I love New Vegas, its my favorite game of all time. And it is for a lot of other people too. This unfortunately means that its almost impossible to say anything negative about the game on Reddit without getting massively shat on. The only point you seem to be allowed to criticize is the bugs, which gets rebutted by "but they only had 18 months to make it" or "Bethesda was in charge of QA", as if any of these things excuse it for you as a customer.
So now that the game is 10 years old and most of us have played it tons of times, I thought it would be a good time to make a thread where we can actually criticize this lovely game. I'll start, now bear in mind this is of course all degrees of subjective so don't throw "uR nOT obJEvTiVE" at me just yet:

The bugs has to be meantioned first. The game ran horribly at release and still did for a long time after. Its first many years later with patches and mods that we reached something that can be called mostly stable. I'm playing it right now only with stability mods on and it still crashes about once every 1-2 hours, and its still very buggy and janky.
Caravan, this game's made up card game, is horrible. Firstly its very buggy somehow. I am surprised they couldn't even bug fix a solitaire-like card game, but here we are. Secondly even when it works its not very fun. It takes minimum 3 cards to make a caravan and only one king or jack to ruin it. It means it heavily favors just fucking up your opponent and hope you win the war of card attrition. The game used to be stupidly easy but was then patched so now the AI will spam kings and jacks constantly. After I got the 30 games achievement I dropped it. Lastly the game doesn't do anything with Caravan. There is no quest to become the Mojave champion or such. I get this isn't needed but it would have helped make it interesting. The only other games in the game are casino games which all depends on your luck stat. I would love being able to play high stakes Caravan.
Cut content. Roleplaying is best when you actually have good reason to join both sides. In Fallout New Vegas the NCR gets the majority of the content. If you side with the Legion you can finish all the faction quests in a few hours, meanwhile the NCR has so many quests I always have to check the wiki to remember them all. Its such a shame. It doesn't help that for 3 of the endings you can work with the NCR but only 1 for the Legion. I don't get this when in 2 of those endings you end up double crossing the NCR anyways, why not allow the player to double cross the Legion? The difference being that the NCR will stand down and the Legion will then try to fight you and your army.
Caesar's Legion is weird. I love most of the faction. I love the ideological conflict between a faction trying to redo democracy but running into the same problems with corruption vs a brutal but safe dictatorship. I like talking to everyone and its cool to see how different peoples' options are of the factions. Some just hate the Legion outright because of their massacre. Some see the value of having a safe society, Cass mentions how she considered running her caravan in the Legion instead of the NCR because its safer. Its cool. However I can't get over the fact that this faction is a big ancient Rome LARP. They run around in football gear. Why not just make them look normal, or similar to Romans but not literally Romans. Its such a well crafted faction that gets ruined by this pretty silly design.
Independent is basically the House route but with you instead. You don't get to choose what your plans are other than your interactions with the small factions, which also doesn't feel special. You don't ever get to use your securitrons. It would have been extremely cool to be able to send your army with you to wipe out or subjugate factions instead of just doing the same quest you do if you side with House. Again, you are also forced into a choice between an uneasy alliance with the NCR where you double cross them, or killing both major factions. You can't make it clear to them beforehand that you don't want to be annexed.
The economy is poorly balanced. In Fallout 3 you barely made any money and vendors were just as poor, so it took a long time to accumulate wealth. Most players would just use gear they found instead of paying for it at a store. In Fallout New Vegas you can easily have 5000 caps by the time you reach The Strip. I had twice that when I reached it 2 days ago. Stores have tons of money and are more than willing to buy all your junk. The economy just breaks when vendors are willing to buy all the crap you pick up at such high prices as NV has. I think you can get them to buy for 90% of their value, that's fucking insane. I try to not level up barter too quickly as it just makes the game too easy but I also hate crippling myself like this. The game's vendors need to be selective about what they buy and how much they pay for it. You need 2000 caps to inter the strip, that's pretty much nothing. The game even gives you tons of ways around the credit check so clearly they meant for it to be a hurdle.
The map. I'm not saying its bad, but going from Fallout 3 to NV makes you miss the feeling of being able to go in any direction and always find something. New Vegas is very railroaded. It has a ton of mountains and invisible walls to make the player go specific places (Edit: a lot of people are citing this one setence and using it to rebut me, guys read the whole damn thing). I can still let myself get lost in Fallout 3, in NV I always know exactly which way I'm supposed to go. The game has no counterpart to F3's Andale or Oasis. There are no small outskirts places for you to discover in some random spot. All the towns are along the main roads, with a handful of cool places that are off the beaten path. I love following the road through Primm->Nipton->Novac->Boulder City->Vegas, its an excellent experience for following the main story and finding a ton of side content, and I love they gave returning players the option to head straight north and try their luck. But when I just want to do some side content I always feel like I have to follow a track. I AM NOT SAYING THE MAP IS BAD. Just that it follows a certain design that some don't like. I like it when I just want to do the main story, its a really nice experience that way. But if you want to just go in any direction like in a Bethesda RPG you will get disappointed. There are tons of invisible walls and mountains in the way. Imagine if you started in Freeside instead and just had to get the cash to get into the strip (more than 2k). Then you can choose to follow the I-88, go towards Jacobstown, Bitter Springs, do stuff in Freeside or the other communities around Vegas. Would be a great alternative start for returning players.

Edit: some extra

Combat is ass to say it bluntly. For some reason people always excuse the poor combat in RPG's because its not the games' focus or because its almost tradition at this point. I don't see why I as a player and paying customer should make excuses for a product I paid for. Its embarrasing how poor the AI is in the game, how poorly combat works and how unbalanced the game is. I can go through a ton of the game with my Couriers Stash 10mm and Vault armor and just blast entire legion or NCR camps, and then suddenly difficulty can turn on a dime and an enemy can kill me in 3-4 hits. Difficulty in RPGs is such an important thing as it directly influences your decisions. In Fallout 1 and 2 I did my best to not bite off more than I could chew. In NV can do pretty much anything other than go to Sloan at the start, which is a part that most have noticed too.
The selection of guns is fine, but not armors. Without ultimate edition you don't get any good early game armor in the game. The only option is leather armor. Mid game you fight to get either power armor or combat armor mk2, and late game is all about Riot Gear from Lonesome Road. They could have made armor interesting by giving it stronger buffs and debuffs. PA and metal armor has a -1 to agility but often +1 to strength. Why not give such traits to all armors and maybe even make it stronger? Too much of the armor is also faction armor which you don't want to be wearing unless you are infiltrating somewhere.
Speech is too much like Fallout 3 and not enough like 1 and 2. In 3 and NV dialogue either ends in a skill check (too often speech) or you having to do a task if you can't pass the check. What's being said is largely unimportant unless it leads to a different outcome. In Fallout 1 and 2 dialogue was much more about reading each option and thinking about how the character you were talking too would react. You often couldn't just [speech] 50 do what I want. NV has a few moments where you actually does have to argue and its some of its strongest parts.
Crafting could have been more. This is more of a "what could have been" argument, but personally I don't see why you shouldn't be able to craft a lot more guns or armors. I don't want Fallout 4's style of somehow being able to craft tons of pre war objects you clearly don't have the tools to make, but just having a good selection of makeshift guns and armors would have made crafting and also survival much better.

These are my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours!

FIRE. What it's like, how to get there.

1What retiring early is like

It's fucking great.
I wake up happy, I do pretty much whatever I want during the day, I go to sleep happy.
I indulge my limited passions and hobbies, I plunge down fascinating rabbit holes of knowledge, I bugger off to places for months at a time (harder with Brexit, you xenophobic malcontents), I spend time with people I want to. I feel smug.
I don't have an alarm waking me up, I don't need to take any shit off anyone, I don't burn 90 mins a day on a loud bus screeching stop announcements at 90db in my ear.
In the summer I sometimes pop over to the local greenery, have a pint and meal, read a book, soak up the sun. Great stuff.
My phone is always on silent. It can wait.
People occasionally ask me “what I do all day”. If your imagination is so limited, living in such an incredible time, with so much at your fingertips, that the question even crosses your mind, then carry on working and bitching about it, you don't know how to be happy.
“Scipio used to say that he was never less idle than when he had nothing to do “ - Cicero, On Duties.

2How to get there

2.1Difficulty modes

2.1.1Easy mode: Get free university education, get a good job, buy a cheap house

Not too difficult if you were born in 1972. Easy mode is now disabled in the UK. Maybe available in foreign versions of the game, such as in Greece or Denmark.

2.1.2Medium mode: Don't have kids

I swear to god, I have been pretty lucky not to accidentally father a crotch goblin, and believe me, little Goocho often vetoed my brain. Use contraceptives. Notice how all the shit hole countries don't give women control over their reproduction.
If I had foolishly crapped out a kid, I would have had to work another 10 years at least I reckon. Ugh.
Borrow kids to play with them, and return when they start crying.

2.1.3Hard mode: Have kids

Look, if you are spending 100k or whatever to raise a kid I don't know what to tell you, at least you got laid eh?
I hope you enjoy working like I didn't. Seriously, if you have a job you like, great stuff, things will be much easier for you. The impetus to leave it won't be so great. The point of all this is to be happy after all!

2.2Control your costs

Filling your house full of nonsense is consumerism at it's worst.
I practice a kind of minimalism. So I don't own a freezer, a cooker or a dish washing machine. Guess what? They will never need repairing or replacing! But I do own an amazing OLED tv, a solid speaker system, loads of films and books. Minimalism is a whole other subject, and attracts the mentally ill who take it to extremes. Spend money on a decent mattress you fools.
Subscriptions are death by a thousand cuts, and will weigh you down. However Netflix and Amazon Prime are great. Shades of grey.
Screw charities, charity workers get paid salaries and you are supposed to give for free? Nope. Begging scum. “it is only the price of a coffee”, bitch please, I pay 10p a cup for my lovely coffee.
Pay your taxes. Don't be a leech on society.
Live in a small house.
Aldi is great.
If you don't get married, you can't get ruinously divorced, .
Insurance is generally a scam, if you are drunkenly fucking up so regularly than you need your phone insured, sort your life out.
You really need that car? Hmmm. If you are driving to the supermarket and paying for the gym, you are an idiot. Those two cancel each other out.
Only unhappy people play the lottery.
Buy a decent phone for £200, pay £5 a month for service. You think iFruit users will look down upon you? Comparison is the thief of joy.
DIY accomplishments are mentally rewarding, great exercise and cheap – or you can throw money at a problem to make it go away, this is the point of money after all, we sell and buy time with it. Before I buy anything big, I ask myself, is this worth x days sitting in an office for?
Spend your money how you like, I am not your mum.
Enjoy what you have.

2.3Plan a little

Write down (don't guess) how much you spend a month over a couple of years.
For investments, assume inflation cancels out general increase in non distributing equity value. This is all a rough guessing game anyway, don't pretend it isn't.
I think there are two ways to look at when you can stop working:

2.3.1Cash drawdown per month until death

If you assume you are going to die around 85 (actuarial tables available online), divide your cash + private pension wealth + state pension amount will pay you until age 85 by the number of months left to live, this tells you how much you can spend a month before you die. Sounds like enough? Investment appreciation means you might have more than that.

2.3.2Cash dividends per month

You have a lumpsum of wealth. Flexible uk pension rules means you no longer need to take the annuity gamble. 4% returns a year seems conservatively doable. Can you live on that? Means you die with a load of cash. Stash it in your silk lined coffin.

2.4Play it safe, but not too safe

Assume laws and taxes will change. Don't count too much on that state pension.
If the NHS falls ill itself, you might need some cash to go private. Good luck getting that hip surgery in the next 12 months post covid!
If the stock market takes a 10% dump, you must still sleep soundly. Don't live too close to the edge.
Assume and hope your parents will spend all their wealth on themselves, having a happy end of life in an old folks home. Points off as a human being for relying on your parent snuffing it for free money.
What if your body conks out and you start shitting yourself and have to pay 4k a month to be served Dickensian gruel in a nursing home? Trust in the societal safety net? Work another 5 years just in case? Keep a cyanide pill by the bed? Sell your house I guess? I'm rolling the dice on this one. Maybe dancing in VR and these 50 degree Victorian terrace stairs will keep me fit (or kill me).

2.5Personal Story

Went to Uni, got a Computering degree, got a job I liked, autistic-ally worked at it, got paid lots of money, bought a house at 26 for 48k, parents threw in 10k to get rid of me, paid off the mortgage in 30 months.
After 8 years in said job, started to dislike it, took 6 months off work. Worked another 2 years before I got made redundant, 15k for doing nothing? Yes please!
Worked about half the time from age 32 to 46 as Contractor scum, in jobs I generally disliked or eventually hated. Had 2-3 years between jobs. Snatching retirement chunks from the future. I figured, why leave retirement until I am too old to enjoy it? Took around 3 months to get a new job each time, I didn't care, I loved not working!
Played casino blackjack for a couple of years for ~8 hours a week, made £12k. Shuffling machines have stopped all that now, was bored of it anyway.
Decided at 40 I had better get a pension, threw money at it when working.
So at 46, when I walked out on the pathetic management at my last gig (FIS Birmingham, you see when you are retired, you really don't have to give a shit!), I had worked for a total of ~15 years, thoroughly enjoyed not working and was sick of working.
At 47 I realised maybe I don't actually need another job? Started paying real attention to my finances.
At 48, I have 110k cash & 140k pension = 250k. 4% a year dividends = 10k a year. I can live happily on that.
£800 a month is enough. I spent £350 a month in December and January, had a great time. Will get a PS5 when available, boiler is bound to break eventually. It all evens out.
My state pension fortells a sickly £117 per week. Meh. Forgive me for not factoring that in too much. Who knows where I will be in 20 years? Hopefully sleeping in late without an alarm clock.

Atlantic City Trip Report 2/4-2/6 (my biggest AC win yet)

MTX - Can We Stop Complaining Please?

Can we please stop complaining about MTX and P2W? Here me out...
Background:
I started playing Dauntless just after Shock Esca dropped and fell in love with it. I worked hard to get all the best gear and cells. I took a lot of crap on here from Vets for running IB builds. I was constantly told to git gud. I started running with a Vet who helped me learn to git gud. I went from all IB builds to running META builds and doing flawless hammer speed runs (some of the videos are floating around here somewhere still). I ended up overly influenced by that Vet and ended up leaving Dauntless the 2nd day of Umbral ESCA. I came back 2 weeks ago and love it!
When we (me, the Vet, and a couple other slayers/content creators) left Dauntless last spring we all hit another cross-play RPG game (I won't name it). Suffice it to say, I blew a ton of real cash on that game. And it was not simply for skins, emotes, flairs, etc.
This game allowed you to have 1 rez pip. You could own multiple, but only 1 could be taken into the battle... and the battle wasn't just 1 monster, it was hundreds before you got to the boss fight. If you tried to solo the level you had one shot! The only way to complete the level was to buy a rez after dying. You could own 20 rez pips in the inventory but you had to buy a new one to use it. The game had literally 50 side merchants, and a damn casino, that you paid real $ to play, in hopes you could unlock the desired cosmetic you wanted (you could not simply buy the cosmetic set you wanted).
You HAD to keep a ton of parts, drops, perks, orbs, shards, gems, meat pieces, spores, fish, etc to give to these side merchants in order to unlock pieces to upgrade your gear. Guess what... you could only hold 50 pieces on you per run... but you could buy 10 more slots for $10 real $. You could transfer it out to locker storage while in the hunt so you could grab more, but even that storage was limited and could be expanded with real $. Simply don't gather so much you say... HA! a single normal hunt awarded 200+ items... then there were event hunts that would give you nearly 500+ items... and if your party was done collecting the boss drops and initiated a new instance, the boss drops were lost because you didn't have the storage space to collect them. So you paid for all the extra in hunt inventory slots and extra locker storage to transfer it to, and you gathered all the parts and pieces to finally level up the sword... oops, you moved them all to the monthly rented locker storage and didn't get them out before your month's rent was up... you guessed it... padlock on your storage... gotta buy another month's rent to get in there and get the parts out.
You also had to buy (with real $) scratch tickets to possibly unlock the cosmetics you wanted. There were 4 different character types, male and female of each, and 4 part sets of armor cosmetics (like Dauntless), but it was no guarantee that you would get all 4 pieces or even your gender. Not only that, you could get no armor from the ticket, just a random fluffy bunny back bling. You might think, just don't buy the tickets. Not so easy. If you wanted to power up your gear and weapons you had to unlock the perks. You could grind for them (much harder than here), or you could buy them in a market from other players. The way to get the money to buy them from other players... you guessed it... gotta sell your scratch it items to another player that wants them to get the in game currency to buy your perks from another player.
The Fashion aspect of Dauntless is amazing... but there is no use for them in the game aside from Fashion. In this other game you could equip skins, load them into your Fashion page, and the other players could award you in game currency for how good you looked. Do you want to change your colors? Had to buy a pass to the salon with real $ to change a single color... one time... Finally leveled up that new weapon or bought a new weapon skin (also not dyable like in Dauntless) and want to make your character match the color scheme... gotta buy a new salon pass... want to change your helmet... salon pass... new boots... salon pass... Just don't participate in the fashion... sure... but lose the in game currency awarded for being a fashionista...
Imagine PHXL selling you your ability to self rez for $2.50 each, charging you $10 to collect 10 essential gear leveling drop parts at a time or lose them (and overloading collectibles with random auto-collect BS pieces)... didn't kill Urska, but broke all his parts? Oh well, you don't get to keep them unless you buy a self rez, clean out your inventory (while he is still trying to kill you again), and gather those parts without getting killed again... Want that +3 cell... you can grind hard for 50 +1 cells that you can't combine into a +3 without bribing the MM with real $ every time you want to level a cell, or buy a scratch it for $10, sell off any random good piece to another slayer, then buy that cell from a different slayer that got lucky on a $10 scratch it... but that cell is 1,000,000,000 protorams... better buy more $10 scratch its to get more fashion parts to sell at 1,000-12,000 protorams each... Imagine not being able to change the colors on your skins without paying real $ to equip skins and dyes you already paid real $ to buy.
That, my friends, is the essence of Pay 2 Play/Pay 2 Win. You COULD NOT level gear and advance without paying real $. Dauntless sells cosmetics. Cosmetics do not influence your gear level, power, perks, cells. Aetherhearts and sparks a grind to get? Could buy them for a little real $? A little P2W??? yeah. But it is far from P2W and forced MTX. PHXL needs $ to pay employees to keep the content coming and fix all the bugs we bitch about all day. Give them their due, quit complaining, equip IB in your builds, dye your skins to your heart's content, grind your gear, git gud, slay Behemoths, ignore META heads, watch videos of Cpt Maelstrom soloing Dauntless Trials in 3 seconds, show off your fashion, and have fun doing it pretty much for free!

Robinhood can be a gambling platform, but it's not and removing it or regulating it will exacerbate the divide between the wealthy and the rest of the U.S.

Hi everyone,
Lately I've been reading and watching on the news about Robinhood and I just wanted to give my two cents as somebody who actually researches Gambling disorder in the United States. My goal in this post is to hopefully encourage people on WSB to become politically active in preventing the regulations or removal of certain aspects that Robinhood allows on its investing platform. First, let me define some terms from the Gambling disorder field:

Gambling- placing something of value on a random outcome in order to achieve a desired result or profit (this last part is added by me as I think it gives a better explanation of why an individual gambles in the first place);
Gambling disorder: A psychological disorder where an individual is unable to control their gambling to the point that they are experiencing consequences from the behavior. The behavior also has to occur without the presence of Mania, other biological co-morbidity, or under the influence of a psychoactive substance.

In this post I will address a few arguments at Robinhood. The first is regarding the "gambling" nature of investment that Robinhood purportedly encourages. The second is that the average investor needs to be "protected" because they lack the information and knowledge to participate on the app.
When I first downloaded Robinhood, I was skeptical at first and proceeded to uninstall and reinstall it multiple times before I deposited $350 to invest in stock. The app provided me a "scratch-off" with my first deposit that rewarded me with my first stock (some medical company). That was the only time that event occurred. If we look at my prior definition of gambling, technically that is not a form of gambling. I placed nothing of value on this random outcome. If the actual act of investing in stock is gambling this leads to an interesting analogy regarding trading platforms, not just Robinhood.
Stocks are the game (roulette, blackjack, craps), Robinhood and trading platforms are the dealers (giving information on the rules of the game and how much it costs to place a bet), and the liberal market is the casino.
In this analogy everybody is in the Casino, and if you don't play the game you stand to lose regardless as your money loses value to inflation. Even worse, if the casino folds the people that didn't cash out or were fully invested in the casino never collapsing (The Great Depression, the recession of 2008 the coronavirus recession) can stand to lose everything even if they didn't participate (regular person that was laid off) or were placing safe bets (ETF's Blue chip stocks etc).
The Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Galvin, is addressing the wrong issue by suing Robinhood. What should be addressed is the reasons that people even participate in Robinhood or in any trading platform. The average individual doesn't understand the market and the United States does not address this ignorance by providing information on how to properly invest for retirement or provide a welfare structure that protects against poverty as individuals become unable to participate fully in the economy due to injury, developmental disability, age, discrimination or lack of access to the "free" market. To claim that people on Robinhood "gamble" for excitement or risk is reductive. People invest their money on Robinhood for the potential accumulate life changing "tendies" that will protect them from the eventuality that they will be unable to participate in the economy and the government will not insulate them from the fiscal impact an individual will (not if) have to deal with in regards rising medical cost for their healthcare and any other services they would require in order to lead a normal life. If William Galvin is actually concerned about the "gamefying" of investment, he should focus on regulating Wall Street and the Banking sector, because last time I checked investors on Robinhood invest with their own money, not the money of other people.
The argument that the average investor isn't informed also leads to more issues that I guarantee the government doesn't want to address or even ask because it would require an expansion of the welfare state and higher taxes on companies and individuals. If the average American is too dumb to invest using Robinhood that what is the solution? The U.S. government has always fought any sort of government guaranteed income or services to insulate an individual against against insolvency from the free market as can be seen by the desire to privatize almost all forms of government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps and Medicaid. This has already occurred with certain programs at the federal level such as HUD which doesn't do anything to help people get affordable housing and the drastic reduction in funding for colleges and universities especially after boomers were done getting their degrees for essentially free.
So lets examine what the average person has to understand in the American economy,

they have to be able to plan and invest for their retirement,
understand loans (including all the fine print such as interest) to pay for college, and purchasing of necessary items for certain areas such as housing or a car;
Navigate a Byzantine like medical industry that can easily bankrupt the average American even with insurance;

So the average American is suppose to navigate all of the aforementioned areas with little to no government assistance. But Robinhood should be regulated, makes sense. Let's not even talk about that most Americans read at about an 8th grade level and have a tough time understanding that a quarter pounder is less than a one third hamburger...
"Why the third pound hamburger failed: One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it. Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray. --Elizabeth Green, NYT Magazine, on losing money by overestimating the American Public Intelligence."
The REAL QUESTION is what responsibility does the government have to insulate the average American from an economy that by its very nature is predatory, especially when the argument set forth by William Galvinson is that the public doesn't understand how to invest on Robinhood. Especially since the government has told the public from day one to take care of themselves as they get older through investing instead of expecting the government to provide assistance. By removing or regulating Robinhood, the fungibility of the average American's dollar will drop in value because they are prevented from another avenue of wealth accumulation, which research shows (at least for those in poverty) they turn to gambling as a means of wealth accumulation because even though the return on a gamble is less it is technically even since their dollar is also worth less.
I think I may have gone on a rant, sorry.
TL; DR,
Please buy me some tendies William Galvin, because I like to be wined and dined before I GET FUCKED!
Robinhood isn't gambling. Robinhood just provides a service to investing on Wall Street, the actual gambling is our devotion to supply side economics which is the original, STONKS ONLY GO UP 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Also, if we are going to start regulating Robinhood because of the actions of a minority (WSB) then we should start regulating other industries that are WAY more predatory and impact a larger amount of the U.S. such as, payday loans, guns, pharma industry, surprise medical bills from emergency rooms, childcare, prison industry, bail industry etc. I bet you the cost to the U.S. economy from those industries is way more than anything Robinhood has done.
Positions: SAVE at 18.45 67 shares; and TQQQ 5 shares at 174.71

Scopely, your frustration mechanics are working old friend

What is wrong with this game? I listed a lot of reasons but if you don't feel like reading just read a few of them and I would have made my point.
TLDR: You are on a journey to finish a task. But you only have a few small drops of resources, while there is an ocean of requirements necessary for the task to be completed. You start to see that the outcome of your task is not worth the hurdles. The journey is no longer fun after you realize that you have been always walking on the same path and are destined to do so forever.
Bottlenecks
LITERALLY everything in this game a bottleneck. Training mats, gold, T4s, orange gear, red star orbs, promo creds, even purple gear lmao basically everything needed to get your toons up to a level beyond the power requirement in 2018 lol. All the reward systems are outdated and basically the same since level 60 was the cap. Why would I ever buy a $100 character if I don't have any resources to upgrade them? It's gotten to a point where even whales have to do diligent resource management. It's absolutely crazy that a whale has to pick and choose who he can take to G15 after spending thousands of dollars. The new raid rewards are also terrible for the amount of effort and resources you need. You get less of everything else then U7.5 except 250 G15 fragments (@30%). Great in 8 days you get a few G15 pieces but you already had you had to invest a mind blowing amount of G15 pieces, T4s, promo creds and other precious resources to get your toons ready.
Gameplay
The main game modes aren't fun at all, more like a chore (except war but that's also becoming pretty much the same matchups all the time at this point and requires a huge time sink). Always the same auto raids, auto blitz, auto RTA...etc. All the new content is basically just a more difficult version of the same boring shit. Raid sliders, the brilliant invention they came up with "the same shit with 100% increase in stats". RTA is a "new" game mode BUT IT SUCKS, you literally play it for 30min a day hoping for it be over as soon as possible, the same feeling you get when you have to clean your gutter. I mean they got feedback that it sucks yet they made their battle pass around it. Where are some fun innovative concepts like 1v1 war or I don't know come up with something.
No investment is being made into this game at all. Where is all this money we are paying for new toons going? I mean really not everything can go into your pocket where is the reinvestment? You're telling me that I have to pay $50-100 per toon each month and I can't even get fucking fun new content? Look at a company in the entertainment space, Netflix charges 8EUR a month and constantly has fresh and exciting new content. Is all this just a cash grab or is there really a long-term future here?
Bugs
There have been so many bugs and they just keep on pilling up. With the crazy expensive premium prices in this game there should be no bugs period. It's like you buy a really new expensive state of the art computer just to find that you have some stupid annoying problem like space and enter buttons not working. It's more the principle that is in question and it really just emphasizes what they do with our money, instead of fixing bugs and hiring better QA people they just put the money in their pocket and release buggy EXPENSIVE products. Also on top of that when it's a bug that benefits us it gets fixed in under 15 minutes, but when its a harmful bug (like the numerous phoenix bugs) they take their time and fix it whenever they want.
Team synergies
There is just so much cookie cutter teams that you need all 5 characters for that specific team to work, which is restrictive and makes the game loose it's potential. It would be so much more fun if you could theory craft and the synergies were more mechanical. Then things would be more interesting and the game would feel less repetitive. It's crazy that you have two different X-men teams and if you were to mix & match them you would get a shit team, which completely goes against the lore. On top of all that you release a game mode RTA, which shows just how bad things get when you go against the cookie cutter business model.
Time-sink
1.5-2h of playing time requirements per day when you have a 6-8h free time day (assuming 16-18h for work and sleep) is a lot of time, end of story.
Red stars
This system sucks plain and simple. Everyone knows it, now content requires 6 rs. Please tell me how can I get 6 rs for good toons when the drop rates are so low (without getting lucky). Exactly the same concept as a casino, where you can spend thousands of dollars and still not get lucky at all. You release 4 toons a month now, and we only get 5 rs a week, even with hoarding you cannot keep up with that. Yet we need at the bare minimum a 4rs just to be competitive.
Conclusion
There are just so many things wrong, each patch gets more and more disappointing. It's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the constant player releases, events, blitz's...etc. The content is just getting more and difficult while the rewards associated with that content are increasingly becoming shit.
I use to spend a lot on the game but now I just don't have the resources to keep up new toons so I don't purchase the offers. Additionally I haven't seen a good offer in ages so I also just stopped purchasing in general. Even during Christmas arguably the happiest time of year, they were greedy beyond belief and the offers were insultingly trash.
My theory is that we are just financing Scopely's debt from the acquisition and whether or not we like the game seems irrelevant. I don't see the long-term strategy here as things stand now, hope that changes in the future. The main reason I am still playing atm is because of the sunk cost fallacy, I know its crap but I just can't imagine wasting all that time and money and then just quitting, feeling that all of it was for nothing.
I know it's a bit of a rant and generally I'm a really positive person but I spent so much time on a once great game just to see it crash in a iceberg with no future ahead makes me angry. I get that everyone has their opinion, that is fair and totally respect that. I think that the game has a lot potential if Scopely starts making better decisions.

Class Trial 66: The Murder of Sonia Nevermind - Part 2: 2ndMIX

What if, like, there was an alternate universe where bears could beat the crap out of chimps?
And it would be, just. Wow. The animal mind is really something else.
A beary good buddy of mine the other day went hunting for elk out in the Pacific Northwest.
Don't know why he couldn't keep a straight face. Might've been the DMT.
Hey, Jamie! Pull that Trial thread up!

Truth Bullets

Monokuma File: Sonia - The victim of this case is Sonia Nevermind. She was found dead at the bottom of the middle of the Three Lakes between the Casino and Hotel Kumasutra. She died during night time. The cause of death is asphyxiation.
Winter Wear: The victim was found wearing generic winter clothes to stay warm such as a jacket, pants, and some gloves. In addition, instead of her trademark neck ribbon, the victim was found wearing a fluffy red neck scarf.
Sonia’s Shoes: Extensive scuffing marks on the back of the victim’s red high heels and tears on the back of her black leggings were discovered.
Sonia’s Scarf: Worn by the victim instead of her trademark neck ribbon. It has been wrapped to cover the victim’s neck. On a free end of the scarf, there is a small hole, and near it are traces of blood.
The Motive: For the first motive of this Killing Semester, Monokuma threatened that if a murder doesn’t happen in the next twenty-four hours, then he will make their parents forget they ever existed.
Emergency HVAC Maintenance: A malfunction in the outdoor HVAC system was detected some time in the afternoon, so Monokuma had to repair it overnight. He announced that temperatures in the Courtyard would drop from the normal 25 C (77 F) to -10 C (14 F) during the night. The system was reactivated to normal operation at 8 AM when Monokuma gave the morning announcement. All indoor areas maintained room temperature overnight. After maintenance, the outdoor temperature returned quickly to normal.
Free Access to the Labs: In the prologue to the Killing Semester, Monophanie announced to the class that all Research Labs at the Academy would be open and its doors kept unlocked 24 hours a day, allowing anyone free access to utilize them.
Wax Residue: Visible traces of black wax were found at the lower-level Plaza next to a bench adjacent to the TV post.
Letter to Gundham: Delivered to Gundham’s dorm room some time yesterday afternoon. It reads: “Gundham, I may have found a way to escape. Do not talk to me today. We are being watched and everyone is potentially dangerous. Meet me at 6:30 AM outside the Dormitory. -Sonia”
Letter to Sonia: Found on the victim’s person during the investigation. It was delivered to Sonia’s dorm room some time yesterday afternoon. It reads: “Sonia, I may have found a way to escape. Do not talk to me today. We are being watched and everyone is potentially dangerous. Meet me at midnight at the Shrine of Judgement at the lower level of the Courtyard. -Gundham”
Gundham’s Account - Sunrise: Gundham claims to have left the Student Dormitory at 6:25 AM this morning to meet with Sonia outside the Dormitory at 6:30.
Gundham’s Account - Sonia’s Corpse: Gundham further claims to have found the victim’s corpse at 7:00 AM lying on top of the middle of the frozen Three Lakes. He claims to have attempted to save her by walking onto the ice to extract her from the frozen lake, but in his attempt fell immediately through the ice and passed out to hypothermia shortly after exiting the lake.
Flattened Patch of Grass: During the investigation just after 9 AM, Gonta, with his extremely sharp vision, noticed that there was a small patch of flattened grass of approximate size 30 centimeters by 15 (12 inches by 6 inches) behind the TV stand at the lower-level Plaza. According to Gonta, taller grasses like those found in the Courtyard when flattened typically do not stand up until twelve hours have passed.
Rantaro’s Account: In the prologue to the Killing Semester, Rantaro went up to the Ultimate Survivor’s Lab in search of dossiers he prepared at an unknown prior time. Upon arrival, he discovered they were missing.
Sonia’s Belongings: Kazuichi was granted permission to search Sonia’s dorm room and her belongings during the investigation. Among other things, he found the last book she was reading, “Spooky People and Spookier Places,” which covers cults, the occult, and serial killers, as well as Sonia’s Monopad, which seems to have been there for some time as it has sunk into the mattress. You can read the book HERE.
Sonia’s Wristwatch - During the investigation, Sonia’s corpse was found wearing the watch on her left wrist. The watch seems to have been broken at some point: its hands are stuck, and turning the crown on the left side no longer changes the time. Monokuma assures the watch kept an accurate track of time up until it was broken. A visual is available in the Truth Bullet Supplements. .
Sonia’s Wristwatch Supplement - The watch is made by TIMELY, a Novoselic-based watchmaker. It is a simple yet expensive and luxurious golden watch with white clock hands and a rose-pink dial.
An Account of Wax Dolls: During Daily Life, Angie, Gonta, Kaede, Mahiru, Maki, Makoto, Rantaro, and Sayaka discovered lifelike wax doubles of each student hidden away in the Art Room closet. Knowledge of their existence was kept to themselves.
Hagakure’s Account: In his “deep memory clairvoyance,” Hagakure remembered that all watches made in Novoselic, in compliance with international standards, are by law required to place their crowns to the right side of the watch face.

Truth Bullet Supplements

* Click HERE to access all available and relevant Trial supplements, including visual aids.

Cast - Main Course

roflcopterpilotx as Endymion, Monokuma^UTC-5
mechamaru as The Legend of Max, The Monokubs^UTC-8
brooklyndis as Candy(Star), Mahiru Koizumi^UTC-5
Chespineapple as Monkey Business, Byakuya Togami^UTC+0
DestinyShiva as Butterfly, Komaru Naegi^UTC+0
Duodude55 as Hopeful, Makoto Naegi^UTC-5
Hearter20 as Ubertreffen, Kaede Akamatsu^UTC+0
JustADramadog as Bamboo Sword Girl, Peko Pekoyama^UTC-4
lappy-486 as Wild Side, Gonta Gokuhara^UTC-5
Makosear as Trigger, Maki Harukawa^UTC-3
Panos0502 as Riot of Color, Angie Yonaga^UTC+2
PeanutPiano as The History of the Future, Yasuhiro Hagakure^UTC-8
Pikmaster5 as The Light, Sayaka Maizono^UTC+11
spaghettiyo as Cartoon Heroes (Speedy Mix), Shuichi Saihara^UTC-8
staplemage as Horatio, Rantaro Amami^UTC-8
TheIdiotNinja as PARANOiA Hades, Gundham Tanaka^UTC+1
thejofy as Across World, Kokichi Ouma^UTC-5
tyboy618 as Toy Box Factory, Kazuichi Souda^UTC-5

Reserve Course

TheCatMinister as Ibuki Mioda^UTC-3
Nakama_witnesser as Hiyoko Saionji^UTC+8
Bossobee143 as Tenko Chabashira^UTC-5
RSLee2 as Nagito Komaeda^UTC-7
dukedice as Kaito Momota^UTC-6

You all are doing a good job so far playing with the evidence. Keep doing that.

Craps in Michigan

My 1 Year Anniversary of Full Time Day Trading. 3 Years In The Business. What I Wish I Could Tell Myself Years Ago.

This industry has a lack of transparency so I'm more than happy to say I will provide lots of that throughout this post with screenshots. There are LOTS of imgur links to back what I say so it's not just words on a post expecting you to just believe what I'm typing.
This post I suppose is "Part 2" my post back in April, "After 2 years of Daytrading. 7 months full time. Here's my advice". I'm doing this to update everyone who came/comes across this in the future. Yes, it is possible. No, it won't be easy. You will pay homage to the rite of passage into this career. I'll also provide some examples of styles of trading so for the newer aspiring traders, there will be some things I rarely see discussed on forums. So here's to 1 year of Full Time Day Trading

TL;DR - You'll become desensitized to trading. Stubborn to other strategies (There are biggebaddemore lucrative strategies. Don't chase them. Why fix what's not broken? I know what works for me and I'm content with it. No strategy is better than another. It's a personal choice. ). Losing individual trades won't faze you, they're inevitable. Profiting certainly feels better. After a while, you won't be as enthralled to trade every morning, it'll become just another part of your day). Trading is just managing your money through a statistic and the medium to execute it is trading on your platform. Think: "If. Then. Because". Your trading plan should be that black and white. Ask "Why" for everything you do and use. If you can't answer it with documented results, drop it.

~~I get a bunch of messages all the time from people asking -~~ . Out of those who follow me and chat me seeking further tips through my previous posts. I'll be answering the FAQ's and addressing things I see frequently in this sub as far as trading axioms
Disclaimer: I won't sugarcoat anything. I'll share my experiences and add pieces of advice I'd give to those who are currently experiencing the same thing becoming a full time day trader and what day to day life is like, the occasional distress, (DRAWDOWNS). Some of you follow my Twitter for the past few months where I post my daily watchlists with a snippet that reveals my DayTradingBuyingPower. I do this not to brag but to demonstrate that the account does yield growth, I pay myself, and there are days where the balance does not move because there was no edge. I also do this since nobody else shows their account performance. (Yes. You, Mr. YouTube gurus and wannabe gurus).
We do this for income, the numbers on our accounts are real. Treat it as such. Get your initial capital out of your account THEN try to "Scale your account" with your profits AKA The Market's Money.

I'll go over:
•FAQ's that I get in my inbox (I'm still welcome to further questions if I don't answer here)
•Decision Fatigue (You will experience this)
•The previous year (2019-2020) of ups and downs
•How to use my watchlists that I post on Twitter in the morning to your advantage
•The pivotal moment that changed my trading career (NFLX 10-17-19)
•The road to becoming a full time trader. (It won't be fun unless you're handed the money)
•You'll have a better grasp of my strategy (Between ProTip 4 and 5. ProTip 8.)

There are 10 "ProTips" throughout the post that I wish I could tell myself years back and I'll periodically throw them in here as the post goes on. I make posts long in order to segregate those serious about this business and those who will just become another statistic in the failure rate of this business.

At the end of this post, I'll go over the frequent questions I receive such as: (Answers to FAQ at bottom of post.)

"How do you prepare for a trading day?"
"What would you go back to tell yourself?"
"Books?" (The most abused question, but I get it. I could start a public library with just trading books I bought over the years)
"What is your background?"
"What is a normal day for you?"
"How did you discover your strategy?"
"What did you do/How did you get started?"
"What is your % return?" (Not a fun question since a trading account is not an index or investment account. Intraday traders do not measure performance in %. Most are measured in "R".)
"Is enough to start trading?"
"Why do you need so many monitors"? (This one is rarely asked but I do see it discussed on platforms and people trading on mobile phones love giving flack to anybody who trades on multiple monitors. Hint: Everyone's different. Whatever works for the individual. There are no rules in trading. The only rule is that it works.)

My story:

Background:
I heard about daytrading during the 2008 crash while in high school. We all want to make more while working less. I entertained day trading from time to time but always realized I never had enough money. Horrible mindset because I could have still researched WHILE saving money to put into my trading business.
2015 - I opened my first trading account with Scottrade while in the Marines. Apparently if you have a net worth of over $1,000,000 you can get out early (Biggest rumor ever).
I frivolously bought crap penny stocks. In short - I was a hair away from gambling. What made it NOT gambling was the fact that at least I owned something tangible (Securities of a company) and anything can happen. Buy low sell high was my strategy. Didn't work obviously. No idea what I was doing. I'd buy and hold hoping to wake up to the stock price being way higher and it never happened.

•ProTip #1 : If you hold a trade overnight... It is not daytrading. Stop turning into an investor because you can't admit a minor defeat.

2017 - I started taking this business seriously while working in the oilfield as a Logistics Planner (If you're wondering what company since I am asked this from time to time, Google: "World's largest oilfield services company").
No kids, girlfriend/wife or financial obligations. I worked 10AM - 7PM CST and would trade the open from home for roughly 1 hour. Later I was offered to be a Data Analyst... Only downside was... I couldn't trade since I had to be at work now at 8AM CST during the market open. In the moment of signing the offer letter, I was bummed thinking, "No more trading,"
That wasn't the case though. You can still build your trading business with a 9-5 and while never making one trade. The data is there.

•ProTip #2 : We all see the same data. It's there forever. Many strategies show their edge both live and in hindsight the same. (Especially if you trade patterns). You CAN build your business as a trader without even taking a trade. You CAN build your strategy while working a 9-5. Just because you're not trading, does not mean you can't build your business through research. You won't know how you'll react to the losses but at least you can diagnose the raw data with a large enough sample size for assurance and confidence.

If you have a 9-5 and want to go fulltime into this business. Stay for a bit, save, live so far beneath your means that it is almost miserable, (depending on your expenses, area you live, family etc) and get a few hundred sample sizes of your strategy! And for your PTO/days off... trade the open. I sacrificed my vacation days to trade.
After 2 years in corporate America, eating cheap food, never going out, saving relentlessly, I made the decision to just do it and resigned. I went straight into the ring of fire known as trading. That was on: September 23rd, 2019
"" ^{(Sound familiar?})

When you hear these types of comments.. your response should be: "Nobody put the time I put into this. The 90%+ who fail, don't have it all written out, computerized backtests, manual backtests, statistics, SOP manuals, JUST like the job I have which is a business, I'm just another cog in their wheel. I'll just be wearing all the hats in my trading business. Instead of Oil&Gas, it's just for trading". One thing I see here a lot is people saying to trade X amount of months/years or make X.

•ProTip #3 - Think in man hours, not calendar. Example:
Trader A puts in 1 hour of study/work/research everyday for 1 year. (365 Hours)
Trader B puts in 12 hours of work every day for 4 months. (~1,450 Hours)
Trader A lives in a major city while Trader B lives in the middle of nowhere. (Think cost of living)
2 totally different living expenses and 2 different calibers of dedication. I'd put my money on Trader B because he put in more man hours. (~1,000 more hours on the clock to be more exact).

ProTip #4 - Have a cushion in your account AND your personal bank account. Having a strategy is great but you won't know entirely if you can fulfill and execute your plan until you experience the ups and downs both short and long term. A strategy is constant over long periods of time... there will be days, weeks, and perhaps a month here and there where you aren't making much money. We hear all the time, "Trade like a casino". Casinos don't make money day after day but the odds are in there favor over the long haul.

Month 1 of full time trading was great:
Immediately after going full time, the first month (September 2019 to October 2019), I did super well. Business as usual. No stress. Everything going as planned. No turbulence. At least not like I had ever experienced...

The 2 prerequisites I had before resigning was:

Show consistency in returns. Consistent Sharpe Ratio.
Make a 4 figure trade (I achieved this while short 100 shares on ROKU September 20th, 2019 and even made a victory post if you scroll down my profile's posts.)

First life-changing trading lesson learned as a full time trader:
That money printing spree ended on NFLX October 17th, 2019. Less than 1 month of being a full time trader. Deviating and going against my plan I actually made $500 in a matter of 4 minutes. If you follow my watchlists on Twitter, I always trade with the direction of the gap. If I notate, "Long Watches" that means I will only trade it IF (and only IF) I see a long biased pattern. Likewise I will only be looking to short my "Short Watches". Plenty of times I'll call out a ticker and it immediately goes the other way. No harm no foul because there was no long biased pattern to confirm my thesis.
On 10-17-2019, I went against my plan and it worked.. NFLX gapped up to resistance and I went short when it tanked off of a short pattern.(This is known as fading). The market gave me a free lunch and then some. So now I'm walking on air in my mind:
"I'm an absolute unit"
"I'll do it again and clear another $500 to make it a 4 figure day before 9:30AM Central"
"Should have quit my job way earlier being this good."
Within 30 minutes of the open. I gave all $500 back. Yes I wanted to trade it back. Never have I had the desire to smash anything but I do understand those who do! Yes I stood there and felt like each passing second was wasted opportunity. The next 24 hours were long!

ProTip #5: It's circumstances like that that help you in the long run. FunFact: I never once deviated from my plan since. Not ever again.

"I could have paid for my groceries and electric for the month after 4 minutes of trading if I just took the free pass the market gave me" I felt dumb but in hindsight, I'm glad at what happened. It was this exact instance that married me to my strategy/business plan. The next day and the 7 trading days following. I didn't make 1 profiting trade. My longest ever drawdown - 11 straight trades. While researching I found out this was Decision Fatigue (I'll go over this shortly below)

Put yourself in that situation...
You have bills and your income is strictly trading. I don't care how much a robot you think you are or how strongly you believe in probabilities, when you were in an office less than a month ago making almost 6 figures sitting in an air conditioned office knowing direct deposit is on its way every other Friday no matter how well or poorly you performed at work.. Now you're in the hot seat. Its a bottomless feeling. Now all of your friends and families words are ringing in your head.
But just like a boxing match.. you gotta take a hit to get a hit. Win some, lose some, shake hands and get back to normal life. Water under the bridge.
Mind you:
•No guaranteed direct deposit every 2 weeks.
•No more medical/dental insurance.
•401K retirement is no longer being matched.

11 trades is nothing. You only require ~5.5 trades at 2:1RRR to make it back OR 3.5 trades at 3:1RRR. It's nothing especially in your research because you can easily just scroll a little more and see, "Oh that's just a drawdown. No big deal". How will you react in real time? Will you buckle or choke? But the thing is, I was skipping trades out of fear and JUST so happened to be picking all of the unsuccessful ones. (Decision Fatigue)
Think about those 2 weeks of being in a drawdown. Half of the month. You're not just stagnant, your account is bleeding slowly but surely. Next time you're looking at your spreadsheet/backtest/predictive model/research.. try to put yourself in those days of drawdown. It's not just 11 boxes of red with "-1R" or "Loss" in them. The screenshot above on Imgur is just a recent example.
Think about your daily routine, going to the gym, hanging with friends, grocery shopping, cooking, going to bed, waking up, doing a routine, then losing again.. and again.. and again. Try to think of life during those 300+ hours (Weekends too) of, "I haven't made money. I've lost money. And I still have bills. After paying them, I'll be closer to my set Risk of Ruin".
Here's a lesson you won't learn before going fulltime but I'll do my best to emphasize it here:
Pick a strategy. And stick with it. It can literally be anything. Don't spread yourself thin watching 20+ tickers and be a jack of all patterns/tickers. Be a master of 1 pattern and master of 1 circumstance. There's this real thing called "Decision Fatigue" which explains exactly why what happened.. happened. The article explains that the 2 outcomes of this mental strain known as "Decision Fatigue" is:

Risky Decision-Making
Decision Avoidance

Sound familiar? Does it kind of make sense now? As a new trader you have YouTube, Facebook, StockTwits, Twitter, "gurus", books recommended on Amazon, all throwing their ideas/strategies around, the market has opportunities littered all over.. Decision Fatigue is inevitable for the unprepared. Decision Fatigue happens in every profession. If you mess up at your 9-5, its just a blunder, your paycheck will remain the same. Just a slap on the wrist and move on. With trading, you make a mistake.. it's less food on your table, lights don't stay on, and/or water isn't running. That pressure adds up. No wonder so many fail...
The signs of Decision Fatigue:
•Procrastination.
•Impulsivity.
•Avoidance.
•Indecision.
When you find what clicks with you AND its either statistically or performance proven, have the courage to risk a healthy sum of your capital into it. There are strategies/patterns/styles of trading littered all over the internet:
Very broad example:
"IF circumstance happens THEN "Execution". Stoploss is XYZ. Target is XYZ. BECAUSE over a series of Y trades, I will make $X,XXX.xx".

ProTip #6 : Strategies are all over the internet. It's your account/money, backtest it. People share their strategies here all the time and although I don't agree with them because I know what works for me, it's something to chew off of for you newer traders. YouTube is a harbor with people who give just enough info to figure their style out. You will lose trades. Sit for some screen-time and pay homage to the edge that you discover. All in due time.

Insert key metrics and find correlations. This is how you create checks and balances to create/formulate a black and white trading plan. When I first started doing this, my spreadsheet(s) had so many columns it was annoying and would kill my desire to continue working. You'll find things that are imperative and some that are unimportant. For a lack of more colorful terms: "Throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" Trim the fat. Rinse and repeat.

Here's some things I used to remind myself of and perhaps it'll ring some bells for you:

•Surrender your capital to your edge. If you truly accept the risk and trust your proven edge, losses don't feel like anything nor do profits. Although we're not here to put on losing trades and yes it does feel nice to profit. I still from time to time will excited when I hit target after a series of multiple profiting trades depending on my mood.
•If you're nervous or your heart starts beating quicker when you hear the sound effect of a trade getting entered/filled. Be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you're truly accepting the risk.
•Things you can't take to the bank:

RRR.
Win-Rate
Number of trades.
"This one great trade that I hit target in less than 30 seconds and I got filled better than expected"

All of these are integral metrics. But you're trading to make money. It's up or down, green or red, profit or loss, TRUE or FALSE. So with that said, find what works flawlessly and is easy to follow. Checks and Balances. Then allocate a good sum of risk into it. I read it here all the time, "Don't risk too much" and that's great and true for new traders. But don't sell yourself short. Push yourself over the edge and admit that you know your stuff. Think of Trader A and Trader B. If you've put the time in.. don't sell yourself short. You've built enough courage to learn a business so many fail at. This business has such a negative connotation. But remember that not everybody can handle meritocracies and that's exactly what the market is. Don't try to be the best, just work harder than everyone else and the output of your input will be relative.

ProTip #7: YouTube trading ads from gurus... they're subconsciously making you think you're a novice trader. It's in their marketing. They study marketing psychology. The EASIEST things to sell:

Health
Wealth
Happiness

People that are desperate for those things are the most vulnerable and these ~~"Traders"~~ marketers are fantastic at portraying all 3 of those things at once.

•ProTip #8 (Broken record alert) : Write a business plan. Your strategy shouldn't take longer than 4 sentences to explain to another trader. When you have a plan that's proven through a statistic and WAIT for it to happen, you feel 100X better taking the trade. You don't even care too much when it results in a loss. Because that was your plan, you accept it much better, and you know it was just an expense for a winning trade.

Want my strategy? "I scan for stocks with a market cap of over 250M, 10k shares premarket, gapping to support or resistance, priced over $10, and I look for a pattern biased to the direction of the overnight gap. It isn't rocket science. Check my Twitter, look at the dates I posted, and you'll notice the gist. Yes this is an edge but not the entire edge. How fast can you sift through 15 time frames? How long does it take you to fill out your order ticket? Your Fibonacci time extensions with 5 EMA's and Bollinger Bands aren't helping you. They're lagging. If they work for you, great. In my experience, they hindered my visibility.

Pro Tip #9: Yes statistics are highly applicable to trading. Patterns do work. All patterns do is tell you WHEN to enteexit, and how many shares. Humans will never think differently of money. Be the frontrunner of the market's emotions. Nobody remembers the indecisive leader. Risk taking is a commonality amongst leaders. Trading requires courage and it's O.K. to show a bit of confidence as long as you also have the humility to admit when you're in a bad trade. (Notice how I didn't put, "wrong". You're only "wrong" when you deviate from a proven strategy.)

ProTip #10: Risk management is 24/7. I've never heard anyone mention this but think about it a little bit. Having financial obligations can become stressful regardless of how you earn your income but its far more stressful while running a business. Not just any business, but a business where you can go to work on your A-game, do every single last thing right, trade without emotion etc... and still walk away with less money than what you came to work with. Meanwhile somebody who JUST started trading made a 4 figure profit not knowing what the heck the difference between ETB, HTB, or NTB. Think of it like this, a JV high school baseball player can hit a homerun off of an MLB pitcher once.. but how will he fare at the end of the season? Traders don't predict stock prices, traders predict the outcome over hundreds of trades. People chat me asking what TO do rather than what NOT to do. You don't learn labor intensive jobs or how to fly a plane by what to do.. you learn what NOT to do to stay alive.

That's all I have. Once you have a trading plan underway and you're executing it, you don't have much time when your hobbies are cheap but I still do respond to chats/messages. I do get asked from a previous post when I'll build a website and to answer that: I'm learning how to build a site on rainy days. Can't put a definitive date on it. I will say that its coming, if you don't give up on this business in the next year or so, you'll see it. What I plan on putting on there:

RiskReward Calculators
Position size Calculators
EV Calculator
Dictionary with examples

I just don't want some generic WordPress site. I want my website to be stellar and a great resource for aspiring traders. Something I didn't have learning this business. I want it to be something I'd consider a staple in a trader's resources. Perhaps one day it will be referenced on this sub frequently.
FAQ:

"How do you prepare for a trading day?" I get behind the computer about 20 minutes before the bell. Reason being: "If you study long. You'll study wrong". If the chart isn't grabbing my attention and gets me excited, then I flick to the next ticker. I don't even know the companies I trade half the time nor do I care about a news report some journalist wrote. Also there is no magic news outlet that lets you know about "Major events that affect stock prices". If there was, I wouldn't be here because we're all subscribed to the same edge nor would I be trading my style.
"What would you go back to tell yourself?" Get more data. Save a little more, your hairline and sleep schedule will thank you. Take only perfect trades and don't feel forced to trade. There will be days you don't touch an order ticket. And days where you are busy and have tunnel vision. Next thing you know its time to shut it down for the day.
"Books?" - I try to humble myself when answering this but off the cuff, they're all mediocre. Andrew Aziz's was ok, definitely get it, it's only a few bucks on Kindle. Just don't expect it to give you strategies BUT it will give you ideas. If you're brand new, it is good as it will teach you the common vernacular of a day trader. Mark Douglas was interesting but his YouTube seminar recordings are much better. No book, Facebook group, YouTube channel is going to be the end all be all perfect strategy. Expect losses. Don't be a one hitter quitter after suffering a few tiny losses/paper cuts. Stick to it. Most books will help you familiarize yourself with the common vocabulary amongst traders and will hint ideas. It's your job to formulate the strategy and template for research.
"What is your background?" I was a logistics planner for a major oilfield services company. Later I then became a data/buyer analyst so yes, data analytics/research was a 2nd language for me entering trading. I did have that upper hand and did shave off months if not years for me.
"What is a normal day for you?" I'm always done trading after 10:30AM Central. I will hold onto a trade until right before the bell if it hasn't hit either target or StopLoss by the time I leave the house but it is absolutely closed in entirety by 2:55PM Central. After I trade, I enjoy the day. No I'm not riding around in my Lambos posting IG/Snapchat (I have neither) stories of my profits with my private jet waiting on a runway trying to sell an $7 eBook or a $100 membership (HINT HINT). I grill/cook, read, workout, ride my motorcycle, attack my other sources of income (small businesses I'm building), hit the driving range, shoot guns, etc. I live in Texas. Life is cheap and fun here.
"How did you discover your strategy?" I bought TradeIdeas premium, went through all of their computerized backtesting patterns, tested them. Then did what I mentioned earlier... Tried to find correlations in metrics. It distilled the trades to a strict criteria and here I am. I post on average 4-5 tickers on my watchlist. 7 max. I do not like spreading my attention thin across multiple tickers. I do not recommend buying TradeIdeas, it does have lots of bugs.
"What did you do/How did you get started?" Was a data analyst, was good at research and applied it to trading. My incentive was, "I could have made more money trading rather than sitting in 2+ hours of roundtrip traffic and 9 hours in an office. The data is there. Everybody sees the same charts all over the world. There are ways to make this possible"
"What is your % return?" (Not a fun question since a trading account is not an index or investment account. Intraday traders do not measure performance in %) I trade to make money AND pay myself, so my equity curve will look like a small loss or small gain after I pay myself. % return? I measure my account's performance in Sharpe Ratio and Risk Units. My Sharpe Ratio is ~1.85. While I yield roughly .8 - 1 R per trading day. Some weeks I make 10R. Some weeks I lose 2R. Yeah one week I might make $2,500. But the next week I might lose $300. The following week my strategy will yield $0 and the last week I might make $1,000. Some weeks suck. Some weeks are great. But overall. Just shy of 1R per trading day. Some days I'm super busy taking trade after trade. Some days I'll shut it down after 5 minutes without even filling out an order ticket. Some days I won't even see the open because there is no edge for me.. Keywords... "For me".
"Is enough to start trading?" Depends on where you live. Are you restricted to PDT? If not then how much are you obligated to expenses? I live in Texas. Things are cheap here. If you live in NYC or The Bay Area your expenses will be astronomical compared to mine. A $30,000 account is totally doable for a single Texan with low monthly expenses. Now if you're in California or New York? I'm sure you'll fall below 25k if you have 1 bad month. Also depends on if you have other sources of income or a full/part time job. I encourage every trader and aspiring trader to have multiple sources of income, don't rely solely on trading. Not just for the sake of mitigating pressure but also for sanity. If you have a family to provide for, I don't know what that's like, you never know when Little Johnny is going to randomly pick up Trombone lessons for a school program/play while little Suzie needs transmission work in her car because a simple solenoid went out. $1,700 later.
"Why do you need so many monitors?" I use 3 for trading. The 4th is for music. The other 2 are useless while trading. That's for trading though. When I made the decision to go full time, I knew I was about to go off the chain with research. And sifting between spreadsheets, a platform to see multiple timeframes for a pattern to backtest. My attention span is short, I'll lose my train of thought before I open the other tab to input data. But the main reason was for research. It's such a time saver and is a headache repellant when doing research while everything is laid out in front of you. Now that I have a system. I'll most likely be treating myself to 2 ultrawides for Christmas.

As always, thank you to everybody who takes time out to message me and letting me know some people read these and show appreciation. I would say, "Good luck" but there is no luck in trading. Just statistics. Remember that!
In conclusion: Yes. Full time trading is possible, depending where you live/monthly expenses and obligations. You're more likely to become a profitable trader than a professional athlete. There is a level of uncertainty each day, perhaps each week, doubtful each month, and definitely not each year. If I ever want a raise, I just consult my business plan and financials, then decide if I can handle it mentally. If you have medical issues, get a part time job for the benefits. If you're healthy, just be careful.

All the best!
-CJT2013

The Fall were a group from Manchester founded by the enigmatic Mark E. Smith in 1976, after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. The group would go on to influence many bands over it's 40+ years of existence, such as Pavement and LCD Soundsystem. (Click link for write up on band)

The Fall was founded by one Mark E. Smith back in 1976, after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall (The same gig attended by Ian Curtis and Peter Hook of Joy Division, Morrissey of the Smiths, and Tony Wilson, who founded the highly influential indie label Factory Records. Basically, Mark was at one of the more important gigs of the past 50 years, as this gig inspired all of those previously mentioned to either start bands or get involved in the punk scene, and changing the course of British indie music.). Over their 40+ years of operation, the band had Mark E. Smith at its helm as the sole constant member throughout it's existence. The band would become known for its classic assortment of records, with the tight musicianship by members such as guitarist Craig Scanlon and drummer Karl Burns (shown in the beginning of this clip from MTV's Cutting Edge) and Mark's esoteric lyricism, the witty, while often-times volatile and difficult, personality of Mark E. Smith, and the constant changing lineup of its members as a result of Mark's volatility. They would also remain to be the favorite band of legendary DJ John Peel, with the band holding the record of the most Peel sessions by a band, which is 24 sessions. The Fall would ultimately come to an end with the untimely death of Mark E. Smith in 2018 due to kidney and lung cancer.
The Fall are a significant band in the history of Post Punk, with a wide catalog of music to listen to released throughout the different eras of the band. I have decided to make a write-up going through the many eras of the Fall, while giving some recommendations from each era to start you off.
(1976 - early 1979 - Early Beginnings: The Martin Bramah Era)
during these years, the Fall were just getting their start with their sound. Their early material leans more towards the punk side of the sword rather than the post punk of their later years, but the embryo of the Fall's sound is clearly present. This can possibly be attributed to the guitar style of Martin Bramah in their early releases, which has a high pitched and trebly sound to the guitars. Their first recorded released came on a live album on the last day of operation for the Electric Circus, then they released their debut EP Bingo Master's Breakout then a single called It's The New Thing all in 1978. They finally released their debut album Live at the Witch Trials in March 1979 before Martin Bramah left in April 1979 due to increasing tensions with Mark E. Smith. He would then go on to found a band by the name of Blue Orchids with another former Fall member Una Baines, who he was dating at the time. Martin would prove to not be the only member to leave because of Mark's controlling demeanor in the band's future.
Here's some tracks to introduce you to this era's punky edge:
Last Orders
Bingo Master's Breakout EP (The entire EP's good to check out)
It's The New Thing
Rebellious Jukebox
Futures and Pasts
Mother-Sister
(mid 1979 - 1982 - The First Golden era: the Marc Riley Era)
I'm calling this the Marc Riley era because, even though Marc Riley was a part of the Bramah era, after Martin Bramah left, Riley would become the main guitarist instead of his previous role as bassist. This would open the door for members like Craig Scanlon to join on rhythm guitar and Steve Hanley on bass. This would end up transforming the sound of the band into the post-punk sound most people are familiar with the band. After releasing Rowche Rumble and the album Dragnet in 1979, the band would end up releasing a string of classic singles in 1980, such as Fiery Jack, How I Wrote Elastic Man, and probably their most well-known song, Totally Wired, as well as releasing the great album Grotesque (After the Gramme). 1981 would also prove to be a good year, with the release of the single Lie Dream of a Casino Soul and the 10-inch EP Slates. The band would end up travelling to Iceland for a string of gigs, which would lead to the recording of some songs for probably their best album Hex Enduction Hour, with tracks like Hip Priest and The Classical displaying the Fall's power in full force. The band would also released the album Room To Live and the single Look, Know. However, this year would prove to be the last with Marc Riley on lead guitar. After learning of their chart success in New Zealand (which was about 300 copies sold to get in the top 20), the band travelled there to play a few gigs in Australia and New Zealand. While there, increasing tensions between Smith and Riley came to a head in Australia when Riley punched Smith in the face for slapping the band for dancing to the Clash (yes, really). There is even a television interview where Mark's black eye is visible (even with heavy makeup). This tour would end up being released as a live album by the legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun Records as the album Fall in a Hole in 1983 (Which Smith would eventually threaten legal action for and forced Flying Nun to pay all of the revenue from the record, effectively almost killing Flying Nun in its infancy). Marc would end up being sacked by the end of the year. This left a hole to be filled for the lead guitar role, and that would be filled after a trip to America.
Here's some tracks to check out to introduce you to the classic Fall sound:
Rowche Rumble
How I Wrote Elastic Man
Totally Wired
New Face in Hell
Prole Art Threat
Lie Dream of a Casino Soul
Hip Priest
The Classical (N-Word Warning)
Iceland
Winter
Marquis Cha-Cha
(1983 - 1989 - The Second Golden era: The Brix Smith Era)
The band would soldier on without Marc Riley into 1983, with Craig Scanlon taking his place on lead guitar. This period would lead to the release of singles like The Man Whose Head Expanded and the Kicker Conspiracy EP. During the Fall's first American tour without Marc Riley, Mark E Smith was introduced to Brix Smith after a gig in Chicago in April. Within three months, Brix would move to England and end up marrying Mark. She would eventually join the band in September of that year and would first appear on their album Perverted by Language, albeit with minimal involvement and only appearing on one track. Her introduction to the band would end up bringing a pop sensibility to the band, as she would eventually become a major songwriting contributor along with Mark and she would try and push the Fall into a more commercially viable direction.
This period would lead to some of the band's most critically acclaimed,as well as their most commerically successful, material. early singles like C.R.E.E.P and Oh! Brother in 1984 display the early shift into the pop sphere for the band. The band would also release the album The Wonderful and Frightening World Of in 1984. By 1985, the band were starting to hit their stride in the commercial sphere, with singles like Cruiser's Creek and Couldn't Get Ahead appearing in the singles charts and the great album This Nation's Saving Grace receiving critical acclaim and decent sales. The band would continue to release increasingly pop-oriented records between 1986-1987, with singles like Mr. Pharmacist, Hit the North and Hey! Luciani reaching the lower ends of the charts, There's a Ghost In My House giving the band their highest singles chart peak, and the album Bend Sinister reaching the Top 40. However, 1988 would prove to be a banner year for the band, with the album The Frenz Experiment reaching the top 20, and the single of the Kinks song Victoria also reaching the top 40. However, this era would eventually come to an end in 1989, when Mark E Smith and Brix Smith ended up divorcing and Brix left the band. Her last record in this era would prove to be the album I am Kurious Oranj, a collaboration with the Michael Clark dance group. However, the trajectory that Brix set the band upon would let their success continue into the 90s, With the band eventually reaching their peak in commercial popularity. However, not all good things are meant to last.
Here's some songs to check out to introduce you to this era's pop-leaning sound:
The Man Whose Head Expanded
Kicker Conspiracy
Eat Y'self Fitter
C.R.E.E.P
2 X 4
Cruiser's Creek
No Bulbs
Spoilt Victorian Child
My New House
I am Damo Suzuki
Shoulder Pads #1
Mr. Pharmacist
Hey! Luciani
There's a Ghost in my House
Hit The North
Victoria
Big New Prinz
Dead Beat Descendant
(1990 - 1994 - The Peak, followed by the Fall: The Major Label years)
After Brix left the band, Martin Bramah was brought back into the fold to fill in her place, and would be featured on the album Extricate, which led to songs like Telephone Thing, which shows influence from the Madchester scene of that time period, which included the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, and the love song Bill is Dead, which possibly reflects upon his divorce the previous year. However, Martin Bramah would not be staying for long, as he would end up being kicked out of the band that same year for having a relationship with the keyboardist. This album marked the period when the band would be featured on a major label, with the band being signed to Fontana. The Fall would continue on to have success during this period, with the aforementioned Extricate reaching the top 40, albums like Shift-Work and Code: Selfish reaching the top 30, and singles like White Lightning and Free Range reaching in the single charts, with Free Range being the bands last top 40 single. Their commercial peak would come with the album The Infotainment Scan, which contained a cover of Lost in Music by Sister Sledge, giving the Fall their first and only top 10 hit album. Mark would also be featured on a top 20 single, which was I Want You by the Inspiral Carpets. However, Mark E. Smith's speed and alcohol addiction, which persisted over the previous decade, started to take its toll. The bands fortunes started to dwindle with the album Middle Class Revolt, Which only reach number 48 in the charts, a far cry from their previous Top 10 success. With this album, the Fall would begin to go downhill, both in their commercial performance and their critical stature.
Here's some songs to check out from this banner period for the Fall:
Telephone Thing
I'm Frank
Bill is Dead
Edinburgh Man
Free Range
Lost in Music
Hey! Student
15 Ways
(1995-1998 - The Low Point: The Brownies Years)
By this point, Mark E. Smith begins to go downhill with the previously mentioned drug and alcohol addiction, and its effect on the music shows. Brix Smith returns around this time period and would come back on the album Cerebral Caustic. Even with her involvement in the band, the album got middling reviews and performed worse than Middle Class Revolt. Smith would also dismiss the long time guitarist Craig Scanlon, who had co-written 120 songs with Smith over the previous 16 years. Smith would later say that he regretted this decision. By the time of The Light User Syndrome, Brix had enough of Mark E. Smith's degrading state and behavior due to alcohol abuse, and would leave on the tour supporting this album. This period would be wrought with increasing tensions in the band and financial troubles, which ultimately came to a head on the US tour supporting the album Levitate at an infamous gig at the New York venue Brownies in April of 1998. Smith ended up appearing drunk at the gig, and did everything in his power to make it hard for the band to play. It came to a head when drummer Karl Burns, who returned to the band when Middle Class Revolt was made, ended up shoving Smith for messing with his drum kit. Burns and long-time/essential bassist Steve Hanley would end up leaving the band and never returning. After this gig, the next few years are marked with the band remaining a low profile for the most part, where would eventually return to form by 2003.
Here's some tracks to check out (if you want to) from this era:
Don't Call me Darling
Rainmaster
D.I.Y Meat
The Chiselers
Powder Keg
Masquerade
(1998 - 2002 - Touch Sensitive: The Long Lull)
During this period of the Fall, the band was just starting to be put back together by Mark after the debacle that was the Brownies gig. The band was able to achieve some form of critical favor with their album The Marshall Suite in 1999, with Touch Sensitive being a particular standout on the album and being featured in a Volkswagen commercial. The band would then release their album The Unutterable, which also started to gain the critic's favor back. The next album Are You Are Missing Winner, however, didn't do the band any favors, as it was recorded when the band was tight on funds. It was considered a misstep by the Fall after the acclaim that the last album received. However, this would ultimately lead to the start of a new era of the fall that would effectively renew their relevance as a band in the public's eye.
Here's some tracks to check out from this transitional period of the bands history:
Touch Sensitive
W.B
Sons of Temperance
Dr. Bucks Letter
Bourgeois Town
(2003 - 2009 - A return to grace: The Third Golden Age)
This era of the fall proved to be a rebirthing of the band's relevance and quality, with Mark writing some of the best material the band had in years. This era starts with the album The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click) in 2003, which provided the band with some late era classics, such as Mountain Energei and Theme From Sparta F.C. Around this period, the DJ John Peel, who was one of the band's biggest supporters from the beginning, died of a heart attack, but not before the Fall could release one more Peel session a couple months before his death. The Fall would then release Fall Heads Roll in 2005, which also provided the band with another late-era classic in the form of Blindness. The band would also release albums like Reformation Post TLC and Imperial Wax Solvent within the same period. Imperial Wax Solvent would end up being the first Fall album in 15 years to reach the top 40. This would lead into the final era of the Fall leading up to Mark E. Smith's untimely death.
Here's some tracks to check out from this era:
Mountain Energei
Theme From Sparta F.C.
Blindness
Clasp Hands
Fall Sound
Latchkey Kid
Is This New
Strange Town
(2010 - 2018 - The Witching Hour: The Domino and Cherry Red/final years)
In 2010, the Fall would release Your Future Our Clutter on Domino Records, the same label that releases records by the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, Two bands heavily influenced by the Fall. Mark E. Smith would also end up recording vocals for Glitter Freeze on the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, which was released in 2010. The band would eventually move to Cherry Red records, which would remain the label of the band until its dissolution. On Cherry Red, the Fall would release album such as Ersatz GB, Re-Mit, Sub-Lingual Tablet, and New Facts Emerge. The latter album would prove to be the band's last record. Over this period, Mark began to develop significant health problems, and would eventually be diagnosed with terminal lung and kidney cancer. This is probably due to the fact that Mark E. Smith was a heavy smoker for most of his life, and his previous problems with drugs and alcohol didn't help either. Mark would perform his final gig with the Fall in November of 2017, and would eventually succumb to his illnesses on January 24th, 2018. Mark E. Smith would leave behind a long history of innovation, wit, and volatility and large catalog of great music for others to be inspired by.
Here's some tracks to check out from the final era of the Fall:
Bury Pts. 2 + 4
Nate Will Not Return
Loadstones
Fibre Book Troll
New Facts Emerge
(Final Remarks)
So that's my write-up for the Fall. I discovered this band about 3-4 years ago and I have fallen in love with them ever since, and I just felt like that they deserved some attention. I wrote this post for anyone who may be interested in checking out the band and giving them a place to start from no matter the era. May Mark E. Smith rest in peace, for he wrote "Northern white crap that talks back" and dug repetition.
P.S: For any fans of the fall, what is your favorite album/song by the fall and why?
If you want to, you can come check out my subreddit Collectionhauls, where I've been posting vinyl finds I've had at the flea market, and have been posting music to check out since March. If you want, you can come post something from your collections to show to others. Anyway, goodbye and I hope you enjoyed my post and possibly enjoy the Fall even more.

Jan/3/2021 news: __ Top-10 anti corruption charges of 2020 __ POW & search __ Russian aid __ Refugees return __ Protecting the church __ Artsakh's international recognition __ Oil & gas news __ Chess & soccer events __ Guinness World Record __ Importing more Iranian products __ Syunik borders __

Your 7-minute Sunday report in 1743 words.

10 notable anti-corruption cases in 2020

10) SIS concluded the investigation of former president Serj Sargsyan's alleged embezzlement of ֏500 million in agricultural subsidies in 2013. Serj appeared in court as a defendant in February. The case continues.
9) ex-HHK MP and ex-Soccer Federation Chief Ruben Hayrapetyan (oligarch Nemets Rubo) was charged with large-scale embezzlement. In February, he was charged with embezzling $1.5 million-worth lands belonging to the Soccer Federation. (he was earlier implicated in the case about organizing the kidnapping, extortion, and torturing of a man who allegedly stole from his restaurant)
8) ex-Yerevan Mayor and Transport Minister HHK Gagik Beglaryan was charged with embezzling ֏230 million in state property. He was also interrogated as part of a ֏23 billion embezzlement in the North-South highway construction project. His brother is implicated in a ֏85 million embezzlement case.
7) ex-Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosyan (wanted) and ex Israel Ambassador Armen Smbatyan (paid a bail) are charged with using an offshore scheme to embezzle the state property.
6) Serj Sargsyan's brother Alexander was a defendant in the case of the 14 stolen paintings by Martiros Saryan. Pashinyan announced that Alexander's $30 million bank account was frozen. Alexander agreed to return the funds to state coffers. $26 million was recovered. $7.5 million was recovered as part of Martiros Saryan's painting case. Another $19 million was recovered -- or as he says, "donated" -- for the army modernization.
5) Powerful Churchman Archbishop Kchoyan (Bentley guy) was charged as part of an investigation of the forceful appropriation of another businessman's property by using an offshore firm, which was run by several individuals, including the churchman and allegedly the former Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan. More on that here.
4) Felony case was launched over the purchase of $42 million in weapons that turned out to be dysfunctional. Pashinyan mentioned this on several occasions, blaming the former regime for "wasting resources instead of developing the army." More recently, Pashinyan criticized General Movses "Mosi" Hakobyan, saying the waste took place under his administration.
3) Serj Sargsyan's chief bodyguard Vachagan Ghazaryan and his alleged accomplices had their felony tax-evasion charges dropped after compensating ֏3 billion ($6.3 million) to state coffers.
2) Serj's son-in-law Mikael Minasyan (Povar Ishik) was charged by IRS in March after the "revelation of an unprecedented level of corruption in modern Armenian history". Minasyan is accused of illegal enrichment. The investigation continues. Minasyan is residing in Russia, which won't extradite him due to close connections.
Details on Mishik's case here, here, here, here (laptop recovered with 9000 files), here, here, here, here, maybe here, definitely here, here, here,
1) BHK leader Gagik Tsarukyan was charged with organizing an election fraud during 2017 and financial crimes by his casino Shangri La. The investigation began in late 2019 after a construction firm, with ties to Tsarukyan, paid a bribe to a Yerevan official in an unrelated incident. Tsarukyan likely learned about the pending charges against him and launched a major opposition campaign against Pashinyan, to then frame his charges as "political persecution" for being critical to the government.
https://www.civilnet.am/news/2021/01/03/2020-ի-10-քրեական-գործերը/414983
https://www.evnreport.com/politics/the-political-rise-and-fall-of-tycoon-gagik-tsarukyan

protecting the church from Satanists

Former HHK MPs Shawarmazanov, Vahram Baghdasaryan, Masis Mayor, and their supporters gathered in front of Ejmiatsin cathedral to show support for the church leader Garegin B. The church was lately criticized for being politically-motivated; it has been accused of acting as the former regime's puppet for several years now.
The former MPs condemned the "attacks" and said, "no Satanists can divide our church because it has been our protector for thousands of years."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrnfWxGlguQ , https://youtu.be/Uli2kwKHtTs , https://youtu.be/FrnfWxGlguQ , https://youtu.be/Gy7PqICSYU4

Italian city Osio Sopra officially recognizes Artsakh Republic

grazie
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039469.html

Iranian & Chinese products to replace Turkish

Armenia will import 2250 types of products from Iran instead of Turkey, amid the 6-month ban on Turkish product imports. "This will be a good opportunity for Iranian producers. In the next step, [Armenia] will supply its required raw materials from Iran," said the chief of the Iranian trade agency.
The govt had earlier met Chinese representatives to discuss the replacement of other Turkish items with Chinese ones.
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/167965/Armenia-to-import-2-250-goods-from-Iran-instead-of-Turkey

border "demarcation" process continues in Syunik

The process to install Armenian and Azeri troops continues on the new borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the Syunik province. The border was formerly Syunik (Armenia) - Qashatag (formerly Artsakh).
Syunik's Shurnukh and Vorotan were built on the immediate internationally-recognized border, and some of them were on the Azeri side. As a result, a dozen buildings will go under Azeri control. Shurnukh village mayor complained about losing several houses and Azeris being too close.
Syunik governor said border guards have been installed in areas surrounding Shurnukh. Russian and Armenian guards are placed in certain parts of this 21 km border.
https://factor.am/325886.html

POWs

European Court for Human Rights has approved a petition by Armenia to implement emergency measures to require Azerbaijan to share information about the conditions of 23 POWs.
"So far, such petitions were approved for 80 POWs, 18 of whom have already returned home," said Armenia's representative in Court.
Armenia's HR Ombudsman Tatoyan criticized Aliyev for calling Armenian POW soldiers "terrorists" and for keeping them arrested, which delays the swap process.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039433.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039480.html

New Years Eve memorial concert in Yerablur Pantheon:

https://youtu.be/eDiK0KZRkH4

casualties & search operations

1145 bodies have been found on battlefields since the ceasefire; 10 of them on Saturday. Several crews continue the search in Martuni, Martakert, and Jabrayil regions.
3330 bodies have been found since the beginning of the war. Some of them are yet to be identified. 436 were identified by DNA analysis, 871 are pending. The DNA process is slow so the govt decided to buy the second device.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039447.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039483.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039500.html

Azeri civilian wounded from a landmine explosion

... in the Fizuli region that went under Azeri control during the war. Azeri prosecutors launched an investigation. In turns out, some Azeri civilians visit these areas without allowing the sappers to clear the areas from landmines first. So far, 10 Azeris have died or received injuries from such explosions after the ceasefire.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039473.html

Russian sappers in Artsakh

... have cleared 400 hectares of lands, 151 km of roads, and 617 buildings from 16,000 explosives. Video of URAN vehicle helping sappers to clear land: https://youtu.be/uZOXWsE4Pvw
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039508.html

Russian peacekeepers to live in modular housing

They built the second rapid-deployment modular mini-town in Getavan, after finishing one in Stepanakert earlier. Another one will be built in Berdashen this month. The blocs will house 300 peacekeepers. They will have access to various convenience shops.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039452.html

Russian humanitarian aid in Artsakh

Russia sent 5,000 m² glass for window replacement, 70 tons of metal parts, 34000 bedding items, to Martuni and Martakert cities. Earlier they sent 20 mobile electricity generators to help the areas that were cut off from the main electric grid.
Russian doctors have so far treated 1044 Artsakh residents with various complaints. There are medical teams that travel in rural areas to provide care, including mental health services. The doctors received New Year's gifts from the medical administrator Oleg Bagayev.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039453.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039463.html

more Artsakh refugees return their homes

220 did so on Friday. So far, 47000 residents crossed the Lachin road while returning to their homes.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039462.html

GazProm has extended the gas contract with Armenia

... with the same pricing until 1Q21. More negotiations will take place later.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039439.html

oil, gas, and... crypto mining??

Under the threat of US sanctions, a Norwegian agency will not certify the Russian Nordstream-2 pipeline, which intends to deliver 56 billion (?) cubic meters of gas from Russia to Germany annually. Trump administration has been pushing hard to sell American liquified gas to Europe.
https://sputniknews.com/europe/202101031081638832-norways-dnv-gl-intl-registrar-says-cannot-certify-nord-stream-2-due-to-us-sanctions/
Russia has another new gas pipeline called TurkStream. Its section located in Serbia began operating on Friday. It'll deliver Russian gas to Europe through Turkey. The US said it will impose sanctions in the event TurkStream expands with new pipes in the future.
https://www.azatutyun.am/a/31029599.html , https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/additional-line-to-turkish-stream-would-face-us-sanctions/
Azeri gas pipeline TAP began delivering gas to several cities in Italy. Azeri gas travels through Georgia, Turkey, and Greece. It's co-sponsored by BP.
https://www.azatutyun.am/a/31029406.html
Russian energy giant Gazpromneft built a cryptocurrency mining facility in one of its Siberian oil drilling sites. They will dig gas, burn it, turn into energy, then use it to mine the coins. Good luck competing with your NVIDIA RTX crap (that is if you have one, pleb).
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Russian-Energy-Giant-Mining-Bitcoin-With-Virtually-Free-Energy.html

employee of the month

Italian soccer club Roma's midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan has been declared the best Roman player of December after a voting.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039476.html

chess news

Levon Aronyan (two-times world cup winner) competed in Airthings Masters finale against Teymur Rajabov (current world cup winner). They played two rounds. Rajabov won the tournament.
Aronyan preserves his FIDE ranking. He is the 6th in the world. The leader is Magnus Carlsen.
https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/champions-chess-tour-airthings-masters-2020-prelims/8/1/2 , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039458.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039477.html , https://factor.am/325895.html

world's smallest chess playing just for you

Ara Ghazaryan from Los Angeles built the world's smallest chess and made it into the Guinness World Records book. It's 8x8 millimeter.
"Ara Ghazaryan is an Armenian American artist who uses jewelry to express his art and formerly held this record title. The chess board itself is made from 18 k yellow and white gold with Armenian apricot wood and rests on a frame made of platinum, 18 k yellow gold, rubies, and diamonds. The figures measure in height from 1 mm for the pawns to 2.4 mm for the kings."
Photo: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/78603-smallest-handmade-chess-set
https://factor.am/325695.html

COVID stats

+1088 tested. +229 infected. +14 deaths. +451 healed. 12398 active.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039503.html

COVID hotline

Healthcare Ministry has a new "Coronavirus Hotline" number you can call if you've been diagnozed with COVID and need assistance.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039450.html

HimnaDram.org entertains hundreds of children

The All Armenia Fund has transported 600 Artsakh children and their parents, residing in various provinces of Armenia, to watch performances in Yerevan's Tumanyan Puppet theater. Santa, Dzyunanush, and the Elves surprised the children with gifts in the end. The Foundation will help thousands of children by the end of January.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1039451.html

daily եռուզեռ in Stepanakert's main market

It's bustling again after a temporary pause during the war:
https://youtu.be/gKMSE9Xf2bs?t=5

donations for Artsakh & recovering soldiers

www.1000plus.am (recovering soldiers & their families)
www.HimnaDram.org (for Artsakh & Armenia)
www.ArmeniaFund.org (U.S. tax-deductible)

archive of older posts

Armeniapedia's archive of my daily news threads:
http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/Daily_Anti-Corruption_Reports

disclaimer

All the accused are considered innocent unless proven guilty in the court of law, even if they "sound" guilty.
Edit: corrected typos in church news.

A goodbye letter for the anti-President. Written by Michael D’Antonio.

I thoroughly appreciated reading this opinion piece. So much so that I’ve linked it and am pasting the article here as well.
A goodbye letter for the anti-President
Dear Donald,
When we first met in 2014, I was a year into research for the biography I was writing about you. I knew about your stern father, your exile to military school at a tender age and your tendency to spin dramatic fantasies. I knew that you considered life a battle for survival and humans to be "vicious" by nature.*
In your Trump Tower stronghold, you were attended by aides who looked like soap opera stars and surrounded by ego-boosting emblems: a wall of framed magazine covers, each featuring your face; a boxer's championship belt given to settle a debt; a stack of clippings delivered with a note that read, "Dad, FYI -- All great press. Ivanka." These totems of greatness, which I haven't seen in the quarters of other super-rich Americans, made me think of you as desperately, and perhaps dangerously, insecure.*
In five interviews that lasted about 10 hours total, you would heighten my fear that despite a life spent in unending luxury and privilege, no amount of wealth and power would move you off the life-is-warfare view. Even worse, you told me that you might run for president because Twitter fans said you should (I wasn't surprised by your ambition and, given your celebrity, I thought you might win). Then, as we stood to inspect a framed letter you had received from the disgraced Richard Nixon, you said his only problem was that he had left office for the good of the country. In your view, he should have stayed and fought.
*You ran for president and you won. And as you visited upon the country more pain than Nixon ever did, you fought on. Unrelenting in your aggression, lies and cruelty, you presided over four years of chaos and conflict provoked by your words and deeds. Though impeached, you escaped conviction and stayed in office to redouble your commitment to ego-driven chaos.
As you refused to mount a serious federal response, the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 400,000. Defeated in your bid for reelection, you spun lies that created an alternative reality so powerful that hundreds of your followers formed a mob that carried out a bloody attack on the United States Capitol. Many there intended to overturn the election, which you had repeatedly claimed was invalid due to fraud that in fact had not occurred.*
In the attack, which was televised by news networks and livestreamed on social media, five people -- including one Capitol police officer -- would die. A DC Metro Police officer, who had been Tasered several times, heard one of your followers say, "Kill him with his own gun." Although Congress reconvened after the mob was driven out, you stand disgraced as the only president in US history to be impeached twice, and all I can think is that you had finally made your narcissistic nightmare of a constant battle against vicious enemies come true for us all.
Your dangerous narcissism was not widely noted when I interviewed you, but it seemed, to me, to be the hallmark of your personality. I consulted experts and learned that this grandiosity was likely a defense mechanism against a fear of shame and rejection. I came to believe this fear was installed by your father, who, when you were a child, demanded you be a "killer" and a "king." When you failed to meet his expectations and became a troublemaker, he exiled you to military school, at age 13. Talk about a scarring experience.
The title of my book, "Never Enough," pointed to your endless drive to prove your superiority, which, ironically, led to bankruptcies, divorces and legal defeats. It's likely these failures provoked the same sense of shame and humiliation that you must have felt as a rejected child. You once told me you hated to reflect on the past, but in refusing to do this, you were bound to repeat your mistakes. No matter how much you achieved, it was never enough. And so, you went too far. (For more on this see what your psychologist niece, Mary Trump, wrote in her 2020 book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.")
As President, your weaknesses posed terrible threats to the country. Your many failures at running businesses such as casinos or the airline Trump Shuttle showed that you were not a nimble thinker capable of leading complex operations. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made this glaring incompetence crystal clear -- and despite your efforts to deflect the blame, the country's death toll speaks for itself. More than 400,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States -- more than any other country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Having seen your inability to recognize others as human beings, I have not been shocked by your indifference to the deaths of your fellow citizens. Nor have I been surprised by your encouragement of violence. Violence was what I always expected from your presidency. I just didn't know what form it would take.
The power of your methods was obvious during your 2016 campaign, when you lied in a way that separated your most ardent followers from reality itself. You promoted many of your old conspiracy theories about 9/11 and climate change and added new ones on the fly. (When an attendee asked -- after first stating as fact that Obama was Muslim and not American -- about the wildly untrue idea that Muslims were running secret training camps in the United States to kill people, you refused to shoot down his claims, promising instead to "look at that."
You also whipped people into a frenzy of hatred by describing opponents, critics and the free press as enemies. I recalled reading how your first wife, Ivana, had said you kept a book of Hitler's speeches near your bed. You once corrected a reporter, telling her it was "Mein Kampf" instead (though Marty Davis, who gave Trump the book, told Vanity Fair it was a book of speeches).
For four years in office, you functioned as a kind of anti-President, inflaming rather than calming passions and attacking rather than negotiating, all while demanding adoration from your Cabinet and constant attention from the media. Having ordered aides to think of each day as an episode in a TV show before you even took office, you tried to gin up as much drama as possible.
As President, you used the authority of your office to spread baseless claims about voter fraud, former President Barack Obama and even of a friendship between former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sexual predator who was your Palm Beach neighbor and friend, to name a few. Many of your followers abandoned reason and dove headfirst into the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, which reveres you as a savior and regards the government and much of the news media as evil. Many of those who attacked the Capitol brandished Q symbols along with Trump flags, Jesus banners and the Confederate stars and bars -- a mix of powerful symbols that shows the breadth of your influence.
Before the attack, you were among many who called for a big crowd of protesters to stop the Congress from affirming your election defeat. After your lawyer Rudy Giuliani, your namesake son ginned up the crowd, and they heard you call for them to march on the Capitol.
"You have to show strength," you said, "and you have to be strong." You promised to go with them but chose instead to view the destruction on TV. I wondered if you understood that the violence that unfolded was real, and not something made for television. Did you order Cokes as you watched? Did you eat popcorn?
I can imagine you snacking because you have played with violence, both real and imagined, for so long that you must be inured you to it. It all started back in the 1970s when you began employing armed guards-chauffeurs, for no apparent reason. I think it was because you enjoyed the sense of menace they added to your presence.
During your 2016 campaign one of your security guards roughed-up a picketer outside Trump Tower in New York, while another physically forced reporter Jorge Ramos out of a news conference in 2015. At one rally you told followers, "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them." When a loud protester disrupted one of your other campaign rallies, you said, "I'd like to punch him in the face."
Your tough guy image was embraced by followers who traded memes in which you were drawn to look like a superhero or shown brandishing weapons Rambo-style. Your avatar punched out a figure labeled with the CNN logo. Add this to the bigotry you expressed in words and images, which you shared with millions of people on Twitter, and a combustible mix was created. (Remember posting an image of Hillary Clinton, along with a Star of David set against dollar bills, brandishing her the "most corrupt candidate ever?").
The atmosphere of bigotry you helped create exploded in Charlottesville in 2017 as men chanted "Jews will not replace us" before a White supremacist murdered a counterprotester by running her down with his car.
Heather Heyer was one of the first civilians to die in this charged political context during your presidency. It did not change your behavior. Instead, you declared there were "very fine people on both sides." By delaying your condemnation of her attackers and resisting efforts to remove monuments to those who fought against the United States to preserve slavery, you sent clear signals about your views on race and violence.
With Charlottesville, questions about your bigotry grew louder. You made your stance clear when you reportedly said Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS" (though the White House denied it), and that people were entering the US from "shithole" countries. Add your vicious comments about Black athletes calling out police brutality, your penchant for slamming individual Black women, and your fearmongering about low-income housing, and everyone understood your perspective. Three years into your presidency, 65% of Black Americans said it's "a bad time to be a Black person" in the United States, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos poll.
It would have been bad enough if your bigotry had been confined to words, but you enshrined it in policy by restricting refugees from entering this country. This led to a sharp decline, from about 85,000 refugees admitted to the United States in 2016 to about 12,000 in 2020. If the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" didn't get the message, then they could consider the way you cozied up to strongmen, the likes of which many of them were fleeing. From Kim Jong Un of North Korea to Russian President Vladimir Putin, you showed a consistent admiration for dictators who jail and kill their critics.
Along our border with Mexico, you began separating children from parents who arrived seeking asylum. By May 2019, six children had died in federal custody. In June of that year, Americans were shocked by the photo of a father and child who had drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande. In December, a surveillance video obtained by ProPublica showed a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was left alone in his Border Patrol cell in Texas for hours before he died on the floor, of complications from the flu.
How many minors died in Border Patrol custody during the four years prior to your administration? Zero, per FactCheck.org.
The deaths were just one measure of the suffering your harsh policies inflicted on asylum-seeking families. New data from June 2019 reveals there were around 5,500 known cases of children, from infants to teens, being separated from their parents and placed in facilities ranging from foster family homes to cells made out of chain link fencing.
Amid all this pain, it seemed you still weren't satisfied. You asked about building anti-immigrant moats to be stocked with alligators. You wondered whether soldiers could shoot immigrants who threw rocks. Those ideas were nixed, but the crisis continues. Because of inept recording-keeping, your administration has not been able locate the parents of at least 545 children, according to court documents from last October.
Refugee families, stuck in limbo while waiting for asylum in the United States, are still filling squalid camps on the Mexican side of the border, many of them fearing for their lives -- particularly in the midst of a global pandemic.
You got away with cruelty in part because you conditioned many Americans to believe that brown-skinned, undocumented immigrants constituted a criminal horde that required a draconian response.
You promised to build a "beautiful" concrete border wall along 1,000 miles of the frontier and force Mexico to pay for it.
Only about 452 miles of tall steel fence has been completed as of January 5, 2021, according to a Customs and Border Patrol Report, and instead of the $8 billion you estimated for 1,000 miles, $18 billion dollars have already been devoted to the work because -- surprise! -- Mexico is not paying for it.
Hyping the wall was just one example of the exaggerations, false claims and lies that came out of your mouth in such a torrent it was nearly impossible for anyone to react properly. You combined this strategy with denigrating the media as "enemies of the people" and purveyors of "fake news" with such consistency that facts seemed to lose their power. You added an Orwellian flourish when you said, "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
What has been the effect on journalists? Threats became a part of our daily lives and the lives of our family members. (One of your followers found my wife's business phone number and called to say that he had located our address and to suggest we be careful.) A "press freedom tracker" run by the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation has counted 421 attacks on journalists during your time in office.
Far worse than the impact on journalists is your effect on Americans' ability to agree upon an established set of facts as they consider critical issues. You are not solely to blame for this problem. However, you have both contributed to it and exploited it. You have made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post, which have landed with the authority that comes with the presidential seal.
The easy way out for someone mired in disinformation is to pick a person to believe and go all in. Many of those who doubled down on their support for you found a sense of belonging amid the slogans, regalia and fervent rallies. They felt they were right. Those who disagreed were not fellow citizens but enemies who, some concluded, should be defeated by violent means.
The loyalty of your followers meant that ordinary politicians feared provoking the ire of your base. When it came to light that you were trying to coerce Ukraine's President into helping your reelection effort, you were impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But this fear helped keep the Republican-controlled Senate in line, and you were acquitted. Afterward, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine defended her vote to acquit you, saying you had learned "a big lesson." What you learned, it seemed, was that you could get away with anything. Even before you were elected, you claimed you could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody," and not lose voters.
Shortly after the impeachment trial wrapped up, you proceeded to mislead the American people about the novel coronavirus. You downplayed the dangers of the virus so that the vibrant economy, the main bragging point of your presidency, would continue to hum. In late February, at a White House coronavirus task force briefing, you said "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for." But you told journalist Bob Woodward weeks before that the coronavirus was "more deadly than your -- you know, your, even your strenuous flus." Nevertheless, you declined to organize a true national response and undermined public health officials who urged everyone to wear face masks.
You also held mass rallies where people were infected. On May 8, when the death toll was more than 77,000, you continued this charade, insisting, "This is going to go away without a vaccine." To say that people died as a result of your posture is not mere speculation. Families have told stories of those who followed your lead, got sick and died. Harvard epidemiologists estimate that thousands have died as a result of your example.
Today the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country. The death toll is now roughly equivalent to a 9/11 each day -- but many of your acolytes, even in Congress, still refuse to protect themselves and others with facemasks. Meanwhile, millions are turning to food banks. Mass evictions loom.
When I consider the hungry, the infected, the traumatized and the deceased and hold in my mind the images of the deadly mob at the Capitol, I hear your voice summoning the worst in my fellow citizens. With those words you truly established yourself as the anti-President, a distinction that cancels any claim you might make to the respect normally accorded the office.
When we met you told me to call you "Don," as if we were friends. You also invited me to examine your hair. I didn't do either because I sensed that you wanted to establish a bond that you would eventually try to corrupt. This was confirmed when you hinted that my book could make me rich if I abandoned my professional duty and wrote it to your liking.
Thankfully, enough Americans recognized your immorality and incompetence and lack of human feeling so profound that the suffering and death so much a part of your presidency didn't appear to affect you at all. They chose Joe Biden in November, making you truly accountable for perhaps the first time in your life.
After four years of your chaos, what's left is a wounded country grieving for its dead and for its innocence. But we will recover, and you now face criminal and legal threats in state courts, along with the harsh judgment of history.
As you desperately summon the remains of your following for comfort and fundraising, your disgrace is growing with the mounting evidence that your words motivated the mob that attacked the United States Capitol. This incitement may be the single worst thing a president has ever done, and it will define you for centuries to come.

Lets Talk: The Fall

The Fall was founded by one Mark E. Smith back in 1976, after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall (The same gig attended by Ian Curtis and Peter Hook of Joy Division, Morrissey of the Smiths, and Tony Wilson, who founded the highly influential indie label Factory Records. Basically, Mark was at one of the more important gigs of the past 50 years, as this gig inspired all of those previously mentioned to either start bands or get involved in the punk scene, and changing the course of British indie music.). Over their 40+ years of operation, the band had Mark E. Smith at its helm as the sole constant member throughout it's existence. The band would become known for its classic assortment of records, with the tight musicianship by members such as guitarist Craig Scanlon and drummer Karl Burns (shown in the beginning of this clip from MTV's Cutting Edge) and Mark's esoteric lyricism, the witty, while often-times volatile and difficult, personality of Mark E. Smith, and the constant changing lineup of its members as a result of Mark's volatility. They would also remain to be the favorite band of legendary DJ John Peel, with the band holding the record of the most Peel sessions by a band, which is 24 sessions. The Fall would ultimately come to an end with the untimely death of Mark E. Smith in 2018 due to kidney and lung cancer.
The Fall are a significant band in the history of Post Punk, with a wide catalog of music to listen to released throughout the different eras of the band. I have decided to make a write-up going through the many eras of the Fall, while giving some recommendations from each era to start you off.
(1976 - early 1979 - Early Beginnings: The Martin Bramah Era)
during these years, the Fall were just getting their start with their sound. Their early material leans more towards the punk side of the sword rather than the post punk of their later years, but the embryo of the Fall's sound is clearly present. This can possibly be attributed to the guitar style of Martin Bramah in their early releases, which has a high pitched and trebly sound to the guitars. Their first recorded released came on a live album on the last day of operation for the Electric Circus, then they released their debut EP Bingo Master's Breakout then a single called It's The New Thing all in 1978. They finally released their debut album Live at the Witch Trials in March 1979 before Martin Bramah left in April 1979 due to increasing tensions with Mark E. Smith. He would then go on to found a band by the name of Blue Orchids with another former Fall member Una Baines, who he was dating at the time. Martin would prove to not be the only member to leave because of Mark's controlling demeanor in the band's future.
Here's some tracks to introduce you to this era's punky edge:
Last Orders
Bingo Master's Breakout EP (The entire EP's good to check out)
It's The New Thing
Rebellious Jukebox
Futures and Pasts
Mother-Sister
(mid 1979 - 1982 - The First Golden era: the Marc Riley Era)
I'm calling this the Marc Riley era because, even though Marc Riley was a part of the Bramah era, after Martin Bramah left, Riley would become the main guitarist instead of his previous role as bassist. This would open the door for members like Craig Scanlon to join on rhythm guitar and Steve Hanley on bass. This would end up transforming the sound of the band into the post-punk sound most people are familiar with the band. After releasing Rowche Rumble and the album Dragnet in 1979, the band would end up releasing a string of classic singles in 1980, such as Fiery Jack, How I Wrote Elastic Man, and probably their most well-known song, Totally Wired, as well as releasing the great album Grotesque (After the Gramme). 1981 would also prove to be a good year, with the release of the single Lie Dream of a Casino Soul and the 10-inch EP Slates. The band would end up travelling to Iceland for a string of gigs, which would lead to the recording of some songs for probably their best album Hex Enduction Hour, with tracks like Hip Priest and The Classical displaying the Fall's power in full force. The band would also released the album Room To Live and the single Look, Know. However, this year would prove to be the last with Marc Riley on lead guitar. After learning of their chart success in New Zealand (which was about 300 copies sold to get in the top 20), the band travelled there to play a few gigs in Australia and New Zealand. While there, increasing tensions between Smith and Riley came to a head in Australia when Riley punched Smith in the face for slapping the band for dancing to the Clash (yes, really). There is even a television interview where Mark's black eye is visible (even with heavy makeup). This tour would end up being released as a live album by the legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun Records as the album Fall in a Hole in 1983 (Which Smith would eventually threaten legal action for and forced Flying Nun to pay all of the revenue from the record, effectively almost killing Flying Nun in its infancy). Marc would end up being sacked by the end of the year. This left a hole to be filled for the lead guitar role, and that would be filled after a trip to America.
Here's some tracks to check out to introduce you to the classic Fall sound:
Rowche Rumble
How I Wrote Elastic Man
Totally Wired
New Face in Hell
Prole Art Threat
Lie Dream of a Casino Soul
Hip Priest
The Classical (N-Word Warning)
Iceland
Winter
Marquis Cha-Cha
(1983 - 1989 - The Second Golden era: The Brix Smith Era)
The band would soldier on without Marc Riley into 1983, with Craig Scanlon taking his place on lead guitar. This period would lead to the release of singles like The Man Whose Head Expanded and the Kicker Conspiracy EP. During the Fall's first American tour without Marc Riley, Mark E Smith was introduced to Brix Smith after a gig in Chicago in April. Within three months, Brix would move to England and end up marrying Mark. She would eventually join the band in September of that year and would first appear on their album Perverted by Language, albeit with minimal involvement and only appearing on one track. Her introduction to the band would end up bringing a pop sensibility to the band, as she would eventually become a major songwriting contributor along with Mark and she would try and push the Fall into a more commercially viable direction.
This period would lead to some of the band's most critically acclaimed,as well as their most commerically successful, material. early singles like C.R.E.E.P and Oh! Brother in 1984 display the early shift into the pop sphere for the band. The band would also release the album The Wonderful and Frightening World Of in 1984. By 1985, the band were starting to hit their stride in the commercial sphere, with singles like Cruiser's Creek and Couldn't Get Ahead appearing in the singles charts and the great album This Nation's Saving Grace receiving critical acclaim and decent sales. The band would continue to release increasingly pop-oriented records between 1986-1987, with singles like Mr. Pharmacist, Hit the North and Hey! Luciani reaching the lower ends of the charts, There's a Ghost In My House giving the band their highest singles chart peak, and the album Bend Sinister reaching the Top 40. However, 1988 would prove to be a banner year for the band, with the album The Frenz Experiment reaching the top 20, and the single of the Kinks song Victoria also reaching the top 40. However, this era would eventually come to an end in 1989, when Mark E Smith and Brix Smith ended up divorcing and Brix left the band. Her last record in this era would prove to be the album I am Kurious Oranj, a collaboration with the Michael Clark dance group. However, the trajectory that Brix set the band upon would let their success continue into the 90s, With the band eventually reaching their peak in commercial popularity. However, not all good things are meant to last.
Here's some songs to check out to introduce you to this era's pop-leaning sound:
The Man Whose Head Expanded
Kicker Conspiracy
Eat Y'self Fitter
C.R.E.E.P
2 X 4
Cruiser's Creek
No Bulbs
Spoilt Victorian Child
My New House
I am Damo Suzuki
Shoulder Pads #1
Mr. Pharmacist
Hey! Luciani
There's a Ghost in my House
Hit The North
Victoria
Big New Prinz
Dead Beat Descendant
(1990 - 1994 - The Peak, followed by the Fall: The Major Label years)
After Brix left the band, Martin Bramah was brought back into the fold to fill in her place, and would be featured on the album Extricate, which led to songs like Telephone Thing, which shows influence from the Madchester scene of that time period, which included the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, and the love song Bill is Dead, which possibly reflects upon his divorce the previous year. However, Martin Bramah would not be staying for long, as he would end up being kicked out of the band that same year for having a relationship with the keyboardist. This album marked the period when the band would be featured on a major label, with the band being signed to Fontana. The Fall would continue on to have success during this period, with the aforementioned Extricate reaching the top 40, albums like Shift-Work and Code: Selfish reaching the top 30, and singles like White Lightning and Free Range reaching in the single charts, with Free Range being the bands last top 40 single. Their commercial peak would come with the album The Infotainment Scan, which contained a cover of Lost in Music by Sister Sledge, giving the Fall their first and only top 10 hit album. Mark would also be featured on a top 20 single, which was I Want You by the Inspiral Carpets. However, Mark E. Smith's speed and alcohol addiction, which persisted over the previous decade, started to take its toll. The bands fortunes started to dwindle with the album Middle Class Revolt, Which only reach number 48 in the charts, a far cry from their previous Top 10 success. With this album, the Fall would begin to go downhill, both in their commercial performance and their critical stature.
Here's some songs to check out from this banner period for the Fall:
Telephone Thing
I'm Frank
Bill is Dead
Edinburgh Man
Free Range
Lost in Music
Hey! Student
15 Ways
(1995-1998 - The Low Point: The Brownies Years)
By this point, Mark E. Smith begins to go downhill with the previously mentioned drug and alcohol addiction, and its effect on the music shows. Brix Smith returns around this time period and would come back on the album Cerebral Caustic. Even with her involvement in the band, the album got middling reviews and performed worse than Middle Class Revolt. Smith would also dismiss the long time guitarist Craig Scanlon, who had co-written 120 songs with Smith over the previous 16 years. Smith would later say that he regretted this decision. By the time of The Light User Syndrome, Brix had enough of Mark E. Smith's degrading state and behavior due to alcohol abuse, and would leave on the tour supporting this album. This period would be wrought with increasing tensions in the band and financial troubles, which ultimately came to a head on the US tour supporting the album Levitate at an infamous gig at the New York venue Brownies in April of 1998. Smith ended up appearing drunk at the gig, and did everything in his power to make it hard for the band to play. It came to a head when drummer Karl Burns, who returned to the band when Middle Class Revolt was made, ended up shoving Smith for messing with his drum kit. Burns and long-time/essential bassist Steve Hanley would end up leaving the band and never returning. After this gig, the next few years are marked with the band remaining a low profile for the most part, where would eventually return to form by 2003.
Here's some tracks to check out (if you want to) from this era:
Don't Call me Darling
Rainmaster
D.I.Y Meat
The Chiselers
Powder Keg
Masquerade
(1998 - 2002 - Touch Sensitive: The Long Lull)
During this period of the Fall, the band was just starting to be put back together by Mark after the debacle that was the Brownies gig. The band was able to achieve some form of critical favor with their album The Marshall Suite in 1999, with Touch Sensitive being a particular standout on the album and being featured in a Volkswagen commercial. The band would then release their album The Unutterable, which also started to gain the critic's favor back. The next album Are You Are Missing Winner, however, didn't do the band any favors, as it was recorded when the band was tight on funds. It was considered a misstep by the Fall after the acclaim that the last album received. However, this would ultimately lead to the start of a new era of the fall that would effectively renew their relevance as a band in the public's eye.
Here's some tracks to check out from this transitional period of the bands history:
Touch Sensitive
W.B
Sons of Temperance
Dr. Bucks Letter
Bourgeois Town
(2003 - 2009 - A return to grace: The Third Golden Age)
This era of the fall proved to be a rebirthing of the band's relevance and quality, with Mark writing some of the best material the band had in years. This era starts with the album The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click) in 2003, which provided the band with some late era classics, such as Mountain Energei and Theme From Sparta F.C. Around this period, the DJ John Peel, who was one of the band's biggest supporters from the beginning, died of a heart attack, but not before the Fall could release one more Peel session a couple months before his death. The Fall would then release Fall Heads Roll in 2005, which also provided the band with another late-era classic in the form of Blindness. The band would also release albums like Reformation Post TLC and Imperial Wax Solvent within the same period. Imperial Wax Solvent would end up being the first Fall album in 15 years to reach the top 40. This would lead into the final era of the Fall leading up to Mark E. Smith's untimely death.
Here's some tracks to check out from this era:
Mountain Energei
Theme From Sparta F.C.
Blindness
Clasp Hands
Fall Sound
Latchkey Kid
Is This New
Strange Town
(2010 - 2018 - The Witching Hour: The Domino and Cherry Red/final years)
In 2010, the Fall would release Your Future Our Clutter on Domino Records, the same label that releases records by the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, Two bands heavily influenced by the Fall. Mark E. Smith would also end up recording vocals for Glitter Freeze on the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, which was released in 2010. The band would eventually move to Cherry Red records, which would remain the label of the band until its dissolution. On Cherry Red, the Fall would release album such as Ersatz GB, Re-Mit, Sub-Lingual Tablet, and New Facts Emerge. The latter album would prove to be the band's last record. Over this period, Mark began to develop significant health problems, and would eventually be diagnosed with terminal lung and kidney cancer. This is probably due to the fact that Mark E. Smith was a heavy smoker for most of his life, and his previous problems with drugs and alcohol didn't help either. Mark would perform his final gig with the Fall in November of 2017, and would eventually succumb to his illnesses on January 24th, 2018. Mark E. Smith would leave behind a long history of innovation, wit, and volatility and large catalog of great music for others to be inspired by.
Here's some tracks to check out from the final era of the Fall:
Bury Pts. 2 + 4
Nate Will Not Return
Loadstones
Fibre Book Troll
New Facts Emerge
(Final Remarks)
So that's my write-up for the Fall. I discovered this band about 3-4 years ago and I have fallen in love with them ever since, and I just felt like that they deserved some attention. I wrote this post for anyone who may be interested in checking out the band and giving them a place to start from no matter the era. May Mark E. Smith rest in peace, for he wrote "Northern white crap that talks back" and dug repetition.
I personally believe that the Fall, while revered in Post-Punk circles and UK indie music, I feel that they are still highly underappreciated in popular music. I feel that they should have been on the same level as the Cure or Joy Division in their cultural significance to music in general. However, what we do have from the Fall is great and I can say that I love them dearly.
For any fans of the fall, what is your opinion on the significance of the Fall to popular music? What do you find to be your favorite aspect of the Fall's music?

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