Tax Duo

... through this is a sibling duo, Dario, the brother and visionary... to address these risks from tax and macroeconomic policy to what...

Knobby22 said: The existing tax system is distortionary. I have ... nation is surging because both duo parties are bringing in 600k...

... can find this in Uno-X duo of Fredrik Dversnes (winner of..., so as to provide better tax conditions that would allow the...

..., they'd worked to make it tax free, so he'd be getting... drive. Unfortunately for the horny duo, circumstances forced them to take...

... белого iMac 20" на Core Duo (Early 2006) - их техника... монитора и компа на Core Duo в 2006 году в Москве... белый iMac 20" с возвратом tax free из Финляндии. Так что...

... белого iMac 20" на Core Duo (Early 2006) - их техника... монитора и компа на Core Duo в 2006 году в Москве... белый iMac 20" с возвратом tax free из Финляндии. Так что...

... I'm a cheapass. $128 with tax delivered is a no brainer... just realize this isn't a duo head, which is one of...

... anything worthwhile except siphon my tax dollars to give Armscuck more... thing, though. a: this dynamic duo have filmed just as many ...

... as the 10% Spanish IVA tax which applied throughout the voyage... Trio (strings) and Habit To Duo, both capable of playing any ... adapting appropriately. The Irish folk duo I only heard once (The...

... it was guarded by a duo of garish ghouls. Thankfully, the... only said one word. "Syn…. Tax….." Knowing that going backwards would ...

... report] (derived from profit before tax, excluding finance costs and associate...): Aster Hill is 74% sold, Duo Tower is 39% sold, and...

...: Was having to pay the tax on the VDH studio irksome, ... not asked how much the tax was, so I was shocked ... for a studio (not the duo studios) depending on category and ...

... was clueless about. The mother-daughter duo conversed back and forth throughout... dig in, Frey collected her tax. She took more food than...

... was clueless about. The mother-daughter duo conversed back and forth throughout... dig in, Frey collected her tax. She took more food than...

... pay $15,000 to the Tax grabber Labor Duo so they can let more... and they pay minimum 30% tax which is equal to corporate... tax rate as well as individual marginal tax rate simply because...

... kill them with capital gain tax in new regime where they... will pay minimum 30% tax on the CGT and also... the "death" tax implemented by this two duo !

..., an entire year in a duo studio would cost ~5600pts or ... the most expensive membership for tax purposes. He had no intention ...

... at $0.20/kWh (plus tax) across their entire network. If..., check out how The Electric Duo just crossed Route 66 in...

... at $0.20/kWh (plus tax) across their entire network. If..., check out how The Electric Duo just crossed Route 66 in...

Originally posted by UberTrader: ↑ And then pay 30% tax minimum on capital gain ? The tax this two duo designed to rip off all capital gain cut by 30%..! imagine you invest $10,000 in stock sell for $12,500 and then the government take home $750 from your $2500 capital gain that's Massive out of window !

... restricts. Those first and second tax aprons are dynasty killers ( see... analogs for San Antonio's backcourt duo (and especially not for SGA...

Update to my original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/1tc62yv/kitten_stuck_down_storm_drain_help/ Hi everyone, so sorry for the radio silence yesterday. The day completely got away from us, but I have good news – the kittens were rescued and are safe**.** Below is a recap of how the events transpired. Given how many of you have a vested interest, I thought it appropriate to include as many details as possible. They’re currently with the Humane Society getting checked out. They seem to be in reasonable shape, just understandably shell-shocked, hungry and exhausted. Because we have cat allergies, we unfortunately couldn't keep them ourselves. They are so incredibly adorable and we sincerely hope they find a good home together. It wasn't easy giving them up, but we felt we had given them a second chance at life. I wish I had more photos, as so many of you want to see them and I feel like so many of you have been with us during this journey. Things got hectic during the rescue process and the little ones seemed pretty stressed out, so we let them be. The Humane Society was a little awkward about not letting us take a few final photos before we left. I honestly didn't expect my last post to blow up the way it did. Your advice, your stories, and just the general "hive mind" support helped us triage the situation when we were in need of a lot of ideas quickly. This was a team effort, Reddit. I never thought I’d feel this connected to a bunch of strangers, so thank you. Full story A few weeks ago, we noticed two strays in the yard. We have a bit of a gopher problem, so we figured if we left out some food and water, it was a win-win for everyone. Then, a few days ago, a tiny kitten popped out of the bushes one evening while I was taking out the trash and nearly gave me a heart attack. I had a good laugh, but didn't think more about it. The next day, my wife calls me saying there’s a cat stuck in one of our storm drain pipes. I didn't believe her at first, but then we heard the sad cries coming from the gutter downspouts. After checking our storm drains, we realized that there were two ways the kittens could have entered: a grate at the drain exit (which had popped off) and an opening in our garden (previously unknown) which likely serves as an air intake to promote flow. Both of these entrances have now been gated and secured. The initial photos I shared were of the downspout for the gutters, which I had removed in order to access the pipes below. The gutter pipes have been replaced, so no little kitties will be able to jump down there. We initially cut a towel into thin strips and lowered them into the entry/exits into the drains and threw some cat food down the pipes to attract the cats. That didn't work and we still heard the sad meows (heartbreaking). Yesterday morning, my wife was really worried so she played the sounds of a YouTube video of a mother cat calling her kittens. She received an instant response and looked down the downspout. There it was, a tiny spotted face staring back at her. She screamed for me and for us that was overwhelming, so we decided to kick it into higher gear and get much more aggressive about saving them. We called animal control for help. Sadly, animal control said they don't assist with this sort of thing, so we were on our own. I don’t think they were rude about it, but it felt like our situation was either not their primary focus or much lower in priority compared to other issues they handled. We didn’t want to quit, so I said to my wife, hey let’s post on Reddit while we brainstorm to get some ideas from others and that’s when I encountered r/Cats. Within minutes, people responded and we started looking into everything that was recommended. We decided to start with the least invasive and escalating as needed. The top ideas were: 1) provide a way for the kittens to climb out; 2) call the firefighters; 3) call the plumbers; 4) cut the pipes open. Our local firefighters responded within a few minutes of us calling them. It was a full truck roll and three guys hopped out. They were super kind and I think they helped us calm down quite a bit, as we likely had a lot of frantic energy about us. We tried several ways to locate/drive the kittens out the storm drain exit, but after half an hour or so, they had to leave. I could tell they really wanted to find the kittens, but they also had other people to help. We were so grateful they came. Quite a few Redditors mention calling a plumber. This sounds so obvious in retrospect, but I never thought of this. While we were searching, we noticed AI was recommending Roto-Rooter, who offered free pet rescues. This sounded like just what we needed and I was a little skeptical about it, but we thought, why not give this a shot. We have nothing to lose and really wanted to get those little guys out. We called the 800 number and a lovely woman picked up on the second ring. She calmly took our info and instructed us to wait for a call back. 15 min later, Jeremy, who is a field supervisor in the region, calls us back. He's a self-declared cat lover and already on the way. Both he and his fiance have seen my original post trending on Reddit. He's about an hour away from us, but I swear he was at our door in much less time. I get a new wave of confidence when Jeremy steps up to the task. I give him the run down and just then, we see a small head pop out of the storm drain exit (let’s call this kitten, Princess). Princess ducks back into the pipe and we get there just in time to see a tail disappear. Jeremy races back to his truck to get some gear, yelling “we can do this!” He deploys his digital scope, which has 100ft of line and plans to use its lights to encourage the kittens to reverse out of the tunnel system. I've attached actual video footage from the scope inside the drain line. Unfortunately, I was focused on grabbing Princess at the very end, so I didn't capture any photos. We do have some after action shots of Jeremy consoling a very scared kitten. We thought our job was done. As we clean up, we hear more meows but this time, they are coming from the other side of the drainage system. We start at the very beginning of the pipes with the scope and work our way through. I have some long runs and it's a bit of a network of pipes, so it took some time, but seeing the kitten’s tiny face (let’s call him Mario), beautiful eyes, and pink nose on the scope’s monitor gave us a renewed sense of purpose. We used two different scopes to corral the kitten towards my wife, who was waiting at the drain exit. After a few start/stops, we get the kitten to go down the right tube to the exit. He's a bit of a fighter, so I end up having to reach into the pipes and grabbing him (gently) with my bbq tongs since he keeps retreating. Video footage of the scope in the pipes also included. After settling down the kittens into their own cardboard boxes, we give them some food/water/hugs and we finally take a breather. I've soaked through my shirt and Jeremy's knuckles are bloody from pushing the scope cabling down the pipe. My wife is still in disbelief and all of us are smiling. We are so relieved! Jeremy received a few service calls while he was here, so I could tell he had to move on (but didn’t want to). We tried to compensate him for his time but he flat out refused. I think we had to force him to take a sandwich and drink from our local deli. As he was packing up, he shared a story about a time he couldn't rescue a kitten that had fallen 20 feet vertically into a storm drain, so this felt like redemption to him. We were very moved hearing that this was a win he needed. He certainly made up for it, since we pulled not one, but 2 out of the tunnels. About the cats themselves. We estimate they are around 8 weeks old, based on their size. Princess is much smaller, with light brown spots. She is fairly shy, mews very quietly, and keeps to herself. I suspect the ordeal was likely tougher on her because she's smaller. Mario is gray with tiger stripes. He is much larger, aggressive and loud. I am less worried about him. If we could keep these kittens, we would (I think this is the cat tax people are referring to?). Unfortunately, I am very allergic to cats and our young children show signs of this as well. We were worried about their health, so we dropped them off at the Humane Society to give them the best chance at recovery. We thought it was important for our kids to understand this process, so we picked them up for school and headed to the shelter together to say our goodbyes. The wonderful team there immediately started tending to them and I hope to get an update later today on their status. I am told that kittens who come in as duos at this age “do very well” and are quite popular, so fingers crossed they land in a loving home. Our local shelter explicitly asked us not to share their location, which we have respected. My understanding is they have experienced the good people of the Internet calling to ask about the cats and it overwhelms their systems. As I write this, I’m still a little in disbelief how so many different people responded to my post with great ideas, Jeremy dropping everything to show up at a stranger’s home, and for those little kittens staying resilient. My wife and I were preparing ourselves for a much different ending. I’m so glad this was a happy ending that I didn’t expect and this all provides us with a little much needed nourishment. submitted by /u/belltown99 to r/cats [link] [comments]

I keep reading ... Duo and have no idea what it means submitted by /u/OnlyBook7276 to r/Unstable_Universe [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Berriz_and_Picklz to r/Unstable_Universe [link] [comments]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7204024/2026/04/17/lebron-james-nba-future-retirement-lakers-cavs-warriors/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=twhq&source=twitterhq The hypothetical tour, like so many other things dealing with James, is something people believed he’d want. Just like they believed he’d be unable to meld his style around the Lakers’ guards or stomach the organization prioritizing its future around younger stars. That warmup session in Dallas came shortly after the Lakers played their best basketball since the 2019-20 championship season, a stretch of play that helped stoke James’ passion for winning and repair bridges that had been damaged during his eight years with the Lakers. After months of speculation that the two parties were headed for a divorce, a strong March changed the Lakers’ landscape and, potentially, the future between the organization and player. Winning, sources said, increased the chances of James and the Lakers extending their partnership. Around the league, rumors also persist that one last run in Cleveland, or a superstar Steph Curry-James duo in Golden State, are plausible possibilities as well. Per team sources, the Warriors’ interest in James this summer remains serious. The Cavs, and the prospect of a goodbye tour where James’ journey began, are also still widely seen by rival executives as a legitimate possibility. But in both cases, the luxury tax poses obstacles that likely mean James would have to make major financial concessions to come their way. His decision, whatever it might ultimately be, will undoubtedly have family considerations heavily factored in. And the prospect of relocation that comes with some of these options is nothing to gloss over, with one executive from an interested team sharing that James’ reluctance to leave Los Angeles has been no secret among outside suitors. submitted by /u/jonsnowKITN to r/nba [link] [comments]

My father cracked the SSC CGL in 2017 (Rank ~3000), and I did it in 2025 (Rank ~1000). I wanted to share 2 pieces of advice he gave me. These were the game-changers that helped me crack the exam on my very first attempt. 1. Extreme Focus: While studying, your focus should be entirely on the page in front of you—nothing else. I repeat: nothing else matters except what you are reading in that moment. Matlab "Present-Moment Awareness" 2. Forget the Syllabus: Yes you heard it right! stop obsessing over finishing the 'whole' syllabus. It is far more beneficial to deeply remember what you have actually learned than to rush through everything and forget it all by exam day. Matlab "Retention Over Completion" For example: step 1: I started my Math preparation only a month and a half before the exam. I knew I couldn't finish the full coaching curriculum in time, so I didn't go for it. I chose breadth over depth, opting for a 60-video marathon (youtube) to cover the essentials. Once I committed to that plan, I stopped worrying about the 'missing' parts and focused entirely on mastering what was in those videos. step 2: reverse engineering through high level mocks If you have any other doubts please go through my old comments where i have tried my best to tell you the exact things that helped me. submitted by /u/Spirited-Bike170 to r/SSCCGL [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/bridge_004 to r/Disneyland [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Tasty-Address-1264 to r/Unstable_Universe [link] [comments]

All the lucrative deals have dried up. The final nail was the recent Netflix axe on its partnership with As Ever. The downtrending duo doesn’t appeal to Americans to put it mildly. Their creative output doesn’t attract a wide audience. And her commercial venture is a complete joke with few takers. So just what is their end game now? They know they messed up badly in the UK. And can never fully return again. I believe they understand they will never be brought back into the fold. And so their backup plans and desired financial supports will never involve his family anymore (save for the royal trust funds that Archie and Lilibet likely have). They’re faced with a hard truth. They’re truly on their own and have to hustle their asses off like nobody’s business. And at this stage, I think they’re strictly trying to stay afloat. They know their game is up. They’ve been exposed for the business ejits they are. They have to indiscriminately pick up any old gig along the way that will add some income to their bank account. They’re like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man looking to gobble up crumbs along the way. Their calculus is to do a little better than break even on each grifting event they put on their calendar. If they can net $50,000 for any single event, then count them in. Maybe even $25,000. That might cover a week’s worth of expenses in the House of Pain. In the past, they could sometimes rely on celebrity mogul connections to help set themselves up and pay their way. But by now, I think Tyler Perry and Oprah have their number, are tired of the broken record, and are simply saying “no.” It’s a complete sentence, Harry and Meghan. They couldn’t hack it in the land of opportunity. So, let’s take the grift tour to other shores! Like that’ll make any difference. Instead of moving in prestigious circles and aiming for luxury markets, they chose middling self-help events to sell their snake oil. A “bestie’s girls retreat” and mental health in the workplace conference? Not exactly the premier live events they had hoped. This will end so badly for them because they know not what they speak. They’ve become a living circus sideshow for hire. There’s a rumor going around that Meghan will be paid $1 million for Besties. Don’t believe her PR. The math just ain’t mathin’ if 300 people pay $2,000 USD each. That’s $600,000 total, which have to be divided between the hotel and catering, organizers, other speakers, and event taxes. My guess is that Meghan will get $50,000 plus travel expenses for appearing. That’s it. So just how low will they go? Anywhere, so long as there’s a paycheck. Is this a sustainable career? Stripped down, these are just paid meet-and-greets and conference talks. Infomercials on wheels. And each one with the same old, dusted off message. Word Salads-R-Us. Harry and Meghan telling others how to live their best lives. 😂 It won’t last. Demand for these events will fall, and the payouts will get even smaller. Because they will continue misstep after misstep in each and every country they visit. There are about 200 recognized countries in this world. I suppose they’ll just pack a new bag once they fail another country and take their Griftiques Road Show to one of the 190 other countries for more merching and mooching until there are none left. submitted by /u/Cultural_Ad4935 to r/SaintMeghanMarkle [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Brilliant_Garden_593 to r/minecraftskins [link] [comments]

feel free to use WDHOAPOML :fire: submitted by /u/Brilliant_Garden_593 to r/minecraftskins [link] [comments]

Minutes into his Dallas Mavericks debut, Anthony Davis threw down a thunderous putback dunk and delivered an impromptu proclamation to a fan base in the early stages of the mourning process stemming from the most stunning trade in NBA history. "I'm here!" Davis shouted after strutting toward the sideline, animatedly pointing to the American Airlines Center court. "I'm here!" Then he wasn't. After dominating the first half that afternoon -- when the most prominent story was the large pregame protest by angry fans outside the arena -- Davis went down with an adductor strain midway through the third quarter. That injury sidelined the 10-time All-Star for six weeks and set the tone for his brief stint with the Mavs. Davis, the headliner in the return of the blockbuster deal that shipped beloved face of the franchise Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers months after he led the Mavs to the NBA Finals, ultimately wasn't on that floor very often. Davis played just 29 regular-season games for the Mavs, plus a couple of play-in appearances, due to a series of injuries. The Davis-Kyrie Irving duo that then-Dallas general manager Nico Harrison bet would be the foundation of a championship contender for "three to four years" played less than three quarters together, as Irving suffered a torn ACL in early March and still has no firm timetable for his return to play. Davis' time in Dallas ended with a whimper at this trade deadline. He was dealt to the Washington Wizards in what amounted to a massive salary dump a few months after fan outrage drove team governor Patrick Dumont's decision to fire Harrison. Nothing Dallas' front office, led by co-interim general managers Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi, did at the trade deadline would make the Doncic deal any less of a disaster. The financially motivated move they decided to execute was viewed purely through the prism of teenage phenom Cooper Flagg. The silver lining in the Mavs' misery occurred through sheer luck. A team built to win now failed enough to cash in 1.8% odds of winning the draft lottery, delivering Flagg to Dallas and gifting the franchise another chance to build around a generational prospect. Now the pressure is on the franchise to make smart decisions and not squander the opportunity. "Crystal clear on the intent: It's the Cooper Flagg era, no ifs, ands or buts," a high-ranking team source told ESPN. THE MAVS' RETURN on the Davis trade was essentially nine figures of financial relief and the roster-building flexibility that comes with it, along with some middling draft capital, including Oklahoma City's first-round pick in June's draft and Golden State's top-20-protected pick in 2030. Second-year guard AJ Johnson is the only player the Mavs acquired in the trade who isn't on an expiring contract. Dallas went from having the NBA's fourth-highest payroll to dipping under the luxury tax this season by including guards D'Angelo Russell, Jaden Hardy and Dante Exum in the trade. The franchise went from having an estimated payroll of $326 million, including luxury tax, to approximately half of that. It also gained access to the $15.1 million nontaxpayer midlevel exception and a nearly $21 million trade exception, both of which could help as it looks to build a future around Flagg. "I think we had to take an honest look at ourselves in the mirror and look at where we were and where we wanted to be," Riccardi said after the trade. "Sometimes the path is not straightforward. Sometimes you have to go a little roundabout way to get where you want to go." When Flagg was drafted, he anticipated beginning his career on a playoff team alongside Davis and eventually Irving, both former No. 1 picks and future Hall of Famers. Instead, Davis played only 20 games this season. Irving remains a key part of the Mavs' plans, but it is uncertain if he will play at all this season. The popular opinion of rival executives is that the Mavs, who are seventh in the lottery standings with a 19-34 record, would be wise to put Irving's return on hold until training camp, even if he's cleared to return this season. "It has been different obviously to what I expected, but just doing the best I can," said Flagg, the Rookie of the Year front-runner who is averaging 20.3 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game. "It was tough at first, that much losing. ... Obviously, it still is. I'm a competitor, but I think for me it's just about learning from the losses as much as I can and taking the positives away." The Mavs began exploring trade options for Davis immediately after Harrison was fired in November, when Dallas had a 3-8 record and Davis was recovering from a calf strain. Davis' maximum contract -- which includes a $62.8 million player option for the 2027-28 season -- and his desire for a lucrative extension and durability issues made finding value extremely difficult. Rich Paul, Klutch Sports CEO and Davis' agent, was determined to position his client for another payday when he becomes extension-eligible this summer. He attempted to help the Mavs negotiate deals with the Atlanta Hawks and Toronto Raptors, but the discussions with the Hawks went dormant after Davis suffered ligament damage in his left hand during a Jan. 8 loss to the Utah Jazz, an injury the Mavs announced would be healed by late February. The Mavs would have had to take back significant salary beyond this season in any deal with the Raptors, making Toronto a tough fit as a trade partner. The Mavs negotiated with the Wizards without the knowledge of Davis and Paul, who weren't aware Washington was a serious suitor until the trade was done. Sources said there was some concern from Dumont about how Mavs fans would react to a Davis deal that didn't include premium draft picks or players who fit into the franchise's long-term plans as part of the return. But Flagg's presence and production -- he's on pace to join Doncic, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird as the only rookies to average at least 20 points, six rebounds and four assists per game since the 1976 ABA-NBA merger -- provide hope and some patience. The fan base, by and large, seems willing to buy into building around Flagg. It helped that Flagg was fresh off the highest-scoring three-game span by a teenager in NBA history when the Davis trade was made. "The runway is long," said Mavs coach Jason Kidd, whose input on personnel decisions is valued by Dumont. "He's 19, developing his understanding of the NBA, the schedule, the physicality. His game is very impressive, and now it's for us to find pieces that fit." IT REMAINS TO be determined who, exactly, will be in charge of finding those players to fit around Flagg. Dumont is in the midst of vetting several candidates in a wide-ranging search. That includes internal candidates and multiple executives with proven track records of successfully running a team's basketball operations department, including some who are currently in those roles for other franchises, sources said. There is an expectation Dumont will decide on Harrison's permanent successor after Dallas' season ends. The predraft process will be critical for the 19-34 Mavs, who appear destined to land in the middle of the lottery standings and will also have Oklahoma City's pick, likely the last selection in Round 1. "You take a look at our roster now, we have an unbelievable player in Cooper Flagg," Finley said last week. "It's our job to put the right pieces around him. When you have the draft capital, it gives you the ability to go out and put the proper pieces around him to make our team -- like I keep stressing -- a championship contender." Dallas, however, doesn't have the option of a traditional rebuild during Flagg's early years; This is the final year the team will have control of its own first-round pick while Flagg is on his rookie contract. The picks were part of deals the Mavs made to build around Doncic: Dallas' 2027 pick is protected if it lands in the top two but otherwise is owed to the Charlotte Hornets as part of the P.J. Washington trade. Oklahoma City has swap rights with the Mavs in 2028 from serving as a facilitator in the Daniel Gafford deal in 2024. The 2029 pick the Mavs sent to the Brooklyn Nets in the Irving deal is now property of the Houston Rockets. The San Antonio Spurs have 2030 swap rights with Dallas, acquired for taking on Reggie Bullock Jr.'s expiring contract in a three-way sign-and-trade deal for Grant Williams, whose Dallas tenure was even shorter than Davis'. By coincidence, on the night after the Davis trade, the Mavs got a close-up view of a franchise that has built around a highly anticipated No. 1 overall pick. Due to years of planning -- including an intentional roster teardown to start the rebuilding process -- the Spurs had the luxury of having a surplus of first-round picks before Victor Wembanyama's arrival, giving them options well beyond what is at Dallas' disposal and drastically increasing their flexibility with the trade deadline maneuvering. But the Mavs can mimic the two most important transactions the Spurs made in going from a 22-win team in Wembanyama's rookie year to second place in the West at this point of his third season. Irving's eventual return can be the Mavs' version of the Spurs' trade for former All-Star point guard De'Aaron Fox. The Spurs' struggles a couple of years ago positioned them to draft Stephon Castle with the No. 4 pick, giving San Antonio a co-star on the same timeline as Wembanyama. It's critical that the Mavs find a young talent worthy of pairing with Flagg long-term with their upcoming lottery pick in a draft that is widely considered within the league as loaded with talent at the top. The hardest part of building a contender is finding a legitimate cornerstone. The Mavs lucked into that -- but now some patience will be required. "You can't make everything happen just like this," Wembanyama said, snapping his fingers and speaking from experience. "You have to trust your organization." Source: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/47890796/nba-2026-dallas-mavericks-cooper-flagg-anthony-davis-luka-doncic-lottery-trade submitted by /u/A_MASSIVE_PERVERT to r/nba [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/TheDarkWalker345 to r/Unstable_Universe [link] [comments]

Btw delia submitted by /u/Scared_Operation7476 to r/h3h3productions [link] [comments]

First | Previous | Next Patreon | Official Subreddit | Series Wiki | Royal Road His Eternal Majesty’s Remembrance Path | The Royal Road of Transgracia. The Night Town Bazaar. Local Time 2150 Hours. Emma Merriment. That’s the word. That’s precisely what this whole town exuded. Whereas Elaseer did have its moments of rugged and untempered fantasy — most particularly in commoner town — this tent city was quite literally forged by it. And for good reason too. This… Night Town, as the locals called it, was sort of the best of all worlds when it came to the grittiness of medieval fantasy; both in the gritty and the fantasy. For starters, there wasn’t so much a clear-cut class divide that truly made the Nexus… the Nexus. The whole place was a settlement forged by necessity, its demographics consisted of those without access to the transportium and those who serviced that sort of clientele. This naturally cut nobles from the equation, leading to a rougher, easier-going, looser, and less restrictive sort of atmosphere that was not only contagious, but a breath of fresh air. It felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest and shoulders. It felt like I could finally breathe easier without the constant looming presence of the Academy, and without the constant social pressures of Expectant Decorum tightening its grip around my very being. Indeed, the only divide that existed was the small yet present disparity that existed between the wealth of merchants. But even that wasn’t as pronounced as it was at Elaseer. Sure, there were those with plate armor rubbing shoulders with those wearing worn and faded tunics… but that was about as far as it went. If anything, there seemed to only be one big exception to this rule and that was the grand and imposing tent positioned high at the top of the hill. Other than that? It was just… normalcy, or at least what was close enough to it all around. Something that both I and even Thalmin seemed to appreciate. It gave me the first taste of that authentic Castles and Wyverns campaign that had been lacking for all this time. I took a deep breath as we entered yet another crossroads, poised to go down yet another high street. Thalmin’s eyes were locked to stalls on our left, as all manner of wares — of dubious quality — were being hawked with varying degrees of intensity. “SWORDS SWORDS SWORDS SWORDS! ARMING SWORDS, PARRYING SWORDS, LONGSWORDS, SHORTSWORDS, GREATSWORDS, GREATER SWORDS, LESSER SWORDS, AND ONE-TIME-ENCHANTED SWORDS AVAILABLE NOW FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY!” A particularly excitable kobold yapped and yelled, clanging a tiny sword against a suitably tiny shield, generating a series of shallow yet sharp clangs that rang cacophonously throughout the entire market. This was set in stark contrast to proprietors who took the exact opposite stance to marketing, as a lizardfolk with similar hooded brethren sat ominously behind a dark and dingy stall. “Pssst. Hey. We have… quality artifacts. The good stuff. Not that second-rate junk found in the back alley of a smith.” They somehow whispered out loud enough that we could hear it over the ambiance of the market. I didn’t know how that was possible. Nor did I think it was in any way really doing any favors for their subtlety points. However, what was clear was that their gear was considerably more… ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 250% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS …mana-rich than the ones hawked by the excitable kobold. Thalmin, perhaps noticing my growing interest in these would-be black market arms dealers, quickly pulled up a privacy screen as we walked past them. “The kobold is hawking third-rate throwaway scrap that most enchanters and smithies throw out. Meanwhile, the lizardfolk are probably hawking dead adventurers’ gear or, just as likely, stolen goods purloined from either the storefront or picked from a parked supply crate.” He spoke through a barely concealed grin of giddiness. Something that I couldn’t help but to call him out for. “Excited about the more illicit side of things now, are we, Prince Havenbrock?” I began with a chiding snicker. “You’re not really beating the mercenary allegations here, I must say.” The prince, clearly giving me a pass for that jab in exchange for his earlier torture of my grastronomic shortcomings, simply smiled in response. “All battles start at the procurement table, Emma. And as with war, one must be open to… unconventional tactics, even and perhaps especially when it comes to matters of supply and logistics.” “I take it this isn’t your first rodeo with these grey market types.” I questioned. “How was it you phrased it, Emma?” The lupinor pondered teasingly, tapping his chin with a single clawed finger. “Ah, yes… I can neither confirm nor deny.” He shot back with a toothy snout-to-snout grin. I responded in the only way that was appropriate — by rolling my eyes. Sadly, this didn’t really translate well to, well… any physical cue. So I had no choice but to vocalize it for illustration’s sake. “I’ll have you know that if it wasn’t for the armor, you’d see my eyes rolling to the very back of my head right now.” I responded cheekily. Though the response I got wasn’t at all what I expected, as Thalmin suddenly narrowed his gaze in a bout of suspicion. “So you can roll your eyes… all the way to the back of your head, you say?” He asked with a sudden burst of interest that seemed to come out of nowhere. “Erm, it’s a figure of—” “Blue Knight!” The unmistakable voice crack of a teenage boy pierced sharply through the background noise of the crowd. Soon enough, the pipsqueek of an elf emerged from the bustling foot traffic,his father trailing shortly behind carrying with him a decent amount of supplies on a backpack hooked up to a tumpline. “Fancy seeing you down here!” He beamed, placing both hands by his hips. That comment caught me off guard, as I promptly cocked my head before responding. “Down here? I thought the entire market was more or less the same all the way up?” “Ah! It is! But you see, I’d assumed you high-born folk would’ve retired to the Lord Protector’s—” “Alorant!” His father practically hissed out, causing the teen to freeze in place, and allowing the older elf to take his place in the conversation. “I am incredibly sorry for the bother, Sir Knight.” He dipped his head as far as it could despite the tumpline. “It’s quite alright, Solizia.” I offered kindly. “Your son’s just excited to see something novel for once, I’d imagine. Curiosity’s healthy at this age, you know?” The elf’s eyes narrowed at that statement, in much the same way he’d expressed discomfort at the whole will of the people statement from earlier. “Perhaps it is.” The shorter elf practically glowed at that affirmation, taking it as a win and deciding to test his luck with his next few words. “Father, perhaps we could provide the Blue Knight with a tour of Night Town?” He urged. The next few moments consisted of a tense staredown between a pleading son and an incredibly tired father. Eventually however, the older elf relented, nodding in acquiescence as the elven teen’s excitement reached a fever pitch. What happened next was what I could only describe as organized chaos. Our trip through the markets accelerated wildly with the young elf at the lead as he zig-zagged, ducked, and weaved through the seemingly endless crowds. Elementals sizzled and warbled as he moved past their undulating forms, while avians of all sorts squawked and CAWWED as we pushed our way through into increasingly smaller and smaller alleyways. Here, we were met with stalls barely the width of the people manning them, their wares either small enough to pack onto the small rickety tables in front of them, or their minds clever enough to play the highest stakes game of jenga imaginable — as unmarked and unstandardized boxes of all shapes and sizes were stacked up high into the night sky. This gave this particular section of Night Town a weird box-scraper-like aesthetic, forcing me to wince as I was reminded of the logistical and workplace ethics horror show that was early 21st century shipping. “Spice shop, lantern stand, silverware, and stitched sacks—” The boy gesticulated wildly, pointing at shop after shop that rattled, glowed, and rattled some more to the pattern and tune of a thousand OSHA violations. “Maps, scrolls, bootsoles, bundles of wool, and rope and knife packs.” He prattled on, his eyes meeting not just the storefronts or their proprietors, but their kids too as they watched us while we walked past; most of them too busy working to pay us much mind. Eventually, we came across a small gaggle of these kids who stood at a crossroads, and it was here that I understood just why Alorant had been so insistent on stringing us along. “Ah, why if it isn’t the carter’s boy.” A young brown-furred feline hissed under a menacing breath, taking the charge as she stood firmly in front of her little troupe. “Finally back, eh?” Another elf marched forwards, his hands struggling to re-adjust a pair of hand-me-down pants clearly several sizes too large for him. “I’m assuming Master Solizia of Alamont couldn’t keep up with the whims and desires of his noble calling, hmm?” A smaller lizardfolk hissed, crossing his arms as he did so. “Hmm? Whatever do you mean?” Alorant spoke cheekily, stretching both arms above his head to reinforce the casualness of his rebuttal. “Don’t take us for fools, cartboy. There’s only one reason you’d be showing your sorry face here again, and that’s if you and your father have both finally failed at getting a leg…” The feline slowly trailed off as she finally noticed both Thalmin and I, having not moved since the confrontation began. “... up.” Alorant’s features grew to rival that of Ilunor’s at this point, as he allowed for the silence to speak for itself. “You were saying?” He chided, attempting to egg both the would-be bully and the rest of their group. The brown-furred feline attempted to formulate a response, her eyes darting this way and that, mostly jumping between Thalmin and I. “As you can see… our accomplishments have gone so far that we’ve now expanded into the realm of porters.” Alorant continued, his tone laced with a twinge of ill-gotten pride. The girl’s features grew even more irritated before she simply relented, hissing under her breath as she disengaged and began a subtle and silent retreat. “Mark my words, cartboy, you’ve bitten off far, far more than you can chew.” She shot ominously, turning back to face Alorant in particular. “Those are big words coming from you lot.” Alorant chuffed. “Oh, no. That’s not what I meant at all.” The Baxi continued loftily, turning towards us once more with a wary gaze. “It’s not us you should be worried about.” With that ominous warning, the group of teens left, leaving both Thalmin and I to look both stare expectantly at Alorant. “Listen kid, I get it. You wanted to show up either your friends or bullies or what-have-you. But if this is what you were planning to use us for in the first place, I’d rather you be frank about it right off the bat—” “You there!” A voice boomed from behind us… a familiar voice, at least as far as the EVI was concerned. [B10 Lord Millias Tacten. Aliases: Millias the Resplendant] Millias… Ilunor’s ‘acquiantance’ from the pay-to-win adventuring party? I quickly turned to face the Vunerian, only to see that we weren’t the targets of interest as he sped past us with the rest of his group — a fully suited elf whose armor plates glowed with an iridescent fire, an avinor dressed in what I could only describe as renaissance mercenary armor, and a fire elemental. They were quick to speed-walk forwards, pushing past us and the crowd alike, until all four of them were positioned squarely in front of the father son duo. The crowds were quick to disperse in response, leaving a wide berth where absolutely no traffic passed. “It has been a while since we last met, Master Solizia of Alamont.” The blonde-haired elf of the group began with a theatrical, almost rehearsed sort of cadence. “I-indeed it has, Sir Lumelis.” He bowed deeply, once again straining from the supplies strapped to his back. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence, my lords?” He attempted to speak calmly, though the nervousness from before was not only noticeable, but completely palpable now. “Oh don’t give us that, Master Solizia…” The frilly-armored avinor stepped forwards, her right hand perched tightly atop of her scabbard. “Has it really been so long that you’ve forgotten the rites of the road?” She snickered, shaking her head as she did so. “I suppose it has been quite a while since I’ve had the need to take up temporary residence in—” “Cut the pleasantries and faux-innocence, Solizia.” The elemental finally chimed in, his flames growing whiter if only for a moment. “Just save us the time, and pay your dues.” The Vunerian nodded, sighing as he did so. “Spare us the indignities and spare yourself the shame, Solizia.” The tension in the air grew so thick that you could cut it with a knife. It was at this point that I knew I had to chime in, clearing my throat as I did so. “Sorry to butt in, but… exactly what dues are you guys talking about?” My unexpected entry threw everyone off, acting like a much-needed pressure release valve, as the elven leader of the group turned to dip his head slightly in my direction. “Blue Knight.” He began politely. “We are simply collecting on the expected dues of the night.” I narrowed my eyes in response, before placing two balled hands on my armored hips. “Like… an entry fee? Or a parking fee to stay overnight in town?” “That’s precisely it, Blue Knight.” The avinor spoke politely, a stark contrast from how she just regarded Solizia. “But… aren’t you guys adventurers?” “Indeed we are, you might have seen us at the Guild Hall, no?” Lumelis responded, before gesturing for the group to quickly reform behind him. “We are…” “The Great—” The elf raised his arms. “—and Bountiful—” With the Vunerian following suit. “—Illustrious Questseekers—” Followed closely in tow by the avinor. “—of Elaseer.” And concluding with the fire elemental, who capped things off with a small display of pyrotechnics. A small crowd had gathered around the empty perimeter just to watch that little display. The fire elemental’s whimsical display prompted many of the roving populace around us to clap and cheer in admiration. Thalmin and I turned to each other as if on cue, blinking to each other in a display of underwhelmed disbelief. “Yeah, we caught that the first time in the guild hall.” I replied bluntly. “And my question still stands. Since you guys are adventurers, what right do you guys have to perform… tax duty?” The group turned to each other, sharing the same look of confusion we held. “We act as protection for the Night Town, Blue Knight.” The elf responded matter-of-factly. “You and — I hate to say this — what army? This town’s massive, I don’t think you have enough eyes and ears to keep a lid on crime while protecting the town from whatever dangers might lurk outside.” I shrugged. “Army?” The avinor turned to their elven leader, her sing-song voice clearly mocking my inquiry. The group eventually broke out in laughter, turning to one another with prideful mirth. “Blue Knight… your sense of humor is truly remarkable. For you see, one needs no army when protection is incurred by one’s mere presence!” Lumelis beamed brightly. “No one would dare act out of line whilst the flag of the realm flies proudly above the Night Watch’s tent!” He pointed up to the aforementioned glamping tent. “It is thus that our presence alone demands a sort of… gratuity fee.” He added in a sort of corporate faux-politeness. I eventually turned towards the father son duo, cocking my head as I did so. “Is that really how it works here?” The pair replied with a series of heavy nods, prompting me to lower my face into both of my palms. “Right, right. Okay. I’m guessing we have to pay too, so let’s not kick up a fuss about this. How much is this parking/entry fee or whatever?” I questioned Lumelis. “For travelers with no commercial intent and no wagons or carts? A single Viscount each.” I stared at the elf blankly, turning towards Thalmin, as I prepped myself for a response I sorely dreaded. “A viscount is half a bronze piece, Emma. Or eight copper pieces.” “Which makes a whole bronze piece, sixteen copper pieces…” I spoke under a deeply disturbed breath. “Correct.” Thalmin nodded. A non-decimalized system… God help me… “Incidentally…” Lumelis continued. “A Count — a single bronze piece — is what’s expected of an empty commercial wagon under a single independent operator. However, given Master Solizia here is carrying cargo over the expected threshold, this will lead us to a gratuity fee of a Half-Regent.” “I’m guessing that’s what? Half a gold piece?” “No, Emma. It’s half a silver piece. A gold piece is a sovereign.” “Right, okay, gotcha.” I acknowledged under another strained breath. “Alright then. I’d like to pay for both of our entry fees now…” I paused, gesturing towards myself and Thalmin before extending a pointed finger at the father-son duo. “... and Master Solizia’s.” “Actually—” The turquoise Vunerian of the group interjected, turning towards Lumelis and the rest of his cohorts with an abrasive and expectant look. “—I contest those prices.” He took a step forward following a slow nod from Lumelis, eventually crossing his arms in what I was quickly ascribing as the signature Vunerian look of superiority. “That’ll be twenty sovereigns.” “Excuse me, what—” “No. No… make that fifty sovereigns.” He interjected before turning to face each and every one of us. “Each.” I turned to Lumelis expectantly. The elf, to his credit, quickly took the uppity and money-grubbing Vunerian off to the side. Strangely, neither deployed a privacy screen. Which meant that every whispered word was heard loud and clear… even without aid of the EVI. “Lord Tacten, what is the meaning of—” “I will not have those associated with Lord Rularia entering our sentry without my just compensation.” The Vunerian spoke with vitriol as I struggled to recall exactly where all of this was coming from. Then it hit me. “I understand that Lord Rularia has slighted you, Lord Tacten. But please, know that none of us have taken offense, nor do any of us see you as any lesser, in spite of the hurtful and scornful words he may have uttered in the guild hall.” “This is a matter of principle, Lumelis.” The Vunerian seethed, before looking over his shoulder and attempting to lock eyes with me. “That Blue Knight is part of his peer group, along with the lupinor. Is this not the perfect chance to rectify the imbalance of dignity incurred by that sniveling actor of a noble?” The elf paused, letting out a massive sigh as he took a moment to compose himself. “Fine. We stand as one, Lord Tacten.” I couldn’t believe it. I could not fricking believe it. Even miles away from us, Ilunor had managed to screw us over in the most roundabout of ways. If only he had kept his mouth shut in the guild hall… “Blue Knight.” Tacten spoke haughtily. “It is with a heavy heart that I must enforce this special gratuity upon you and your commoner cohor—” “We’re not paying.” I interrupted plainly. This… clearly took the wind out of his sails, as his eyes grew wide and his whole rehearsed speech shattered at the seams. “Then you cannot—” “We were just leaving, actually.” I once more interjected, gesturing for the father-son duo to follow. Thalmin turned his nose up at the adventuring group, making sure to meet each of their gazes before shaking his head in a way only a prince could. “You disappoint me.” Was all he said. The reactions on all but the Vunnerian’s faces were immediately apparent — as each member of the party averted their eyes from the mercenary prince, guilt very much painting an image of disgrace on each of their faces. The Vunerian, however, reacted as I expected Ilunor to. He stood there dumbfounded, confused, but most of all, enraged at me simply refusing to play his games. Ilunor… I thought to myself frustratingly. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you know how much I hate you right now… Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30, Living Room. Local Time: 2210 Thacea “GAH!” I immediately perked up, rushing to the dining table to see what the commotion was about. “What is it? What happened?” I cried out. “A tragedy of the highest order.” Was all Ilunor said in response, pointing at a dropped pastry that sat pathetically at his feet. “I feel as if fate has conspired against me. Like the hand of some great evil had forced me to experience such a tragedy. But alas…” The Vunerian trailed off as he lifted another cloche. “Fate cannot conspire against all of my delectable delights…” His Eternal Majesty’s Remembrance Path | The Royal Road of Transgracia. Fifteen Kilometers out from Night Town. Local Time 2355 Hours. Emma The journey to make camp outside of the town’s perimeter was wrought with frustration after frustration. Frustration over the repercussions of Ilunor’s actions. Frustration over the pay-to-win adventuring group’s appeasement of their Vunerian party member. And frustration over once again having to divert course, if only by an hour. However, after successfully pitching up the tents and starting the camp fire, a sort of calm eventually washed over me. It had been… a long, long while since I even went camping. Acela just felt too big to ever leave, especially with all there was to do at school and at JROTC. And while there had been some camping trips with Aunty Ran, they’d always just been overnight trips that just didn’t fully scratch that itch. But really, it was probably because of my hesitance to really commit to longer trips that made camping such a distant memory. Maybe it reminded me of my parents just a bit too much. Perhaps it was just the quiet that got me. Whatever the case was, things were somehow… different here. Maybe the quiet was more alluring now, following weeks of nonstop developments. Whatever the case was, I eventually found myself letting go of my frustrations, eventually being met with an offer of some unknown hot beverage by Solizia. “I’d like to thank you back there, Blue Knight.” He began softly, attempting to keep his voice down for the sake of Alamont who’d quite literally found himself sleeping just minutes after we’d made camp. “It’s alright. If anything, I’m sorry for dragging you folk out with us.” “No, no. We… heh. If my responses to the adventuring party didn’t make it clear enough… well… let’s just say I wasn’t in a position to really pay in the first place.” The elf admitted through a pained breath. “Moreover, that’s not all I wished to thank you for.” I raised a brow, cocking my head as I urged the man to continue. “I’d like to thank you… for humoring my son earlier in town. Moreover, I’d like to thank you for offering your protection. Camping out here in the open does incur the risk from both flora and fauna… not to mention the elements.” “Hey, it’s my pleasure, Solizia. Seriously, we probably were fated to camp outside of town anyways given the beef Tacten has with us. So you two tagging along isn’t any skin off our backs.” I offered warmly, attempting to reassure the anxious man some more. “Besides, what are the actual chances of something attacking us in the dead of night? I doubt it’s that common for—” [PROXIMITY ALERT! MOTION DETECTED — NORTH-WEST — QUADRANT C2] [RANGE: 142 METERS AND CLOSING.] [COUNT: FIVE TARGETS — SPREAD FORMATION — APPROACH VECTOR ERRATIC] [ETA: 45 SECONDS] [Recommend Combat Presets—] “Do it.” I answered immediately, turning to Thalmin who’d since emerged from his tent fully kitted with his sword drawn. We turned to each other with a knowing glance as I immediately felt the armor loosening, my whole body moving freer, with greater power. “Get behind us, or stay in your cart.” I ordered. “W-what’s going—” “Beasts.” Thalmin barked out. This was all Solizia needed to know as he quickly woke up his son and immediately booked it for his cart, where he promptly shuttered all openings with a series of practiced motions. [STATUS UPDATE: 7 TARGETS. RANGE: 100 METERS AND CLOSING.] I quickly unholstered my gun, taking aim at the edge of the small brush the targets were closing in from. Out of nowhere, thermals eventually turned up creatures that should have been visible from beyond 100 meters out. I didn’t read too much into it, instead focusing on what the sensors and composite imaging revealed. … And what I saw was nothing short of creepy — a maned komodo, a marsupial-looking feline, a mini-wyrm, a sharp-fanged basilisk with the face of an anglerfish, and three more ‘off-looking’ analogues of both magical and earthly creatures were barreling towards us in a formation. Though their forms and coordination weren’t in and of itself the creepy part. No. It was their skin. Their smooth, featureless, dotted, and uniformly speckled skin that seemed the same across creatures that should have had fur, hair, or any number of varied surfaces. Moreover, there was something else about them that threw me completely off. Their lack of eyes. I turned to Thalmin for a moment, my trigger finger itching to dispatch them. “Pointers?” “Fire.” Thalmin responded, shifting his sword to something more suitably one-handed, and outstretching his non-dominant hand. “Yeah, I am ready to fire, I was asking—” “No, Emma—” ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 350% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS “—I MEANT FIRE!” First | Previous | Next (Author's Note: Hey everyone! I'm back! :D Thank you so much for your patience and understanding! Tent town was super exciting to write here, as was the reintroduction of the pay to win adventurer group, and some hints at the non decimalized nightmare that is the Nexian currency, which we will see more of in the future! But first, we have to tackle this strange contender emerging from the forests! :D The next Two Chapters are already up on Patreon if you guys are interested in getting early access to future chapters.) [If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 139 and Chapter 140 of this story is already out on there!)] submitted by /u/Jcb112 to r/HFY [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/kibme37 to r/soccer [link] [comments]

For those of you who watch my videos you all know Ms. Mercedes. She is my best friend for the nearly 12 past years. This weekend her fight with heart failure finally came to an end. She passed in my hands looking right at me. She enjoyed all the rides in the Rivians and adventure over the years. Maple will still be around for puppy tax... but not the dynamic duo. submitted by /u/Domphotog to r/Rivian [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/SuperPop9521 to r/nfl [link] [comments]

I plan on adopting two cats in a year or so. But when you go to the shelter, how do you pick the “right” cat? Is it just luck/ fate? What I mean is, what makes you pick one cat over another one in that same shelter? When I was a kid we found a bunch of kittens in our backyard. We adopted two of them and gave the rest to family and friends. There was no “picking one out”, if anything they picked US out 😂. I’m just curious what makes people pick certain cats out at the shelter. Also just to note: even if the cat I picked was super antisocial and didn’t like cuddles, I would still love them. I am not afraid of picking the “wrong” cat, if there is such thing. I would love my kitty no matter what. Edit: I just want to say that I was so surprised to see all the comments this morning!!! And reading everyone’s stories and pictures has made me cry, I love kitties so much and I’m so thankful that the world has this many kind, caring, and patient animal lovers in it. I can’t wait to adopt my very own bonded pair. It’s still far away, but I’m already researching shelters and looking at Pinterest for ideas to “catify” my future home. Thank you so much to everyone for sharing your stories and photos. It really means so much and this has made my whole week better 😭 submitted by /u/meechis_n_buns to r/CatAdvice [link] [comments]

Every year since 2015, I've been going to the movie theater as much as possible, keeping track of every movie I see (along with ticket stubs, scores, some thoughts, etc). I went 5 times in 2015, 9 times in 2016, 146 times in 2017, 165 times in 2018, 193 times in 2019, 45 times in 2020, 86 times in 2021, and 273 times in 2022. I rarely go watch a movie more than once, but it happens a few times a year. I try to go 3-5 times per week, depending on what's coming out. I have 25 or so theaters within 15 miles so I get a solid selection every week, everything from big blockbusters to obscure, one-theater-only international releases. I'm not big into horror so many notable ones will be missing from my ranking (Halloween Ends, Smile, Orphan: First Kill, Terrifier 2, Prey for the Devil, Jeepers Creepers Reborn, etc). With A-list, festival memberships/passes, reward points, matinee screenings, Discount Tuesdays, etc, I'd guess it probably averages out to only about $6-$8 or so per movie. I go alone most of the time. I set a goal in January 2020 to go see 200 different movies in theaters that year (after doing 192 in 2019), but had to abandon that in mid-March (after 44 movies) and didn't go again for the next 13 months because of COVID, then slowly started going back in late-March 2021. This year was a bit like making up for lost time in 2020/2021. After ever only having been to 1 ever before, I also went to 5 film festivals this year: Savannah Film Festival (15 movies in 3 days), Miami Film Festival (16 movies in 7 days), Outshine Film Festival (6 movies in 5 days), Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (11 movies in 6 days), and the Gems Miami Film Festival (5 movies in 2 days). For most of the festival screenings, members of the cast/crew were present for the movie and Q&As. Some highlights were Ron Howard after Thirteen Lives, Eddie Redmayne after The Good Nurse, Kerry Condon after The Banshees of Inisherin, Dean-Fleischer Camp after Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Jeremy Pope after The Inspection, Eric Appel after Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Jared Harris after The Ghost of Richard Harris, and Michael Ward after Empire of Light. I try to stay away from reviews/trailers/etc as much as possible before watching something, to go in as blindly as possible. My ranking/thoughts/scores are for fun, I am not a professional (or good) reviewer and this isn't meant to be taken super seriously. It's basically just an enjoyment ranking, based on a score I give to a movie right after watching it. It's not really meant to put movies against each other, and I don't have any sort of checklist/requirements/guideline for scores. I just like going to the movies and keeping score for fun. The Worst Person in the World - 10/10 - I haven't been this blown away by a duo of lead performances since Marriage Story. I love the way it was structured like a book, with important chapters of her life. Anyone that is struggling (or has struggled) getting their life together in their 20s will be able to form a strong bond with this movie. It's full of heartwarming and relatable and beautiful moments but always casting a strong existential shadow. On a technical level, it's one of the best directed and edited movies of the year. The surreal (and dream/trip) scenes could feel out of place in most other movies, but they're woven in perfectly here. Absolutely perfect bittersweet ending and Waters of March was a great match to go with it. Catchy and stuck in my head for a while. The kind of movie that just makes you melt into your seat as the credits roll. My favorite movie of the year. Aftersun - 9/10 Petite Maman - 9/10 Babylon - 9/10 - Voodoo Mama is the best original song of the year. Margot Robbie puts in the best performance of the year (with an amazing scene-stealing performance from PJ Byrne in the few minutes he's in it). 'For the love of Cinema' is basically its own genre now (especially this year with Empire of Light, The Fablemans, Last Film Show, etc) but this is the cream of the crop. Starts off at 120 MPH, doesn't let off the gas for an hour, then it slows down a bit (maybe too much...), only for it to take another batshit crazy turn. An amazing final scene. Damien Chazelle does not miss. The scene where Margot Robbie, Olivia Hamilton, and PJ Byrne try to make a scene work with the new sound coordinator is the most I've laughed in a while. Top Gun: Maverick - 9/10 - The best action blockbuster in a while. I can't add anything that already hasn't been said a million times before. All Quiet On the Western Front - 9/10 - Up there with Paths of Glory, Come and See, The Bridge with being one of the best anti-war movies of all time. It has some of the best production design for a war movie I've ever seen, really impressive stuff for a non-Hollywood production. Very brutal, very grounded. Licorice Pizza - 9/10 CODA - 9/10 - The movie equivalent of a hot bowl of soup on a cold day. Soul-warming stuff. Reading the premise, you'd expect something really cheesy/tearjerky, but this gets around that and earns a bunch of real tears. Close - 9/10 - The bus scene was the single-most emotionally-impactful scene of the year. Heartbreaking tale of childhood innocence and the consequences of societal pressures. The Banshees of Inisherin - 9/10 Triangle of Sadness - 9/10 A Chiara - 9/10 - A really unique and great mob movie. It doesn't concentrate so much on the mobsters, but the effect a criminal-empire has on the family of the boss. You're put in the shoes of the daughther of a mobster, and seeing her navigate and come to acceptance with her dad's situation made for a really thrilling movie. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On - 9/10 - You haven't lived until you're sitting a full theater of people laugh-crying about a tiny shell. I saw this in July, couldn't stop thinking about it, and went to see it again in October with the director (Dean Fleischer Camp) in attendance. Arsenault and Sons - 9/10 - This was a reallllly good crime-thriller. It's about a French Canadian family that owns a regular small-town garage but are also involved in illegal off-season hunting and meat distribution. A close-knit spider web of crime that quickly unravels and crumbles. It reminded me a lot of Animal Kingdom. Great score that helps build tension throughout, amazing acting all round, with a great payoff at the end. The best French-Canadian movie since the Cannes double-premiere of You're Sleeping Nicole and Mommy in 2014. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story - 9/10 -Seeing this in a huge, sold out, 1200-seat theater with a completely raucus and wild late-night crowd full of Weird Al fans was honestly the most fun experience I’ve ever had at the movies. Something I'd pay a lot to experience again. Hilarious, perfectly-outrageous, but with a good amount of heart thrown in. Score is maybe inflated a bit based on how many drinks I had beforehand. Happy that Roku financed it in the first place, but still a bummer this won’t get a theatrical release. I feel like it was strongly elevated by that. Stars at Noon - 9/10 - My only complaint is that it wrapped up so quickly. I wanted another hour. Claire Denis' best movie since 35 Shots of Rum. If someone asked me to suggest a movie that's flown completely under the radar this year, it'd be this one. It's full of great performances, geopolitical spy/thriller intrigue, and mystery. The Whale - 9/10 - Brendan Fraser is rightfully getting a lot of praise for this performance, but the whole cast deserves it. Hong Chau and Sadie Sink put in two of the best supporting performances of the year. Aronofsky's recent stuff might get too bogged down by religious allegory but this worked on many more levels. Novembre - 9/10 - A mix of Sicario and Zero Dark Thirty. An air-tight, real-life, crime-thriller that doesn't waste a single second and keeps your heart pounding throughout (especially that one raid scene near the end, holy shit). Holy Spider - 9/10 The Ghost of Richard Harris - 9/10 - The best documentary of the year. A sweet and honest tribute by 3 sons for their legendary, complicated father. It doesn't shy away from the tough topics, and the interviews feel deeply-personal, more than most documentaries. It covers his faults and his greatness evenly, perfectly balanced. The Jim Sheridan segment is probably my all-time favorite documentary interview, totally honest and revalatory. Red Rocket - 8/10 - Pound-for-pound the funniest movie of the year and the best comedy since Don't Look Up. Avatar: The Way of Water - 8/10 EO - 8/10 - On one hand, it made me lose all hope in humanity. On the other hand, it fully restored it. A delicate balance, and a beautiful little puzzle of a movie, and maybe the best overall score of the year. The Good Boss - 8/10 The Batman - 8/10 The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - 8/10 Ramona - 8/10 - Lourdes González is completely mesmerizing in this. One of my favorite performances of the year. A sweet, breezy, and quirky comedy-drama. The color/melodrama of Almodovar, the walk-and-talk romance of Linklater, and the aesthetic of Noah Baumbach, but a beautifully-personal and cute story that makes it stand on its own. Gagarine - 8/10 - A beautiful and sad story of childhood imagination and loss. It's an extremely unique take on the coming-of-age/first love/early friendship genre. Super sweet. Lyna Khoudri is going to be huge, I think. Came out of nowhere and blew me away. George Washington is one of my favorite movies ever, and this reminded me a lot of that. There was something really comforting and innocent about it. Olga - 8/10 - Jaw-dropping performance for a first-time actress. Maybe the best debut performance in a while. Intertwined real-life footage doesn't work most of the time, but it was perfect in this movie. Amazing sound design, lightning (in the gyms especially), and use of non-actors. Imaginative transitions. Some sports movies can make 'big competition climax' seem corny and fake, but this was the opposite, it was a perfectly shot climax, like an Olympics documentary or something. The current situation in Ukraine adds a whole new parallel/layer to this already-amazing movie. Thirteen Lives - 8/10 - Formulaic but very effective. A bit too long, but still a great rescue/survival movie. If this doesn’t win the Sound Design and/or Production Design Oscar, then I don’t know why those awards exist. Emily the Criminal - 8/10 Bodies Bodies Bodies - 8/10 En Corps - 8/10 - Beautifully choreographed and uplifting movie. Knives Out: Glass Onion - 8/10 X - 8/10 Everything Everywhere All At Once - 8/10 Tar - 8/10 - I really wish this cut the last 10 minutes. For me, the perfect end point would have been when she's watching the old Leonard Bernstein VHS tape at her childhood home, but Cate Blanchett carries this to greatness. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - 8/10 - Animated movies aren't really my thing, but this was a really fun and cute movie. A Hero - 8/10 Crimes of the Future - 8/10 Drunken Birds - 8/10 Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness - 8/10 Spider-Man: No Way Home - 8/10 - A really fun time. Official Competition - 8/10 - A biting, meta, and sharp satirical-comedy set in the world of filmmaking. Maybe Penélope Cruz's best-ever performance. Italian Studies - 8/10 Happening - 8/10 The Northman - 8/10 Huda's Salon - 8/10 - This came out of nowhere. A lot more brutal and graphic than I thought it would be. Elvis - 8/10 - Tom Hanks was miscast (it should've been Bill Camp),but I get that you need a big name in this. The first few minutes suck, but a fun ride after that. Nightmare Alley - 8/10 Cha Cha Real Smooth - 8/10 - Sweet, lighthearted, unique, and refreshing rom-com. I need one of these once in a while. The Menu - 8/10 Alcarras - 8/10 - I love a movie that just blindly throws you head-first into a complicated, layered, and relatable family drama. There's a rich built-in history that you can slowly piece together. The grandpa was amazing. All of the children felt like their own pillars to the story. A stern-but-loving dad clumsily trying to keep it together against a changing tide. Really great stuff. Devotion - 8/10 Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul - 8/10 - One of these days, Sterling K. Brown is going to get the recognition he deserves with a big award nomination (like he should've gotten for Waves a few years ago). This was really solid religious satire. It's like a behind-the-scenes version of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The Phantom of the Open - 8/10 - Liked this a lot more than I expected. "If life is tea, she's my sugar" is one of my favorite lines of the year. It does feel like Mark Rylance is always playing the same character though. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - 8/10 Fire of Love - 8/10 Paris, 13th District - 8/10 Brighton 4th - 8/10 Montana Story - 8/10 - Both comforting and unsettling. A really low-key family drama that sticks with you. Haley Lu Richardson is easily one of my favorite actresses, she's great in this. The Fablemans - 8/10 Drive My Car - 8/10 Lost Illusions - 8/10 - A sprawling epic of early-1800s French publishing (as boring as that sound, it's really not, it's completely captivating and flies by) and a great story of ethics vs profits. I love that Xavier Dolan just randomly shows up in things. The Lost King - 8/10 - Surprisingly sweet story about finding the body of King Richard III. Some of the comedy with the ex-husband character doesn’t land and feels really dated, but overall a solid modern biopic. I liked that they made King Richard a ghost-like character that followed her around, it might have been too generic of a biopic if they didn’t do something like that. Corsage - 8/10 Blonde - 8/10 The Inspection - 8/10 She Said - 8/10 - The Five Devils - 8/10 - That karaoke scene though. You Can Live Forever - 8/10 - This reminded me a lot of 2018's Disobedience (starring Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz), it's a story of forbidden lesbian love story set in a small-knit, religion-controlled community, led by 2 great lead performances. Really good drama with an amazing soundtrack. Plus, I'm a sucker for any Quebec-based films so this gets extra points. One Fine Morning - 8/10 - It’s hard to explain but there's always a comforting warmth to Mia Hansen Love’s movies, and this was no exception. Heartbreaking and beautiful performance from Lea Seydoux. Side note: Ending movies with a freeze frame is really corny and it never works, its a trend that should have stayed in the 80s or whereever. Matilda: The Musical - 8/10 Sam Now - 8/10 - Very thoughtful documentary filmed over 25 years. 500+ hours of footage cut down to a journey of 86 minutes, about 2 half-brothers looking for the mother that abandoned them without explanation. Nope - 7/10 The Gray Man - 7/10 - Totally ridiculous, totally stupid, totally enjoyable. As far as Netflix's globe-trotting bloated action movies go (Red Notice, Six Underground), this is by far the best. I know that's not a high bar, but this had that '90s blank check action movie' vibe that just felt right. Hustle - 7/10 - A movie with this many non-actors will usually get distracting, but this pulled it off. A really solid sports-drama-comedy. The Woman King - 7/10 Parallel Mothers - 7/10 - Well-built and well-acted like every Almodovar movie, but like All About My Mother and a few others, the melodrama chokes out the story and doesn't leave much room for any growth to the story. Penelope Cruz killed it as usual. Dollar Store Javier Bardem was pretty good too (it really did feel like Bardem wasn't available for the shoot so they got his doppelganger to replace him last-minute.) Dog - 7/10 The Tender Bar - 7/10 - Ben Affleck just straight up stole the show. He was made for this supporting role and he'd get my vote at the Oscars. One of the sweeter (although a bit over-sentimental) movies of the year. You can just tell it was a book first. Mixed in with a great soundtrack, brought down a bit by Tye Sheridan. Bullet Train - 7/10 Barbarian - 7/10 Plaza Catedral - 7/10 Hit the Road - 7/10 The Forgiven - 7/10 - It felt like a fully-loaded play with a million interesting characters. Great dialogue. Thor: Love and Thunder - 7/10 See How They Run - 7/10 - If the universe was fair, we'd have a 10-film series of Sam Rockwell and Saiorse Ronan solving crimes together. It takes a usual whoddunit movie, then flips it, then flips it, then flips it again. Pearl - 7/10 Bones and All - 7/10 - I wanted to love this a lot more. Michae Stuhlbarg is wasted and I'm so tired of Mark Rylance playing the same exact character every movie. I get that he's widely-regarded as one of the greatest theater actors of his generation, but I find him very one-dimensional in film. This was a good movie, but I think it could've been a lot better. Hold Me Tight - 7/10 - An amazing performance from Vicky Krieps, but it gets a bit too jumbled/confusing for me to give it a higher score. It felt like a puzzle missing a few pieces. Maybe that's the point. I don't know. The 2 intertwining realities kind of blend it together. 2nd Chance - 7/10 Three Thousand Years of Longing - 7/10 - George Miller swings for the fences, sometimes it lands, sometimes it crashes. This lands, and then crashes. Coupez! - 7/10 - I went in thinking this was just a remake of the Japanese One Cut of the Dead, but was pleasantly surprised that it went another layer deep. If you want a horror-meta-comedy, this is it. God's Country - 7/10 Maigret - 7/10 - Decent, predictable, and mostly-forgettable crime procedural set in 1950s France, but does enough to keep you interested in the murder-mystery. You can figure it out pretty early on though. Wild Men - 7/10 DC League of Superpets - 7/10 The Box - 7/10 Compartment Number 6 - 7/10 Ambulance - 7/10 - I know I'm supposed to hate this, but I just can't. I could list a million reasons why it sucks: The constant tonal changes (from a little girl literally being impaled by a fence to a few wise-ass jokes a minute later), so much product placement I felt like I was watching the Super Bowl, the sun being blasted into my eyeballs every 5 seconds (we get it Michael Bay, the sun exists), a super-weird marriage counseling scene, the awkward camera angles, etc. All that being said, it was just a whole lot of fun. To Leslie - 7/10 - Crippling alcoholism is a common theme at the movies this year. Andrea Risenborough and Marc Maron are awesome in this, but it's mostly something you've already seen before. Moonage Daydream - 7/10 - Was worth watching in IMAX (not often this can be said for a doc), but not my favorite documentary of the year. Memory of a Free Festival has been stuck on my playlist since watching this movie. A Love Song - 7/10 Confess, Fletch - 7/10 - Jon Hamm awkwardly and confidently finds himself in the middle of an intercontinental murder-mystery. It's as fun as it sounds. Watch it. Vengeance - 7/10 Nostalgia - 7/10 Amalgama - 7/10 Wet Sand - 7/10 Argentina, 1985 - 6/10 - The tone was kind of weird, I went in expecting a fully-serious trial-drama (about post-dictatorship Argentina and the trial of the military leaders that ordered thousands of murders), but it ended up being played for a lot of laughs. Still a pretty good legal-drama though. Clerks III - 7/10 Navalny - 7/10 Sundown - 7/10 - Lowkey, vague, slow, sun-drenched chiller that sticks with you. Jockey - 7/10 - The Duke - 7/10 That Kind of Summer - 7/10 - Not many movies are this honest and open about sexual experiences. 18 1/2 - 7/10 - Take a weird ass turn near the end but I enjoyed the bizzaro-alternate-history angle. Watergate told from a fictional personal point of view. Watcher - 7/10 - Maika Monroe in a psychological-thriller, what more needs to be said? Last Film Show - 7/10 Everything Went Fine - 7/10 Scream - 7/10 Cyrano - 7/10 - Impressive set pieces & choreography and an amazing sound track ("Wherever I Fall" is a song I find myself going back to a lot, same with "Someone to Say"), but a like most of Joe Wright's work, it ends up a bit on the wrong side of bland. The great long-shot battle scene reminded of a lot of what he did during the famous beach beach in Atonement. Bonus points for the full-on commitment from Peter Dinklage, Kelvin Harrison Jr, and Haley Bennett, you really felt it on screen. Pre-2020 I could see this movie having been a huge crowd-pleasing hit, like The Greatest Showman. Kind of a bummer it flopped so hard. Violent Night - 7/10 Spoiler Alert - 7/10 Ali & Ava - 7/10 The Territory - 7/10 The Lost Daughter - 7/10 Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom - 7/10 The Daughter - 7/10 Soul of a Beast - 7/10 Vortex - 6/10 - Technically impressive, and Alex Lutz had a really amazing supporting performance, but there's only so much double-perspective aimless wandering I can take, and it turns out 2 hours and 29 minutes is past my limit. Dario Argento's terrible French was really distracting too, he was really struggling to get lines out, and not in the natural way you'd expect/want. If you're in the mood to have your heart and soul crushed by the horrors of old age and the degenerative brain diseases that await many of us, I'd highly suggest *The Father or Amour over this movie. Hardcore Gaspar Noe fans will like it though, he has a unique way of getting under your skin, and he definitely digs here. I liked the maze-like/claustrophobic/cramped feel of the apartment though, that really elevated the whole thing. The shower scene and the gas scene really hit, liked those a lot.* Pinocchio - 6/10 Beast - 6/10 Decision to Leave - 6/10 - Muddled, confusing, weird tonal changes, but it did look great. The most disappointing movie of the year for me, especially considering The Handmaiden is one of my all-time favorites. Neither a good romantic story nor a crime-drama. It's kind of just stuck in between. White Noise - 6/10 - 9/10 first half, 3/10 second half. The train derailment in the movie kind of happened at the same time as the derailment of the movie itself. Neat. Emergency - 6/10 The Bob's Burgers Movie - 6/10 Uncharted - 6/10 The Quiet Girl - 6/10 - I had really high expectations for this going in. It was one of the year's biggest indie hits in the UK & Ireland and it was a festival darling all across the globe. I thought it ended up being....just fine? It's a pretty generic story, an unwanted/overlooked child gets sent away to distant relatives in the country and they bond over shared trauma/sadness. It was well-shot and well-acted, but I was mostly left disappointed. Saint Omer - 6/10 Armageddon Time - 6/10 - Anne Hathaway and Anthony Hopkins made this worth watching. Everything else, not so much. The 355 - 6/10 - An okay, generic, time-wasting action-thriller, with every plot twist you'd expect and a few good one-liners and world-travelling set-pieces (think *Triple Frontier, or a Jason Statham/Liam Neeson vehicle with better cinematography). Brian and Charles - 6/10 - An extremely British Lars and the Real Girl. A Taste of Hunger - 6/10 Lightyear - 6/10 Jackass Forever - 6/10 Death on the Nile - 6/10 - The fun thing about a murder-mystery is that deaths carry a lot of weight. Killing off half of the characters really destroys that weight and removes any sort of investment I had in the movie. A fun script and good acting kept this afloat. Moonfall - 6/10 - Watching Armageddon, The Core, and The Day After Tomorrow 500x times each as a kid will always keep a soft-spot in my heart for movies like this. The Outfit - 6/10 The Greatest Beer Run Ever - 6/10 Empire of Light - 6/10 - It looked gorgeous and sounded amazing, but overall feels like a huge wasted opportunity. There's an amazing movie in there somewhere, as a tribute to cinema and theaters while following the cast of misfits keeping a theater alive on the south English coast, but it gets buried by a terribly-boring (and kinda creepy) main relationship, an overly-hammy performance by Olivia Colman, and way too many side-stories. The Drop - 6/10 - Painfully, absurdly, and wonderfully awkward but at the end of the day, it's a bit too stretched thin. Like an SNL sketch that goes on too long. Ride Above - 6/10 - It relies too much on being emotionally-manipulative (quadriplegic girl teams up with autistic farmhand to train horses at a failing family ranch, I mean, come on), but the racing scenes and acting keep this interesting enough. The Estate - 6/10 Dual - 6/10 - Riley Stearns's previous movie, The Art of Self Defense, was one of my favorite dark-comedies of recent years. I liked the premise, and I liked the alcoholism parralel, but I couldn't get past the terrible casting of the two leads (Karen Gillan/Aaron Paul). The Bad Guys - 6/10 Downton Abbey: A New Age - 6/10 - I've never seen a single episode of the show, but I've seen both movies. It didn't quite have the cozy feeling of the first one, but it was still charming and overly-extravagant enough to be enjoyable. Points lost for many cliché plotlines. The Good House - 6/10 On the Come Up - 6/10 - Very clunky in the middle and about 30 minutes too long, but the rap battle scenes make this a worthy watch, especially the last one. Eiffel - 6/10 Confessions of a Hitman - 6/10 - My dream movie or television project is a big-budgeted, sprawling retelling of the Quebec Biker War, but I guess this will do for now. Catherine Called Birdy - 6/10 Immersion - 6/10 Emancipation - 6/10 - If it wasn't for the worst color-grading I've ever seen in a major motion picture, the worst accent work of 2022, and a ridiculous hand-to-hand alligator vs Will Smith battle, this would've been pretty good. Three Minutes: A Lengthening - 6/10 - It's an interesting choice, making a full-length documentary movie from a 3-minute clip of a pre-WW2 town, but I think it was stretched too thin. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore - 6/10 All of the Old Knives - 6/10 - Not great, but I liked the 'old-school-and-overcomplicated-spy-movies-they-dont-make-anymore' vibe this had going on. It really is a throwback to 1990s camp. My Name Is Sara - 6/10 Master - 6/10 Don't Worry, Darling - 6/10 Men - 6/10 - I absolutely loved Ex Machina. I absolutely hated Annihilation. This is somewhere in the middle. Alex Garland has been very 'style over substance' for me in his past 2 features. Jessie Buckley was great as always though. Where the Crawdads Sing - 6/10 Till - 6/10 - In a vacuum, Danielle Deadwyler's courtroom scene is probably the most well-acted and captivating single moment I've seen on the big screen this year, and it deservedly should get her an Oscar nomination, but the movie as a whole wasn't as great as it should have been. Call Jane - 6/10 Luck - 6/10 Corner Office - 6/10 - In some moments, it's a really funny/relatable satire of workplace dynamics and the total absurdity of office culture, but most of the time, it's just too dry and slow to work. Really close to greatness though. I do love the variety of Jon Hamm's projects recently though. Nocebo - 6/10 Nanny - 6/10 Christmas Bloody Christmas - 6/10 - The first 70 minutes were good and the 2 mains had great/fun chemistry, getting drunk and discussing movies/music while people get brutally murdered around them. Then the last 15 minutes really dragged, really stretching for runtime there. Loved the physical media references throughout (Vinegar Syndrome, Severin, etc.). Firebird - 6/10 Moon Man - 6/10 Amsterdam - 5/10 - Kind of a mess, but Christian Bale makes it watchable. John David Washington on the other hand puts in one of the worst performances of the year. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths - 5/10 - Some of the best editing and set design of the year. The rest did not work. Sin La Habana - 5/10 Jurassic World Dominion - 5/10 - If Top Gun: Maverick is the perfect blockbuster, this is the blandest blockbuster. Too many characters you don't care about, too many stupid decisions, too many side-plots. It's passable but I'll never watch it again. Let this franchise rest for a while. American Dreamer - 5/10 - Peter Dinklage and slapstick comedy can only carry this so far. You Won't Be Alone - 5/10 - If Terrence Malick directed a folk-horror. Sounds amazing, but didn't do anything for me. Minions: Rise of Gru - 5/10 Benediction - 5/10 Fall - 5/10 Belle - 5/10 Mr Malcolm's List - 5/10 Spirited - 5/10 Passing - 5/10 - It was slow, but fine, until the ending blows the whole thing up. God that was bad. That should have stayed in the novel, it didn't translate to the screen at all. Strawberry Mansion - 5/10 Mrs Harris Goes to Paris - 5/10 Arlette - 5/10 - Basically a French Canadian Veep, but not nearly as biting or funny, except for a few moments. I can appreciate the fact that a movie mocking the government is partially funded by the government, especially in a movie about supporting culture and the arts, but the ending mostly deflates that goodwill. Memories of My Father - 5/10 - The most dragged-out, melodramatic death scene you've ever seen in your life. Plan A - 5/10 So Damn Easy Going - 5/10 Ticket to Paradise - 5/10 - Super-safe, super-sanitized, super-predictable, but I am happy that movies like this are still getting made and are bringing people to the theaters. I also wish more movies did blooper reels during the credits like this did, that's always fun. The Automat - 5/10 - If it hadn't turned into a glorified Starbucks ad in the middle, this might've been pretty good. Maixabel - 5/10 Estacion Catorce - 5/10 The Tale of King Crab - 5/10 The Lost City - 5/10 - Tracy Buttstuff. Sonic 2 - 5/10 The Contractor - 5/10 - 15 years ago, this would have been a huge, $150M-budgeted, franchise-starting, summer blockbuster starring Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. Now, it's a lifeless and confusing action movie pretending to have political intrigue. I'm surprised it didn't also co-star John Travolta. Mothering Sunday - 5/10 - If you like naked people walking around aimlessly, this is the movie for you. Bros - 5/10 The Cow Who Sang A Song Into the Future - 5/10 - It bites off more than it can chew. It tries to tackle so many issues at once but can't Apples - 5/10 Breaking - 5/10 - John Boyega doing his best 'Denzel Washington in John Q' impression. Some scenes are so over-acted (especially with the bank manager), that they become accidentally-funny. Les Tricheurs - 5/10 Black Adam - 5/10 Loving Highsmith - 5/10 Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile - 5/10 - If only this could have lived up to the wonderful & lively opening dance/singing sequence between Javier Bardem and Lyle. It all goes downhill from there. Honestly, take out the stupid family (terrible casting all-around there, especially the kid) and cliché bad-neighbor, and increase the Bardem/Lyle scenes by 300%, and you've got something great. Utama - 5/10 - I get it. A family's way of life is dying and a stubborn, aging patriarch is bringing dragging them down with it. It's got great, sprawling landscape shots and feels very grounded, but I was just so bored. Father Stu - 5/10 Strange World - 5/10 Ahed's Knee - 5/10 - I feel like I don't know enough about middle-eastern geopolitical issues for this to work for me, much like the director's previous movie (Synonyms). Memory - 5/10 - As far as "im too old for this shit' Liam Neeson action movies this year go, this is miles ahead of Blacklight (see: bottom of this), but that's not a high bar. Unidentified Objects - 5/10 The Good Nurse - 4/10 - Drab, generic crime story that lacks any tension or suspense. Chastain was good, Redmayne was terrible. The Eternal Daughter - 4/10 - Watching a Joanna Hogg movie is like accidentally and awkwardly walking into someone else's therapy session, or it's like the feeling of waking up and instantly forgetting an insanely-vivid dream. It's uncomfortable. Frank and Penelope - 4/10 - Could be good if you're in the mood for a pulpy, cheap, late-night, Tarantino-ripoff crime movie, but it wasn't for me. Flee - 4/10 A Journal for Jordan - 4/10 You Resemble Me - 4/10 - Watch November instead. American Underdog - 4/10 - Could've been alright with more football and less sentimental-cheesy romance/religious stuff. Infinite Storm - 4/10 - I'm really burnt-out on survival-dramas. I had trouble staying awake during this one. Morbius - 4/10 Attachment - 4/10 Salvatore: The Shoemaker of Dreams - 4/10 - Once in a while, really talented people get together for a bunch of fast money and make an extended commercial that's not worthy of their talent. The Silent Twins - 4/10 Summering - 4/10 Jane - 4/10 My Donkey, My Lover, and I - 4/10 - Totally corny and painfully unfunny. Watch Wild instead, if you're in the mood for a 'middle aged woman goes hiking to discover herself' movie. Cool donkey though, points for that. Wine moms probably love this movie. Aline - 4/10 Wildhood - 4/10 - There is not a single original bone in this body. The acting was atrocious. Waiting for Bojangles - 4/10 Paws of Fury - 4/10 - The story behind the production of this movie is far more interesting than anything the movie itself offers. Delia's Gone - 4/10 - I thought Diane Keaton in Mack & Rita would run away with the honor, but Marissa Tomei in this movie easily puts in one of the worst performances I've ever seen on the big screen. It was like a bad parody of Matthew McConaughey in True Detective. Stephan James is picking really bad projects post-Beale Street. Jane by Charlotte - 4/10 - If a lame Mother's Day card was made into a movie. The anti-Ghost of Richard Harris. Awkward and clunky. Studio 666 - 4/10 I Am Here - 4/10 Detectives vs Sleuths - 4/10 - One of the most convoluted, nonsensical crime movies I've ever seen (I've seen The Snowman and nothing is ever topping that). A total mess from start to finish. Could not keep track of any character or motivation or "case number". The Invitation - 3/10 - I remember watching this in 2019 when it was named Ready or Not and didn't suck. I've never seen a vampire movie so afraid of an R rating. Laugh-out-loud stupid ending that should have been cut. My Policeman - 3/10 - Boring. Really came close to falling asleep a few times. Extremely sedated romantic-drama. I'd rather there was no "future" version of the characters, just the originals. Maybe that would've made it better. Leonor Will Never Die - 3/10 - Too meta. Too quirky. I felt like I was on the outside of an inside joke the whole time. Last Flight Home - 3/10 - There's something overly-sanitized, overly-edited, fake, control-heavy, and gross about this documentary. Just didn't feel right. At its core, its the story of a dysfunctional family milking their father's assisted suicide for their own needs. A sad, lonely man watching politics on TV in his final days, reminiscing about the good old days and reaching for death, while his family films it. Rifkin's Festival - 3/10 - Wallace Shawn was so awful in this. Woody Allen has some classics, but this is rock-bottom. Marry Me - 3/10 The King's Daughter - 3/10 - I don't think anybody else saw this in theaters. I remember Pierce Brosnan's hair, that's it. Both Sides of the Blade - 3/10 - I'm a huge fan of Claire Denis, but some of her more recent movies have left me more irritated than anything else. If you want to watch 2 hours of an annoying couple just bicker at each other for no reason, I guess you might enjoy this. I hated all 3 main characters. I didn't care about what happened at all. Worst love triangle ever. The Rose Maker - 3/10 Mack & Rita - 3/10 - "She's so old every second counts" was the only redeeming line or memorable moment. It felt like a movie that was supposed to come out 20 years ago. Freaky Friday, but creepy. Firestarter - 3/10 Easter Sunday - 3/10 - Awkward, unfunny, cheap-looking. Medieval - 2/10 - Some of the all-time funniest/awful line-dubbing by Michael Caine in this. Maybe the worst-edited movie I've ever seen. The story is impossible to follow. Hatching - 2/10 Three Headed Beast - 2/10 - What should have been an experimental 10-minute short is stretched out to an extremely thin and taxing 85 minutes. A boring relationship-drama about extremely unlikeable and annoying characters. Matrix Resurrections - 2/10 The Railway Children Return - 2/10 - From the poster you'd think this was just a cheesy, bland, forgettable British period drama. It turns out you'd be right. Enys Men - 2/10 - Every folk horror cliché messily jumbled together into a bundle of total nonsense along with purposefully out of synch audio and bad visuals. 90 minutes of pure cinematic torture. Please Baby Please - 2/10 - I wonder how they got Demi Moore to be in this. I feel like that's an interesting story. Simple Passion - 2/10 - The "French people having lots of sex" genre hits rock bottom here. It's like if a Lifetime movie accidentally got approved for an NC-17 rating. Like Me - 1/10 - A boring & annoying & explicit soap opera masquerading as a full-length feature film. Blacklight - 1/10 - Possibly the worst "action" film I've ever watched. This was "post-2000 Steven Seagal Action Movie" bad. Embarrassing for all involved. Other statistics: 17 triple-headers, 4 quadruple-headers, and 4 quintuple-headers. The most in a one-week span was 20 movies from Oct 21 to Oct 28. Movies I went to see more than once: The Worst Person in the World x2, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On x2, Elvis x2. Movie Theater Visits by Month: https://i.imgur.com/xIKqMNc.png Favorite Performances: https://i.imgur.com/Z0ih75e.png Past Rankings: 2018 (162 Movies) 2019 (192 Movies) 2020 (44 Movies) 2021 (86 Movies) In the next few weeks, I am planning to go see I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Living, No Bears, Women Talking, Alice Darling, M3gan, A Man Called Otto, Plane, The Son, House Party, and Broker. submitted by /u/BunyipPouch to r/movies [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/GenghisHam to r/byebyejob [link] [comments]

WSB was never moving into silver. The media got the story wrong. Think about who reads weekend financial news. Old people. The last time silver had a real short squeeze was in the 70s, and these people are now in their 70s. Who clicks on ads? Basically only old people. Dealers of gold and silver love to advertise, and media likes to make money through click-through revenue. Of course they are going to post all these stories of small unit silver selling out at dealers, they will get higher click through and sales kickbacks from the targeted ads on these articles. If you are purchasing SLV thinking you are purchasing silver on the open market, you could not be more wrong. Purchasing SLV is the best way for an investor to shoot themselves directly in the face. I have done some research on SLV and I have come to believe that it is essentially a vehicle for JPM and other banks to crush retail investors by manipulating the silver market. So what are these games of manipulation that the banks have played? The general theme could be described as this: If banks hold the silver, the price is allowed to rise, but if you hold the silver, the price is forced to fall. Jeff Currie from Goldman had an interview on February 4th where he dismissed the idea of a silver short squeeze, and he had one line that was especially profound, “In terms of thinking how are you going to create a squeeze, the shorts are the ETFs, the ETFs buy the physical, they turn around and sell on the COMEX.” – Jeff Currie of Goldman This was shocking to holders of SLV, because SLV is a long-only silver ETF. They simply buy silver as inflows occur and keep that silver in a vault. They have no price risk, if the price of silver declines, it’s the investors who lose money, not the ETF itself, so there is no need to hedge by shorting on the COMEX. Further, their prospectus prohibits them from participating in the futures market at all. So how is the ETF shorting silver? They aren’t. The iShares SLV ETF is not shorting silver, its custodian, JP Morgan is shorting silver. This is what Jeff Currie meant when he said the shorts are the ETFs. Moreover, he said it with a tone like this fact should be plainly obvious to all of the dumb retail investors. He truly meant what he said. What is a custodian you ask? The custodian of the ETF is the entity that actually buys, sells, and stores the silver. All iShares does is market the ETF and collect the fees. When money comes in they notify their custodian and their custodian sends them an updated list of silver bars that are allocated to the ETF. But no real open market purchases of silver are occurring. Instead, JPM (and a few sub custodian banks) accumulated a large amount of silver, segmented it off into LBMA vaults, and simply trade back and forth with the ETFs as they receive inflows. Thus, ensuring that ETF inflows never actually impact the true open market trade of silver. When the SLV receives inflows, JPM sells silver from the segmented off vaults, and then proceeds to short silver on the futures exchange. As the price drops, silver investors become disheartened and sell their SLV, thus selling the silver back to JPM at a lower price. It’s a continuous scalp trade that nets JPM and the banks billions in profits. Here’s a diagram to help you sort it out: ​ reduce, reuse, recycle An even more clear admission that SLV doesn’t impact the real silver market came on February 3rd when it changed its prospectus to state that it might not be possible to acquire additional silver in the near future. What does this even mean? Why would it not be possible to acquire additional silver? As long as the ETF is willing to pay a higher price, more silver will be available to purchase. But if the ETF doesn’t participate in the real silver market, that’s actually not the case. What SLV was admitting here, was that the silver in the JPM segmented off vaults might run out, and that they refuse to bid up the price of silver in the open market. They will not purchase additional silver to accommodate inflows, beyond what JPM will allow them to. The real issue here is that purchasing SLV doesn’t actually impact the market price of silver one bit. The price is determined completely separately on the futures exchange. SLV doesn’t purchase futures contracts and then take delivery of silver, it just uses JPM as a custodian who allocates more silver to their vault from an existing, controlled supply. This is an extremely strange phenomenon in markets, and its unnatural. For example, when millions of people buy GME stock, it puts a direct bid under the price of the stock, causing the price to rise. When millions of people put money into the USO oil ETF, that fund then purchases oil futures contracts directly, which puts a bid under the price of oil. But when millions of people buy SLV, it does nothing at all to directly impact the price of silver. The price of silver is determined separately, and SLV is completely in the position of price taker. So how do we know banks like JPM are shorting on the futures market whenever SLV experiences inflows? Well luckily for us the CFTC publishes the ‘bank participation report’ which shows exactly how banks are positioned on the futures market. The chart below shows SLV YoY change in shares outstanding which are evidence of inflows and outflows to the ETF. The orange line is the net short position of all banks participating in the silver futures market. The series runs from April-2007 through February-2021. I use a 12M trailing avg of the banks’ net position to smooth out the awkward lumpiness caused by the fact that futures have 5 primary delivery months per year, and this causes cyclicality in the level of open interest depending on time of year. https://preview.redd.it/2vpm42uehwo61.png?width=849&format=png&auto=webp&s=5feb48c0ce3ce1a2a55280e7ec2f79b8b7f33c0a It is evident that as SLV experiences inflows, banks add to short positions on the COMEX, and as SLV experiences outflows they reduce these short positions. What’s also evident is that the short interest of the banks has grown over time, which is also why silver is ripe for a potential short squeeze, just not by using SLV. One other thing that is evident, is that the trend of banks shorting when SLV receives inflows, is starting to break down. Specifically, beginning in the summer of 2020, as deliveries began to surge, the net short interest among banks has actually declined as SLV has experienced inflows. It’s likely one or more banks see the risk, and the writing on the wall and is trying to exit before a potential squeeze happens (having seen what happened with GME). For further evidence of this theme of, “If banks hold the silver, the price is allowed to rise, but if you hold the silver, the price is forced to fall” look no further than the deliveries data itself, ​ https://preview.redd.it/e6gnlo7ghwo61.png?width=869&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb6ff867907a4de54a27876835cad96ac00ad46e You’ll notice that as long as futures investors didn’t actually want the silver to be delivered, the price of silver was allowed to rise, but whenever deliveries showed an uptick, the price would begin to fall once again. This is because the shorts know that they can decrease the price of all silver in the world by shorting on the COMEX, and then secure real physical silver from primary dealers to actually make delivery. Why pay a higher price to the dealers when you can simply add to shorts on the COMEX and push the price down, and then acquire the silver you need? But just like the graph of the bank net short position, you’ll notice that this relationship started to break down in 2020, and the price has started to rise alongside deliveries. The short squeeze is underway, and the dam is about to break. And lest you think I’m reaching with my accusations of price manipulation by JPM, why not just listen to what the department of Justice concluded? https://preview.redd.it/fwjolfmhhwo61.png?width=877&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b1804172cace87c2fb285f1f13bad1d5dcef374 For JPM and the banks involved in the silver market, fines from regulators are just a cost of doing business. The only way to get banks to stop manipulating precious metals markets is to call the bluff, take delivery, and make them feel the losses of their short position. SLV is by far the largest silver ETF in the world, with 600 million ounces of silver under its control, and its custodian was labeled a criminal enterprise for manipulation of silver markets. Why should silver investors ever put their money into a silver ETF where the entity that controls the silver is actively working against them, or at a minimum is a criminal enterprise? And let me know if you see a trend in the custodial vaults of the other popular silver ETFs: https://preview.redd.it/8kbb08xihwo61.png?width=607&format=png&auto=webp&s=7da347b06b44433082ab041d11f35d1563c8919a Further exacerbating the lack of trust one should have in these ETFs, is the fact that they store the metal at the LBMA in London. Unlike the COMEX that has regular independent audits, the LBMA isn’t required to have independent audits, nor do independent audits occur. I’m not saying the silver isn’t there, but why not allow independent auditors in to provide more confidence? So what are investors to do in a rigged game like this? Well, there is currently one ETF that is outside this system, and which actually purchases silver on the open market as it receives inflows. That ETF is PSLV, from Sprott. Founded by Eric Sprott, a billionaire precious metals investor with a stake in nearly ever silver mine in the world, so you know his interests are aligned with the longs of the PSLV ETF (in desiring higher prices for silver via real price discovery). Further, PSLV buys its silver directly, it doesn’t have a separate entity doing the purchasing, it stores its silver at the Royal Canadian Mint rather than the LBMA, and it is independently audited. By purchasing the PSLV ETF, retail investors can actually acquire 1000oz bars and put a bid under the price of silver in the primary dealer marketplace. And if a premium occurs among primary dealers, deliveries will occur in the futures market. This is what is starting to happen right now, a premium has developed among primary dealers, and deliveries on the COMEX have started to surge, while COMEX inventories have begun to decline. And this is happening after PSLV has added just 30 million ounces over 7 weeks (once the small contingent of silver squeezers realized SLV was a scam and started switching). Imagine what will happen if investors create 100 million ounces of demand. Even a small portion of SLV investors switching to PSLV because they realize the custodian of SLV is a criminal enterprise, would create a massive groundswell of demand in the real physical silver market. After the original silver squeeze posts went viral on WSB on 1/27, silver rose massively over the first 3 trading days following it. But on 1/31 a post was made about citadel being long SLV which got 74k upvotes (compared to only 15k on the original silver post). This lead to a fizzling in the momentum for the silver squeeze movement on WSB. However, given what I've explained here about how SLV is a complete scam meant to screw over investors, is it really that much of a surprise? Additionally, that post about citadel showed them with $130m in SLV. That's only 0.04% of Citadel's AUM. Do you really think they were pushing silver because 0.04% of their AUM was in SLV? This post also didn't detail the fact that citadel also had short positions on SLV. That's what a market maker does. They have long and short positions in just about everything. There are plenty of banks talking about a commodities super cycle, and a ‘green’ commodity super cycle where they upgrade metals like copper, but they never mention silver. Likely because banks have a massive net short position in silver. Lets dig into the potential for a silver squeeze, starting with the silver market itself. Silver is priced in the futures market, and its price is based on 1000oz commercial bars. A futures market allows buyers and sellers of a commodity to come to agreement on a price for a specific amount of that commodity at a specific date in the future. Most buyers in the futures market are speculators rather than entities who actually want to take delivery of the commodity. So once their contract date nears, they close out their contracts and ‘roll’ them over to a future date. Historically, only a tiny percentage of the longs take delivery, but the existence of this ability to take delivery is what gives these markets their legitimacy. If the right to take delivery didn’t exist, then the market wouldn’t be a true market for silver. Delivery is what keeps the price anchored to reality. Industrial players and large-scale investors who want to acquire large amounts of physical silver don’t typically do it through the futures market. They instead use primary dealers who operate outside of the futures market, because taking delivery of futures is actually a massive pain in the ass. They only do it if they really have to. Deliveries only surge in the futures market when supply is so tight that silver from the primary dealers starts to be priced at a large premium to the futures price, thus incentivizing taking delivery. Despite setting the index price for the entire silver market, the futures exchange is really more of a supplier of last resort than a main player in the physical market. Most shorts (the sellers) in the futures market also source their silver from sources outside of exchange warehouses for the occasional times they are called to deliver. The COMEX has an inventory of ‘registered’ silver that is effectively a big pile of silver that exists as a last resort source to meet delivery demand if supply ever gets very tight. But even as deliveries are made each month, you will typically see next to no movement among the registered silver because silver is still available to source from primary dealers. So how have deliveries and registered ounces been trending recently? Let’s take a quick look at the first quarter deliveries in 2021 compared to the first quarter in previous years: https://preview.redd.it/u6vl4z3lhwo61.png?width=669&format=png&auto=webp&s=97d96e5ee4fcc5553bb267603f764a0378123dec After adding in the 3.6 million ounces of open interest remaining in the current March contract (anyone holding this late in the month is taking delivery), 1Q 2021 would reach 78 million ounces delivered. This is a massive increase relative to previous years, and also an all-time record for Q1 from the data that I can find. Even more stark, is the chart showing deliveries on a 12-month trailing basis (which I also showed earlier) Note: You have to view this on an annual basis because the futures market has 5 main delivery months and 7 less active months, so using a shorter time frame would involve cutting out an unequal share of the 5 primary months depending on what time of year it is. https://preview.redd.it/o4wjuwfmhwo61.png?width=724&format=png&auto=webp&s=03f45022e0f2d1702d5c3e0aaa2877a654ed884b As you can see from the chart, starting in the month of April 2020, deliveries have gone completely parabolic. While silver doesn’t need deliveries to spike for a rally to occur, a spike in deliveries is the primary ingredient for a short squeeze. The 2001-2011 rally didn’t involve a short squeeze for example, so it ‘only’ caused silver to rise 10x. In the 2020s however, we have a fundamentals-based rally that is running headlong into a surge in deliveries that is extremely close to triggering a short squeeze. In fact this is visible when looking at the chart of inventories at the COMEX. https://preview.redd.it/9907dfnnhwo61.png?width=827&format=png&auto=webp&s=45d5859b4c8cd42a66118d62e6d1a97f2364d774 As you can see from the graph and the chart above, COMEX inventories are beginning to decline at a rapid pace. To explain a bit further, the ‘eligible’ category of COMEX is silver that has moved from registered status to delivered. It is called ‘eligible’ because even though the ownership of the silver has transferred to the entity who requested delivery, they haven’t taken it out of the warehouse. It is technically eligible become ‘registered’ if the owner decided to sell it. However, the fact that it is in the eligible category means that it would likely require higher silver prices for the owner to decide to sell. The current path of silver in the futures market is that registered ounces are being delivered, they then become eligible, and entities are actually taking their eligible stocks out of COMEX warehouses and into the real physical world. This is a sign that the futures market is currently the silver supplier of last resort. And there are only 127 million ounces left in the registered category. 1/3 of an ounce, or roughly $10 worth of silver is left in the supply of last resort for every American. If just 1% of Americans purchased $1,000 worth of the PSLV ETF, it would be equivalent to 127 million ounces of silver, the entire registered inventory of the COMEX. That’s how tight this market is. Right now we are sending most Americans a $1,400 check. If 1% of them converted it to silver through PSLV, this market could truly explode higher. And lest you think this surge in deliveries is going to stop any time soon, just take a look at how the April contract’s open interest is trending at a record high level: https://preview.redd.it/olei0ejphwo61.png?width=779&format=png&auto=webp&s=e53aa870cf012bdeff94fb0b9f4d07ab8127813f It looks almost unreal. And keep in mind the other high points in this chart were records unto themselves. That light brown line was February 2021, and look how its deliveries compared to previous years: https://preview.redd.it/llu9bzoqhwo61.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd538ecd2ad375f52aa20ae9932d3b795832f322 12 million ounces were delivered in the month of February 2021. A month that is not a primary delivery month, and which exceeded previous year’s February totals by a multiple of 4x. Open interest for February peaked at 8 million ounces, which means that an additional 4 million ounces were opened and delivered within the delivery window itself. April’s open interest is currently at a level of 15 million ounces and rising. If it followed a similar pattern to February of intra-month deliveries being added, it could potentially see deliveries of over 20 million ounces. 20 million ounces in a non-active month would be completely unheard of and is more than most primary delivery months used to see. Here’s what 20 million ounces delivered in April would look like compared to previous years: https://preview.redd.it/n706c9yrhwo61.png?width=478&format=png&auto=webp&s=78c23017586291a4f7efc66a274c8f1c9a99b4f3 So just how tenuous is the situation that the shorts have put themselves in (yes CFTC, the shorts did this to themselves)? Well let’s look at the next active delivery month of May: https://preview.redd.it/ppuloa0thwo61.png?width=860&format=png&auto=webp&s=680a8cfba0f920b008a6660f52f35d45d82557db ​ https://preview.redd.it/fkh2bdfxhwo61.png?width=271&format=png&auto=webp&s=86c2bf46c9b547b8e0b0cfe109639ad283a832e7 If a larger percentage than usual take delivery in May, there is easily enough open interest to cause a true run on silver. With 127 million ounces in the registered category, and 652 million ounces in the money, most of it from futures rather than options, the short interest as a % of the float is roughly 513%. Its simply a matter of whether the longs decide to call the bluff of the shorts. No long contract holder wants to be left holding the last contract when the COMEX declares ‘force majeure’ and defaults on its delivery obligations. This means that they will be settled in cash rather than silver, and won’t get to participate in the further upside of the move right when its likely going parabolic. As registered inventories dwindle, longs are incentivized to take physical delivery just so that they can guarantee they will be able to remain long silver. Of course, the COMEX could always prevent a default by simply allowing silver to continue trading higher. There is always silver available if the price is high enough. Like the situation with GameStop, the authorities have historically tended to interfere with the silver market during previous short squeezes where longs begin to take delivery in large quantities. There were always shares of GME available to purchase, it’s just that the price had not reached what the longs were demanding quite yet. Given that it was the powerful connected elite of society who were short GME though, the trade was shut down and rigged against the millions of retail traders. The GME short squeeze may indeed continue, because in this situation it’s millions of small individuals holding GME. While they were able to temporarily prevent purchases of GME, they can’t force them to sell. In the silver short squeeze of the 1970s, that’s exactly what the authorities forced the Hunt Brothers (the duo that orchestrated the squeeze) to do, they actually forced them to sell. The difference this time is that it’s not a squeeze orchestrated by a single entity, but rather millions of individuals who are purchasing a few ounces of silver each from around the globe. There is no collusion on the long side among a small group of actors like in the 70s with the Hunt brothers or when Warren Buffet squeezed silver in the late 90s, so there’s no basis to stop the squeeze. In the squeeze of 1979-1980, the regulators literally pulled a ‘GameStop’ on the silver market. Or in reality, the more recent action with GameStop was regulators pulling a ‘silver’. The regulators will try everything in their power to prevent the squeeze from happening again, but this time it’s not two brothers and a couple of Saudi princes buying millions of ounces each (or just Warren Buffet on his own), but rather it’s millions of retail investors buying a few ounces each. There is no cornering the market going on. This is actual silver demand running headlong into a silver market that banks have irresponsibly shorted to such a level that they deserve the losses that hit them. They’ve been manipulating and toying with silver investors for decades and profiting off of illegal collusion. Bailing out the banks as their losses pile up would be truly reprehensible action by our government, and tacit admission that our government is ok with a few big banks on the short side stealing billions from small individual investors. But what about beyond a short squeeze? Is there any logic to buying silver on a fundamentals basis? There are two types of bull markets in silver. One is a fundamentals-based bull market, where silver is undervalued relative to industrial and monetary demand. The second type of silver bull market is a short squeeze. Both types of bull markets have occurred at different points in the past 60 years. However, the 1971-80 market in which the price of silver increased over 30x does was combination of both types of bull markets. I believe we may be entering another silver bull market like the one that began in the fall of 1971, where both a short squeeze and fundamentals-based rally occur simultaneously. Smoke alarms are ringing in the silver market, and are signaling another generational bull market. So what are these ‘smoke alarms’? I recently went digging through various data to try and quantify where we are in the silver bull/bear market cycle. I ended up creating an indicator that I like to call SMOEC, pronounced ‘smoke’. The components of the abbreviation come from the words Silver, Money supply, and Economy. Lets look at the money supply relative to the economy, or GDP. More specifically, if you look at the chart below, you will see the ratio of M3 Money supply to nominal GDP, monthly, from 1960 through 2020. https://preview.redd.it/ltu4vgovhwo61.png?width=852&format=png&auto=webp&s=de4f9f2f0748ca3d86e8cf153175efa78901435d When this ratio is rising, it means that the broad money supply (M3) is increasing faster than the economy, and when it is falling it means that the economy is growing faster than the money supply. One thing that is very important when investing in any asset class, is the valuation that you enter the market at. Silver is no different, but being a commodity rather than cash-flow producing asset, how does one value silver? It might not produce cash flows or pay dividends, but it does have a long history of being used as both money and as a monetary hedge, so this is the correct lense through which to examine the ‘valuation’ level of silver. Enter the SMOEC indicator. The SMOEC indicator tells you when silver is generationally undervalued and sets off a ‘smoke alarm’ that is the signal to start buying. In other words, SMOEC is a signal telling you when silver is about to smoke it up and get super high. Below, you will see a chart of the SMOEC indicator. SMOEC is calculated by dividing the monthly price of silver by the ratio shown above (M3/GDP). More specifically it is: LN(Silver Price / (M3/Nominal GDP)) Below you will see a chart of the SMOEC level from January 1965 through March 2021. https://preview.redd.it/5m8y7kzyhwo61.png?width=905&format=png&auto=webp&s=1073a6fa09e9b1151a162b79172d673af515fc93 I want to bring your attention to the blue long-term trendline for SMOEC, and how it can be used to help indicate when investing in silver is likely a good idea. Essentially, when growth in money supply is faster than growth of the economy, AND silver has been underinvested in as an asset class long enough, the SMOEC alarm is triggered as it hits this blue line. Since 1965, SMOEC has only touched this trendline three times. The first occurrence was in October 1971, where SMOEC bottomed at 0.79 and proceeded to increase 3.41 points over the next eight years to peak at 4.20 in February of 1980 (literally 420, I told you it was a sign silver was about to get high). Silver rose from $1.31 to $36.13, or a 2,658% gain using the end of month values (the daily close trough to peak was even greater). Over this same period, the S&P 500 returned only 67% with dividends reinvested. Silver, a metal with no cash flows, outperformed equities by a multiple of 40x over this period of 8.5 years (neither return is adjusted for inflation). This is partially due to the fact that the Hunt Brothers took delivery of so many contracts that it caused a short squeeze on top of the fundamentals-based rally. The second time the SMOEC alarm was triggered was when SMOEC dropped to a ratio of 2.10 in November of 2001 and proceeded to increase 2.32 points over the next decade to peak at 4.42 in April of 2011. Silver rose from $4.14 to $48.60, an increase of over 1000%, and this was during a ‘lost decade’ for equities. The S&P 500 with dividends reinvested, returned only 41% in this 9.5-year period. Silver outperformed equities by a multiple of 24x (neither figure adjusted for inflation). There was no short squeeze involved in this bull market. Over the long term, it would be expected that cash flow producing assets would outperform silver, but over specific 8-10 year periods of time, silver can outperform other asset classes by many multiples. And in a true hyperinflationary environment where currency collapse is occurring, silver drastically outperforms. Just look at the Venezuelan stock market during their recent currency collapse. Investors received gains in the millions of percentage points, but in real terms (inflation adjusted) they actually lost 94%. This is an example of a situation where silver would be a far better asset to own than equities. ​ https://preview.redd.it/ir5gcfv0iwo61.png?width=676&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e02b95d63beea8de9b7e067cc40655d7a59da16 I in no way think this is coming to the United States. I do think inflation will rise, and the value of the dollar will fall, but it will be nothing even close to a currency collapse. Fortunately for silver investors, a currency collapse isn’t necessary for silver to outperform equity returns by over 10x during the next decade. Back to SMOEC though: The third time the SMOEC alarm was triggered was very recently in April of 2020 when it hit a level of 2.91. Silver was priced at $14.96, at a time the money supply was and still is increasing at a historically high rate, combined with the previous decade’s massive underinvestment in Silver (coming off of the 2011 highs). Starting in April 2020, silver has since risen to a SMOEC level of 3.37 as of March 2021. Silver is 0.46 points into a rally that I think could mirror the 1970s and push silver’s SMOEC level up by over 3.4 points once again. Remember that this indicator is on a LN scale, where each point is actually an exponential increase in the price of silver. Here is a chart to help you mentally digest what the price of silver would be at various SMOEC level and M3/GDP combinations. (LN scale because silver is nature’s money, so it just felt right) The yellow highlighted box is where silver was in April of 2020 and the blue highlighted box is close to where it is as of March 2021. https://preview.redd.it/af5yjg13iwo61.png?width=644&format=png&auto=webp&s=f34ac3ae181c742c4ab2dbf30f64ae82648d84ac An increase of 3.4 points from the bottom in in April of 2020 would mean a silver price of over $500 an ounce before this decade is out. And there’s really no reason it must stop there. The recent money supply growth has been extreme, and as the US government continues to implement modern monetary policy with massive debt driven deficits, it is expected that monetary expansion will continue. This is why bonds and have been selling off recently, and why yields are soaring. Long term treasuries just experienced their first bear market since 1980 (a drop of 20% or more). The 40-year bull market bond streak just ended. What was the situation like the last time bonds had a bear market? Massively higher inflation and precious metals prices. https://preview.redd.it/0e9ncqp4iwo61.png?width=864&format=png&auto=webp&s=21a08435c70609ca534ca672815cc2095358ef5a This inflation expectation is showing up in surging breakeven inflation rates. And this trend is showing very little sign of letting up, just look at the 5-year expected inflation rate: https://preview.redd.it/esd1tzp5iwo61.png?width=618&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c26a1673a48f884c3e3cba23ef3d393cfc5eac9 Inflation expectations are rising because we are actually starting to put money into the hands of real people rather than simply adding to bank reserves through QE. Stimulus checks, higher unemployment benefits, child tax credit expansion, PPP grants, deferral of loan payments, and likely some outright debt forgiveness soon as well. Whether or not you agree with these programs is irrelevant. They are not funded by increased taxes, they are funded through debt and money creation financed by the fed. As structural unemployment remains high (low unemployment is a fed mandate), I don’t see these programs letting up, and in fact I would be betting that further social safety net expansion is on the way. The $1.9 trillion bill was just passed, and it’s rumored the upcoming ‘infrastructure’ bill is going to be between $3-4 trillion. This is the trap that the fed finds itself in. Inflation expectations are pushing yields higher, but the nation’s debt levels (public and private) have expanded so much that raising rates would crush the nation fiscally through higher interest payments. Raising rates would also likely increase unemployment in the short run, during a time that unemployment is already high. So they won’t raise rates to stop inflation because the costs of doing so are more unpalatable than the inflation itself. They will keep short term rates at 0%, and begin to implement yield curve control where they put a cap on long term yields (as was done in the 1940s, the only other time debt levels were this high). So where does the air come out of this bubble, if the fed can’t raise rates at a time of expanding inflation? The value of the dollar. We will see a much lower dollar in terms of the goods it can buy, and likely in terms of other currencies as well (depending on how much money creation they perform). The other problem with the fed’s policy of keeping rates low for extended durations of time (like has been the case since 2008), is that it actually breeds higher structural unemployment. In the short term, unemployment is impacted by interest rate shifts, but in the longer-term lower interest rates decrease the number of jobs available. Every company would like to fire as many people as possible to cut costs, and when they brag about creating jobs, know that the decision was never about jobs, but rather that jobs are a byproduct of expansion and are used as a bargaining chip to secure favorable tax credits and subsidies. Recently, the best way to get rid of workers is through automation. Robotics and AI are advancing rapidly and can increasingly be used to completely replace workers. The debate every company has is whether its worth paying a worker $40k every year or buying a robot that costs $200k up front and $5k a year to do that job. The reason they would buy the robot is because after so many years, there comes a point where the company will have saved money by doing so, because it is only paying $5k a year in up-keep versus $40k a year in salary and benefits. The cost of buying the robot is that it likely requires financing to pay that high of a price up front. In this situation, at 10% interest rates, the breakeven point for buying the robot versus employing a human is roughly 8 years. At 2% interest rates though, the breakeven investment timeline for purchasing the robot is only 4 years. The business environment is uncertain, and deciding to purchase a robot with the thought that it will pay off starting 8 years from now is much riskier than making a decision that will pay off starting only 4 years from now. This trade off between employing people versus robots and AI is only becoming clearer too. Inflation puts natural upward pressure on wages, governments are mandating higher minimum wages are costlier benefits as well. There’s also the rising cost of healthcare that employers provide as well. Meanwhile the costs of robotics and AI are plummeting. The equation is tipped evermore towards capital versus labor, and the fed exacerbates this trend by ensuring the cost of capital is as low as possible via low interest rates. On top of the automation trend, low interest rates drive mergers and acquisitions which also drive higher structural unemployment. In an industry with 3 competitors, the trend for the last 40 years has been for one massive corporation to simply purchase its competitor and fire half the workers (you don’t need 2 accounting departments after all). How can one $50 billion corporation afford to borrow $45 billion to purchase its massive competitor? Because long term low interest rates allow it to borrow the money in a way that the interest payments are affordable. Lacking competitive pressures, the industry now stagnates in terms of innovation which hurts long term growth in both wages and employment. Of course, our absolutely spineless anti-trust enforcement is partially to blame for this issue as well. The fed is keeping interest rates low over long periods of time to help fix unemployment, when in reality low interest rates exacerbate unemployment and income inequality (execs get higher pay when they do layoffs and when they acquire competitors). The fed’s solution to the problem is contributing to making the problem larger, and they’ll keep giving us more of the solution until the problem is fixed. And as structural unemployment continues, universal basic income and other social safety net policies will expand, funded by debt. Excess debt then further encourages the fed to keep interest rates low, because who wants to cut off benefits to people in need? And then low long term interest rates create more unemployment and more need for the safety nets. It’s a vicious cycle, but one that is extremely positive for the price of precious metals, especially silver. And guess what expensive robotics, electric vehicles, satellites, rockets, medical imaging tech, solar panels, and a bevy of other fast-growing technologies utilize as an input? Silver. Silver’s industrial demand is driven by the fact that compared to other elements it is the best conductor of electricity, its highly reflective, and it extremely durable. So, encouraging more capital investment in these industries via green government mandates and via low interest rates only drives demand for silver further. One might wonder how with high unemployment we can actually get inflation. Well government is more than replacing lost income so far, just take a look at how disposable income has trended during this time of high unemployment. It’s also notable that all of the political momentum is in the direction of increasing incomes through government programs even further. https://preview.redd.it/mnfd5gr7iwo61.png?width=864&format=png&auto=webp&s=34c7b3ddfc9808b29e08bd7619d47d1f51f840fc The spark of inflation is what ignites rallies in precious metals like silver, and these rallies typically extend far beyond what the inflation rates would justify on their own. This is because precious metals are insurance against fiat collapse. People don’t worry about fiat insurance when inflation is low, but when inflation rises it becomes very relevant at a time that there isn’t much capacity to satisfy the surge in demand for this insurance. Sure, inflation might only peak at 5% or 10% and while silver rises 100%, but if things spiral out of control its worth paying for silver even after a big rally, because the equities you hold aren’t going to be worth much in real terms if the wheels truly came off the wagon. The Venezuela example proves that fact, but even during the 1970s equities had negative real rates of return and the US never had hyperinflation, just high inflation. During these times of higher inflation, holders of PMs aren’t necessarily expecting a fiat collapse, they just want 1%, 5%, or even 10% of their portfolio to be allocated to holding gold and silver as a hedge. During the 40-year bond bull market of decreasing inflation this portfolio allocation to precious metals lost favor, and virtually no one has it any longer. I can guarantee most people don’t even have the options of buying gold or silver in their 401ks, let alone actually owning any. A move back into having even a small precious metals allocation is what drives silver up by 30x or more. ​ ​ TLDR: SLV is a scam, as are basically all of the silver ETFs. If you do want to buy silver you'll buy physical when premiums are low, or PSLV. Disclaimer: I am a random guy on the internet and this entire post should be regarded as my personal opinion submitted by /u/TheHappyHawaiian to r/wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/reverse_twinkie69 to r/dreamsmp [link] [comments]