https://www.saucerswap.finance/ [6th AMA of 2024]
Pine_apple
Thank you all for joining our monthly AMA today. Next week is Father's Day here in the United States. So happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. ABFT is co-hosting today and we have two awesome guests in the house, Brady and Gaurang. Both are co-founders of Bonzo Finance, an open source, non custodial lending and borrowing protocol built on the Hedera network. So welcome to our AMA, Brady and Gaurang.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Hey, thanks so much for having us. Really appreciate it and excited to get the chance to chat with the SaucerSwap community.
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Glad to be here.
ABFTFTW
Hey Brady. Hey Gaurang. Good to have you guys in the Bonzo Finance in the house. Happy to have you with us. I've been outside today and it's in Texas and it's a scorcher. I'm hoping some of that heat kind of passes off into the cryptosphere. I think the HBAR has a bright future. You know that most development going on in all the crypto space and I'm in it for the tech, so let's get this going. Talk to me, Peter.
Peter
Hi everyone. Welcome to our June AMA. And a very warm welcome to Brady and Gaurang from Bonzo, who will be answering some questions about their upcoming lending protocol. So super excited to welcome them up here to talk about that. So in the past, some of you may know, we've welcomed guests from projects like HeadStarter and Citadel wallet, so we are always excited to bring on builders in this space to talk about what they're building on Hedera.
Before we do jump into the questions from this week, we want to take a moment to address just the overall sentiment and roadmap. We wanna give everyone a sense of what's currently being worked on, what's coming next and our overall strategy to grow SaucerSwap.
So first of all, we have made some great progress on governance, which will provide a core utility to the SAUCE token. So for those unaware, governance is the core and sometimes exclusive utility of many DEX tokens. This includes UNI of Uniswap. With the release of governance, everyone will be able to vote with their SAUCE on proposals that align initiatives, create farms and LARI campaigns, decide token classifications, and so on and so forth. We have governance working now on Testnet and have created the UI for it. So we are looking at launching it early summer. So in the next few weeks. It could be towards the end of this month or it could go into next month but it is coming up.
Next we get to work on some features after governance that we know have been highly anticipated, namely Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Single-sided staking. We are super excited to follow through with these developments. We know that they've been a long time coming and they can contribute to some greater utility, both for the xSAUCE token and then also the Planck Epoch Collectible NFTs via kind of their redemption for Sauceling NFTs. So after we roll out governance, we'll be able to lock in the product schema for these features and move forward with their development. So we are really excited about bringing Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Single-sided staking online.
Additionally, with SAUCE having been listed on Bitget last month, we are looking forward to at least one more Centralized Exchange listing this month, with two being more likely. There is additionally a Centralized Exchange listing that is currently scheduled for July, which we are excited about as well.
We also want to just quickly bring to your attention we kicked off a major grant with the HBAR Foundation last week, providing over 20 Million HBAR in incentives for liquidity providers. At the time of receipt, that was over $2,000,000 USD an equivalent value for those tokens and those tokens are being distributed right now to SaucerSwap liquidity providers, in both Version 1 and Version 2, and we'll be live for the next few months. So if you haven't had a chance to check that out, feel free to do so on Saucerswap.finance on the liquidity page. You'll see kind of the effect of those increased rewards.
The salient point we do want to make in this introduction is we understand sentiment is lower today than it was a few months ago. We think this is kind of observed across DeFi on various networks, but you know the nature of these things is cyclical and we want our users to know that we are still developing, we're shipping major features coming up with governance and more on the roadmap that I just mentioned, as well as some other integrations in the coming weeks.
Looking back at the previous month, we think we had some major wins. You know we had this grant announcement with 20 Million HBAR, a major listing on Bitget, a MoonPay integration that's been in the works for a few weeks, not to mention the work that we have accomplished behind the scenes. So there's a lot to be excited about moving forward and we are very appreciative of all of your support as we continue to grow SaucerSwap.
I will just mention as well, you know the project depends on our community as much as it depends on development. So I would like to encourage everyone to stay positive. There's a lot to look forward to. We're working hard and remember that we have a well defined roadmap and we've consistently shipped features on that roadmap since the launch of SaucerSwap Version 1 almost two years ago, and we have a clear plan going forward as well to scale.
As we scale, the ecosystem has some exciting developments as well. So this is kind of the the feature of this AMA. We have Bonzo here, so lending and borrowing going live. It's a DeFi primitive that has an established symbiotic relationship with DEXs on other networks. It's a proven model, so we're excited to see projects like Bonzo and others coming online soon. There's a few lending and borrowing. I think HLiquity, it's already live. They created a pool on SaucerSwap. Bonzo is coming right up as well. And I think Sirio is another one. But anyway, all of these developments can bring a lot more awareness and activity to Hedera DeFi.
So with that preamble out of the way, we can get into the questions for this week.
___
Pine_apple
Thank you so much, Peter. Hedera DeFi, here we come. So the first question is from Rocco. With this environment being highly competitive, any project is required to have excellent marketing in order to succeed, regardless of how its tech is. What is SaucerSwap's long term plan to gain popularity and create brand awareness, especially to people outside of the Hydra ecosystem? As of my observations, current incentives don't reach far out of Hedera or SaucerSwap's community. So, for example, onboarding influential social media figures to talk about SaucerSwap, purchasing ad space or other collaborations in order to reach people that aren't already in the Hedera ecosystem. As of now, the average crypto enthusiast does not know of SaucerSwap's existence. What are your thoughts on that, Peter?
Peter
Yeah, Rocco, thanks for the question. So this kind of goes back to our overall marketing approach. And in general, it's always been to be objective and honest about the development of the platform. Reading brand awareness is a tricky thing and our philosophy is that it's linked to earning brand integrity. In our view, this comes from following through and executing on development.
So in Web3, you see a lot of marketing that focuses on hype and speculation, and in the short term that works. Our approach is different. We think that a long term, more sustainable approach that builds trust is better. It's not to say that we don't want visibility, especially to people outside the Hedera ecosystem. Quite the opposite. That's one of our main goals is to expand the challenge is accessibility. So right now there's one bridge to and from Hedera that not many people outside of Hedera know about. There is limited access to Hedera native USDC on Centralized Exchanges. The Hedera Token Service has not been integrated, full stop, on many Centralized Exchanges. These are substantial barriers to entry that that do make any marketing endeavors to users from other networks not impossible but definitely more challenging.
The silver lining to all of that is that all of these problems are being actively addressed, and when they are addressed, I think it's reasonable to expect the door to Hedera to open and because it will be so much easier to get involved by having easier access to native USDC for example, or being able to use the bridge that users are familiar with and trust, they will have less friction to get involved with Hedera and participate in the various network offerings.
So sum up our point of view, we think our marketing approach to date has been effective with a kind of high of reaching the top 25 DEXs across all networks by TVL, despite the accessibility challenges I mentioned before, and despite the lack of institutional capital on Hedera. So that is a massive achievement and we're not trying to rest on our laurels. I think it's just a good barometer of what we've achieved together. We surpassed Camelot, SpookySwap, QuickSwap, Bancor, Minswap - which is the leading DEX on Cardano - Loopring, and other very prominent DEXs, some of which had TVLs in excess of $1 billion last cycle.
So this growth we observed was not achieved by hiring influencers to create urgency or sense of hype, but just by being consistent and working hard and delivering on our roadmap. That strategy has been successful for the growth of SaucerSwap to date and that is our strategy going forward.
___
ABFTFTW
That was a great question Rocco, and Peter, you nailed it on the head. I couldn't agree more. Next question is for Bonzo Finance. Are there any plans to integrate SaucerSwap's API with Bonzo to enable collateral swaps directly from within the Bonzo Finance interface?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. To the question the answer is absolutely yes, but not immediately. We might be doing that in Q3 of this year. So what we are focusing on right now, Bonzo has a public Testnet live right now, which has the basic features like borrowing, lending, repaying, withdrawing and all these things, right. And we also have flash loans working right now on the Testnet. Our current main focus is to launch on the Hedera Mainnet with a basic set of features. These will include flash loans, liquidation bots, all the borrowing lending, you know, basic features of any lending protocol. Immediately after that, we want to launch the collateral swaps because our team has been using lending protocols personally and I think collateral swaps or even DEX swaps is a really nice feature, so if you see the APY for some token is more than the APY for the token that you have supplied, you can immediately switch that token without going through the whole process of withdrawing and supplying again. So yeah, it's definitely on the roadmap and that will be one of the first features that we tackle after launching on the Mainnet.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, and just to add to that as well. Bonzo Finances, it's based on the Aave V2 code base and so the functionalities that you're seeing on Aave V2 are all part of the roadmap. And I think we're taking a similar approach to SaucerSwap when it comes to sort of laying a a really solid and robust foundation initially. They had started with Uniswap V2 and then evolved feature sets and product offerings and eventually adopted Uniswap V3, and we're taking a very similar approach and it's sort of phased, but we want to deliver a really solid and usable product right off the bat, utilizing Aave V2 and sort of its core functionalities.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thank you so much for that Brady and Gaurang. The Bonzo testnet is found on Bonzo.Finance, so for free to check that out guys. So our next question is from an anonymous user. When is SAUCE going to be listed on another Centralized Exchange? To get a ByBit listing, you need to have 40 million marketcap. SAUCE well past 50+ Million marketcap. Why is SAUCE not on ByBit? And another question is, did the team also apply for Binance after the recent announcement? What are your thoughts, Peter?
Peter
Yeah. Thanks for this question. So as I mentioned in the introduction to the AMA, we are planning for at least one Centralized Exchange listing this month, with two potentially being on the horizon. We can't speak on kind of specific exchanges or the exact scheduling right now, but we are satisfied with the progress we have been making and we're looking forward to the coming weeks.
I will just also note that so newer projects like PACK from the HashPack team tend to get listed faster or percede the scheduling in terms of listing of other network tokens. Just being a newer project, this is kind of what Centralized Exchanges want to capitalize on, and it's great for the ecosystem. It's been really good for us and it means that HTS is integrated on exchanges. There's more precedent for it and some more token listings can follow. And we have been working with HashPack to achieve the goal for the, you know, to the benefit of the entire HTS ecosystem to have HTS more widely integrated on Centralized Exchanges. And that of course kind of culminated in the Bitget listing last month with PACK and SAUCE.
___
ABFTFTW
Yeah, sounds good to me. Thanks for that explanation there, Peter. Septia. Hello, Septia. How are you? Septia wants to know what risk controls will Bonzo Finance have in place to minimize liquidity crunches.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, it's a great question. Happy to take that one. So there's a few things that we're doing to try and minimize that risk. The first one, which is foundational to Aave, is that when you're participating in lending and borrowing, it is an overcollateralized position that you're providing. So when you supply assets to the protocol, you are only allowed to borrow a percentage of the value that is supplied and the percentage is different per asset. So based on risk parameters and a risk analysis for each asset that's supported, that over collateralization amount is going to change. Essentially the loan to value amount will change. So when users are sort of over collateralizing, there's a buffer that exists for those assets.
And then in addition, dynamic interest rates. So the interest rates for borrowing adjust based on the utilization of that particular asset. So as more of an asset was borrowed, the interest rate for that asset increases and that incentivizes the behavior of repaying and also sort of encouraging liquidity to return to the protocol. Gaurang, anything else there that I may have missed?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. So I just want to give an example of the Aave market on the Scroll network. The Scroll is another L2 on Etherium. It actually happened I think on Thursday or Friday this week. So on the Aave protocol, there's a concept called utilization rate. Essentially, it's a rate of borrowed assets against supplied assets. So let's say all the people on the on the network has supplied 10,000 USDC and all the people have borrowed 9,000 USDC. So in that case, the utilization rate is going to be 90%. So as Brady was saying, as the utilization rate goes on increasing, the interest rate goes very high. So on Scroll, what happened this week was that the USDC utilization rate was at 99%, and because of that, the borrow and the supply APY on that particular asset was very high. So it was going towards like 80% or something for the supply. And you know what happens is with the market dynamics whenever the APY goes so high, there are more people in the market for supplying that asset. So it's kind of like an equilibrium and it's a game theoretical problem. So what we have observed in the protocol in the past is that the market dynamics kind of help with this. That's number one.
We are also looking at implementing something called Borrow Caps from Aave V3. We might bring in that functionality in [our] Aave V2 [fork] now. I'm not sure whether we will be doing it, but we are trying to do it before the Mainnet launch. With the Borrow Caps, we can actually cap the utilization of any assets, so we could cap it at let's say 90% or 85% or something. Yeah, these are like a couple of things that we're looking at.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. And then to add in addition to that, there is a mechanism within Aave that is also being employed in Bonzo called a safety module. Essentially, a safety module is a reserve of the protocols native asset. Holders of that native asset are incentivized to lock up their tokens into this safety module and receive a interest rate, an APY for doing so. That reserve can be employed in the case of a shortfall event related to liquidity. So if there's moments of extreme volatility for supported assets and liquidations that don't take place in a timely manner or take place improperly, that reserve is also employed to ensure that accreditors are made whole. So anticipation is that we are doing everything to mitigate the chance of that from happening, but it is sort of an insurance in the case of something like that taking place. And then if it is employed, the assets that are utilized from the safety module, it's shared across anybody who is participating in that functionality.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thank you so much for that, Brady and Gaurang. So moving on to our next question, this is from a anonymous user. SaucerSwap Twitter is not very active recently and the number of followers is stagnating, which seems to indicate a lack of interest. Any plans to boost engagement, engagement and dynamism in the coming weeks?
Peter
Yeah, well, Bonzo's surely getting the fun questions. So SaucerSwap's Twitter account has grown by 3400 followers in the last 30 days, which indicates roughly a 10% increase month over month. That is an excellent growth rate. And over the next few weeks, we have several developments and integrations that we will announce and highlight right on our social media platforms, including Twitter. So in terms of recent growth, we have enjoyed a healthy rate of increase again 10% month over month is very good.
Going back to the answer from before regarding our marketing approach, we use our social media accounts to put out useful information about integrations and protocol developments, so that all the content we put out is not just fluff. We want to put out substance. Additionally, the Spring Incentives Campaign does present a unique opportunity for marketing. Looking into potentially doing a press release for this one to kind of target users from other networks. So highlighting that as an endeavor is something we're currently pursuing.
___
ABFTFTW
Sounds pretty good, Peter. Thank you for that. Next question is again for the Bonzo crew. Are there any integrations that will exist between SaucerSwap DEX and Bonzo Finance lending protocol?
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, we're definitely looking into integrations between the two. I think the first thing off the bat is there are two core functionalities within the Bonzo Finance ecosystem for liquidation bots and flash loans that Gaurang mentioned earlier. And so for liquidation bots, essentially what that is, is anybody in the ecosystem who is technically savvy can operate a liquidation bot that seeks out opportunities for liquidations. Essentially when liquidation thresholds are met for users. And upon performing the liquidation, they would take the collateral that was supplied by the user and swaps would need to be performed as part of that process. And when we are building out the templates for liquidation bots in that ecosystem, it is going to heavily rely on SaucerSwap and their DEX and the liquidity in SaucerSwap to perform that action.
One thing I'm excited about that in the sense that I think that by adding lending protocols and particularly Bonzo Finance and our liquidation bot ecosystem, it should help further drive volumes that we see on the SaucerSwap DEX, which is a key health metric, and then in addition to that with flash loans.
Flash loans are essentially the ability to borrow assets from the Bonzo Protocol without providing collateral. And the way that works is it's the development of a smart contract that borrows assets or liquidity from the protocol, utilizes that liquidity for certain types of financial transactions, so it could be arbitrage between two Decentralized Exchanges or between a Centralized and a Decentralized Exchange, and then paying back that loan plus interest, all within a single transaction. And if the loan is unable to be repaid back within that single transaction, the process reverses. And so it's as if that process never happens. So flash loans are viewed as a very relatively safe way to be able to utilize larger amounts of liquidity in the protocol and earn a profit for doing so based on the various types of activities that would utilize that liquidity for in the templates that we're building out for our developer ecosystem. That includes SaucerSwap as sort of a key exchange that someone would utilize when participating in a flash loan type activities. Gaurang, anything else there to add in addition with regards to integrations?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. So we mentioned the collateral swaps earlier, so that will be another integration. Also, we are heavily relying on the WHBAR, the wrapped HBAR contracts deployed by SaucerSwap. So for us, I think for any blockchain protocol, composability is very important, right? So it's very important to be able to work with essentially all the contracts and all the things that have already been deployed on the network. That's why we are integrating with the WHBAR contract deployed by SaucerSwap. That way, there's very close tie and close relationship between Bonzo and SaucerSwap. Anyone who is kind of building liquidation bots on Bonzo or utilizing the flash loans on Bonzo will be able to use SaucerSwap very seamlessly.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thank you so much for that, Brady and Gaurang. So this next question is from a user and you guys kind of touched on this a little bit. For liquidation bots on Bonzo Finance, will there be mechanisms in place to utilize SaucerSwap's liquidity to facilitate the liquidation process efficiently?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say it's like the keystone for any liquidation bots on Bonzo. So without SaucerSwap's liquidity, the liquidation bots and the flash loans won't really work. So just to kind of explain in short how the liquidations work, let's say I have deposited some token on Bonzo token like KARATE or DOVU or SAUCE token, and I have borrowed USDC against those tokens. Now let's say what happens is, just like what happened yesterday, the supply token value goes down by 20% because of some events in the market that happened yesterday for example. Now what happens is in this case my loan to value ratio, my LTV, could go above the liquidation threshold and in this case, the liquidation bots will kick in. So what the liquidation bots will do is they will repay my USDC loan by taking a flash loan. They will swap my USDC on SaucerSwap back to SAUCE, and then they will essentially pay back the flash loan on Bonzo. So all these actions will happen in the same block, in the same transaction on the blockchain, not the same transaction, but the same block on the blockchain. And that's why without SaucerSwap, liquidation bots might not work unless you have like a big liquidity in your own wallet. Unless you have like 10s of thousands or even millions of dollars in your wallet, it won't work.
___
ABFTFTW
Awesome, Gaurang. Thank you so much for that. Next question goes to Joseph, what cross chain activities will the team be participating in over the next six months to encourage new users to come to SaucerSwap?
Joseph
Hi everyone. Man, I feel like a second class citizen during this far down. Well yeah, to answer the question, there are several interoperability solutions currently integrating with Hedera. So I believe Axelar has been the first to publicly announce this, and once integrated, there will be more avenues to bridge assets to and from Hedera and other chains. So SaucerSwap plans on leveraging this by allocating a portion of the 23 Million+ HBAR in THF grant money towards liquidity incentives in both V1 and V2 pools. And this would be pools containing these newly supported cross-chain assets, with an emphasis on stable coins.
On protocols like Axelar will also enable cross-chain swaps in addition to the standard bridge transactions, and this means you can access say Uniswap liquidity from within the SaucerSwap's web frontend.
Beyond this, we are continuing to assist with the onboarding of new active liquidity management or ALM providers such as Gamma and Steer protocol. These offer an alternative liquidity management strategy to Ichi. So ALMs, of course, are important for the health of SaucerSwap for V2 since concentrated liquidity positions can be a challenge to manage without the auto rebalancing. And lastly, I think it would be great for multi-chain yield aggregators like Beefy to integrate with Hedera. This would enable V1 yield farmers and potentially V2 liquidity providers to automatically compound their earnings without the need to do like a manual harvest.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thanks so much for that. Joseph, you're A1 in my book friend. So the next question is from anonymous user. Development seems relatively slow recently. Are you facing particular challenges such as technical staffing or other? When can we expect the release of the features in development visible on the roadmap? For example, improved LARI analytics, slippage optimization, Wallet Connect integration, etc.
Joseph
Yeah, good question. So development is fairly cyclical, meaning we generally spend several months with our heads down working on a new product or feature. Then once it's ready to ship, we allocate more resources to marketing and just become more public facing in general. So you may have noticed this pattern with single-sided staking, SaucerSwap Version 2, most recently Autopools, and the product that we're currently working on is on-chain governance.
Also, as our protocol continues to mature, the length of these development cycles tends to increase as considerations like scaling and stability become more pertinent, and this has become especially apparent in recent times, given that we experienced a 10x increase in traffic near the beginning of the year.
There's also external considerations that are outside of our control. So for example, we are unable to release Wallet Connect despite completing our integration. This is due to several outstanding differences between Hedera wallet providers, which are currently being resolved.
So all to say, we unfortunately can't move with the same cadence as we did at the beginning of our projects life cycle. However, we are taking proactive measures, such as hiring more developers and ensuring tech debt is minimized and we have a solid foundation on which to build. I do agree that frequent communication on the status of our development is important and the hyper competitiveness of this space is acknowledged. So we will put out a development update this week, and this should bring the community up to speed on what has been achieved and what can be expected in the near term.
___
ABFTFTW
Thank you, Joseph. Next question is what is the plan to deepen liquidity in Bonzo and also the Hedera DeFi ecosystem as the whole? And then a follow up question is a DEX partnership like Joe, Cake or JUP coming up?
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, it's a great question and it's something that's really top of mind for us at the end of the day. In order to create an economically sustainable protocol, we need to have TVL on Bonzo and then we need to ensure that folks are utilizing that TVL for borrowing. That's where you know majority of the fees come from for the treasury for Bonzo Finance. There's sort of three key things that that we're looking at off the bat that that seemed critical and it's the incentivization of liquidity providers, offering a wide range of assets that are supported by the protocol, and then leveraging stable coins and in particular USDC.
With the incentivization of liquidity providers, there are two programs that were looking at running. The first one is we are in discussions with HBAR Foundation around liquidity incentives for their DeFi Spring program that SaucerSwap is also partaking in. Those discussions aren't finalized yet, but the hope is to be able to provide HBAR incentives for folks that are both supplying liquidity and borrowing.
And then the second is a points program that's being employed by the protocol. So we're actually going to be using the HCS-20 point standard using the Hedera consensus service for the protocol. I think it's one of the first times that in the Hedera ecosystem, there's been an employment of this HCS-20 standard for like a real world live use case. I think the only other one might be NFTier. That points program - we were inspired by Margin Phi, Kamino, and some of these other lending protocols that you see on networks like Solana and across the Web3 space - and it's going to run in seasons.
So each season is around five to six months, and points that are accumulated throughout those seasons for participating in supplying liquidity and borrowing. Users will receive rewards at the end of each season for the accumulation of those points. So we think between those two incentive models, it's sort of strong case for folks to want to be able to supply liquidity to the protocol.
In addition and sort of tangential to that, there's a lot of liquidity in the ecosystem today that is in the treasuries of these token based projects or in large holders accounts - sometimes employees or investors or folks that have you know are large holders of these token based projects - and there hasn't been a extremely safe place for them to supply that liquidity, which unlocks it for the ecosystem that's more sort of relatively lower risk where they're able to earn rewards on it. And so with Bonzo, because when you support a specific asset, it's a single liquidity pool. It's not like a token pair similar to like a DEX. And in discussions that we've had with token based projects, looking to them as potentially unlocking some of that liquidity that is in their treasuries or by these large holders that for many reasons they're unable to sell their tokens on market, but they do want to utilize them, Bonzo is a very appealing place to be able to supply those assets.
In addition to that, in terms of a wide range of assets, one of the things that I'm most excited about that's sort of in the process of being developed is bridging infrastructure and in particular the engagement with Axelar. I think the one of the few ways that we can really drive overall TVL and the ecosystem is through the use of bridging, and providing incentives for users to drive liquidity from other networks to Hedera. So we are in the process of waiting for Axelar bridging and bridge providers that are utilizing Axelar to come online, but those wrapped assets that can be brought over are going to play a critical role in like the growth and health of Hedera's DeFi ecosystem and in particular protocols like SaucerSwap and Bonzo Finance. We certainly want to run campaigns that target users on other networks and bring them and liquidity over to the Hedera network, but again, just waiting on the development of this bridging infrastructure to take place, but it feels very promising.
Then the third thing is stable coins. There's a huge emphasis on USDC right now in Hedera ecosystem as part of HBAR foundation strategy and I think just overarching strategy. The liquidity of USDC on Hedera is quite low relative to other public networks. So as Gaurang mentioned earlier, USDC and stable coins on lending protocols are one of, if not the most highest utilized asset. We think that's going to hold true for the Hedera ecosystem. So in our discussions with market makers and liquidity providers and other folks that would be supplying that liquidity, USDC is definitely top of mind and we want to be a liquidity powerhouse when it comes to USDC and other stable coin assets.
___
Pine_apple
Thank you so much for that thorough explanation, Brady. So our next question is from Maurice. Is there any consideration to use the Pyth network for better auto pools?
Joseph
Yeah. So our team actually has met with Pyth and we do see value in an integration. In terms of Auto Pools, I know that Ichi uses Chainlinks transaction manager to streamline the rebalance function. So this is done by quickly identifying and confirming transactions during periods of heavy network congestion. I don't think that's particularly relevant to Hedera just due to architectural differences between Hashgraph and Blockchain, but in terms of price oracles, Ichi currently looks at SaucerSwap TWAP oracles and these price assets based on token reserves and liquidity pools. So I'm not sure if they would how they would use third party oracles such as those offered by Pyth, but if you have any ideas, feel free to drop them in our Discord.
___
ABFTFTW
Next question is when is stage 2 and 3 of single-sided staking going to launch and what are the use cases for the PEC NFTs?
Joseph
Yeah. So Peter touched on this, but stages 2 and 3 of single-sided staking will be prioritized following the release of on-chain governance and this is planned for early summer. Our conception of how phases 2 and 3 will work has evolved since it was first announced, and we now have a better sense of how an optimal system could be developed that has product market fit within the Hedera ecosystem. So you can expect marketing and educational material on this extension of single-sided staking to become a focus once token weighted voting and a functioning DAO become live.
In terms of how Planck Epoch Collectible NFTs relate to stage 3 of single-sided staking, the idea is that holders of these NFTs will have the option of redeeming them for Sauceling NFT, and these Sauceling NFTs in turn can be staked to increase one's weight of rewards in a Community Pool.
___
Pine_apple
Thank you for that, Joseph. So this next question is for Brady and Gaurang. Can developers or traders use Bonzo Finance's flash loans to execute complex arbitrage trades or liquidity provision strategies on SaucerSwap?
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, absolutely. So as mentioned before, flash loans can be employed to be able to perform these arbitrage activities in the templates that we're creating for users who are creating flash loans, automatically incorporate SaucerSwap's DEX as part of that. The way that that process might look is a trader identifies that there's a price discrepancy between an asset that's on SaucerSwap and maybe another Decentralized Exchange, or Centralized Exchange. They configure a flash loan where the trader is able to borrow the necessary funds to be able to execute this arbitrage trade that they want to perform. All within the same single transaction, the trader would sell the borrowed assets on the exchange with the higher price and then buy them back on SaucerSwap at a lower price as an example. Then finally, the trader repays the flash loan using the profits from the arbitrage trade and then keeping the remaining profits for themselves. This is sort of one example that flash loans can be utilized for.
In terms of liquidity provisioning - you can borrow assets against your collateral on Bonzo and then you really can do anything that you want with those assets that you've borrowed. So one of the things that I could anticipate seeing is there are various APY rates on SaucerSwap for providing liquidity. Based on these different asset types, and let's say you're a large holder of HBAR, you want to be able to get exposure to these other assets to supply them as liquidity and earn interest or earn rewards for doing so, but you don't want to sell your HBAR in order to do that. So you can collateralize your HBAR using Bonzo. You can take out a loan of let's say USDC because USDC interests APY on SaucerSwap is pretty high. There is a small borrow APY that you would pay for borrowing the USDC from Bonzo, but you would supply that to SaucerSwap and you'd be earning an ideally larger APY for supplying it as liquidity to the protocol. That is one strategy where liquidity provisioning can take place where it utilizes Bonzo and it utilizes SaucerSwap. That's going to help deepen the liquidity for assets on SaucerSwap's DEX, but then also create more sort of efficient market. So with greater liquidity in SaucerSwap's DEX, there's a less likely chance of slippage and other benefits that come along with that, as well as efficiencies.
___
ABFTFTW
Awesome, Brady, I appreciate all that information. That's really fascinating stuff. This is where we break away from the traditional AMA and move on to the TMS because this isn't the question, this is tell me something. So Anon wants to tell us. I think it's appropriate to use AI technologies to be more inclusive of non-English speaking communities and not be attacked with so many questions afterwards. Joseph, you want to tell him something back?
Joseph
Sure, take a stab. Yeah. So we actually did leverage AI to translate our gitbook documentation into, I believe, 11 different languages. I do think there's also value in translating the AMA transcripts, so I appreciate this suggestion. Slightly unrelated, but adding localization and multi-currency support to the webapp would also increase SaucerSwap's accessibility to non-English speakers. I'm not sure if automating this with AI is necessarily the right approach, as we'd want to ensure the translations are accurate, but in any case, we definitely plan on looking into this once current roadmap items are completed.
(...)

Basic background: (tl;dr down at the bottom for a speedier read if you prefer)
I'm a web designer by trade.
Boss pays 1099, instead of W-2, so we're technically sub contractors.
I have a few clients who've grown a relationship with me to the point of "I will only work with [that guy]."
At last count, we have about 2000 clients.
The company is a small-town business of about 25 people, not corporate.
I have a flimsy NCA that was put in place when I started working there, but my boss doesn't even know where it's at, every time I've asked for a copy of it to review it. He keeps claiming "It's in docusign somewhere, get with so-and-so." Problem is: That contract was hand-signed...not docusign...and the person who does our docusign has no record of it. So my boss and I both have no effin clue where that contract is. From what I remember though, it had these limitations:

1. I couldn't use the company's "propietary blend" of sales lead generation (yeah right...all they've been doing is buying leads off the most mainstream lead generators)
2. Tried to prohibit me from doing freelance work in my freetime (which I found out much later, way after it was too late for the financial damage it did to me, was an unreasonable inclusion since we're 1099, and even on W-2 employees judges have started laughin cases out of the room for trying to uphold it, because you can't control what people do in their free time as long as it's not with a competitor and they're controlling the line between side work and main work.). He was trying to act like he could sue me if I breached that, but no...in my state all he could do was fire me...right to work state.
3. The part that I'm fuzzy on, is I don't think it had anything in there about poaching...or if there was, it was really vague, and essentially boiled down to "don't steal clients while working here."

Context:
Leaving my current job soon, because the boss has become flatout abusive.
BUT I have relationships with 3-5 clients who literally will not talk to anyone else on the team -- and I don't say that to be cocky. I'm only considering people who've expressly told me that I'm the main reason they stuck around. Heck one of the ones who came right out and said that...at one point there was some slight tension with them caused by one of our sales people and one of our support people, as (due to pressure from my boss not allowing them the time to handle it properly) they were barely giving him the time of day for an urgent issue. Then I sat with him on the phone for an hour and got it fixed. He told me (almost verbatim): "Why is it that anytime I try to talk to someone else, it becomes so hard to get anything done....yet when I'm on the phone with you, we get it squared away and I actually like working with you. I don't mind paying for this stuff. I'll pay whatever it takes. I just need someone to give a shit. If it's okay with you, I would really prefer that you're the only one I deal with there from now on."
A few of them even actually consider me a friend. Will either start asking about life plans while I'm doing work on the phone with them, upcoming weekend plans, etc. and have insisted that if I'm ever in their area, if I wanna save on a hotel, use their guest room or at least let them buy me lunch, etc. Like I said above, I've even had a couple/few who've outright told me that I'm the only one they want to speak with about work being done, because of how the others treat them.

The meat of the question (the TL;DR)

Remember: 1099, bullshit flimsy NCA in place that can't even be located, and even if it could, I've learned over the years that there were many misclassification violations in there that would not hold up (too broad of a "proprietary blend" of software usage, threatening to sue over doubleworking with freelancing, etc.). Basically the entire thing violated employee rights that I should have but don't and if he tried to sue me for any of it, it'd become a giant legal mess for him, likely getting the entire contract thrown out.
However, when I leave, I foresee those clients leaving the company too, once they realize I no longer work there.
I've been wondering what happens if they were to reach out to me after I leave. Like I said they will likely leave the company once they realize I have, and a few of them may likely try to establish work with me afterwards, since I was the primary reason they stayed

1. Would it become poaching if I consider taking them on for freelance work? Even if they're the ones who reach out to me, and not the other way around?
2. What do I need to be mindful of, so that it doesn't become poaching? Like is there a happy-medium way that I could carefully nudge these clients in that direction, even if it's just to tell them that I'm leaving (after I've given my two week notice), and then see what they do with that information?
3. Am I overthinking this, and does poaching even apply here, since I'm 1099?
4. What kinds of definitions apply to "poaching" that are just inherent with positions like mine? Are there any built-in rights that the company has or that I have, or is poaching 100% contract-based, and if a solid contract doesn't exist, it doesn't matter?

I know some people may reply to the effect of "bad vs good faith, even if it's legal." I understand and respect that viewpoint, but in this case I, subjectively, don't care. My boss has become an absolutely disrespectful ass, and while I'm not actively seeking revenge for that, I know that he doesn't respect those clients and I do genuinely care about them and their businesses. I'm not going to actively campaign to chase down clients, or smear the company's name....but it would be kinda nice to know whether or not, if these people were to reach out to me to work with me freelance instead of the company, that I'm legally safe from getting sued.
Thanks in advance for any advice that you guys can give.

You're probably aware that athletes, particularly NBA players, make a lot of money, but do you know who the world's NBA's Richest players are?
If your answer is no, you've arrived at the right place. We see these folks on holidays and on social media showcasing their newest cars or mansions.
As a result, it's natural for us to wonder how much money they make and how wealthy they are. NBA players have long had one of the most lucrative contracts in the sports entertainment industry.
Furthermore, unlike the NLF, MLB, or NHL, an NBA player's minimum pay is nearly twice that of any other league globally.
Nonetheless, based on what we've seen over the years, most of the richest NBA players do not rely solely on a pay as their primary source of revenue.
Many of the wealthiest players are financial wizards, and others are surrounded by a team of highly skilled financial consultants.
These groups of financial consultants frequently counsel them on which investments to make and which deals to avoid.
According to what we've observed over the years, Brand deals and sponsorships are essential for a professional player's financial success.
From Michael Jordan to LeBron James to Kevin Durant, these stars make a lot of money off the court. Let's look at the top ten NBA Richest players of all time.

1. Michael Jordan

Net Worth: $2.2 Billion
Michael Jordan is a former basketball player, team owner, product endorser, and entrepreneur from the United States. Furthermore, Michael made $93.7 million in compensation during his NBA career.
He was the first athlete in history to receive a salary of more than $30 million a year. He, however, earned $30.14 million in basic salary during the 1996-1997 season to reach this feat.
After adjusting for inflation, he made $33.14 million the following season, equivalent to $53.4 million today.
Michael earns $100 million every year from endorsements and other commercial enterprises, although he hasn't played basketball professionally in nearly two decades.
Please remember that this is more money in a single year than he made in 16 NBA seasons. Michael makes at least $60 million a year in royalties from the Nike/Jordan brand.
Michael's ownership stake in the Charlotte Hornets NBA franchise helped him become a millionaire. This investment will be discussed in greater depth later in this essay.
Furthermore, Jordan won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. He has won the league MVP award five times. On September 112009, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame as the player with the best career scoring average of all time.

2. Junior Bridgeman

Net Worth: $600 Million
Junior Bridgeman is one of the NBA's richest players of all time. He has a net worth of $600 million as a retired professional basketball player and highly successful fast-food entrepreneur in the United States.
In addition, Junior Bridgeman had a 12-year NBA career with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Clippers and was a somewhat successful player.
Besides, his biggest salary in a single season was $350,000. He put all of the money he earned into fast-food franchises, particularly Wendy's restaurants.
After retiring from professional athletics, he is now one of the wealthiest athletes in history and a role model for success.
East Chicago native Junior Bridgeman is a retired NBA player. Apart from the expanding number of Chili's restaurants with 118 locations and counting, he owns over 160 outlets. Bridgeman was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999.

3. Magic Johnson

Net Worth: $600 Million
Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. has a net worth of $600 million and is a retired American basketball player and entrepreneur.
After winning high school and college basketball championships, he was chosen first overall in the 1979 NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers.
Additionally, for 13 seasons, he was the Lakers' point guard. He won the NBA Championship and the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award in his debut season. Johnson was the Lakers' previous president of basketball operations.
He founded the Magic Johnson Foundation to help fight HIV after revealing his diagnosis in November 1991.
Johnson has worked as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, broadcaster, and care for HIV/AIDS prevention and safe sex.
However, his public declaration of his HIV-positive status in 1991 stunned the public. It helped to shatter the misconception that HIV was a "gay sickness" that heterosexuals didn't have to worry about at the time.

4. LeBron James

Net Worth: $500 Million
Next on our list of NBA's richest players is LeBron James. LeBron James is a professional basketball player and entrepreneur in the United States.
After igniting the high school basketball world, LeBron skipped college and was selected first overall in the 2003 NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers' local team.
Additionally, from 2003 through 2010, LeBron James was a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. From 2010 through 2014, he "took his talents" to Miami, where he played for the Heat.
In 2012 and 2013, he guided the Heat to two NBA championships. From 2014 to 2018, he was a member of the Cavaliers, winning a championship in 2016.
Additionally, he joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018. In 2020, he won a title with LA. In terms of compensation alone, LeBron James is the sixth highest-paid player in the NBA as of this writing.
His base compensation is $41.1 million per year. LeBron James is one of the world's highest-paid and most influential celebrities outside of sports.
Additionally, he has a $1 billion lifetime contract with Nike and makes more than $50 million each year in endorsements. However, his investments in many have turned his celebrity and riches into a veritable economic empire. \
He owns a stake in Liverpool F.C. LeBron James will be a billionaire in 2035 if he continues to earn and invest at his present rate.

5. Shaquille O'Neal

Net Worth: $400 Million
Shaquille O'Neal is a retired NBA player, entrepreneur, television host, and commercial endorser from the United States.
Shaq earned $292 million in salary alone throughout his NBA career. He made well over $200 million from endorsements during the same time.
Furthermore, Shaq still earns roughly $60 million per year from endorsements and numerous commercial ventures despite retiring for several years.
Like most the people on this list, Shaq O'Neal has shown to be a marketing and financial genius. O'Neal, a serial investor, and entrepreneur, owns several businesses and is a joint-owner in others.
Furthermore, Shaquille O'Neal owns more than 150 car washes in the United States, as well as more than 40 Auntie Anne's Pretzels restaurants and another 40 Fitness franchises across the country.
Shaquille O'Neal, one of the best centers of all time, was one of the most dominant players in the NBA during his prime. Shaquille O'Neal played for six different NBA clubs during his stellar 19-year NBA career, including Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat.

6. Vinnie Johnson

Net Worth: $400 Million
Winnie Johnson is also one of the NBA's richest players of all time. As a former professional basketball player and entrepreneur, Vinnie Johnson has a $400 million net worth.
Meanwhile, Vinnie was a member of the Seattle SuperSonics, Detroit Pistons, and San Antonio Spurs throughout his NBA career. He won the NBA title with the Pistons in 1989 and 1990.
Additionally, Johnson gained the nickname "the Microwave" during his playing career for "heating the team's offensive" in a short amount of time.
After retiring, Vinnie started the Piston Group, an automobile company. In addition, he built the company into something of a behemoth with annual revenues in the billions.
Furthermore, Johnson is the chairman of the board of directors for the joint ventures JL Automotive and PASA Modules, among his other business interests.
He's also a member of the Detroit Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan Minority Business Development Council.
Vinnie is now the Chairman and CEO of the company. The company employs over 200 employees and earns over $2 billion in revenue each year.
The company increased from $500 million in revenue in 2012 to be on track to surpass $3 billion shortly under Vinnie's leadership. The firm is one of the largest minority-owned firms in the world.

7. Hakeem Olajuwon

Net Worth: $300 Million
Hakeem Olajuwon has a $300 million net worth as a retired Nigerian-American professional basketball player.
He was a member of the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors in the NBA, where he led the former to back-to-back NBA titles in the mid-90s.
In addition, he was a member of the 1996 Olympic gold-medal-winning US team. Olajuwon is the first non-American to be an All-Star and an NBA MVP. He is widely regarded as one of the best basketball players of all time.
Furthermore, Hakeem started on a tremendously successful entrepreneurial career following his retirement. He has bought and sold fundamental properties for more than $150 million in the last two decades.

8. Grant Hill

Net Worth: $250 Million
Grant Hill is also one of the NBA's richest Players. He has a net worth of $250 million as a retired basketball player from the United States.
Additionally, he is one of the highest-paid basketball players, having played 18 seasons in the NBA.
He has made around $120 million in endorsements and $140 million in salary during his long NBA career.
However, he was a member of the Detroit Pistons (1994-2000), Orlando Magic (2000-2007), Phoenix Suns (2007-2012), and Los Angeles Clippers (2007-2012). (2012-2013).
Hill has participated in several humanitarian endeavors. After graduating from Yale University to support local families, he gave money to his father's daycare business in New Haven, Connecticut, after graduating from Yale University to help local families.
Additionally, in 1999, he also served as Vice-Chairman of the Special Olympic World Summer Games Board of Directors in North Carolina.
Hill has been a prominent champion for MRSA awareness and prevention since 2003, when he contracted a life-threatening methicillin-resistant illness caused by Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
However, he has even appeared in public service advertisements for the non-profit organization Stop MRSA Now.

9. David Robinson

Net Worth: $200 Million
David Robinson, a retired professional basketball player from the United States, has $200 million. He spent his whole NBA career with the San Antonio Spurs, from 1989 to 2003.
In addition, he was a 10-time NBA All-Star, a two-time NBA champion, and the NBA MVP in his 1995 career.
Robinson was also a member of the gold-medal-winning US national basketball teams in 1992 and 1996. Robinson's stint in the US Navy earned him the moniker "The Admiral."
Robinson built the private, non-profit Carver Academy in San Antonio to give possibilities for inner-city youngsters. In 2012, the school became a public charter school.
Furthermore, Robinson also co-founded Admiral Capital Group with Daniel Bassichis in 2008. The Carver Academy was founded by a private equity business to provide further financial support.
However, it has a $100 million portfolio that comprises upmarket hotels and office buildings across the country. Robinson also has a Jaguar Land Rover dealership in San Juan, Texas, which he co-owns.

10. Kevin Durant

Net Worth: $200 Million
Next on our list of the NBA's richest players is Kevin Durant. He is a professional basketball player in the United States.
Kevin is a high-paid player both on and off the court. He is one of the five highest-paid players in the NBA, with a $42 million salary.
He can earn tens of millions of dollars more each year because of his several lucrative endorsement deals.
Additionally, he earns $65 million from his numerous efforts between June 2019 and June 2020.
After three seasons with the Golden State Warriors, Kevin signed a four-year $164 million contract with the Brooklyn Nets in 2019.
He is a tech investor who has made more than 40 early-stage investments. Additionally, Durant's personal life is mainly private, with little information publicly available.
He is believed to have dated Cassandra Anderson, a Bay Area real estate salesman, and was formerly engaged to Monica Wright, a former WNBA star, until 2014.

11. Luol Deng

Net Worth: $200 Million
Luol Deng, a professional basketball player from the United Kingdom, has a net worth of $200 million. He was born in Wau, Sudan, on April 161985. (now South Sudan).
He was just eight years old when he and his family fled Sudan to escape the country's civil conflict, eventually settling in Egypt and later London.
However, he had previously represented England as a member of the Brixton Basketball Club at the age of thirteen.
Additionally, he traveled to the United States at 14 to enhance his basketball skills at Blair Academy in New Jersey.
Luol Deng was regarded as the second most promising high school senior in America after LeBron James due to his obvious talent.

12. Dwyane Wade

Net Worth: $170 Million
Next on our list of the NBA's richest players is Dwyane Wade. Dwyane Wade is an NBA basketball player in the United States with a net worth of $170 million.
In addition, Dwyane Wade made $198 million in salary during his NBA career. Endorsements, especially shoe contracts, brought in tens of millions of dollars for him.
Dwyane WAs we just revealed, ade made $198 million in salary alone during his NBA career, as we e $2.6 million in his debut season. His income increased to $13 million per year after signing a significant contract extension before the 2007-2008 season.
In addition, the Chicago Bulls paid him $23.2 million during his peak season of 20016-2017. Converse was Dwyane Wade's first shoe sponsor.
The $400,000-per-year contract was for a period of six years. When compared to Carmelo Anthony's $21 million six-year deal signed around the same time, that was a pittance.
However, it was a drop in the bucket compared to LeBron's $90 million seven-year deal, which turned out to be $12.8 million per year. In just 11 days, LeBron earned Dwyane Wade's total annual shoe compensation.
The Converse Wade 1 was a tremendous global success by 2006, with over a million pairs sold.
Wade changed from Converse to Nike's Jordan brand in 2009. In his early years with Nike, Dwyane earned $5 million per year, eventually climbing to $10 million after milestone bonuses.

13. Russell Westbrook

Net Worth:$170 Million
Russell Westbrook is an NBA basketball player in the United States with a net worth of $170 million. In terms of both income and endorsements, he is one of the highest-paid athletes in the world.
Furthermore, Russell earned $250 million in compensation in his first decade in the NBA after joining the league in 2008. His base pay is $44 million as of this writing. Every year, he earns millions more through endorsements.
Westbrook signed the richest contract in Jordan Brand history (a 10-year agreement valued between $150 and $200 million) and NBA history (a 5-year, $205 million extensions) in September 2017.
Additionally, the Rockets absorbed Russell's contract when he was transferred from Oklahoma City to Houston in 2019. His annual salary will be $41 million.
In 2020, he was traded to the Washington Wizards. Then in 2021, he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Until December 2020, when Giannis Antetokounmpo signed a five-year, $228.2 million contract, he held the record for the highest NBA contract. Between June 2018 and June 2019, Westbrook made $53 million in salary and sponsorships.

14. James Harden

Net Worth: $165 Million
James Harden is a professional basketball player from the United States with a net worth of $165 million.
After transferring from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Houston Rockets, Harden built a name for himself. In January 2021, he was dealt with the Brooklyn Nets.
Additionally, James is an eight-time NBA All-Star and has led the league in scoring three times. He has also won the MVP award. Today, James is regarded as one of the top players in the NBA and the best shooting guard.
Furthermore, Harden played collegiate basketball for the Arizona Sun Devils before entering the NBA. In 2012, James and the United States national basketball team earned an Olympic gold medal in the Summer Olympics.
In addition, James is one of the NBA's highest-paid players. His base income alone is around $44 million per year. Every year, he earns millions more through endorsements.

15. Carmelo Anthony

Net Worth: $160 Million
Last on our list of the NBA's richest players is Carmelo Anthony. Carmelo Anthony is a professional basketball player born in Brooklyn and had 160 million dollars.
He is likely most known for his time as a member of the New York Knicks. Anthony has been an NBA All-Star 10 times and a member of the All-NBA Team six times.
However, with the US National Basketball team, the 27-year-old American basketball pro has won gold in three Olympics in a row.
Carmelo Anthony, who currently plays for the Portland Trail Blazers, is without a doubt one of the best power forwards in the NBA.
In addition, Anthony has spent 16 years in the NBA and has been named to the All-Star team ten times.
In conclusion, That concludes the list of the top 15 NBA Richest players in history. Basketball is currently one of the most lucrative sports in the world.
Furthermore, the massive contracts these players sign with their numerous teams, as well as their enormously profitable endorsement portfolios, demonstrate this.

Good afternoon anybody, somebody, nobody, & everybody
all evidence DM ME
My name is Jain Kunwar
I am a retail trader for 3.5 years.
I am not an ape, I am not an institutional investor, I am not a hedge fund.
Nor do I have any clients.
I do not provide personalised investment advice for fees or commissions or tax purposes.
I'm just an individual investor who did my own research like Detective Columbo/Pikachu.
I come from a broken family, I have been to prison, I have been homeless even at 15 for many years.
I am not a good person, but I am seeking salvation from God.
I been doing Heroin since the age of 13, sober 8 years since the day I pleaded out to God in Merton station London at 1 am asking God to save me.
Which I believe in myself he did because shortly…….
Soon after, I went prison by confessing all my crimes and the judge let me run it concurrently for being honest that I need help and I had no foundation and healed a bit moving forwards in life.
I was born on May 10th, 1994, in Nepal Butwal. Home of the Gurkhas
I came to England 2002 November & have lived here since.
I class my self as Asian British A9
I have been repenting for my sins happily, paying off my debts and learning to be a good human being for I was a sinner till I met Jesus in Church of England.
My one and only father Jesus.
I have been following and invested in Game stop for a long time.
I started educating myself about the stock market since then.
I have been buying shares of GameStop Since 2021 But since 2021 June been incurring losses through market manipulation techniques I.E.
I had been denied withdrawals/ buying or selling options, leveraging options from Capital.NLY

Which incurred me 6 Grand losses on June 2021 and God knows how much/many other investors BIG or small in all exchanges that this effected.
I also have evidence of numerous times the trading app has halted its trade for more then 30 minutes to an hour in a single day! But for these I have videos more then images
I am happy to hand it over if you tell me where to send it.
They kept ignoring me until a month ago in May the 10^th 2024 will touch base here later(miracle)
I have what’s app records of me trying to make complaints throughout the years with no redemption or straight answers.
I once spoke to an employee male & female one said, “We are experiencing some technical difficulties” this was about 1-2 years ago.
The Craziest thing was the ticker was moving in other exchanges just not in the one I was trading from.
Once it didn’t even open for 1.5 hours when it was open everywhere else
It finally opened at 10:49 how I know? I experienced this.
Under the FCA regulations all registered Trading Companies have a duty to protect investors from glitches and “technical difficulties”
Which They failed to do so for me I speak for myself and only what I have experienced.
The company even has glitched my leveraging system of 5-1 which was the setting since joining the company.
where, even if you pick 5-1 you only receive 2-1.
I have evidence of this as well & it’s not the first time either.
I know this has been done 100x of times if you take a Deeper Dive in the company’s own trading platform.
You won’t be able to find in other exchanges as other exchanges are working well so you cannot see the reason as its all “inter- linked”.
“Inter-linked “exchanges one falls apart whilst others are moving causing direct market manipulation.
Quoting blade runner “inter-linked”


Since then, I have been sent death threats anonymously.
Which also I can prove It was sent by him by connecting some dots with you
I met the owner in Wembley stadium in Corporate Box I was invited by Mr Stephen O
He contacted me and invited me to his corporate box on 8/6/24 I went there to find clarity as hackers have been going through my phones and social media with death threats.
Currently he is getting his hackers to find out where my siblings are and such as those are the type of questions I am getting in my social media platforms.
I call it phsing, smishing and vhising all 3 were used on my network.
Using carefully relaying questions in segment to build a definitive answer by narrowing down the wrong answers.
Like how it asks me what horoscope I am, Questions like use your initials to create a Japanese name.
Narrowing down an answer what every analytical mind would do.
I have been going through this since May 10^th after he contacted me.
I have said my name is J to every one of these questions should be in my social media history.
Notice how it says JJ DEAD MAN COVER
i.e
Notice how I met the Owner at 8/6/24 1 pm corporate box …there are plenty cameras there.
I like to be clear here I do not know this person or have his number for him to be coming to my social media as people “whom I know”.
I believe it was the vhising technique of his goons on hire you can see my history for the past month in call history I been getting scam calls left right and centre.
I will also give a copy of screen recording on request.
Then I went home and put a video of his trading app chart not moving like other exchanges for example having a 1-minute ticker symbol does not move for 30 minutes in graph line on my social media suddenly,
I see a people “whom you might know” soon after I posted the video.
I only went to the corporate box because he told me he has over 300 people retail traders coming which I was the only retail there apart from 5 millionaires 4 of which I believe they own the company only speculation whom others are currently.
But I felt an eerily vibe So I did not eat their food or take their hospitality which was probably funded by investors like me getting robbed blind because he thought no one would notice.
I also met a man there I spoke to him he told me His trading account was transferred to their platform.
The clue is there which accounts have been moved without consent or choice?
He will plan to bring all in one to have more control and doing this also erases all traces of manipulation in the trading platform it moved from a very sly way to delete history.
Should not affect me though I joined capital.com ticker symbol. NLY as my first and only trading app.
I have lost all history of my trade’s funds and even portfolios deleted without notice of consent why is he observing my account and why is he deleting everything without my consent? He knows he did me wrong that’s why because he uses capital.com to manipulate the market into his interest.
I can identify all 4 of them even though I only spoke to Mr S.O over the phone and only know their name.
I ended up being the only retail trader there, A poor man in a Billionaires Club
So out of place
I just can’t figure out why, Can you?
The ticker symbol has to be moving according to the time even if the price does not fluctuate the time has to keep moving like kinetic energy.
It has to be moving unless halted which can be only 35 minutes per day but I have counted over 1 hour gone in some days


I have been through mental trauma with hackers trying to hypnotize me with flashing lights and other spiral colour techniques mind you.
I am an epileptic which I grew out of when I was 15 which is highly reactive to epileptic people.
Miracle indeed, as many don't, certainly not after adult hood.

Also, they have tried to ask me questions to figure out whom I am on my social media,
I got closer to their crimes and my truth and they wanted to know what I know or make me join them as per the invitation I believe bribing me to survive another few years maybe?
Hope you Enjoyed the Corporate box Kenny it was from the money you stole from me!
Steal from the poor how dare you?
pushing pornographic and other Hypno/flashing light techniques to my social media platforms
also using racial harassment by calling me Paki Psycho
At least get the country right! Originally from Nepal BITCH Gurkhas Salute!
We both know whom we are now S.O
Which over the past 3 years have also caused me to lose everything…..
money, love, joy, sanity & dreams.
I have been Robbed constantly from these techniques they use also the withdrawal rejection from 10000 to even 100 this was very recently too. Have some images to reference this too.
I log almost everything I do.
That’s just how I found healing/clarity by writing it down.
I spoke to a person named Emma who told me to withdraw,
I have to show all my cards even the bank card “HSBC” which was bankrupt and stopped without consent.
Jokes on them I still had it Q.Q ahahaaha even after I showed them it didn’t work.
Until 3 days later after I lost 65% of my investment.
I like to point out, I mentioned to HSBC many times I am currently struggling and am willing to pay in an instalment plan.
What I can because I did not want my account to close ever as it would effect my credit score most indefinitely.
Also, the weirdest request was they asked me to show them a picture of the different Barclays Cards I have with the same account number.
saying it must be the same card but it’s the same account number same card basically so why?
I replied, I put the money from my apple pay send it back to my apple pay card he said please send us an email of all your cards indirectly refusing to let me withdraw whilst I am in profit.

So, I sent them by email which I should have on my email “for reference”.
He also mentioned he will be my account manager and watch my account after the first time he called me because I am a “premium” account.
I still am a premium account with minimum 5-1 leveraging glitched to 2-1 with only 400 pounds left in my account and still watches where and when as my judgement has been good when to buy.
Buy low sell high! Or just hold but I couldn’t do any of these.
I believe it took him this long for many years the issue was my real name and my social media are not the same people.
As I do not have a social media account anywhere with my real name.

He started taking control of my account and portfolios since the day he contacted me on 2024 May 5-15 around the same time I started losing again drastically.
Unfortunately, I cannot provide you how much money I had made in profits or losses because “My account manager of a premium account less then 50 grand had deleted all my portfolios and trade history to clear his name”.
My account portfolio was called Bullish-CFD
Glory CFD and 3 gbps cfds I ended up with one named GBP usd
How the name changed I do not know
I suspect he closed my shared and opened it in a different portfolio causing 8888 amc share sale in my account 1112 GME shares.
As these most of these shares were bought months ago which I believe he has to pay for borrowing he doesn’t have to pay if it was new trades, I suspect this happened here.
Why else would I not the Portfolio I had designated names on.
This can also explain why my trade history has been wiped.
I did not do this I did not consent this nor was I notified.
Let me make this clear I do not have any controls or jurisdiction to wipe my history of trades if you could compare with other users to see if they have been wiped out and why it has been wiped out as its detrimental for Securities Agency to have correct data of everything that is going on with trading exchanges.
Which makes me believe more in the investment of AMC & GME.
I also believe Mr S.O prior to 2 years ago before all these new rules started coming, he was using his trading account to artificially increase profits by making a profit/gain.
I.E you open a position in a stock that is about to split in the market or going through one.
Let’s say its 2 5-1 reverse split now its 10 he made 8 decimal gains instead of changing the shares according to the split.
This crime trick he used to manipulate the market ended when sundial went for a share split reverse.
I came to realise this when I ventured in a demo account, and it worked but I didn’t do it with real money as that is not the right way.
I am trying to be good doing it the right way.

I have worked physically demanding jobs for many years working 6 days -7 days per week doing 55-65 hours per week, killed my joy in life and even went without food to invest in this company as I believe in the Company board, company outlook and company fundamentals all 3 checks out as a great investment to my eyes a hat trick to a quad trick now.
Putting money in it almost every month in the past 3-4 years.
My journey ends here with my Losses from market manipulation but I will reveal the truth!!!
They have robbed us again and again even the government has been robbed.
just for their benefit ruined many people’s lives all over the world.
Especially now that the company managed to be stable and grow profits.
But the issue here is not my losses it’s the market manipulation.
the company is doing all they can to not close their losing trade which is the
THE BOX everyone is talking about, but no one is knowing about somebody may know though.
Maybe investigate their wives’ accounts and you might find it on a marginal line red line in this account.
The blonde lady. Wearing navy blue jeans. Bingo!
Mr Stephen O has tried bribing me in social media sending women over my home to seduce me but my dog did her job right! And sensed the intentions I know this because I had a media pushed through my social media saying do you want me to send you two women to seduce me in hiding his criminal behaviours but this is not about me
He has robbed millions of people .

I have evidence of this as well to turn it in his favour as I believe he is short on GameStop which is a direct Conflict of interest “the reasons why I am been having these trading technical issues “
Trying to turn you into a gambler not investor! By taking away the withdraw, buy or sell!!!
You see,
The universe spoke to me, and I am becoming the voice for everybody who are being robbed by this man.
Call it a sign, a cohencidence or just dumb luck!
I am not a messiah though I just uncovered the truth!
2 weeks before my birthday on May 10^th,, a stray kitten gave birth to 4 kittens and left only one behind. The squeeze began on my Birthday no fucking way!!!!!!!!
I/we have since, been taking care of her.
Meet My Newborn Kitten.

At 2 weeks old.

I also have a conspiracy theory on this as an attempt to harm my kitten.
To destroy me and make me stop trading.
I have frozen the medication Dr Elliot not a regular vet from that practice.
Well not the ones we see anyways 2 out 3 times.
My kitten was very ill shortly after taking the medication was also recommended to euthanised my kitten.
If you see her now you won’t believe why they would ever recommend this.
Of course, I argued and took control of the situation and saved her.
When I am back on my feet, I am going to a professional to check it out completely.
I like to remind you I already have a dog in this house for that cat to dare to come in my yard and give birth its like it was meant to be here cats? get it?
She is about 2.2 times her size now! Growing strong !!! just like GAMESTOP
CANT STOP WONT STOP GAME STOP
In Jesus name can I get AMEN!
b4 I continue...
I currently work as a civil engineer and am on the quest to turn my life around in my Pursuit of Happiness.
Thank heavens as I do not even hold a GCSE another miracle!
That I have this job.
I am a troubled child, but I still have dreams... of making it in life.
Which is providing my future wife and kids with everything I did not receive,
love, attention, guidance and more importantly a home they can sleep comfortably knowing they will have a place to sleep again tomorrow.
But I do not blame anyone as it was a first time for everyone being a father... a mother...even me a son just as guilty.
But I want you to keep reading this story… as it is very important if you have lost in the stock market as there are many other stocks that are missing in chart it was probably getting diluted for someone’s benefit to maybe stabilise their losing trading account.
I get the desperation that’s how I felt scrounging, borrowing money when I felt like I was about to be margin called totally human reaction.
The way he gained the money to stabilise it was totally criminal though.
I feel like he is digging himself a bigger and bigger hole and that hole is up some skunks arse hole by now.
I also like to point out Mr S.O has notified me that capital is a British company, but I have seen it being registered in the state of
This is the Final frontier.

My judgement was clouded by addiction made me do bad things...
I apologise to everyone I caused harm/inconvenience in the past and now.
I really am.
From the bottom of my heart.
my actions were clouded by addiction it took me more than a decade to defeat my heroin addiction.
At this sober state, now If you ask me anything; I’ll tell you even if it gets me in trouble
without a second thought.
I like to point out through out my columbo detective move I came across various information some even I should not know.
All I’m seeking is justice and peace right now and I hope someone can help me get this as I have proof for most of these speculations.
But I believe Mr S.O has been sending his hackers to feed numbers into my head by keep pushing it into my feed.
Because of this I purposely lost all my trades as I will not participate in insider trading sent by Mr S.O to convict me to silence.
Realising I was being watched by numerous people.
I went into a state of hallucinations, insanity.
It was hard but I crawled back out of the hackers infiltrating my device to corrupt my mind and decisions.
I suffer with anxiety and depression already too and have been suffering further since Mr S.O has called me.
I just didn’t know this before he called me, and all the pieces started to connect.

As this type of speculations and claims are only for the wealthy and privileged.
I know I am neither.
I am a very poor man with no land no inheritance no support.
Everything I earn is from these hands that push tools and this mind that tries to learn investing.
At my day job I give my 110% physically
at home
I work my mind 110% to try being an experienced smart investotrader as I know once I have knowledge and skill, I can make money easily after.
Currently, I am sharpening my day trading skills to further increase my knowledge from investor to a trader.
I earning ends meet living pay-check to pay-check and I will continue doing so to save earn invest and one day have a place, which my future family can call our home proudly safely.
But I still see the deep value in a growing company as the more room for growth the more gains the investment will make.
I learnt this from reading and following great investors of this decade I.E DFV videos of GameStop 3 years ago.
I especially like the one where we roll the 8 ball and just find a random ticker and analyse it you never know what dumb luck can bring you.
A school dropout like me to GameStop and I have learnt more things than I did in my lifetime.
You can learn anything in YouTube now amazing really we should use technology to assist us not work for us I strongly believe not use it for our own personal gain just because you have coders.
If you look through their trading app they chart doesn’t even revert the history into split prices SUPER MANIPULATION.

1 I love the stock/I believe in the stock.
2 the company has board members who doesn’t even get salary.
For this they have my trust of my investment and that they will do everything in their knowledge and power to make this company successful as toys brings “JOY” even to adults.

I kept putting more and more invested in this company, but the stock is being manipulated so it doesn’t work everyone will lose as how the conflict-of-interest person wants it he has survived until now because of this but there were no major leads of this I believe.
[Again, I am here to speak about GameStop and the TRUTH]()
I still see GameStop as a great investment.
The company survived Covid 19, also is profitable and stable currently.
With all the current market price fluctuations
Also the price has not dropped below 40! pre split price.
which further strengthens my speculation,
I currently own only 18 shares of GameStop I did have over a thousand.
But the company owners of; Capital.com ticker symbol NLY.
Have done everything they can to make me lose a winning investment.
They took my buy button my sell button and even stopped trading for more than 30 mins and hid it from none trading eyes in the bigger picture.
He also took my shares and diluted it I have incurred about 61 grand losses from my history of trading because of these market manipulation techniques over the past 3-4 years.
I as an investor a client of capital trading app was not treated fairly.
1 Even when I have raised complaints numerous time over the past 3-4 years was shrugged off because I am just well a NOBODY.
I call it a poor man's privileges.
2 Under FCA regulations Glitches or technical failures that cause financial harm to customers is a breach of this rule.
3 I am formally writing a complaint here and raising awareness with evidence of market manipulation!
would like support regarding the Law side of things and what i can recover from being ridiculed and robbed.
Using my food & leisure money to invest in this company.
I sacrificed my Joy for this investment with my hard earned money by working 50-60 hours a week labour 52 weeks per year non stop you can check my work rota records sometimes even 70 per week in physically demanding jobs.
1He has sent me Death threats today of what I am revealing now since meeting him in Wembley Stadium 8/6/26 (have a image of sending me death threats after meeting him today using paid hackers)
1 3/half weeks ago he called me to say I am in a premium account there are 300 of you and I would like to invite you to meet him today
which was really weird why is he putting my account on premium and saying He is going to look after it I am retail trader I have barely any money in account!
and deleted all my portfolio and trade history everything wiped clean!
+I suspect this was getting rid of evidence as I am right at the heart of the Griffin
I know why he took ownership from me without my consent and sold it without me knowing by derivatives and decreased the market value for his personal benefits.
Because he is already manipulating using this trading platform to control the prices elsewhere.
I have evidence of this you can only see it just DM me
if you look at the charts in their trading platform you can see it yourself to say it’s not photo shop.
no one else can notice it if you are not using the same app!!
+
2 Mr Stephen and his goons have been manipulating the stock since gamestop! 2021
+prior to 2 years ago his app would increase profits even from a split share!
I came across this information on 2022 You should recheck all files that are linked to him and splitting shares tickers as he has robbed them blind too.
I was the only retail investor, there alongside his corporate buddies which I am happy to identify and stand as witness.
I felt safe though as I don't even Fear the Darkest Night as I always walked by faith and believed in God has a purpose for me too..
A nobody like me maybe could be somebody one day!

(all hail great DFV) got to pay your respects !
I learnt trading since 2021
“Once there was a farmer who sold a pound of butter to a baker every week.
After several weeks of purchasing butter from the farmer the baker decided to weigh it. To insure it was indeed a full pound.
When he weighed it, he discovered the butter felt short of a pound which enraged him and made him feel cheated and decided to take the farmer to court.
The judge asked the farmer what his method is of weighing the butter.
the farmer replied “your honour, I am poor I do not own any exact measuring tool.
How ever I do have a Scale.
The judge then inquired if the farmer uses the scale to measure the butter the farmer explained.
“Your honour I have been buying a 1 pound of loaf from the baker Long before he began purchasing butter from me,
When ever he brings the bread, I place it on the scale and measure out the same weight to give him in return.
So, if the baker is not receiving a pound of butter he is also not delivering a pound of bread as promised.
The moral you get what you give if you try to cheat others of what they promised them.
You will be cheated in return.

KARMA IS REAL AND KARMA WILL PUNISH ALL OF YOU WILL GO PRISON

Have a dual economy, with private ownership of businesses allowed for most business types. Only centralize those industries that are heavily R&D dependent or benefit heavily from economies of scale, like heavy industry or provide necessary services like Health, Fire, Police, and Utilities. Empower co-ops by creating a legal framework through which employees can force a buyout of the company they work for. Provide no legal framework at all for the existence of corporations or stocks. Possibly apply restrictions to discourage formation of private equity firms and/or robber baron moguls.
Prescriptive instead of Descriptive legal and regulatory system. Basically, instead of laws telling you what you can and cannot do, the law follows a 'prescriptive' approach. Primarily with a "Do no harm" philosophy, and only prosecute when Harm occurs. No more making things illegal because they COULD result in harm. A legal system that puts faith in the individual to be mindful of their actions. But also a legal system that comes down hard on those who are reckless or unconcerned with the harm they do to others. That is, more severe punishments to balance the more permissive legal environment. Furthermore, greater discretion is given to the judges to decide punishments.
Have the legal/economic system mostly focused at the local level, with many smaller districts/neighborhoods with their own local judges and magistrates who can arbitrate issues and provide more timely judgement on local/minor crime. Respects biases, but does not allow 'life destruction' to enforce them. That is, local communities can engage in discrimination (such as denial of service) to maintain 'local character' but cannot resort to severe punishments like imprisonment or asset confiscations. If a community is found to be doing this, a federal court can intervene, undoing damages and collecting reparations.
While countering corporate corruption is easy, by simply not allowing/respecting the existence of corporations dealing with exploitative forms of private ownership is more difficult. While I believe private ownership must be an aspect of any truly anarchist economy that respects the individual, there needs to be placed certain limits to prevent malignant growth that harms the greater society.
I believe allowing the formation of unions and buyouts will do a great deal of the work, there could be further systems implemented.
Idea 1: progressive tax rate that becomes steeper the larger a private organization grows. A private organization can get out of these tax penalties by offering to sell to their employees, convert to a non-profit structure, or in certain cases sell to the state. Also perhaps tax breaks for forming/having a union in situations where the employees reject purchasing the company.
Idea 2: limit number of businesses a single person can own and/or apply antitrust principles to prevent monopolistic acquisitions. Likewise limit the ability for a business to own other businesses.
The Investment issue: Investment and start up capital are an important aspect of growing an economy. With the disallowment of Corporations and stocks there is little incentive for rich individuals to provide money to new companies and ideas. While Entrepreneurial Socialism has a systematized organization to handle this a Anarcho Communist state in the interest of maintaining as small a government as possible would not. While the state would primarily oversee the expansion of those areas it has direct control of, that is heavy industry and necessary services it would not be able to assist the development of other areas of the economy.
As such I believe a very healthy environment for banks and especially credit unions needs to be established. Where Entrepreneurial Socialism would nationalize banking, Anarcho Communist economies would have to rely on private banking and other forms of lending. Local governments could also provide lending at their local post offices.
It follows then that Debt would need to be handled in a way that both does not discourage banking but does not allow predation of the poor and unfortunate.
First and foremost those under pre defined income thresholds should be immune to asset seizure/wage garnishment. This would follow under the Do No Harm statute. Furthermore the usage of courts to badger plaintiffs (of any type, not just debtors) should be prevented. That is a limit on how frequently a person can be brought in to court to inquire about their assets/income.
On the other hand, the scope that debt holders have against debtors should be expanded for those with the ability to pay. Unfortunately this falls outside my areas of knowledge so I would need to leave it to someone else to figure out.
Taxes: I'm partial to the concept of the "revenue tax" that instead of taxing downstream forms of income, like wages or profits, taxes wealth at the point of creation. Of course, revenue tax rates would need to be small, as they cannot account for expenses. For instance, if a companies revenue and expenses equal out, a revenue tax could send a company into a loss whereas income or profit tax would not. Obviously exceptions and exemptions could be built in to alleviate this issue. Like simply not require taxes be paid if it would cause a loss, though perhaps with a time limit to prevent abuse. Non-profits would need a different tax model applied to them by default. More then likely some form of flat tax or sales tax.
Anyway Im tired, I'll work on this more later.

So I had this idea after going to a party yesterday and being asked what my wife does. "Oh she works for wikipedia." It just kinda rolled off the tongue. I mean she doesn't get paid and isn't an employee of the wiki foundation but it's definitely a full time 8 hour+ job she does. I used to explain this to people but this time I just let the people at the party believe she is a "real" wiki employee and took the "wow!" "that's great!" comments with a smile and didn't explain more.
I know there are huge copyright issues with paying wiki authors for their work. But could I set up a donation page for her specifically? Is there already a system like this? Kinda like https://www.gofundme.com/ but without the "i'm in dire straights and need money" more like, what if the donate button on wikipedia itself let you pick the user the money goes to?

I have been offered a role that's related to setting up data strategy and data operation for a New York based firm that does not have operations in Pakistan. They are offering to pay me through a service called Deel.com. The payment i will receive will be in PKR but I can negotiate it to be USD based on whether there are any tax based benefits.
My questions are:
1) Are data analytics and operations based roles part of the list of jobs exempted from Tax or have Tax benefits under the IT export law?
2) If yes, do I also need to register myself somewhere (like Pakistan software export board for freelancers) to be able to get the tax benefits? keep in mind I'm not a freelancer, I'm an employee of this firm.
3) Once i receive my pay through Deel.com (they have their own accounts from where you can transfer money to your local bank accounts), how do i pay that 1% that i've read IT exporters need to pay? Also if it's coming in in PKR, do i still get benefits?
Any help would be helpful, i have a meeting with my employer tomorrow where i can ask for things to be changed according to what i learn here.

I posted this as a comment in another sub and someone DM’d me, said y’all would like to hear the story. I hope it fits here. •••TL:DR at the bottom.
I have a very good friend who maliciously complied her way into getting paid for essentially doing absolutely nothing for 19 months.
It was a government job, no surprise there. She and her colleague worked in a state office that kept track of plague cases among prairie dog towns. They were super busy trapping and testing all summer but once winter comes, prairie dogs hibernate so they ran out of work. They told their boss via email there was no more to do for the season that first autumn and their boss responded by telling them to stand by for reassignment. So… they did. For months.
They didn’t want to be accused of theft by just clocking in and out and leaving so in the very beginning, they organized some storage spaces (very slowly), cleaned their office several times, organized paperwork and that sort of thing. When they ran out of shit to do, they started sleeping, doing school work, sudoku, what have you. Initially, they slept in turns so someone was always available if anyone came to check in on them but when it became obvious no one was coming, they stopped bothering.
By summer the following year when the prairie dogs came out of hibernation and she thought her work might resume, the whole office (all the employees, in every department) received an email from someone high up informing everyone that particular department had been cut. Don’t know if it was unfunded, or they got all the data necessary the previous summer, or that particular pet project of some politician was forgotten about, but somewhere along the line, the state fish and game axed the project for whatever reason.
Nothing was mentioned in the email about her job status so her and her coworker continued to go in and do nothing.
She’d tell me about making a giant binder rubber band chain and roping two office chairs together facing eachother to sleep in the seats (she’s only 5ft tall so she fit relatively well), making a “nest” under her desk, and moving the large-ish copy machine out of its cabinet and sleeping inside.
They made sure the security people saw them periodically throughout the day and they were on camera, anyone above them paying attention would have noticed but no one ever took the time. They dodged folks in the other departments for fear they’d get told on and just minded their own business (they rarely had much interaction with other employees anyway).
Eventually, she ran into her “boss” at a show and she asked my friend where she had found new work. My friend didn’t lie and said she still worked there. Where? Where you left them. She said you should have seen her face when the lady put the pieces together and realized what was going on.
The jig was up and she and her colleague were let go that following morning via email before they went in. Because they had technically worked there for so long (I think two years was the threshold), they both got a little severance package.
In case you’re wondering, they got to keep their pay since: 1. they had proof they informed their boss they had no work and she clearly saw the email and responded, 2. they still showed up, 3. they did exactly what they were told, and 4. it wasn’t their job to make sure they actually had work to do. They both qualified for unemployment to boot.
Neither of them used the unemployment since they had both been feeling like the gravy train was sure to derail any day so they had new jobs lined up.
•••TL;DR: My friend’s job became obsolete. When she informed her boss she and her colleague had no more work to do, she was told to stand by for reassignment. My friend “stood by” for 19 months and got paid to do nothing until she ran into her boss at a show and her boss finally figured out what was happening. My friend and her coworker were quietly let go with a little severance package.
•Edited to add: thank you all for your stories! I had no idea it was so common to “misplace” employees that continue to get paid. Y’all are opening my eyes. Keep ‘em coming!
The quote from Independence Day comes to mind as I read your comments:
“You didn't think they actually spent ten thousand dollars for a hammer, thirty thousand for a toilet seat, did you?”
It’s not Area 51 all that money is going to, it’s forgotten and redundant government employees!
•Edit strikes back: I got my friend’s permission to tell her story of course, and she asked me to include some more things they did with their time while “standing by” (she doesn’t Reddit):
-One autumn, he and her colleague decorated the shared nap hiding spot (a walk-in storage closet) with miniature Halloween decorations and then re-enacted scenes from Hocus Pocus.
-She spent a whole lot of time editing Wikipedia for grammar.
-She learned to knit. Then she learned she doesn’t like knitting.
-Her colleague downloaded plans from the internet on how to make a personal flying device (think: jet pack) and tried to make it with office supplies at 1/16th scale. They knew it wouldn’t fly, they just wanted to see if they could build what it would look like.
-During Christmas, they wrote all new jingles about how bored they were. There were 14 completed songs in total and they recorded them on a little mini tape recorder she still has.
-Her colleague went to night school (evening school, really) and did his homework during the day. By the time they were finally let go, he was just shy of becoming a paralegal. He did finish school and went pretty much straight into a job and all these years later, he’s now a real estate attorney. Good for him!
-“We invented Uber and Lyft.” That is, they worked out a solid plan for a non-taxi ride service that would work based on ordering a car via the internet (this was before smartphones).
-She wrote a bunch of serial killers in prison and told them how disappointed she was in them. She never received a reply.
Thanks again for sharing your stories! Y’all are outstanding humans and you have a fantastic day. :)
•Edit, the new black: A few people DM’d me and asked what she does now. She got a glowing reference from the state job and went on to work at our city zoo and then got her certification in wildlife rehab. She now works as a public outreach coordinator for a big cat sanctuary. No, she does not miss her old job of either juggling plague-ridden prairie dogs or being bored out of her mind. She says, thanks for asking!

Was reading the Sampson mail bag on the athletic and this Q/A jumped out at me:
Notre Dame administrators have previously said that if universities are required to treat college athletes as employees, Notre Dame will follow a different path a la University of Chicago in the early 20th century. After the NCAA-House settlement, that line in the sand appears closer to becoming reality than ever. Are any of your administration sources worried about spending all of this money on a new facility when that building may ultimately house a team that isn’t even competing in the top tier of college football? — Jack L.
Freeman believes Notre Dame will pay its players as well as any program in the country. Bevacqua said Notre Dame desperately needs to win a national championship in football. A $100 million-plus facility is going up. Two coordinators got unprecedented four-year contracts pushing $18 million total. The Irish got a top graduate transfer quarterback from the portal in back-to-back years and it’s understood that a quarterback costs in the ballpark of $1 million.
I know what former Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins wrote in The New York Times nine years ago. And all that was fine. But Notre Dame isn’t operating in any way, shape or form like a school thinking about taking its ball and going home if more and more money goes to athletes.
Notre Dame may not like how the game has changed when it comes to competing in big-time college football. But it’s going to play it. And pay it.
The link is to an archive view that you can read of the NYT post but here is the part that Sampson references:

Father Jenkins, a passionate defender of his alma mater, has considered the arguments. He agrees that the N.C.A.A. is struggling to find its role on a changed playing field. And, in what may come as a surprise, he suggests that student-athletes should be able to monetize their fame, with limits. But he adamantly opposes a model in which college sheds what is left of its amateur ways for a semiprofessional structure — one in which universities pay their athletes. “Our relationship to these young people is to educate them, to help them grow,” he says. “Not to be their agent for financial gain.” Image
And if that somehow comes to pass, he says, Notre Dame will leave the profitable industrial complex that is elite college football, boosters be damned, and explore the creation of a conference with like-minded universities.
That’s right: Notre Dame would take its 23.9-karat-gold-flecked football helmets and play elsewhere.
“Perhaps institutions will make decisions about where they want to go — a semipro model or a different, more educational model — and I welcome that,” Father Jenkins says. “I wouldn’t consider that a bad outcome, and I think there would be schools that would do that.”
Pundits scoffed when Jack Swarbrick, the university’s athletic director, voiced similar sentiments this year. No way would Notre Dame — practically French for college football — set aside its national ambitions and settle for Saturday matchups against, say, Carnegie Mellon.
Think of it, they reasoned. Television and sports-apparel contracts would dry up, alumni generosity would decline, and the best athletes would go elsewhere. Notre Dame would no longer be ... Notre Dame.
The scholar-president disagrees. Notre Dame will remain Notre Dame no matter what, he says, fully aware that he is on the record.

Is it possible that the BOT decided that Notre Dame needs a major college football program or is better off with a major college football program even if that leads to players playing or does Notre Dame feel confident that what's going on now in the sport will somehow be corrected by Congress? That or maybe the take from Sampson is wrong and Notre Dame would still drop down a tier but would focus on being the best program in that tier which would be almost guaranteed.

Let's not kid ourselves here, valve does not give this game a lickspittle of attention. Considering the Steam platform literally shits money for them, the financial incentive to pay much mind to a 17 year old game just isn't there.
I see people using the WoW legacy server petition as an example of how community pressure can help make sorely-needed updates to games happen, but here's the thing; WoW is one of the few actually-enjoyable blizzard products in existence, supposedly. It's a massive money sink for most of the people who play it; if it goes down there goes a massive chunk of Blizzard's revenue, it could literally cripple the company. They have to support the games or die in the process, it's pure capitalism; they see a petition with 300,000 or more signatures and the entire board of directors have to cave to keep their player base happy.
On the other hand Valve basically IS the PC gaming industry. TF2 probably barely accounts for even a fraction of a percent of all the money they make off of all the games they sell on Steam; if the TF2 servers went down it would be little more than a mosquito bite to their checkbooks. Not to mention TF2 is running off of 17 year old source spaghetti, it's probably development HELL to simply keep the game running at all let alone actively add content to it.
Think of it this way. You're a car collector, and among your cars is both an original Ford Model T, and a brand-new tesla. You love the model T and want to drive it more, but it's an old fucking car. It breaks down, it's hell to start up, they literally don't make parts for it anymore, it has the fuel efficiency of a dead rat, and even after all that the insurance only lets you drive it once a week. If you wake up in the morning and need to get to work, what are you going to drive? The Model T that needs a refuel just from driving to McDonalds, or the Tesla that can drive a good few hundred miles between recharges?
My point is that I don't see putting a petition in front of them with a hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, hell even a million signatures on it, ending any other way than with them nodding blankly, saying "Yes, we hear your concerns", and then going back to unclogging the money printers. We're hefting responsibility on the people who, financially, have perhaps the LEAST reason to actually do anything at this point.
And that's the thing that irks me.
At the end of the day, signing petitions and just talking about it isn't actually DOING anything. It's slacktivism, thinking that by just saying "Hey here's the problem" will in and of itself get someone else to solve the problem. The reason the WoW petition worked was because it showed a serious financial pressure to Blizzard, pressure we simply can't hope to put on the monolithic entity known as Valve. Cause here's the thing; Hackers in TF2 aren't costing valve any money. Even if they want to do something as game developers to fix this, as businessmen the money simply isn't there. It's solely a problem for the people who play it, and we're continuing to indulge in the fallacy that by waving our problem in valve's face that they'll fix it for us.
I say then, that since it is our problem, WE should be the ones to actually fucking do anything about it. Get up off our asses, stop complaining to Valve to fix it and get our own bloody hands dirty. And no, I'm not going to be the person who screams "Actually do something" and not put forth some suggestions to do so.

1. Get more people playing the game.

The more actual humans playing TF2, the more people to push back bots, the more people to show valve that there is actual genuine interest in this game's continued existence. We should start our own advertisements for the game, draw people in as much we can. Spread memes, make animations, do shitty youtube advertisements, TALK about the game beyond "Gee the bots fucking suck". Bring your friends to games, bring family, just GET PEOPLE PLAYING. Starting our own advertising campaign, free of charge, might also be the slap in the face Valve needs to do something (not that I like the chances of that though).

1. Gather information on the Bot hosters outside of the game and target them through the legal system.

Trying to fight them in-game is a fool's errand. We all know this to some degree. However, if we start actively targeting them outside of the game, we DO have a case. Activision managed to win a 14 million dollar lawsuit against CoD cheat makers, there IS a precedent for these sort of cases being won. And even if we didn't, the fact that we as a community would be willing to follow through on legal action would be enough to threaten some of them out of the game. It's the community who's being harmed in this matter, who better to use such a nuclear option than the community?

1. Draw TOO much attention to the bots.

They're doing this for attention, correct? I am personally of the belief that there IS such a thing as bad publicity. At this point it's impossible to NOT draw attention to the bot hosters, so why not go the other direction?
The problem is that this issue is being kept pretty close to the TF2 community, who have little direct power to counter it on our own. if we expose the issue to the greater part of gaming it would be like putting a spotlight on a vampire. TF2 is one of the most venerable games in existence, every gamer has at least HEARD of it. Putting pressure on the bot hosters from outside the TF2 community, hell drawing attention from outside gaming in general even, would both force the hosters into the spotlights of people who would be a lot less unable act against them. Cheating in online games IS illegal in some countries, making it an issue to them would RUIN the hosters.

1. Gain powerful allies.

And that leads me to my last point. At the end of the day we can't just directly dox these people, or blow up their bot servers, no matter how much we fantasize about it. We have to resort to indirect means to fight this fight if we want to stay out of jail. So why not ask people who CAN directly do something to help? Talk to lawyers, see if we have a case; ask security analysts what policies are being broken, hell if you know a valve employee talk to them to see what the fuck is going on over there. We're a community and that is our strength; we have a common goal beyond just "Fuck over the game". And we have communities beyond this community, why don't we pool our strengths to handle this ourselves instead of waiting for valve to do it for us?

Welcome to our first discussion of David Copperfield! This week, we will discuss Chapters 1-5. The Marginalia post is here. You can find the Schedule here. The discussion questions are below.
One reminder - although this is a classic novel that has been adapted many times over, please keep in mind that not everyone has read or watched already, so be mindful not to include anything that could be a hint or a spoiler for the rest of the book or for other media related to this novel! Please mark all spoilers not related to this section of the book using the format > ! Spoiler text here !< (without any spaces between the characters themselves or between the characters and the first and last words).
Links of Note:

• Goodreads page
• Storygraph page
• Rockingham Castle and Mr. & Mrs. Richard Watson: Dickens dedicated this novel to the Watsons (link has minor spoilers for Bleak House)
• A David Copperfield Map (zoom in to click on individual locations - beware of potential spoilers, though)
• Get your own Dickens character name! Use this automatic generator or go by your birthday.

Chapter Summaries:
Chapter 1 - I Am Born: David Copperfield launches into the retelling of his life story with that famous line that questions whether he or someone else will turn out to be the hero of his life…but we’ll just have to read the whole thing to find out! Immediately we are let in on the unusual circumstances of David’s birth, which is suffused with superstition, causing the town gossips to speculate wildly. He was born on a Friday night near midnight, which of course means that he’ll have an unlucky life and be visited by ghosts and spirits. (I mean, would this even be a Victorian novel without some ghosts? David assures us that he’s yet to be haunted, though.) He was also born with a caul (inside the amniotic sac) which means he’ll be safe from drowning. This is apparently such great news that they advertise the caul for sale after his birth, but only get one hit on Victorian Craigslist, so they hang onto it until they can put it up for a raffle several years later. David says he remembers that raffle and found it super weird to watch a piece of himself get sold off, which, fair! He does note that the old lady who won the caul died in bed and not by drowning, so I suppose it was worth it?
Anyway, back to David’s birth! His father had been dead for six months on the night of his birth, and his mother was a terrified teenager living alone with Peggoty, her servant-girl, so called because they share the same first name. One Friday afternoon in March, his mother was hanging out by the fire and pondering the likelihood of dying in childbirth, when a formidable woman named Betsey Trotwood showed up at her door. Miss Betsey was his father’s aunt and she loved Mr. Copperfield, but hated her abusive husband, who she paid off to go to India and leave her alone. It worked - he died there! On the night in question, Miss Betsey literally pokes her nose into Mrs. Copperfield’s window and then demands that the pregnant lady get up to let her in. Being a force of nature, she takes charge of the room right away, criticizing the Copperfields’ choice of home (a rookery with no birds?) and making somewhat disparaging remarks about Mrs. Copperfield’s history as an orphan and a nanny. She also declares that the baby will be a girl and demands to be the godmother and namesake so the new Betsey Trotwood (Copperfield) can undo all the mistakes of Great Aunt Betsey’s life. Mrs. Copperfield goes into labor and Miss Betsey stays by the fire, plugging up her ears with cotton. She spends some time mildly abusing Ham Peggoty (the servant’s nephew who was hanging around the house to carry emergency messages) and generally ignoring the doctor. Said doctor, Mr. Chillip, is a gentle man but speaks so slowly that Miss Betsey almost throttles him. When he congratulates her on the birth of a BOY, she smacks him upside the head with her bonnet and leaves immediately, never to darken the Copperfields’ door again! Welcome to the world, David!
Chapter 2 - I Observe: David Copperfield relates some of his early impressions of life: his memories of creepy pantries, stuffy parlors, boring church services, and a loving home. His mother is young and beautiful in these memories, and Peggoty is beautiful to him in her own way (though she insists she is not). One day, Davy's mom shows up with a stranger who walks her home and - gasp! - touches her hand! Davy immediately dislikes this black-bearded, dead-eyed interloper and Peggoty seems to like him even less. He falls asleep while his mother is swooning over her new admirer, but when he wakes up his mom and Peggoty are having a big fight. Peggoty says the new man is bad news and Mr. Copperfield would never approve, while Davy's mom says Peggoty is being unfair and heartless. When all she does is sacrifice for Davy, doesn't she deserve some attention and excitement?! All three of them end up crying, and things are never quite the same between the trio again.
Davy's mom continues to see this man, Mr. Murdstone, who rides up one day and invites Davy to take a little trip with him to see a yacht. Peggoty gets him ready in a huff, and you can just tell this is the Victorian era version of riding on the irresponsible boyfriend's motorcycle without a helmet. Davy gets to meet some friends of Mr. Murdstone and watch them do a bunch of paperwork on the yacht. They also make fun of him, comment on how hot his mom is, and make him drink brandy. Since Davy is a little kid, he thinks they're having a grand time. When he later tells his mom they complimented her looks, she is quite thrilled. And then a few months later, Peggoty invites Davy to go with her to visit her brother for a fortnight. She talks up the trip so Davy will be excited, but it's clear she's worried. Davy wonders how his mom will fare all alone, but Peggoty assures him she will stay with a neighbor. (Lies!) Mr. Murdstone is there to see them off and he has … opinions … about how emotional Davy's mom is during the goodbyes. I'm with Davy when he wonders why it's any of this guy's business in the first place. In retrospect, Davy reflects that he wishes he had known he was leaving something behind forever and he is glad that he and his mom had a touching moment full of love as his carriage pulled away.
Chapter 3 - I Have a Change: Davy endures a very boring journey across flat countryside towards the sea to get to Peggoty’s family in Yarmouth. When Davy complains, Peggoty defends her hometown, as a proud Yarmouth Bloater. (Here's some bonus reading: a Victorian-era article about bloaters.) Davy is won over when they reach the busy fishing town and he gets to see the Peggoty home: it is a boat that has been converted for living, and he thinks it is pretty perfect. It turns out to be a full house due to the generous nature of Mr. Peggoty (original Peggoty's brother). Just don't mention said generosity because it makes him super mad. Mr. Peggoty has taken in the orphaned children - Ham and Em'ly - of his drowned brothers, as well as Mrs. Gummidge, the widow of his fishing partner. Davy's fortnight with the Peggotys is full of happiness. He explores the seashore with Em'ly and falls in love with her. They bond over never knowing their dads, although Em'ly wishes she were a lady in the same class as Davy. Davy reflects that given what he knows of her future life, it might've been better if Em'ly drowned that day by the sea. Dark! Mrs. Gummidge often has melancholy moods where she cries all day and declares she has it worse than everyone else, but the family kindly chalks it up to mourning for her husband and assures her they don't want her to go off to the poorhouse and die.
As the visit draws to a close, Davy realizes he has quite forgotten to miss his home and becomes eager to see his mother and Blunderstone Rookery. Yet when they arrive, Peggoty pulls him into the kitchen nervously. She really botches the delivery of her big news because Davy first thinks his mother may have died and then, when she tells him he has a dad, imagines Mr. Copperfield may have risen from the dead. But she brings him to the parlor to greet his new step-dad: it's Mr. Murdstone, of course. Mr. Murdstone proves himself to be a real downer, kicking things off by correcting Davy's mom (who we discover is named Clara) for jumping up too enthusiastically at her son’s arrival. Davy sneaks away to find that his house has completely changed and the yard has acquired a mean, black dog that snaps at him.
Chapter 4 - I Fall Into Disgrace: Davy has fallen asleep crying after the discovery of his mother’s marriage, and when Clara and Peggoty wake him, his mom blames both Peggoty and Davy for his despair. Mr. Murdstone comes up and dismisses them both so he can be alone with Davy. He explains that if he had a stubborn animal, he’d beat it until it obeyed, strongly implying that Davy had better change his attitude or else. Things get pretty grim for Davy after this. He is kept isolated from both his family and neighborhood children. Mr. Murdstone’s sister, Jane, comes to live with them and immediately takes over Blunderstone. Clara is given no say in household matters: even the keys are kept by Miss Murdstone and, when Clara protests and weeps at being pushed aside, the Murdstones manipulate her into apologies and submission. When the family goes to church, Peggoty is no longer invited and the Murdstones keep Davy and his mother apart; Davy also notices that the family seems to be the subject of much whispering and staring from the community.
Davy’s days are miserable. He is often locked up alone in his room, where he loses himself in his father’s old stash of novels and uses this escape as a survival mechanism. (This collection of novels was taken straight from Dickens’ own childhood, according to his biographer John Forster.) When allowed out of his room, Davy endures lengthy, difficult lessons in the parlor. He suspects the lessons are meant as much to teach his mom the Murdstone tradition of firmness tyranny as they are to educate him. No matter how hard Davy tries, he cannot seem to remember the lessons under such severe supervision. Davy is belittled as stupid for his mistakes and boxed on the ears with his books by Mr. Murdstone. When Clara tries to help Davy at one point, Miss Murdstone catches her, and both Clara and Davy are in a good deal of trouble. Clara is chastised, Davy is removed from the room, and the next day’s lessons are overseen by Mr. Murdstone with a cane and switches. This goes about as well as you would imagine: in his terror, Davy makes more mistakes than ever and is dragged from the room by Mr. Murdstone. To her credit, Clara does protest and try to run after them (unsuccessfully). Mr. Murdstone wields his cane and switches, but Davy bites his hand in an attempt to wriggle away. He then beats Davy severely and leaves him locked in his room for five days. During his imprisonment, Davy sees only Miss Murdstone who brings him meager meals and allows him short walks in the garden each morning and family prayers in the evening, before locking him away again. At the end of this punishment, which feels like years to Davy, Peggoty sneaks to his room to whisper through the keyhole that he will be sent to boarding school in the morning. She tells him his mother isn’t very angry with him, only disappointed, and begs him to remember her and her love for him. She promises to look after Clara and they both vow to write to each other. Davy asks to be remembered to Em’ly and the other Peggotys.
The next morning, his mother expresses her disappointment in his behavior and her hope that boarding school will reform him; Davy seems to realize she has been coached to believe the worst of him. He chokes down a little breakfast before his coach arrives, and Clara steals one unsupervised moment with him to say goodbye affectionately. Then, they are parted, and Davy is on his way to boarding school. It’ll surely be a harmonious and supportive learning environment. Right? Right?!?
Chapter Five - I Am Sent Away From Home: Mr. Barkis, the carrier driving Davy on the first leg of his journey to school, pulls over not too far away from the house. Who should appear out of the bushes but Peggoty! She silently hugs Davy until she pops some buttons of her dress (one of which Davy keeps), hands him some cakes, and slips him a note from his mother that includes two half-crowns. Davy shares a pastry with Mr. Barkis, who asks a lot of questions about Peggoty’s relationship status and cooking skills. He asks Davy to write Mr. Barkis is willin’ in one of his letters to Peggoty, which Davy does at the next stop. As he waits in Yarmouth for the stagecoach to London, Davy eats lunch at a hotel restaurant where he is grifted by the waiter. This unscrupulous man tricks Davy into giving him his ale, most of his food, and some of his money. The rumor goes around that Davy has the appetite of a boa constrictor, making him too nervous to eat at the next stop for supper. Wedged between two men and with a woman’s luggage stuffed underneath him, Davy spends an uncomfortable night in the stagecoach as it approaches London. He finds it strange the next morning, after all the snoring and moaning he witnessed, that the adults insist they were unable to sleep a wink!
Upon arriving at the station in London, there is no one to collect him. Waiting in the office, Davy begins to worry that he will be turned out of the station at night, run out of money and starve, get lost walking home, or have to offer himself as a soldier or sailor (though he knows he is too small for that). Finally, a rather scrawny man - who Davy assumes is the Master of Salem House School - arrives and takes Davy the rest of the way. Weak from lack of food and sleep, Davy begs to stop so he can buy breakfast, and the man takes him to the home of a poor woman (presumably his mother) to cook the provisions they purchase. The man plays the flute very badly as Davy begins to eat, but soon Davy has fallen asleep. He wakes to hear comments of “delicious” which he assumes refers to the man’s music, but I bet indicates they were eating Davy’s breakfast. They continue on to Salem House, where a man with a wooden leg lets them in and throws old boots at Davy’s escort, who turns out to be Mr. Mell, an employee of Mr. Creakle, the school proprietor. Salem House is dilapidated, dirty, and deserted. Davy wonders where everyone is and Mr. Mell informs him that Davy has been sent to school during the holidays as punishment. Another punishment: Davy must wear a sign on his back identifying him as a biter, which makes him increasingly paranoid that someone is always behind him reading it. (Probably not.) He also worries that the students, whose names he can read carved in the doorpost, will all make fun of him for it when they return. (Probably true!) Mr. Mell, an odd man with various ticks, doesn’t pay much attention to Davy, but neither is he mean. We get another ominous reference to the future in that Davy says he dreads the return of boys like J. Steerforth and the presence of “the awful Mr. Creakle”.

In Honkai Star Rail, you play as Johnkai Starrail, a fully-grown two-week-old cancerous raccoon hobo jointly adopted by three mass murderers, a fraud and a furry all of whom live inside a giant flying gun train that goes around the universe stealing cancer from people.
Johnkai Starrail was born when a femcel NEET gamer with no sense of hygiene fisted an innocent raccoon with portable space cancer while a cockroach watched.
These two of course being the members of the Stellaron Hunters, a rival group of cancer-stealing mass murderers with nothing better to do than listen to a cat meow and knock over boxes and through sheer schizophrenia, decipher it as an MS Word document on the fate of the universe that will grant each and every one of them their deepest wishes.
The Stellaron Hunters consist of:

• Femcel Bronya (she has kidney stones).
• Ms Cockroach (this bug steps on you)
• Shirou Emiya (he wants to kill himself)
• Kamen Rider (she likes genocide and cute plushies)
• Elio (literally just a cat)

Welcome aboard the Astral Express, Trailblazers! Tonight, we rail the stars!
...

Chapter 2: Johnkai Starrail does minimum wage labour in China.

Johnkai Starrail, for his countless crimes, has been sentenced to life in prison. He is to be sent to the penal colony, Penacony, with his accomplices Dong Hung and September 11th.
However, conflict arises as Ms Cockroach suddenly arrives at the Astral Express to fight for custody over Johnkai Starrail. HIMeko, not wanting her lovely deranged trash-eating son to be stressed by this legal battle, loads him into the Express' barrel and fires him to *Space China* to create low price electronics for her while he waits it all out.
However, the sheer density of Dong Hung's massive **** creates a gravitational field and pulls March and Grandpa Fraud along for the ride.
...
At the same time, Shirou Emiya holds up the General of Space China, Mid Yuan, over that one time he and his college D&D group dine-and-dashed. "Of five, three must pay a price." Fortunately, Fraud Yuan was one of the five who footed the bill so he's free to go.
...

Tangent: Man, I love eating literal garbage.

Before we move on with this haphazard story written by Hoyoverse's overworked employees through throwing stones into the air while highly sleep-deprived and trying to mesh the hallucinations spawned from them hitting the writer in the head into a concise plot, I must explain how levelling works in this game.
Called the Trace system, it, unlike its Nasuverse counterpart, operates not by concentrated schizophrenia, but rather, eating literal garbage.
In essence, for say, a Preservation character, you take them to an outhouse, and instead of ordering anything on the menu, you murder all the employees, strip the guards of their clothes, and then your Preservation character gleefully consumes the inedible masses of scrap metal ripped from their carcasses.
This gross violation of all natural laws is so pleasing to this character that it causes their prowess at violence to greatly increase by... 1%.
And now you know how to build your characters!
...
Back to the plot, Johnkai Starrail, March 7th and Grandpa Fraud are held up by Chinese Space Customs for having no passports. Fortunately, they are reduced to blood mist by the hitherto unmentioned immortal omnicidal PTSD plant menace created due to Yaoshi getting just a little too invested in Plants vs Zombies and trying to fuse the two.
The gang meet up with a fox lady named Tingyun. All you need to know about her is that she won the Best Head contest on the Buddy subreddit.
She takes the troupe of Nameless to her boss, Yukong, who's canonically a milf. Yukong tells them to screw off, so Johnkai Starrail demands to speak to the manager of China. She redirects them to Fraud Yuan.
Fraud Yuan realises this plot has been directionless for the past two hours and desperately trying to save this mess of a chapter gets Johnkai and pals to murder Shirou Emiya, because if anyone can fix a mess of a plot it's everyone's favourite sword.
...

Dong Hung does nothing but kill plants for two hours while Welt's boyfriend acts vaguely menacingly.

Dong Hung remembers he's one of the main characters and so banned from being irrelevant. However, being a lazy wad on account of the mere existence of his planet-shattering \*** consuming all his energy, leaving him with atrophied muscles in a medical condition commonly called "Twink*", Dong Hung can't be bothered to actually do anything of import.
Instead, he gets off the train, meets up with Welt's boyfriend and leaves all the plot to him since, like HI3, Otto handles everything.
In fact, Otto didn't die in HI3 because of the two scantily clad teenage girls beating him to death, but rather because his spine simply snapped after having carried the entirety of the plot for the past 15 years.
Suschlong is there too. According to the Honkai community, she has a very large cock.
...

Johnkai Starrail's custody battle comes to a head.

Johnkai Starrail and pals find Ms Cockroach, Johnkai Starrail's mother. Having been unable to convince the judges that she's the better parent to the woman whose coffee is considered worse than IX's gaze, she's decided to break the law and just take her son back through force.
With her incredible skills of Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss, she dominates the party, but then a tiny Asian woman appears with a slipper, and as small Asian women are the natural enemy of cockroaches, Kafka is immediately defeated.
They drag her to a giant calculator and she has a delusional rant on how:

• She's a slave of a cat.
  
• Everything is unavoidable.
  
• Johnkai Starrail needs to fistfight God shirtless on a tall tower in the rain one day.
  

Johnkai Starrail now understands how she lost the custody battle.
...

Johnkai hunts endangered wildlife for fun.

Fu Xuan lets the clearly mentally addled old mother go. March 7th then, bored, drives an endangered species of deers extinct.
Oh yeah, wait, this thing had a plot. Yeah. remember those weird plant immortal PTSD things? They originate from smoke apparently. And Johnkai and his friends go ahead to the smoke machines to-
Whoops. Recall Tingyun? The lady who won the "Best Head" contest?
Phantylia, Ravager of Destruction, severely misunderstands what "Best Head" means and snaps her head off.
...

Dong Hung gets penetrated.

Johnkai Starrail, severely traumatized, decides to halt the plot to have a beach episode.
There, he finds Dong Hung and Shirou Emiya aggressively "sword-fighting". However, Dong Hung's prowess with his 'polearm' is nothing compared to Shirou's skill with his 'blade' and Shirou penetrates Dong Hung.
This experience of having another man inside him causes Dong Hung to experience self-realization and transform into a flamboyant, horn-y version of himself surrounded by fluid.
...
Suddenly, Yanqing arrives. Ms Cockroach , Dong Hung and Shirou Emiya all set their differences aside to beat the small child to a pulp. Johnkai Starrail sees this and joins in on the fun, followed by March 7th, Grandpa Fraud, Phantylia, Nanook, IX, Aha, Acheron, Firefly, Screwllum, Gandalf, Roland, Gilgamesh, Doctor Who, Doraemon, Goku and everyone in the Honkaiverse and a few outside.
After atomising Yanqing, everyone has a great celebration and Shirou Emiya and Dong Hung reconcile over their shared love for violence. They put aside the old unpaid bill for McDonald's that caused a rift in their friendship, the High Cloud Quintet (named after how they'd all get together to get absolutely smoked every Sunday) years ago.
...

Johnkai Starrail and friends attack a giant lady's chest till she dies and go home.

Johnkai Starrail, Fraud Yuan, Dong Hung then go to Phantylia because they just remembered she's terminally ill with space cancer.
With Dong Hung's fluids, Johnkai Starrail's lance, Fraud Yuan and Grandpa Fraud doing absolutely nothing, they easily overpower her and steal her cancer, causing her to have to give up her Make-a-Wish gift of being a giant woman and turn back into a ball of fire which Fraud Yuan stuffs into a furnace.
The gang celebrates their victory by all inviting every single fictional character to have ever been to stage the world's largest JJK jumping and eradicate the very concept of Yanqing.
...

Johnkai Starrail gets arrested for tax evasion.

Sometime later, Johnkai Starrail thinks on the abrupt ending and ponders on the matter. Was there a moral to this? Why was Otto here at all? Is it true that Suschlong is in fact larger than Dong Hung?
His questions go unanswered as he is dragged kicking and screaming back to Belobog for tax evasion.
The rest of the gang look on baffled as the entirety of Space China subsequently collapses as while they took over a meth lab and murdered a giant woman, they kind of forgot to deal with the actual problem of the immortal unkillable serial killer plant zombies everywhere.
Yeah, that happens sometimes. Some worlds prosper, other worlds get railed.
Because this truly was our,

Honkai Star Rail!

...

Roll Credits!

...

[<---Previous Part Here!]

So there's this app called wind app, (nope I am not promoting it currently) , Currently its in enterprise phase where enterprise / companies can convert their USDC / other crypto to fiat currency, they take care of all the KYC.
The founder says they will add the option for normal users after few weeks.
Users can convert their USDC to INR / other fiat currency using this app, and get money directly in the bank account, This app works on a "remittance model" , services like remitly, western union, wise, already exist that lets a user living abroad send money using them to account in INR, the only issue being these services don't allow crypto to fiat transfer. However wind app does that, they do remittance but crypto to fiat remittance, users can send money in upto 38 countries as of now.
The founder of this project is a person who has founded a business called "pathao" , "pathao" is like Ola / Uber that operates in Bangladesh and Nepal, so this founder has some credibility.
Regarding taxes and FIU, there won't be such thing as TDS, as mentioned by the founder, as they are not required to register business in India. They just "remit" money, and only allows off ramping, so the government gets dollars coming from other countries so the government is happy, users won't have to worry about bank freeze and TDS, users will be happy, and regarding taxes if you earn profit you should pay taxes. You can't use them to buy crypto so the dollar doesn't leave the country and the government is happy about that.
When questioned about how this crypto to fiat legally takes place, here's what the founder replied :
"Questions around regulations on our off-ramps. -> We have licensed VASP in Europe where we convert USDC to USD. -> We have licensed PSP in UAE (licensed for cross-border remittance) through which we can disburse local fiat. Our infra makes this seamless. Through this we can off-ramp not just in India, but anywhere in the world. All users have to pass KYCs and the process adheres to our KYC/AML policy that is approved by our regulators and banking partners."
Further legal questions and answers can be found here : https://docs.wind.app/legal/legal-t-and-c-and-policies
Here's what the founder said regarding Off ramping in India :
We solved off-ramp in India Off-ramping to India is not as easy, even if there are large exchanges like WazirX
We tried paying out employees of Web3 companies in India using USDC, and partnered with local fiat off-ramps to convert that USDC in fiat. Our early users hated it. Why? Because India has a 30% "crypto tax". These web3 employees did not want their money coming in from an exchange because they were afraid they would have to report it for their tax filings, and get charged 30%+ in taxes! We solved it by doing the conversion off-shore. We convert USDC > USD outside of India, funnel that USD > INR into India. The money shows up as remittance (as it is!) in the employees bank statement. Indian government = happy, because USD is coming into the country. Employees = happy, they are not dealing in crypto. Us = happy, because this is a unique product that doesn't exist in the market.
Twitter link of the founder of Windapp : https://x.com/realElius , this person is active on twitter so if you have any questions, tag him, he will reply.
link of the website currently for enterprise use only : https://wind.app
Note : I am not endorsing this app / website currently, I just found it to be a latest solution for us off rampers hence I felt its necessary for keep you guys updated. I will use it once its available to general people and provide further feedback.

Apologies for the long read, but I don't know what else to do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Little backstory first: We are down to 4 employees from 9 between both work buildings, same boss the entire time; I've been there for 8 years, others have been there for 9 and 10 years. There have been newer hires since I started but they all left for other jobs, citing they wanted to move to a bigger city instead of our small city. But the real reason is because of the boss (let's call them S). Anyway, all 4 of us have had to take on more work, but me especially; I have the workload of 2.5 people, where the others have 1.5 people's worth of work. I took on the work of another position after that person had left, as we still needed coverage for it. It's a bit more intensive as there's more aspects involved. I have not been compensated for taking on more work at all. I have asked S for a raise but was met with beating around the bush answers, saying everyone's asked for a raise, we'll see how corporate budget is, etc.
S does let us go home early some days if work is slow, however, is incredibly micromanaging, sometimes helicopter- like. S will make a bunch of unnecessary trips past everyone's desk to see what we're doing (usually work, obviously, but S has control issues). They will also drive past on their time off to see if we are at work. They like to schedule their appointments on their time off so that they will be driving by the work building to see if we are at work. No one has ever given them any reason to make them suspicious of that, they are just extremely controlling. Another thing that S likes to do is take 1hr+ on company time, to wash their vehicle, or to get fuel, or to go over to the other building (colleagues at other building said they do not see S for the full hour, only that S has popped in and out to grab/drop something off). Time theft. S's boss doesn't see it happening because they are in the corporate office in a bigger city a couple provinces over. S likes to gate-keep information, especially stuff they hear about from higher-up, which would be helpful to know since we deal with them for our projects. S suppresses our learning new/different things, as they don't want us to succeed and stay stuck in the same position for years on end. Colleague E literally was trying to finish up their diploma so they could work in the area that they went to college for, but couldn't get this class as it was no longer offered, and S told them "Can't say I'm too sad about that." There was this one project type that only S knew how to do and just refused to teach us, however when the time came that they were away, there was a request for a rush on that exact project type. So it was only after that, where S finally showed us how to do it.
Now, not to toot my own horn but between me and the others, I am the best employee that S has; I'm actually qualified to be there, I'm incredibly efficient, and always sending in my projects way ahead of schedule, whereas my colleague E sits and chats all day then complains about having so much work to do by mid-afternoon, and gets mad at S for assigning them the work.
My one and only con is that I show up 10 mins late to work (I have the longest commute of 1.5 hrs which includes dropping the kids off at daycare), but I work hard and I make up the late time during my lunch, so one would assume that's fine right? No, because S leaves 20 minutes early for lunch and returns 10 minutes later, so they never notice. Most recently, S took some time off work, and on one of those days, I couldn't make it in because one of my kids was sick, so I told E to let them know. 2 hours later S sends me a message saying they heard I wasn't in, and to let them know next time if I wasn't going to be in while they're away, but why exactly does that matter? They're away from work. Also, S had asked E if I was in. Which seems insulting, why are you asking my colleague if I'm in or not? Just ask me? S said I should have let them know in the first place then none of this would have happened, however I don't see why they're making such a big deal out of it.
S has been treating E like they are the best employee, but has had to clean up after E several times in the last few months. I feel like I'm being forced to play second fiddle to E, who isn't even actually qualified to be working in this position (hello nepotism). I'm growing increasingly frustrated and I don't know what to do. My only other options for work closer to home is admin/reception type of stuff, which I don't really want to do as it'd be a pretty big pay cut. I would save on fuel and maintenance costs I suppose, but I don't know if it'd be enough.

I came across a post where OP was asking why they see so many kids with college degree lost. The post had over 490 responses however I could not add mine as commenting was turned off. So I decided to create a small post in hopes that I can show my perspective.
Here is my understanding of what's happening. The world our parents lived in no longer exists. Their life was simpler: you go to school, you go to college, you get a solid job in a big company, and you work there your entire life until you retire. This is how it worked, and this is what our parents taught us. There was stability in day-to-day life and predictability of what would come years ahead. Education was solid, and money was hard-earned but kept its value.
That world is no more.
Today's education is mostly a money grab and brainwashing. The economy is sinking fast, and Covid has disrupted the already fragile economy in many countries, and we will see the ripple effect for years to come.
Companies no longer guarantee any tenure or even stability. Even Fortune 500 giants are laying off their employees in packs.
Everyone I know (myself included) either has a 2nd job and/or side hustle or is actively looking for one. About 2 weeks ago, I ordered food, and the Uber driver delivered it in a shiny new BMW 5 series. That tells you something.
What we live in today is a Gig Economy.
I didn't go to university or even college. My family's financial situation demanded urgent attention, and being the oldest child in a big family (I have 3 siblings), I had to work instead of pursuing higher education.
Nonetheless, today I'm 46, live in Canada (my second immigration), and work full-time as Director of IT in a mid-size retail company.
My salary is a nice number by the old standards, but whatever is left after paying taxes is not enough to support my quite humble lifestyle.
I was taking side jobs in IT on nights and weekends to help pay the bills, sleeping less than 4 hours a day for a while.
This did not make me any richer, just barely kept me afloat.
Finally, I got lucky to come across an opportunity to build a steadily growing passive income. Based on the current trend, my passive income will match my salary in about a year - year and a half. However, when that happens, I doubt I will be able to afford an early retirement, so I will keep going.
So back to your question about a degree - if the profession of your choice does not demand a degree (lawyer, doctor, etc.), probably this will not be a smart investment of your time and money, in my opinion.
Better to use it to build your own business, especially if it can generate money while you sleep. Everything else is a trap.
Please share your stories and advice on how to stabilize this rocking boat called life.

I have 2 YOE and have been working as a SWE since I graduated from university. 6 months ago I started a remote role at a Dutch fintech company, making around £53k whilst living in an LCOL area in Wales. My monthly net pay is around £3.3k and my expenses are around £1.3k, so I have an extremely comfortable and privileged life for someone in their 20s.
Whilst I was at university, I enjoyed the research modules and had a great time during my research project. However, I did not go for a master's or PhD because of the opportunity cost. I planned on working for 1 or 2 years and use that time to figure out if I wanted to go back to university or not. In the meantime, I would find and apply to programmes that were worth the time/money.
Now the opportunity has come, and I have received an offer from the University of Cambridge for the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science. The focus of the course is on AI, ML, and scientific computing, which is similar to what I did during my undergrad but has nothing to do with my current job. I worked very hard to get this offer and thought that when it arrived I would be ecstatic to take it. However, the reality is that I have a million doubts about whether it's a good idea to quit my current job, have no salary for a full year, and pay £17k in tuition fees to go to Cambridge. Fortunately, I have the savings to pay for this and survive a year without getting a postgrad loan.
The pros of taking the offer are

• Incorporating Cambridge into my CV
  
• Have a deeper glance at AI research, which is an interesting field and feels more exciting than regular backend roles.
  
• Networking with interesting people
  
• Enjoying a unique lifetime opportunity that very few people are privileged enough to have.
  

The cons of taking the offer are:

• An opportunity cost of around £43k (tuition + net wages during the course)
  
• Missing on 1YOE
  
• Having to give up a fully remote job that pays well and treats employees very well.
  

I am looking for more experienced advice from folks on whether they would go to Cambridge or not if they were in my shoes. I am especially interested in the following questions:

• Could I realistically expect higher salaries after graduating from Cambridge in sectors such as AI/HFT or even backend in the UK?
  
• Does the Cambridge name play a role in getting FAANG roles in the UK?
  
• How feasible is it to get an MLE role in 2024 with my profile?
  
• Will this master's also be useful for going back to industry, or will it only be valuable if I continue with a PhD?
  

This is quite a transcendental decision, I come from a non-technical family, and I am struggling to find people who can give me advice on this. So if you have taken the time to read my post, I appreciate it.

BEWARE of this partnership! They are currently approaching investors with a prospectus trying to raise $20M for their Saskatchewan revitalization project. They will buy multi unit buildings as well as other properties in poor areas of SK and generate revenue. Kardia is deeply broke (or at least this is what they tell over 100 investors they owe millions of dollars to, past and current employees they owe multiple paychecks to, and any other services they owe money to including lawyers/rent/etc).
Saretzky Holdings Ltd owned by Jennifer and Greg Saretzky does own assets and have a successful albeit smaller property management business. They are allowing Kardia to use their financials to appear to be a healthy company to rope investors in further. This allows them to share in the profits of this massive project despite their awareness of Kardia not paying security deposits back to their tenants, letting them live without heat, letting them live in absurd conditions.
Kardia is also using “exclusive contracts for sale” in their pitch saying they own the rights to buy x number of properties for this project. In these contracts they’re supposed to be paying owners their costs to hold the property ie mortgage and property tax. Kardia is in arrears for these holding costs to nearly every single owner but collect rent from their tenants. Employees Syed Warsi, Zienab Hamdan, Andrea Jones, and Katelin Friesen are actively involved in perpetuating this scam.
This is a scam through and through; Kardia and it’s directors Carolin Gallardo , Christan Hiscock , Michael T. hamdar are under investigation by the Alberta Securities Commission for the millions overdue and this latest pitch for money is likely to continue the cycle of starting to pay the bare minimum if anything at all to past investors to allow themselves to continue to operate. They have already tried sending payout statements to select investors only and for the wrong amounts. Shame on Saretzky Holdings Ltd for being complicit. I expect next year the ASC will be knocking on their door.

I am here for phase 2 of the thesis. Let's take a step back.
I came here initially for a short squeeze (I mean fuck, look at my username), as the 99% majority here did - which was fraudulently stopped.
3 years later, we are still here with the continued prospect - but no guarantee - of a short squeeze after reading hours of DD, DRSing, knowing the sideway charts guy, the german guy, the ape historian, going through tons of lows, highs, fuckery, illegal crime, MSM headlines and a million other things.
We had a solid ramp up after a long while, cryptic tweets from RoaringKitty and eventual confirmation that he had bought a fucking shit load of 120k call options that he personally believe would be ITM @ $20< by June 21. I mean, you don't buy options to lose money.
It felt like 2021 again, and everyone - or at least I - felt the fucking adrenaline in my veins.
Was this it?
Let's go over some facts first; no emotions.
Note where the word board is used as opposed to RC, as there is a difference between them.

1. The board is not RC, and RC is not the board. There are only a handful of decisions that RC can make on his own.
2. It seems that the board has stopped yet another gamma ramp last minute.
3. The board has done a dilution twice - with the second dilution being a very specific close number to the number we have DRSd.
4. The board has seemingly said a big 'fuck you' to the thesis of DRS locking up the shares. Dilution is not good for a short squeeze, and factually harms DRS's efforts. It is up to you, as an individual investor, to re-evaluate the DRS thesis and see if it is still applicable for your investment.
5. The board would be aiming for around a war chest of $4,000,000,000, increasing the share's intrinsic floor. This is good for all stockholders.
6. We do not know why the board timed it at the current point in time.
7. We do not know why the board is aiming to raise more money, but the money in one way or another would be used for GameStop so this is good for the company.
8. The board could have delayed the dilution, but didn't - we do not know why.
9. We do know that what the board done has done would not be beneficial for a short squeeze, at least in the short term. There is no need to call anyone a sh*ll for that, or brainwash yourself into it.
10. RC is a billionaire already, yes, but in terms of proportions - he has a significant amount of skin in the game.

RC has signed up to do all he can to ultimate drive long-term stockholder value creation.
The board has also signed up to do all they can for long-term stockholder value creation (though they have less skin in the game).
Nor RC or the board have signed up to do all they can for a short squeeze, which would also not align with fundamentals, for the stock of a company they are running.
Read those lines again.
RC and the board were never here to give you a short squeeze. If anything, that harms the stock long term as the increased volatility keeps out institutional investors. Just because me (and you?) initially bought GME for a squeeze does not mean that we have the right to hold the board accountable to creating the conditions for a short squeeze.
We are at a cross roads:

1. Individuals that are here purely for a short squeeze, with no interest in the company fundamentals or the long-term plan of the company: paid by HFs to share negative sentiment, a newbie or an OG ape who is letting negativity get to them, there seems to be a lot of this sentiment.
2. Individuals that were here for a short squeeze / have had prior holdings, and now see better fundamentals for the stock as a potential lighter for a short squeeze - but if that doesn't happen, they are investing for a promised turnaround of the company. A turnaround because even GameStop themselves understand that the world is changing; their reports show that the company's leadership is not oblivious.

If you are in the first camp, let me put your mind at ease - the board will not go out of their way to give you a short squeeze. You will also not get rich in the next 5 days. Factually, from what the chart shows, a short squeeze was 'done' in 2021 and a future prospect of it has been diminished by further dilution. Continue your investment at your own risk, sell the stock, or even short the stock. You can stop reading.
If you are in the second camp like me and RK, then ignore all the noise and reaffirm why you are invested in GameStop.
The core short thesis still applies, but in a smaller capacity. The thesis was betting on a weak leadership with no money and no turnaround plans.
We have strong leadership, 1B$+ and vague turnaround plans - this is why the market can continue to short GameStop. They are betting on the plans failing How do we get better plans? More money. Money drives everything and is what provides the management board with air cover.
I agree with what RK said in his stream:

1. 'There is no real game-plan'. The game plan is to be determined by the board, not by me, you or RK.
2. 'Ryan Cohen and his crew are what folks should be focused on' - all eyes now on the board.
3. 'I believe this guy' (Ryan Cohen) - me too.
4. 'Now it’s all about the transformation'
5. 'The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence'
6. “You could lose it all... you could lose everything.” - Do I deem it likely? No if you've been averaging down. Should you invest 90% of your income into GME when you have 3 kids? I personally wouldn't. Have I got 90% of my expendable income in GME? Yes. Is that my choice? Yes.

The high-level short thesis went out the door with the first billion, yes - GameStop is not going to go bankrupt today, tomorrow, next year or even for the next 5. But the board must continue to work on the long thesis.
A company can be unprofitable even with no shorts.
I want my money in a company that not only shorts are scared to short, but that also attracts investors that care about its longterm growth and go long on it.
Could the board give us more updates? Yeah, I think they could.
Do I think they're not giving us updates because they don't know how to? No.
Do I think they're not giving us updates because they don't have plans? No.
Why are they not giving us any updates yet? The board knows.
Do I trust the board? Yes.
Why?
Answer lies in the 2024 Proxy Statement: We strongly encourage stockholders to read the “Compensation Discussion and Analysis,” the compensation tables and the accompanying narrative disclosures in this Proxy Statement which discuss in greater detail the compensation of our executive officers, the Company’s compensation philosophy and the factors that the Compensation Committee considered in making compensation decisions.
Did you read it?
In 2021, we redesigned our compensation program to ensure that the program is aligned with long-term stockholder value creation*.*
Compensation awards should be based on the fundamental principle of aligning the long-term interests of our employees with those of our stockholders.
To the extent the Company succeeds in achieving our business strategy, our executives will be rewarded through stock price appreciation; however, failure to achieve our strategy and deliver sustainable stockholder value creation will lead to an erosion of realized pay to our executives.
Mr. Cohen has declined a base salary. Mr. Cohen has declined all forms of cash bonuses. Mr. Cohen has declined all forms of equity compensation. Mr. Cohen therefore only benefits to the extent his existing investment in the Company appreciates and is therefore uniquely situated to drive stockholder value. No awards were granted to Mr. Cohen... in fiscal 2023.
I continue to have faith in my investment in the stock of a company with:

• a skilled, experience management board whom are compensated when I am also compensated
• billions of dollars available for use by the board
• a board that knows when to take risks and cut losses when the risk does not work out i.e. NFT marketplace
• improving financials year on year, making the right economic decisions in line with industry trends
• current strategic goals that I agree with: Establish Omnichannel Retail Excellence, Achieve Profitability and Leverage Brand Equity to Support Growth
• a president that has the largest stake in the game, prior experience in retail, not afraid to make big changes in the board and has a proven track record of leading change
• a fantastic level of insider stock ownership

I will re-evaluate my investment if:

• the board raises more money and does not provide suitable communication regarding their plans by latest FY25 Annual Report - I will reach out to the secretary if I wish to speak to Ryan Cohen as a shareholder
• RK applies to be on the management board of GameStop
• GameStop fails to demonstrate progress towards a transformation over a <3 year period.

I liked the stock, and now I like the company. It is now on the management board to deliver on their vision of long-term stockholder value creation.
I'm sorry but I, personally, no longer am focusing on a short squeeze as my primary target; the ultimate MOAS is no shorts due to a ever-profitable company that makes any short position in it laughable and any long position in the company a guaranteed given in any decent portfolio. Shorts have not closed and I think the only way they'll close is an irrefutable turnaround of the company.
If you are here just for a squeeze, then yeah - I don't think you'll like the board or the next few years.
I am here for phase 2 of the thesis.
(No financial advice, usual disclaimers etc. etc.)