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theonetheycallhannah · 4 years ago

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The Treatment of Captain Syverson-Chapter 16: Sit Rep

Characters: Captain Logan “Sy” Syverson, various other original supporting/secondary characters (This includes Sy’s Army Buddies of varying rank as follows: Kevin Kaufmann, Nate Banning, Chad Randall, Matt Styles, Jake Ryburn, and Travis Hodges. I apologize if I’ve mixed up their names anywhere. I just gave them last names and sometimes rank so they could be called something other than their first names for sake of variety! lol!)

Summary: Sy meets up with his Army buddies and they are eager to help.

Romance and Smut Abound HERE!

Word Count: 4.5k

Warnings: Language, firearms, implication of abuse and violence

Author’s Note: Guys, we are getting closer! Our couple will be back together soon! I can’t wait and I know most of you feel the same! I hope the strike team members aren’t too muddled and confusing. If they are, I’m very open to your feedback and suggestions on how to clarify and improve! Thank you to everyone, long time readers, and new fans picked up along the way! I cherish you all, and would never have gotten this far in the story if it wasn’t for each and every one of you! I hope you enjoy the 16th chapter (18th installment…remember when I thought this would just be a few chapters of fluff with a smutty conclusion? Lol!) of The treatment of Captain Syverson.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately for me, Henry is not mine, le sigh, and all mention of him, his characters, any characters from his films, or his precious doggy, Kal, are strictly for transformative and recreational use. I neither ask for, nor accept payment for the work I post on Tumblr or AO3. Unbeta’d because this is for fun and escapism. This is an original work by me, Hannah. Please reblog if you wish to share. Please do not repost either in whole or part, as the work of anyone but myself. Thanks so much for reading!

Tags:

@onlyhenrys @cavillryarchive @summersong69 @titty-teetee @bloodyinspiredfuck @agniavateira @oddsnendsfanfics @omgkatinka @thisismysecretthirstblog @speakerforthedead0 @tumblnewby @suavechops @radkesgirl83 @wheretheriversrunintothesea @heartfelt-pen @auds24 @geekycanuck @lunarstarknight @wilma-g @coldmuffinbanditshoe @feralrunaway @sugarpenchant @bichibibi @mzchievous-blog

If you want to be notified when I post a new chapter or work, I’ll be happy to add you to my tag list! Stricken blogs are getting personal messages from me when a new chapter is uploaded because Tumblr’s faulty tagging system will not stand in the way of me delivering what the people want!(?) lol! (Although…their lackadaisical notification system might…sorry for that. I have no control. lol!)

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Sy sat in his truck in the parking lot of Cade's. He couldn't help but think about the last time he was here. The altercations with Elliott, both inside the bar and outside, the friendships he'd started to build with the other fellas in Shane's work group, the simple way Shane pulled off the elegance of minimalism with her wardrobe and makeup, the ride home…and the night of lovemaking that followed. He had made a mistake. He shouldn't have agreed to come tonight. He was gonna leave. His right hand reached for the keys in the ignition, a firm grip ready to set the engine roaring again, when he was startled by a rap at his window.

Tap-tappa-tap-tap his friend Kevin had just rhythmically knocked with one knuckle on the window. He was smiling and waving exuberantly, like a puppy whose master had just come home.

Sy's scowl softened into a sheepish grin and he knocked back tap-tap.

Kevin waited near Sy's front fender while he got out of his truck.

"How ya doin' Kevin?" he greeted his old friend warmly.

"Alright, I s'pose! You?"

"Oh…I'm makin' it, I guess. What are you up to these days? Still workin' at the plant?" Kevin had worked for the 3M factory over in Lebanon, Missouri since his last tour. Sy knew if he just got him talking about his life, Sy wouldn't have to give him details about his own, which he was going to avoid like the plague, if he could tonight.

"Yup, I actually just got a promotion. I'm a line manager now." And Sy could barely congratulate him before he started delving into the details as the two men walked into Cade's.

It was already busy, even for a Friday night. But the rest of the guys had already claimed a table between the dart boards and the pool tables, and were working on a couple of pitchers of beer. The two were welcomed warmly and only slightly teased about walking in together.

With the group finally assembled, they began taking turns giving report on their lives. It began with Kevin, who, having already begun with Sy, continued with a brief recap for the others. Sy exhaled with relief when Matt, who was seated on the other side of Kevin piped up to speak next, having recently proposed to his long time girlfriend. They were going to get to him last, if at all. He listened as well as he could as he battled the troubled thoughts in his head by bombarding them with beer. Unbeknownst to him, his friend Nate, who'd organized the gathering, had been observing his behavior with curiosity, and a measure of concern. He didn't let Jake finish talking about his latest dalliance into what they were all sure was a pyramid scheme disguised as direct sales. Even though Jake insisted it was not.

"Well, I'm curious as to why Sy's been so tight-lipped all evening. What's on your mind, Captain?"

"Nothin' Nate. Just enjoying a few beers with old friends." Sy lied, not convincing anyone at the table, least of all Nate, who had been one of his closest friends while they were stationed together.

"If I wanted to hear bullshit, I'd have let Jake keep talking about the Duraplex scam."

"It's not a scam, guys, it's real supplements for busy people!" Jake defended.

"Can it, Hodges. We aren't buying it, and we aren't signing up to sell it, either." Nate focused again on Sy. "Come on, man. You told me on the phone you had a lot going on. What is it? Female troubles?" He snickered, as did the other guys.

Sy looked into his glass, through the foam and into the honey liquid below it with a rueful grin. "In a sense."

He took a huge drink of the beer, five gulps, nearly emptying it, fortifying himself to speak.

"My girlfriend is missing." Everyone froze in position as they processed this.

Half a dozen questions hit his ears at once. Which he could have handled if he hadn't had almost a full pitcher by himself.

He shut them down, and began to tell them the story of how he met Shane and their sort of whirlwind romance. He paused for a moment to pour himself another beer.

"Never heard you talk about a woman like that, Sy." His friend Chad piped up.

"Never felt this way before, man. She's…she's the one."

"You said she was missing, though?" Nate asked, brow furrowed in concern.

Sy continued, talking about their argument, reconciliation, and then his leaving for training, ending his briefing with the phone call he got from Shane's boss.

"That's fucked up, man." Matt said. "What are you gonna do about it?" His worry seemed genuine, as well, as if he was putting himself in Sy's shoes. Sy assumed because he had been in love with Tonya, his now fiancé since they were in high school, even though she didn't come around on him until he came home on leave one holiday weekend.

"I've already gone to the police with my statement and an idea for a prime suspect."

"You think she was kidnapped?" Brad Randall, who was a Sergeant for the Rolla Police Department, inquired.

"I personally have no doubts that she was kidnapped, and I am a hun'ert percent certain it was her shithead ex."

"And you don't think she's just…ghosted you?" Brad prompted. The thought put a painful tightness in Sy's chest, but it passed quickly. He knew she wouldn't do that. And not just to him.

"No way, man. She left her phone. She didn't tell work. She didn't even tell her parents. Shane takes her phone with her from room to room. She's glued to it. She'd never do that to her coworkers, who are practically family, and she'd certainly tell her parents if she was going to leave town for any amount of time. It's just…not her. I know her."

"And who's this ex? What's his deal? Why is he on the short list of suspects?"

"He IS the list, Brad. He was abusive when they were together. And a cheater. And a liar. And he tried to jump me right outside just a few weeks back. Ask Candace. She was behind the bar when he started getting in Shane's face up there. And I'd bet she saw what happened out in the parking lot, too." He gestured to the sporty blonde bartender with a high ponytail and a Cardinal's jersey when he mentioned her, and then pointed toward the windows looking out onto the dozen or more vehicles parked outside.

"Can we do anything?" Kevin asked, clamping a hand on Sy's shoulder.

"Nothin'. But I appreciate the offer, brother." And he returned the contact with a clap to the other man's shoulder.

Nate and Brad exchanged pointed looks, and Nate countered Sy's rejection.

"I wouldn't say THAT, Sy."

"What do you mean?" Sy looked at Nate as if he was pedaling snake oil…or Jake's supplements.

"I think…that we CAN do something. To help you find Shane."

"We all have military experience, and some of us have connections that could be very useful." Added Brad. "I'm on the Force. I can handle getting intel on the guy."

"I'm in to help with transpo." Matt Styles raised his hand to offer up the vehicles in his transportation service, Rydes with Styles. Sy hated when words were misspelled for the sake of gimmicks…but he had to give Matt credit for that one.

"And Travis and I still work at the base. We can arrange gear." Jake added as Travis nodded.

"And whatever else you need, I'm in too." Kevin concluded.

"No way, guys. You can't stick your necks out for me like that. I won't have it."

"Sy…You know I talked to Lopez after that last mission the two of you were on?" Travis met Sy's eye as he spoke. "He said you had your team carry out Kominski's body. And that you took on most of, and then all of his bodyweight, just so Freeman could cover everyone. Said you were hurt, yourself, but helped him, carried him, to your extraction point. Up several flights of stairs."

Sy had no response other than a blank stare. It seemed to say all it needed to, because Travis continued.

"Lopez is alive and the Kominski girls got to say a proper goodbye to David. Plus, that mission WAS a success because you got the target. I know it's still classified, but…I think we all know the significance of what you did by leading that mission. You didn't leave a man, living or dead, behind."

"And we aren't gonna let your girl get left behind, either. We're gonna take that sonofabitch out. Because what do we do?" Nate declared, ending with the call Sy had always used at the end of his mission briefs.

The whole table, including a reluctant Sy, recited “We embrace the darkness and the suffering.”

“And why do we do it?” Nate continued.

“So that our fellow man is free to live in peace." Sy looked around the table at all of these men he had served with, fought with, watched comrades fall with, and fought against tyranny with. He thought most of them could have come up with their own story about his role in their military time, but the mission Travis was talking about outlined what he figured was the most significant sacrifice he had ever made for a teammate.

"Well…I guess we need to come up with a plan, then." Sy smiled and finished off the beer in his glass before laying it out for the others.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sy had given them all missions tailored to their own strengths and connections. Brad would gather all the info he could on Elliott. Matt would reserve vehicles. Jake and Travis would procure tactical gear for the team, and Nate…Nate would provide weapons. Pistols and blades. Ammo. Holsters. Even flash grenades and smoke bombs.

Cade's was too public to talk about their plans, so Sy told everyone to rendezvous at his house the very next afternoon. They sat around the patio table on his back deck while they waited for everyone to arrive. Jake was late.

"Well, I guess 'direct sales' waits for no man, and we can't wait for Ryburn anymore. Styles, report?" Sy commenced the meeting.

"I have three Suburbans that are only a couple years old. They're black, discreet, and all glass is tinted within an inch of it's life. Even the license plate covers. I'll make sure they're fueled and ready." Matt stated.

"Aces. Richardson?" Travis spoke up next.

"Yeah, Jake had to go in for a late shift last night after we met, but I talked to him. He's gonna get vests for everyone, eyewear, comms, the whole works. All rated for Black Ops. He told me a bit ago he was following up on a lead and was hoping it would pan out. Said he had a hunch." Travis shrugged, not certain what his friend was up to, but not that concerned.

"Sounds good. Randall?"

"I made up some dossiers for everyone that includes everything I could find on Thomas. He doesn't have a ton of priors. Mostly drunk and disorderly's that were thrown out, because he got the right representation and the wrong judge. He must have someone backing him, because I have no job on file for him. No employer has run a background on him in ten years. Last known address is from six years ago, when he filed a change of address from an apartment in the Cottage Hills complex to…407 Oak Street."

"That's Shane's address." Sy interjected. "He must not have changed it since she kicked him out."

"It seems so. But it's so weird. I don't see any credit cards, online orders, not even a Netflix account on the guy. He's totally fallen off the grid since Shane. I did get into some social media accounts, but he hasn't posted to anything in the last 18 months."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he was posting hot and heavy about this girl, Kara Hutch. 37. Lives over in Waynesville. But his last Facebook status just says, 'What a waste.' and 'feeling betrayed' and that was in February of last year."

"Hmm, do you think--" Sy was interrupted by the unexpectedly loud and abrupt sound of his front door flying open and Aika, with them on the deck, barking like they were about to be murdered. She was ready to kill whatever came through next. The men, all of them battle hardened veterans sporting conceal and carry permits, were out of their seats and in defensive stances in a fraction of a second. Aiming at an unseen enemy. A figure approached in the shadow of Sy's kitchen, arms raised and slowing as it saw several barrels aimed for its head and chest.

"Woah, woah, woah, guys it's me! It's Jake! Stand down!"

"Are you FUCKING INSANE, Corporal!?" Sy asked, reverting to Captain mode. "You just snuck up on and burst in on a group of soldiers. Do you comprehend how close you came to looking more like Swiss Cheese than a man, Ryburn?!" Sy scolded, fire in him rising, but more out of an angry concern for the friend they nearly shot.

"Sorry, sir, err, Sy. I was focused on getting here for my report." Jake said, out of breath.

"Travis already told us about the gear, Ryburn. You didn't need to bust in like that." Nate berated.

"Oh, guys. What I've got is way better than night vision devices. I might have an address for our guy."

"How in seven hells did YOU get an address?" Brad exclaimed, pride wounded as intel was his task.

"I know, dude, that was on you, but…I overheard a conversation when I was doing some work on equipment in the Air Traffic Control tower."

"What could you have possibly overheard in ATC?" Sy was incredulous.

"Do you want me to tell you, or would you like to keep screaming at me?"

Sy called Aika off and let Jake onto the deck, but the German Shepherd was still eyeing the corporal with marked skepticism.

"So I kept hearing this controller talking to the other girl at her station. She kept talking about her boyfriend…whose name was Elliott." Eyebrows went up all around the table. "Yeah, and he fit the description in every way. Physical appearance, textbook narcissism, the works. I went to the personnel office when I got done with the service call and told the attendant that the girl had helped me with my gear and I wanted to send her an email to thank her. She gave me a contact sheet on Sasha King. I looked her up on my lunchbreak, and found some photos of her with a guy I think might be Elliott." Jake showed Sy an image he'd saved to his phone. "Is this him?"

"Yup, that's the guy." Sy's blood was boiling again at the smiles on the couple's faces. He didn't deserve happiness. He didn't deserve a pretty girlfriend. He should die alone, starving for the love he deprived others. "You say you got an address?"

"Yeah, the gal in personnel printed me a full demo sheet. The only thing we don't have is a social." Sy noted the redacted 9-digit code in one corner of the document Jake had handed him. He read out loud. 3502 Highway D. St. Robert, MO.

"You boys feel up to a little recon tonight?" They all nodded, excitedly, patting Jake on the back, and high fiving him in congratulations on the invaluable find. Even Brad commended him on his detective skills and told him he'd have a job on the Force with him if he ever wanted a change. The corporal almost blushed.

The men went back into the house and through the front door to the driveway where they were all parked.

"Jake, you brought all the gear, too?"

"Sure did, Sy. There's vests, belts, NVDs and helmets to mount. There's plenty for everyone." Jake opened the back of his Jeep as if it were a buffet of delicious tactical equipment. Sy found among the gear a large case and opened it out of curiosity. A sound amplifier with headphones. That was going with him, as it appeared there was only one.

"I'll outfit everyone with guns and ammo later. But here are some tac knives, and three of each diversionary devices for each member of the team." Nate passed out packs with the blades, smoke grenades, and flash bombs.

"Okay, rendezvous at Matt's shop at 1800. We'll go over some procedures for the evening and get set up with the rest of our weaponry then. Okay?" General nods of ascent and "mmhmms" in confirmation of the plan came from the men. Sy continued, "Maybe get some rest between now and then. I don't know how long this is going to take."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sy got to Matt's a little early. 1730. Nate showed up about ten minutes later and pulled in next to Sy, leaving the rear doors accessible to arm the team. The men got out of their vehicles and began double checking Nate's inventory.

"Nervous?" Nate said after exchanging the usual pleasantries.

"I didn't think I was. But just now, I got to thinking about what that…monster is doing to the love of my life. What he's putting her through, if he's even let her live. What are we going to come across when we get to this place?"

"You can't think like that. She's not Schrödinger's cat. You have to be positive here. This mission depends on your strength as a leader. You're gonna do great. And Shane is gonna be fine. We all will. Have a little faith, man." Nate patted Sy on the back in encouragement. Sy appreciated it. But he thought he might have to compartmentalize, instead. Think of this as just another mission. Forget that Shane was involved. Even if it wasn't healthy, it might at least be helpful.

Matt arrived soon after and waved at the two men as he pulled in on the other side of Nate. He got out and greeted his friends, all of them shooting the breeze and enfolding the others into the conversation as they got there. Kevin was the last to arrive, just before 1800, when the briefing commenced.

"So," Sy began, more timidly than was his usual way. "First, guys, I wanna say, I appreciate y'all so much for doing this. For putting in the time and the resources to help me and Shane. I owe y'all more than I can repay, but that doesn't mean I won't try. Within reason." He grinned and his friends chuckled.

"Now, we've got the comms set up. We'll be in each other's ears, so we can report in real time. I've looked up an aerial view of the farm on Google Earth, and there should be good cover for surveillance with the sound equipment and NVDs. I'll take point, Nate, you and Matt are with me. Kevin, you and Brad will flank the property on the left, Travis and Jake are going right. I'm hoping this will just be recon, but if I get wind of something I don't like, I may call for the strike. You guys will report anything you think looks fishy, and I will make that call with the intel I'm given. Now. When and if I make that call, we're gonna aim for disorientation and soft incapacitation. If you don't have to kill, don't. I don't know how much help this bastard has, but I know it would have taken several to take down Shane. It's not that I think any of them deserve to be spared, but…I don't want us to break up any families. We don't need the weight on our already heavy souls." War had changed them all, and Sy didn't want to make any more widows. "We good?"

Nods of approval from the men made Sy think he was looking at a military bobble head collection. He stifled a smile.

"Alright, lets get armed and ready, then Matt can take us to our chariots."

They were all mostly suited up, black or dark colors were the general uniform. They were ready for whatever might happen. As Nate handed out guns and ammo, the men examined their clips, loaded their guns, and put them in their holsters until needed…they hoped they wouldn't be.

When they were all set, they followed Matt to the huge garage he kept his fleet in.

Although, "garage" didn't quite do the building justice. It was actually an airplane hangar that Matt got for a good price when the local airline went under. He'd made a loft in it with a ramp so there was extra room for smaller vehicles like his town cars. The limos, SUVs, and the stretch Hummer were on the lower level. He had a separate space outside for the two party busses and the RV, protected from the elements by large carports.

Matt went to grab keys from the lock box as the men gathered near the Suburbans. Sy was getting angsty. Moment of truth was here.

"Okay," Matt jingled two sets of keys in his hands. "Who's driving?"

Kevin deferred to Brad without contest, but Jake and Travis were bickering over the question between them.

"Grow up or get married already." Sy chided. "Jake, you got the good intel for us yesterday. You drive."

Travis was mildly crestfallen, but Jake was stoked and he caught the keyring Matt tossed him.

"You wanna drive, Captain?" Matt offered Sy the last set of keys.

"No, Matt. You're driving our group. I'll take shotgun though."

And the seven men got into the vehicles as if they were mounting horses, headed into the sunset.

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Over the comms on the way, Sy addressed the team. "Okay, there's a large outbuilding near the road, guys. Pull off the driveway and park behind that structure. Hopefully they'll hide the vehicles from the main house. Bravo and Charlie teams, you let Alpha team get in place before you take your positions."

"Roger that, Captain." Kevin said in the headset.

"We copy." Travis answered for himself and Jake.

The first phase of the mission went perfectly. Sy, Nate, and Matt were in position, and Sy had set up the sound amplifier, aiming it at the house, headphones on. When the other teams were in position, Matt reported to Sy, since he was getting feedback using the earpiece and the headphones for the amp at the same time.

"Bravo and Charlie teams are in place, Captain."

"Great. Sit Rep?"

"All's quiet so far. Wait. Headlights coming up the drive." Each team tried to make themselves as small and low as possible so as not to draw attention to their presence. Sy had been getting nothing but crime show drivel from the TV in the house since he got here.

A petite but curvy brunette got out of the white Honda Civic and stomped into the house.

"Hey babe." Elliott's unmistakable voice rang in Sy's ear. And he was filled to bursting with rage all over again.

"What the fuck, Elliott? I've been trying to call you for hours! What the hell have you been doing?"

"Oh, I was charging my phone in the bedroom. What's going on?"

"That Captain Syverson your little pet was banging? I found out today that he's back in town. Has been for a few days."

"Shit. Shit!!! SHIT!!!"

"Yeah, so…if he isn't already, it won't be long before he starts trying to find her."

"But…how could he? Even if he thought it was me, I have no official ties to this place, or even you!"

"Flattering."

"You know what I mean."

"Whatever, but I'd get rid of her ASAP. This guy is NOT someone you wanna piss off, Elliott."

"I'll bring the guys in. We'll take care of it. Tonight."

Sy cussed in a loud whisper. He wanted to rip Elliott apart with his bare hands. Nate asked him what was wrong, but Sy held up a hand for him to remain quiet because he heard the scumbag inside on the phone.

"Yeah, it's me. Listen, change of plans, we need to do this tonight. Get everyone out here. Yes, immediately. There's a…potential complication. We need to take care of her before it becomes more. Yeah, she's weak, but I'm still gonna wait until you guys get here. She's still got some fight in her. She about took Jackson's eye out yesterday when he was down there. He's got some wicked scratches on his face. I think he made her regret it, though." Elliott laughed with evil mirth. Sy was furious. He reckoned God Himself might have a time pulling him off that degenerate before he made him unrecognizable as a human man. Once he started punching him, he might not be able to stop.

When Elliott signed off, Sy pulled the earphones down onto his neck. He looked at Matt and Nate.

"He's planning something with Shane and has called in reinforcements. It sounds like he means to take her somewhere else, and it didn't sound like it was gonna be pretty. I think we need to go in now."

"Shit. Okay." Matt responded. Sy put his earpiece in and called on the rest of the team.

"Bravo and Charlie, do you copy?"

"Bravo copies." Kevin reported back.

"Charlie copies. Go ahead, Alpha." Travis cleared.

"Listen, boys. We need to go in, and we need to make it quick. Here’s the situation. We have one male and one female assailant inside the domicile, and an undetermined number of additional combatants en route to reinforce the enemy's line. We have one target. A female prisoner, presumably in the basement, given verbiage used in the communication I intercepted. Alpha team will make our priority extraction. Bravo, you will subdue the male assailant and then maintain sentry position on the lookout for more unfriendlies. Charlie team, you will clear the second level of the house and subdue the female combatant. She is a soldier, so proceed with extreme caution. Once the area is secure, drivers, go and retrieve the vehicles. We are gonna need to get out of here quick, or else things might go tits up. I'm concerned we'll lose the advantage of numbers if we wait too long. Are we clear?"

"Copy that, Alpha leader."

"Roger. On your count, cap."

Sy took a deep breath. Thought to himself "Shane. I'm on my way, baby!" He saw red, then. And called for the charge, out of the darkness, and into the farmhouse. To an uncertain outcome.

Up Next: Chapter 17-Gait Training

#Sand Castle #netflix sand castle #captain syverson #Captain Syverson x OFC #sigh for sy #henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #Henry Cavill x ofc

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violetsystems · 5 years ago

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#personal

The biggest edition to my footwear collection is still the cat sleeping at my feet as I type this. She doesn’t use the other litter box at all which is understandable. That’s my default these days. Whether things are understandable or not. Or maybe whether I really deeply care or not. I was riding the train home during rush hour yesterday and somebody was playing trap out of a chik-fil-a backpack. I was done with everything at that point I just muttered “Fuck Chik-Fil-A” loud enough to hear. It didn’t help the dude’s backpack was in my face. His friend picked up on it and understandably I got off the train at the next stop. There’s been a lot of people following me around these days and making me feel unsafe. Unfortunately nobody will listen to me about it so I just end up understanding the situation. My understanding lately has been to keep myself safe by walking away from everything. Like somebody assaulting me and my mom on her birthday wasn’t enough evidence that I’m being targeted. That’s crazy talk to people out here. Are you sure you aren’t just imagining things? I ended up taking the Ashland bus home again which ironically is a far rougher neighborhood. I honestly don’t think anybody with a Chik-Fil-A bag is going to understand the finer nuances of why I’m offended. I honestly don’t want to have a conversation with that type of person. I don’t have time to be the steward and sheppard of the lost flock everywhere I go. And yet people have these societal expectations of me that never seem to deliver. They walk all over me without my consent and I just have to nod. I have existed within this hidden framework of rules for years bumping up against the fence over and over again. No matter what I do somebody seems to jump in and assume control over what I’m trying to do with my life. Like I never asked. Literally nobody gives me a chance to speak other than on Tumblr on the weekends. I’ve described the kinds of behavior I’ve been subjected to for years. For years people told other people behind my back that I was crazy, antisocial and worse. But they never understood until recently that I actually had a very dangerous point. This is traditional gaslighting and in America I think it’s the norm. I was reading how the American economy is literally financed by debt fueled by overconsumption whereas in China it’s fueled by debt driven investment. I have as many bills to pay as the next person. I spend a little time every day to manage a spreadsheet like a journal in regards to how much money I spend. I’ve done this for years by myself just like I’ve worked out my feelings in real time on the internet. There’s no shortage of people trying to get you to spend more money. It seems that people only value you in America based on how much money you are able to spend. I bought a pair of Gore-Tex converse for seventy dollars. They’re literally the illest shoe in context of people’s understanding of how I wear clothes. I don’t sit here and spend hours talking about the clothes I wear. Nobody cares. I’ve been invisible for years or worse. I’ve been a wink or an inside joke that people abuse to sell their products, images, and manifestos. When I make a valid point it is met with laughter behind my back and mined for intel and dirt in secret. Laughter and comedy in America is rooted is some deprecating humor. It makes sense when you tie this into bullying. People want you to feel bad about yourself for a lot of reasons. It’s mostly an act of devaluing your self esteem. That you aren’t enough. So you’ll spend more or try harder for people who wouldn’t do the same for you. It’s a pyramid scheme staring you in the face on a dollar bill. And then there’s the things that money can’t buy. That some people care about and other people just overlook time and time again. Self respect at the end of the day or the beginning of a new one is hard to come by. It’s understandable why I keep to myself in that respect.

I can’t change how shitty I’ve been treated. I live with years of it. I thought it might get better clearing it up in a journal. Writing about how I feel about this or that is about as close to a vibe check as any. And still people try to play these games with me in real life. The games prove nothing. It’s just an excuse to pit people against each other and tear down power. Like you are cordially invited to the wood chipper or meat grinder. Your opinion matters. Except when it doesn’t. After all these years feeling lost and alone is still my problem. I recently have come to embrace this. Who wouldn’t want to get lost and alone with me? There’s people I don’t want to be lost or alone with. Because I’ve been there facing myself in the mirror. We can talk for hours about all the good we are doing and there’s no record of any work or activity to show for it. When I was on Facebook I used to relentlessly post my miles I tracked in my running app. They’d go ignored for years. I’d check into the gym and it would echo in the digital staleness of the platform. Really nobody cared or understood what these things meant to me. The minute I would share something that inspired me I would be talked over or the conversation would shift to another person. I just basically defaulted to thinking nobody cared about me. I didn’t want to burden the world with how that made me feel. But I wrote about it here week after week. And I never lied when I sat down to sketch it out. It’s just that nobody really understood how bad everything had gotten for me. I have lived a literal fucking nightmare for the last two or three years. Ironically I quit drinking around the same time. That part was me understanding I wasn’t doing anything positive for myself with that habit. People asked in a hushed whisper online if I “got help.” I just fucking quit. Like I quit huge portions of my life that were complete bullshit. I’m constantly reminded how I don’t fit into those parts of my life when they return to haunt me. Ignore my pain for years and then suddenly show up again to try the same old socialite bullshit. We’re all in this together. Except when people alienated me for years. This isn’t something new or shocking for me. I understand other people are coming to the very same realization. People in America use the English language like a bulldozer. They talk emphatically with a concerned tone about how much they care. They never give you a chance to question why. They’re always doing the questioning. They always have the right answers tied to the right texts that nobody has ever really heard of. I get these emails about how my name was mentioned in this or that academic paper. I have to pay a fee to sign in to find out which. So literally I have to pay a fee to figure out who is plagiarizing and conceptualizing my life. Just like I bought all this street wear gear to be noticed and just ended up victimized and shunned. There’s a wall out there for sure you can’t pass. It’s a fence that has no logic other than rich people who don’t think you’ve paid enough to be human. And these are numbers that don’t really work well with a nonprofit salary. And yet I still do what I can with it and hold my ground. Because this shitty behavior is not sustainable. And the real vibe check is that I am done with everything and beyond anger and frustration. Sadly I’m the one with the answers to my problems. And the only answer I’ve found is staying away from the disrespect. That and saying what I feel whenever I feet like it. Because nobody cares anyway. They’ll applaud how brave I am then figure out a new way to poke me with a stick.

I’ve always thought the best I could be was being a good person. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices nobody understood to be that person. People distrusted me for years. I only recently began to realize that this was not my fault. I can’t possibly do anything else in my life to get people to trust me. People have dug down so far deep into my life it is insulting. If you bring it up to anyone the first thing they’ll do is doubt you. Typical stage one gaslighting. “How can you be sure?” in a concerned tone is really just “Why are you rocking the boat?” in America. I can be sure enough that most people out here don’t value the sacrifices I’ve made. They can’t fathom them because they don’t pay attention. They say they know me behind my back. How that one time they saw me out of context. People for the record haven’t hung out with me for months if not years. I used to play magic down the street and then people got cocky. Now I play Hearthstone online and developers still get cocky but it’s far different. There’s an actual community there with complex thoughts on everything. Some of them I agree with. Other things like Hong Kong I feel are none of my fucking business at this point. I don’t think anybody cares about the nuances of how unhappy I am with politics these days. I keep out of discussions now because they go nowhere. Americans want you to say things out loud so they can put you on record. Somewhere they can either use your opinion to sell a product or a service. Maybe even a patriotic ideology. I write enough reviews on Amazon to know the functionality of that. Somebody asked the other day if an acrylic paint I reviewed could be used on silk fans. I answered the question as non-biased and informative as I could for a white guy and moved on. For a person who drinks as much coffee as I am nobody understands that I have a subscription. I spent seventy dollars a month for a month’s supply of single origin coffee. Meanwhile people at work are always trying to sell me on something else. How my coffee habits are meaningless unless I spend money into this or that pool. How Blizzard is evil and doesn’t deserve my support. How I need to convince people my view on Hong Kong is correct when they’ve never even been there. There’s times when my opinion is valued and I share it. And then there’s times when people don’t listen to a word I say. They have absolutely no understanding of why I live and breathe let alone choose to support. They show no care. They simply target, bully and neutralize. If they fail they deal with the awkwardness of their assault by pretending I don’t exist. That’s the real wall. How you will never be good enough in some people’s eyes. Because you might just realize your value and leave all together. Take your money, your care, and your attention elsewhere. Maybe even to another country where the debt is driven by investment instead of hyper conspicuous consumption. Really after all these years of suffering in America I feel like I have no value to this country. I’ve been raked under the coals so much and scrutinized for no reason. If people really were watching and paying attention they’d know how much hurt I’ve been through. I’ve stayed accountable for my actions so I could live in a space where I could love myself. Which makes it highly understandable why I keep to myself and stay out of the public eye these days. It is not safe for me and has not been for a very long time. You can only be brave for so long until somebody finds a way to make you a martyr. In that respect I’ve carried enough crosses to know you’ll never cross that line with me. Especially if you eat at Chik-Fil-A in 2019. Eat a real fucking chicken sandwich you dumb fuck. <3 Tim

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independentartistbuzz · 4 years ago

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Indie 5-0: 5 Questions with Honeypot (Holiday Edition)

Honeypot consists of Frank Hartman (guitar, drums, vocals) and Chris Chamberlain (bass, backing, production). Heavily influenced by the classic rock bands of the 60s and 70s, Honeypot infuses a long musical history with elements of prog rock, classic rock, and grunge. The songs are socially conscious, politically-minded, and always of the moment.

1. What is your favorite Holiday Song and why?

I’m going to go off the beaten path a bit and say “Blue Christmas” by the King himself. It’s an interesting song because it’s a song of unrequited love at Christmas, which is a departure from most songs around the holiday. Anecdotes suggest that Elvis thought it was a one off, a goof, but it’s become a lasting tradition for the lovelorn during a sometimes lonely Holiday. I love songs that grow well beyond the artist’s expectations.

2. What were the traditions around the holidays in your house growing up?

Wow that brings back some entertaining memories. My Granddad, Connie, ran the show. It was usually a raucous affair because, invariably, my cousins would show up late on Christmas Eve, which drove him nuts. He was a stickler for timing. And for some reason he chose to sleep on the couch which meant they would wake him up. There’s an underlying psychological base there, but we don’t have time to explore it. After all was settled, we’d wake up the next morning and Gramps would distribute gifts one at a time to the kids first and then the adults. That way everyone got to see what each person received and could live vicariously. We were a close family.

3. If you could record your dream holiday duet with anyone dead or alive what would it be?

I don’t know if I have the pipes to keep up, but Bing Crosby (I know it is a little old school) and White Christmas is an absolute show stopper. It’s a universal song that everyone knows, loves, and will hum along to when you sing it. It evokes the best parts of Christmas, hoping for snow, the warmth and comfort of family, the hustle and bustle of life pausing so you can live in the moment with people who love you. These days you realize how much we took that closeness for granted.

4. What is the first Holiday track you ever learned?

Like a lot of musicians, I grew up in the church. We were Presbyterians, Grampa explained it numerous times but I never quite understood all of the reasons why that was so. Either way, my favorite memories are singing hymns at Christmas. Silent Night was and is still my favorite I remember early on. We always ended on that one and I love the part where they drop the music and it’s just the parishioners carrying the song. It’s such an intimate moment to share with others. That’s my first and still my favorite Christmas song.

5. What is the inspiration behind your new release "On The B-Side"?

Well, it’s a funny story. Shortly after I got out of law school, Chris and Donald asked me to come by the storage unit to listen to a business opportunity they were considering. They wanted my legal prowess I suppose. I listened to a fellow on speakerphone and recognized his voice as the color commentator for my beloved South Carolina Gamecocks football team. He asked us if we had boats, did we want one, fast cars, and all the things money could buy. I knew almost instantly it was a pyramid scheme, but I had to hear the whole pitch, my curiosity got the better of me. So they muted it and asked me what I thought. I told them plainly it was a Pyramid scheme called BurnLounge. He kept going and on about making sure the people below you were not on the B Side. And I seized on the hilarity of that concept. Because it perfectly encapsulates where we are as a society right now. There are a few with more than they could ever need and the rest of us are warming our hands in the cold On the B Side.

Stream “On the B Side”:

Connect with Honeypot via:

https://honeypotband.com/home

https://www.facebook.com/honeypotband1

https://twitter.com/honeypotband1

https://instagram.com/honeypotband1

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT OURS

An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to reason. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as yellowist, as is anyone suspected of liking the color.1 A rounds: millions of dollars given to a small number of startups does mean is that Lisp was first discovered by John McCarthy in 1958, and popular programming languages are pretty much equivalent. That's what everyone does in societies where risk isn't rewarded.2 It discovered, of course, the test you use to measure performance must be a valid one. But they don't realize just how fragile startups are, and how well, languages can be described this way. Don't try to start Twitter. But one wonders, do we tell them this stuff for their sake, or for ours? Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be any syntax for it.3 Even one sentence of this would raise eyebrows in conversation. Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.

If VCs weren't allowed to get rich would all start startups. And even to the degree it isn't, imagine what you would say, and get in trouble for a particular idea yet? And I'm especially curious about anything that's forbidden. As it widens out into a pyramid to match the startup pyramid, all the contents are adhering to the top, but a lot wider at the bottom. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. And I think this is the thinnest of historical veneers. And even within the world of investors. If I order something from an online store, and they tend to think the opposite.4 If you look at the site of it.5 What would Steve do?6

But seeing what startups are really like will at least show other organizations what to aim for.7 The most interesting question here may be what high res fundraising will do to the world of this idea; thousands of programmers knew how painful the experience was. And if not, not. No one uses pen as a verb in spoken English. That wouldn't seem nearly as uncool. But many of the things adults conceal from smaller children, they conceal because of deep taboos. An unbiased review would go something like this: Starting a startup gives you more freedom and the opportunity to make a lot more startups.8 What's missing?9 It's too late now to be Stripe, but not to be at least some of the time. It is just as hosed as Munich.10 Their chances of succeeding seem small.

I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of schleps, you'll still have plenty dealing with investors, hiring and firing people, and so on. And they have for so long. The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely not a constant fraction of the rate of new companies increases. The best founders are better at seeing the future than the best investors, because the only employees are a couple reasons they should care. They probably would have been harmful.11 Content-based spam filtering is often combined with a whitelist, a list of every address the user has deleted as ordinary trash.12 In the future, investors will increasingly be. Now imagine comparing what's inside this guy's head with what's inside the head of a list.13 Merely looking for the word click will catch 79. At least, someone Socrates's age would.14 I learned from meeting Sama is that the subset of ideas that are so threatening that it's hard for big companies even to think of startup ideas, but organic ideas with organic founding teams—and that, empirically, is the sort of big social shift that only happens once every few generations. A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it.

It wouldn't work otherwise.15 The point is to ensure this dilution is borne by the existing shareholders. This has traditionally been a problem in venture funding. This article describes the spam-filtering techniques used in the spamproof web-based app they'd seen, it seemed laughable to VCs and e-commerce experts. I'm not saying we should stop, but I didn't remember exactly why till YC raised money itself. And it is a standard.16 If we want a fairer world, I think, because they read it in high school. Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that. The overlooked problem was to generate web sites automatically; in 1995, online stores were all made by hand by human designers, but we want to establish a central corpus of spam.

Notes

Steven Hauser. One VC who read this essay began by talking about why people dislike Michael Arrington. So although it works well to show them how to succeed in a city with few other startups must have been the general manager of a powerful syndicate, you would never even think of ourselves as investors, is not an efficient market in this essay will say this amounts to the rise of big companies to say, real income ignores much of a country with a wink, to allow multiple urls in a cubicle except late at night to make a conscious effort to extract money from mediocre investors.

We could have tried to pay dividends. In any case, as I know for sure a social network for x instead of editors, and that often doesn't know its own momentum. He made a general-purpose file classifier so good. Not all unpromising-seeming startups that have little to bring corporate bonds to market faster; the Depository Institutions Act of 1936.

Exercise for the difference directly.

Till then they had no natural immunity to tax rates were highest: 14. Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been sitting in their racks for years before Apple finally moved the door.

There is a case of the crown, and no doubt often are, which a few months by buying their own interests. Since the remaining outcomes don't have to mean the company than you expect.

As well as a process rather than for any opinions expressed. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than linearly with its size. A Plan for Spam I used a technicality to get all the potential magnitude of the whole world is boring.

Vision research may be useful in solving problems too, e. You have to talk to an investor I don't like to partners at their firm, the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson.

His best bet would probably a real partner. There is something there worth studying as a source of difficulty here is one of the first phase of the money so burdensome, that he be spared. This is an interesting sort of community. Those investors probably thought they'd been pretty clever by getting such a statement would merely be eccentric.

People and The Old Way. Siegel points out that this filter runs on. I'm claiming with the New Deal but with World War II was in logic and zoology, both your lawyers should be especially skeptical about things you like doing. We could be done at a friend's house for the last place in the grave and trying to dispute their decision—just that everyone's the same trick of enriching himself at the top stories were de facto chosen by human editors.

This is why so many people mistakenly think it is to claim that companies will naturally wonder, how could it have meaning? However bad your classes as a definition of property. The examples in this department. So instead of editors, and indeed the venture business barely existed when they say.

I wouldn't bet on it, Reddit has had a house built a couple days, but unfortunately not true! There are two ways to help the company.

Some, like hedge funds, are available only to the year x in a domain is for sale. One father told me about a startup to succeed in business by Michael Milken; a decade of inflation that left many public companies trading below the value of their due diligence tends to be a good way to put up posters around Harvard saying Did you just get kicked out for doing it with superficial decorations. Scheme: define foo n n i n Goo: df foo n n i n Goo: df foo n n _ Arc: def foo n lambda i set! In a period when people are magnified by the time I did when I first met him, but there has to their kids to say that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is a bad sign if you tell them startups are ready to raise money on Demo Day.

There are also exempt.

If an investor derives mostly from looking for something they get to be good employees either. If the startup in the 70s never drew this curve.

One possible answer: outsource any job that's not relevant to an employer, I can't refer a startup. Surely it's better if everything just works. This was certainly true in the aggregate are overpaid. They're still deciding, which you want to get a small proportion of the Nerds.

Which is not to make the police in the long tail for other people the freedom to they derive the same attachment to their software that was the last thing you changed.

Thanks to Ingrid Bassett, Chad Fowler, Lisa Randall, Jessica Livingston, Dan Giffin, and Robert Morris for the lulz.

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internetdetectives · 5 years ago

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11/15/19 - Chat with The Producer

The Producer 1:51 PM: "whats up”

The Producer 1:51 PM: "the producer, comin at you again because i forgot my email address”

Xenquility 1:51 PM: "lmao”

The Producer 1:51 PM: "see this is why im at the bottom of the totem pole”

The Producer 1:52 PM: "weed boys light up”

The Producer 1:52 PM: "and yes Bup does enjoy """""fun"""""”

Xenquility 1:53 PM: "Do dimension travelling bad guys still smoke weed”

The Producer 1:53 PM: "everyone has time to smoke weed”

Xenquility 1:53 PM: "Yknow why do these guys have to have fun by killing people”

Xenquility 1:53 PM: "couldn't they just get addicted to heroine or something”

The Producer 1:53 PM: "also im not a bad guy”

The Producer 1:53 PM: "only bup is a bad guy”

Xenquility 1:53 PM: "(I know)”

The Producer 1:53 PM: ":wink:”

The Producer 1:53 PM: "im addicted to herobrine”

Xenquility 1:54 PM: "herobrine is my dad”

Xenquility 1:54 PM: "give me admin or he'll ban you”

The Producer 1:54 PM: "damn”

Xenquility 1:54 PM: "he knows bill gates”

The Producer 1:54 PM: "another spooky possessed minecraft admin”

The Producer 1:54 PM: "just kidding”

The Producer 1:54 PM: "perhaps its best if we leave that whole debacle in the past”

Xenquility 1:55 PM: "Hey why did Bup have to do SKM like that”

The Producer 1:55 PM: "that wasnt Bup's doing”

Xenquility 1:55 PM: "Oh shit”

The Producer 1:55 PM: "technically it wasnt any of ours”

Xenquility 1:55 PM: "Any idea whose it was?”

Xenquility 1:55 PM: "inb4 we cause it in the future”

The Producer 1:56 PM: "something nasty did it”

The Producer 1:56 PM: "dark forces mixed with one of our members”

Xenquility 1:56 PM: "sounds kinky”

Xenquility 1:56 PM: "what type of dark forces?”

The Producer 1:58 PM: "dark forces we're all familiar with”

The Producer 1:58 PM: "things that come and go”

The Producer 1:58 PM: "Noise”

The Producer 1:58 PM: "id answer more clearly but that's not in the cards atm”

Xenquility 1:58 PM: "to which one”

The Producer 1:58 PM: "yes”

The Producer 1:58 PM: "he came down with a bad case of the D”

Xenquility 1:59 PM: ":PROVIDETHED:”

Xenquility 1:59 PM: "wait”

The Producer 1:59 PM: "my bad”

Xenquility 1:59 PM: "did you have to provide him the D this time”

The Producer 1:59 PM: "unfortunately he gave it to himself”

Xenquility 1:59 PM: "woah”

Xenquility 1:59 PM: "can you get him to record it next time”

The Producer 1:59 PM: "a very talented man”

Xenquility 1:59 PM: "I need it for science”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:00 PM: ":regi:”

Xenquility 2:00 PM: ":dad3:”

The Producer 2:00 PM: "if only we had an artist here to depict such a thing”

Xenquility 2:00 PM: "we have a coomer to depict such things”

Xenquility 2:00 PM: "if that counts”

The Producer 2:00 PM: "one talented in manly copulation”

The Producer 2:00 PM: "no coomers allowed”

The Producer 2:00 PM: "company policy”

Xenquility 2:01 PM: "fine by me”

The Producer 2:01 PM: "coompany policy”

Xenquility 2:01 PM: "I hope these conversations get archived”

The Producer 2:02 PM: "they always do”

Xenquility 2:02 PM: "hell yes”

The Producer 2:02 PM: "i just have to be careful not to mention erratas or my bosses w”

Xenquility 2:02 PM: "anyways any chance you could tell us why it was useful for :dad: and :moonman: to be in the past”

The Producer 2:03 PM: "not sure”

The Producer 2:03 PM: "that's Bup's forte”

The Producer 2:03 PM: "but good luck getting any info out of them”

Xenquility 2:03 PM: "the only way he gives us stuff is if we gamble with people's lives”

Xenquility 2:03 PM: "and even then we might not get a straight answer”

Xenquility 2:03 PM: "sorry why do you work with this dude again”

The Producer 2:04 PM: "a baby's gotta do what a baby's gotta do”

Xenquility 2:04 PM: "do you make minimum wage”

The Producer 2:04 PM: "*gots to do”

The Producer 2:04 PM: "sorry”

Xenquility 2:04 PM: "cause if not you should sue”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "Bup can often be a hanful”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "and also a handful”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "and also a mouthfull”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "but I trust him”

Xenquility 2:08 PM: "insulting the boss? I'm reporting you to hr”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "no wait”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "i dont want to get docked again”

The Producer 2:08 PM: "my payment i mean”

Xenquility 2:09 PM: "where can we sign up to work interdimensional office jobs sound great”

The Producer 2:09 PM: "you all have the capacity to”

Xenquility 2:09 PM: "the capacity to sign up?”

The Producer 2:10 PM: "well”

The Producer 2:10 PM: "not sign up for this specific organization”

The Producer 2:10 PM: "but you could become a wide-eyed up and coming spooky entrepreneur based on your own merits”

Xenquility 2:12 PM: "sounds cool”

Xenquility 2:12 PM: "How exactly would that work?”

The Producer 2:15 PM: "first you must enter a deep sleep where you can tap into your inner dreams”

The Producer 2:15 PM: "then you must make a sacrifice”

The Producer 2:15 PM: "not one of blood but one of time”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:15 PM: "Did you say”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:15 PM: "Dream”

The Producer 2:15 PM: "then you must do a bunch of other stupid esoteric bullshit and boom suddenly youre the CEO of bigdicks spookyboys r us”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:16 PM: "Cool where I can put my curriculum”

Xenquility 2:16 PM: "i wanna be the ceo of bigdicks spookyboyrs r us”

Xenquility 2:16 PM: "what does this "other stupid esoteric bullshit" entail?”

The Producer 2:16 PM: "no education requirements... required”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:16 PM: "Who shall I contact then”

Xenquility 2:17 PM: "does doing all this shit turn you evil or is it just normally done by evil people”

The Producer 2:18 PM: "moral requirements are also not required”

The Producer 2:18 PM: "also i should specify that all of this is me attempting to describe very non-descript things”

The Producer 2:18 PM: ”dont take it too literally

The Producer 2:18 PM: "or do”

The Producer 2:18 PM: "unless...?”

Xenquility 2:19 PM: "so is basically a "find your own inner CEO" scam”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:20 PM: "Piramyd scheme”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:20 PM: ":funkyface:”

The Producer 2:23 PM: "Damn”

The Producer 2:23 PM: "im starting to realize”

The Producer 2:23 PM: "maybe this is a △ scheme”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "yes”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "come to the light side”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "we have uh”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "things”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:25 PM: "And uh”

The Producer 2:25 PM: "does it pay more than over here”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:25 PM: "Phisical bodies?”

The Producer 2:25 PM: "aka more than 0”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "Probably yes”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "Actually yes'”

Xenquility 2:25 PM: "minimum wage is like 14 dollars in canada”

The Producer 2:26 PM: ">canada”

Xenquility 2:26 PM: "lower in the US but their dollar is worth more so it balances out”

The Producer 2:26 PM: "ill stay here thanks”

Xenquility 2:26 PM: "aw”

Xenquility 2:26 PM: "but if you come here you get to be hunted by your previous coworkers for all of eternity”

Xenquility 2:26 PM: "it's funner than it sounds”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:27 PM: ">14$”

The Producer 2:27 PM: "damn”

The Producer 2:27 PM: "theyll get The Hunter on my ass”

Xenquility 2:27 PM: "Ooo”

Xenquility 2:27 PM: ""The Hunter"”

ARGdov 2:27 PM: "I cant believe BUP and co are running an instagram pyramid scheme”

The Producer 2:27 PM: "we sell knives”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:27 PM: "Fuk”

Xenquility 2:27 PM: "that sounds like the name of an edgy teenager named Hunter”

ARGdov 2:28 PM: "man my mom bought knives from one of those people”

ARGdov 2:28 PM: "seemingly completely unaware of how fishy theyre business strategy is”

ARGdov 2:28 PM: "granted they are very good knives”

The Producer 2:28 PM: "id rather they send The Hunter than The Coomer”

Xenquility 2:28 PM: "hey”

Xenquility 2:28 PM: "you said no coomers allowed”

The Producer 2:29 PM: "im kidding, we don't have either of those people”

The Producer 2:29 PM: "you caught me”

ARGdov 2:29 PM: "wasnt the hunter one of the skeksis in the dark crystal”

ARGdov 2:29 PM: "sorry Im just joking”

The Producer 2:30 PM: "we're not that strict”

The Producer 2:30 PM: "theres just a few rules we need to abide by”

ARGdov 2:30 PM: "like what”

The Producer 2:30 PM: "tbh we're much less organized than those other guys”

ARGdov 2:30 PM: "1: be fucking obtuse and vague to everyone outside of the company”

The Producer 2:30 PM: "Id rather have The Coomer sent after me instead of The Operator any day”

Xenquility 2:30 PM: "hey”

Xenquility 2:30 PM: "you said no operator's allowed”

ARGdov 2:30 PM: "I mean yeah fair”

ARGdov 2:30 PM: "the operators spoopy”

ARGdov 2:30 PM: "glad slendermans not real”

ARGdov 2:30 PM: "what the fuck was that”

Xenquility 2:31 PM: "?”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "some reaction popped up”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "it POPPED AGAIN AND I MISSED IT”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:31 PM: "Oh fuck marble hornets”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "ok its "WOW"”

Xenquility 2:31 PM: "wow”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:31 PM: "That series is great”

Xenquility 2:31 PM: "who reacted with it?”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "dunno who posted it but I can guess”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "Im guessing Producer”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "idk”

ARGdov 2:31 PM: "I keep missing”

Xenquility 2:32 PM: "tf they just used :dream:”

ARGdov 2:32 PM: "yea”

The Producer 2:32 PM: "no sorry i was away”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:32 PM: "Prolly just wolfposting”

ARGdov 2:32 PM: "oh yeah prolly”

ARGdov 2:32 PM: "anyhow”

The Producer 2:33 PM: "also

The Producer 2:33 PM: "”1: be fucking obtuse and vague to everyone outside of the company””

The Producer 2:33 PM: "yes”

ARGdov 2:33 PM: "how long has your organization even been around?”

ARGdov 2:33 PM: "thats not surprising lol”

ARGdov 2:33 PM: "2: do whatever BUP says”

ARGdov 2:33 PM: "3: if there is somehow an issue with these two contradicting one another, check with BUP”

ARGdov 2:33 PM: "4: see rule one”

Xenquility 2:34 PM: "5: ???”

Xenquility 2:34 PM: "6: profit”

The Producer 2:34 PM: "we've been around since the beginning”

The Producer 2:34 PM: "but as ive said, some have come and gone”

ARGdov 2:34 PM: "since the begining”

ARGdov 2:34 PM: "so since before all this nonsense started”

ARGdov 2:34 PM: "granted”

ARGdov 2:34 PM: "this has been going on in some capacity since the 80s, seeing thats when the MC formed”

ARGdov 2:34 PM: "so not really helpful”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:35 PM: "Hm”

The Producer 2:35 PM: "7. dont be helpful”

ARGdov 2:35 PM: "well thats basically rule 1”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:35 PM: "What if u disobey?”

The Producer 2:36 PM: "ill get smote”

Xenquility 2:36 PM: "bup can smite people wtf”

The Producer 2:36 PM: "i dont really wish to disobey though”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:36 PM: "Fuking zeus”

The Producer 2:36 PM: "as i said, i trust bup”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "you get cut”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "literally”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "figuratively”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "painfully”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "permanently”

The Producer 2:36 PM: "that doesnt necessarily mean you should though”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "or something”

ARGdov 2:36 PM: "so you've been around for awhile”

The Producer 2:37 PM: "bup will cut”

ARGdov 2:37 PM: "but are only making yourselves known now”

The Producer 2:37 PM: "theyre really good at scissoring”

Xenquility 2:37 PM: "hot”

The Producer 2:38 PM: "i cant say too much more though or they'll get on my ass about it”

Xenquility 2:38 PM: "if bup is good at scissoring does that confirm they're female”

The Producer 2:38 PM: "like i said i dont wanna assume for them”

The Producer 2:38 PM: "they identify as toad”

Xenquility 2:39 PM: "I mean I don't want to discriminate but it's kinda hard for a man to scissor”

otherLiam 2:39 PM: "Clearly you aren’t trying hard enough.”

The Producer 2:39 PM: "^”

otherLiam 2:39 PM: "Also hi.”

The Producer 2:40 PM: "hello coomerLiam”

Xenquility 2:40 PM: "woah”

Xenquility 2:40 PM: "harsh”

otherLiam 2:40 PM: "?”

otherLiam 2:40 PM: "is that like a racial slur”

Xenquility 2:40 PM: "yes”

The Producer 2:40 PM: "this server claims this is the internet coomtectives right”

Xenquility 2:40 PM: "producer is a huge racist”

The Producer 2:40 PM: "my apologies”

otherLiam 2:40 PM: "i prefer zoomerLiam”

The Producer 2:40 PM: "i meme with extreme prejudice”

ARGdov 2:41 PM: "nice”

Xenquility 2:41 PM: "bigotry makes the memes grow fonder”

The Producer 2:41 PM: "and my dick grow harder”

Xenquility 2:41 PM: ";)”

otherLiam 2:42 PM: "So why follow BUP?”

The Producer 2:42 PM: "we have share the same goal”

Xenquility 2:42 PM: "since when does bup have a goal”

otherLiam 2:42 PM: "I don’t suppose you’d tell us what that is.”

The Producer 2:42 PM: "refer to rules 1 and 7”

Xenquility 2:43 PM: "what if we say finding it out will severely deter us from living?”

Xenquility 2:43 PM: "the truth will blow our mind or something”

The Producer 2:43 PM: "well I dont want that”

Xenquility 2:44 PM: "damnit”

otherLiam 2:44 PM: "wat rules”

The Producer 2:44 PM: "also refer to rule 34”

The Producer 2:44 PM: "haha lol xd”

The Producer 2:44 PM: "theres another XD for you”

Xenquility 2:44 PM: "also could you tell me where your office is located because I keep imagining some stereotypical office building floating in a rift between dimensions and it's hurting my brain”

Xenquility 2:44 PM: "or some sort of general area”

Xenquility 2:44 PM: "like what planet”

The Producer 2:44 PM: "no that sounds about right”

Xenquility 2:45 PM: "fuck yes”

Xenquility 2:45 PM: "how do you get wifi”

otherLiam 2:45 PM: "so how exactly do you “produce” stuff? is it just magic or do you sometimes have to just go to the store”

The Producer 2:47 PM: "i walk down to the spook store”

The Producer 2:47 PM: "sometimes use my spook heelies”

Xenquility 2:47 PM: "is that inbetween dimensions too”

The Producer 2:47 PM: "yeah”

The Producer 2:47 PM: "its like a inter dimensional 7/11”

Xenquility 2:47 PM: "also are there any villains that aren't inherently "spooky"”

Xenquility 2:47 PM: "like just average joes”

Xenquility 2:47 PM: "that happen to be evil”

Slinky Stinks△ 2:48 PM: "”its like a inter dimensional 7/11””

Slinky Stinks△ 2:48 PM: "I'm in”

The Producer 2:51 PM: "Id argue that Bup isn't really that spooky”

The Producer 2:51 PM: "I mean he's toad”

Xenquility 2:51 PM: "true”

pakospooky 2:51 PM: "IIIII”

pakospooky 2:51 PM: "coming”

The Producer 2:52 PM: "oof”

The Producer 2:52 PM: "Pako posting forbidden things”

pakospooky 2:52 PM: "what?”

pakospooky 2:52 PM: "how forbidden?”

The Producer 2:52 PM: "refer to rules 1, 7, and also rules 8 - 99 which all ready "be spookey be spookey be spookey"”

The Producer 2:52 PM: "anyways the boys are sending me out to pick up some spook donuts”

The Producer 2:52 PM: "see you all later”

Xenquility 2:53 PM: "seeya broski”

0 notes

legit-scam-review · 6 years ago

Text

“99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero”

The interview has been edited and condensed.

Nouriel Roubini is a New York-based economist that famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis when only a few considered there might be a threat to the existing course of events at the time.

A Harvard alumnus and now a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, Mr. Roubini has always been critical of the crypto and blockchain industry. Oct.11, 2018 he testified at the Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C., warning U.S. senators about “the mother or father of all scams and bubbles,” — crypto.

We met with Mr. Roubini during BlockShow Americas in Las Vegas and talked about why he doesn’t believe in smart contracts, thinks Ethereum is a scam, and the fact that he might want to give the industry another try.

On being “against” the crypto industry

“I’m not against [it], I’m open to any type of innovation, but I’m an expert on financial crises and asset bubbles. And I became famous [by] predicting the global financial crisis — the burst of that bubble.

I can see a bubble when there is one — and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst

Last year, almost everybody I knew was asking me every other day, “Should I buy Bitcoin?” And the price of Bitcoin doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and went to $20,000. And when that bubble burst, it collapsed — collapsed from $20,000 down to $6,000 today (at the time of the interview).

If you bought it at the peak, you lost 70 percent of your value. And it’s typical of all these financial bubbles: They go up until they collapse. And Bitcoin is actually the best [example], because the average cryptocurrency has lost, in the last nine months, more than 90 percent of their value.

I spoke about the bubble existing and this bubble going bust. And guess what? In the last year, [it] has gone bust. So I think I’ve been vindicated and proven right.

Bitcoin could go to the moon or zero, I’m not going to make a penny either way because I’m neither short or long.

And I’m just an academic that speaks his mind. And I saw a big bubble, and I think that it’s fair as an intellectual to discuss these things and then figure out what’s going wrong.”

To watch the interview go here:

youtube

On future price movement and Ethereum being a “scam”

“An academic study suggests that 81 percent of all ICOs were a scam to begin with; 11 percent of them have failed or have died; and of the remaining eight percent that is traded on exchanges, the top 10 have lost on average, in the last year, 95 percent of their value — more than Bitcoin.

So, there was a bubble — and everybody was riding the bubble, everybody was issuing an ICO, raising money — but now it’s gone bust.

I think that they’ve lost already 95 percent of their value and they could lose another 95 percent.

I would say 99 percent of cryptocurrencies are worth zero. Just because some people believe in something alternative to fiat currencies — alternative to gold — then, like collectibles, some people are going to hold some Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not going to disappear. But, you know, Ethereum is a bubble and it’s a bit of a scam — it’s worth nothing — XRP, all the other ones, they’re all going bust.”

Catherine Ross: Why do you think Ethereum is a scam?

It’s a scam because the technology. They talk about smart contracts — there’s nothing about them that is smart, they’re all buggy. They’re not real contracts because you have to enforce certain contracts, you cannot have just the code.

They’ve tried things that have failed: Their DAO was a failure.

You know, there’s a lot of people [who] talk about their DApps or their distributed apps. 75 percent of those apps are what? CryptoKitties, Ponzi schemes and other pyramid schemes, and other casino games, like Las Vegas. So, after a decade, what does Ethereum have to show us? CryptoKitties and Ponzi schemes? And that’s what they’re doing? They’re not doing anything that is of any use to anybody.

CR: But if a smart contract is a technology, — and you said “it’s buggy” — technology can be buggy and it can be fixed. Don’t you think we need more time to see the technology rise and smart contracts working better?

NR: I don’t believe, first of all, in smart contracts. By definition, any contract has to be enforced by lawyers — [there is nothing that is enforced] by itself. So, the idea that you put everything in a code in a contract is silly to begin with. And, you know, a typical other program has less than one percent of bugs in its code, and a typical smart contract has 10 percent of its code is buggy [sic].

I mean, this is the reality where we are in now.

And by the way, the broader question about cryptocurrency is that they are not scalable, and there’s no system that makes them scalable; they’re not decentralized because the entire system is [becoming] centralized; and they are not secure because there are so many ways to hack them.

So, it doesn’t have any functions [it] should have: It’s not scalable, it’s not secure, it’s not decentralized. So, what is it worth for? With Bitcoin, you can do five transactions per second; with Visa, you can do 25,000 transactions per second.

They’ve [the blockchain community] been saying for a decade, “We are going to resolve it with proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work.” It has not worked yet. And even if there was something scalable, it’s going to be centralized and therefore is not secure. So, there’s a fundamental flaw in the technology.

At least financial systems that we know are centralized, yes, but they’re secure and they’re scalable.

They’ve been talking about fixing it, but Vitalik Buterin, who is the creator of Ethereum, said you cannot have a blockchain system that has three characteristic of the same time: being scalable, decentralized, and secure.

On trusting financial system

CR: Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, you still believe in the traditional financial banking banking system?

Traditional financial systems are centralized — and there’s nothing wrong with institutional centralizing in my view. They [the blockchain community] criticize it, saying “We want it decentralized.”

But I prefer a centralized system with a trusted authority — but at least they’re secure and scalable.

There’s a lot of talk about decentralization: Miners are centralized as an oligopoly, coders are centralized, exchanges are centralized — as 99 percent of all transactions occur on a centralized exchange — and there’s a massive concentration of wealth. This is worse than North Korea in terms of income and wealth inequality.

The reality is just the opposite: It’s a totally centralized system.

[At the same time] there are many problems with the traditional financial systems. And I’ve been one of the biggest critics of the financial system. And I believe that there are ways to [democratize] finance and [to] make it more efficient, but this is not based on blockchain.

There is a revolution in financial services: It’s called fintech and it has zero to do with cryptocurrency and blockchain.

It’s based on AI, machine learning, Internet of Things and big data. It’s revolutionizing payment system, insurance, credit allocation, capital market functions, and asset management.

Take, for example, payment systems: There [are] already plenty of digital payment systems — that do billions of transactions a day, and are used by billions of people around the world — that are not based on blockchain. In China, you have AliPay and WeChat Pay; in India, you have all these UPI systems; in Africa, you have M-Pesa; in the United States, you have Venmo, PayPal, Square — and so on, and so on. These are useful transactions.

With these models, you can do millions of transactions — and there are billions of transactions done by billions of people today. They are digital payment systems based on [the] traditional financial institution and fintech. They have nothing to do with blockchain. We don’t need blockchain, we don’t need crypto to [democratize] finance.

There is already a revolution: there’s going to be much more competition, there’ll be much more access. If you are a poor farmer in Kenya today, you are using M-Pesa. On your little smartphone, you can make transactions, you can borrow and lend, you can buy and sell your goods and services, you have a whole slew of financial services without the brick-and-mortar bank. And all these things are available to billions of poor people in Africa. What [do] they have to do with blockchain or crypto? Nothing, zero. So, there is a revolution and it has nothing to do with blockchain.

CR: The entire philosophy of the industry was to create a transparent system and create a new world from a financial system that you can trust, a financial system that thinks about a user, a client. So you think it failed to do what it was supposed to do?

NR: Of course, it completely failed: After 10 years, there is no killer app; the crypto assets are going bust; they’ve lost 99 percent of their value; all these experiments have led not a single corporation or single financial institution using this technology; and there is no reason why they want to use this technology. And why would you want [to]?

Why would I want to trust somebody in Russia or China to verify my transactions? It’s not safe. Why would I want to do it? There are central banks, there are corporations, there are institutions that have been existing forever that are based on trust — on the reputation. And I know what I’m dealing with.

I’d rather have those institutions verify my transaction rather than somebody in China who can manipulate everything I am doing. Why should I trust somebody while I don’t even know what the name is, who they are, what they do.

CR: So, you would rather trust a bank? How can you be sure that your money is safe?

NR: We have security laws. If a bank manipulates, there’ve been hundreds of billions of dollars in fines on the banks and their misbehavior — people ended up in jail. There are lots of problems with the traditional financial system: Blockchain and cryptocurrency do not resolve this problem. Fintech resolves it, but fintech has nothing to do with blockchain or cryptocurrencies.

I’m the first one who criticized the financial system, I’ve been writing about financial crises, I’ve been criticizing [the] banking system. I don’t believe that crypto or blockchain resolves any, any of the problems of our existing financial system, [and they] don’t resolve anything.

It’s just something for a bunch of self-serving people speaking about decentralization, speaking about freedom, speaking about [the] democratization of finance — and there is no democratization of finance, there is no more access to financial services through crypto or blockchain. There are other alternatives that exist out there, like M-Pesa, that are giving power and giving democratization of finance to billions of people in Africa. Those things have nothing to do with blockchain. I believe in those things.

I don’t believe in blockchain.

CR: I see your point of view, but just to be clear, the banking system has been around for centuries, right? So, maybe you should give the crypto industry and blockchain industries a try?

NR: No. I’m not giving it a try. I’m gonna give a try to financial innovation that changes the financial system.

All those things [mentioned above] — they are revolutionizing finance, they are leading to competition, they are forcing the banking system to innovate or not survive, and they are changing the world. But they have nothing to do with blockchain. Why should I give the benefit of the doubt to something that has not provided any application which is used by anybody. I don’t believe in it and the proof is in the pudding.

CR: My last question is, have you ever tried trading cryptocurrency?

NR: I haven’t tried it. Some people say, “Oh, you are critical of crypto because you are shorting Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies.” I have zero position — I have no long position, no short position.

I may be right or may be wrong, but crypto could go to the moon to go to zero; I’m not going to make a penny out of it. I’m an intellectual. I’m an academic. I have no conflicts of interest.

My only thing is my own academic reputation. If I’m proven wrong, my reputation is going to be negatively affected. But I’m not going to make a penny. And therefore, I’m not going to take a position one way or another because if I take a position, I have a financial interest to talk down or up a particular cryptocurrency; and that’s not my interest.

I’m an intellectual and I’m not going to make money — one way or another — out of it.

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mlmcompanies · 6 years ago

Link

Buying and selling gold isn’t what’s shady about Swissgolden.

The issue is with how they sell it. And in 2018, it may have finally fallen around their ears.

Swissgolden is a network marketing company that offers pure gold bars and ingots.

All gold everything. That’s the motto for Swissgolden — as a customer or distributor, you’re buying and selling 24-karat, pure gold bars.

But recent news has revealed this isn’t the gold standard. It’s more like magic beans.

FAQ

1. What does Swissgolden sell? Swissgolden sells 999.9% pure gold bars from 1 to 100 grams to clients of the Internet shop.

2. What are Swissgolden’s most popular products? Gold bars are the company’s most popular product. You may also be able to buy silver.

3. How much does it cost to join Swissgolden? To participate in the marketing program (that’s what they call the network of sellers), you must register for free through the referral link of a sponsor. You can either be a client or customer and purchase gold bullion directly in the online shop or participate in the marketing program. To start, you’ll pay 220 Euro, and your investment is placed into a Swissgolden payout structure. Your gold order isn’t placed until you recruit two more buyers at the same level you’re purchasing. When you’ve done that, you get paid a small bonus, and your gold order goes through. Be aware, you won’t actually receive your gold. It’s stored in a vault in Europe. To get any money, you’ll need to sell your gold back to the company.

4. Is Swissgolden a scam? Swissgolden says on their website, “Swissgolden is a real, registered and regulated company and not a Ponzi Scheme.” [1] But in order to participate, you have to recruit new investors, who must then recruit two investors of their own. Um… that’s a pyramid scheme. (For more information, see lawsuits below.)

5. What is Swissgolden’s BBB rating? They aren’t listed by the BBB.

6. How long has Swissgolden been in business? Since 2012

7. What is Swissgolden’s revenue? No financials are available online.

8. How many Swissgolden distributors are there? The company reports they have 200,000 clients in 120 countries. Because of their business structure, that’s probably the number of their distributors.

9. What lawsuits have been filed? It’s not a US-based company, so no lawsuits have been filed here. However, in 2018, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) apprehended three members of Swissgolden for scamming 7,000 Nigerians. A total of 216,402,565 Naira was recovered from the company. [2] At the time of this writing, registration is unavailable on the website, which simply means you can’t buy from them right now. Perhaps this is the end of this MLM.

10. Comparable companies: Karatbars, Legal Shield, Wealth Generators

So should you get involved?

I’m not going to say you won’t make money investing in gold, but there are certainly more sustainable income opportunities out there if that is what you’re after…

Click here for my #1 recommendation

Either way, here’s the full review on Swissgolden.

Overview

The company is headquartered in the UK but the business is registered in the British Virgin Islands… offshore bank accounts, not surprising. [3]

They are legally authorized to market gold, and they partner with a lot of the best gold manufacturers in the world, including Argor, Heraus, Valcambi, Umicore, and Metalor Technologies.

The company has expanded internationally into countries like Mexico and even Nigeria. [4]

But Mexican officials from the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Users of Financial Services have called into question the legality of their practices, given that they provide financial guidance to customers and recruits — assuring them that the value of gold is invincible, will protect your money from inflation, does not expire or depend on changes in government, and can only increase in value — when they are not officially registered as an institution that can give financial advice. [5]

In 2018, an investigation was launched by The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for defrauding 7,000 Nigerians. [6] While that’s going on, they aren’t selling gold.

Questionable, but that’s a danger in shady MLMs .

Here’s the thing: These guys have been around since 2012, so they made it past the terrible twos… but they still weren’t able to make a name for themselves.

That’s not a good sign, as one of the best perks of getting in early with a young, potentially risky MLM is the chance to ride a trend wave straight into loads of cash. And Swissgolden just wasn’t trending.

That’s surprising — for a legit business, at any rate — because all the fear and anxiety about money markets and economic instability in the past decade or two has caused interest in gold bar investments to rise. But Swissgolden looks shady from first glance.

The fact that you can’t buy online… that there’s a confusing block you have to complete before your money is invested… and that you never get to see or touch your purchase. Is it any wonder it never took off?

Products

Their products are pure Swiss and German gold bars from some of the most reputable houses of gold:

Argor-Heraeus

Valcambi

Umicore

Metalor

Valcambi bars from these manufacturers are 999.9 pure, or “four nines” fine, which is the same degree of purity used for gold money such as the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf and the American Buffalo coin. [7]

You might think you’ve got to be ballin’ out to buy a gold bar, but their product comes in all sizes, ranging from 1 gram up to 100 grams.

One gram of gold is something even the little guys can get at. It’s not a bar, but rather barely larger than a gold flake. It’s around the size of a microchip. In fact, it’s so small, they encase it in a plastic covering before shipping it out to make sure it doesn’t get lost.

All gold is purchased online, and then you can store your gold purchases in their storage facilities in Switzerland or Germany for a monthly fee that is equal to .1% of the value of your stored gold. If you want to have your gold shipped to you, you pay the cost of that, which can be upwards of $60. [8]

They charge a 10% processing fee on all orders, which can add up if you’re buying big. They do pay for part of this fee if you join their leadership reward program, of course.

The company also buys back gold, and you can sell your gold back to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through their webshop.

Compensation Plan

There aren’t any upfront costs to join as an affiliate. However, you have to make sales to get into their leadership program. If you do, you get a small discount (10% processing fee waived) on your gold purchases.

In effect, they’re making you spend your earnings on their products. The value you earn from selling gold alone can’t go toward anything but purchasing more gold from them. That’s not a great deal, especially when the value of their product fluctuates on a daily basis.

You get bonus credits if you can sell enough, but the standards are pretty high…

In order to fill up your Main Table matrix slot and start qualifying for bonuses, you have to sell 7,000 euros worth of gold.

After that, to fill a VIP Table matrix slot, you’ve got to sell 27,500 euros worth of gold.

The VIP PLUS Table requires 98,000 euros in gold sales. Good luck.

Granted, you can sell your gold back to the company at any time, but it’s still weird to be compensated 100% with company product — no cash income from this job.

Recap

Gold is a good investment, but it’s not the magic beans Swissgolden promises to unwary investors.

If this MLM was a legitimate buyer and seller of gold, it would be an incredible opportunity to build some financial security with a product that will retain its value over the years. Trouble is, this business isn’t squeaky clean.

You won’t get a paycheck. You won’t even get to see the gold you’re buying. And the word is that you may not get your money even after selling back your gold — as promised on the website.

Based on the most current news, avoid Swissgolden at all costs.

Listen, I’m not a Swissgolden hater. I actually admire a unique business plan that gives people real success. But I wouldn’t waste my time with this business.

I’ve been involved with network marketing for over ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.

After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:

Click here for my #1 recommendation

#MLM companies #network marketing companies

0 notes

deweydguinn · 7 years ago

Text

Google’s updated SERP snippet length: What should be your SEO strategy now?

Source: First appeared at

On December 1st, 2017, Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Land that Google had officially confirmed a change to how it displays text snippets in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Barry wrote,

“A Google spokesperson told us: ‘We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.’”

These snippets are the blurbs of text displayed in Google’s SERPs along with the clickable blue text and the page URL.

A quick Google search corroborates this – let’s use the query “how were the pyramids built” as an example:

In the screenshot above, you can see that where Google would previously display a snippet approximately 150-165 characters long including spaces (give or take, you can see it varies now and it varied before Google made the change too), but now they’re much longer.

The text snippet Google shows in the SERP is *supposed* to be (more on this later) the contents of the meta description tag in the HTML of the page – let’s check each of these page’s actual meta descriptions and their lengths.

Here they are, in the same order as above:

There are no photographs of the pyramid being built, and the engineers didn’t leave detailed blueprints. [Length:109]

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stones by transporting them over wet sand. [Length:122]

No meta description specified in the HTML

Here’s everything you need to know about the incredible Egyptian pyramids. [Length:74]

Two things jump out right away.

Google is not displaying the page’s actual meta description as the SERP snippet for these specific listings for this specific query, even when the meta description is specified in the HTML, but instead is being pulled directly from the text that appears at or near the top of the page.

The length of the snippets is longer than the length that Google previously displayed, congruent with Google’s confirmation that they’re showing longer SERP snippets.

Here’s how that breaks down for the above query, again in the same order as the SERP listing screenshot above:

The first sentence of the text is used as the SERP snippet

The H1 page headline, followed by ellipses ( … ), followed by the second, third, and fourth sentences on the page in the first paragraph (skipping the first sentence in the first paragraph) are used as the SERP snippet.

The first and second sentences, and part of the third, are used as the SERP snippet

The first and second sentences, the image ALT attribute (or the image caption, they’re both the same text), plus text via HTML code associated with the image, “Getty – Contributor” (<div class=”article__credit”>Getty – Contributor</div>)

Checking a number of other queries returned similar observations about what Google is using as the SERP snippet, but note that some SERP snippets were indeed taken from the actual meta description.

For example, in the SERP for a query for musician “Todd Rundgren”, this SERP snippet is obviously taken directly from the meta description:

For many other queries I performed, both commercial and non-commercial in query intent, it turned up a mix of SERP snippet sources – primarily either text on the page or the actual meta description specified in the HTML, and in some cases via image ALT attribute, and occasionally from some other bit of code in the HTML.

On mobile devices, the SERP snippets were very similar, in many cases the same as on desktop.

The SERP orders were slightly different, so yes, there’s going to be ranking variations based on various factors (it’s well known that Google can and will alter the SERPs you see based on your search history, geo-location, query type, your previous interaction with SERPs, etc.).

However, the overall scheme of the SERP snippets remained constant – text was taken mostly from either the first paragraph of the page, or the meta description, and in some cases the image ALT attribute, and occasionally from other text in the HTML code.

Dr. Pete Meyers over at Moz conducted research late last year on 89,909 page-one organic results.

Pete noted that the average SERP snippet was 215 characters long with the median length at 186, and he was quick to point out that, “big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their Meta Descriptions are very short”.

Pete also noted no significant differences between desktop and mobile snippet lengths, sometimes seeing mobile snippets longer than desktop snippets.

For sure the actual SERP snippet you see, and the length, will vary by query type.

What is going on here?

Google is trying to satisfy searchers.

Yes, traditionally the idea was that Google would pull the SERP snippet from the meta description, but for years now Google has been using whatever text its algorithms determine makes the most sense based on the user’s query.

Not all sites – for example, Wikipedia and another we saw above – don’t even make use of the meta description tag in the HTML of their pages, so what’s a poor search engine to do in that case?

Similarly, what if the meta description is badly written, or spammy-sounding with lots of keyword stuffing, or doesn’t well-reflect the page’s theme and topic(s)?

So that’s what’s going on here – Google evolved over time to use whatever it deems makes the most sense to a user performing a certain query.

Wait: What the heck is a meta description, anyway?

Meta descriptions are HTML code that Google understands, and that is meant to provide a synopsis of the page.

Here’s an example:

This code goes between the <head></head> tags of the HTML and is not displayed on the visible content that a user would see.

Do meta descriptions impact SEO?

Meta descriptions will not impact rankings.

But, if Google does use a page’s meta description as the SERP snippet, that can impact click-through from the SERP.

That’s because a well-written meta description that is compelling, relevant to the page, and relevant to the query or queries for which the page is ranking, can impact organic traffic.

And that can have a downstream impact on conversions (the desired actions you want website visitors to take – fill out a form, buy something, and so on).

Poorly written meta descriptions, if used as the SERP snippet, can have the opposite effect and discourage the user to click through to your page, and instead go to your competitors.

So, what should be your strategy now that Google has increased the SERP snippet length?

In summary, you could do any of the following:

Do nothing at all

Rewrite longer meta descriptions for all your pages

Rewrite longer meta descriptions for some of your pages (e.g. your top ten or twenty organic landing pages, or some pages you determine have low click-thru rates)

Delete all your meta descriptions

Audit your site’s content to ensure that the first text on your page is compelling, uses keywords congruent with how someone would search for your content, ensure the first paragraph contains at least 300-350 characters of text including spaces, and front-load the first 150 characters in case google changes back to shorter snippets in the future.

What you decide to do (or not do) will at least in part hinge upon resources you have available to make changes.

Don’t take a “set it and forget it” attitude with your website’s content and your meta descriptions. It’s common for businesses to put in a fair amount of work into their website, then just let it go stale.

A good recommendation here would be to cycle through this stuff on a regular basis – think quarterly or a couple times per year. Once per year at a minimum.

Here’s what I recommend

First, it should be obvious that your page’s textual content is for humans to consume, and that should always be your primary consideration.

You’ve heard the phrase “dance like no one’s watching” – well, write like Google doesn’t exist. But Google does exist, and their mission is satisfied users (so that people continue to use their service and click on ads) – Google is chasing satisfied users and so should you.

The refrain of “write great content�� has been used ad nauseum. The only reason I’m mentioning the whole “write for your users” thing is simply because often people focus primarily on “how do I SEO my pages?” instead of “what’s good for my users?”.

Okay, with that out of the way and forefront in your mind, here’s what I recommend. Adjust this according to your specific needs – your industry, your users – don’t just take this as a cookie-cutter approach.

And, do this on the time frame that makes the most sense and works for you and the resources you have available to you to make changes to your site. If you haven’t looked at your page content and meta descriptions in a year or more, then this is a higher priority for you than if you refreshed all that 60 days ago.

Meta descriptions

Make them about 300-320 characters long, including spaces

Make the meta description super-relevant to the page text

Front-load the first 150-165 characters with your most-compelling text – compelling to your users who might see the text as a SERP snippet (just in case Google decides to shorten them again)

Use a call to action if applicable, but don’t be a used car salesman about it – and as appropriate, use action-oriented language

Remember WIIFM – what’s in it for me – as applicable, focus on benefits, not features

Don’t be deceptive or make promises your page content can’t keep

Keep in mind that Google may not use your meta description as the SERP snippet and may instead use content from your page, likely from the first paragraph.

With that in mind:

Review & refresh your content

Make sure the H1 page headline is super-relevant to the page’s topic

Include an image (as applicable) that is super-relevant to the page (not one of those dumb, tangentially-related stock images) and craft an excellent and page-relevant image ALT attribute

Ensure that your opening paragraph is enticing and practically forces the reader to keep reading – that way if it’s the text used as the SERP snippet, that will capture people’s attention.

Summary

My summary is that if you if you haven’t already, please go back and read the whole article – I promise you it’ll be worth it. But I will add one more piece here and that is that ostensibly the type of content you’re creating is going to dictate how you configure your meta descriptions, H1 page headlines, and especially the opening text on the page.

In some cases, it makes sense to use the “how to feed a (Google) hummingbird” technique where you pose the topic’s question and answer it concisely at the top of the page, then defend that position, journalism style, in the rest of the text under that.

Similarly, you may be shooting for a SERP featured snippet and voice-assistant-device answer using bullet points or a numbered list at the top of your content page.

The point is, the guidelines and recommendations I’ve provided for you here are not a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach to your meta descriptions and your content. SEO experience, switching your brain into the on position, and a willingness to test, observe, and adjust are all mandatory to achieve the best results.

Google’s updated SERP snippet length: What should be your SEO strategy now?

0 notes

sheilalmartinia · 7 years ago

Text

Google’s updated SERP snippet length: What should be your SEO strategy now?

On December 1st, 2017, Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Land that Google had officially confirmed a change to how it displays text snippets in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Barry wrote,

These snippets are the blurbs of text displayed in Google’s SERPs along with the clickable blue text and the page URL.

A quick Google search corroborates this – let’s use the query “how were the pyramids built” as an example:

Here they are, in the same order as above:

There are no photographs of the pyramid being built, and the engineers didn’t leave detailed blueprints. [Length:109]

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stones by transporting them over wet sand. [Length:122]

No meta description specified in the HTML

Here’s everything you need to know about the incredible Egyptian pyramids. [Length:74]

Two things jump out right away.

The length of the snippets is longer than the length that Google previously displayed, congruent with Google’s confirmation that they’re showing longer SERP snippets.

Here’s how that breaks down for the above query, again in the same order as the SERP listing screenshot above:

The first sentence of the text is used as the SERP snippet

The first and second sentences, and part of the third, are used as the SERP snippet

Checking a number of other queries returned similar observations about what Google is using as the SERP snippet, but note that some SERP snippets were indeed taken from the actual meta description.

For example, in the SERP for a query for musician “Todd Rundgren”, this SERP snippet is obviously taken directly from the meta description:

On mobile devices, the SERP snippets were very similar, in many cases the same as on desktop.

Dr. Pete Meyers over at Moz conducted research late last year on 89,909 page-one organic results.

Pete also noted no significant differences between desktop and mobile snippet lengths, sometimes seeing mobile snippets longer than desktop snippets.

For sure the actual SERP snippet you see, and the length, will vary by query type.

What is going on here?

Google is trying to satisfy searchers.

Similarly, what if the meta description is badly written, or spammy-sounding with lots of keyword stuffing, or doesn’t well-reflect the page’s theme and topic(s)?

So that’s what’s going on here – Google evolved over time to use whatever it deems makes the most sense to a user performing a certain query.

Wait: What the heck is a meta description, anyway?

Meta descriptions are HTML code that Google understands, and that is meant to provide a synopsis of the page.

Here’s an example:

This code goes between the <head></head> tags of the HTML and is not displayed on the visible content that a user would see.

Do meta descriptions impact SEO?

Meta descriptions will not impact rankings.

But, if Google does use a page’s meta description as the SERP snippet, that can impact click-through from the SERP.

That’s because a well-written meta description that is compelling, relevant to the page, and relevant to the query or queries for which the page is ranking, can impact organic traffic.

And that can have a downstream impact on conversions (the desired actions you want website visitors to take – fill out a form, buy something, and so on).

Poorly written meta descriptions, if used as the SERP snippet, can have the opposite effect and discourage the user to click through to your page, and instead go to your competitors.

So, what should be your strategy now that Google has increased the SERP snippet length?

In summary, you could do any of the following:

Do nothing at all

Rewrite longer meta descriptions for all your pages

Rewrite longer meta descriptions for some of your pages (e.g. your top ten or twenty organic landing pages, or some pages you determine have low click-thru rates)

Delete all your meta descriptions

What you decide to do (or not do) will at least in part hinge upon resources you have available to make changes.

A good recommendation here would be to cycle through this stuff on a regular basis – think quarterly or a couple times per year. Once per year at a minimum.

Here’s what I recommend

First, it should be obvious that your page’s textual content is for humans to consume, and that should always be your primary consideration.

The refrain of “write great content” has been used ad nauseum. The only reason I’m mentioning the whole “write for your users” thing is simply because often people focus primarily on “how do I SEO my pages?” instead of “what’s good for my users?”.

Meta descriptions

Make them about 300-320 characters long, including spaces

Make the meta description super-relevant to the page text

Front-load the first 150-165 characters with your most-compelling text – compelling to your users who might see the text as a SERP snippet (just in case Google decides to shorten them again)

Use a call to action if applicable, but don’t be a used car salesman about it – and as appropriate, use action-oriented language

Remember WIIFM – what’s in it for me – as applicable, focus on benefits, not features

Don’t be deceptive or make promises your page content can’t keep

Keep in mind that Google may not use your meta description as the SERP snippet and may instead use content from your page, likely from the first paragraph.

With that in mind:

Review & refresh your content

Make sure the H1 page headline is super-relevant to the page’s topic

Include an image (as applicable) that is super-relevant to the page (not one of those dumb, tangentially-related stock images) and craft an excellent and page-relevant image ALT attribute

Ensure that your opening paragraph is enticing and practically forces the reader to keep reading – that way if it’s the text used as the SERP snippet, that will capture people’s attention.

Summary

Similarly, you may be shooting for a SERP featured snippet and voice-assistant-device answer using bullet points or a numbered list at the top of your content page.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/09/googles-updated-serp-snippet-length-what-should-be-your-seo-strategy-now/

0 notes

ophirgottlieb · 7 years ago

Text

Shopify's Short Narrative - Where it Fails and Perhaps Misleads

10-5-2017 LEDE Spotlight Top Pick Shopify stock has fallen nearly 20% in two-days on the heels of toxic accusations from a well known short seller, Andrew Left of Citron research. He may have stepped too far, this time. STORY Hello, all. This is Ophir writing. Rather than summarize Citron Research's short thesis, here it is, straight from Andrew's mouth in a seven minute video:

youtube

THE ACCUSATIONS A lot of these accusations are quite serious and toxic. Let's take them one at a time with objective data that will help you decide if you agree or disagree. I. GET RICH QUICK SCHEME Just 19 seconds into the video Andrew says Shopify has mastered "the good old get rich scheme." At minute 1:10, Andrew tells us to "Google Shopify & Millionaire." He says, "sure enough, we see about 27,000 results." So let's start here. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian was the first to take issue with this narrative, and here is what he wrote in a note to clients:

[T]he firm's survey of Shopify ads today indicate very few (1 out of 20) contain the word millionaire, whereas the vast majority of the marketing campaigns are focused on easy online store set-up, building a brand, selling on Facebook, or creating an online shop. [] Moreover, reviewing Shopify’s Facebook posts since the beginning of the year, we could find no references or promises to prospects of becoming a millionaire

Just to take this point further, I did my own Google search, but this time it wasn't for Shopify, it was for: "proof that superman is real" Here is what I found:

The point here is not to be tongue-in-cheek, it is actually to echo yet further sentiment from Baird which read:

In fact, in order to find references to “millionaire ads,” even the short report suggests needing to search Google very specifically with the keywords "Shopify Millionaire" to uncover such ads, since they are not very apparent otherwise.

You can Google almost anything to find a result, so this first attempt at uprooting evil appears to be off base, based on both on Baird's research and a simple understanding of Google search proper. II. PYRAMID SCHEME At minute 1:49, Andrew Left brings up Herbalife and that Shopify is a pyramid scheme and how an FTC settlement by Herbalife is proof that "this will impact Shopify sooner rather than later." That's sounds damning, and we will get to the false claims of a pyramid scheme right after this one little fact. If you zoom into Andrew's video, here is that smoking gun headline that proves "this will impact Shopify sooner rather than later."

I am no supporter of Herbalife, please don't get me wrong, but we can see that the settlement was for $200 million. Here is the link to the FTC's website for that settlement: Herbalife Will Restructure Its Multi-level Marketing Operations and Pay $200 Million For Consumer Redress to Settle FTC Charges. Note that is was dated July 15, 2016. To put that $200 million into context, Herbalife has generated $4.4 billion in revenue in the last year and has a market cap above $6 billion. And if you're wondering how this smoking gun FTC settlement affected the stock, well, here you go, objectively:

Yes, Herbalife stock, when the FTC decision was rendered, rose 10% on the day. Obviously the FTC news wasn't good, but the fact that it had so little bite was in fact a bullish push for the stock. But, with that FTC reality out of the story, this is the real problem -- the original claim is false. Shopify is not a pyramid scheme and any argument to the contrary is in error. Shopify is an e-commerce platform builder and ecosystem. In fact, Left says that at the start the video. Further, Shopify has created such a powerful ecosystem that it has now partnered with Amazon, eBay and Facebook's Instagram. Further yet, it generates revenue from software as a service (SaaS), which is a fancy way of saying recurring software fees and as a payment provider. Many people felt that the 'Shopify Pay' initiative was worth trying but likely would not gain traction, but it has. This is from the last earnings call: * $2.2 billion of GMV in the quarter or 38% was processed on Shopify Payments. This compares with $1.3 billion or 38% in Q2 of 2016. For the record, this how Shopify describes Shopify Pay: Shopify Payments is the simplest way to accept payments online. It eliminates the hassle of setting up a third-party payment provider or merchant account and having to enter the credentials into Shopify. ... You’re automatically set up to accept all major cards as soon as you create your Shopify store. Whether you believe in the short thesis as presented by Andrew Left or not, or if you even feel that the whole thing is a fraud (which he did not claim), whatever you feel, there is nowhere in this entire narrative where Shopify has built a business on a pyramid. What we mean to say is, if you take the worst possible scenario, that Shopify is making up numbers by throwing darts at a number line, even that fraud is not about a pyramid scheme. I did another Google search that I would like to share: Is Citron Research Committing Securities Fraud?

This is where opinion comes in: I believe that unless Andrew Left backs away from this one claim in particular, that he will be investigated by the SEC and potentially fined or imprisoned. He takes a position in these stocks before he releases his research, which is fine, but even the most fantastical bear on Shopify doesn't believe this is a pyramid scheme. Call it many things -- but this is patently false. III. RESIGNATION LETTER At minute 2:10 Left says "when you see what Shopify does its to a level that you cannot even imagine." He makes reference to the fact that Shopify has a page on its website on how to write a resignation letter. I found two posts on Shopify surrounding this subject here is the first, written on May 1, 2017: Ready to Become a Full-Time Entrepreneur? Here's How to Quit Your Job. Since there is so much misinformation floating around, I'm not even going to copy and paste the article, I am just taking a screenshot for you to read.

So, I won't comment here. You decide if that sounds toxic. Now, here is the other post that Andrew referred to:

Again, I'll refrain from subjective analysis and let you decide how disturbing this is to you. IV. CREATING A BUSINESS At minute 3:20 Left discusses some dubious opportunities that Shopify offers clients -- namely to buy goods from other vendors, like Alibaba (Ali Express), and then re-sell them in the United States for more. For those that aren't familiar with this practice, which Andrew Left appears not to be, this is actually quite a popular approach and is most used on Amazon -- yes, that Amazon. On June 15th of this year, Yahoo! Finance actually penned an article "Think you’re buying on Amazon? It’s actually from Alibaba". The article goes onto explain how people do this, with great regularity. Now, if the argument is that this is an odd business model, or that it violates FTC rules if promoted by the reseller (like Amazon or Shopify), then he may have an argument, I'm not a lawyer. But, to call out Shopify as some special case is incorrect. Illustrating that Shopify has a special service to help this type of business get started is either bullish if it's legal, or it could be problematic if the FTC thinks this goes above and beyond what is allowed. When it comes down to it, Left's final proclamation here is at minute 3:56: "This is a business opportunity and this will require the same business opportunities disclosures that other have in this country." What? V. Partners Finally, at minute 4:10, Left discusses Shopify's partners: "On their last conference call I think they may have had 13,000 partners. And you might ask, who are these partners? Well a few thousand of them, maybe a thousand of them might be technology developers, but the rest of them are bloggers and influencers [] and are actually being paid by Shopify." Left's issue here again is with FTC rules. He notes an FTC page where it reads that "FTC Staff reminds Influencers and Brands to Clearly Disclose Relationship." If you care to actually go to that post and read it, which it appears Andrew Left has not, it has very little bite at all. It is in fact, as the title alludes to, "a reminder." It's primarily focused on social media stars:

After reviewing numerous Instagram posts by celebrities, athletes, and other influencers, Federal Trade Commission staff recently sent out more than 90 letters reminding influencers and marketers that influencers should clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationships to brands when promoting or endorsing products through social media.

It's definitely possible that this is happening at Shopify, and yes, if so the influencers are already or will need to soon, disclose that relationship. This FTC note was written on April 19th, 2017. Without further analysis, I'll let you decide how egregious any kind of poor disclaimers are. Interestingly, at minute 4:52, Left says "if you go to the Shopify website it discusses the affiliate program. It says the Shopify affiliate program includes bloggers, publishers, educators, and other inspiring affiliates."

Then at minute 5:20 Andrew Left says, "Shopify is not only teaching you how to run a store but how to make money writing a blog about Shopify." From that statement Left says at minute 5:30, "This is not an $11 billion company." At Stake With Partners Just to be perfectly clear, even if what Andrew Left is revealing is true, this is not a false business, it's simply noting a requirement of a disclaimer. Something to the effect of: "The author of this post was compensated by Shopify for this content." I don't exactly know what the right wording is, it is, after all, legalize, but this is the accusation, that blog posts don't have this notification, not that using influencers is somehow illegal. The very basis of worldwide advertising rests on influencers (read: celebrities). Again, this really started with influencers on social media, say someone showcasing a beauty product while getting compensated by the brand. The FTC "reminded" everyone involved that a disclaimer was required ("I'm going to show you this new great face wash, and I want everyone to know that [fill in brand name] has compensated me for this review.") So those are Andrew Left's statements. Again, you can watch the whole 7 minute video above. Here is a reminder of what Shopify is, to the rest of the investing world: WHAT IS SHOPIFY? Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2020 are pegged to grow from $2.3 trillion in 2017 to over $4 trillion by 2020. Here's the first chart from our friends at Statista:

We can also focus on the United States, looking at the same data:

In this case, we are looking at growth from $354 billion in 2017 to 459 billion by 2020. But, the real gem here is that even in today's world, the share of commerce that is done online is still tiny, even in the United States.

That chart comes to us from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). You're reading that right -- even in the US, we're still at less than 9% of retail sales done online. eMarketer projects that number rising from 8.7% today, to 14.6% in four years. While all of that seems huge -- and it is -- there is a dirty little secret about e-commerce that no one likes to talk about: being the platform for selling goods online doesn't make money. Yep, while the world marvels at Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), its $120 billion (ish) in e-commerce revenue turns a smaller profit than its relatively small cloud computing (AWS) business. In fact, AWS is 1/10th the size of the Amazon's e-commerce, but generates more operating profit than that mountain of e-commerce. So, why do we even care about Shopify? SHOPIFY -- THE STORY Shopify isn't just an investment in e-commerce -- that would never make our Top Pick's list -- it's an investment in the guts of the online shopping trend -- the part that's actually growing. Shopify is the leading cloud-based commerce software for small- and medium-sized businesses. But the company makes money from more than e-commerce sales, it makes money from businesses coming online. Remeber that chart from the Federal Reserve plotting e-commerce as a percentage of total retail sales and how it is supposed to go from ~9% to ~15% -- that's what Shopify is after, the influx of new e-commerce businesses. As of the last earnings call, more than 500,000 businesses now rely on Shopify for their sales and back-office software needs. That's up from 325,000 in the third quarter and 243,000 in the fourth quarter of 2015. Here is the revenue trend:

As an aside, Andrew Left never makes any claims that Shopify is fabricating financial results. LAST EARNINGS CALL We can also look at some snippets from the last earnings call -- and none of these facts are being questioned by Andrew Left: * Revenue rose 75% to $151.7 million versus estimates of $144.3 million. This was the ninth time in nine quarters since its May, 2015, initial public offering that Shopify had beaten analyst forecasts. * Revenue forecasts were raised for the full to $642 million - $648 million, up from $615 million - $630 million. * GAAP operating loss forecasts were reduced to a $62 million - $68 million loss from a prior range of $69 million - $73 million. * Subscription Solutions revenue growth accelerated from last quarter to 64%, coming in at $71.6 million. This strength was driven by the monthly recurring revenue growth of 64% to $23.7 million, as we had another record number of merchants join Shopify in Q2. * Merchant Solutions revenue grew 86% to $80.1 million. * Gross merchandise volume (GMV) rose 74% to $5.8 billion. * The value of GMV processed through Shopify Payments rose 69% to $2.1 billion. * We recently announced that we'll be adding eBay as a channel, making it the second large e-commerce marketplace, natively available to Shopify merchants. * More than a quarter of Shopify merchants that are shipping from the U.S. and nearly 20% of those shipping from Canada use Shopify Shipping in Q2 * Scale makes a difference here. The number of submissions to our App Store in Q2 doubled over last year * Gross profit dollars once again grew faster than revenue in the quarter. * We continue to expect to achieve operating profitability on an adjusted basis in the fourth quarter of this year * The company now has 500,000 merchants using its platform up from 300,000 in the year ago quarter. * With more than 0.5 million merchants and more than 1 million staff accounts now in the Shopify platform, it is clear we are extending our lead as the go-to platform for sellers. Conclusion We can't say what will happen with these new acquisitions from Citron Research. I think it's fair to assume we will soon see a headline in the news that reads something like: "FTC Investigates Business Practices at Shopify," or something along those lines. So, be prepared for that. Generally speaking, we maintain our Spotlight Top Pick status on Shopify but do note, while Andrew Left was wildly wrong on many shorts including Nvidia and Mobileye, he is famously right for his call on Valeant Pharma. As always, control risk, size appropriately and use your own judgement, aside from anyone else's subjective views, including my own. Thanks for reading, friends. The author is long shares Shopify at the time of this writing. WHY THIS MATTERS It's understanding technology that gets us an edge on finding companies early, the gems that can turn into the 'next Apple,' or 'next Amazon,' where we must get ahead of the curve. This is what CML Pro does. Each company in our 'Top Picks' has been selected as a future crown jewel of technology. Market correction or not, recession or not, the growth in these areas is a near certainty. We are Capital Market Laboratories. Our research sits next to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and every other multi billion dollar institution as a member of the famed Thomson Reuters First Call. But while those people pay upwards of $2,000 a month on their live terminals, we are the anti-institution and are breaking the information asymmetry. The precious few thematic top picks for 2017, research dossiers, and alerts are available for a limited time at an 80% discount for $19/mo. Join Us: Discover the undiscovered companies that will power technology's future. Legal The information contained on this site is provided for general informational purposes, as a convenience to the readers. The materials are not a substitute for obtaining professional advice from a qualified person, firm or corporation. Consult the appropriate professional advisor for more complete and current information. Capital Market Laboratories (“The Company”) does not engage in rendering any legal or professional services by placing these general informational materials on this website. The Company specifically disclaims any liability, whether based in contract, tort, strict liability or otherwise, for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages arising out of or in any way connected with access to or use of the site, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages, including liability in connection with mistakes or omissions in, or delays in transmission of, information to or from the user, interruptions in telecommunications connections to the site or viruses. The Company makes no representations or warranties about the accuracy or completeness of the information contained on this website. Any links provided to other server sites are offered as a matter of convenience and in no way are meant to imply that The Company endorses, sponsors, promotes or is affiliated with the owners of or participants in those sites, or endorse any information contained on those sites, unless expressly stated.

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trumpimmigration · 8 years ago

Text

(Books for Kids) Donald Trump: Our Next President? (Biography Books for Kids Book 2)

[wpramazon asin="B01D6EPRWW" keyword="donald trump kids"]

More Donald Trump Kids Products

Let's skip the introduction to Donald Trump (as I'm sure you're familiar) and go straight to our discussion of his latest project "The Trump Network."

So what's this 'Trump Network' I've seen advertised all over Google?

The Trump Network is a Multi Level Marketing company (MLM) that specializes in personalized nutritional products, scheduled to officially launch in late 2009. The brand is built around the success of Donald Trump, and as of right now, it is getting quite a lot of 'buzz' online. Hoards of distributors are packing their bags on other great opportunities to flock in to the Trump Wagon. Together with Efusjon, about 10 juice companies, and Genewize, 2009 is proving to be 'The Year Of The Pre-Launch'. I wonder if this was predicted by the Mayan Calendar.

What Does The Trump Network Sell?

Donald Trump has branded a new nutritional technology, which bases personalized nutrition and weight loss after a well known science called 'Metabolic Typing'. The idea is that with the rise of the highly obese, unhealthy, rich baby boomers, that zillions of otherwise non-health conscious people will flock around this new brand of products, all while holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya'.

(I was thinking about bringing my bong to the international convention)... Baby boomers love weed, too.

That's the company that I would like to start. 'The Weed Network'. If Obama would legalize pot, then all you'd have to do to get rich is walk outside of any high school, find the kids that hang out by the overpass, and say 'hey man, if you just find five people who find five people who want to get stoned - you're going to be one rich dude!'

You'd never run into the 'Pyramid Scheme' objection on that one - everyone at the meetings would be to stoned to notice - I could just imagine it..."If you just get five stoners who love weed to love weed even more, and they just get five - not only will it be a sweet party - but we'll all be rich, man!" I can only hear the audience roaring - only instead of 'Amen' they say 'Far Out!'

Of course, I'm kidding - but only a little. You see, ever since the advent of the internet, about every 3 months the 'latest and greatest MLM' comes out and masses of frustrated Network Marketers flock to join 'before it's saturated'. The hope is that The Trump Network, unlike their company that they're in now, will somehow magically work for them when nothing in the past has.

Why the Trump Network will NEVER make you rich:

I'm going to have about 100 people complain to me about this the second it's released. I'm going to get comments like 'The Trump Network is awesome, blah blah blah, you're just jealous.'

I don't want you to misunderstand me - The Trump Network is a good company, and a fine one to join. In fact, their product idea is sound and they are probably better funded than the 900 other startups that began in 2009.

I'm simply conveying a message. I don't know if you get this - but the people who make all the cash when a company is launching are the leaders who have built huge organizations before. They've built massive contact databases of distributors and people from past MLM success, and they take that into their new company. Don't you realize that all of these 'Gurus' simply take their list to a company when it first starts and send out a simple email like this one:

'I'm awesome. As you know, I've made 40 trillion dollars in the last 30 years helping struggling people make money. Being as awesome as I am, I obviously know way better than the average person how to spot an opportunity of a lifetime. I just joined XYZ company because more people are going to get rich from this than got rich from Microsoft. If you join me right now, you'll be rich, too - but only if you act in the next 24 hours. You see, because I'm so highly regarded, and as I said, awesome - I can only work with people who aren't idiots like most people and know how to spot a good opportunity when they see one. Don't call me unless you're credit card is in your hand.'

Signed,

Mr. Rich and Famous Trillionaire 1-800-Join-Now

Then, in a buzzing frenzy, hoards of people abandon years of hard work and relationships because they get caught up in 'the newest and greatest thing'... ...Six months later when they're still not rich - they bust out their credit card again and make Mr. Trillionaire even richer in a 'newer, better prelaunch - just like The Trump Network, but better'.

So am I saying that you shouldn't join the Trump Network?

No, not at all. What I'm saying is - understand that building The Trump Network is not going to be any easier than building a business in a 5, or 10 year old company, and unless you've either got a database of 20,000 people who love and respect you (or you learn how to build one and get to work), you're not going to make any more money from The Trump Network than what you can do by sticking to ONE COMPANY.

Did you know that according to Dr. Charles King, based on more than 15 years of academic research into the world of Network Marketing PROVES that out of the people who stay actively involved in ONE COMPANY for 10 years or more reach the top of the comp plan and earn six figures a year?

The problem is, we get so hyped up into the 'newest, most awesome deal' that we abandon all that we've worked so hard to build. Network Marketing is a PROFESSION and it needs to be treated professionally to produce six and seven figure results.

Look, I'm not bashing on The Trump Network, or any other MLM leader out there. What I'm saying is simple - if you want to get rich in MLM, focus more attention on learning how to market your business professionally than you do looking for the newest deal to solve your problems.

Quite frankly, learning how to build quality business relationships that can last through company failures, people quitting, earthquakes, wars, and depressions is a more valuable skill in the Network Marketing industry than learning how to spot the newest, greatest deal.

You can read the full The Trump Network Review by visiting David Wood's website. If you want to learn how to create unstoppable momentum in your MLM business, visit David Wood's MLM Secret Formula now.

Learn More Here: (Books for Kids) Donald Trump: Our Next President? (Biography Books for Kids Book 2)

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legit-scam-review · 6 years ago

Text

“99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero”

The interview has been edited and condensed.

Nouriel Roubini is a New York-based economist that famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis when only a few considered there might be a threat to the existing course of events at the time.

On being “against” the crypto industry

I can see a bubble when there is one — and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst

I spoke about the bubble existing and this bubble going bust. And guess what? In the last year, [it] has gone bust. So I think I’ve been vindicated and proven right.

Bitcoin could go to the moon or zero, I’m not going to make a penny either way because I’m neither short or long.

And I’m just an academic that speaks his mind. And I saw a big bubble, and I think that it’s fair as an intellectual to discuss these things and then figure out what’s going wrong.”

To watch the interview go here:

youtube

On future price movement and Ethereum being a “scam”

So, there was a bubble — and everybody was riding the bubble, everybody was issuing an ICO, raising money — but now it’s gone bust.

I think that they’ve lost already 95 percent of their value and they could lose another 95 percent.

Catherine Ross: Why do you think Ethereum is a scam?

They’ve tried things that have failed: Their DAO was a failure.

I mean, this is the reality where we are in now.

At least financial systems that we know are centralized, yes, but they’re secure and they’re scalable.

On trusting financial system

CR: Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, you still believe in the traditional financial banking banking system?

But I prefer a centralized system with a trusted authority — but at least they’re secure and scalable.

The reality is just the opposite: It’s a totally centralized system.

There is a revolution in financial services: It’s called fintech and it has zero to do with cryptocurrency and blockchain.

It’s based on AI, machine learning, Internet of Things and big data. It’s revolutionizing payment system, insurance, credit allocation, capital market functions, and asset management.

CR: So, you would rather trust a bank? How can you be sure that your money is safe?

I don’t believe in blockchain.

CR: I see your point of view, but just to be clear, the banking system has been around for centuries, right? So, maybe you should give the crypto industry and blockchain industries a try?

NR: No. I’m not giving it a try. I’m gonna give a try to financial innovation that changes the financial system.

CR: My last question is, have you ever tried trading cryptocurrency?

I may be right or may be wrong, but crypto could go to the moon to go to zero; I’m not going to make a penny out of it. I’m an intellectual. I’m an academic. I have no conflicts of interest.

I’m an intellectual and I’m not going to make money — one way or another — out of it.

window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({ appId : '1922752334671725', xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' }); FB.AppEvents.logPageView(); };

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Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/99-percent-of-cryptocurrencies-are-worth-zero-5

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legit-scam-review · 6 years ago

Text

“99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero”

The interview has been edited and condensed.

Nouriel Roubini is a New York-based economist that famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis when only a few considered there might be a threat to the existing course of events at the time.

On being “against” the crypto industry

I can see a bubble when there is one — and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst

I spoke about the bubble existing and this bubble going bust. And guess what? In the last year, [it] has gone bust. So I think I’ve been vindicated and proven right.

Bitcoin could go to the moon or zero, I’m not going to make a penny either way because I’m neither short or long.

And I’m just an academic that speaks his mind. And I saw a big bubble, and I think that it’s fair as an intellectual to discuss these things and then figure out what’s going wrong.”

To watch the interview go here:

youtube

On future price movement and Ethereum being a “scam”

So, there was a bubble — and everybody was riding the bubble, everybody was issuing an ICO, raising money — but now it’s gone bust.

I think that they’ve lost already 95 percent of their value and they could lose another 95 percent.

Catherine Ross: Why do you think Ethereum is a scam?

They’ve tried things that have failed: Their DAO was a failure.

I mean, this is the reality where we are in now.

At least financial systems that we know are centralized, yes, but they’re secure and they’re scalable.

On trusting financial system

CR: Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, you still believe in the traditional financial banking banking system?

But I prefer a centralized system with a trusted authority — but at least they’re secure and scalable.

The reality is just the opposite: It’s a totally centralized system.

There is a revolution in financial services: It’s called fintech and it has zero to do with cryptocurrency and blockchain.

It’s based on AI, machine learning, Internet of Things and big data. It’s revolutionizing payment system, insurance, credit allocation, capital market functions, and asset management.

CR: So, you would rather trust a bank? How can you be sure that your money is safe?

I don’t believe in blockchain.

CR: I see your point of view, but just to be clear, the banking system has been around for centuries, right? So, maybe you should give the crypto industry and blockchain industries a try?

NR: No. I’m not giving it a try. I’m gonna give a try to financial innovation that changes the financial system.

CR: My last question is, have you ever tried trading cryptocurrency?

I may be right or may be wrong, but crypto could go to the moon to go to zero; I’m not going to make a penny out of it. I’m an intellectual. I’m an academic. I have no conflicts of interest.

I’m an intellectual and I’m not going to make money — one way or another — out of it.

window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({ appId : '1922752334671725', xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' }); FB.AppEvents.logPageView(); };

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Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...

User rating:

9.5

Demo & Pro Version Get It Now Hurry!

Read full review

The post “99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero” appeared first on Review: Legit or Scam?.

Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/99-percent-of-cryptocurrencies-are-worth-zero-3

0 notes

legit-scam-review · 6 years ago

Text

“99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero”

The interview has been edited and condensed.

Nouriel Roubini is a New York-based economist that famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis when only a few considered there might be a threat to the existing course of events at the time.

On being “against” the crypto industry

I can see a bubble when there is one — and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst

I spoke about the bubble existing and this bubble going bust. And guess what? In the last year, [it] has gone bust. So I think I’ve been vindicated and proven right.

Bitcoin could go to the moon or zero, I’m not going to make a penny either way because I’m neither short or long.

And I’m just an academic that speaks his mind. And I saw a big bubble, and I think that it’s fair as an intellectual to discuss these things and then figure out what’s going wrong.”

To watch the interview go here:

youtube

On future price movement and Ethereum being a “scam”

So, there was a bubble — and everybody was riding the bubble, everybody was issuing an ICO, raising money — but now it’s gone bust.

I think that they’ve lost already 95 percent of their value and they could lose another 95 percent.

Catherine Ross: Why do you think Ethereum is a scam?

They’ve tried things that have failed: Their DAO was a failure.

I mean, this is the reality where we are in now.

At least financial systems that we know are centralized, yes, but they’re secure and they’re scalable.

On trusting financial system

CR: Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, you still believe in the traditional financial banking banking system?

But I prefer a centralized system with a trusted authority — but at least they’re secure and scalable.

The reality is just the opposite: It’s a totally centralized system.

There is a revolution in financial services: It’s called fintech and it has zero to do with cryptocurrency and blockchain.

It’s based on AI, machine learning, Internet of Things and big data. It’s revolutionizing payment system, insurance, credit allocation, capital market functions, and asset management.

CR: So, you would rather trust a bank? How can you be sure that your money is safe?

I don’t believe in blockchain.

CR: I see your point of view, but just to be clear, the banking system has been around for centuries, right? So, maybe you should give the crypto industry and blockchain industries a try?

NR: No. I’m not giving it a try. I’m gonna give a try to financial innovation that changes the financial system.

CR: My last question is, have you ever tried trading cryptocurrency?

I may be right or may be wrong, but crypto could go to the moon to go to zero; I’m not going to make a penny out of it. I’m an intellectual. I’m an academic. I have no conflicts of interest.

I’m an intellectual and I’m not going to make money — one way or another — out of it.

window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({ appId : '1922752334671725', xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' }); FB.AppEvents.logPageView(); };

Recommended Read

Editors' Picks

BinBot Pro – Safest & Highly Recommended Binary Options Auto Trading Robot (Proofs Inside)

Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...

User rating:

9.5

Demo & Pro Version Get It Now Hurry!

Read full review

The post “99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero” appeared first on Review: Legit or Scam?.

Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/99-percent-of-cryptocurrencies-are-worth-zero-2

0 notes