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Guarantee 90+% of your frustrations in fights in this game are due to how bad the servers, desync and peekers advantage are. And it costs us the userbase each wipe.
*** [EDIT] *** Looks like Nikita made a thread as a result of this one's popularity, and is saying it's not netcode, it's the servers and the hardware/networking there, global networking, bandwidth issues that causes etc etc, and that putting pressure on them to fix it won't work. sigh...if he fails to realize it's still his responsibility... This game is one of the worst examples of desync and bad netcode in modern gaming. This will never change until we put more pressure on BSG and stop giving them excuses, like hackers. Yes, there are hackers. Yes, the BattlEye they've implemented is clearly the cheapest version they could get as hackers are still around but nowhere near as bad as before. But it's the servers right now, this wipe, that are completely unacceptable. We're a month or however long it has been now in to this wipe, and based on previous experience (even though we lack the ability to track numbers), a large chunk of players will have already dropped off from playing. They come back for the wipe, they've not played in months due to boredom or frustration, they're hoping things have changed and...nope. Then leave after circa 2 or 3 weeks due to frustrations, almost always around bullshit fights where they die when they feel they shouldn't have done. Yes, ammo and armour factor in, there's no denying that. Ammo is everything. But holding an angle, especially as a solo player, and then seeing someone appear at a corner for a shave of a second before you die, IS UNACCEPTABLE NETCODE BULLSHIT. CS servers tick at what? 128? Anyone in that game holding a corner should win that fight, if they're even vaguely skilled, because the servers are fast enough to transmit to damn near real time. In EFT? You saw that guy for a shave of a second on your screen. On HIS/HER screen, you were on it for a second or more, and that's the difference between winning and losing. How many clips from streamers have you seen where they walk past a doorway, and a guy is stood there not moving with their gun pointing at the doorway and don't even react or fire back as the streamer strafes across the door and unloads in to them? Nobody just STANDS there and allows themselves to die. You were stood there not even moving for the streamer, yet the guy who died? He saw you zip across the screen and he died, has his arms in the air crying speed hacker, hacker, this game is bulllshit etc etc. Streamers on stream dying to someone leaning out behind a pillar and tapping them, yet the streamer doesn't even see him. Chat cries hacker. Peekers advantage, shit netcode, shit lag. BSG have clearly, CLEARLY reduced scavs across all maps this wipe. So you have bigger maps now like Woods, less scavs, less players this far in to a wipe, AND THE SERVERS ARE STILL SHIT. BSG want to expand. Add a whole new streets map. Add vertical audio. VOIP etc. FUCK ALL OF THAT frankly. The biggest frustration in this game is the bullshit servers. I'm sorry BSG but if you're seeing more players than ever before, you really, really, really need to be pumping that money in to better server ticking and providers. BSG want to add more maps, combine the maps together, add more players, yet we're in a place right now where player numbers are down, scavs are borderline turned off, and the servers are still this awful? This wipe has seen, for me, more lagged deaths from people I've shot than in any other period of play over 2 years. Shoot someone or a scav, and they drop dead after running for a few SECONDS. I'm in the UK on a London server. WTF is this tickrate or ping? I have a clan mate from CoD who finally ditched it and wanted a new experience, bought EFT because he likes a challenge, he got to level 4 and said he can't believe how bad this game is, how much lag there is. And he's completely right. BSG. Jesus Christ. Your netcode is everything, and it's awful.
To be clear, I'd still wholly recommend this version of 3D World even without Bowser's Fury. The tweaks are small overall, and Bowser's Fury isn't going to sate the most hardcore of Mario fans looking for a brand new game, but the package as a whole is magical. If you were one of the many who missed out on this Wii U classic, fix that.
You can play a lot of 3D Mario games on your Switch. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is just as good as any of them. It contains makes the Wii U game feel better than you remember, and the bonus campaign makes the package one of the best ports Nintendo has brought to the Switch.
Despite multiplayer now being online, it still feels superfluous, but otherwise Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury might just be one of those fabled "perfect" games.
Super Mario 3D World remains one of the better linear Mario games, and anyone playing it for the first time is in for an absolute treat. Add to that the curious bonus adventure that is Bowser's Fury and you've got a package that provides great value for money. It isn't without its flaws, but most of these (online multiplayer, repetitive missions in Bowser's Fury) relate to the new additions; the main game itself remains as pure and perfect as it was seven years ago. Had it just been Super Mario 3D World on its own, we'd be thoroughly recommending it anyway; Bowser's Fury is just the cherry on top.
Bowser’s Fury is a short experience – it’ll take a competent player a couple of hours to see all it has to offer, and a few hours more to drive it all the way to 100% completion – but it’s completely worthwhile. It has some great surprises, which is why I talk about it in such generalized terms. Bowser’s Fury would’ve made a great download-only, budget-price stand-alone – so as a bonus included with an already excellent game, its value can’t really be overstated.
This is one of the best platforms in history, and its expansion is by no means a minor content, since at some times it shines with more personality than the original title. In short, an indispensable pack has played the video game on Wii U or not, and one of the most essential works of your Nintendo Switch.
Although Super Mario 3D World is only an implementation for Nintendo Switch, it has not lost any of its charm and ingenuity. The loving optimization for the benefit of the gaming experience, as well as the bonus adventure Bowser's Fury, are convincing across the board and promise fun for up to four players. Even some questionable level designs can hardly tarnish the overall picture.
Super Mario Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is a package that offers two different ways to experience one of the best 3D Mario adventure, making it ideal for the franchise’s 35th anniversary celebration. There is no doubt that the game is a two-way diversion, able to preserve elements of the past and paint majestic novelties around it, as Bowser Jr. does with his paintbrush in the new and fascinating Bowser’s Fury.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is an explosive pack. 3D World returns with an improved pace, while retaining the stellar gameplay that characterized it when it first launched, and of course being still as hilarious as it was back then. Bowser's Fury takes the lesson a step further, creating a small and dense open world that will put you to the test with a sense of urgency unlike any other Super Mario game. The result, needless to say, is pure, unadulterated joy.
This package combines tried-and-true gameplay and level design with unique concepts (plus an all-new game) to earn its place among the elite games in the franchise
It´s not one, but two great platformers for Nintendo Switch. One of the greatest Wii U games (with improvement such as online multiplayer and photo mode) and a new Mario 3D game, not as big and ambitious as previous games, but equally fun and full of surprises.
Super Mario 3D World is an excellent game so if you still haven't played it or simply want it on Switch, this will make a wonderful addition to your gaming library. Oh, and you also get a fantastic bonus game with Bowser's Fury so how could you go wrong?
Super Mario 3D World shows why Mario is an ageless franchise, with the seven-year-old game providing fresh fun and a delightful experience. Bowser's Fury is the exact opposite, showing just how exciting and experimental the series can be.
Super Mario 3D is a great game to play solo or with friends and shows off some of Nintendo's best level design yet, while Bowser's Fury is an inventive take on the Mario formula that's more generous with its content than it ought to be. Both games make for a fantastic bundle and should be checked out by fans and non-fans alike.
Overall, this is a fantastic collection of Super Mario games. From the focused and demanding Super Mario 3D World to the more experimental, though still very well executed, open world take for Bowser’s Fury. Both games have a lot to offer and will keep you very busy unlocking their innermost secrets.
Bowser's Fury is much more than just a bonus . Despite it is relatively short, it still feels like a fully fleshed Mario jump and run. Packed with the great main game including the long missed online co-op mode Super Mario 3D World + Bowers's Fury is a must have for every Switch user.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury for Nintendo Switch effectively handles two important tasks: introducing new players to the classic game that came from the Wii U, as well as pleasing hungry fans with new great content. Definitely a must-play for all Super Mario fans!
Thans to its many clever tweaks, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury give the player many reasons to enjoy a great 3D platformer, now a little bit faster, and with friends around the globe online. Let's not forget Bowser's Fury, a tiny open world adventure which rightfully mixes gameplays from the Wii U and Switch episodes, and delivers a strong experience with a twist.
Quirky, creative, and constant good fun, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury blends Mario gameplay old and new with great success, creating a title that feels worthy of his 35th birthday celebrations.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury offers much more than your regular Switch port with a brand new adventure that packs between 5 and 8 hours of great new original content. I loved my time spent in this new open world of Bowser's Fury and going through 3D World a second time sure was a blast. Hopefully, this new package gives the game the second life that it truly deserves.
Simple and immediate, beautiful to see and fun even in multiplayer, Super Mario 3D World is the "what if" of the history of Super Mario. But with obvious limitations compared to Super Mario Odyssey and the other chapters in 3D. Bowser's Fury tries to beat new paths, without avoiding a few slips.
One of the best modern Super Mario titles is made that little bit better and accompanied by a brand-new game that bends the formula in new and exciting ways.
If you've never played 3D World before or haven't touched it since the Wii U days, this is well worth the price of admission. Prospects get a little tougher if you're not interested in going through 3D World, because while Bowser's Fury is amazing, it's still approximately less than 10 hours of gameplay even if you do everything. But no matter what: Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury might be one of the strongest Mario games available on Switch. The base game is fun and varied, while Bowser's Fury offers a distinctive, inventive, and superb open-world 3D Mario experience.
Super Mario 3D World is an incredible and underplayed Wii U adventure that's now available on Switch. But Bowser’s Fury steals the show with its exciting and fresh take on a 3D Mario game.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is a fantastic package that showcases what makes Nintendo games so special. Super Mario 3D World is just as good as when it released, and Bower's Fury is a surprisingly good standalone adventure that paves the way for the future of Mario.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is a delightful double act. Super Mario 3D World holds up well, and offers a unique multiplayer experience that works particularly well on Switch. Its opening worlds are designed to cater for that varied audience, while the second half injects some much needed difficulty and is best played solo. Bowser’s Fury is experimental in nature, and offers something completely different with a fully open world housing plenty of Shines to collect at a rapid pace. While neither quite reaches the dizzying heights of Super Mario Galaxy or Odyssey, it is a double dose of Mario doing things differently, and a fitting finale to Super Mario’s 35th anniversary.
Near-perfect platforming, gorgeous visuals and a joy-filled soundtrack make Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury one of the best Mario titles of all time, and an essential purchase for all Switch owners.
Ultimately, Super Mario 3D World, in this package, is the best that game has ever been, with the increased speed and ease of multiplayer access making it far more enticing than ever before. Bowser’s Fury, meanwhile, is essentially the Super Mario Odyssey DLC that never was. It feels like Odyssey’s level and game design sensibilities, but placed in the Super Mario 3D World game engine, with all of the power-ups and quirks that game has to make something truly unique. Putting both of these games in one package is the best decision that Nintendo has made in a long while, as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is one of the best Mario offerings available on Nintendo Switch, which is lofty praise given the existence of Super Mario Maker 2. Now it just needs the option to play again, but as Luigi.
I can't really recommend Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury enough. Whether you've played the original game before or not, the addition of online multiplayer is a big win, while Bowser's Fury is a testament to just how pure a Mario game can be while still feeling fresh and exciting. Put simply; this is an essential game for Mario fans.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is both a welcome return for a platforming classic and a novel expansion of what made the game so special back on the Wii U. There's a solid chance that millions of players missed out on its excellence back in 2013, so now is the perfect time to take it for a spin.
The real star of the show, however, was Bowser’s Fury, which innovates on the foundations laid by previous 3D titles, to provide some of the most enjoyable, open-world platforming I’ve had the pleasure of playing. This is a must-buy for Switch owners and Mario fans alike and is sure to tide you over the next couple of months.
As the title itself indicates, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury proves to be more than just the re-proposal in Nintendo Switch sauce of an exclusive Wii U not particularly lucky: the idea of inserting for once a completely new extra is very appreciable, and you find the ideas inside Bowser's Fury are not lacking at all. While the difference in tone and gameplay between the two games is quite right, the overall superiority of Super Mario 3D World over the new adventure is also evident, which ends up being an appendix or little more. The effect is that of a very solid pairing, which once again celebrates the undisputed supremacy of the Great N in the platforming field.
Super Mario 3D World has aged quite well. It is still a very enjoyable adventure, updated in its rhythm and different enough from Super Mario Odyssey for those who came to Switch without going through Wii U to discover it. The big surprise is Bowser's Fury, which transcends the concept of simple DLC and adds mechanics and novelties of epic dimensions.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is an excellent case for why Nintendo should be porting more Wii U games to the Switch. With its improved presentation and the convenience of the Switch, this is definitely the optimal way to play Super Mario 3D World, even without much in the way of new features. Bowser’s Fury is also an excellent open-world Mario mini-adventure, which is probably worth the price of admission on its own. Admittedly, the multiplayer features some camera issues, particularly in Bowser’s Fury. However, that should not stop Mario fans of all ages from checking out Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, especially if they missed out on this much loved platformer the first time around.
Super Mario 3D World may not have had much added to it aside from an online function that is limited to only saving progress for the host, but it didn't necessarily need much else. Nintendo successfully found a way to evolve the 2D classics without going open world, and the result is one of the most consistently fresh and enjoyable games around, which, despite lacking the challenge of the NES games, has something for just about everyone. The bonus Bowser's Fury solo adventure is an absolute delight with a brilliant core idea that adds a crazy tension to Mario platforming, but it is hard to present a case for purchasing this pack just to play it. Whilst full of great content, it is too short-lived to feel worth the asking price, and really needs a standalone purchase option. When taking both games into account for those that have not played the original Wii U title, though, this is a cracking bundle of Mario goodness that encapsulates what everyone knows and still loves about the moustachioed hero after an enduring thirty-five years.
Bowser's Fury offers some great new ideas and is much more than a simple DLC. It's a great Mario game in its own right, with enough to entice those who played 3D World before with a wholly new and compelling experience, as well as offering one of the most epic showdowns in Nintendo history. Bowser's Fury is a great take on 3D Mario and finally makes Bowser the menacing villain he deserves to be. The game's only flaw is that it left me wishing there was more of it.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is the Wii U port that Switch owners have been waiting for. Besides the inclusion of online multiplayer, 3D World is the same good game that players already experienced on the Wii U, and fans of the series who missed it the first time around will enjoy its hybridization of 2D and 3D Mario gameplay. But the highlight of the package is Bowser's Fury, a scaled-down but surprisingly robust mini 3D Mario game that actually takes some chances.
Glyph brings together the simplest form of platforms and puzzles in one package. It is an entertaining experience that shines for its simplicity. Although it falls short in scope, it fulfills the most important thing: is fun to play.
Even with the Bowser’s Fury miss, the content is worth it. If you want one of the best and most versatile multiplayer experiences to date for the Nintendo Switch, online or offline, go with Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.
I don’t think Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury annoys me as much as it did on the Wii U, since the Switch already has the best Mario ever made on it; and I do think there is fun to be had with these games, even though I find them to be fairly frustrating. I would still recommend them if you enjoyed the originals, or maybe wanted to play them with younger gamers. Even though I might not go back to it very often, I don’t regret the time spent with it.
Bowser’s Fury works just fine as an added bonus packaged with an under-appreciated platforming gem from the Wii U era. If you’ve never played 3D World before, this is a great chance to catch up on a fresh take on 3D Mario design. If you’re mainly interested in Bowser’s Fury, though, maybe wait until the strong ideas get expanded into a full, standalone game.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury might include the same game that was on the Wii U but it's also a title that needs to be experienced by everyone who owns a Nintendo Switch.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is essentially the same game on Switch that some of you may have experienced on Wii U. While there’s no denying that the new hardware can’t keep up with the game’s ambitions at times, this bundle is at its core another fantastic Mario experience.
$SLV is not going to get squeezed...$SLV is the Trojan Horse for the squeeze THAT'S ALREADY HAPPENING
I have no horse in the GME "fight" right now. I wish you all the best, and it is the biggest trading mistake of my life so far. I was talking about GME with my friends in March 2020, and even did trade some options then for a loss. I must have read DFV at some point, as we were discussing Burry and a "technical short squeeze" happening. But I missed the real boat, so good on DFV and all of the rest of you degenerates. Instead, I focused my market attention during quarantine on precious metals. My opinion is that in the long term (10+ years) they will provide the only real hedge against inflation in the world as every CB on the planet is exploding the supply of fiat to deal with COVID economic disruption. In the short term, I believe that the "powers that be" are engineering the largest short squeeze in the history of markets. We do not have the power to effect whether this happens, it is simply an inevitability. HFs, banks, and other large institutions are going to extract an enormous amount of wealth from the world during this squeeze. This money will be taken from the future pocket of every consumer of industrial goods for the next several decades in the form of inflated prices on everything: batteries, electronics, solar panels, EVs...even jewelry and silverware. We cannot stop them, but I have decided to try to hop on for the ride. The last few months aside, I never saw WSB as a force for societal change, because the people who control the money are always going to win the most in the end. WSB is a place where we can learn the tricks of a market that is structurally rigged against us, and use those tricks to our advantage. To use an analogy that I think we all know: I am not, and will never be, Ender. But I can learn that the Enemy's Gate is Down, and play The Game that way. The tl;dr is this: the market for silver is the most manipulated physical market in the history of the world. $SLV is the vehicle that is currently being used behind the scenes to vaccum up ownership of every available physical bar of silver in major bullion vaults in the world. When it has completed doing that, the "paper" markets that have held down the price of silver for decades will become disconnected from the physical markets. The energy that has been artificially held back for decades by this paper will explode the price of physical silver, and I have no idea how high it will go. $SLV will stand (mostly) alone as the world's exchange traded product for electronic trading of physical silver.
LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING: WHY IS SILVER IMPORTANT?
Silver has been used as real currency for thousands of years, and there is an argument to be made for returning to "sound" money through the use of silver and gold. However, that is not the argument that I am making. Silver is a highly industrial metal, and it's usage for industry will only continue to expand as we electrify the future. Silver is important for electrical applications b/c it is the most-conductive / least-resistive metal in the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_and_conductivity_of_various_materials). It is used heavily in all electronic applications (even more since RoHS has pushed us away from Tin/Lead and towards Tin/Silver solder blends, with silver being added to mitigate the longevity problems of 100% Tin solder growing Tin whiskers and shorting out components). But the largest new demands on silver are going to come from solar panels and EVs. Utility-scale solar is now virtually tied with wind as the cheapest new sources of energy in the world and is only getting cheaper every year. As fossil fuel plants continue to reach the end of their service life, they are going to be replaced with solar and wind technologies. As EVs become more prevalent, their components (ESPECIALLY their batteries) will produce additional demand for Silver. As smart investors are wont to do, this coming demand for industrial silver has been front-run and large quantites of silver have been sucked into investment products so that they can produce financial returns when demand begins to increase. 2020 showed remarkable investor interest in silver, to the tune of an estimated 350Mtoz moving into exchange traded products like $SLV. $SLV alone added ~200Mtoz of silver to it's holdings in 2020. Unfortunately for the market, supply cannot meet demand: Of the 930.9Mtoz estimated for 2020 demand, only 236Mtoz was available for physical investment, because the rest was consumed by industrial uses. This means that $SLV alone absorbed almost the entire world's capacity for silver investment in 2020, and as you'll see soon, this is only accelerating in 2021. Source for demand/supply/investment numbers: https://www.silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SilverInstitute2020InterimPR.pdf
LETS GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL
Now it's important to understand that huge amounts of "silver" is traded on "paper" markets, and these markets have historically decided the approximate cost of physical silver in the world, in the form of the "spot price". I'm not going to give anyone a primer on how this works, go read about the London Fix and COMEX paper on your own time. But the important thing to know is that there are a bunch of silver bars in vaults in London and in the U.S., and electronic claims on them are traded on the LBMA and COMEX continuously, without the silver ever leaving the vaults. However, these vaults have concrete numbers of physical bars in them, and trading contracts against them technically means that you can show up at a window somewhere and demand your 5x 1000oz bars that a COMEX warrant entitle you to. This redemption happens all the time, and it can be used to extract physical silver from the unallocated storage at bullion vaults and release it to industrial or consumer bullion uses. However, these bars can also be moved into "registered" or "allocated" accounts without them leaving the overall vault storage. This means that a quantity of individual silver bars that an owner holds title to can be physically moved inside the vault onto a different rack, and the owner has individual serial numbers of bars that they own. These bars can be withdrawn on demand only by their owner and are not available for general redemption of a COMEX warrant. So how many bars are there? Well between LBMA and COMEX, there are 1480.3Mtoz sitting in vaults (sources below when I start doing math). This includes all allocated AND unallocated bars. Now, obviously London and NY are separated by an ocean, but people always like to bring up that bars could be moved b/w London <-> American COMEX vaults. This is an enormous undertaking, but let's make a "spherical chicken in a vaccuum" level assumption and say that LBMA + COMEX vaults are a singular source of inventory for both $SLV and other market participants. If you read the $SLV S-1 (which I did: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1330568/000119312505127244/ds1.htm) you would learn that the custodian of the $SLV trust is required to hold all silver weight (with an exception for 1100toz of unallocated, lol) that is owned by the trust in allocated accounts, where the individual bars are physically segregated inside the vaults, and the serial numbers of the owned bars are explicitly recorded. The idea that there is "no physical silver" backing the SLV trust and "you could get settled with cash" is ridiculous. iShares publishes a report listing every serial number of every bar that is owned by the trust, along with the total weight contained in the bars. It is 10847 pages long (you can read it here if you have trouble sleeping at night: https://emea-markets.jpmorgan.com/metalicsWebAppJanus/publicUnauthenticated/BONY_SLV.pdf) and is updated frequently. The underlying silver is owned by the trust. It cannot be removed from the trust unless "baskets" of 50000 shares are redeemed by an "Authorized Participant" which is only a few large brokers. It cannot be removed by the bullion vaults and given to other customers because it is physically segregated inside the vaults. People who have recently beaten down the idea of a silver squeeze love to talk about how JP Morgan is the custodian for the SLV trust. And because JPM just paid a $1B fine for historical manipulation of the paper silver market, they aren't going to be honest about this. This is crazy talk. When it comes to the dishonesty of a big bank, there is "fraud" and there is FRAUD. "Fraud" would be them saying "Oh sorry, we didn't realize that a laundromat bringing in $300k/week of dirty dollar bills was out of the ordinary". "Fraud" happens all the time, and the banks get away with it regularly. FRAUD would be them saying "Oh yes, 3rd party customer (iShares) who services dozens of other large banking institutions in the world, here is objective evidence, with serial numbers, that we have these silver bars in the vault" and then just making up the data. It is QANON-level crazy, IMHO, to think that JPM is going to commit FRAUD by publishing a list of serial numbers that is completely fake. I believe the exact opposite: since they have just gotten caught, they are playing it straight this time and have just switched sides in order to go long. On the COMEX alone, JP Morgan Chase is long 193.9Mtoz, or just north of $5B. (COMEX depository data by weight: https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls) The problem for the futures and options markets is that their continual trading of paper contracts is chasing a smaller and smaller amount of physical silver that is not owned by $SLV. And the market participants (minus, now, JPM) who have gotten away with naked selling of paper contracts and mostly settling them for cash are going to soon find the underlying vaults empty and no metal to give to warrant holders who come looking for it.
HOW BIG OF A PROBLEM IS $SLV FOR THE NAKED SHORTS IN THE PAPER MARKET? LET'S DO SOME MATH.
$SLV inventory math: $SLV is holding 669,357,789.40 troy ounces in trust, and has 720,500,000 shares outstanding. (If you are curious why $SLV/share trades below the spot price, it's because: 669.4Mtoz / 720.5M shares = .929 toz / share) ($SLV data from here: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund?qt=SLV#/ ) (screenshot from tonight for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/0sqcMFr) Bullion vault inventory math: London (LBMA) silver stocks are 1080.5Mtoz (http://www.lbma.org.uk/london-precious-metals-physical-holdings-statistics) US COMEX silver stocks are 399.8Mtoz (https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls) 669.4/(1080.5 + 399.8) = 45.2% of the vaulted silver in the world is already owned by SLV Subtracting what SLV already owns, leaves us with: (1080.5 + 399.8) - 669.4 = 810.9Mtoz (This is completely ignoring the fact that a lot of that remaining silver is owned in registered or allocated accounts by individual owners. E.g. there is 150.2Mtoz in "registered" on the COMEX which means those bars are already specifically deeded to an individual owner. But they could theoretically sell it to SLV so I included it as available.) 810.9Mtoz is the ABSOLUTE THEORETICAL MAXIMUM available in LBMA + COMEX silver that is not already owned by SLV. Now how short are the shorts? Some more math: OI on COMEX futures: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver-futures-and-options.html
in currently open interest that could be demanded for delivery. Just on the COMEX, there could be demand for twice as much silver as there is in the combined LBMA + COMEX vaults that is not explicitly owned by $SLV right now. Caveats:
I have not included any London futures contracts that may have claims on metal here. I am not versed in their contracts at all and don't have a good data source right now. If anyone knows how to calculate the short obligation for London I would be glad to add it.
I have not analyzed any of the strike prices on COMEX options or dates on COMEX futures...some of them could be way out of the money or way in the future. Many silver producers sell futures years in advance to lock in prices, and then deliver the physical to satisfy the contracts.
Using the same basic methodology–total shorts divided by shares [toz in this case] outstanding–as is used on a stock to calculate short interest (and gave us the infamous 140% short interest on GME) we get......drumroll please: 1563.9 short / 810.9 physical = 192.9% short interest. OPEN INTEREST ON COMEX SILVER FUTURES AND OPTIONS IS EQUIVALENT TO A 192.9% SHORT INTEREST AGAINST ALL LONDON AND U.S. AVAILABLE INVENTORY. But it gets even worse.
WANNA ADD A GAMMA SQUEEZE??
I pulled the data for all current OI in SLV options. There is a large number (5.7 million) of call contracts open (here are the totals: https://imgur.com/tiqPA34) Using the .929toz/share number, we can calculate that there are up to 527.2Mtoz that would have to be bought during an absolute runaway Gamma Squeeze. Call options on $SLV max out right now at $55, so the spot price would only have to increase by around 122% to reach the point that all of that weight would need to have been purchased. But at some point, it could become self-reinforcing, and the gamma squeeze continues to cause more gamma squeezing. I believe that this almost happened Sunday evening (2021-01-31) as evidenced by the huge premium that $SLV was trading to the futures price for a few minutes when trading opened. (My comparison chart: https://i.imgur.com/UPjL3zm.png) The Silver ETF that trades on Sunday in Tel Aviv (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/TCHF82:IT) closed up >6% (and was consistenly rising for the entire session) before any american spot markets opened. I believe that hedging algorithms at MM firms that write options saw this spike as a need to buy shares in $SLV to cover their deltas, and so they bought the opening of $SLV like crazy. $SLV opened up 17.6%, while paper only opened up about 6%. Paper market players had to sell 23.8Mtoz of paper in the first minute of trading to keep the price under control. I have never seen an imbalance like this before, and it was covered up quickly (within 2 hours of trading). But to me, it sounds like Vincent's heartbeat monitor in GATTACA when he runs out of fake signal: there was a cover up required to hide this explosion. When the day comes that this cover up is not executed properly, stuff is going to get ugly, b/c $SLV won't just gamma squeeze like a normal stock...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! A TRADITIONAL GAMMA/SHORT SQUEEZE WILL SEEM LIKE NOTHING IN SILVER
The squeeze in silver will be FAR WORSE than the combination of a gamma and short squeeze in a stock, because shares of stock cannot be removed from the market. Eventually somebody holding $VW or $GME is going to say "sure, I'll sell at $42,000.69 per share" and that share can go back to cover a short. But if instead of doing that, the holder of that share withdrew it from the market by converting it to a physical token b/c they thought that the physical token would be more valuable than the share (the retail premium on physical silver vs. paper silver), the short interest would INCREASE as shares were converted into tokens. And since there are currently more "shares" of silver than there are bars of silver in the vault, the shorts can be caught with a literally illiquid market that has nothing to buy. Zero. Zilch. No silver available. The doomsday scenario (for paper silver holders and writers) is the following combination:
holders of COMEX warrants will see the rising premium of physical bullion to the spot price and decide to redeem their warrants for physical
a rising spot price will Gamma Squeeze the writers of $SLV options into buying more shares in a runaway fashion and the trust will absorb all available vault inventory as it issues new shares
COMEX warrant holders who try to demand metal that doesn't exist will literally break the market. The CBOE will probably step in and decide to force settle the contracts for cash at the last known good price, and COMEX paper warrants will cease trading forever. The physical market price will then be disconnected from the paper market, and $SLV as an exchange traded product will stand (mostly) alone as the new "paper" market for silver.
SO WTF DO I DO? [NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE]
Well I could always buy physical silver, if I can stomach the premium and wait 8 weeks for it to show up. Or, I could just get long on $SLV. Since I believe that $SLV will stand alone after the dust settles as the one true claim on bars in the vaults, I could be long the actual $SLV ticker in several ways:
Buying shares (duh, but it worked for $GME)
Buying long dated calls (Gamma Squeeze go BRRRRR, but who knows when)
My name is Jared A. Brock. Having just turned 35, I sat down to reflect on everything I’ve learned so far and made a list of the things I wish I learned far sooner. None of these are rules or commands for you to follow, just personal reflections from a decade of journaling. I hope they save you a lot of time, energy, and struggle:
1. “Save the best for last” is terrible advice.
A French monk taught me this one. Every morning, I put on the newest pair of socks in my drawer. Why wear the rattiest pair? When I sit down to eat, I eat the tastiest bits first. Why let them get cold? After every shower, I put on my favorite clean t-shirt. I have a great bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig scotch in my cupboard, but I probably won’t drink it for months because I received two bottles of reactor-aged Lost Spirits single malt for Christmas. Why? Because life is hard enough and we aren’t promised tomorrow. This doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind and “live in the moment” at all times, but it does mean we should try to find the golden middle and glean a little bit of pleasure from every day we’re blessed to live. “Save the best for last” is poverty-mentality thinking. It expects worse in the future. Enjoy the best right now — in your marriage, parenting, work, travel, faith, friendship, contribution. Keep all the chips on the table. Be ready at all times to leave without regret.
2. Tools use us.
A hammer literally cannot hit a nail without using a human. A saw cannot cut through a board without using a human. A phone cannot deliver ads without using a human.
3. Avoid false dichotomies.
When given two great options, choose both. When given two horrible options, choose neither.
4. Failure is overcome by one word.
“Next.”
5. Ambition is ruinous for your happiness.
Most goal-setters (myself included) live much of life in anticipation of tomorrow, and when that day arrives, they’re either disappointed by their failures or underwhelmed by their successes. Instead: trust the process. Whiskey, pasta, bread, beer, and cereal all require just two ingredients — wheat and water — but the outcome is completely different based on the process. Identity precedes action. Determine what you want to be, then find the process that will get you there every single time.
6. Forget what the market wants.
Listen to your gut. Your body knows the difference between good and great. Someone said you should never record a song or code an app or write an article unless it makes you laugh, cry, or orgasm. If an idea doesn’t move you, it won’t move an audience, no matter how “commercial” you think it is.
7. Give yourself a shove.
The best way to eat more candy, drink more vodka, and smoke more cigarettes is to leave them in the middle of the kitchen counter. You get it. Willpower is useless. Instead, line up a series of little nudges to automatically get you through your day. If you want to work out, leave your shorts by the door or your cleats in your fridge. My blue diode glasses rest on top of my laptop so I have to protect my eyes before logging online. I can’t not see my vitamins when I brush my teeth, or chia seeds when I reach for the Brita. There’s a book beside my bed, toilet, desk, and car’s gear shifter. Line up enough nudges and you can shove yourself in the right direction.
8. Grandma didn’t use toilet paper.
She used pages from the Sears catalog. Splinter-free wasn’t available until 1935. The Romans used sponges. The Greeks used clay. Francois Rabelais recommended using “the neck of a goose.” Arabians used their left hand. Never assume our extremely unique cultural moment is “normal.”
9. Ninety-nine isn’t enough.
Water boils at 100 degrees Celcius. The difference between 99 and 100 is the difference between zero and one. Not-boiling, boiling. Corollary: 101 doesn’t make it any more boiling.
10. Old people know better.
Honoring our elders is one of the most underrated practices in our newness-obsessed society. Sure, there are a ton of old crazy far-right conspiracy theorists, but there are also good people who have survived four wars, six recessions, and twelve presidents and are somehow still smiling. Get to know them. Also: meet your old-person self. I try to invent a new word every week — one of them is preflection. To ponder the present through the eyes of your future self. Take an hour in silence to listen to your eighty-year-old self. They might know something you don’t.
11. Fire all your employees.
The employer-employee relationship creates an unhealthy power dynamic between humans that simply didn’t exist when we worked cooperatively to feed our clan or village. I love my work life so much more now that I only work with independent entrepreneurs who are my equals. For me, it’s either a one-man show (my writing business), an equal partnership (my film company), or a co-operative endeavor. Life’s too short to be a boss or be bossed around.
12. Accept that you are a voracious locust of doom.
Nail a roll of paper to the wall and write down everything you consume for a year — food, toilet paper, electricity, car fuel, movies, music, social media content, other people’s time, everything. See what I mean? Saint Augustine said that the human heart can only fully be satisfied by one thing aside from God himself: everything. All the sex, all the money, all the power, all the possessions, all the glory. All of it. Nothing short of everything could ever fully satiate the human heart. We are wired for more. Understanding this truth is the first step toward real contentment.
13. Awkward is awesome.
My best friend says that The Office gave society a beautiful gift: the ability to embrace cringe. When you meet someone new and it’s slightly weird, pretend you’re Michael Scott. Just glory and bask in the discomfort. You can awkward-proof your life by being bold: Ask for discounts. Ask for refunds. Ask for phone numbers. Ask for pay raises. Ask inappropriate questions at inappropriate times. Lather yourself in awkward and pretty soon nothing sticks.
14. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life.
Hitler really was following his bliss by offing millions of Jews. I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer genuinely enjoyed the taste of human flesh. Bernie Madoff seemed content to bilk charities for decades. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life. It’s not even in the top ten. Happiness is a seasonal fruit, not a foundational root. Find firm and fertile ground.
15. There is no ugly.
My grandpa re-proposed to my grandma on their fiftieth wedding anniversary and called her the most beautiful woman he’s ever known. Old wrinkly grandma? Yes. Because we choose our definition of beauty through our thoughts, disciplines, habits, and patterns, be they conscious or otherwise.
16. We are what we consume.
The statistical average American is a walking bodybag of sugar, alcohol, caffeine, porn, pills, and digital stimulus. Imagine how different life would be if our only inputs were nature, sleep, sunlight, organic food, and embodied human interaction? Guard your inputs carefully.
17. We’re going to die quite soon.
Make sure you live first. Practicing memento mori will help.
18. Fame is poison.
One in four Gen Zers thinks they’ll be famous by age 25. One in 3.9999999 Gen Zers are going to have a miserably disappointing life. Why do people desire the attention of strangers? Because we all need to love and be loved, to know and be known, but are too afraid to risk personal heartbreak to seek it out. Attention is not affection. Influence is not intimacy.
19. Boomers are to blame for half our troubles.
The Me Generation took a free ride at the planet’s expense and are hellbent on taking the rest of it with them. They’re statistically low on empathy — blame the lead, asbestos, and hairspray if you must — but at least acknowledge the reality that life is hard for everyone, and no one has it easier.
20. Children are dope.
Kids are the blood transfusion in our sick system. We need to stop manipulating, brainwashing, colonizing, and propagandizing them, and learn from them instead.
21. It doesn’t have to hurt.
Joy is a choice.
22. Watch comedy before calls and meetings.
Five minutes of gut-busting laughter will prime you for even the most tedious conference call. Your co-workers and customers all have tough lives like everybody else, so brighten their day by pre-brightening your own.
23. No ragrets.
Tattoo it on your neck. Most people play it far too safe. Instead: optimize your life for the least number of regrets and the most amount of selfless contribution.
24. There are better ways to vote.
I’ve manned several local voting stations, and I’ve also hob-nobbed with politicians in Canada, America, and the UK. The reality is that they don’t work for us. They work for their corporate sponsors and private interests. Democracy isn’t dead. It just hasn’t happened yet, with all attempts to date being stillborn or aborted. Democracy = one voice one vote. Athens wasn’t a democracy — women, slaves, and tenants had zero say. America isn’t a democracy either — no representative system is, because it’s far too easy for private interests to buy politicians. The charade of voting is illusory. All elections are sham elections. So what to do? Vote with your money and time and attention. One sham vote every four years versus tens of thousands of dollar-votes each year? It’s a no-brainer. My wife and I haven’t stepped foot in a Walmart in more than a decade because thousands of its suppliers are based in China, the billionaire heirs are anti-democratic tax-avoiders, and they treat their employees like indentured servants. Vote for pro-democracy third-party candidates if you must — just understand the game, and vote in the ways that actually matter.
25. Everything easy has already been done.
So run a little further. And if it hasn’t been done, it won’t be as easy as it appears. The question to ask is: what’s been standing in the way this whole time? Achievement is all about knocking down obstacles. Just make sure what’s on the other side is rightly worth the effort.
26. Broccoli still tastes terrible.
But you’re not a child anymore. Adults do hard things.
Discipline is great, but it’s also subject to the law of diminishing returns. Life is just too dynamic to schedule with military precision. Free yourself from the tyranny of “only people who wake up at 5 AM are successful.” All hours are not created equal. It depends on your sleep drive and chronotype. Know yourself. Unapologetically get more sleep, then do your best work at your best time in your best state.
28. “Freedom” isn’t freedom.
America wasn’t founded on freedom. America was founded on violent autonomy. The ancient Greeks had an entirely different definition of freedom: it was the ability to choose the right regardless of circumstance.
“We talk about freedom all the time, but we’ve stopped talking about freedom a long time ago. Now we’re talking about autonomy. Freedom is different than autonomy. Freedom has boundaries. Truth is one of those boundaries. And morality is one of those boundaries. Autonomy is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want in whatever way you want. The problem is this: If I’m autonomous and another person is autonomous, and I have preferences and those matter more than the truth, and that person has preferences and their preferences matter more than the truth, when two autonomous preference-seeking beings come together and their preferences don’t match, who is going to win? If truth is on the bottom shelf, truth won’t decide. What will decide will be power. And isn’t it ironic that in our quest for “freedom”, someone gets enslaved?” — Abdu Murray
29. The Marines were right: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
As teenagers, my friend Tyler and I were in a hurry to get somewhere quickly so we drove 120+ miles per hour for forty-five straight minutes before nearly crashing when the speed burned a footlong gash through the tire. By the time we replaced it with a spare, we were late to our destination by more than an hour. But nevermind driving. Pump the life-brakes sometimes, or at least, let off the gas. You might get there faster, with less wear-and-tear on the engine.
30. The quest for wealth is destroying life.
We’ve commodified land, water, shelter, clothing, art, time, and nearly everything else. Very little remains, and it’s amassing into fewer hands. We need a shared global vision. My invented word for it is benevitae: the sustainable flourishing of all creation. Our collective goal should be socioenviroeconomic sustainability. Where to start? We’d do well to let biology determine ecological sustainability and real democracy to determine economic fairness. Our current trajectory is worse than the Space Shuttle Challenger.
31. Most “leaders” aren’t leaders.
Celebrities, politicians, and book-hocking business gurus all call themselves leaders. They’re not. Real leadership is influence that serves. True leaders are selfless and servant-hearted. They put the best interests of others ahead of their own. Politics and media, by comparison, attracts sociopaths like flies to firelight. Never give power to those who seek it. Nearly everyone worth following is dead.
32. Divide-and-conquer is a business model.
Near the end of high school, dozen friends and I binge-watched multiple seasons of LOST in our friend Mike’s basement. It was one of the most hilarious, riotous, enjoyable experiences we had as a group. And it was the last show we ever watched together. People used to go to restaurants in large numbers, to the movies by the dozen, climbing over each other for one of the limited video game controllers, packing out our churches, cheering on our sports teams by the busload. We were almost never alone, and we were far happier. Now we order in, watch Netflix, stream Minecraft, catch the highlights, watch porn, and go to bed. It’s killing us. Resist the urge to be alone. It’s too easy, and it’s the exact opposite of what we really need. The #1 thing that’s correlated to human happiness is human togetherness.
33. Self-improvement won’t save us.
The great lie of individualist-consumerist culture is that we can improve our way to personal perfection and communal utopia. But it’s incrementalism at best. It’s just chasing infinity.
34. We know nothing +/-.
On the scale of all that is known, and all that is knowable, our individual understanding is essentially mathematically zero. The entirety of human knowledge is a rounding error. This is the beginning of humility.
35. The sun is not on fire
I was at an observatory in the Davis Mountains in Texas, and it was the first time I’d paid attention to astronomy since grade school. For three decades, I’d wrongly assumed the sun was a giant ball of flames. But there’s no fire in space because there’s no oxygen in space. (It just looks like fire because of how our eyes perceive light through the atmosphere and prism.) As I stared at the real-time image of the sun on the observatory wall, I nearly wept. The sun actually looks like a giant, boiling, grey brain. And then it hit me: I have so many assumptions to set aside and so much left to learn. So pay attention. Don’t worship the “question everything” mantra, but instead spend your life seeking truth, and wisdom, and understanding. You know what you need to do to get where you want to be.
Hey Armchair Psychologists! We finally made it! The People and The Rankers have spoken and we have our results! They are queens, who are ranked, on a spreadsheet, in an order I am looking at with confusion. But they are here! Actually, one group was mostly right and one group was... interesting. I'll let you decide which is which. Some facts before we get to the results:
I received entries from all 8 rankers and 29 members. I did not mix the results together, so there are actually two sets of rankings below.
Violet Chachki was the most popular answer to which queen made it too far in the rankdown. Other common answers were: Crystal Methyd, Aquaria, Sharon Needles, and S2 Raven.
There wasn't a single common response to which queen went home too early, but some fairly common answers were: AS3 Shangela, AS1 Raven, S3 Manila Luzon, and S7 Ginger Minj. There were too many single answers to list them all. Edit: Ahem, I forgot an important queen. DJ Nina Flowers left far too soon.
So without further ado... the results!
The Public's Rankings
14th Place - Sharon Needles (Season 4 Winner)
Average Placement:11.45
Number of Members Ranking 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 5th)
Number of Members Ranking 14th: 11
13th Place - Aquaria (Season 10 Winner)
Average Placement: 10.86
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 2nd)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 6
12th Place - AS5 Shea Coulee (All Stars 5 Winner)
Average Placement: 9.41
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
11th Place - The Vivienne (Drag Race UK Season 1 Winner)
Average Placement: 9.34
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 4
10th Place - Tyra Sanchez (Season 2 Winner)
Average Placement: 9.03
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 2
9th Place - Raja (Season 3 Winner)
Average Placement: 8.69
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 3rd)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
8th Place - AS4 Monique Heart (All Stars 4 Finalist)
Average Placement: 7.93
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 13th)
7th Place - Bianca Del Rio (Season 6 Winner)
Average Placement: 7.72
Number of Members Placing 1st: 2
Number of Members Placing 14th: 2
6th Place - AS2 Alaska (All Stars 2 Winner)
Average Placement: 6.52
Number of Members Placing 1st: 3
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
5th Place - AS3 BenDeLaCreme (All Stars 3 6th Place)
Average Placement: 5.14
Number of Members Placing 1st: 6
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 12th)
4th Place - Jinkx Monsoon (Season 5 Winner)
Average Placement: 5.03
Number of Members Placing 1st: 3
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 12th)
3rd Place - Jaida Essence Hall (Season 12 Winner)
Average Placement: 5.00
Number of Members Placing 1st: 2
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 13th)
2nd Place - Bob the Drag Queen (Season 8 Winner)
Average Placement: 4.45
Number of Members Placing 1st: 7
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
1st Place - S9 Shea Coulee (Season 9 Finalist)
Average Placement: 4.41
Number of Members Placing 1st: 2
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 12th)
Congratulations to Season 9 Shea on finally winning a crown! Too bad none of this counts. The REAL rankings are below. I have included anonymous quotes about each queen, pulled from the comments from the rankers. Some have been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Ranker's Top 14
14th Place - Aquaria (Season 10 Winner)
Average Placement:11.38
Number of Members Ranking 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 8th)
Number of Members Ranking 14th: 2
What the Rankers said:
~"Top 13 is good enough for her." ~"Surprised everyone by being likeable and winning handily" ~"Aquaria's this high in part because of her keen eye for fashion and in part because she played the Drag Race game very well. She turned her weakness (a lack of eloquence and on the spot comedy chops) into an asset with her character choices, and she also started drama that was small enough to be quashed within the season while still being entertaining. Would I have liked to see Asia take the S10 crown? Yes. Can I fault Aquaria for her run? Not really." ~"Let me ask you a very fair question: why is Aquaria in the top 14? The Snatch Game was great. The Ball was great. That’s all. Asia should’ve won evil twins. She had some killer runways but... she’s a rich fashion twink from NYC with a huge connection of designers. Of course she had good runways." 13th Place - Sharon Needles (Season 4 Winner)
Average Placement: 10.88
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 6th)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
What the Rankers said:
~"She had a good run but 4 challenges wins is a bit much. She was lucky that the challenge she won didn't had much stood out." ~"Oh, Sharon. If only the show’s editors could have followed you around in real life." ~"Good or whatever, a few iconic looks but some fucking bad ones too." ~"If we were allowed to consider the queens outside the show, Sharon wouldn't be in this top 14. While she was a decent competitor, I think that season 4 was much stronger reality TV than it was a competition, and Sharon won a lot because the other queens just weren't strong competition (not knocking their drag skills though)." 12th Place - AS5 Shea Coulee (All Stars 5 Winner)
Average Placement: 10.38
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 3rd)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 2
What the Rankers said:
~"While she did deserve to win the whole season, as far as challenges go she really only deserved to win the two she ended up winning. She was fine in most challenges, but was only the best of the bunch twice. Her runways were consistently fantastic, combining fashion, meta references, and afrofuturism flawlessly. Both her lipsyncs were strong too." ~"I feel like she showed growth between the seasons and went onto AS5 having genuinely improved as a competitor. Her fashion was always good, but she stepped it up a LOT for her return (especially that stunning giant cotton candy pink finale gown and her bedazzled body suit for Love the Skin You're In). You gotta love a queen who takes the note." ~"I love her but should've not made this far. There were queens who did better and were eliminated before her." 10th/11th Place - TIE - Bianca Del Rio (Season 6 Winner)/The Vivienne (Drag Race UK Season 1 Winner)
Average Placement: 10.00
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Bianca's Highest Placement was 8th/The Vivienne's Highest Placement was 7th)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1 (The Vivienne Only/Bianca's Lowest Placement was 13th)
What the Rankers said about Bianca:
~"Look I know she did really good or whatever and I'm not supposed to base anything on off-show stuff but I watched Hurricane Bianca Two in full and I can't rank her higher, sorry." Sorry I thought this was hilarious and needed to include it. ~"A great queen and an obvious winner, but she did not show a lot of versatility. She’s lucky S6 was riddled with acting challenges. Not sure how she would have fared on an actual lipsynch finale." ~"Bianca gets touted as one of the series's strongest comedy queens, and yet of the three challenges she won, two of them were looks challenges. Yes, she killed the standup, and yes, she did well in a lot of the other performance challenges, and yes, she was (extremely) consistent on the runway. I just don't know that I found her run all that exciting. There are other queens on this list (and some not in this top 14) who had moments during their seasons where they did something I wouldn't have expected from them. I don't think I can say that about Bianca, but her general level of polish and competency gets her to this point." ~"Her run doesn’t age well, but in the bubble of season 6, she is an undisputed champ. Well, unless your name is Methany."
What the Rankers said about The Vivienne:
~"Amazing run and great winner, she really set the tone for Drag Race UK." ~"stomped the competition, sorry Divina, served great looks, was the funniest queen from the cast, sorry Baga and is a great representation of british drag, she can do conceptual/out of the box looks and she can serve classic british fashion with her smart humour." ~"Obviously The Vivienne crushed her season. However, I wonder how much production pushed her, given her prior status as the UK DR ambassador. I'm also not a fan of Trump impersonations; while hers was definitely spot-on, it lowkey made me uncomfortable to see someone so heinous being rewarded as a source of comedy. Her runways were stunning though, especially her finale look." ~"DRUK1 had a great cast of nine charismatic and talented queens, including The Vivienne, who rightfully won. That being said, as great as the cast was, on the show that didn’t translate as well. The Vivienne felt like a big fish in a small pond, who didn’t have much competition. She was consistently in the top, which can be accredited somewhat to a mixture of her doing well and her castmates doing lackluster." 9th Place - Tyra Sanchez (Season 2 Winner)
Average Placement: 9.50
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 6th)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 13th)
What the Rankers said:
~"Won, won by a long shot, but not to be very basic but I found her offputting. Bad Beyonce acapella is illegal." ~"Raven was robbed of a chance because there was no way she would have won when they casted Tyra. Her only real competition was Jessica and she was 6th. Tyra was the absolute best in every challenge she won and was great in the others (Snatch Game included because at least she had 2 jokes), except the singing one and even if she didn't have immunity she would have been safe because Juju and Sahara were horrible." ~"Tyra Sanchez is a flawless bitch and it’s a shame she quit drag." ~"Tyra was the justified and correct winner of S2, end of discussion. I fully believe that when you consider the queens' lives outside the show, Tyra's run on the show is maybe the singularly most impressive of any contestant. She went onto season 2 as a 21 year old Black gay single parent living in Florida, homeless and broke and sleeping on her drag mother's couch (per the show), and proceeded to stomp all the other queens. The only challenges she didn't ace were SG (where she was, at worst, 5th or 6th out of 9) and Rocker Chicks (she said in an AMA on the drama sub that her performance in that challenge was inspired by, and I quote, "immunity"). An icon, we have to stan." 8th Place - Raja (Season 3 Winner)
Average Placement: 7.88
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 6th)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 12th)
What the Rankers said:
~"Raja was the second ever fashion queen behind Rebecca, and that’s a well-earned title. Her looks were consistently conceptual and surprising. She completely swept up the first episode (the first real episode I’m not counting the corny casting special) and racked up some wins under her belt." ~"The only queen who could challenge Bob for most commanding winning run from the show. Perez didn't even really need to leak anything, it was obvious from jump that Raja was the winner, baby." ~"the OG fashion queen, served some of the best looks from the show that would make even some designers outfits look ugly by comparison, served the best dress ever created on the work room (the money gown) and she was very funny for a fashion queen. Her low part were the makeover and the patriotic ad, my god what terrible performances on a challenge" ~"She won before she was even cast." 7th Place - AS3 BenDeLaCreme (All Stars 3 6th Place)
Average Placement: 6.75
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
What the Rankers said:
~"There's no doubt that she should win All Stars 3, to the point that it was unfair to the other queens to compete against her. She also did great tv with her self elimination. Different from the other queens on All Stars 3 and even some winners, none of her wins felt it was undeserving, you could say that Trixie may have won the Bacholerette or Girl Groups but BenDela was always the best or second on challenges" ~"If it were up to gladecleanspraylinen, she would be ranked lower than Elliott with 2 Ts." Note: this was NOT written by gladespraycleanlinen. ~"It is a truth universally acknowleged that if Ben hadn't self-eliminated, she would have won AS3. Ben's strength IMO is not just that she's quick and has sharp comedic instincts, but also that she's consistent and brings those instincts to every challenge..." ~"Great run but not top 10 because she quit so although she would easily win her season, it's kinda unfair to vote her top 10 against people that had to go all the way through." 6th Place - Jaida Essence Hall (Season 12 Winner)
Average Placement: 5.75
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 13th)
What the Rankers said:
~"Probably the best winner from recent seasons. Amazing run, even with production not favoriting her. Her lip sync was amazing. Total winner." ~"The essence of beauty. After a slow start, she shined and gave me a glimmer of hope she could be my hero to beat UwU Gigi Goode. I love her humility, versatility and her unexpected sense of humour. Just writing about her makes me smile! Her finale lipsynch were iconic and I'm sad we didn’t get to see more of her because of the pandemic." ~"Jaida looked flawless every single runway, aced basically every challenge except the one-woman show (where she was more or less sabotaged by [REDACTED]), destroyed her lipsyncs, and did it all while being humble, relatable, and fun in the werkroom. I genuinely think that Jaida would be a serious contender for an All Winners season, but more importantly, she's just fun to watch." ~"Perfection personified." 5th Place - AS4 Monique Heart (All Stars 4 Finalist)
Average Placement: 5.63
Number of Members Placing 1st: 0 (Highest Placement was 2nd)
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 11th)
What the Rankers said:
~"My top non-winning run for obvious reasons. Sorry to those men (Monet and that other guy) but Monique should've gotten both of those crowns (and Trixie's crown) and worn them front-to-back like a mohawk." ~"AS4 Monique brought it in every challenge. In a fair world she would’ve won the Talent Show, Improv, Clubs, Makeover, and Acting. And honestly neither of her bottom placements were earned." ~"Bitch is stunning. Should've been the winner and all of her bottom placements were unfair not number one because although her wins her deserved she didn't dominated as much the season." ~"My favorite run of any queen on any season of any franchise. She was judged unfairly, and her absence from the top 2 remains CRIMINAL." 4th Place - S9 Shea Coulee (Season 9 Finalist)
Average Placement: 5.38
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 10th)
What the Rankers said:
~"No way she's not getting number one. Flawless performance, even with a lukewarm lip sync." ~"An actual robbery. Fuck you, RuPaul." ~"Shea in S9 has the distinction of being the only queen to win four challenges and deserve all four wins." ~"Name something and Shea Coulée excels at it. She is everything and was on top during all her season. We are talking about a season with some fierce competition. Shea crushed everything and I was convinced she was a shoo-in for the final victory. Man, was that final lipsynch twist painful to watch. Sasha won fair and square at the finale, but S9 as a whole was Shea’s to win." 3rd Place - AS2 Alaska (All Stars 2 Winner)
Average Placement: 4.50
Number of Members Placing 1st: 2
Number of Members Placing 14th: 1
What the Rankers said:
~"The most entertaining AS queen on an AS season. I think the AS twist did her a disservice bc it did sour her win somewhat. But it made for some great TV, and she won by a small landslide." ~"She came. She saw. She threw a tantrum to show vulnerability. She painted herself blue. She conquered." ~"Alaska on AS2 took a lot of the fun rougher edges of S5 Alaska and sanded them down until all that was left was vocal fry. Her sense of humor and commitment to the challenges is fun, and $10000 via Paypal is an iconic meme, but for a lot of AS2 it's like "oh yeah, and there's Alaska, doing great". Alaska is clearly a great queen, and there's a reason she won that season and is a huge fan favorite, but I just don't think her drag is for me. I just never really resonated with a lot of what she did, especially in her lipsyncs and runways on AS2." ~"Alaska had the most well-rounded run of any queen, ever. Nobody balanced camp, fashion, and uniqueness as well as she did. She downright won over half the challenges of the season." 2nd Place - Bob the Drag Queen (Season 8 Winner)
Average Placement: 3.75
Number of Members Placing 1st: 1
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 6th)
What the Rankers said:
~"Best queen, best run, in a world with non-bullshit judging she would never have lipsynced. Yeah her makeup was suspicious but she was so GOOD. She'd win All-Winners, she's the best drag queen in the world that I'm aware of. Bob's the only valid winner of this rankdown." ~"The unofficial co-host of season 8." ~"Season 8 was her season. Her charisma is everything and even when she’s not doing great, you can’t take your eyes off her. Maybe I’ve got bad taste but I enjoy her fashion sense and her humour is amazing." ~"Bob's performance as Chocolate Chip Cookie in RuCo's Empire is one of the strongest performances any queen has ever given on the show, full stop. While her fashion has improved since S8, Bob's looks on the season were hit-or-miss. Also, while Bob was great in the comedy challenges, she didn't shine as much in some of the other weeks. Her highs are really, really high, but her lows are maybe a bit lower than some of the other queens on this list." 1st Place - Jinkx Monsoon (Season 5 Winner)
Average Placement: 3.25
Number of Members Placing 1st: 2
Number of Members Placing 14th: 0 (Lowest Placement was 7th)
What the Rankers said:
~"The most entertaining queen on the most entertaining season. Cheek contour aside, flawless victory." ~"Extreme bias because she is one of my favourites but she deserves the number queen from the show, she was the one who did great in every challenge except two and all of the challenges were different, everyone on season 5 was strong at one talent but lacked another, Jinkx was strong in 8 different talents (lip sync, acting, improv, singing, dancing, makeover, impersonating, writing jokes) and she was only weak in one thing that was sewing. So for me she takes the crown" ~"We've all seen season 5, we all know that Jinkx was hilarious in every single challenge. The only point where she really struggled was the Sugar Ball, and even then, it's more a case of Alaska and Roxxxy just killing it than Jinkx doing bad, per se. Her Little Edie SG was one of the first iconic SG performances, which is big by itself. If her runways had been better, she might have been #1." ~"8 weeks of high placements in a row. Sharon walked so that Jinkx could sprint while wearing black chalk as cheek contour." Congratulations to Season 5 Winner Jinkx Monsoon on winning the "official" rankdown! One last HUGE thank you to the rankers! I know I'm exhausted and I'm sure they are too. Clap for these hookers! Until next off-season, so long. u/MatronneGeorgia didn't know I was making cringe references the entire rankdown, so I armchair psychologist diagnose her with inner saboteur syndrome
Lump on. That is what the Football Association would like you to believe Kieran Trippier told his friends shortly before his move to Atletico Madrid. It implies a ring, a sting and big, big rewards, hence his 10-week ban. It was nothing of the sort. Transcripts reveal a more earthbound reality. The circle trying to win a few quid, the player trying to be a pal. One of Trippier's mates asks if he should 'lump on' — the first time the phrase is used — and gets the reply: 'Can do mate.' Later, pressed, Trippier adopts the same turn of phrase. 'Lump on if you want mate,' he advises. It is the tamest of endorsements. Yet, as the friends swiftly discover, lumping on really isn't an option. Bookmakers don't want anyone lumping on a transfer bet because the only person who would enter such an unpredictable market with cash and confidence is in the know. Nobody is betting big money on a hunch. So it's a win-win. If the move collapses the bookmakers keep the cash, and if it delivers they have the safety net of football's governing body to do their dirty work, if betting patterns indicate prior knowledge. So one of Trippier's friends had his stake 'massively restricted', and another got £300 on, but only at odds of 1-6, giving bookmakers a liability of £50 and a red flashing light. Some of the other bets were laughable: £8.75 at 1-2, liability £4.37; £20 at 1-2, liability £10; £20 at 1-3, liability £6.66; £25 at 8-13, liability £15.38. The biggest bets were undermined by short odds: £100 at 5-6, liability £83.33; £120 at 5-6, liability £100. Another bet of £300 at 4-11 gave the winner £109.09, while £80.34 was wagered at 3-10, a return of £24.10. The significant numbers here are not being made off book-makers. 'Levy just wants £500,000 more,' Trippier told his acolytes at one stage. According to FA evidence, the fee was finally agreed with Tottenham for £25m, which rather puts that £4.37 into perspective, or even the big hit, £109.09. As does the £482m Denise Coates was paid as chief executive of Bet365 across two years between 2017 and 2019. And, yes, it's the principle that counts, not the profit. Trippier should not have been sharing privileged information with people he must have reasonably assumed were using it for gambling purposes. Yet, why, exactly? This isn't a match. He isn't affecting the outcome and therefore the integrity of a competition. Bookmakers have chosen to make a market on his life, and in doing so have placed him in jeopardy. Who makes significant career decisions without discussing it with family or friends, without taking counsel, or offering progress reports? Trippier did not ask for this book to be opened, and receives no revenue from it. Maybe that is what should change. The only way these bans and fines would be fair is if book-makers had to seek permission from the individuals involved, who would receive a cut of the revenue as part of their image rights. Then, if a player was found to be manipulating the market, or offering the inside track, it would be fraud and he could be penalised accordingly. This is just the FA acting as bookies' muscle. If they didn't pursue cases against players such as Trippier and Daniel Sturridge, the gambling houses would soon tire of losing and the problem would go away. It is the FA that facilitates this by acting as enforcer — as if the grubby charade is any of their business. This is now being tested. Atletico Madrid have challenged the ban which is suspended, pending appeal. The club will go to FIFA and then the Court of Arbitration for Sport if unsuccessful. Their case is simple. They bought a player. They had nothing to do with a betting scandal that took place when he was still under contract to Spurs, or a punishment handed down from a different country. Had Trippier served it as administered, he would have missed 13 Atletico matches including the home Champions League fixture with Chelsea. As he would not even be allowed inside the training ground before March 1 — or to attend a game — his place in the Madrid derby scheduled for March 7 would have been in jeopardy, too. And this is a huge season for Atletico. They top the table with a two-point lead and games in hand on Spain's big two. They could win LaLiga for only the second time since 1996 — and Trippier is their first-choice right back. Certainly, it did not escape Atletico's attention that his ban did not impinge on any international fixtures, leaving the FA and English football unscathed. Atletico protested and FIFA listened. It could mean, if the punishment is delayed but upheld, that Trippier misses the European Championship. That leaked this week as if the FA were trying to put the frighteners on. Yet, so what? It's their trumped-up ban. Given the friend-of-the-right-back's-cousin's-best-mate's-cleaning-lady source of transfer gossip is such a familiar trope, how preposterous is it that the FA make passing information a crime? Equally, why are they prioritising protecting the sanctity of an artificial betting market created to separate mugs from their money? Unless some mug knows somebody, of course. Then, they'll refuse to pay, turn the source over to the beaks, and the FA will prosecute as if they've cracked the crime of the century. Strange, isn't it, that they're so fascinated by £4.37 — but rarely with the part where the real money gets made? link if you want give click to the dm
$SLV is not going to get squeezed...$SLV IS THE TROJAN HORSE FOR THE SILVER SQUEEZE THAT'S ALREADY HAPPENING
I have no horse in the GME "fight" right now. I wish you all the best, and it is the biggest trading mistake of my life so far. I was talking about GME with my friends in March 2020, and even did trade some options then for a loss. I must have read DFV at some point, as we were discussing Burry and a "technical short squeeze" happening. But I missed the real boat, so good on DFV and all of the rest of you degenerates. Instead, I focused my market attention during quarantine on precious metals. My opinion is that in the long term (10+ years) they will provide the only real hedge against inflation in the world as every CB on the planet is exploding the supply of fiat to deal with COVID economic disruption. In the short term, I believe that the "powers that be" are engineering the largest short squeeze in the history of markets. We do not have the power to effect whether this happens, it is simply an inevitability. HFs, banks, and other large institutions are going to extract an enormous amount of wealth from the world during this squeeze. This money will be taken from the future pocket of every consumer of industrial goods for the next several decades in the form of inflated prices on everything: batteries, electronics, solar panels, EVs...even jewelry and silverware. We cannot stop them, but I have decided to try to hop on for the ride. The last few months aside, I never saw WSB as a force for societal change, because the people who control the money are always going to win the most in the end. WSB is a place where we can learn the tricks of a market that is structurally rigged against us, and use those tricks to our advantage. To use an analogy that I think we all know: I am not, and will never be, Ender. But I can learn that the Enemy's Gate is Down, and play The Game that way. The tl;dr is this: the market for silver is the most manipulated physical market in the history of the world. $SLV is the vehicle that is currently being used behind the scenes to vaccum up ownership of every available physical bar of silver in major bullion vaults in the world. When it has completed doing that, the "paper" markets that have held down the price of silver for decades will become disconnected from the physical markets. The energy that has been artificially held back for decades by this paper will explode the price of physical silver, and I have no idea how high it will go. $SLV will stand (mostly) alone as the world's exchange traded product for electronic trading of physical silver.
LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING: WHY IS SILVER IMPORTANT?
Silver has been used as real currency for thousands of years, and there is an argument to be made for returning to "sound" money through the use of silver and gold. However, that is not the argument that I am making. Silver is a highly industrial metal, and it's usage for industry will only continue to expand as we electrify the future. Silver is important for electrical applications b/c it is the most-conductive / least-resistive metal in the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_and_conductivity_of_various_materials). It is used heavily in all electronic applications (even more since RoHS has pushed us away from Tin/Lead and towards Tin/Silver solder blends, with silver being added to mitigate the longevity problems of 100% Tin solder growing Tin whiskers and shorting out components). But the largest new demands on silver are going to come from solar panels and EVs. Utility-scale solar is now virtually tied with wind as the cheapest new sources of energy in the world and is only getting cheaper every year. As fossil fuel plants continue to reach the end of their service life, they are going to be replaced with solar and wind technologies. As EVs become more prevalent, their components (ESPECIALLY their batteries) will produce additional demand for Silver. As smart investors are wont to do, this coming demand for industrial silver has been front-run and large quantites of silver have been sucked into investment products so that they can produce financial returns when demand begins to increase. 2020 showed remarkable investor interest in silver, to the tune of an estimated 350Mtoz moving into exchange traded products like $SLV. $SLV alone added ~200Mtoz of silver to it's holdings in 2020. Unfortunately for the market, supply cannot meet demand: Of the 930.9Mtoz estimated for 2020 demand, only 236Mtoz was available for physical investment, because the rest was consumed by industrial uses. This means that $SLV alone absorbed almost the entire world's capacity for silver investment in 2020, and as you'll see soon, this is only accelerating in 2021. Source for demand/supply/investment numbers: https://www.silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SilverInstitute2020InterimPR.pdf
LETS GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL
Now it's important to understand that huge amounts of "silver" is traded on "paper" markets, and these markets have historically decided the approximate cost of physical silver in the world, in the form of the "spot price". I'm not going to give anyone a primer on how this works, go read about the London Fix and COMEX paper on your own time. But the important thing to know is that there are a bunch of silver bars in vaults in London and in the U.S., and electronic claims on them are traded on the LBMA and COMEX continuously, without the silver ever leaving the vaults. However, these vaults have concrete numbers of physical bars in them, and trading contracts against them technically means that you can show up at a window somewhere and demand your 5x 1000oz bars that a COMEX warrant entitle you to. This redemption happens all the time, and it can be used to extract physical silver from the unallocated storage at bullion vaults and release it to industrial or consumer bullion uses. However, these bars can also be moved into "registered" or "allocated" accounts without them leaving the overall vault storage. This means that a quantity of individual silver bars that an owner holds title to can be physically moved inside the vault onto a different rack, and the owner has individual serial numbers of bars that they own. These bars can be withdrawn on demand only by their owner and are not available for general redemption of a COMEX warrant. So how many bars are there? Well between LBMA and COMEX, there are 1480.3Mtoz sitting in vaults (sources below when I start doing math). This includes all allocated AND unallocated bars. Now, obviously London and NY are separated by an ocean, but people always like to bring up that bars could be moved b/w London <-> American COMEX vaults. This is an enormous undertaking, but let's make a "spherical chicken in a vaccuum" level assumption and say that LBMA + COMEX vaults are a singular source of inventory for both $SLV and other market participants. If you read the $SLV S-1 (which I did: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1330568/000119312505127244/ds1.htm) you would learn that the custodian of the $SLV trust is required to hold all silver weight (with an exception for 1100toz of unallocated, lol) that is owned by the trust in allocated accounts, where the individual bars are physically segregated inside the vaults, and the serial numbers of the owned bars are explicitly recorded. The idea that there is "no physical silver" backing the SLV trust and "you could get settled with cash" is ridiculous. iShares publishes a report listing every serial number of every bar that is owned by the trust, along with the total weight contained in the bars. It is 10847 pages long (you can read it here if you have trouble sleeping at night: https://emea-markets.jpmorgan.com/metalicsWebAppJanus/publicUnauthenticated/BONY_SLV.pdf) and is updated frequently. The underlying silver is owned by the trust. It cannot be removed from the trust unless "baskets" of 50000 shares are redeemed by an "Authorized Participant" which is only a few large brokers. It cannot be removed by the bullion vaults and given to other customers because it is physically segregated inside the vaults. People who have recently beaten down the idea of a silver squeeze love to talk about how JP Morgan is the custodian for the SLV trust. And because JPM just paid a $1B fine for historical manipulation of the paper silver market, they aren't going to be honest about this. This is crazy talk. When it comes to the dishonesty of a big bank, there is "fraud" and there is FRAUD. "Fraud" would be them saying "Oh sorry, we didn't realize that a laundromat bringing in $300k/week of dirty dollar bills was out of the ordinary". "Fraud" happens all the time, and the banks get away with it regularly. FRAUD would be them saying "Oh yes, 3rd party customer (iShares) who services dozens of other large banking institutions in the world, here is objective evidence, with serial numbers, that we have these silver bars in the vault" and then just making up the data. It is QANON-level crazy, IMHO, to think that JPM is going to commit FRAUD by publishing a list of serial numbers that is completely fake. I believe the exact opposite: since they have just gotten caught, they are playing it straight this time and have just switched sides in order to go long. On the COMEX alone, JP Morgan Chase is long 193.9Mtoz, or just north of $5B. The problem for the futures and options markets is that their continual trading of paper contracts is chasing a smaller and smaller amount of physical silver that is not owned by $SLV. And the market participants (minus, now, JPM) who have gotten away with naked selling of paper contracts and mostly settling them for cash are going to soon find the underlying vaults empty and no metal to give to warrant holders who come looking for it.
HOW BIG OF A PROBLEM IS $SLV FOR THE NAKED SHORTS IN THE PAPER MARKET? LET'S DO SOME MATH.
$SLV inventory math: $SLV is holding 669,357,789.40 troy ounces in trust, and has 720,500,000 shares outstanding. (If you are curious why $SLV/share trades below the spot price, it's because: 669.4Mtoz / 720.5M shares = .929 toz / share) ($SLV data from here: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund?qt=SLV#/ ) (screenshot from tonight for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/0sqcMFr) Bullion vault inventory math: London (LBMA) silver stocks are 1080.5Mtoz (http://www.lbma.org.uk/london-precious-metals-physical-holdings-statistics) US COMEX silver stocks are 399.8Mtoz (https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls) 669.4/(1080.5 + 399.8) = 45.2% of the vaulted silver in the world is already owned by SLV Subtracting what SLV already owns, leaves us with: (1080.5 + 399.8) - 669.4 = 810.9Mtoz (This is completely ignoring the fact that a lot of that remaining silver is owned in registered or allocated accounts by individual owners. E.g. there is 150.2Mtoz in "registered" on the COMEX which means those bars are already specifically deeded to an individual owner. But they could theoretically sell it to SLV so I included it as available.) 810.9Mtoz is the ABSOLUTE THEORETICAL MAXIMUM available in LBMA + COMEX silver that is not already owned by SLV. Now how short are the shorts? Some more math: OI on COMEX futures: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver-futures-and-options.html
in currently open interest that could be demanded for delivery. Just on the COMEX, there could be demand for twice as much silver as there is in the combined LBMA + COMEX vaults that is not explicitly owned by $SLV right now. Caveats:
I have not included any London futures contracts that may have claims on metal here. I am not versed in their contracts at all and don't have a good data source right now. If anyone knows how to calculate the short obligation for London I would be glad to add it.
I have not analyzed any of the strike prices on COMEX options or dates on COMEX futures...some of them could be way out of the money or way in the future. Many silver producers sell futures years in advance to lock in prices, and then deliver the physical to satisfy the contracts.
Using the same basic methodology–total shorts divided by shares [toz in this case] outstanding–as is used on a stock to calculate short interest (and gave us the infamous 140% short interest on GME) we get......drumroll please: 1563.9 short / 810.9 physical = 192.9% short interest. OPEN INTEREST ON COMEX SILVER FUTURES AND OPTIONS IS EQUIVALENT TO A 192.9% SHORT INTEREST AGAINST ALL LONDON AND U.S. AVAILABLE INVENTORY. But it gets even worse.
WANNA ADD A GAMMA SQUEEZE??
I pulled the data for all current OI in SLV options. There is a large number (5.7 million) of call contracts open (here are the totals: https://imgur.com/tiqPA34) Using the .929toz/share number, we can calculate that there are up to 527.2Mtoz that would have to be bought during an absolute runaway Gamma Squeeze. Call options on $SLV max out right now at $55, so the spot price would only have to increase by around 122% to reach the point that all of that weight would need to have been purchased. But at some point, it could become self-reinforcing, and the gamma squeeze continues to cause more gamma squeezing. I believe that this almost happened Sunday evening (2021-01-31) as evidenced by the huge premium that $SLV was trading to the futures price for a few minutes when trading opened. (My comparison chart: https://i.imgur.com/UPjL3zm.png) The Silver ETF that trades on Sunday in Tel Aviv (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/TCHF82:IT) closed up >6% (and was consistenly rising for the entire session) before any american spot markets opened. I believe that hedging algorithms at MM firms that write options saw this spike as a need to buy shares in $SLV to cover their deltas, and so they bought the opening of $SLV like crazy. $SLV opened up 17.6%, while paper only opened up about 6%. Paper market players had to sell 23.8Mtoz of paper in the first minute of trading to keep the price under control. I have never seen an imbalance like this before, and it was covered up quickly (within 2 hours of trading). But to me, it sounds like Vincent's heartbeat monitor in GATTACA when he runs out of fake signal: there was a cover up required to hide this explosion. When the day comes that this cover up is not executed properly, stuff is going to get ugly, b/c $SLV won't just gamma squeeze like a normal stock...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! A TRADITIONAL GAMMA/SHORT SQUEEZE WILL SEEM LIKE NOTHING IN SILVER
The squeeze in silver will be FAR WORSE than the combination of a gamma and short squeeze in a stock, because shares of stock cannot be removed from the market. Eventually somebody holding $VW or $GME is going to say "sure, I'll sell at $42,000.69 per share" and that share can go back to cover a short. But if instead of doing that, the holder of that share withdrew it from the market by converting it to a physical token b/c they thought that the physical token would be more valuable than the share (the retail premium on physical silver vs. paper silver), the short interest would INCREASE as shares were converted into tokens. And since there are currently more "shares" of silver than there are bars of silver in the vault, the shorts can be caught with a literally illiquid market that has nothing to buy. Zero. Zilch. No silver available. The doomsday scenario (for paper silver holders and writers) is the following combination:
holders of COMEX warrants will see the rising premium of physical bullion to the spot price and decide to redeem their warrants for physical
a rising spot price will Gamma Squeeze the writers of $SLV options into buying more shares in a runaway fashion and the trust will absorb all available vault inventory as it issues new shares
COMEX warrant holders who try to demand metal that doesn't exist will literally break the market. The CBOE will probably step in and decide to force settle the contracts for cash at the last known good price, and COMEX paper warrants will cease trading forever. The physical market price will then be disconnected from the paper market, and $SLV as an exchange traded product will stand (mostly) alone as the new "paper" market for silver.
SO WTF DO I DO? [NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE]
Well I could always buy physical silver, if I can stomach the premium and wait 8 weeks for it to show up. Or, I could just get long on $SLV. Since I believe that $SLV will stand alone after the dust settles as the one true claim on bars in the vaults, I could be long the actual $SLV ticker in several ways:
Buying shares (duh, but it worked for $GME)
Buying long dated calls (Gamma Squeeze go BRRRRR, but who knows when)
$SLV is not going to get squeezed...$SLV is the Trojan Horse for the squeeze THAT'S ALREADY HAPPENING
I have no horse in the GME "fight" right now. I wish you all the best, and it is the biggest trading mistake of my life so far. I was talking about GME with my friends in March 2020, and even did trade some options then for a loss. I must have read DFV at some point, as we were discussing Burry and a "technical short squeeze" happening. But I missed the real boat, so good on DFV and all of the rest of you degenerates. Instead, I focused my market attention during quarantine on precious metals. My opinion is that in the long term (10+ years) they will provide the only real hedge against inflation in the world as every CB on the planet is exploding the supply of fiat to deal with COVID economic disruption. In the short term, I believe that the "powers that be" are engineering the largest short squeeze in the history of markets. We do not have the power to effect whether this happens, it is simply an inevitability. HFs, banks, and other large institutions are going to extract an enormous amount of wealth from the world during this squeeze. This money will be taken from the future pocket of every consumer of industrial goods for the next several decades in the form of inflated prices on everything: batteries, electronics, solar panels, EVs...even jewelry and silverware. We cannot stop them, but I have decided to try to hop on for the ride. The last few months aside, I never saw WSB as a force for societal change, because the people who control the money are always going to win the most in the end. WSB is a place where we can learn the tricks of a market that is structurally rigged against us, and use those tricks to our advantage. To use an analogy that I think we all know: I am not, and will never be, Ender. But I can learn that the Enemy's Gate is Down, and play The Game that way. The tl;dr is this: the market for silver is the most manipulated physical market in the history of the world. $SLV is the vehicle that is currently being used behind the scenes to vaccum up ownership of every available physical bar of silver in major bullion vaults in the world. When it has completed doing that, the "paper" markets that have held down the price of silver for decades will become disconnected from the physical markets. The energy that has been artificially held back for decades by this paper will explode the price of physical silver, and I have no idea how high it will go. $SLV will stand (mostly) alone as the world's exchange traded product for electronic trading of physical silver.
LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING: WHY IS SILVER IMPORTANT?
Silver has been used as real currency for thousands of years, and there is an argument to be made for returning to "sound" money through the use of silver and gold. However, that is not the argument that I am making. Silver is a highly industrial metal, and it's usage for industry will only continue to expand as we electrify the future. Silver is important for electrical applications b/c it is the most-conductive / least-resistive metal in the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_and_conductivity_of_various_materials). It is used heavily in all electronic applications (even more since RoHS has pushed us away from Tin/Lead and towards Tin/Silver solder blends, with silver being added to mitigate the longevity problems of 100% Tin solder growing Tin whiskers and shorting out components). But the largest new demands on silver are going to come from solar panels and EVs. Utility-scale solar is now virtually tied with wind as the cheapest new sources of energy in the world and is only getting cheaper every year. As fossil fuel plants continue to reach the end of their service life, they are going to be replaced with solar and wind technologies. As EVs become more prevalent, their components (ESPECIALLY their batteries) will produce additional demand for Silver. As smart investors are wont to do, this coming demand for industrial silver has been front-run and large quantites of silver have been sucked into investment products so that they can produce financial returns when demand begins to increase. 2020 showed remarkable investor interest in silver, to the tune of an estimated 350Mtoz moving into exchange traded products like $SLV. $SLV alone added ~200Mtoz of silver to it's holdings in 2020. Unfortunately for the market, supply cannot meet demand: Of the 930.9Mtoz estimated for 2020 demand, only 236Mtoz was available for physical investment, because the rest was consumed by industrial uses. This means that $SLV alone absorbed almost the entire world's capacity for silver investment in 2020, and as you'll see soon, this is only accelerating in 2021. Source for demand/supply/investment numbers: https://www.silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SilverInstitute2020InterimPR.pdf
LETS GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL
Now it's important to understand that huge amounts of "silver" is traded on "paper" markets, and these markets have historically decided the approximate cost of physical silver in the world, in the form of the "spot price". I'm not going to give anyone a primer on how this works, go read about the London Fix and COMEX paper on your own time. But the important thing to know is that there are a bunch of silver bars in vaults in London and in the U.S., and electronic claims on them are traded on the LBMA and COMEX continuously, without the silver ever leaving the vaults. However, these vaults have concrete numbers of physical bars in them, and trading contracts against them technically means that you can show up at a window somewhere and demand your 5x 1000oz bars that a COMEX warrant entitle you to. This redemption happens all the time, and it can be used to extract physical silver from the unallocated storage at bullion vaults and release it to industrial or consumer bullion uses. However, these bars can also be moved into "registered" or "allocated" accounts without them leaving the overall vault storage. This means that a quantity of individual silver bars that an owner holds title to can be physically moved inside the vault onto a different rack, and the owner has individual serial numbers of bars that they own. These bars can be withdrawn on demand only by their owner and are not available for general redemption of a COMEX warrant. So how many bars are there? Well between LBMA and COMEX, there are 1480.3Mtoz sitting in vaults (sources below when I start doing math). This includes all allocated AND unallocated bars. Now, obviously London and NY are separated by an ocean, but people always like to bring up that bars could be moved b/w London <-> American COMEX vaults. This is an enormous undertaking, but let's make a "spherical chicken in a vaccuum" level assumption and say that LBMA + COMEX vaults are a singular source of inventory for both $SLV and other market participants. If you read the $SLV S-1 (which I did: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1330568/000119312505127244/ds1.htm) you would learn that the custodian of the $SLV trust is required to hold all silver weight (with an exception for 1100toz of unallocated, lol) that is owned by the trust in allocated accounts, where the individual bars are physically segregated inside the vaults, and the serial numbers of the owned bars are explicitly recorded. The idea that there is "no physical silver" backing the SLV trust and "you could get settled with cash" is ridiculous. iShares publishes a report listing every serial number of every bar that is owned by the trust, along with the total weight contained in the bars. It is 10847 pages long (you can read it here if you have trouble sleeping at night: https://emea-markets.jpmorgan.com/metalicsWebAppJanus/publicUnauthenticated/BONY_SLV.pdf) and is updated frequently. The underlying silver is owned by the trust. It cannot be removed from the trust unless "baskets" of 50000 shares are redeemed by an "Authorized Participant" which is only a few large brokers. It cannot be removed by the bullion vaults and given to other customers because it is physically segregated inside the vaults. People who have recently beaten down the idea of a silver squeeze love to talk about how JP Morgan is the custodian for the SLV trust. And because JPM just paid a $1B fine for historical manipulation of the paper silver market, they aren't going to be honest about this. This is crazy talk. When it comes to the dishonesty of a big bank, there is "fraud" and there is FRAUD. "Fraud" would be them saying "Oh sorry, we didn't realize that a laundromat bringing in $300k/week of dirty dollar bills was out of the ordinary". "Fraud" happens all the time, and the banks get away with it regularly. FRAUD would be them saying "Oh yes, 3rd party customer (iShares) who services dozens of other large banking institutions in the world, here is objective evidence, with serial numbers, that we have these silver bars in the vault" and then just making up the data. It is QANON-level crazy, IMHO, to think that JPM is going to commit FRAUD by publishing a list of serial numbers that is completely fake. I believe the exact opposite: since they have just gotten caught, they are playing it straight this time and have just switched sides in order to go long. On the COMEX alone, JP Morgan Chase is long 193.9Mtoz, or just north of $5B. The problem for the futures and options markets is that their continual trading of paper contracts is chasing a smaller and smaller amount of physical silver that is not owned by $SLV. And the market participants (minus, now, JPM) who have gotten away with naked selling of paper contracts and mostly settling them for cash are going to soon find the underlying vaults empty and no metal to give to warrant holders who come looking for it.
HOW BIG OF A PROBLEM IS $SLV FOR THE NAKED SHORTS IN THE PAPER MARKET? LET'S DO SOME MATH.
$SLV inventory math: $SLV is holding 669,357,789.40 troy ounces in trust, and has 720,500,000 shares outstanding. (If you are curious why $SLV/share trades below the spot price, it's because: 669.4Mtoz / 720.5M shares = .929 toz / share) ($SLV data from here: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund?qt=SLV#/ ) (screenshot from tonight for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/0sqcMFr) Bullion vault inventory math: London (LBMA) silver stocks are 1080.5Mtoz (http://www.lbma.org.uk/london-precious-metals-physical-holdings-statistics) US COMEX silver stocks are 399.8Mtoz (https://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/Silver_stocks.xls) 669.4/(1080.5 + 399.8) = 45.2% of the vaulted silver in the world is already owned by SLV Subtracting what SLV already owns, leaves us with: (1080.5 + 399.8) - 669.4 = 810.9Mtoz (This is completely ignoring the fact that a lot of that remaining silver is owned in registered or allocated accounts by individual owners. E.g. there is 150.2Mtoz in "registered" on the COMEX which means those bars are already specifically deeded to an individual owner. But they could theoretically sell it to SLV so I included it as available.) 810.9Mtoz is the ABSOLUTE THEORETICAL MAXIMUM available in LBMA + COMEX silver that is not already owned by SLV. Now how short are the shorts? Some more math: OI on COMEX futures: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver-futures-and-options.html
in currently open interest that could be demanded for delivery. Just on the COMEX, there could be demand for twice as much silver as there is in the combined LBMA + COMEX vaults that is not explicitly owned by $SLV right now. Caveats:
I have not included any London futures contracts that may have claims on metal here. I am not versed in their contracts at all and don't have a good data source right now. If anyone knows how to calculate the short obligation for London I would be glad to add it.
I have not analyzed any of the strike prices on COMEX options or dates on COMEX futures...some of them could be way out of the money or way in the future. Many silver producers sell futures years in advance to lock in prices, and then deliver the physical to satisfy the contracts.
Using the same basic methodology–total shorts divided by shares [toz in this case] outstanding–as is used on a stock to calculate short interest (and gave us the infamous 140% short interest on GME) we get......drumroll please: 1563.9 short / 810.9 physical = 192.9% short interest. OPEN INTEREST ON COMEX SILVER FUTURES AND OPTIONS IS EQUIVALENT TO A 192.9% SHORT INTEREST AGAINST ALL LONDON AND U.S. AVAILABLE INVENTORY. But it gets even worse.
WANNA ADD A GAMMA SQUEEZE??
I pulled the data for all current OI in SLV options. There is a large number (5.7 million) of call contracts open (here are the totals: https://imgur.com/tiqPA34) Using the .929toz/share number, we can calculate that there are up to 527.2Mtoz that would have to be bought during an absolute runaway Gamma Squeeze. Call options on $SLV max out right now at $55, so the spot price would only have to increase by around 122% to reach the point that all of that weight would need to have been purchased. But at some point, it could become self-reinforcing, and the gamma squeeze continues to cause more gamma squeezing. I believe that this almost happened Sunday evening (2021-01-31) as evidenced by the huge premium that $SLV was trading to the futures price for a few minutes when trading opened. (My comparison chart: https://i.imgur.com/UPjL3zm.png) The Silver ETF that trades on Sunday in Tel Aviv (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/TCHF82:IT) closed up >6% (and was consistenly rising for the entire session) before any american spot markets opened. I believe that hedging algorithms at MM firms that write options saw this spike as a need to buy shares in $SLV to cover their deltas, and so they bought the opening of $SLV like crazy. $SLV opened up 17.6%, while paper only opened up about 6%. Paper market players had to sell 23.8Mtoz of paper in the first minute of trading to keep the price under control. I have never seen an imbalance like this before, and it was covered up quickly (within 2 hours of trading). But to me, it sounds like Vincent's heartbeat monitor in GATTACA when he runs out of fake signal: there was a cover up required to hide this explosion. When the day comes that this cover up is not executed properly, stuff is going to get ugly, b/c $SLV won't just gamma squeeze like a normal stock...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! A TRADITIONAL GAMMA/SHORT SQUEEZE WILL SEEM LIKE NOTHING IN SILVER
The squeeze in silver will be FAR WORSE than the combination of a gamma and short squeeze in a stock, because shares of stock cannot be removed from the market. Eventually somebody holding $VW or $GME is going to say "sure, I'll sell at $42,000.69 per share" and that share can go back to cover a short. But if instead of doing that, the holder of that share withdrew it from the market by converting it to a physical token b/c they thought that the physical token would be more valuable than the share (the retail premium on physical silver vs. paper silver), the short interest would INCREASE as shares were converted into tokens. And since there are currently more "shares" of silver than there are bars of silver in the vault, the shorts can be caught with a literally illiquid market that has nothing to buy. Zero. Zilch. No silver available. The doomsday scenario (for paper silver holders and writers) is the following combination:
holders of COMEX warrants will see the rising premium of physical bullion to the spot price and decide to redeem their warrants for physical
a rising spot price will Gamma Squeeze the writers of $SLV options into buying more shares in a runaway fashion and the trust will absorb all available vault inventory as it issues new shares
COMEX warrant holders who try to demand metal that doesn't exist will literally break the market. The CBOE will probably step in and decide to force settle the contracts for cash at the last known good price, and COMEX paper warrants will cease trading forever. The physical market price will then be disconnected from the paper market, and $SLV as an exchange traded product will stand (mostly) alone as the new "paper" market for silver.
SO WTF DO I DO? [NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE]
Well I could always buy physical silver, if I can stomach the premium and wait 8 weeks for it to show up. Or, I could just get long on $SLV. Since I believe that $SLV will stand alone after the dust settles as the one true claim on bars in the vaults, I could be long the actual $SLV ticker in several ways:
Buying shares (duh, but it worked for $GME)
Buying long dated calls (Gamma Squeeze go BRRRRR, but who knows when)
This post is mod-approved and I hope it's helpful. My name is Jared A. Brock and today is my 35th birthday. It’s been a wild ride: I’ve walked across hot coals, swam up an underground river by candlelight, eaten bull’s testicles, and roasted marshmallows on flowing lava. I’ve written three books, directed four films, published 400+ articles everywhere from Esquire to The Guardian to TIME Magazine, road-tripped through 45 American states and nine Canadian provinces, helped get some laws changed, and traveled to forty countries including North Korea and the Vatican. I’ve enjoyed nearly thirteen years of marriage to my seventh-grade sweetheart, and we’ve been blessed to fundraise hundreds of thousands for charity. Though not without tons of mistakes and some major setbacks — financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually — it’s been a pretty decent trip so far. I’m lucky, blessed, downright spoiled. And even though I certainly don’t claim to be wise in any way, shape, or form, here are 35 things I wish I’d learned far sooner. None of these are rules or commands for you to follow, just personal reflections from a decade of journaling. I hope they save you a lot of time, energy, struggle, and life:
1. “Save the best for last” is terrible advice.
A French monk taught me this one. Every morning, I put on the newest pair of socks in my drawer. Why wear the rattiest pair? When I sit down to eat, I eat the tastiest bits first. Why let them get cold? After every shower, I put on my favorite clean t-shirt. I have a great bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig scotch in my cupboard, but I probably won’t drink it for months because I received two bottles of reactor-aged Lost Spirits single malt for Christmas. Why? Because life is hard enough and we aren’t promised tomorrow. This doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind and “live in the moment” at all times, but it does mean we should try to find the golden middle and glean a little bit of pleasure from every day we’re blessed to live. “Save the best for last” is poverty-mentality thinking. It expects worse in the future. Enjoy the best right now — in your marriage, parenting, work, travel, faith, friendship, contribution. Keep all the chips on the table. Be ready at all times to leave without regret.
2. Tools use us.
A hammer literally cannot hit a nail without using a human.A saw cannot cut through a board without using a human.A phone cannot deliver ads without using a human.
3. Avoid false dichotomies.
When given two great options, choose both.When given two horrible options, choose neither.
4. Failure is overcome by one word.
“Next.”
5. Give yourself a shove.
The best way to eat more candy and drink more vodka is to leave them side-by-side on the kitchen counter. You get it. Willpower is useless. Instead, line up a series of little nudges to automatically get you through your day. If you want to work out, leave your shorts by the door or your cleats in your fridge. My blue diode glasses rest on top of my laptop so I have to protect my eyes before logging online. I can’t not see my vitamins when I brush my teeth, or chia seeds when I reach for the Brita. There’s a book beside my bed, toilet, desk, and car’s gear shifter. Line up enough nudges and you can shove yourself in the right direction.
6. Awkward is awesome.
My best friend says that The Office gave society a beautiful gift: the ability to embrace cringe. When you meet someone new and it’s slightly weird, pretend you’re Michael Scott. Just glory and bask in the discomfort. You can awkward-proof your life by being bold: Ask for discounts. Ask for refunds. Ask for phone numbers. Ask for pay raises. Ask inappropriate questions at inappropriate times. Lather yourself in awkward and pretty soon nothing sticks.
7. Ambition is ruinous for your happiness.
Most goal-setters (myself included) live much of life in anticipation of tomorrow, and when that day arrives, they’re either disappointed by their failures or underwhelmed by their successes. Instead: trust the process. Whiskey, pasta, bread, beer, and cereal all require just two ingredients — wheat and water — but the outcome is completely different based on the process. Identity precedes action. Determine what you want to be, then determine the process that will get you there every single time.
8. The Marines were right: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
As teenagers, my friend Tyler and I were in a hurry to get somewhere quickly so we drove 120+ miles per hour for forty-five straight minutes before nearly crashing when the speed burned a footlong gash through the tire. By the time we replaced it with a spare, we were late to our destination by more than an hour. But nevermind driving. Pump the life-brakes sometimes, or at least, let off the gas. You might get there faster.
9. Most “leaders” aren’t leaders.
Celebrities, politicians, and book-hocking business gurus all call themselves leaders. They’re not. Real leadership is influence that serves. True leaders are selfless and servant-hearted. They put the best interests of others ahead of their own. Politics and media, by comparison, attracts sociopaths like flies to firelight. Never give power to those who seek it. Nearly everyone worth following is dead.
10. Old people know better.
Honoring our elders is one of the most underrated practices in our newness-obsessed society. Sure, there are a ton of old crazy far-right conspiracy theorists, but there are also good people who have survived four wars, six recessions, and twelve presidents and are somehow still smiling. Get to know them. Also: meet your old-person self. I try to invent a new word every week — one of them is preflection. To ponder the present through the eyes of your future self. Take an hour in silence to listen to your eighty-year-old self. They might know something you don’t.
11. Fire all your employees.
The employer-employee relationship creates an unhealthy power dynamic between humans that simply didn’t exist when we worked cooperatively to feed our clan or village. I love my work life so much more now that I only work with independent entrepreneurs who are my equals. For me, it’s either a one-man show (my writing business), an equal partnership (my film company), or a co-operative endeavor. Life’s too short to be a boss or be bossed around.
12. Accept that you are a voracious locust of doom.
Nail a roll of paper to the wall and write down everything you consume for a year — food, toilet paper, electricity, car fuel, movies, music, social media content, other people’s time, everything. See what I mean? Saint Augustine said that the human heart can only fully be satisfied by one thing aside from God himself: everything. All the sex, all the money, all the power, all the possessions, all the glory. All of it. Nothing short of everything could ever fully satiate the human heart. We are wired for more. Understanding this truth is the first step toward real contentment.
13. Forget what the market wants.
Listen to your gut. Your body knows the difference between good and great. Someone said you should never record a song or code an app or write an article unless it makes you laugh, cry, or orgasm. If an idea doesn’t move you, it won’t move an audience, no matter how “commercial” you think it is.
14. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life.
Hitler really was following his bliss by offing millions of Jews. I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer genuinely enjoyed the taste of human flesh. Bernie Madoff seemed content to bilk charities for decades. Happiness isn’t the purpose of life. It’s not even in the top ten. Happiness is a seasonal fruit, not a foundational root. Find firm and fertile ground.
15. There is no ugly.
My grandpa re-proposed to my grandma on their fiftieth wedding anniversary and called her the most beautiful woman he’s ever known. Old wrinkly grandma? Yes. Because we choose our definition of beauty through our thoughts, disciplines, habits, and patterns, be they conscious or otherwise.
16. We are what we consume.
The statistical average American is a walking bodybag of sugar, alcohol, caffeine, porn, pills, and digital stimulus. Imagine how different life would be if our only inputs were nature, sleep, sunlight, organic food, and embodied human interaction? Guard your inputs carefully.
17. We’re going to die quite soon.
Make sure you live first. Practicing memento mori will help.
18. Fame is poison.
One in four Gen Zers thinks they’ll be famous by age 25. One in 3.9999999 Gen Zers are going to have a miserably disappointing life. Why do people desire the attention of strangers? Because we all need to love and be loved, to know and be known, but are too afraid to risk personal heartbreak to seek it out. Attention is not affection. Influence is not intimacy.
19. Boomers are to blame for half our troubles.
The Me Generation took a free ride at the planet’s expense and is hellbent on taking the rest of it with them. They’re statistically low on empathy — blame the lead, asbestos, and hairspray if you must — but at least acknowledge the reality that life is hard for everyone, and no one has it easier.
20. Children are dope.
Kids are the blood transfusion in our sick system. We need to stop manipulating, brainwashing, colonizing, and propagandizing them, and learn from them instead.
21. It doesn’t have to hurt.
Joy is a choice.
22. Watch comedy before calls and meetings.
Five minutes of gut-busting laughter will prime you for even the most tedious conference call. Your co-workers and customers all have tough lives like everybody else, so brighten their day by pre-brightening your own.
23. No ragrets.
Tattoo it on your neck. Most people play it far too safe. Instead: optimize your life for the least number of regrets and the most amount of selfless contribution.
24. There are better ways to vote.
I’ve manned several local voting stations, and I’ve also hob-nobbed with politicians in Canada, America, and the UK. The reality is that they don’t work for us. They work for their corporate sponsors and private interests. Democracy isn’t dead. It just hasn’t happened yet, with all attempts to date being stillborn or aborted. Democracy = one voice one vote. Athens wasn’t a democracy — women, slaves, and tenants had zero say. America isn’t a democracy either — no representative system is, because it’s far too easy for private interests to buy politicians. The charade of voting is illusory. All elections are sham elections. So what to do? Vote with your money and time and attention. One sham vote every four years versus tens of thousands of dollar-votes each year? It’s a no-brainer. My wife and I haven’t stepped foot in a Walmart in more than a decade because thousands of its suppliers are based in China, the billionaire heirs are anti-democratic tax-avoiders, and they treat their employees like indentured servants. Vote for pro-democracy third-party candidates if you must — just understand the game, and also vote in the ways that actually matter.
25. Everything easy has already been done.
So run a little further. And if it hasn’t been done, it won’t be as easy as it appears. The question to ask is: what’s been standing in the way this whole time? Achievement is all about knocking down obstacles. Just make sure what’s on the other side is rightly worth the effort.
26. Broccoli still tastes terrible.
But you’re not a child anymore. Adults do hard things.
Discipline is great, but it’s also subject to the law of diminishing returns. Life is just too dynamic to schedule with military precision. Free yourself from the tyranny of “only people who wake up at 5 AM are successful.” All hours are not created equal. It depends on your sleep drive and chronotype. Know yourself. Unapologetically get some sleep, then do your best work at your best time in your best state.
28. “Freedom” isn’t freedom.
America wasn’t founded on freedom. America was founded on violent autonomy. The ancient Greeks had an entirely different definition of freedom: it was the ability to choose the right regardless of circumstance.
“We talk about freedom all the time, but we’ve stopped talking about freedom a long time ago. Now we’re talking about autonomy. Freedom is different than autonomy. Freedom has boundaries. Truth is one of those boundaries. And morality is one of those boundaries. Autonomy is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want in whatever way you want.The problem is this: If I’m autonomous and another person is autonomous, and I have preferences and those matter more than the truth, and that person has preferences and their preferences matter more than the truth, when two autonomous preference-seeking beings come together and their preferences don’t match, who is going to win? If truth is on the bottom shelf, truth won’t decide. What will decide will be power. And isn’t it ironic that in our quest for “freedom”, someone gets enslaved?” —Abdu Murray
29. Grandma didn’t use toilet paper.
She used pages from the Sears catalog. Splinter-free wasn’t available until 1935. The Romans used sponges. The Greeks used clay. Francois Rabelais recommended using “the neck of a goose.” Arabians used their left hand. Never assume our extremely unique cultural moment is “normal.”
30. The quest for wealth is destroying life.
We need a shared global vision. My invented word for it is benevitae: the sustainable flourishing of all creation. Our collective goal should be socioenviroeconomic sustainability. Where to start? We’d do well to let biology determine ecological sustainability and real democracy to determine economic fairness. Our current trajectory is worse than the Space Shuttle Challenger.
31. Ninety-nine isn’t enough.
Water boils at 100 degrees Celcius. The difference between 99 and 100 is the difference between zero and one. Not-boiling, boiling. Corollary: 101 doesn’t make it any more boiling.
32. Divide-and-conquer is a business model.
Near the end of high school, dozen friends and I binge-watched multiple seasons of LOST in our friend Mike’s basement. It was one of the most hilarious, riotous, enjoyable experiences we had as a group. And it was the last show we ever watched together. People used to go to restaurants in large numbers, to the movies by the dozen, climbing over each other for one of the limited video game controllers, packing out our churches, cheering on our sports teams by the busload. We were almost never alone, and we were far happier. Now we order in, watch Netflix, stream Minecraft, catch the highlights, watch porn, and go to bed. It’s killing us. Resist the urge to be alone. It’s too easy, and it’s the exact opposite of what we really need. The #1 thing that’s correlated to human happiness is human togetherness.
33. Self-improvement won’t save us.
The great lie of individualist-consumerist culture is that we can improve our way to personal perfection and communal utopia. But it’s incrementalism at best. It’s just chasing infinity.
34. We know nothing +/-.
On the scale of all that is known, and all that is knowable, our individual understanding is essentially mathematically zero. The entirety of human knowledge is a rounding error. This is the beginning of humility.
35. The sun is not on fire
This whole list began in Texas. I was at an observatory in the Davis Mountains and it was the first time I’d paid attention to astronomy since grade school. For three decades, I’d wrongly assumed the sun was a giant ball of flames. But there’s no fire in space because there’s no oxygen in space. It just looks like fire because of how our eyes perceive light through the atmosphere and prism. As I stared at the real-time image of the sun on the observatory wall, I nearly wept. The sun actually looks like a giant, boiling, grey brain. And then it hit me: I have so many assumptions to set aside and so much left to learn. So pay attention. Don’t worship the “question everything” mantra, but instead spend your life seeking truth, and wisdom, and understanding. You know what you need to do to get where you want to be.
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