317 it's exciting to talk about something different



Well, that whole Robinhood/Gamestop situation really blew up, huh?

Since everyone on earth is offering up an explanation of what a short is, I'm just going to skip that and head straight to cultural criticism.

So, for a bunch of people, this is straight up about money. Making it, or fear of losing it.

For others, it's a way to spend a couple hundred bucks to protest.

And some are doing both-ish. Best I have seen, a redditor named u/deepfuckingvalue put up a screenshot of investing their whole IRA into GME a couple years ago, when the stock was just over a dollar. 

This was a joke, but also for real... They thought the stock was undervalued, and it probably was. They have been keeping the other redditors up to date on the investment, and have thus far turned about $50k into about $50m.


During that growth, other people got on board, driving the stock up into the low 40s. At which point, one or two big investors (hedge funds) started to sniff around. They saw an overvalued stock, and decided to do something only big institutional investors can, and shorted the stock. Not just a little, a lot. 140% of the stock, meaning, they either cheated a little by trading stock that doesn't exist, or they borrowed some shares twice. That doesn't matter, the point is, they went big on GME going down. 

Specifically, I think the bet was that it would go below 30 by the end of this month. And apparently they have to make this info public. And the redditors saw that someone was trying to sink their baby, and opted to fight. If they hold the stock above 30 for the month, the hedge funds will have to buy them out at whatever the going price is (somewhere between 200-400 yesterday, up from 80 Monday.)


Now, there's some talk about how the Chewy.com CEO joined the GME board this month with big turnaround plans, but I don't think this is really about that. I think most of the people involved in this fight know that most of the money is make believe. They're having an ideological, David vs. Goliath, money fight.


R/wallstreetbets went from 2m to 5m subscribers this week.

AOC was one of the first politicians to speak out when Robinhood shut off people's ability to trade the stock. (Free market? Maybe for the ultra rich) 


Then Shmed Bruz tried to jump on the populist bandwagon by retweeting her, at which point she reminded him that she fucking hates him, and for good reason.


So yesterday, someone inside the company couldn't wait anymore. They sold 5-6m shares, which is a big chunk of the company, at about 400. The price then dropped to 200, but whoever made that sale turned over a billion dollar profit. 


Considering they were probably an executive at a video game retailer in its way out, that's a pretty good turnaround. It is hard to comprehend just how much money a billion dollars is.


So, here's how I like to think about it: a million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 30 years. That's a big big difference.

 

So, yeah, today we get to see just how free the free market is. If yesterday is any indicator, we'll probably see Robinhood get shut down (or severely throttled) by the government soon.

It's kind of like Occupy Wall Street, but with money instead of tents. Perhaps this is the common ground between the little guys on the left and right? 

File under: movement

We're getting closer.

Yes, what if?!?

I should reach out to this writer with a copy of Self-Driving Mystery.

 

A plastic tub with a hub motor on one of the back wheels, and tricycle steering. It only goes 15mph, and that's probably for the better: trikes like this are seriously tippy. Turning it around so there are two wheels up front helps, but would make the steering and suspension much more complex and expensive, so, instead, they made it slow.

As it is, it's too expensive, at about $5k. Bring it down to $2k and pump that top speed up to 60mph and there won't be a car on the road in fifteen years.

Although that's not what GM thinks.

 So yeah, the guy who crossed the line first didn't actually win.

He did it in a foiling boat. My brother ran some numbers on foils vs. old school boats in the race.

He average 12 knots, for 24000 miles. I can say with some confidence my dinghy has never hit 12 knots. That's like, blazing fast for a sailboat. Day and night, for three months.

At top, I was taking a picture of these tree rings (about a hundred years old, with lots of wind from the west) when Emmy got super alert.


There was a coyote sneaking up on us! He slunked away when I started paying attention. This isn't really that big of a deal, I've seen a coyote every time I've been to that park in the past couple weeks. But I got a photo! (Ish)


Still learning...

This drawing really makes me wonder how much Larry Harvey had Sutro Tower in mind when he built the man.

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