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"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

submitted by Tharnite to GlobalOffensive [link] [comments]

With the recent influx of new users - I decided to post a guide to Pump and Dump schemes - what they are, how to avoid them and how to move on from them

TLDR: Following the recent DOGE and XRP situations, and our influx of new users - I have decided to put together a quick guide on what a pump and dump is, how to spot it, how to avoid it, and what to do should you fall for one. This is just my thoughts on the issue and by no means exhaustive. I welcome comments and my biggest recommendation if you fell for one of these schemes is to accept it, address your emotions, seek support - either by those around you or here if you feel more comfortable, then commit to educating yourself.
 

Summary:

A pump and dump scheme is where a group of people pitch a coin (or stock) to other people to spike short term volume, and therefore the price, in order to profit from selling their own supply at the higher price to the newer investors.
 
How to spot a PnD:
  Tips to avoid - see below but the main two for me are:
 
 

What is a Pump and Dump scheme?

  A Pump and Dump scheme (PnD from here on in), is where an investor, or group of investors promote a coin they already hold (or are purchasing) in order to cause positive sentiment and the price to rise. At this point these investors will then sell their coins to the newer investors, causing the price to crash and leave the people who fell for the PnD with a large potential loss, or coins which are now worth a lot less than the price they paid for them.
These are not new and were traditionally done via phone call. If you have watched the Wolf of Wall Street, or similar films about penny stocks, you have seen this stuff in action. If you are buying, you are the retail investor who gets taken for a ride.
With the recent influx of new users to this site, and following the PnD schemes surrounding Doge and XRP, lets take a look at how to spot a PnD scheme
 

How to spot a PnD scheme?

 
  • Promises of huge gains, in a short amount of time. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. In crypto (and stocks) if someone is talking to you about something, they are selling you their position. If it is positive - they likely own it, if it negative - they either want prices to fall or they hold a competitor. Ask yourself, why someone would be going out their way to tell you something is a once in a lifetime opportunity? If it was, they would be keeping it secret and accumulating themselves. These people are salesman, and you are the one buying the bullshit
  • Linked to the above there is often a time element - 'get in quick, or you will miss it', they are relying on your impulsive decision making to jump in - they are manipulating you to over ride the logical part of your brain which makes decisions based on information and context
  • There is no discussion of any potential risks or downsides, and you are removed from groups or harassed for asking basic questions - this is a hive mind at work, and you are being censored from raising any concern or legitimate question.
  • There may be reference to 'how this time is different', or it plays on recent successes which are in no way comparable - e.g Game Stop - anyone who paused for a second would realise why not only was financially the short squeeze on GME completely different, but also the moral stand point was too. XRP, for example, is a centralised system which enriches the founders beyond belief. Yet these groups tried to ride the sentiment of GME to convince others to join - as a show of rebellion and alliance.
  • Social media storms are cooked up, it seems like out of nowhere this is all anyone can talk about - when has this ever proven a successful decision? Once everyone is talking about it, you are already too late. You may not lose money, if you are lucky, but you are still the one being duped. Again this is feeding on emotion and Fear of Missing Out. There will be groups created and ran by mods who run them like cults - no talk of anything but price going up is accepted.
  • There is a time or plan attached - e.g. Pump and Hold at 8:30. For the love of god, if this is the case, sell before then. All the leaders of these groups will have done. All of these public announcements are done again to create legitimacy and make you feel at ease - as a collective.
  • Generally any concept of 'we are in this together', coming from a group trying to actively push up the price of something short term = PnD. You are not in this together, markets are competitive - they are survival of the fittest whether you like it or not. They want your money, when you listen to them - you are basically offering to hand it over. People invest to make money, especially when the entire premise is pushing a price up to get rich. They do not want what is good for you, they are using you and they will take your money if you allow them to. They are telling you, because you are the opportunity - not the coin.
  • Be aware, people telling you to hold and buy more, are using you. They want you to push the price back up so they can sell. If you are in these groups - on social media, be aware you may be talking to bots, or at the least people who are trying to dump on you. When it drops, get out.
 
 

How to avoid PnDs in future

 
  • 'Why are they telling me this?' - this is the first and main question to ask yourself. What does the person sharing the information have to gain from telling me? In this case - you invest and push the price up, allowing them to make greater profit. Understand why they would be sharing details with you - if it such a great thing, why are they sharing it?
  • if it is a friend telling you, ask for more information - why it is doing well, what the plan is etc - if they can't explain it properly, this is a big red flag and they likely have fallen for it too.
  • Look out for how someone talks to you about it - is it emotionally driven, does it make you excited? scared to miss out? - This is exactly when you need to step back, breathe and ask yourself if you are thinking correctly. Emotional decision making is not a good thing here, and then ask if they are intentionally trying to get an emotional reaction out of you? (see the above - FOMO, get rich quick etc)
  • Is there any room for nuance? Are you able to discuss the potential cons or risk? If you are laughed at, or harassed, others are told to ignore you (he won't be getting rich, weak hands, pathetic seller) - this is a huge sign that you are investing in something where no other thoughts are allowed. The reason for this, once you are out the bubble - logic returns and you see the smoke and mirrors for what they are. PnD groups work like a cult, only one form of thinking is allowed, everything else is censored.
  • Did this come out of nowhere, do I even know anything about this? If you don't know anything about it, except it makes money, don't invest in it. This is a terrible decision for two reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, you have asymmetric information - you have no idea why and what you are buying, therefore can't make an informed decision - only an emotional one. Equally, this kind of thing pushes panicked, emotional selling. When you don't know fundamental reasons why you invest in something, when the price dips you will sell. Why? because when your brain asks you the question 'shit it is dropping, what do we do?!' - your logical brain won't have an answer, because you never gave it the information to form one. This second part is more relevant to regular investments, not PnDs of course, but is worth bearing in mind before you invest in anything.
  • Was the coin relatively stagnant, or has it dipped recently? PnDs typically target coins which haven't moved much recently, or have lower trading volume, this allows for a much easier spiking of the price due to a small change in demand equalling a big change in price. If you look at the charts and it was doing nothing until this big flurry of activity - you are being taken for a ride.
  • Look for the news, if it is pumping, don't listen to people inside the group - search for reasons why something is pumping. If you can't find anything of value, there probably isn't anything, and you are gambling on emotional decisions.
  • The opportunity finds you, you don't find the opportunity. Getting rich off 'undervalued' coins, or finding a hidden gem is not easy. They are hidden for a reason. If someone is coming to you with this, remember they are selling. You are buying.
  • If someone does approach you, talk to someone else outside of the bubble - find another group e.g. CC, or other investors - talk to them, get outside perspective before investing.
  • look for examples of populist sentiment. Do you hear things about an other? - e.g. haters, those missing out who are jealous. Are you made to feel like you are part of a special group? The ones with insider information? This is a lie, it is very very common manipulation within populist movements, cults etc - to create a narrative of an other to entrench tribalism within the group. This is done to make you switch your brain off, to rule on emotion.
  • is there a recent comparable story that was successful? e.g. GME (yes this isn't the same at all in reality, but the story being sold is - or at least plays on the hype of GME). If there is, you are being played. The real opportunity, just like the hidden gem, is the first one. When people tell you this is happening again, they are simply using the positive news from one case and applying it to their own - often because it lacks any actual, real, tangible reason for succeeding or being a good investment.
 
 

I fell for a PnD, what next?

 
Have you sold yet - No? Are you in profit? Sell. Whilst you still can. Greed will tell you not to, and perhaps you can eek out a little more money. But you are gambling, and gambling extremely high risk against people trying to take all your money.
 
Yes, you have sold. Did you make a profit? Yes - great. You are still a an idiot, just a lucky one. Tell yourself that. There is a difference between opportunist traders taking advantage of PnDs and someone getting lucky and getting out before it collapses. Do not confuse the two. The first group know what they are doing (and they may still lose, but they are aware of the real risk). You are fucking lucky. Don't do it again. So count your blessings, go through the same process of learning about PnDs and begin to understand why you fell for it, how to avoid it in future and realise you are up - you won. Don't go back in, you are asking to lose.
 
Yes you have sold? Did you make profit? No? Ok, this is normal - 90% + of people doing this will end up in the same situation.
 
  • Recognise and accept your mistake. Do not feel ashamed of it, it is ok. You were played, it happens to all of us in our lives at some point.
  • Step away from whatever device you used to invest. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WIN IT BACK RIGHT AWAY. You will most likely make things worse, investing again on emotions - even worse emotions now, shame, anger, disbelief.
  • Talk to the important people in your life if you feel comfortable, if not, come here or to other anonymous groups for support. It is important to share what happened, to vent emotionally whatever it is you feel.
  • Realise it is only money, even if gambled way more than you should have done, long term you will get out of this. Focus on other areas of your life for the time being - emotional investment, fulfilment and development - seek out things which may centre to your emotions again, whatever that may be - getting out in nature, cooking, reading, adrenaline sports - whatever the shit you need, do it.
  • Consider who, if anyone needs to know. Did you borrow from you and your wife's joint account? Accept a loan from a mate? These people need to know the truth. Do not hide it and hope to win it back. Tell the truth. They deserve it.
  • Do not repeat the same actions, if you want to win long term from this - you need a different approach. Step away from the high stakes casino and figure out long term strategies to make money.
  • Learn to diversify and manage risk. You are taking a huge gamble going all in on something - even if it isn't a scam, you need to protect yourself through diversifying your investments. Get rich quick schemes are the fastest way to lose money.
  • Educate yourself on these behaviours - I would recommend 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahnemann as a personal favourite. This book helps to look at and address the biases that make up our emotional decision making, and learn how to recognise these and instead 'think slow'. You won't regret reading it.
submitted by Anhowa123 to CryptoCurrency [link] [comments]

I am 35 years old, make $56,000 ($231k combined), live in Seattle, and work in higher ed administration

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.
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Old Austin Tales: Forgotten Video Arcades of The 1970s & 80s

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975
ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.
March 3, 1976
ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.
First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984
A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.
I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983
Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."
Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982
'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."
Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982
Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.
This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:
Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.
The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003
submitted by s810 to Austin [link] [comments]

What Feminism Forgot: The Glass Floor is Far More Important Than The Glass Ceiling

From the very beginning, feminism has focused on shattering the so-called glass ceiling. That invisible barrier that keeps women from becoming CEOs, doctors, lawyers, President, and all those other exciting, rewarding, glamorous careers. Feminists looked at that content housewife from the 50s, taking care of her husband and children, and told her that she was oppressed. That if she was unshackled from her oppression, she could become President one day. Believing them, women joined the feminist movement in swarms. And after 50 years of amazing gains, they're unhappier than ever, and certainly unhappier than their housewife mothers.
What happened? Simple. Feminism's exhortations to be "independent" was a lie on two fronts: one, that being a housewife was oppression, and two, that if she wasn't she could become President. Let's examine both in detail.
  1. ​
We all know the stereotype of the 50s woman: staying home, taking care of the kids, not having her own career, having dinner ready for her husband when he got home, and spending her free time watching soap operas and having tupperware parties with other housewives in the neighborhood. Feminism came up with the supposedly radical idea that women could work just as much as men. But here's the thing: that's not a radical idea. Indeed, throughout most of history, women (along with children), worked like dogs, just like the men. What was radical was the idea that a woman could stay at home and *not* work, without having the family starve as a result.
Before the industrial age, pretty much *everyone* worked from sunup to sundown, plowing the fields, tending cattle, or anything else, in order to grow enough food to feed their family, with very little left over for any sort of "luxuries" like shoes or meat. This included old people who would work until they keeled over (retirement wasn't really a thing), and kids as young as 2 or 3. Outside of a very small class of aristocrats, everyone else had to work fulltime just for the very basics of living.
With the industrial age, men and women still had to work, this time in dangerous factories, to keep their families solvent. The only people who got a pass were kids who now could wait until 7 or 8 before joining the factory, and old people, who were kicked off the assembly lines when they were too weak.
Indeed, for the vast, vast majority of human history, men and women worked their butts off (albeit often in different jobs) to keep their families afloat. As productivity improved, fewer people needed to work, but women were the last to be freed of this responsibility. First, child labor laws meant children could go to school and avoid working until 16-18. Next, social security and pensions allowed old people to spend at least a few of their final years in a reasonable retirement.
Finally, women were able to stay at home. And it was only for a few decades that productivity rose so high that something previously inconceivable could be possible: in an average family, a single wage could now support 6 people: 2 parents, a husband and wife, and 2 kids. Contrary to feminist thought, the novel idea was not that women could work, but that they could be afforded the privilege of staying home and caring for the family. And even that was not universal. Plenty of women (about 1/3rd) worked in the 50s/60s. Most of them were in lower and working class groups, where a single wage was still not enough to live on.
What's more, even the housework that was remaining had become so much easier: in the old days, cooking meant threshing the wheat, gathering the water from some distant stream, churning butter, and sitting over an open fire breathing smoke for hours in order to make some tasteless gruel. Similarly, washing clothes meant taking them to a river and pounding them on a rock for an hour. By the 50s, advances in cooking, laundry machines, etc. meant that actually tending house took so few hours of the day that they had to invent a new form of entertainment to occupy the rest of the hours. Thus soap operas and tupperware parties. Any woman who thought being a housewife in the 50s was tantamount to slavery while watching soap operas every afternoon has no idea what their own mothers and grandmothers had to go through just a few generations ago.
So this was the first lie that women were fed: rather than celebrate their newfound freedom, they were told that being "forced" to stay home was a sign of longstanding patriarchal oppression, and that progress was to throw that away and join men in the workforce. No one bothered telling them that that was exactly opposite: progress was allowing women to stay home (just like children and elderly were allowed out of the workforce in previous years), and joining the workforce was the actual historical oppression that most people tried to avoid if at all possible.
2.
The second lie was that if women would just leave their comfortable home lives, they would all have the type of glamorous careers that they dreamt about. Feminists never told them the truth about work, something that men have known forever (and women knew, until they stopped working and forgot): the vast majority of work is largely soul-sucking drudgery, not some empowering, glamorous work; being beholden to a boss or (worse) some faceless bureaucrat in a distant corporate HQ for your monthly paycheck, career development, and daily marching orders is hardly a picture of independence; and the only reason to submit to such torture is to put food on the table for your family, not to "actualize your innate awesomeness" or some other BS propaganda that bosses talk about.
Sure, maybe it's more fulfilling to be a doctor and save countless lives than it is to raise 2 well adjusted kids and have a happy home life. But how about being a secretary, answering angry phone calls all day? How about being a janitor, sweeping floors every night? Are they really more fulfilling than raising a family? I don't mean to disrespect secretaries and janitors. Their jobs are absolutely needed. But none of them are under any delusions about how "empowering" it is to deal with Karens asking to speak to the manager, or scrub the toilets after the cafeteria has its weekly Taco lunch. Most of them do it because they need the money, and then try to get meaning in their lives from everything else they do, whether it's raise a family, be a good friend, win the local bowling league's championship, etc. And there are far, far more secretaries and janitors than there are doctors (also, if you talk to most doctors, they'll tell you how disillusioned they are by the profession, which turns out to be just as soul-sucking and frustrating as most others; they have one of the highest suicide rates of any career and many of them long to leave the field as soon as they save up enough money).
Feminism tells a woman that the only thing keeping her from being a CEO, or doctor, or lawyer, or multi-million dollar jetsetting humanitarian crusader / fashion icon (or whatever BS dream job women think exists) is the Patriarchy. But that's not true. If it was, then every man should be one of those. It's not like the garbageman never had dreams of becoming an astronaut. But the truth is, even for the vast majority of men, such careers are out of reach and were probably never within their reach due to a combination of their innate intelligence, social support structures, economic factors, and sheer dumb luck. The same applies to women.
The only reason guys still sign up for those thankless jobs is because there is no alternative for us. There's no rich woman waiting to marry a poor unemployed guy to raise a family with and share a life together. But no guy is foolish enough to think that it's "liberating" to spend your days filling out TPS reports while being beholden to some pointy-haired boss who can fire you whenever the company's profits take a dip.
3.
There's a common belief among the Left that racism is what the Right uses to keep poor white people and poor black people from uniting under a common economic cause. By keeping them divided and thinking each other is the enemy, they can avoid action against their corporate and Wall St. donor class. If that's the case, then the Left has used feminism to do the same: keep poor (i.e the 99%) men and poor women from uniting under a common economic cause to take action against the Left's corporate and Wall St. donor class (largely the same as the Right's donor class). Feminism taught women to view men as the problem rather than The Man. And it achieves the same purpose as racism for the Right.
And they do it the same way: the racial strategy is to convince a white man the reason he's poor is because a black man took his job, and not the fact that thanks to lax labor laws and favorable trade agreements, the job actually went to an illiterate 12 year old in China, with the CEO keeping the profit. Similarly, feminism says what's keeping a woman from having financial security / happiness / fulfilment in her life is her husband "forcing" her to stay at home, and she should instead depend on the vagaries of Corporate America to provide her those benefits. Just like a racist says "I may be poor, but at least I'm not black" (meanwhile he has to play dancing monkey for his corporate masters to keep his paycheck), a feminist says "I may be unhappy but least I'm not dependent on a man" (meanwhile, being utterly dependent on her corporate masters for that "independence").
It's not a coincidence that wages in America began to stagnate in the 70s, just as women began to enter the labor force in larger numbers. Under the guise of feminism (and civil rights, see my note below), there was a huge new influx of available workers. Of course that will lower wages.
4.
Now, all of this would be fine, *if* it increased women's happiness. That is, if women were truly unhappy or oppressed at home, and found greater happiness or got closer to their life's goals, by working, then feminism would be fine. After all, no man is entitled to his job, and if a woman can outcompete him for it, then so be it. But women's happiness has gone down, because it was a lie: only a tiny, tiny majority of jobs actually deliver enough intrinsic worth, challenge, respect, etc. that they beat the fulfillment and satisfaction that comes from raising a family. That's true for both men and women, but only men knew this. Their hope was that, if they put their noses to the grinder and worked hard, they could provide for that family, and if they married the right woman, she would raise that family well, and that joint life's work would be something both could cherish for the rest of their lives. As long as that possibility was there, men would be willing to break their backs (literally, as they disproportionately take the most dangerous jobs) to get it.
The bargain offered to men in the 50s/60s was this: "yes, most likely your job will be boring / dangerous / etc, but in exchange, you will earn enough money to marry a good woman and raise a family with her. And in the end, that will bring you fulfillment, not the job." The bargain wasn't easy, but at least it was an honest offer. Feminism offered this bargain: "yes, your mother was happy staying at home and raising a family, but you can do better. Sign up with us, and your career will give you even more happiness and fulfillment than your mother had raising a family." Or, at the very least, they promised that you could have both an amazing career *and* the same family life that their mothers had.
Unfortunately, most women didn't read the fine print on that bargain, which read: "a) <1% of you will get those jobs, because they're exceedingly rare and hard to get into; b) by signing this deal, you sign away your chance at the happiness your mother had, because you will be so busy building and then sustaining your career you won't have time to build a family life". IOW, by signing up for this deal, women agreed that they were either going to be part of that 1% with great, satisfying careers, or be left without the safety net of at least having what their mothers had: financial stability (through a husband), a family, and a life partner who, for all his faults, was still better than being alone.
How many of us play the lottery with our life's savings? That's what feminism fooled women into doing, and they bought it. And now, the ones who gambled away their safety net chasing that tiny fraction of careers are looking around wondering why they're even worse off than their "oppressed" mothers.
But it gets worse: feminism altered men's bargain too. Because now, men simply can't find a good woman to raise a family with, and even if they do, rising divorce rates and biased family courts mean they might lose their children and spouse regardless. So all of a sudden, the bargain they signed up for doesn't hold either. As a result, lots of men are asking "why am I working so hard and risking my physical safety if I can't find a good wife and raise a family anyway?" And deciding to go for an easier job which provides just enough for them to live a single life and make peace with that.
In the end, neither men nor women are happy with the choices they're now offered. Even the married ones now have to work 2 jobs to provide the same standard of living that 1 job used to provide before. Interestingly however, Corporate America is tickled pink about having doubled labor availability (while paying for the same standard of living as before), neither one now having a safety net, making them even more reliant on their bosses.
NB:
FWIW, I believe the civil rights movement to end racial discrimination for jobs was different, because access to those jobs *did* make lives better for black people. If a black man couldn't get a job, neither could his black wife, which meant the whole family was condemned to poverty. So allowing him (or her) to get a job was a net increase in their happiness and financial stability. But white women already had financial stability and happiness: through their husbands. Feminism was just asking them to transfer that dependence from their husband to their boss (ironically, usually also a man), while telling them they were becoming "independent". While Corporate America no doubt benefited from the influx of labor when minorities were allowed to compete for jobs, at least it did provide a net increase in happiness for those minorities (of course, the real solution would be to grow the economy and provide more jobs for everyone). There is no reddit full of black people wishing they could go back to being sharecroppers. Like I said before, if feminism did the same thing for women, increase their net happiness, then I would accept it as well, but it didn't.
5.
tl;dr summary:
1) The glass ceiling, ie the barriers to having a glamorous, fulfilling career, exist for everyone -- men and women-- and have always existed, and *will* always exist, even if The Patriarchy is demolished, for the simple reason that those jobs have always been rare and ultra-competitive to get into. If you demolish one barrier, another one will come up, because there just aren't enough of those jobs to go around for everyone who wants one. For every company that employs 100,000 people, there is only one CEO. For our country of 300 million people, there is only one President. Break all the barriers you want, it won't make the constitution allow for 2 Presidents.
2) In contrast, the glass floor for women has been gradually raised higher, to where women in the 50s/60s could avoid work, have financial stability, raise a family, have a life partner, and still have time to watch soap operas (or pursue other avenues of personal fulfillment like volunteering, reading books, developing hobbies and interests, etc.).
3) Feminism offered women the chance to break the glass ceiling, in exchange for removing the glass floor that acted as their safety net.
4) Women, having been out of the workforce for a generation, forgot how crappy most jobs were, and how few and far between the glamorous careers actually were, and took that deal. They were aided by feminists telling them that the only thing standing in the way of them becoming President was the men in her life (her father, her husband) keeping her down, conveniently forgetting that 150 million men also will never become President, because the bigger obstacles are things like class and money: every President for the past 30 years has come from an Ivy League school; here's the list from 1988 until this year (counting re-elections): Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Harvard, Harvard, UPenn. Also, here are the law schools of all of the current 9 Supreme Court Justices (men and women): Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Notre Dame. Gee, looks like Patriarchy is the real problem, right?
5) After taking the bargain, women then dedicated their best years to "building a careeer" as feminism told them that handing over your 20s/30s to a faceless company or (worse) paying an immensely wealthy University to take those years from her, was more "empowering" than dedicating those years to a man who loved her and would in turn dedicate his life to her. Because, you know, that career would be far more fulfilling than anything that oppressive, patriarchal man would give her.
6) After a few decades, many (most) women realize that they could not, and will not, crack the glass ceiling (turns out it's made of bulletproof acrylic, designed by the ones above it to protect themselves from the ones below, both men and women), and that the jobs they managed to find provided less economic security, fulfillment, or happiness, than the glass floor they gave up.
7) Meanwhile, men have been damaged too, since, with fewer women interested in focusing on building a family and being a good life partner, they're wondering why they need to work so hard at those same jobs. So now, fewer men are available who are willing to provide what their fathers did for their wives.
8) Thusly, having crashed through the glass floor, forced to work a soul sucking job to put food on their table, beholden to a boss less interested in their welfare than the most uncaring husband ever was, the vast majority of women have actually regressed: less happy, less secure, less fulfilled, less independent. Yet rather than recognize the failed ideology that brought them to that unhappy place, they double down on their assumption that men are the source of their problems while simultaneously crying out for us to rescue them.
Funnily enough though, for a winning socialist movement, corporate profits are up...
submitted by ogrilla99 to WhereAllTheGoodMenAre [link] [comments]

£500 for a rainy day- A Beginners Guide to Matched Betting

I've been meaning to update this guide for a while and add in some elements about Matched Betting that people should be aware of before getting started. Here they are as follows:
(1) You can start with as little as £20 but ideally and for the sake of attaining more profit in a faster time, My Personal Reccomendation would be to start with £100-£200.
(2) If you are careless, you can make mistakes. Like with any task, you must give it the level of precision it demands, a mistake when entering figures will cost you real money. When you read the guide below you will see that the process is very simple, but that means you must take extra care not to become complacent.
(3) If you have a history with Gambling, do not come near Matched Betting. Matched Betting is not Gambling, but the fact you will be using betting websites to facilitate a profit is too much of a temptation- It's not worth it.
(4) Matched betting won't effect your credit rating, however it's common sense that it doesn't look good to have numerous transations to betting sites on your bank statement. Open a seperate virtual bank account for all your Matched betting activity (It only takes 5 minutes, details below)
With that being said, Matched Betting really is a solid way to secure £400-£500 in a very short time, it's the reason I was able to pay my first couple of month's rent when I moved to the UK and to this day still remains a handy way to pay the bills every month. Anyway, Below is the Guide:
​
Starting Out:
I was sceptical as hell about Match betting because a friend showed me the Facebook groups and it just looked like a giant gambling pyramid scheme. It turns out there is a decent chunk of change to be made from it, you just need to follow the guides and never ever actually gamble with your money.
Never ever Gamble? Yes That's right, you are going to be using Gambling sites to complete the various offers, but the whole idea behind match betting is that every time you "make a bet", you match that same bet on the exchange. So for example, if I bet £10 for Real Madrid to Win on the Bookie Site at odds of 2.5, I then also make a Matched bet on the Exchange (This is a separate site such as Smarkets or Betfair) where I bet for Real Madrid not to win at odds of 2.5 (or as close as I can get to those odds). In this way I am covered in all outcomes, and it allows me to fulfill the requirements of the bookies offer (For example Bet £10 and get £30 in Free bets)
What's the difference between the Bookie Site and the Exchange? On the Exchange Site you are basically being the Bookie and just like a Bookie, you have liability. If I bet £10 and my bet wins at odds of 2.5 then I win £25, so the bookies liability for this bet is £15, the extra money that they would have to give me if I win. There are calculators on the Match betting sites which you can use to calculate what Liability you need to enter on the exchange each time you make your matched bet. There is also software to help you find what games have the closest odds on both the bookies and the exchange, which is very important.
What do I do when I get my free bets? It's the same process again, You find a game that has very close odds on both the bookies and the exchange (You can do this by eye or by using odds matching software. A good site with this software is called OddsMonkey). Only this time when you use the calculator to work out your liability, you will set it to "Free bets SNR" so it knows you are not using real money. It will tell you how much Liability to use in the exchange and off you go.
How does this make me money? The fact that you have a free bet to use is what makes you money, For example a £30 free bet at odds of 5.5 in the bookies will win you £135 (30x 4.5, because the original free bet stake of £30 is not returned to you). Now let's say that the closest odds I can find in the Exchange for the same game are 6.0, I will need a liability of £112.50 to match my free bet in the bookies ( I use the calculator on oddsmonkey to work this out)
£135- 112.50 = £22.50 in Profit.
Alternatively if my bet on the exchange wins, I will lose the free bet of £30 (but it's not actually a loss to me because It's not real money) and I will win £22.50 on the exchange. Either way, I make a Profit of £22.50
What about providing card details? You can use a separate, virtual bank account for all your match betting, In this way your main banking information is not shared with any of the sites you sign up to and all of your match betting transactions never go near your main bank account. A good one to use is Revolut or Monzo, both apps are super easy to use and it only takes 5 minutes to open an account. It's also totally free to open.
Revolut: Referral (£15 referral scheme) Non Ref
Monzo non ref: https://monzo.com
​
Where can I learn to do it? There are some sites that you have to pay a monthly subscription to but I found one called Team Profit that is free and has a full guide of all the different offers you can complete.
I worked my way down through the list of offers, nice and handy, and having completed 20 offers at 15 minutes per offer, I came out at £470 for 5 hours total of work.
If you are new to this site and are opening a free account I would really appreciate if you use my Referral (£10)
Here is the non referral link to the page with all the offers: https://www.teamprofit.com/welcome-offers-list
TLDR: You do not need to "gamble" to match bet, in fact by definition, the bet you make is "matched" on the exchange, so it is not a gamble in any sense.
I hope this guide helps and hopefully might even get a few people out of a fix this month with bills, rent etc.
Thanks for Reading.
submitted by IvyRoney to beermoneyuk [link] [comments]

The Tale of EVE Online’s Most Infamous Scammer

TLDR in vid form - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUqX_8dPXtM
Preface
Hey everyone! Today I'm going to tell you the story of someone rather infamous in the EVE online community before his ban a few years ago. I personally played EVE for years before winning the game and haven’t been back since, but the legend of Erotica 1 has stayed with me all of that time. Erotica 1 was known throughout the game as the most prolific isk-doubler of his time. If you’re unfamiliar with EVE, isk is just money. Isk-doublers would stay docked in popular trade centers with an offer of doubling any amount of money sent to them. Now, if you have half a brain, you would realize this is an obvious scam. However, there are quite a few players of EVE online who need to learn the hard way and will giddily send their money to Erotica 1 and many other scammers like him. These scammers would frequently employ the tactic of actually doubling your money the first few times until you sent them an amount they were pleased with. Now, this is all within the game rules, as scamming is perfectly allowed and the general consensus surrounding the victims is that they should have been smarter and now ya’ know better.
The Bonus Room
With all that explained, let’s get into what made Erotica 1 infamous throughout New Eden. Located normally in Jita, Erotica 1 would spam the chat looking for marks to scam. When he found a good victim, he would use his charisma to convince the person to transfer all of their assets to him. After he got everything they owned, he would promise to only double it if the mark made it through what he called the bonus round. Now, this isn’t too special. Many isk-doublers would make themselves stand out by creating small but usually difficult games to actually win, so that people would say they were legit in chat. This also gave them an out when people called them a scammer, they could just claim that the person lost their game fairly. Erotica would seek out the most gullible or innocent of the eve community before selecting them for the bonus round, others would simply just walk away once they realized it was a scam before they got in too deep. Those selected for the bonus room would be instructed to send everything in the game they had to Erotica 1 and his brokers, this included money, ships, materials, PI goods, any holdings they had in EVE gambling sites. Now, you’re probably thinking why on earth would anyone do this? Erotica would promise bonus round participants that he would quintuple their net worth. For many greedy players, this was too much to pass up. There was also plenty of innocent, naive or just plain stupid players who fell into this trap. After Erotica was satisfied that he had control of all of their assets, the player would proceed to part 2 of the bonus room. This part often varied from player to player, but was consistently horrible for the scamee. Players would be prodded into reading hours of boring text, singing song after song over voice chat while Erotica and his friends egged them on, promising to pay out after just a few more songs.
Jester's Blog
Eve blogger Jester made a long post about the horrors of Erotica 1 and how he tormented a player. The victim in Jester’s post had a speech impediment, when Erotica and his fellow interrogators noticed it they jumped on him for it. Making him repeat a word he could not pronounce again and again. Then they decided he would need to read the word and its definition over and over. Following this, they forced him to read the entire Russian history entry of wikipedia all while mocking his speech impediment. After about an hour and a half of reading, Erotica had decided it was time for this player to move to phase 3 of the bonus room. Like many others, the contestant is forced to sing song after song while he is mocked by interrogator after interrogator, each popping in after the other is forced to mute themselves due to their laughter. After about 3 hours of the bonus room, the contestant snaps. He begins screaming, cursing and shouting at the interrogators who all burst into laughter. He has completely lost it at this point, the scamees wife can be heard trying to calm him down before she herself devolves into a panic attack at her husband's state. All the while Erotica and his gang are in hysterics at the situation, they have stolen everything from this man and now have pushed him into a manic state of mind. Eventually, they disconnect, taking everything the player owned. Erotica would then publish the recording of this event online, humiliating the player further. When people talk about the sociopaths or truly fucked up people that play EVE online, you need look no further than Erotica 1. Jester’s post would make major waves, the story would be picked up by Massively.com, Eurogamer, EveNews 24 and discussed wildly across the EVE subreddit. Jester, at the time, was also a member of the CSM which is a group of players selected to be in close contact with game developer CCP, so it isn’t a stretch to think that he likely brought this to their attention as well. Erotica had made waves before, when he used to force players to be repeatedly killed in their alpha pod, until they lost all of their skill points. For non-EVE players, this means Erotica would force the player to be killed in a state in which they lost skills or levels, over and over again, wiping out possibly years of progress that they could not just get back, all the while dangling all of their assets in front of them.
The playerbase chooses sides
When the recording and blog post dropped, the community split into two factions. Those pro and anti Erotica 1. Many players were appalled by his actions while others found it hilarious, bombarding him with both support and hate mail. The New Order or CODE, a group of hi-sec griefers being one of Erotica’s staunchest supporters. Though this is not surprising, Erotica’s scamming had made him one of the richest players in EVE and he had funnelled billions of his isk into supporting the CODE. Erotica, once a long time member of the Goonswarm or CFC as they were known at the time, was recently kicked before the recording due to creepy behavior and crossing the line one too many times so he found no support in his old allies. In the end, after thousands of posts for and against Erotica 1, CCP chose to permanently ban him from the game. After around 100 or so bonus rounds, years of scamming and attention whoring, EVE’s most infamous scammer was finally brought down. Erotica would make a long post on the eve subreddit post regarding his ban, promising to essentially whine to every gaming media site he could find about his unfair treatment and how he was simply trying to protect the sandbox, but in the end, his ban stood.
EVE prides itself on being a tough, roguish game where you are expected to just get up and dust yourself off after even the worst disasters so it is understandable that some players would side with Erotica in seeing those who fell for his scams as foolish or greedy.
However, Erotica 1 just took it too far. There are thousands of scammers within EVE online who are able to practice their craft without even so much as a warning from CCP. It’s an accepted and beloved part of the game, At the end of the day, you need to think about the other, real life person on the other side of the game. Scam them and move on, don’t push them and torment them for a few laughs because you “outsmarted” them. Honestly, I’m glad he’s gone, the game is certainly better for it.
This has been the tale of Erotica 1, EVE onlines most infamous scammer and one who remains banned to this day. What do you think about it? Does he deserve his ban? Did those who participated in the bonus room deserve it for being so gullible?
https://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bonus-round.html - The original blogpost that caused all the drama
submitted by uTorrent to truegaming [link] [comments]

GME squeeze has turned into a cult

Long and updated every day
Understandably the promise of free money comes with confirmation bias. Many people who recently bought it waiting for the squeeze to happen don't realize the stock already shot from $15 to nearly $500 in one month. That's already 33x.
I'm calling them squeezers I'm not saying WSBers because most of them are new and have no idea that WSB is about massive losses and treating stocks like gambling
Now my long ass comparison...
To begin a boring age old QAnon rant for a paragraph.
QAnon's distrust in the government definitely derives some of its root from the government lying and covering things up, which understandably should lead to a normal amount of skepticism. However, the frequency of lying perceived by cult members is much higher than in reality. By this I mean they think nearly everything is a front or lie and not just some events. Further, after every "Q drop" that doesn't turn out to be true they make up some excuse as to why it never happened. They keep pushing and pushing and pushing back the date of the "storm" or whatever the fuck its called. Overtime the more reasonable members tend to drop out and realize that their level of skepticism and distrust has reached an unreasonable level. However, as it goes on some become more radicalized. They even start to name their opposition as "sheeple" and "fake news" and retreat into an echo chamber of like minded individuals (Like WSB for squeezers).
Currently there has been some lying about the stock market (CNBC saying Melvin closed their position) and about WSB (saying they are targeting silver). These circumstances much like the government lying sometimes can lead to healthy amounts of skepticism however many squeezers are beginning to believe that anything not inline with their perception of the GME situation is wrong.
Take for example S3's data. Much like QAnon followers throwing Pence under the bus after propping him up for so long. The second S3 came out with contradicting numbers to what WSB believed they threw them under the bus. There are however, somewhat reasonable arguments for distrusting S3's figures. The issue is a significant amount of previously reliable sources are now reporting figures around 30-50% not just S3. However, they continue to cherry pick sites to use and dig into their confirmation biases.
Now many members involved in the short squeeze prefer to use outdated number so long as they justify their beliefs such as marketwatch.com which reports short of 121%(equivalent to fox news in our comparison). Even if a significant amount of sources disagree with them they chose to dig into the confirmation bias of it still being over 100% shorted.
Consequently the constant drive for a confirmation bias (which is understandable as a lot of people dumped entire savings into this) leads to everybody regurgitating the same image or website while simultaneously ignoring the many others that contradict their belief (Like QAnon only watching Fox and some other stuff and hating everything else). The reality is most of these squeezers know little to none about the stock market as millions of new members just recently joined WSB over the squeeze hype and are likely in an echo chamber (like QAnon) with other uninformed members spitting out misinformation.
For example they constantly deny the possibility that Melvin repositioned shorts which would mean that the short % stays stagnant while the date for when they start paying premiums goes out. They take information that's outdated (I saw a photo of a Bloomberg terminal that was from a week ago and was reported as today) and try to pass on that its new.
Most squeezers like QAnon members mindlessly repeat what others are saying without any research "They couldn't have covered there's no volume trading" "The volume is low we are doing it" every time the price drops "Its a short ladder its not people selling the volume is too low". Low volume means low selling and low buying it doesn't just go one way. Low volume means the price wont go up or down it will remain stagnant and in relation to today (Monday) it reflects that it was people selling to each other not some algorithm. The low volume today represents that everyone who is in IS IN and there isn't much more buying to do.
The most convincing evidence of a cult mindset in my opinion is the constant push back of the squeeze (storm in QAnon terms). Last Friday there was supposed to be a massive rise in prices (It was going to happen Thursday/Friday but RH screwed that up and I personally think they repositioned that day and it would've blew up otherwise) but there wasn't. So the massive rise got pushed to Monday and now its being pushed to later this week or even half a month. Much like the QAnon supporters waiting for martial law, squeezers keep pushing back and waiting for the squeeze.
As squeezers slowly realize the squeeze keeps getting pushed back and delayed more and more, they're becoming more and more disenfranchised about the squeeze. Further, the ones that stay are getting more radicalized and just buying (because the narrative that's being pushed is you need to buy all in for the squeeze to push) in even more risking entire savings to a promise of free money even after the stock already shot up 33x in a month.
For example let's take robinhood not having enough liquidity to pay their broker. Many squeezers speculated that it was Citadel who told RH to pull the plug because they were taking heavy loses (Citadel only reports 3% loses as of today). In reality this was not true and while many squeezers realized RH had a liquidity issue and were disenfranchised with the event (they got a 2bn bill) many more still think that some "deep state" is conspiring to rig the market against them and not RH still being a small company without an IPO and in one day had to 10x their bill.
The narrative that the prices are low because of the hedge funds (deep state) short laddering it and rigging it in other ways is also an excuse used to deflect the reality that no-one is buying in anymore and the hype has died. Its now likely a pump and dump; however, until the proper figures are filed on the 9th (I think its the 9th) I can only speculate.
Instead of "sheeple" we have "paper hands", "shills", "bots"
Some people even believe that these hedge funds are buying well aged well endowed (karma in the thousands) accounts en mass and having them do disinformation campaigns. I will admit that there were bots pushing stocks to be pump and dumped and pushing some silver. In reality Melvin literally has 33 employees I don't think they even have enough people to manage that kind of attack. Realistically its a pump and dump guy who is used to doing this spamming some bots however, a lot of them are just people who want in on the "next squeeze" (they don't understand why GME was special they just think we can squeeze shit now).
Ight I'm tired of writing this but hopefully you can see some comparisons between the two.**I hope I'm wrong and you guys make a lot of money riding to the moon have fun don't spend what you cant live with losing.**
In the wise words of WSB "You don't lose money until you sell"
​
Edits: more writing I guess this is really pissing me off (Tuesday 7 am)(as of 7:45 am GME is down to 147.5 I sold yesterday at 242 for a like 70% profit I was really hoping it'd go up)Also there are people capitalizing on the hype who are selling -shirts etcI might've even got a tattoo if it hit 5k or 10k, maybe these promises to ourselves have some sort of psychological impact on our belief systems (I've never taken a psych class so I don't)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fun fact hedge funds HEDGE bets so they typically don't take on infinite risk
https://www.reddit.com/stocks/comments/lak74v/confessions_of_a_short_selle?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every piece of contradicting information is FUD! They "told you about it beforehand" that's right what an amazing prediction. Squeezer predicted people will experience FUD as the price drops but, because they told you about it before hand it means Melvin and its 33 employees are the driving force and not the person themselves. By this I mean squeezers are trying to redirect FUD as Melvin Capital and its bots (us) launching a mass disinformation campaign as opposed to reasonable skepticism.
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/laq7vx/so_youre_experiencing_fud/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

"So You're Experiencing FUD

📷Discussion Well what the hell, retard. What have we been telling you literally this whole time? 💎 👐. Its that fucking simple. What is so hard to understand about that? "
Apparently everything is a short attack. Notice the language in the post. They call people with skepticism bitches and retards etc.
Note I understand retard and profanity is part of WSB culture however since the vast majority of members are new I’m going to make the assumption that when they are referred to as a bitch they don’t perceive it as digging into a meme
to make it seem like they know less than the squeezers. That they are dumb inexperienced and should just trust the squeezers. This is a pretty effective tactic as most of them are inexperienced traders and its extremely predatory behavior by posters to take advantage of this fact.
The thing is everyone and their mother on WSB already knows what a short ladder is but... they keep pretending like people don't. There are constant posts about it because they assume people are selling (which they are and are likely demystified with the short ladder excuse at every drop).
This is essentially the stage where people either become extremely radicalized or disenfranchised as the price bombs and potentially goes parabolic down today.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a perfect example of always trying to find a way of morphing numbers to their liking https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/laoaru/read_this_they_are_screwed_numbers_dont_lie/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Where in reality a counter argument to that nonsense is this guy: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/laoaru/read_this_they_are_screwed_numbers_dont_lie/glpqp62?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
"Ihor is talking about the S3 float %, that's their propriety metric.
They also provide the standard free float %.
The S3 % float is at 34%, the standard free float is at 53% "
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was also thinking about how the memes really kept me involved in the squeeze. They acted as a sort of propaganda, they took the edge off of being worried. Its interesting how propaganda has morphed into gifs about winning and "sticking it to the man" (until they realized the damage has already been done and the man is out and likely making money off the drop now).
While I was in the GME squeeze mindset and experienced FUD memes kind of reassured me that its alright, that this is a WAR (common theme used to describe it). This idea of being part of a financial war and the imagery of battling hedges etc, really helped me stay in at least for another day or two. It would be interesting to have someone more qualified than me look at the impact of propaganda via memes and people holding longer as my experience is only anecdotal and not empirical (I'm just a loser computer engineer who doesn't know much about social sciences).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is a prime example of confirmation bias/whatever the fuck is going on in WSB.

https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lal147/how_come_no_one_is_talking_about_the_duplicate/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Instead of taking a rational position such as assuming that people who own GME likely own AMC as well so the selling and buying trends are similar. This post takes in the assumption that GME and AMC are mutually exclusive trends.
To say it clearly I'm suggesting someone who owns GME likely also owns AMC. Therefore, when somebody sells GME they will likely also sell AMC as they are both pump and dumps at this point (just my opinion there could still be a squeeze).
This post however, suggests that the downward trends are some sort of market manipulation while comparatively ignoring the correlation between upwards trends. They are suggesting that downward trends are manipulation and upwards trends are natural even though they are both extremely similar in this picture.
In my opinion this is the pinnacle of a cult type mindset/ignorance to alternative explanations. They cherry pick what they want to hear and ban/downvote alternative opinions (I'm not saying my opinion is right it's also a speculation; however, it should at least be considered, the banning of "free speech" is very detrimental to maintaining a neutral view).
———————————

Just saw this post

https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lax4z8/hardcore_laddering/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I’d like to suggest that this isn’t a short ladder at all and is in my opinion HFT algos and some day traders taking advantage of the volatility. I’ve actually looked into making HFT algos myself and some of my friends used to work in developing statistical learning models to trade. One very popular model is the random forests classification algorithm which is primarily good at trading momentum stocks like GME. To me this stock looks like the prime target for HFT as it’s extremely volatile and has lots of momentum trends.
HFT algos trade to make fractions of pennies on a trade however they sell large volume eg 100’s of shares at once. This means the fractions of pennies compound into dollars. A small % gain on large capital makes money. This to me looks just like that. Many trades milliseconds apart that make fractions of cents profits in large orders.
This isn’t a short ladder but companies like citadel who do HFT taking advantage of the volatility. However the narrative to the squeezers is that it’s evidence of a short ladder which in my opinion is completely false. It’s just another excuse to not look in deeper to what’s really going on. It the equivalent of creating some easy to play off excuse for the stock dropping.
Another edit:
It has occurred to me many people don’t know what HFT stands for. High Frequency Trading. It aims to make tens or hundreds of trades in milliseconds making fractions of pennies on a share. With large capital this can leads to lots of gain as making 0.00001% on a million dollars per millisecond compounds quickly. HFT accounts for nearly 60% (I didn’t google it I’m just going off my shitty memory don’t trust this number) of capital gain in the market today. ———————————————
On the bot accounts here is a claim of a “bot” account
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lazktn/bots_are_being_used_to_spread_negative_sentiment/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Look at his profile he is obviously not a bot he makes real comments I’ve seen bot nets they are expensive to buy and aren’t manually aged. He was just copy pasting his ideas which is spam not a bot.
There is a difference between spamming a comment and being a bot net funded by large hedge funds or someone else.
This is like a witch hunt at this point. He is a spammer not a bot.
submitted by proturtle46 to melvinbots [link] [comments]

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