We managed to get a lightsaber in the Dungeon Adventure game. Scott said something like “try to smash the chest with the morningstar”, and a screen came up with the ‘do or do not, there is no try’ and said we had a new weapon. Checked the weapon list and, hey, there’s a super powerful weapon. Damage is 7d6 — so better than the super sword we were hoping to find somewhere in the dungeon.
Category: Miscellaneous
SNL
I hate that Musk (and many other people) conflate a real condition with permission to be a jerk. You learned something about how your brain or biochemistry work and can use this information to relate better with others? Great! You learned something about how your brain or biochemistry work and take that as permission to mistreat people, defame them, etc? No good. I get PMS. It doesn’t mean I get to scream at people and verbally abuse them for a week every month.
If he had someone reading his tweets before publishing — to ensure he wasn’t, say, about to call a stranger a pedo — I’d be more accepting of the “I have Aspbergers” announcement because the announcement would have continued with “… and I understand that things I don’t consider offensive really bother people, so I’ve taken this concrete step to avoid inflicting harm on others in the future”. Similarly, considering yourself a visionary because you don’t care enough about others to think that their near certain death isn’t a big obstacle to colonizing Mars? I think that’s callousness.
Frog Rescue
Anya rescued a frog today. It had rained overnight, and the frog somehow hopped on top of our chicken tractor. It got stuck in the screen that covers the top of the tractor. Anya managed to pick up the frog, and she carried it back to our pond. It hopped out of her hands when they were close to the pond.
Trout Dough Ball Recipe
Scott’s going fishing, and Anya and I made dough balls for trout bait. Mix 1 cup all purpose flour, 1/3 cup corn meal, and 1-2T garlic powder (I used 1.5T of garlic powder, and it’s really garlicy).
Add enough water to make a firm but slightly sticky dough.
Pinch a bit of dough and roll between your palms to form into blueberry sized balls. Some of ours got a little big!
Drop in boiling water for 1-2 minutes.
Remove and place on napkin/towel (or, in my case, a perforated silicone baking mat) to dry. Cool for an hour then freeze overnight.
Sunset and a maple tree
Bud break
The big sugar maple in our front yard has budded out — no more sap from it this year!
First Buzzard Sighting – 2021
Anya didn’t close the chicken tractor well today. When I looked outside to check on the chickens, I saw Sunshine right by the house. We headed out, rounded up the three escapees, and refilled their water. On the way back into the house, there were three buzzards flying over the house.
On Privilege
I read an article highlighting the white privilege of Bernie attending the inaguration in a warm coat and warm mittens. This is a case where “privilege” means “recipient of general courtesy that should be extended to anyone”. Someone less “old white dude” shows up, they’re gonna get hassled over their attire. But I have trouble identifying the fact someone is able to wear warm, comfortable clothing to an event as the problem.
I’ve gone to operas, ballet performances, symphonies, plays, and Michelin rated restaurants wearing a warm coat and boots (carrying dress shoes in a waterproof handbag, not for the fashion statement as a “don’t trek muddy snow melt all over the joint” courtesy). The cloakroom attendant keeps my warm coat and bag of wintery boots. Is that privilege? Sure, in the same way that letting Bernie sit in the audience without haute couture displays his privilege. Do I need to be aware that I’m fortunate not to get hassled at the door? Sure. Do I need to be aware that I’m fortunate, when playing with my daughter in a park, to know the cop who cruises by to check on us really is just saying hi? Sure. But the *problem* is when some non-white non-dude human does the same thing, they should be treated the same way — anyone with a valid ticket should be cheerfully greeted like they belong there — because they *do* belong there.
Point out how privilege manifests itself, advocate for changes that extend such courtesy to everyone, and ensure you treat everyone equitably. Don’t tell Bernie to wear a fancier coat!
FU Investing
It’s important to remember the difference between capitalization through offering shares and market value. Say I have a company that I’m going to take public. Forget all the real-world stuff that goes into an IPO — I put one million shares of my company out there with a target price of 10$ a share, and initial investors purchase all of the shares at my target price. I now have ten million bucks in exchange for the investor’s interest in my company. Now you want to buy a share of my company. I had a million shares and sold them all. You aren’t buying a share from *me*. You go to someone who owns shares in my company and offer to buy one. Well, they paid 10$ yesterday, so they’re not going to sell that share for ten bucks. You offer them 11$, though, and they say ‘sure’.
My company is doing well (“the fundamentals” are good), people anticipate I’m going to start offering dividends or I’m going to start using a new manufacturing technique and reduce cost by 10%. A lot of people want shares, so they start offering to pay 20$ for a share. And plenty of people who paid 10$ a share want to bank their profits, so there are shares available to buy. Even though my company shares are selling at 20$, which makes my market capitalization twenty million dollars, I only have ten million of that. The other ten million went as profit to investors who sold shares. Same when the stock price goes down — I’m not hitting sales targets, my planned IP filing doesn’t go through, etc and shares are down to 5$ … I still got that ten mil from my IPO; investors just own their share of my company with a value of 5 mil.
A company that isn’t doing well can still be worth millions on paper. This is where short selling comes in. Think about buggy manufacturers when automobiles became “a thing” — if they were publicly traded companies, you could have anticipated that the value of the stock would go down. You borrow a share of Lisa’s Buggy Company from someone — it’s worth 10$ today. You sell it and pocket the ten bucks. A month from now, you buy a share of Lisa’s Buggy Company for 3$ and give the repurchased share back. You’ve score 7$. Now, realistically you don’t just find someone who owns a share and borrow it from them. You ‘borrow’ the share from a brokerage. You pocked 9.50$ initially because you give the brokerage 0.50$ for letting you ‘borrow’ that share for a month (like interest when you borrow money).
If you borrow a 10$ share and are going to return it in a month, no one knows how much that’s going to cost you in a month. You’re hoping it’s less than 10$. But, in a case like GameStop, that 10$ share you borrowed is worth 320$. Brokerages hold what amounts to cash collateral to cover your short — because they don’t want to be out that 320$ share when you cannot afford to repurchase it. And, as the share value goes up, they may need more collateral to cover your short. At some point, you just don’t have any more cash to throw into collateral. You’re screwed (and have to repurchase those borrowed shares at whatever the price happens to be now). Or the broker doesn’t want to keep risking it — they call in their loaned share so they can sell it and keep the 320$.
Thing is? Having shares trading at a couple hundred bucks instead of a couple bucks doesn’t change the real trajectory of in-person retail sales of physical game media and equipment (i.e. the underlying logic that led investors to short GameStop in the first place). It doesn’t give GameStop half a billion dollars they can use to move into a new, more profitable, market space. AMC are an interesting, somewhat similar, case. AMC have, to a lesser extent, gone through the same thing as GameStop. Except they also happened to have planned to issue an additional fifty million (or so) shares of stock to raise money. Had the offering gone through when the stock was trading at 2$, they’d have only raised another 100 mill. Had they hit the 20$ a share price the stock peaked at, they’d have raised a billion. IIRC, they brought in a little over 300 million — enough to wipe out a bunch of debt and probably secure operations through the pandemic (if that means summer/autumn). And, I expect, there are a LOT of people who (once vaccinated) are really eager to go do *things* like overpay for popcorn while watching movie on a big screen. This FU investing to screw over massive shorts may have saved the company.
First Robins of 2021
I thought I saw a robin yesterday, but I wasn’t able to get a picture of it. Today, though, we were outside working on the nesting boxes and I saw half a dozen robins in one of the trees. We need to make some suet and get the feeders out!
