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Blowing up all over the internet yesterday and today - the news that reddit users - specifically r/wallstreetbets - had discovered that hedge funds were over leveraging GameStop and so pooled their resources and joined the game. Certain hedge funds now teeter on the edge of bankruptcy. (This never happens - they get bailouts. If they were people this would happen).
So far this is a wonderful little feel-good story.
Hilarity ensues. Some of the more amusing comments: "Reddits coordinated attack on Wall Street is going as planned", "Reddit woke up this morning and decided to make their own stimulus check". Now - everything they're doing is perfectly legal - and - if they weren't so smart no brokerage or hedge fund would have a problem taking their money. But the redditors are taking theirs, and it's fast becoming "war" - with the brokerages that solicited the redditors business in the first place now not allowing them to trade certain stocks on their accounts. This is market manipulation, illegal, and will probably result in a class-action lawsuit has resulted in a Class Action Lawsuit.
A class war played by real people against billionaire investors in hedge funds - on their own terms - who now have the audacity to complain that they're winning.
Note that the brokerage many are using is called "RobinHood", only they're behaving as the Sheriff of Nottingham. To summarize their position: "You're allowed to lose money on the Stock Market, but if you should by accident or intent make money we'll suspend/freeze/limit your account.
A few links to bring you up to speed:
- Jim Cramer reveals dirty tricks to short market
- Chamath Plihapitiya roasts CNBC Anchor
- Charles Payne roasts Wall Street
- Billionaire Leon Cooperman complains that "wealthy people are being attacked"
- Winklevoss twins on Reddit Trader Rebellion
- Robin Hood Limits Trading & Here
- Robin Hood gets sued
There's more than one way to stage a revolution...So far, all good news!
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And so following friends disclosure about where she'd found work I did a little digging, and went down more than a few rabbit holes.
First of all, I'm not providing any links. This is a small town, and it's pretty hard to be critical of anything - especially reason - without it coming back to haunt you. But do a little of your own digging and you'll find that what I'm telling you is 100% legit. If anything I'm understating it. Anyways, to begin:
Charlatans and Mountebanks:
I'm intrigued, I mean, I know it's a load of BS but I do my own googling, find their website, a few of their webinars.
Watch the video. A no-name spiritual "influencer" is asking "the founders" nonsensical questions. It's an infomercial - essentially, for their spiritual brand of techno-karma. The influencer, he's in on it, gets a commission on every referral. They're spreading the wealth. The interview setting, the dress of the interviewers, the smile and mannerisms, it's all meant to subtly remind you of their spirituality - their inner peace and life's purpose realized in this - the age of anxiety.
I'm filled with a feeling - half of envy, the other of loathing First - why in the hell with all these crystals did I not invent a machine? I mean...they're making hundreds of thousands a month providing absolutely nothing but a sense of spiritual superiority.
No promises, careful about making promises, but they qualify with anecdotal examples, testimonials of how their raised consciousness beam has affected people, people calling in to talk about their experiences in the energy field - more friends, happier pets and plants, and a general feeling of raised consciousness.
One founder, he's explaining the "Machine" - well, first his background - he'd spent 3 years developing an "Over-Unity" machine - that's Perpetual Motion - before going bankrupt and deciding to turn his attention to something a little less empirical.
I recall James - the enlightened son of a former roommate of mine - who made films - 2nd rate films that emulated the formula of "What the Bleep do We Know?", filled with stock images of happy, vacuous people, exotic places, and interviews with quacks, charlatans, Yogini's, Anti-Vaxxers, feel good movies that promised the secrets to material abundance and eternal youth and great health, I look up his website. He's still around, a bad blue suit, artificial tan, uncannily perfect teeth. He looks like a bad evangelical minister who wants to talk about Jesus and how you can put your "seed" money or tithe on your Mastercard and never miss a payment. I always wondered why he needed to sleep on sofas, stay at his parents, but see his teeth? - he'll be paying for those until he dies. His website - full of the smug satisfaction of the "Enlightened", a section on "Suggested" interview questions and "News and Story Ideas", guidelines to ensure a friction-free experience for him and an unenlightening one for you. He has an online course in enlightenment that can be purchased; "Proven Methods" that can be found in a million places online for 0$, the implied superiority (he's not!), "His Passion" *(Your Money and unswerving adulation), a section of cornball pictures of him - every one of them photoshopped - meditating, doing yoga, speaking, on the beach, "Living Life", as they say, a brand that he himself can't even begin to live up to - but - for a few monthly installments he'd be glad to share with you his secrets...
CREDENTIALS FOR THOSE WITH NO CREDENTIALS...
Everywhere, the inanity of their titles, "Credentials" or "Qualifications" or "Skills" - Leader, Motivator, Healer, Shaman, Influencer, Mentor, Coach, Channeler, Sage, Prophet, Communicator, Personal Development, Educator, Visionary, Minister, Yogi, Swami, Pastor, Priest, Wizard...
***
Back to the Interview - the founders, the have a catchy brand, an Acronym, "Quackronym", that makes it all easy to remember: "Quantum Unified Assistive Convergent Kineseology", and they're still discussing "The Machine", this machine - it's an enigma, they don't' like to give away proprietary secrets, it's based on Tesla's secret notebooks, he knew (Always, always Tesla. He was crazy at the end - getting calls from the Venusians on the Wireless...they do know that, don't they?), sacred geometry, Shungite (for some reason popular in New Age circles), they misappropriate hip terms from science, phrases like "Quantum" and "Kinesiology" and "Homeopathic Nutrition" and "Epigenetic Triggers" in what can be seen as desperate grabs at legitimacy, they've expanded upon David R. Hawkins model of the "Hierarchy of Universal Consciousness" to include Dolphins, Bigfoot and Angels, and all the while they avoid discussing "The Machine", deflect, parry, reroute the conversation, and the way they're talking, you can tell, they want to be on a TED talk like the new Tesla, Musk, Gates, Bezos, Ikea, Ghandi, they've found the easy way to salvation - don't ask such difficult questions - merely send us your money, debit or credit card, and the Machine, it will work for you -
They Know, They Know, And - even if they don't - this willful ignorance, self-deception, is worse.
The interviewer/influencer obliges, turns the questions from the machine, and they continue tossing complements back and forth. Even he is a bit curious, but not so curious he'd risk losing a commission...
The quack mechanics that power The invisible machine that no one has ever seen must by necessity remain unknown. How does it connect to the internet? Is it possible that this energy, this chi, prana, aura, vibration, could descend, set fire to your house? Bring back a lost love or turn your wife to Salt?
The absence of answers is making me ever more curious. More webinars, a free trial, perhaps, is in order.
***
The website recommends you drink lots of water. Take Magnesium and Omega 3 supplements. Try to meditate twice a day. If you do all of these things you will feel the vibration keenly, you will be more open to the inevitable rise in consciousness the machine will indubitably provide. That said, not every is so delicately attuned they can feel the effects of the Machine. No, there are no pictures of the machine.
For subscribers to the website there's a little button that will give you a little boost of energy - sent to your home, place of work, telephone or license plate. It lasts 15 minutes. Every subscriber is allowed ONE boost per day.
"Giving Back" is done through hiring employees, there are no promises of free energy showers or food bank donations, nothing at all, merely we need people to help us to get rich. Phrased almost as bluntly.
For a moment or two I wanted to work there, go undercover, see if I could pass their "energy" tests, be a CSR to all the wing-nuts of the world, but really, I know myself better, I couldn't pull it off for 5 minutes. My interactions with fellow staff, though, clients: "Don't want to turn up the energy too much...can't afford another case of Spontaneous Human Combustion!!" ...I mean - what fun I could have...
***
Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Idiots! Every one! Did they ever build a machine? Make a million dollars? Fucking Ass-Holes!
***
Is it wrong? Really? I mean, a fool and his money will be soon parted and all of that. The cost of subscription gives you a feeling - that part of being something bigger, gives you that mindfulness, that focus, that awareness - why, the machine, it eliminates the 5G, for an additional...$X.00 a month you can cast it on your phone, your computer, your license plate, cast it on your friends, pay for extra boosts, turn up the frequency, it will mitigate all the negative effects of the EMF, the FM, AM Radio, it will bathe you in it's aura, leave you awash in the minute near imperceptible vibrations of enlightenment...
***
I'm jealous. I want to build my own machine, my own quantum-potentiator energy transducer, vortex-positron-grafenberg accumulator, style myself a mystic, healer, shaman and scientist, selling techno-spirituality to people who understand neither science or spirituality, fuck doctors I'll just wrap my crystals in the selected blends of copper, silver, gold wires, suspend coils, bend mobiles, create my own sacred geometries, I've considered it but the lifetime company of idiots, well, it's a bit more than I can pull off, sooner or later someone's going to catch me reading a book and the gig would be up, "EXPOSED!!!"...
***
I could go on. I mean, it's a damned big website full of resources and helpful life tips like: "If you can't afford the service the machine provides many former subscribers report getting similar benefits through cleaning their house". I'm not making this up. I'm not making any of it up, only the names and the Acronyms have been changed, and, now really, REALLY, I need to get a job...
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Following the events of last Wednesday I've been online all day doomscrolling to the end of the world ... anxiety fueling anxiety, trying to find the latest news... like at the beginning of Covid, it's a train-wreck and you just can't look away. That Viking guy got himself lost on the way to Shambala, can't eat in prison because they won't serve him organic foods, the hilarious juxtaposition of absurdity and entitlement, the Trump supporting cop killed by Trump supporters, man killed by tasering himself in the balls, the clusterfuck of dark comedy, a most fitting and predictable end to 4 years of Trump, and this quiet now before the inauguration, it's got me suspicious, a little too early to be popping one's head out of the trenches yet I think...
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So, having just gotten my EI and gone to town, got groceries, gas, cigarettes, paid bills and I find myself once again 2 weeks from any cash over Xmas. Not a big deal, I've supplies, but in the absence of reasonable employ should probably begin looking at other revenue streams...
Time now to wrap the crystals, easy-peasy, there's a craft I'm sure I can master, and I've watched enough YouTube videos on it that probably I'm already a master without knowing.
Attempt #1:

Chris had said the 16 Gauge wire was too tough to work with, but I proved him wrong.
And then, a more pliable gauge of wire, Attempt #2:

I was working towards a pendant but I think I'm going to settle for "Orgone Accumulator Trans-Dimensional Crystal Healer" and be done with it.
I need to set up my own page on Craftastrophe or Regretsy (sadly out of service but I'm pretty sure they'd reopen for me). And, while I have no desire to be anything more than adequate at this - so I can move a shit-ton of crystals out of my locker and move on to more interesting projects or purchases, this I'm taking as a challenge...
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This, by the way, is not something I'd recommend. And I have wheels.
First, all the live-long day you're trying to get in out of the cold, find someplace warm, charge your phone, computer, what have you. You're paying rent at the cafe's and grateful that the lockdowns haven't gone any further. The shower options - at the rec center - are unavailable, so the whole "get a good-life membership" to clean up is off the table. And the washrooms in the mall - well, there's always a line, and you don't dare take the time to shave or clean up.
Rent, paid instead of to a landlord, is payed in gas, restaurants, cafe's, cigarettes and Vodka because the sun goes down early, and who can sleep from 4:00 PM until 7:00 AM the next day? Vodka, it helps. And this rent, it's winds up costing more than rent paid to landlords - substantially, even out here, and as your finances erode your chances of finding a place or work diminish. It becomes a spiral.
Homelessness was never a great option, but this Pandemic, it's made it impossible.




















