of this isn't really her fault.
She said previously that she would probably be fine with me seeing other people romantically too, so I believe her when she says she thinks this specifically is what she is. She also said that if I were to not be OK with any of it, then she'd forget this side of her and not pursue it with resentment-free (easy for her to say that now IMO as she currently doesn't have feelings for anyone else). But I hate the thought of my wife not being able to be herself with me. I mean, what's the point of any romantic relationship if you can't do that? I want her to be herself, unrestricted so long as there is respect to my needs. To give some insight into polyamorous love, polys think of love as an infinite resource - they can love someone, and it doesn't diminish the love they have for other partners at one time, whereas monos only really have enough love for one partner at a time.
She has been honestly amazing throughout the whole discussion. She's been willing to give me complete control over her relationships and has kept saying that I have the final say on limits and boundaries - if I say I don't want her doing anything physical, then so be it. But honestly, that hasn't been enough to make me feel better since now I feel like we're incompatible on an intimate level. During the first conversation, I took it well - I was uncomfortable but I realise that she can't control who she is or her feelings anymore than I can (though we can control our actions), and if that means she's poly and i'm monogamous, then I shouldn't be angry at her.
That said, the next day all the negative feels hit. Rage, jealousy, anxiety, fear. I couldn't work, I couldn't eat, all I did was stew over the thoughts of her being romantically intimate with someone else - physically or emotionally. Had an argument (which was more just me raising my voice while I talked at her) over it where I accused her of doing this to us, and blaming her for all the pain I was feeling. I implied that because of this we might not be compatible, and she broke down in a way I have never seen. She had a panic attack and hyperventilated so badly she passed out. After talking it over with her, I apologised and said I wasn't going to leave. Next day comes again and I realise that when I talk to her, I generally feel better about us but when we try to be intimate, my mind immediately goes to her experiencing that moment with someone else. When i'm alone, I stew over it and was back to being angry - I brought it up politely and she reassured me and I felt better. Later on, it ate at me until I was being standoffish, and on being asked about it, implied again that we might not be compatible and that it might not be intentional but it was her fault. I said I feel like I can't be secure with us anymore because I can't empathise with her intimate needs anymore - I get that she could love others, but I can't, and because of that, I will never truly be able to know if what we are feeling at the same time is the same. This talk was far less emotional but much more of an argument. She said that she's been up crying all night, trying to figure this part of herself out with me being fully disclosed and having control over what she does, and that her reaction at my words were compassion-based (crying, guilt, reassurance, sacrifice) whereas mine were selfish (anger, demands, accusations).
She's completely right. I was acting that way knowing full well it wasn't her fault she's like this. She then said that we need to process this separately since she can't do it while feeling like shit because of me, so we're taking some space from one another. I pushed back later and apologised, but the damage was done.
I love my wife more than anything, and I am desperate to not lose her. I understand that a lot of my insecurities about her being with others are founded on fears about losing her for someone else, or that she'll prefer them to me. Really, those shouldn't be an issue as like I said, her love for others doesn't diminish her love for me, but right now that knowledge isn't enough to soothe my emotions. I hate the thought of being compared to (but in poly relationships that's kind of a good thing as differences between partners can be celebrated, not viewed as imperfections or failures). I don't want to be angry. I don't want to just sit on these emotions. I feel sick to my stomach. I want to be able to accept it, and i've been reading forums for advice and perspective, but I haven't yet found much that is relevant to my type of situation (married for years, then came out). I've been on monodatingpoly and it's helped but there isn't much quality there at the moment. I can't keep feeling this way but even reading forums which tell me how to process the jealousy and insecurity just make me feel angry and hurt all over again. I power through it, and sometimes it does help, but its just so fucking different to everything I thought I understood about love.
I'm trying to understand her, I cognitively understand and agree with everything around the poly culture. What i'm hoping for with this post is perspectives from some people who have experienced this, how they processed it, and what the end result was. I want to resolve my insecurities and try this but oh my fucking god this hurts so much, even when I try to logic it away without her having actually even done or felt anything with anyone else. Please help?
Forgot the TL;DR edit - wife came out wanting other romantic partners, i'm not cool with it even though she is supportive an giving me control to completely shut it down, I want to be cool with it as it's possibly a need of hers and I want some perspective as to how to process it
Next Day Edit: Holy shit most of you guys are awesome. I feel tremendously better - I think I mostly just needed to feel validated about my feelings. Felt like I was being a bad husband by not being able to accept this - I've struggled with expressing myself and being true to my feelings in the past which hampers things when we need to work issues out.
To clarify a few things: i'm 99.99% sure she isn't with someone else. She met a poly lesbian a few months ago (wife is straight) which got her thinking about whether the lifestyle could work for her.
As for her being manipulative, I don't think it was intentionally that - she seemed genuinely scared that she was going to lose me so I think it was an emotional response to tell me I could tell her to close that part of her off to make me feel more secure.
I wasn't aware that "coming out" wasn't the correct term and that it's more of a lifestyle choice than a need (a need could indicate a bigger issue and she isn't even really sure about it). Might post a follow up after we hash everything out. Thanks again!

Two-By-Two, Eyes-Of-Blue: Uncovering The Conspiracy And Future Expansions of 2077 - An Analysis of The Conspiracy, Clues, and Theories to the Future

I think we're all aware by now of the conspiracy that's building in the background of 2077. Most of us know about the mysterious Blue Eyes who appears in The Sun ending to the game. He operates as The Stinger of sorts for (that) ending of the game; He and V discuss a job vaguely alluded to through out the ending sequence and then the ending cuts to V in space charging off towards The Crystal Palace. Cue DLC Hook and credits.
But, let's go back here. This is only the tail end of the conspiracy and where it actually intersects with V's story. Blue Eyes (and some connections to him) crop up multiple times through out the game and, when pieced together, start building a larger picture that runs deeper into Night City than the pockets of most corporats.
I've finished my second playthrough of the game and I've been drafting this post as I play and find more clues. I doubt I'll find everything or might completely dismiss some, but I want to be on the front lines of uncovering this mystery, especially if this will be our Gaunter O'Dim for Cyberpunk 2077. I apologize for the length of this post ahead of time, but I need to summarize a bunch of lore and at least 4 major side-quests; "I Fought The Law", "Dream On", "Full Disclosure", and "The Prophet's Song".
Here's a long essay incoming, but I hope you chooms enjoy and I hope you read through to the end because, oh boy, I uncovered some cool shit!
So, who is Blue Eyes? Who are his contacts? What is his role in the ecosystem of this city?
"I FOUGHT THE LAW"
Let's start with where he most appears in the game; Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez, political family in the running for Night City's first family. Which I kinda have to summarize their questlines, including the first one which Blue Eyes never appears in. But I'd prefer to go in chronological order and not jump around, so stick with me.
Elizabeth first contacts you for the job "I Fought The Law". It's fairly basic, but the quest tells us she convinced her husband to hire V to look into the recent death of Mayor Rhyne. We get a BD of a cyberpsycho attack by Peter Horvath on Mayor Rhyne. Weldon Holt leaves the room before the attack and then the security gate crashes right before Peter walks in with billions of eddies worth of chrome. The attack is unsuccessful and stopped by Detective River Ward, who was only there because Peter went missing internally at the NCPD and he knew where Peter would go.
When investigating Peter Horvath, his previous boss describes him as paranoid that "probably thought Mayor Rhyne talked to him through the TV" and that the world was out to fuck him. She then mentions that someone "finally saw what he was worth" which cues into how Peter was thrown into this attack in the first place; he had a patron who funded his chrome and the attempt on Rhyne's life. Tellingly, River than goes into a little talk about how clues rarely make sense until put into the larger context, much like we're doing right now.
V goes to the club Rhyne died in; The Red Queen's Race. V sneaks through, takes out some Animals, and can investigate what actually happened to Rhyne. If we read the emails on the office terminal, we know that Weldon Holt arranged for Rhyne to be there. He initially mentioned this to Rhyne during the first BD; Rhyne asked Holt directly to arrange his usual room at the club. So, this doesn't inherently look too suspicious on it's own, but Holt knew where Rhyne would be. We also find out via the Animals Boss there that Weldon Holt is the one who hired them to smash up the club and they're currently waiting around for payment. Further, you can go to the room Rhyne died in, find the BD headset, and put it on... which INSTANTLY knocks V out and they need to be rescued by River (who, btw, takes out any Animals on the property you didn't get to! Ty bro!). They surmise that Rhyne was killed by a virus in the headset. Lastly, we find footage of Detective Han (River's partner) covering up the death of Rhyne. They confront Han, V goes off to the Peralezs, and quest ends.
Of note, finding the BD set is a hidden dialogue option with the Peralezes suggesting, yes, that's the correct deduction to make. You don't get that option otherwise. And V never actually comes to any real conclusion to what happened to Rhyne.
So, let's summarize what we know about the death of our Mayor. Peter Horvath was hired by an unknown Patron who spent a ton of money to turn him into a suicide bomb against Rhyne. They have connections internally to the corrupt NCPD which allowed Horvath to get access to Rhyne, both from escaping NCPD custody and for the security to give him access to Rhyne's conference room. That fails so our mastermind instead assassinates Rhyne at his usual sex club, one that we know for sure Holt knew about. Rhyne is assassinated via malware in a BD porno headset, NCPD comes in an Detective Han cleans it up. Later, Holt hires the Animals to take claim to the club and fuck it up.
Holt is looking suspicious AF rn, but we also don't have any direct evidence and V says as much if you accuse him. Personally, I think it's a little too clumsy if it's him. Holt leaves the room just as an assassination attempt goes down, sets up a sex club appointment for the Mayor where he's successfully assassinated, NCPD covers it up... and then he hires a gang to cover it up more? Something doesn't fit here.
My theory is Holt is innocent. He's a scum bag, but not the culprit here. Why would you EVER give your identity to the Animals you hired to cover up an assassination? The big dumb brutes of the underworld? A name they give up with almost no fight? No, I think someone hired them under Holt's name. And I think they hired them because they KNEW the BD Headset was left behind; Han dismissed it entirely as Rhyne dying of a heart attack brought on during sex. They needed that destroyed to cover the final footprints. It's the only piece of evidence that doesn't have Holt or NCPD's name on it and doesn't fit the narrative that both are pushing. If they're covering NCPD or Holt's tracks, why not delete the emails or footage of Han? And if Holt or Han were trying to push this false narrative, why leave the headset right there the first time?
And, while I have no evidence of this assertion, the Animals are only still there because they're waiting for payment to come in... I think our employer never intended to pay them and left them in the path of V, who is likely to shoot them and tie up the loose end for our mysterious entity. Animals destroy the BD set, V shoots the animals, no trace. And, even if he doesn't, Animals will point V to the wrong person.
No, we've got a third party here. But let's continue so we can finally let our lead actor take center stage.
"DREAM ON"
"Dream On" starts when Jefferson calls V and asks them to help in another case. Long and Short; Jefferson woke up in the night and found a man in a mask (or an implant) standing over him. Jefferson shot the man, only for his head to fry and knock him out. Coming to, he's back in bed with no evidence it ever happened. SSI, their private security, insists that there was nothing on the cameras, no evidence, and nothing happened. Elizabeth claims she slept through the whole thing event.
V investigates the apartment, with Elizabeth giving the tour, and finds a lot of evidence. Elizabeth is kinda dismissive at first thinking V won't find much. First small stuff leading into larger reveals. Let's start small and work our way up.
First room Liz takes us to is the campaign room. She talks about running the campaign entirely out of pocket and having to keep most of their supplies at the Penthouse; "It's cheaper that way". You find a picture of their daughter on the wall and Liz explains that she's off at university in Europe while Jefferson is running for office; "It's easier that way" she says. That phrasing again.
EDIT: A redditor in the comments pointed out that the Peralez are being controlled via drugs in their food as part of the tech. They mention they've been eating fast food lately, explaining why Jefferson was lucid enough to catch the agent and shoot him.
V can look at Jefferson's emails (which Liz slightly discourages them, saying there's nothing there) which reveals a bit more about their campaign. There's a video of the iconic commercial and poster of Jefferson pulling out a gun and shooting a bunch of paperwork. In the email, Jefferson HATES this commercial, but his assistant, Lea Patel, insists on it as it will air in television time slots with action-drama series and catch the attention of voters. Further emails have Eric Boucher, Jefferson's Campaign Partner (Manager?), saying Jefferson has been acting unpredictably lately; presumably referencing one of the next emails. Boucher is confused because they fired Lea Patel together, only for her to continue working and sent him a new ad for approval. When emailed, Jefferson is confused about Lea being fired at all and doesn't remember the event ever happening, even telling Boucher to be honest if he has some issue with her. A final email is from SSI Chief of Security, Wallace, discussing Jefferson's intent to hire a merc to look into Rhyne's death ("Dream On") and they suggest Jefferson drop it or have NCPD or themselves look into it. Private Security just... offering to investigate the former mayor's death? Huh... sounds more like they want to squash the issue to me.
We should now talk about the Peralez's campaign. As you explore the apartment, Liz explains that they're running on a corp free campaign; they want to get Night City out of the control of the corps and do so without ever owing any favors to them. She specifically cites "Night Corp, Militech, and Petrochem" as ones they've denied. Militech and Petrochem come up a few times in other quests but Night Corp is relatively obscure. And they choose that corp to be the first one she mentions? Stands out to me. It also isn't lost on me that we're talking about running a campaign out of pocket and refusing corp assistance... while walking on the fancy ass balcony of a penthouse in Charter Hill- North Oak.
Next room, we find Jefferson's office. Elizabeth and Jefferson both graduated with law degrees from Asukaga University in Berkley. V points out it would be extremely expensive for them both, but Elizabeth says that both got full ride scholarships from the Richard Night Foundation, run by Night Corp. To further fucking cement this moment, there's a Richard Night biography shard on the desk. But we'll drop this for now because I want to get to Night Corp a bit later.
The computer on the office desk has some emails on it sent by Elizabeth. One is between her and Judy where she's asking Judy for help on the original "I Fought The Law" quest and Judy is the one who gave her your contact in the first place. Another is from their daughter kinda asserting the same thing earlier; safer for her in Europe so she's not a target on the campaign trail. And here's the interesting one; Boucher emailed Elizabeth asking why Jefferson changed his mind on Lea Patel. Elizabth says Jefferson explained it to her that it "slipped his mind" and "circumstances changed in Lea's favor" and she asks him to drop the whole thing. She's dismissive and gives extremely vague details.
Next room, Bedroom. Elziabeth's gun is on the table. It's the one Jefferson claimed he fired and scanning it tells us that it has been fired recently. We also find the wedding photo of Jefferson and Elizabeth where she fondly talks about having blue roses because she loves them so much... except the photo's roses are red and V says as much. Elizabeth quietly corrects herself that they only had red roses instead and moves on.
In the hall, we find the blood trail and gun shots in the wall; both covered up hastily. Following the trail, we enter a tv room. The Smart Glass isn't working and Elizabeth says it stopped working recently; not like they use it much anyway. Passing a Tech Check lets us try and fix it... only to be quickly blacked out by it so hard Johnny felt it too. V asks Elizabeth about it but she doesn't know what V is talking about despite having been standing right there. We also find a hidden door in the wall. Unlike earlier, Liz is actually confused by the door but demands V try and open it.
Downstairs we have the security room. Liz says that it used to be her place but "Security had to set up somewhere" and that she had to make sacrifices for this campaign; "it wasn't the first nor will it be the last". One computer has a Welcome email from SSI to new recruits. It details that they have access to all areas except Section Zero, which is reserved for Blue or Black agents and that, should the encounter a Blue or Black Agent (SPECIFICALLY "in the night"), do not interact or acknowledge them. The next email from Wallace mentions an accident where there was a "behavioral anomaly" and "ALPHA" injured a Blue Agent (BLUE-66M) who is in critical and the SSI head is requesting access to Sector Zero to give medical aid. SSI gives Wallace the code to Sector Zero and sends a team to aid. SSI knew about the accident and lied. You go to the second computer, unlock it, and can unlock the upstairs door. On that terminal is a bunch of deleted files (presumably the security footage from that night) and emails discussing "normal maintenance procedure" and further informing security that ALPHA (Jefferson) hired a merc (V) and, should security encounter them, do not interact with them.
Small thing I found interesting, a shard called "You Are What You Slot" is found down here too. It details a fictional assassin who kills and then steals the identity of her victims. Small and doesn't mean much on it's own, but the shards are hinting at the story here; one of false identities and manipulation.
Now, let's get to the main event; the secret room. Inside is a control center. Elizabeth is horrified and feels violated. She shouts that she's not letting SSI anywhere near them, only for her head to start hurting and she tells V to do what he needs to do. She leaves him. Inside the control room is a box of bloody medical supplies. The computer discusses "behavioral norms" for ALPHA (Jefferson) and suggests amplifying "neural dampening". It discusses things similar to Wallace's terminal, but from the other side; ALPHA is displaying odd behavior by hiring a merc, the SSI teams avoided meeting the merc, and then the actual accident that occurred injuring BLUE-66M during regular 'maintenance'. The other side of the room also has another data shard, "Rewriting Synaptic Pathways", basically talking about using tech to rewire the brain a bit.
Following some wires from the control room to the roof, we find a signal dish. Johnny (replacing Elizabeth for conversation now that she's gone), joins in that the tech looks prehistoric but functional and that Militech used it in the war; it requires line of sight to transmit data but otherwise can't be intercepted. We can see the tower and go to investigate. V tells Liz the whole deal; V can suggest that the Van near the tower could be SSIs or that it might not be due to unconventional tech. Liz then itterates twice that it's a stressful campaign time for Jefferson and V should talk to her, NOT him. "Sure, whatever" V and the player dismiss.
(I SWEAR WE'RE ALMOST DONE WITH THE SUMMARIZING FOR DREAM ON, I'M SO SORRY.)
We drive after the van, Johnny is suddenly excited for smashing a corpo conspiracy and iterates that citizens do not choose their representatives, instead they're chosen by "key players" who watch the Peralezes for weaknesses or blackmail material. We arrive at the facility patrolled by Maelstrom and the occupants of our van park, get out, and climb ladders to the roof where they get into an AV that is cloaked to be near invisible (as shown in a couple of vids on YouTube and this subreddit).
At the place, Maelstom is explained; "UNKNOWN USER" contacted them while driving the van for protection to take care of V and then destroy the van. Van's data makes it pretty clear; the Peralezs' minds are being manipulated, new neural pathways are being created, and their memories are being created, changed, or erased. There are also a couple of other names of other test subjects. The data is then erased. We do see an almost flower like symbol before the data is destroyed.
The agents on the cloaked AV CAN be killed and do drop a shard, thought it doesn’t have many more details, merely that they’re contacting HQ to arrange extraction and that the Van’s data should be destroyed and echoing the arrangement with Maelstrom mentioned earlier in their shards.
V calls Liz, Liz wants to meet in person instead of over holo and send him to a Japantown Raman shop (same one that used to be Rainbow Cadenza, coincidentally). Odd choice for an upstanding congresswoman. She says her nerves are shot, the ramen shop is a quieter place to meet than the apartment, and she needs a moment to gather herself since she last saw V, with V even asking if something has happened since they last saw each other. Of note, Liz is stress smoking the entire scene, something she hasn't done until now. She then explains, no, it's been over a longer period of time. She's been watching her husband change and act differently for awhile; he stopped reading, his taste changed, and he even insisted he was an only child and never had a bother when Liz asks about visiting the grave. Of note, yes, Antonio Peralez has a Columbarium Vault, which proves Liz is correct on this. She confesses that she herself has been told by others she's been acting strangely. V says she knew what V would find and she asserts that she doesn't know the who, how, or why, but "they're changing us". Jefferson apparently went on in great detail about a trip she swears they never went on, but she doesn't know if the vacation is a fake memory or if she's the one that doesn't remember.
She saw a stranger in their apartment tinkering with a monitor, only for him to be missing when it was reported to SSI and they looked at the feeds. The next day, she got a phone call from a stranger (whom she refers to by "he") saying that she's walking on thin ice and Jefferson could have an accident. They later erased all data that the phone call had happened. Elizabeth claims she's terrified for herself and her husband's safety and doesn't want V to reveal the truth. V points out "they" could be telling her to say that but it doesn't really change how she feels since she just wants Jefferson to be safe. She tells V to tell Jefferson it was SSI spying for Holt. She asserts she wants SSI out of her roof if they're spying on their sleep. She will take responsibility for firing SSI, but wants Jefferson to be safe and out of that fight. She adds a meeting with Jefferson to his calendar at Reconciliation Park. But, ultimately it's V's choice (especially since she has no idea if she'll remember the conversation) and leaves. Johnny jumps and and talks and mentions that there were talks like this back in his day and worrying about the damage a puppet mayor could do.
V heads to Reconciliation Park to meet with Jefferson. Entering, V is called by an Unknown Number which blacks out V's optics. They claim to know who V is, *what* V is, and what V wants. It doesn't matter what V tells Jefferson, but "don't dare cross that line" and "you're playing with fire". Its a garbled male robo voice, so safe to say it's irrelevant to the owner.
Enter Stage Right, our missing lead; Mr. Blue Eyes. He is standing on a balcony watching the place where we meet Jefferson. In the Scanner, he is labeled "Mr. Blue Eyes", has no known affiliation, is wanted for "SC 370", and is wanted for "Classified". His eyes are electronically glowing blue you can even see from several yards away. You cannot injure him as grenades do nothing and you can't aim at him. Of small note, and I don't know if this ACTUALLY means anything, but his hair style asset is referred to as Morgan Blackhand in the files, but could mean nothing if this hair is actually used by other NPCs. MOST LIKELY THIS IS NOTHING UNLESS SOMEONE HAS FURTHER INFO.
(Plot twist: It meant something. But we'll get there.)
V sits with Jefferson and can reveal the truth; "SSI is on the take from an unknown group to control your lives". V can even point out the absurdity of Peralez being as successful of a politician as he is without any corp sponsors. "They want you to be *their* mayor. Molding you like clay". You can tell Jefferson how to proceed and additional details, but it doesn't matter. Later, Jefferson will send a text and delete your number and so will Elizabeth, who will call you out for telling Jeff. In the end credits voicemails, Jefferson has decended into paranoia about some vitamins Liz gave him which he didn't trust so he sent them to the lab, only to then not trust the lab results saying they're fine. Jefferson Peralez is confirmed the new mayor during Late Act 2 and the major difference is his state of mind at the end game; either hiring V to be on his security staff or descending into absolute paranoia over everything in his life.
Lastly, Johnny appears and cryptically talks about back in his day when they'd talk about rogue AIs. Personally... I kinda completely dismiss this? It comes out of nowhere, Johnny cites NOTHING for why he'd bring this up in relation to the case, and I can't fathom a motive. I’d also point out that this isn’t the only time Johnny is outright wrong. In fact, he’s wrong A LOT in the game. For example, he criticizes V for listening to the Netwatch Agent and that he’s bullshitting you. Except, the agent is 100% correct that VDB did spike V as a suicide virus and Johnny is actually wrong. He also claims he doesn’t know what happened with Thompson after Never Fade Away, but this is a lie because Thompson is flying the AV Johnny takes to Arasaka in 2023. The only connection I can find is "Who is controlling Blue-Eyes" which might make Johnny correct, if just not in the way 'Rogue AIs' initially implies.
So, what actually has happened?
The Peralez family has been molded for a very long time into being the perfect political couple. They got scholarships from the Night Foundation for two fancy law degrees, have successful political careers, and Jefferson is running for Mayor on an anti-corp platform, an insanity for Night City. And he's actually successful at it. During a maintenance service at night on the Peralez's apartment, Jefferson woke up and shot an SSI/Unknown agent making repairs. The Control Booth knocked Jefferson out and they pulled the agent out of the apartment into the secret room. SSI put the Peralezes back into bed and hastily cleaned up everything, but the damage was done and Peralez hired V who uncovered mostly everything.
Elizabeth seems to be initially very upset by the discovery, but wants V off the trail when we meet her next. However, she's not in on it as she's equally a victim to the brainwashing/gaslighting and that's for certain. I think she's a pawn who is either too scared or too programmed to break the rules of movement on this chessboard. It's worth noting that, while the unknown entity threatens Jefferson's life and V's well being, they do not make due on either of these threats. I call their bluff. They have put too much work into Jefferson to abandon or kill him.
But, where else have we heard of this gaslighting brainwash process before?
"FULL DISCLOSURE"
Ok, we're on the shorter end so I don't have to actually explain this quest in full. Sandra Dorsett is a netrunner and a very skilled on at that, actually collecting data from Night Corp. She was kidnapped by the savs we rescued her from at the beginning of the game shortly AFTER she stole this data, suggesting Night Corp was behind it. This data is on the shard she asks you to collect during the aforementioned quest. V has full ability to NOT read it, but let's look at it; "Operation Carpe Noctem" ("Seize The Night" in Latin)
Described in it is an experiment on Night Corp's own employees where they are quietly brainwashing them and getting them to do whatever they want. They specifically cite an empathetic and calm employee who they got to fight a co-worker and then jump from a 16th floor window. The shard ends on mentioning that they're ready to install CN-07 on "our actual target".
I think multiple quests discussing brainwashing and gaslighting is too coincidental to be utterly unrelated to each other. I think Night Corp's actual target mentioned here is Peralez.
So, what is Night Corp?
Night Corp is the most mysterious of the corps in Night City. It currently operates to better Night City via philanthropic ventures, fundraising, community support, and city infrastructure. Basically, while Militech and Arasaka and the others operate in the city, Night Corp basically RUNS the actual city. They're also noteworthy for the level of security they have that even the best netrunners can't get much from them and, since they keep to themselves and seemingly just do city infrastructure stuff, no one really super bothers them. It has been run by Miriam Night, wife of late-Richard Night, until recently and we currently don’t actually know who runs NightCorp.
Originally, they were the Night Foundation, but that requires explaining Richard Night... oh boy, Lore Drop. I'll make it quick as possible.
Richard Night is the founder of Night City. He started as a partner of a firm, but his ambitions grew beyond that to founding "Night International" to build his dream; a city that would be so grand it would make all other cities pale by comparison, Coronado City. A capitalist mecha of opportunity, Night City would be run by corporations and have next to no anti-business policies on the books. Arasaka, EMB, and Petrochem were his first backers and he came into claim of land on the central-California coast; Del Coronado Bay and Morro Bay would be the location of his dream city.
(BTW, irl, Morro Bay, California is a real place. Been there, have family there, go there regularly, kinda cool!).
Despite being a capitalist mecca city and run by corps, Richard Night also dreamed it to be "A sprawling metropolis, free of crime, of poverty, of debt. A place where people could live safely, peacefully, without having to worry about the dire situations that were growing around the world at the time".
However, due to the design plans, Night didn't employ local contractors and instead got expensive architects and builders from all over the world. Local builders didn't like that, they had mob connections, bloodshed started. And soon Richard Night was murdered by an unknown assassin, presumably a mob hitman. The city was renamed Night City in his honor and his dream utopia became to embody everything that was destroying the world. Mob took control and corps didn't give a fuck since it didn't hurt them any until they eventually had to take out the mob gangs, but not in any favor to Night’s dream either.
Miriam Night, Richard's Widow, founded the Night Foundation (later Night Corp) to stick to Richard's Ideal dreams of what he wanted the city to be. They invest heavily in ecological research, alt power sources, civic infrastructure, public works, and charities and scholarships for Night City youth. "They've even managed to stay out of the normal corporate power struggles which tend to plague every other corporation, both inside the city and out. Even the shadowy corporate rumors about them, like having underwater bases in the bay or access to orbital satellites, remain unsubstantiated despite extensive investigation."
So, where does this put us now? We have ONE last quest...
"THE PROPHET'S SONG"
Garry The Prophet is our local crazy man. He spouts off insanities to anyone who will listen near Misty's Esoterica in Kabuki. However, some of his ideas aren't quite as much off the mark as one might think. There ain't no technonecromancers from Alpha Centuri (or Spanish Inquisition) nor is Saburo Arasaka an immortal vampire, but he was correct that Saburo wasn't dead and in fact immortal; via Mikoshi and The Relic.
He send you on a quest to investigate a meeting; he says that his ripper mistuned some cyberware in his head and he can hear their communications. You show up to a meeting between corps and Maelstrom. They say some nonsense phrases and transfer a data shard. Reading it ("Destroy After Reading") it seems like nonsense. But does include the line "The cages of men melt as night descends". You can decode it via a Null Cipher; first letter of every line: “Project Oracle Command Execute Plans”.
We don’t know what Project Oracle is. In real life, secret project or operation names actually tend to be chosen at random and are unrelated to the actual project (you can google funny stories about names that ended up awkward to the actual project), so this could mean nothing. But, narratives tend to give meaning to everything. Oracles are mythical in references and could predict the future or see the unseen. Perhaps perfect prediction via behind the scenes manipulations? Not sure we’ll get answers on this one for now.
Going back to Garry, he's been kidnapped. His protoge is screaming he's been kidnapped "Black suits came by - blue eyes and all". Blue Eyes huh? Further, she claims that they threw him into an invisible AV... Huh, like the one we saw back during "Dream On"? "Night's comin... The eternal night"
So, it’s time to jump us to the final step in our Fool’s Journey: The Sun.
“THE SUN”
The Sun ending has V wake up in their new penthouse apartment (with their love interest if they have one). Checking the computer, we see emails from our dear Mr. Blue Eyes. He wants an answer from V as to the job to the Crystal Palace he has planned and that they’re on a tight schedule for “obvious reasons”. We meet with him at the Afterlife and he talks about the job; Casino security is going into maintenance and V mentions giving him the casino client list. V also asks him to “hold up your end of the bargain”. They never discuss eddies or payment. It’s all in such vague terms. “Your end” or “Obvious reasons”. Smaller point but an email from Vik on the space shuttle also tells us that he’s asked around about Blue Eyes and has nothing; either he works with people WAY above Vik’s paygrade or he’s shady as hell… or both.
I think Blue Eyes knows V is dying (the obvious reasons) and I think the unspecified payment is V’s survival. V always says that they want to come back to their love interest so it’s not a mindless suicide run and I don’t think V would risk it all for nothing but eddies; especially not after Reaper (both versions) paint suicide runs as a horrible terrible thing. To then glorify it in another ending… no, the game is smarter than that.
Your love interest doesn’t seem to be too upset about the situation either. Panam and Judy leave V in The Sun due to their lives taking different directions, but it seems mostly amicable and understanding. They even express desire to see V again because they know V needs to do this job. Kerry, who stays with V in The Sun and expresses worry and also a desire to settle down with V, also seems mostly understanding that V needs to go on this quest. I don’t think they’d be so calm and loving and understanding if this were a suicide run. They know more than the player does.
Further, I think Blue Eyes isn’t after the casino aspect of the Crystal Palace at all. While that’s the major commercial aspect of the station as marketed to the citizen world, the station also has embassies from every nation on earth, facilities from all the major corporations, and is pretty much THE place where all the dark corporate espionage goes down. There’s so much more to this location than ‘casino resort’. *EVERY* corp has space stations and hideaways in space because the Crystal Palace offers it’s own legalities and opportunities that are not allowed within Earth’s terms and conditions. If they want to do some research that would be frowned upon elsewhere and get up to some Top Secret shit, it’ll be in outer space. Night City is controlled by corps and has lax laws, but outer space’s are even more so.
I think the cure V wants is not only on the station, I think it’s what Blue Eyes himself is after, but I’ll get there when it’s time to theory craft about the future.
I think it’s worth noting; Blue Eyes IS IN THE TRAILER FOR THE GAME. Yeah, anyone remember that shot on a shuttle with a guy being burned out from the inside? Yeah, he’s there. In the foreground. *Smirking*. The shuttle also seems like they’re in space.
These events leading to the Crystal Palace and the conspiracy with Blue Eyes are blatant DLC Hooks for the future and suggest a post-game DLC. This isn’t the first CDPR has done so either; Blood and Wine takes place after the story of Witcher 3 and is explicitly incompatible with the worst endings of that game. I think, conceivably, other endings where V is still alive could be roped into this adventure; Blue Eyes merely needs to hire them with the same offer of survival. While The Star takes V to Arizona and away from Night City, I think that choice of location is appropriate as, to even get to space for The Crystal Palace, citizens go from LAX to Arizona for a space port to launch them off Earth’s surface. They could have chosen anywhere else to send Panam and V, but they choose Arizona, huh. I do think Reaper, Temperance, and Devil will be locked out of this future, however, as all make any point of Blue Eyes hiring V irrelevant; there’s no V left to hire/save. MAYBE a rejected Devil ending, but I wouldn’t blame them for not continuing that conclusion either as Devil is one of the bad endings.
So, it’s finally time to really compile a lot of this information into where I think this is going in the next comment below

I worked for a successful startup and I've adopted the idea of Product Backlog (Agile/SCRUM) for my personal productivity

Cosmonaut's Jojo's Video is Wack

Alright Cosmonaut I have no hate for at all, I used to watch his channel and I just drifted away gradually, for no reason really I just did. I checked out this video because I love Jojo's and my god I didn't like this one. I know its been a while since its release but I just need to get my thoughts out there (I think MangaKamen also did a video about it but I haven't seen it yet). There are so many weird things he says, stuff that's blatantly wrong etc. Remember there's no hate here he seems like a cool dude, he just made a bad video imo. I love this series and I am aware of its flaws but I do feel a lot of his points also is shared with a lot of people and I want to disprove many of the ones I think are unfair and untrue to the series and give Jojos its deserved credit as I feel its a much better series than many think. Like people say its overrated and I disagree, a lot of people just kinda see it as a meme series and even a guilty pleasure, it doesn't really have that prestigious aura around it like series like One Piece and Hunter X Hunter.
Parts 1+2 Section:
"I don't like the way Araki writes his side characters. While I love Joseph, I cant say I feel anything for anybody else." Now I don't really mind this statement and this is during Part 2 (he improved massively with each part eventually getting to the point where in Part 5 the main cast was full of memorable and great characters) and I agree that Araki's character writing especially side characters was pretty weak back then aside from a few notable exceptions like Jonathan, Rio Zeppeli, Dio, Wham, Stroheim and Joseph.
Part 3 Section:
"Part 3 is kinda stinky. Its bloated, its very long for no reason" There is a reason though. Its a monster of the week road trip spanning across 50 days and the timeline is pretty much that. But this I also feel is a pretty popular opinion which I heavily disagree with, so many people call Part 3 repetitive and bloated but its a monster of the week and very episodic, its not really meant to be binged especially the manga and for its time it was very creative as anyone could be a threat like a baby, a doll, a dog, etc where many other shonen where if you werent an alien or a martial artist you were useless. Also Part 3 I feel has so many fun fights that are really different from each other to like Ebony Devil's clash with Polnareff, Hanged Man, Death 13, and most of the Egyptian Gods were fantastic like both Darbys, Pet Shop, Bastet and Geb. I feel Part 3 gets too much flak and not many realise just how many good fights are in there.
"There isn't enough traits or characteristics to get me interested in Jotaro as a main character"
Like ok he isn't the most complex or anything but this is underselling him a bit. He's introduced as a seemingly generic tough guy but then you realize he locked himself up just so he wouldn't hurt anyone else because of his stand, notices when his mum is pale and asks about it, goes on a death defying journey for her and actually develops from being really anti social to opening up a lot more. He really seems to become more comfortable with the crew as he goes on as Araki stated that Jotaro doesn't really express much as he thinks other people will just get it from his body language which could explain social awkwardness. And also for most people that watched the anime they missed all the scenes where Jotaro was really expressive in the manga as Star Platinum is smiling all the damn time and shows how pumped up Jotaro is behind his facade and he usually smiles and laughs a ton with them. I honestly don't get why the anime did this. Also he states he didnt care for the side characters again which...alright but i mean I loved Polnareff who I feel is one of Araki's best characters due to his fun personality, development, exciting fights and creativity and has a really tragic end in the part which is weird that Cosmonaut never mentions as I thought this is what he wanted from the previous side characters.
He calls Polnareff a Funny Coward...yeah. The guy who goes out to the world and fights many battles where he will most likely die just to avenge his sister, is shown to be so honorable he would rather let himself burn than stab himself and fights stand users countless times with no fear like when he instantly knew Anubis was following him and was ready to fight. Also the Vanilla Ice fight. Just that whole fight. Both Iggy and Avdol died and Polnareff was wrecked. But what did he do? He got back up and walked to DIO who to his knowledge is way more powerful than the guy that slaughtered two of his friends and almost beat him and he is all alone while doing it. Yeah sorry Cosmonaut but that was a stupid statement and not true in the slightest.
Also he calls Speedwagon a crazy murderer that turns into a funny coward and this is also hilariously wrong. Speedwagon grew up in the roughest part of London and sees a man who is really honorable and actually spares him and so dedicates himself to protecting Jonathan and helping him on his quest against Dio. You know? The journey full of vampires and monsters that Speedwagon never once opted to get out of?
"Character arcs do not exist in this series"
Dio, Wham, Jotaro, Polnareff, Iggy, Koichi, Yukako, Rohan, Okuyasu, Fungami, Abbachio, Narancia, Mista, Bruno, Trish, Jolyne, Foo Fighters, Weather and Annasui and that's just the parts he read.
"Goku and Luffy stay relatively the same throughout but change little bits whenever they encounter different situations and parts of the story" You mean like when Jonathan tried to be nice and a push over to Dio but eventually couldn't take it and beat the shit out of him? You mean like when Joseph started thinking of others other than himself for once after the Wham fight? You mean like how Jotaro becomes more comfortable and open? Also Goku and Luffy are both from very very long shonen where they have way more time to grow than an average Jojo who just has one part
"the only thing you'll get is an evil character becoming nice" Once again my previous listing of all the characters that developed disprove this.
"Most of the characters die unceremoniously. A lot of Jojo deaths are there for shock value"
Ok this was one of the few points that actually annoyed especially since he played Avdol's death while he said this. Every death in Jojos that's important is well important and means something and just because a lot of them happen quickly isn't a bad thing like he states it is. Danny really saddened Jonathan and showed how far Dio would go, George's and Rio's deaths had a profound impact on Jonathan, Jonathan's death even hit Dio quite hard, Caesar goes without saying, Wham had a nice death showing his kinder side and Joseph's respect, Avdol sacrificed himself for Polnareff directly going against his own orders and in his last moments of life chose to let Polnareff live instead of himself. And you got Iggy. This dog who is so selfish and hates that hes forced along this journey, he barely works with them and constantly acts rudely but after defeating Pet Shop in one of the most brutal fights (he lost a paw) of the series is now determined to fight Dio but as the weakens and loses blood Polnareff a guy he fought with constantly chooses to let Iggy go on without him and accepts his death. Iggy then saves Polnareff using all of his energy and for the first time thinks for someone other than himself and realizes that Polnareff has a much better chance at winning and cant let himself live and selflessly sacrifices himself for Polnareff. He made the mature decision to sacrifice himself for Polnareff.
"Atleast in Parts 1 and 2 the Zeppeli's deaths motivated the characters to keep going while in Part 3 they drop like flies" as I stated Avdol and Iggy had a profound impact on Polnareff and motivated him heavily to keep going even against Dio. And Kakyoin's deaths was very important as Kakyoin in his dying breaths gave Joseph the clue to Dio's power (you know, the ability they've been wondering for and desperately wanted the whole time!?) which helped Jotaro.
"the middle section of Stardust Crusaders is goddamn boring. Most of the stands are lame and too simple"
I don't get this either. In the middle of SC you get stands like Justice a fog like stand that controls people through their wounds, Lovers an insect stand that controls your nerves and attaches your pain to your opponent, The Sun which while comedic definitely wasn't boring, Death 13 which is a dream stand that makes you forget its existence when you wake up and is also controlled by a baby, Judgement a literal corrupt genie, High Priestess a small stand that can turn into any metal object like even minerals in the ocean and then you get great ones like Geb which is one of the best fights in the series, Oingo Boingo which was hilarious, Bastet a plug stand that makes you a giant magnet, Set a shadow stand that makes you way younger in like a second and of course Darby which is a fantastically suspenseful game of poker which is some of Araki's best writing ever. He also states that compared to a lot of the villains the mcs stands weren't that creative which alright fine I guess but how the stands were used is why they are great and fun to watch especially Polnareff's fights.
"The end shows that this part didn't need to be so long."
The length and amount of fights and screen time of the characters makes the Vanilla Ice fight and ending hit way harder though.
"In Part 2 everything was there for a purpose. Nothing wasted your time like Part 3" Once again they are different types of story. Part 2 is a serialized story and Part 3 is a monster of the week road trip story. Part 3 isn't meant to be binged, you're just meant to chill and watch each fight and enjoy spending time with their characters on their fun roadtrip.
Part 4 Section:
"Part 4 is the perfect balance of mundane with the strange which is what Jojo's needs"
...Why?
"Part 4 has the most consistent art up to this point"
Yeah its very consistent. Joking aside I still kinda disagree as I feel Part 2 had the most consistent art. Part 1 started out looking really weird and janky but ended looking really clean (late art style) and Part 3 started out with weird designs for Jotaro, Kakyoin and Avdol and grew to be way more clean, stylish and nice to look at (late stardust crusaders + early diu is probably my favorite era of jojos art).

The Golden Wind Section: (oh boy)
"Part 4 is still good with bad translations."
Yeah no. That's blind favoritism because you already read the part's actual translations I'm guessing and Part 5 had extremely bad translations where the story and even characters were changed a lot for the worse and were made way less understandable. There is a reason why people used to be so negative on it and now with the anime making it a lot clearer and with much improved translations why the critical outlook on this part has changed.
He calls Fugo a calm cool guy...the guy who stabbed someone in the face with a fork because of him getting a maths question wrong. The guy who beat a professor half to death with a dictionary. The guy who has so much pent up anger that his stand is literally a demon that kills anything that comes near it.
Also Bruno is so much more than a calm cool guy. Thats a really superficial look at one of Araki's best characters. He's a guy who chose his father to live it even though living with his mum would've been way better but did it anyways because he felt bad for his dad and wanted to be there for him. Almost lost that dad to crime which involved drugs and has for his whole life wanted to stop the drug trade but had to keep his head down. Bruno's kindness later went on to help bring in many social rejects like Narancia, Fugo, Mista and Abbachio a previous cop who is now left suicidal and depressed and Bruno accepts everyone of them and they all grow to care about each other. They all actually feel like real friends even when we see them for the first time. They know each other's quirks, have good chemistry and Fugo stabbing Narancia isnt really seen as a big deal which could also show the abuse they have went though in their daily lives. Anyways Bruno wanted to stop the drug trade as it was killing and ruining many innocent families but couldn't find an opportunity until Giorno came and of course you all know what happened afterwards where the man gave up his own life just so Giorno can finish the job.
Narancia and Mista are funny cowards apparently? Of course this is obviously bull. Narancia had plenty of dangerous fights and he was nowhere near scared. Remember when he stabbed out his own tongue against an enemy? Remember when he was literally shrinking and still fought off an enemy straight away and even bloody fought off a big spider? Also Mista is like the bravest dude ever. Dude constantly puts himself out there like did you even read the White Album fight and Kraftwerk?
"Giorno and Bruno should be merged into one character. Giorno has no traits. He is just a guy."
This makes no sense at all. They both serve completely different things to the story of Golden Wind. Giorno is the guy who comes in and inspires the whole gang to become better people and to become braver and move on against Diavolo and sacrifice themselves for the greater good because of his charisma and coolness. Remind you of anyone? DIO! Bruno is one of those who is inspired as he clearly states after his fight with Giorno, his fight against Diavolo and his second death.
"Araki's writing becomes garbage here. He abandons a character because he is too op."
This is also blatantly false. In Bunko Volume 10, Araki explains that the plot originally had Fugo working as a spy for Diavolo that Giorno would have eventually been forced to kill. Having gone through grim feelings at the time, Araki couldn't handle the thought of betrayal of a dear friend and felt that the readers would have been disappointed had he followed through, thus the goodbye scene at the quay of San Giorgio Maggiore happened. This was just one Google search. Would it kill you to research Marcus? And I like the fact that Fugo stays behind. It makes sense for his character who is very logical and obviously wouldn't wanna go on what was essentially a suicide mission against the boss of many powerful stand users who himself owns one. Also Fugo's stand wouldn't have helped matters and would've been killed off first by Diavolo. Purple Haze is nothing to King Crimson, its not because he was op. Fugo staying behind brought more stakes to the story and made the gang's decision feel like even more of a big deal.
"Why is the main villain introduced halfway through the story? We don't have enough time to develop him. Dio is the best villain because he have the most time dedicated to fleshing him out."
N O. Diavolo's whole point was to be a mystery. His birth, childhood, personality, body, even his stand is full of contradictions and its all meant to be creepy and weird. His name means the devil and there have been many theories on what he is (King Crimson coming to life and taking over Doppio? Diavolo is his evil personality? Diavolo is the devil?) and thats the whole point of Diavolo. To make you think and question his existence. His whole point was that he wanted to hide from society, get all the money, live an isolated and lonely existence with no relationships as he would risk heartbreak and other painful emotions like that which goes against the theme of the gang who through their friendship, comradery and sacrifice win against many obstacles and protect Trish. Also his stand shows how he goes against fate and cheats unlike Giorno who uses his fate to his best advantage and inspires everyone to better themselves to achieve something great and that's why the arrow chooses Giorno at the end. Also man that's cool and all that you like DIO a lot but Yoshikage Kira from Part 4 (the part that you really liked) is widely seen as better and Jojo's best villain next to Pucci and Valentine and we didnt even see him until the second half. Sure he had a lot of screen time but he wasn't meant to be as mysterious or as much as an anomaly as Diavolo.
"How many times does Mista die in Part 5?"
Like twice I think? Not even? First time against Prosciutto which I'll give you. He clearly got shot in the head and was treated as a death scene until Mista was surprise revealed to be alive. I agree with you on that. The second time was against White Album when he got shot lots of the times at the end but this one is fine because we clearly see from the last bullet that Giorno saves him. So yeah. 155 chapters and Mista has one fakeout death and a second close call one. It's nowhere near as bad as you say man.
"Why does Polnareff turn into a turtle?"
It was explained? Chariot Requiem makes you switch bodies. Polnareff and Coco Jumbo were both at the Colosseum and were pretty close to each other and...yeah that's it really.
"Its not cute anymore. It's not a feature to be weird, it is now a bug." I mean if you gave a couple of examples your point would be better. All you mentioned was fake out deaths which Mista only had one and Bruno to but he did die he was just kept as a zombie and that was actually explored and added to as it helped him in his fight with Secco when he blew out his eardrums and Polnareff turning into a turtle which was clearly explained. That's it. Are you not going to mention any of the stands maybe? The users? The turtle that has a small room in him? Giorno making infinite Coco Jumbos? The clothes?
"Araki's art takes a nosedive near the end of the part. I can't understand what the hell is going on most of the time"
I'll agree with this actually. Araki's art in this part especially in black and white is pretty messy near the end but he could have shown off better panels to illustrate this point. Like he showed Mista and Ghiaccio shooting each other but that looks pretty clear to me?
"Why should I care about the fights if I don't care about the characters and the story!?"
I mean tbf you generalized the characters a lot to pretty unfair superficial levels. I already explained why Fugo, Bruno and Giorno didn't deserve that and even Mista, Abbachio and Narancia are pretty great. My favorite thing about Part 5 is the main cast. They all have vastly different personalities, motivations, and backstories that greatly explain them like Narancia being abandoned and lonely, Abbachio's idealism being crushed and loss of trust and Mista just guiding through life and trying to find a purpose. All great stuff and even then the fights are at their best in Part 5 for me. The story is really fast paced and each fight is important to the plot. I don't want to get too in depth so I'll be quick.
Giorno vs Bruno - establishes their characters and gets Giorno closer to Passione
Giorno vs Black Sabbath - Giorno gets into Passione and Polpo dies and we see Giorno's kinder side as he wants to avenge the janitor
Bruno and Abbachio vs Soft Machine - establishes Abbachio's character and issue of trust and Bruno's way of leading and makes them realizes that assassins are after them
Mista vs Kraftwerk - shows off Mista's character and quirks and plays with his stand in really fun ways
Narancia vs Little Feet - Narancia having to prove himself, showing how far he'll go to win and not fail the mission and his sheer bravery and of course introduces La Squadra (best villain group in Jojos btw)
Man in the Mirror - establishes Abbachio and Giorno's dynamic better, gives Fugo some shine and they all work together and grow better as a team
Grateful Dead and Beach Boy - I mean this fight is fantastic on it's own. It develops Pesci well as a villain and shows his growth as an assassin, Prosciutto is a really cool older brother and mentor figure, its on a train so its automatically exciting and of course cements Bruno as the leader of the group and his care for them
Babyface - this one isn't too important but it does give Giorno his own fight and shows him develop his ability more as he learns from Babyface who also grows during the fight
White Album - I mean this is one of the series best fights ever. And it also shows off Giorno and Mista's dynamic and actually perfectly encapsulates Giorno's role in the story as he inspires Mista through his resolve which pushes him on to sacrifice himself and win the day
King Crimson - introduces Diavolo and his ability. And it steers the story in the next direction as everyone turns traitor (except Fugo)
Talking Head and Clash - develops Narancia into a braver figure and helps his trust in Giorno
Notorious B.I.G. - gives Trish much needed development and her own stand and crashes a plane
Metallica - this is my personal favorite Jojo fight possibly ever. The two stands at play, Risotto's character, the strategies used and how the stands are used, I love it so goddamn much. It just works and it finishes off La Squadra, shows off Doppio and Diavolo's deal and kills off Abbachio and gives him some nice development before he dies as trusts Giorno to figure out what he leaves behind and meets his partner in heaven
Green Day - shows off how depraved Diavolo's forces are and gets us the 7 page muda.
Oasis - Bruno uses his new zombie powers to his advantage
The Arrow - this is of course the final battle so its obviously important. Narancia dies young and its very tragic as he deserved a better life, Diavolo gets punished for cheating fate as Bruno leaves this world and GER takes care of business.
Rolling Stones - finishes off the story in a really nicely told and themed story and explains why this story was fated to happen and Giorno's impact.
So yeah. Every fight is indeed important and uses the story and characters well.
"Part 5 is basically Part 3 again." HOW!? The only similarity is that its Jojos and its monster of the week but its executed differently. Part 3 is a massive roadtrip, very comedic and each stand user has little to do with each other and are largely seperate while in Part 5 its one long continuing narrative that's really fast paced and the main villains of the first half are a group of assassins are La Squadra and second half is Diavolo and the story constantly changes to keep fresh and its overall much darker, more character rich and more thematically complex than Part 3.
"It ends with some bull Deux ex Machina."
Except GER isn't a deux ex machina. The arrow was built up and explained to give you the power you wanted and needed. Kira got Bites the Dust to protect his identity, Chariot Requiem was to keep the arrow away from Diavolo and GER was to counter Diavolo's time skip. They all are really powerful and get the user what they most want and need.
Ending Section:
He then goes on to say he binged through the series in two months which is a shame since Jojos isnt really a series thats meant to be binged especially after Part 2. If you get burned out, just take a break man. Don't finish a whole part out of spite man. No wonder it turned you off the series. Which is a shame I feel like he's kinda being unfair because he goes on to say he didn't really care about Part 6 and read it when he's feeling bored and exhausted of the series and of course reading it still would ruin your experience and I feel he should've taken a break for a while. Like I love One Piece but eventually you get a bit worn out from a series and take a break (for me it was Fishman Island. Took a few weeks off and came back and continued to love it again) so it will remain fresh as I feel Part 6 is a pretty fun part to. It has a great Jojo, great main villain and a pretty fun story with some creative as hell stands and my favorite ending of any Jojo part.
He then shows a screenshot of a person not liking an anime because of a weird trope and a guy recommends Jojo as well its a pretty unique series and not all anime are the same but Cosmonaut gets the impression that they're recommending Jojos to newbies to anime and even then I don't get the problem. Anime is weird. Jojos is a pretty fun anime. Watch/read it. You might enjoy it.
And thats about it really. And what I find a massive shame is Cosmonaut quitting the series. I mean he enjoyed Phantom Blood, really enjoyed Battle Tendency, really liked Stardust Crusaders from Pet Shop onwards, loved DIU (which is the longest shonen manga part yet complains about SC and GW being too long) and he might really enjoy SBR and Jojolion. Those two are fantastic imo and Araki has really grown and improved as a writer and artist and SBR is genuinely a fantastic manga full of arcs, a good story, great characters and a good ending which is a lot of the stuff that Cosmonaut felt was missing. And hey Part 8 is set in Morioh and is just as crazy and as fun as Part 4 was so he might actually like Part 8 a lot more than most of the other parts. Like the quality of SBR and Jojolion is pretty high most of the time and much higher than the shonen parts.
It would be nice if Cosmonaut saw this (most likely won't though) and tried out Parts 7 and 8 especially 8 i think he'll like that one a lot and its a shame he got really burned out of it and he got turned off by the fanbase which happens to a lot of popular series. Usually fanbases are really annoying and its usually the vocal minority and you shouldn't judge series based on them and I do feel Parts 7 and 8 are a massive improvement and he did really enjoy parts 1+2+4 like I said before.
So yeah, that's it

As a community, we can ELIMINATE the controller barrier to entry. I need your help.

Hey guys. I want to propose what I think could be a huge step forward in the accessibility of melee to new players, which would in turn help the scene grow and thrive. I’m talking about the difficulty of acquiring a working OEM controller at a decent price for those just starting out.
I’m fortunate that I don’t have to worry about controllers myself, since I’ve had multiple opportunities over the years to buy them at a reasonable price. But for someone trying to enter the scene today, things are kind of grim. Someone who is totally new doesn’t even know what to look for. Hopefully they will have the sense to buy a real Nintendo controller, but it won’t be easy or cheap.
How to acquire your first gamecube controller? Blippi.gg just links to a google search for gamecube controller (not to criticize them, it’s an awesome site). Buying a new one sucks because they are no longer being produced and are therefore overpriced, also fuck Nintendo. Used on eBay or something, prices vary wildly and you might get scammed and receive a fake controller. You could try to buy from Battle Beaver or Controller Chaos, but they are (I hear) extremely overpriced for what you get. Controller modders charge a lot (understandably), way more than I think a prospective player would be willing to spend right out of the gate. No updates on the Panda Controller. Box controllers are expensive and back ordered and counterintuitive. The goomwave will be expensive and who knows what the supply/demand ratio will be when it comes out.
It’s a big problem. But I think the solution is right under our noses, and in our closets. In a recent video Toph watched and reviewed the goomwave announcement. There’s a scene where M2K is shown laying out his many controllers. Toph comments that he has at least that many controllers himself, in a box in his apartment. In the same video, he mentions how Zain frequently switches controllers because they lose their ability to pivot. Wonder what Zain does with his old ones… See what I’m getting at?

Introducing the Melee Controller Co-op

The controllers are out there. We just need to get them out of boxes in closets, and into the hands of new players. And I have an idea for how to do it.

Step 1: Get members of the melee scene to donate their functional controllers that they never use

Despite UCF, any given melee vet will find most controllers unsuitable for competitive use for a wide variety of reasons (like Zain and pivots). But that doesn’t mean the controller is unsuitable for a brand new player, who would be thrilled to have the discarded table scraps of the pros.
But why would players donate their controllers to this co-op? I dunno, good question. Because they love the game and the scene? Because melee means a lot to them and they want it to mean a lot to new people? Because they know the scene needs new players to grow and thrive, so they can continue to make a living doing what they love? Because donating controllers will give them social media clout, bolster their personal brand, and create some great content opportunities for their streams and youtube channels? I think they could be persuaded. It might be a little tough getting the very first person on board (or it might not, if we do it right), but after one respected community figure contributes, I’m sure others will follow.
And this isn’t just about the top echelon of the most skilled/famous players. All kinds of melee scene veterans have tons of functional controllers that they don’t use and will probably never use again. (Keep in mind, I’m not suggesting that anyone should donate controllers they still use.) Wouldn’t it be awesome for that unused controller to be someone’s key to entering the world of melee?
Donors ship a box of their unused controllers to the co-op (if it is financially feasible, the co-op could even reimburse their shipping costs). They make a youtube video about what melee means to them and why they want to donate controllers to help new people get into it. Everyone thinks they are generous AF and they get 1000 new twitch subs. Along with the controllers, they provide a note that will be copied and included with every controller they donated when it is sent out to someone. So the person receiving it knows, “Holy crap, this controller used to belong to the one and only Chu Dat. And he Yeayuhzzed me!” This will presumably have the same effect on them as receiving Michael Jordan’s old sneakers in Like Mike.
To take it even further: the controller donor also records a video directed at the person(s) receiving their old controller. In the video they say what melee means to them, advice on how to get started, why they should stick with it, whatever. This video is posted unlisted on the Controller Co Op YouTube channel, so it is (for the most part) only seen by actual recipients of that player’s controllers. How freaking amazing would that be as the start of your melee journey? I bet it would provide some good motivation and make you less likely to fizzle out when things get tough.
OK, maybe all this sounds great (unless you are only still reading this long ass post out of spite). But how do we get the donated controllers to new players?

Step 2: Create a Controller Co Op website where prospective players can apply for (not just buy) a controller

The entire point of the co-op is to get controllers into needy hands. Not to make money. However, I think it would be wise to charge one flat rate for all controllers, for example, $20. So a prospective player asks around about where they can get a controller to get started. They are immediately directed to the controller co-op, of course. They visit the site and understand that they can apply to receive a fully functional OEM controller to start their melee journey, for just $20 including shipping (I haven't crunched any numbers, this is just an example). If that isn’t accessible as all hell, I don’t know what is.
Why charge money at all? I think it is good to make them put some skin in the game. If you give something away completely free, that kind of sends the message that it has no value. Also, the price must remain low enough that anyone who really wants to can reasonably raise the money. Even a 12 year old could come up with $20 if they were really motivated. Lastly, the money from the “sale” (even though this should be viewed as a charity, not a business) will all go back into the co-op or into the melee scene in other ways (more on that later).
Do they get to choose their controller? No. Controllers will be distributed randomly. This is so that people aren’t waiting around to snipe some specific controller that looks cool or is more valuable or was owned by a certain person. You fill out your application. If you are approved, you get a randomly selected but guaranteed functional controller. When you receive it, you find out who owned it and so on.
But won’t people just abuse this system of acquiring cheap controllers for personal gain? Some will try to I’m sure. The co-op would have to take measures to prevent this. For one, I would like to include a sticker (or something) on the back all controllers that go through the co-op. It says something like:

The melee controller co-op. Donated by: [player name]. NOT FOR RESALE. If you don’t want this controller anymore, give it to a new player or visit controllercoop.com/buyback.

I also propose having a buyback program. If someone realizes that they can’t or don’t want to use that controller to play melee anymore, the co-op will buy it back from them. (The co-op won’t buy controllers that it didn’t already possess before; those must be donated. This is a charity, not a store). They will ship it back, the co-op will verify that it is still in working condition, and then refund their money minus the cost of shipping.
Further, there will definitely be a rule that one person can only buy from the co-op once (if the controller they get suddenly stops working, we can help them out with that of course). And the application process will be designed to ensure that controllers only go to the right people: those who want to get into melee and DON’T already have a real, functional controller.
Despite these measures, could people still attempt to defraud the co-op? Absolutely they could. People can try to defraud any business or charity, and some of the time they will succeed. But think of all the good it could do for the community and getting new people into it. If you ask me, the risk is more than worth it.

Logistics

Let me say it again: this project should be viewed as a charity, by the community for the community, with the goal of getting unused controllers into the hands that need them at an extremely reasonable price. It is not meant to be a profit driven business. This won’t be easy to get started, but I think it will be worth the effort and I’m serious about giving it a shot. What do we need?
I think phase 1 is to refine the plan. If you see any holes in this plan or think of ways to make it better, please let me know.
When it's time to actually get started, we will need volunteers to fill key positions. I think we need:

A controller intaketester, who can receive incoming donations, make sure they work, maybe make small repairs or even combine nonworking controllers into working ones, etc. They will ship controllers they have finished with to:
A controller distributor. This person will complete the process of randomly choosing a controller for each approved applicant, packing that controller and shipping it to them. (If the intaker was also the distributor that would save on costs, but it sounds like a lot of work for one person. Maybe multiple people working on these tasks in one geographical location would be best.)
Web developer: the co-op will need someone to design and maintain the website, including application forms and receiving payments.
Application reviewer: someone to evaluate applicants to make sure they are the right fit to get a controller from the co-op.
Social media/publicist: someone to keep the community up to date via social media on what the co-op is accomplishing. They will also make contact with potential donors and community figures. (possibly working with a video editor).
Treasurer: since there is money involved, someone will have to manage it. They will make sure the co-op is carrying out its functions efficiently and look for opportunities to use the money to serve the community.
Board of directors: while I think this project should probably have a specific director to manage operations, ideally there would also be a board of directors that includes trusted community figures. This board would approve financial decisions and any new projects or directions that the co op might take on.

This entire project will have to run on community good faith and trust in order for it to work. I would want it to be 100% financially transparent: records of all donated equipment, all money received, all money spent on anything whatsoever, would be available for public viewing on the website at all times.
So yeah, that's the gist of my proposal. Please ask questions and provide feedback below. I personally believe that the melee community has what it takes be self sufficient. Why rely on Nintendo or Panda Global or random ebay sellers to make our game accessible by providing controllers? The game of melee is hard enough; we don't need it to be hard to even start playing, because you can't get a decent controller (especially when the controllers are already out there gathering dust). Why don’t we, as a community, take on the controller problem and obliterate it as a barrier to entry?

GME Gang: On the Subject of the Golden Bridge and Its Inevitable Destruction By Fire 🚀🚀🚀

Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.
Sun Tzu, Art of War
Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
I was wrong! Blow the bridge! Blow the fucking bridge!
Tugg Speedman, Tropic Thunder
Hello again GME Gang! It’s been a while since I last ranted at you, but I know we’ve been in some very good hands here at WSB with all the great DD folks have posted over the past few weeks. So no need for CPT Hubbard to go for 11 again on the Thumbscroll Dial (until today, that is). I’ve enjoyed a lot of these posts very much, so thank you on behalf of myself and the attention-deficient Rocket Children for continuing to deliver that 100% Chaff-Free GME-grade Wheat at such a feverish clip.
Now, I am going to get to Hong Kong’s Lamest Outlaw and his disconcertingly vacant eyes here shortly. But first I want to take you on a journey back to Christmas Eve, in the year of our lord 2020—a heady time in all our lives. We were all so young and innocent then, weren’t we? Fresh off the run up to 22. Blissfully oblivious that we were living in the last moments where the question What is The War of 1812? was the only acceptable Jeopardy question for the answer: The Last Time the Goddamn U.S. Capitol Was Stormed. This was also before we all became irresponsibly overleveraged in Cathie Wood’s Ornamental Gourds ETF. It was a wondrous, confusing time.
But before we get too off topic, let’s all hop in my 1985 DeLorean (purchased with proceeds from my Jan 15 calls – thanks RC!), fire up the ol’ Flux Capacitor, and get that shit to 88 because something happened that evening that is Worth Pondering—particularly in light of recent events. And just as a friendly reminder: even though you’re going back in time in a DeLorean, no one here has to deviate funds away from GME shares to Save the Clock Tower and you are under no obligation to fulfill a scenario where you wind up making out with your Mom (unless your Mom is Cathie Wood like mine—in which case maybe just some quick over-the-clothes stuff).
On the Subject of How It Once ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas
So what in the holy fuck happened on the night before Christmas, Captain? Well, while all you Gentiles were sleeping soundly after lying to your children about benign home intruders and before gorging yourself on the teat of late-stage capitalism, me and the rest of the Chosen People were up late eating Chinese food and thinking about tendies (self-hating Jew Joke! Ba-zing!). But then: when out on the electric twitter machine there arose such a clatter, I sprang to my phone to see what was the matter. And what to my wondering eyes did appear, a mysterious tweet from a Rich-Ass Viking who had a lot of fucking interesting things to say about this whole GME situation that’s what.
This tweet, buried as a reply to a tweet sent by Mr. Rod Alzmann (@RodAlzmann or u/Uberkikz11), simply said: “Merry Christmas. Shhh.” But it included this screen shot:
[**Image Deleted Due to the Mods - check the link below where someone transcribed it - I'll try to add later**]
Now, this tweet to Rod, sent late at night and likely after a strong Mead or three, was very promptly deleted. But your intrepid cub reporter saw this here tweet that night with his own two eyes—seeing as I am a degenerate GME addict and devoted follower of Mr. Rod Alzmann (Hi Rod!). And I took screenshots, of course, like any responsible records custodian might. And so did the dude who wrote a somewhat-overlooked WSB post on this, which included the most pertinent text of the message if you are having trouble reading it here:
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kk0omp/christmas_miracle_gamergate_2020_gme_shorts/
Now, what are we to make of this? At the time, I thought it was very interesting. But I did not give it too much attention seeing as how the internet is overcrowded with anonymous weirdos claiming to know more than they do about all sorts of subjects (and now I feel your judging eyes…). Also, there was some very good commentary in that WSB post from some sharp folks about the screenshot author’s questionable use of the shorthand PE/IB—given that private equity and investment banks wouldn’t apparently be involved in a behind-the-scenes transaction with the short funds like what was being discussed there (don’t ask me, I just string together silly words here). But maybe you poke around his Twitter a bit and see for yourself.
Still, plausibility assessments based on preferred nomenclature aside, it seemed to me that some version of that conversation had to be taking place behind the scenes in a situation like this—given the batshit insane short interest, the funds supposedly involved, and the rapid rise in SP coinciding with RC’s share accumulation, December 21st amended 13D filing, and new status as a GME Insider and Board member (just love saying all that in a row, don’t you?).
So the Viking’s screenshot tweet, and the very likely possibility that shorts are in so deep that they’re attempting to negotiate peace with large shareholders behind the scenes, stuck in my tiny little baby brain as a pretty plausible set of scenarios. And from the look of it, it seems like some funds were at least willing to discuss offering these shorts a Golden Bridge away from Certain Fucking Destruction on the open market. And if the words on the screenshot are at all aligned with reality, these short funds have no good options.
Yet it seems like they are still playing hardball to negotiate the carat on this generous bridge offer they’re getting. Why? Maybe they’ve been getting high on their own supply for so long and they don’t know how to see this situation for what it is. Who knows? Maybe there is no Ryan Cohen and we’re all living in a simulation. But if the recent low-rent anti-GME articles and market manipulation efforts we’re seeing are any indication, these overleveraged short fuckers seem to think they’re going to be able to spin out of this hold and drive the SP back down to even smaller peanuts than it’s at now by sheer force of will (and some deployment of well-honed tricks of the trade amirite?) to emerge unscathed. Or even victorious? I dunno—it’s their delusional fantasy sequence.
But do you know what this scenario reminds me of? And this is just coming to me so please bear with me as I’m not showing this to my editor before we print (I haven’t seen this movie in ages – don’t know what made me think of this!). Fuck it, I’m just gonna start riffing here. The shorts trying to thread this needle, against all odds and logic and common sense, reminds me of that hilarious scene in Dumb and Dumber where haplessly delusional Jim Carrey thinks he has a chance with Mary Samsonite Swanson. But the scene is funny because he really doesn’t. Have any chance. At all.
Now, I know this is a 1990s movie originally released on VHS that we haven’t seen it or even seen it referenced in ages. But now that you’re thinking of it again after all this time, doesn’t it remind you of this too? I know, I get it: You’d have to have fucking peanuts for brains for it not to.
(https://twitter.com/ryancohen/status/1350877969816956934?s=20)
On the Subject of the Continued Internet Bumbling of Mr. Justin Dopierala
Now that screenshot came to mind this past week when something kind of weird happened while we were all enjoying our quick rocket ship ride. And yes, we are briefly going to talk again about Seeking Alpha’s second finest pro-GME author (always been more of a Dmitriy man myself) and recurring CPT Hubbard character, Justin Dopierala (and no, Angela, I do not want to have like 10,000 of his babies).
Last Thursday, after we were all virtually high-fiving one another and counting our future Lambos, Mr. Justin Dopierala, head of Domo Capital and longstanding uber-bull GME shareholder and author at Seeking Alpha (last seen arguing pithily with our own Rod Alzmann about the conservative nature of Rod’s holiday earnings projections. Hi again Rod!), made it known that he sold all of Domo Capital’s 500,000 shares for around $42.50—at the very top of the run up last Thursday morning.
Now, Domo Capital’s business decisions are none of my goddamn business. And there are plenty of market opportunities right now. Shit, I hear there is even a new Cathie Wood Gourd ETF coming online soon that people are really excited about and that I’m sure Justin’s clients would find intriguing. But Domo’s decision to sell seemed curious given a few things: (1) on Wednesday, when the rocket is mid-flight, he got a twitter follow from Gabe Plotkin, head of Melvin Capital, which he promptly tweeted about with a “get a load of this fuckin’ guy” vibe (oh the sweet, intoxicating arrogance of tendie victory, I too love it so); (2) he had also tweeted that day comparing GME’s rise to Apron’s short squeeze that lasted 4 days—where he also stressed to his followers that Apron had a much lower SI than GME; and (3) he then promptly deleted all of these tweets and almost everything else GME-related on Thursday after apparently introducing 500,000 shares of liquidity into the height of a stressed market up and through the Thursday reversal and down into his own personal tendie town.
Now, after seeing all this, I mouthed off a bit to Justin on the electric twitter machine because that’s kind of my thing. And if you are familiar with my prior ramblings, you know that he and I go way back. In response, Justin talked a bit of shit about your intrepid cub reporter here in a comment on Dimitry Kozin’s October 21, 2020 article about a possible sony revenue share deal or something, the comment section of which has become the preferred SA water cooler over there. (And I can’t link that because Thems The Rulez). And Justin hurt my little feelings a bit with his very sharp denial. And by all means have at it over there to check out his comment about why he sold if you give a shit. That is if Justin hasn’t deleted it yet. Free country and all.
But to summarize, on the subject of treacherous coordination with Melvin Capital, Justin said he would not could not in a boat and he would not could not with a goat. And I for one believe him. And do you know why? Because even though Justin seems like a very smart guy in some ways, he’s also a well-known internet bumbler who blurts out things to his internet friends that a person with better self-control would keep to themselves. And so I do not think he is capable of pulling that off or keeping a secret like that. Also: he said he didn’t so I am more than willing to give someone the benefit of any doubt in that area and you should too. I think we keep Hanlon’s razor firmly in mind here about never attributing to malice that which is explained by stupidity. That is unless, of course, you’re Andrew Left and you’re actually trying to convince people that you didn’t realize there was a US presidential inauguration planned for the same time you announced your Super Important TeeVee Yammerfest ‘21 about GME not being a good candidate for an imminent short squeeze no way no how not if my name isn’t Andrew Left short seller expert extraordinaire and Hong Kong’s Most Misunderstood Ethically-Minded Businessman. You can ascribe the fuck out of malice to that one.
No, even though I really have no idea, I think the most likely thing that happened there was that Gabe Plotkin, Master of the Universe, Head of Melvin Capital, and Acolyte of Perennial Most Ethical Business Man MVP candidate, Steven Cohen—got into Justin’s head when Plotkin followed him on twitter during the 57% (at one point 94%) day last Wednesday and then Justin got a bit chippy about it.
And this is the real reason I’m bringing this up.
Because I honestly care very little about the Nervous Investing Habits of the Wisconsin hedge fund voted most likely to prompt a Mr. Roboto reference. No: I think that Gabe Plotkin sent a message with that follow. Without even ever having to say it directly. And I think that after GME’s huge run and getting a little overexcited while working the twitter machine, Justin maybe had a chance to relax with a warm glass of milk that night and reflect on that message. Which I believe was: I’m watching you, motherfucker. And the only reason I’m paying any attention to some shitstain Wisconsin pseudo-fund on a day like today when I am getting my ass fucking torched is because I want you to know that if this GME shit blows up on me, I’m going to fuck your ass up. I will remember the name Domo Capital forevermore. And when you least expect me, I’ll be there. Now: your move, motherfucker.
And once I realized what might have happened there, that made me feel kinda bad for Justin if he felt that way. Definitely a puss move because fuck you Plotkin I drink your fucking milkshake, right? But bad because that’s a mean message for a business colleague to send, Gabriel. Shame on you if that's how you roll like a big New York bully and scaring our poor Justin like that. And if you just wanted to follow him to shoot the shit or swap listicles and Star Wars Prequel memes with a respected contemporary—even in the very midst of getting fucking annihilated while short GME—well Justin has a totally different account for that and he’s not allowed to access it during work hours.
On The Likelihood That The Most Heavily Shorted Stock in History Is Not Being Subject to Continued Market Manipulation When A Steve Cohen Acolyte Is Losing His Fucking Shirt
Have you heard about Steve Fucking Cohen? The guy who looks like he’s tip top of the list of the premier Hollywood casting agency’s rolodex for Saddest Dipshit Still At the Strip Club After Everyone Else Has Already Gone Home? I’m sorry, that’s mean and my mother told me to always be kind to the truly hideous looking because they’re probably still beautiful on the inside (spoiler alert: he’s not!).
Get a load of this guy:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-02/why-sac-capitals-steven-cohen-isnt-in-jail
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-09-02/controversial-hedge-fund-billionaire-steven-cohen-takes-on-hollywood
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/steven-a-cohen-among-the-million-dollar-donors-to-trump-inauguration-2017-04-19
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/steve-cohen-trump
https://nypost.com/2015/06/17/billionaire-steve-cohen-bros-out-with-guy-fieri/
Are you back? I’ve missed you. That was scary, wasn’t it? But allow me to TL/DR all that for you who decided to avoid all that unpleasantness: the dude just has all this bad luck and keeps finding himself into these really awkward situations where someone could potentially question his commitment to ethical business and life practices as well as adherence to the laws of the United States and it’s just not fair and nothing’s fair and Nice Guy Steve Cohen Is The Victim Here So Just Stop Right There Mister I See What You’re Doing. He's also bros with Guy Fieri. Cool.
But why am I talking about a guy who would so clearly pass Billy Madison’s Final Question about Business Ethics without even breaking a sweat?
Because Steve Cohen once had a young Ace Protegee that he loved very much. With the name of an Archangel, so tender and pure. And one day this young man decided he wanted to Prove Himself and Leave Steve’s Nest. And thus was born Melvin Capital, seeded financially by Steve Cohen but named after famed Crooner Melvin H. Tormé, which Gabe’s esteemed mentor Steve would play in his office, over and over, all those years ago.
Now let’s fast forward a bit because I’m boring myself with all that fucking Cohen reading (the bad Cohen—don’t you dare get anyone confused here). As I was saying: Gabe Plotkin, head of Melvin Capital, has by all accounts gotten himself into a bit of a pickle here being so deeply short GME. Lots of people have analyzed and overanalyzed it, and I’m not going to do it again here; that dead horse is well and truly beaten. But to bottom line it: we’re all just staring down what is essentially an unprecedented math problem that will, at some point, resolve itself. And if it revolves itself in favor of the Good Guys, then the Bad Guys will lose a Fuck-ton of Money. That’s your money block quote, WSJ, so fuck off and stop calling me.
Now: picture yourself as a Steve Cohen acolyte that just bought a $44M Miami Compound and who cannot stop talking about how co-owning the Charlotte Hornets is worth it just for the courtsides alone bro once basketball is a thing again and so what if Michael Jordan keeps calling him Gary it’s close enough. Are you feeling the most financially secure that you have ever felt in your young rich life right about now? Or might you be a wee bit worried that you’ve pursued an investment thesis so reckless, so irrationally and intentionally destructive of equity, that even Melvin H. Tormé himself must be rolling in his fucking grave that you would ever dare put at risk your ability to continue being Michael Jordan’s Gary?
And so here is when I again link my good buddy Jim Cramer’s Great Unveiling of the Tactics Deployed by Short Sellers hoping to change the narrative and construct a “new truth” to suppress the SP in the face of, oh, let’s just say: a very promising turnaround story in a high-growth industry by an e-Commerce Canadian Genius who does not fuck around and who knows what he’s fucking doing and aims to sell more and better video games experiences to crackhead video gamers and there’s a million things he wants to do but just you wait, just you wait.
Is this plot that hard to follow?
And I’ll also say this: I know fuck-all about monitoring order flows or how funds continue to create synthetic shares to short shit into oblivion. But I’m just stepping back and thinking of the broader narrative and tactics on this. Spit-balling here again—bear with me. Now, if you were massively short a security while paying out your ass in borrowing fees for the privilege of entering the most crowded short trade in the market and you’re now opposite a massive business turnaround story, Ryan Cohen, numerous institutions, funds, retail whales, Norwegian HNW Freemason Consortiums, and the energy behind the Finest Rocket Children Ever to Grace Planet Fucking Earth—and you’re taking it in the ass week after week here—Do you then play this straight? Do you set aside all of these illegal and deceptive short tactics Jim Cramer candidly outlines in that video even though they’re impossible to enforce and are in fact not enforced? That Jim basically says you’d be professionally negligent if you were short and didn’t do this shit because fuck it whosgonnastopyou? And now you fucked up and that steamroller is barreling down upon you and there are all these things you could theoretically do try to get yourself out of this jam if you were That Kind of Person? Do you set this all aside and, at least in Jim’s view, tie one hand behind your precious ethical back? On the most heavily shorted stock off all time where you are bleeding Real Life Big-Boy Money? Just buying and selling you know, just a job, honest living, nothing much to it, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, can't get too carried away with it.
Or is it something a little bit fucking different than that?
I don’t know. I’m not in the industry myself. And I would never accuse anyone of doing anything so clearly contrary to the values upon which their professional career as Master of the Universe was built. So Gabe: chill. Don’t follow me or something on twitter man, since for all I know that’s Plotkinese for I Hope You Don’t Mind Sleeping With This Severed Horse Head in Your Bed Motherfucker. It’s just money, dude. You seem pretty well taken care of. But man would I be sweating if I were short right now staring down the barrel of your new neighbor Ryan Cohen’s whims and patience and polite Canadian manners and ambiguous emojis that we all lose our shit for. I mean, fuck man: are you ok? Don’t forget to exercise and eat well during all this. Maybe switch to green tea or something. And remember: you’ll always—always—be Michael Jordan’s Gary.
But here is where we return to our good friend Andrew Left from Citron Research.
Do you remember the excitement you felt this past weekend? I’ve never seen WSB so jacked. People were coming out hot on Tuesday—an uptick day! The new phone book’s here! The new phone book's here! What luck to be free of Gary’s tomfoolery for one fine day. And then GME spiked right away—reaching a high of over $45 that morning.
But then something happened. We all know what it was. But here is where any SEC lookie-loos need to close those Pornhub links and pay closer attention. Because in the moments before the Citron tweet that morning about Andy’s upcoming BuzzFeed Listicle call on Why GME is Scary Investment GRRRR, total short shares available dropped from 1.2M to 0. And a $300K put bet was placed on a weekly with a strike price well over 10% out of the money at the very moment that GME’s price was accelerating rapidly. (H/t u/FatAspirations). That’s some WSB-level shit right there.
And yet they pull it off! GME immediately shoots down nearly 30% intraday, and eventually climbing abck up above 10%, making us all feel a little weird and like ungrateful millennial brats for feeling so shitty about a 10% day. But we all know what fucking happened, now don’t we?
So what can we say about ol’ Andy? Now, many of you know Andy as the dumbshit who shorted TSLA until he was ground into little bits of dumb dumb dust and made to look ever so foolish over and over again until he finally cried drunk uncle and flipped to being long TSLA and now he’s cool to you or whatever. Or you might know him as the guy who puts out really shoddy research that often, by pure happenstance, drives a new narrative to control the orderflow and SP on a WSB-beloved security like PLTR? You know the guy I’m talking about. Once in hot pursuit by Hong Kong fuzz, an International Man of Obviousness with a face that says: why yes, I will have another vodka tonic thankyouverymuch. That’s him.
Well, just like future call-back candidate for the role of Frightened Inmate #2, Mr. Steve Cohen, Andy is also but a Caveman—frightened and confused by your modern concepts of “ethics” and “rules.” No! No!—He’s a straight shooter! Devoted to rooting out obvious frauds, like Lukin Coffee and TSLA (Do not fuck with Elon or my Hot Mom’s ETF, Andy). And like the aspirations of Antoine Bugle Boy when he entered the blue jeans market, Andy saw an overcrowded short trade here based on an overly simplistic and obsolete short thesis about GME and said: “Me Too!” And as this thing is ripping to the stratosphere, Andy starts ringing his dumb dumb twitter bell and saying hear ye, hear ye—Inauguration Day and time it shall be for all my Big Brain thoughts about GME!
Nothing weird about that. No sir.
So Andy Citron or whatever the fuck his name is will be putting out some dumbshit video or something today in what seems to be a pretty clear attempt to scare my poor Rocket Children and get those pesky computers to high frequency this shit to drive the SP down to more acceptable loss levels (cause let’s be honest: they’re still taking a fucking bath here) for Mel Tormé’s namesake hedgefund and all the other cretins that are dug into short position here. And they’re gonna try to scare ya’ with the color red! And they know that no one here likes the color red.
But do see what’s going on here and who we’re dealing with. This really ain’t rocket science, Rocket Children. The dude actually tried to claim he forgot about the Inauguration. In 2021. He has not been in a coma, to the best of my knowledge. But you do look a little bleary eyed, Andy. Must have been all that staying up super late working on those last few bullet points to fill out the powerpoint on that GME listicle of yours, eh sport?
Conclusion: On the Subject of Patience and The Arc of The Universe Bending Toward Ryan Fucking Cohen
In my youth there was a period of time where I went out on boats that would drop crates into the waters of the Arctic. Bundled inside them were raw pieces of meat. In the coming days the boats would head back out to the frigid seas, hook the floats bobbing upon the waters, and pull the crates up. Packed inside would be many crabs. They were so delicious & made a good price at market. The difference between the crate that was empty and the create full of bounty was a mystery even the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger pondered at much length.
But the hearty fishermen of my youth already knew the answer long ago. Why did the trap fill up? Time. In time, all traps fill. In time, all things pondered shall be revealed.
--The Fucking Viking, That’s Who
Now look, you all know I have a soft spot for Ryan Cohen. Hell, we all do. He’s a good dude. And the man has played this flawlessly so far. He really has. The fact that we are all sitting here with Ryan Cohen having successfully negotiated three seats on the Board—a bloodless coup as my man Rod Alzmann says—here in January? It’s amazing. His vision for GME is dialed-the-fuck in and extremely exciting. This misunderstood business is on the threshold of an exciting turnaround with Ryan Cohen at the helm. And though I was very much looking forward to the potential repercussions of a vote being called at the annual meeting and what that might mean for the short-term share price, this result is infinitely better. Whatever their motivations, that Board and George Sherman saw the writing on the wall here and accepted the Golden Bridge that Ryan offered them. And Ryan Cohen has done everything he’s set out to do here. And he’s clearly been having fun while doing it. Read up on the guy at some point if you haven’t–there’s lots of good DD out there on him, obviously. And while you’re reading and thinking about Ryan Cohen, think also about guys like Steve Cohen (no fucking relation) and Gabe Plotkin and Andy Left and how lucky we are that we get to roll with RC against that motley crew of fuckwads.
And do you know what? I’m guessing that RC, and maybe even the funds being discussed in that screenshot, have been very patient with Mr. Plotkin et al in recent weeks. You don’t go around bankrupting hedge funds willy nilly, you know--bad form and all that old chap. People tend to remember that. And guys like Steve Cohen and Gabe Plotkin seem like they play for keeps. So now you try to build them a Golden Bridge to cross—maybe not their preferred route of travel, but could be worse and all that, right guys? But for whatever reason it seems like the natural instinct here on the short side is fight over flight. And these short FUD tactics are getting increasingly ridiculous to help slow down the inevitable march toward the detonator right next to that bridge. So relax everyone! And let’s not fool ourselves: All those Masters of the Universes are well aware of the math problem they’re all facing here and they must have a vague grasp of the odds that this goes off in one direction over the other. And what that could mean for the size of their money pits and how many sports teams they can buy this year. Shit, I assume Steve Cohen is counseling his young acolyte about how many sads he himself felt deep down in his man heart on that fateful day in 2008 when he lost $250M on a short when Volkswagon squeezed to infinity—a sadness that he will continue to draw on when his agent finally finds him a role that calls for it.
But my point is: the longs here can afford to be patient and let this play out. When this thing moves, the Viking’s Schrödinger crabs will only be in one pot. And I’m guessing that pot is the one being held by the guy who is actually in total control here: Ryan Goddamn Cohen.
So enjoy the show today. If you’re anything like me, you’re feeling relaxed after gorging yourself on lucky space peanuts all week.(https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/10022/lucky-peanuts/)
And though these silly wabbits with their cumbersome FUD efforts can get a bit tiresome, I’m still very much enjoying this GME show at this point and almost do not want it to end—what with all these Sorkin-esque twists and turns and my Cohen Tweet Decorder Ring getting all this sweet action.
But just remember who Ryan Cohen is, what he cares about, and what, so far, he has told us he intends to do here. And then you might realize, as I have, that Ryan Cohen has had the Gray’s Sports Almanac here all along. This story has already been written. He’s already won. And Melvin Capital’s Schrödinger-ass crabs are dead as fuck. The only question now is: what causes that Golden Bridge to blow? I, for one, am content to wait on RC while counting my good fortune that I can continue to accumulate until whatever happens here happens. So pass the rocket peanuts.
It’s just money after all. Right Gabe?
TL/DR: Psst: a Mysterious Viking once told me about behind-the-scenes Golden Bridge negotiations that are likely taking place that give shorts no chance but the shorts seem to think they’re saying there’s a chance but there really is no chance; Gabe Plotkin, Steve Cohen and Andy Left are misunderstood Straight Shooters who probably answer typical interview questions about their own perceived weaknesses by saying “Sometimes I just care too much about doing the right thing”; and Ryan Cohen is the Goddamn Man so we can all relax and not worry so much about all this dumb short FUD bullshit, ok? OK. 🚀🚀🚀
**If you construe any of the above as investment advice without doing your own DD or at least Googling Ryan Cohen then you are a fucking idiot and may God have mercy on your soul. You too, Andy.

what does it mean when a guy says ok cool video

If a guy says this, he might actually mean it… as in it’s not you, it’s him because he’s a huge douche who’s too chicken to actually tell you what he’s feeling. “I’m fine.” This is exactly the same as a woman saying it. He’s not fine, but he doesn’t want to talk about it and he isn’t going to tell you what is going on. “You’re prettier without makeup.” He means Question: What does it mean when a guy says he loves me after only knowing me for one month, and then takes forever to respond to texts? Answer: It means he was trying to get you in bed and now that he's slept with you, he's moving on. Or, if you didn't sleep with him, he's bored and is moving on. When a guy calls you cute and other random compliments . If it isn't obvious he likes you, then guuuurrrl you are as blind as a bat.When a guy gives you compliments out of nowhere (as in, you're not wearing an Oscar ballgown), then it should be clear as crystal that he likes you. Guy code says that no guy can "just be friends" with a girl. Many guys just assume that if a girl has guy friends, that must mean that they all want to hook up with her. Whether or not that is actually the truth is really just beside the point. He will also ask this question if he sees some frequent Facebook activity between you and some other dude. The phrase "cool" is very relaxed, never goes out of style, and people will never laugh at you for using it, very conveniant for people like me who don't care about what's "in." So if a guy insults another guy, he automatically thinks he wants to fight. And if you say you like his shirt, he thinks, "Cool — she wants to jump my bones!" Fear of rejection is real, and a casual text softens the blow if a woman is not responsive. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give a guy who is a little more unsure a chance. Despite this being a less-than-perfect start, know that if he is following up with specifics via text, he is interested. If I initiated the text and am being based on his okay cool means "I honestly don't give a fu*k" long story short, he's rejecting you. sorry for being too harsh. What does it mean when a guy say ok cool? When you tell a guy friend you been sleeoing with that your goin to get a blood/urine pregnancy test done an ask if he wants to go with you his response is i cant be late for work but ok cool how am i suppose to take that. Answer Save. 2 Answers. Relevance. alexander w. Lv 7. 9 years ago. Favorite Answer.A blood/urine test is hardly worth a guy losing You've finally met a cool guy and you don't want to waste a single minute. But if he doesn't feel the same way, he's not going to make time for you. Plain and simple. When a guy tells you that he's busy, that means that he's not interested in hanging out with you anymore and that he's really not into you. No, it doesn't actually mean that he's busy. Because no one is that busy. If you like someone, you want to see them and you make time for them. So remember this because this will probably

Gentlemen Speak: Ever Get Confused by a Guy’s Texts? Here

what does it mean when a guy says ok cool

what does it mean when a guy says ok cool - win

TIFU by unknowingly committing Nine Felonies and Seven Misdemeanors