text:
3D Printing Steps in to Aid Semiconductor Industry's Faltering Supply Chains
April 21, 2021 by Michael Molitch-Hou 3D PrintingExclusive InterviewsMetal 3D Printing
At this point in its evolution, additive manufacturing (AM) is growing far beyond the aerospace sector that kickstarted its adoption for end part production. It is being incorporated into automotive, general industry, energy and more. This includes the semiconductor industry, where complex machinery can benefit from some of the same advantages that AM brings to other sectors, such as improved efficiency, production on demand, and innovative design possibilities. To learn more, we spoke to Scott Green, Principal Solutions Leader for semiconductors at 3D Systems.
While there are about five leading chip makers— Intel, Samsung, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom—they rely on an extensive line of contractors and subcontractors and system suppliers to make each individual component that lands on the final board, which all ultimately rely on those that mine for the raw materials needed to make them. As a result of this elaborate supply chain, semiconductor makers can be easily impacted by larger issues, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a ship stuck in the Suez Canal.
At the same time, the sector is innovating at as rapid a pace as possible to keep up with the demands of Moore's Law and the growing industries that rely on a steady supply of new, better, smaller chips. The pandemic is also driving businesses, educational institutions and people to move further online.
"Schools are buying iPads, computers, and upgrading networks. People are working more remotely and, for some companies, this is occurring for the first time ever. A vast majority of small-to-medium businesses are not cloud connected. They're investing in things like Salesforce, Office Online, and Amazon Web Services to try to go remote," Green said. "You end up getting folks like Amazon and Azure, the big server farm companies, and certain cloud services companies with an increased load capacity, which means, of course, more servers, more memory, more storage upgrades, and take taking care of all the server equipment."
This all causes a strain along the supply chain, as supplies eventually run low, requiring a new influx of goods at each point to keep up with demand. All of this was then further exacerbated by reduced working environments and restrictions, as well as the global economic challenges and transportation issues related to the pandemic. Therefore, like many other industries, semiconductor manufacturing can benefit from having a technology that can reliably produce parts on demand.
Employees are seen working on the final assembly of ASML's TWINSCAN NXE:3400B semiconductor lithography tool with its panels removed, in Veldhoven, Netherlands. Image courtesy of Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie/ASML/Handout.
In some cases, a lithography machine for silicon wafer manufacturing may have a couple hundred thousand parts with dozens and dozens of kilometers of tubes containing wires feeding into them. That represents nearly countless opportunities for 3D printing to make an impact.
Of course, plastic prototyping is prolific across most high-tech industries, including semiconductor manufacturing. Metal 3D printing of end parts is beginning to grow in use. According to Green, there are already wafer processing systems on the market that include metal components made with 3D Systems equipment. This is in part due to the fact that the company has been serving the semiconductor equipment industry in Eindhoven, the Netherlands for the better part of a decade.
"We're steadily increasing that pie chart of additive to non-additive parts in the leading-edge equipment with every generation—the latest products that are just being shipped. Now, in the generations beyond that, we're seeing something like double or triple the number of additively manufactured parts inside of those than the machines that are in the market today," Green said.
"Generally, what the silicon wafer manufacturers are trying to do is optimize the systems to reduce noise and uncertainty inside the systems so they can have faster time to market," Green said.
To do this, a fast technology capable of rapid iteration is necessary. 3D Systems' Direct Metal Printing (DMP), a form of laser powder bed fusion, is used by some firms to develop new machine designs.
Better thermal management of wafer tables can simultaneously improve semiconductor equipment accuracy by 1–2 nm, as well as speed and throughput. (Image courtesy of 3D Systems)
In some cases, end parts are produced that can lower tooling costs by combining multiple components in an assembly into a single part. These include wafer tables with complex cooling channels that might normally be made up of five to seven pieces machined and brazed together and have a two-to-three-month lead time. With AM, the same assembly can be made as a single piece more efficiently and with improved performance. Moreover, a variety of materials, such as copper or aluminum or titanium, might be tested to obtain the best thermal values.
"This is allowing the manufacturers to actually design for the function first, instead of making manufacturing compromises first, and then sacrificing function because of these compromises," Green said.
The use of 3D printing in these businesses usually begins when either a manufacturer sees existing use cases from 3D Systems and reaches out to them or they experience their own technical issues and see an opportunity to overcome the challenge with AM. 3D Systems will then work with the customer on applications that are obvious and achievable, including wafer tables, manifolds, and general structural optimization.
3D Systems has two case studies that it has made public on its website, one of which is for what is probably considered the most complex piece of equipment on the planet: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Representing the cutting edge of optics and physics, the LHC is looked at as the leading example for the semiconductor industry, with the technology developed for the massive particle physics experiment trickling down into semiconductor manufacturing.
The LHC example is discussed more fully in a separate article, but, in brief, Nikhef, the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics, was aiming to produce leak-tight cool bars that could achieve -40˚C within the particle accelerator's detector. Manufacturing the component with conventional processes was not feasible due to the required wall thinness, necessary to minimize the amount of material between the coolant and the surface to be cooled.
Working with 3D Systems, they were able to produce cool bars made from TiGr23. The leak-tight bars had wall thicknesses of just 0.25mm with 50-micron precision across the 263-mm length of the part. In turn, over 300 of these cooling bars were 3D printed using 3D Systems' DMP technology.
Cooling bars for the LHC. Image courtesy of 3D Systems.
The other case study is related to structural optimization to reduce vibration and improve the strength of wafer cooling tables and manifolds. Conventional manufacturing yields manifolds that are big, heavy, and create poor flow and connections. In contrast, Wilting , a tier 1 supplier for semiconductor OEMs, worked with 3D Systems to optimize fluid and gas flow within manifolds to reduce pressure drops, as well as mechanical disturbances and vibration.
When AM is employed to produce complex fluid manifolds, engineers can optimize designs to reduce pressure drop, mechanical disturbances, and vibration. (Image courtesy of 3D Systems)
Using additive manufacturing to create manifolds can help reduce liquid-caused disturbance forces by as much as 90 percent. Additionally, converting a multi-part assembly to a single 3D printed manifold has the potential to reduce weight by 50 percent. This, in turn, can lead to improved reliability, manufacturing and yield. The success of their partnership has driven increased demand for 3D printing with Wilting, which is expected to expand to Wilting's customer base.
As a tier 1 supplier, Wilting is a good example of the direction adoption can go throughout the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. Companies at that level are able to innovate freely with the OEMs for whom they work choosing to adopt those innovations when and where appropriate. If one of the five big manufacturers mentioned earlier (Intel, Samsung, etc.) sees the value of a new development, such as the use of 3D printing for metal end parts, it can push that development across its supply chain.
Lightweighting semiconductor components and advanced motion mechanisms reduces inertia and improves lithography and wafer processing machine speed and uptime. (Part courtesy of VDL)
This is being further driven by COVID and other supply chain trends, which are pushing OEMs to produce more innovative products more quickly. The CHIPS Act in the U.S., as well as legislation in the E.U., is seeing large rounds of funding directed at semiconductor production as businesses seek to reshore their operations and reduce dependence on China.
"There is a perfect storm creating an overwhelming amount of interest and speed around [AM in the semiconductor industry] because these companies are under a lot of pressure now. It's just going to get ramped up with international funding and that Biden has pushed through," Green said. "This means that, in the next two to five years, that shortage will be solved, but then you'll have devices that'll be on the market that will be a product of that funding. So smarter devices, lower costs, more memory, faster speeds, lower power usage—all the key values that you look for."
With this in mind, increased adoption of AM in the semiconductor space is essentially inevitable. At the moment, part feature sizes and shapes aren't too difficult, but Green sees 3D printing applied to ever-more difficult challenges, meaning components with very fine features and more complex geometries. Over the next 10 to 15 years, he sees the industry following a similar path to adoption of AM in aerospace, where the technology was first used outside of the engine compartment for brackets and aesthetic parts and is now increasingly used to completely reimagine engine designs.
"Especially as the part count of the latest machines increases, we'll see more advanced thinking about AM in semiconductors. As they get past this optimization stage, where they've basically optimized as much as they can and are breaching the laws of physics, then they will start from scratch and think of some new ways to make wafers even better," Green said. "That's where things are going to get really interesting."
In a decade or two, according to Green, design for AM will have been taught in undergraduate, graduate and trade schools so that engineers will be thinking about 3D printing from the outset when they enter the job market. This is in contrast to the current generation of experts who have to reorient their subtractive mindsets toward AM.
"Then, from a supply chain perspective, I see the opportunity for suppliers to transition to AM or fail and suffer. If your business is casting, assembly, and machining for the semiconductor industry, and that's the lion's share of your business, and you don't shift to additive, you're going to lose that business for sure," Green concluded.
Tagged with: 3D printing case studies • 3d systems • 3d systems dmp • CERN • direct metal printing • interview • metal 3d printing • semiconductor manufacturing • semiconductors • supply chain


text:
Target-market-scholarly-Peer-review-JournalDrug Development peer review journalshypervitaminosisOpen-access journals in Electronic EngineeringPeer reviewed mild cognitive impairment JournalsInternational Irrigation & Drainage Systems Engineering JournalsKidney stones research articlesReview Articles on In Silico BiologyIndexedToxicogenomics Impact factorHigh impact journals in pediatric gastroenterologyPolymersMachine learningdrug target journalsTick Borne Diseases
Open Access Articles- Top Results for Chieri
Journal of Phylogenetics & Evolutionary Biology
Phylogenetic Diversity and the Evolution of Molecular Sequences
Journal of Nutrition & Food Sciences
Food Handlers' Occupational and Professional Training Characterization
The GC Content of Bacterial Genomes
Journal of Medical Microbiology & Diagnosis
Clinical Validation of the BD Onclarity™ HPV Assay Using a Non-Inferiority Test
Phenotypic and Evolutionary Distances in Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction
This article is about the Italian comune. For the fictional Darkover race, see Darkover#Chieri. For fictional character of AKB0048, see AKB0048#Chieri Sono.
Template:Infobox Italian comuneChieri is a town and comune in the province of Turin, Piedmont (Italy), located about Script error: No such module "convert". southeast of Turin, Script error: No such module "convert". by rail and Script error: No such module "convert". by road. It borders the following municipalities: Baldissero Torinese, Pavarolo, Montaldo Torinese, Pino Torinese, Arignano, Andezeno, Pecetto Torinese, Riva presso Chieri, Cambiano, Santena, Poirino.
1.1 Pre-Roman
1.2 Roman
1.3 Early Medieval
1.4 Late Medieval
1.5 Renaissance
1.6 Modern era
2 Main sights
3 Notable natives
4 Notable events
5 International relations
5.1 Twin towns — Sister cities
Pre-Roman
Between the Neolithic and the Iron Age, the original inhabitants of this part of the Italian peninsula were the Liguri people.[citation needed][dubious – discuss] The Liguri living in this area of the Po river plain belonged specifically to the Taurini tribe, whose capital was the city of Taurasia (Torino), after whom that city is also named.
The location of Chieri is within the Taurini tribe's territory, in the belt of hills which surround Torino. The original settlement was most likely founded by them, being sited on a prominent hill (on which the church of San Giorgio currently stands) and which grew to be the geographical focus of the city centre. Its original name would have been Karreum or a variant thereof e.g. Karreo/Karrea/Carrea: this is based on the root kar, which possibly means "stone", reflecting the typical Ligurian settlement layout of a stone edifice at the centre of a grouping of other habitations within a village, which would have likely been the original layout of Chieri.
Sometime around 400 BCE, Celtic tribes (called Gauls by the Romans) crossed the Alps from Gaul and settled the Po river plain. These peoples mingled with the original Liguri, either through conquest or peaceful cohabitation, and gave rise to a Celto-Ligurian race of people, inhabiting the region which the Romans would call Cisalpine Gaul, i.e. "Gaul this side of the Alps".
The Romans, over the two centuries between 400-200 BCE, conducted a prolonged counter-offensive to conquer all of the northern Italian peninsula, partially in response to successive invasions, starting with Gauls led by king Brenno in 391 BCE, and later the Carthaginians under the great general Hannibal Barca in 218 BCE.
It is likely sometime after 176 BCE that Cisalpine Gaul was completely subdued by Roman legions, and this would have included the village of Karreum itself. This was possibly under the command of Roman consul Caius Claudius Pulcrus, leading a military response to a rebellion the year before by the Liguri, the scucces of whose campaign allowed him to later write back to Rome that as a result of his victories "no enemy of the Roman people now remains this side of the Alps".
Following this Roman conquest in the 2nd Century BCE, the village became known as the Roman settlement of Carreum Potentia: the Latin name 'Potentia' (derived from potens, "powerful") being added as a cognomen to the original Ligurian name.
It is likely that, following similar examples elsewhere, at Carreum Potentia the Roman settlement was built alongside the pre-Roman one, the Roman part built on lower ground in the plain, alongside the Rio Tepice stream and at the base of the original native hill-top settlement. It would appear the Forum and the main Temple (most likely dedicated to the goddess Minerva) were located in the area where the Duomo and the piazza around it currently stand, with a wall around it (traces of which were excavated in the 1960s).
Roman historian Pliny the Elder referenced "Carreum quod Potentia cognominatur", in his work Naturalis Historia (dated 50-60 AD), naming it within a list of fortified settlements which then abounded in the section of Cisalpine Gaul between the River Po and the Ligurian Apennines: the city was portrayed as a prosperous Roman walled city, surrounded by cultivated farmlands and scattered agricultural settlements. By the 1st Century AD, Carreum Potentia was indeed referred to as a Roman municipium, i.e. a seat of local government for the surrounding area.
The city underwent conversion to Christianity sometime in the 5th century, as recorded on a funeral slab dated from June 488 AD for a little girl called Genesia who died at the age of two.
No further historical records exist regarding Chieri until the 10th century, when it came under feudal subjection to the Bishop of Turin. During the first half of the 11th century the city had an encircling defensive wall erected around the San Giorgio Hill (known as the Castrum Sancti Georgi, which still constitutes the city nucleus), under direction of Bishop Landolfo: these long-demolished Mura Landolfiane still clearly trace the outline of the pattern of narrow streets around the hill (known as the Chiocciola, "snail"). The work included a strengthening of the fortifications and tower atop the hill, now incorporated into the Church of San Giorgio which occupies the hilltop and overlooks the city.
Outside the walls, on the plains surrounding the city, a church was erected dedicated to Santa Maria (Virgin Mary): this site was likely that of an earlier and more primitive Church dating from the 4th century, which had itself replaced the earlier Roman Temple to Minerva.
This period also experienced the construction of numerous quadrilateral towers, inside the perimeter of the walls, by the powerful families of the city, hence it became known as Cittá delle Cento Torri ("city of one hundred towers"): a handful of these Towers still survive to this day.
During the 12th century the city allied itself with the more powerful city of Asti in fighting against the marquis William V of Montferrat, himself allied to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa: in revenge for this rebel alliance, Barbarossa besieged the city and in January 1155 conquered it, decimating its towers and fortifications, as well as massacring a significant portion of the population.
Popular legend has it that its present-day name was given by Barbarossa who, upon departing the city after ransacking it, looked back upon its ruins and asked Ma tu, chi eri? (Italian for "And you, who were you?") - although this story is most likely apocryphal.
Over the remainder of the 12th century, the city gradually gained independence from the rule and authority of the Bishop of Turin, and this resulted in the emergence of the free Republic of Chieri, which grew to have its own autonomous judicial and administrative institutions, similar to the numerous other Free Republic cities which existed in Italy during this period.
In the course of the 13th century, the Republic of Chieri experienced a period of substantial prosperity, and at that time was comparable in splendor and importance to the great medieval cities of Genoa, Asti and Pisa.
In 1238 the Republic was granted the status of camera speciale (Italian: "special chamber") by Emperor Frederick, which meant that the only authority the Republic would be subject to was that of the (very remote) Emperor.
Following growing violent internecine struggles between city factions to the end of that century, the Republic of Chieri, despite asserting its dominion over adjacent lands and castles and constructing a secondary ring of city walls, decreased in power and autonomy to the point that in 1339 the city made itself subject to Robert of Anjou, King of Naples: in doing so, it granted half of its lands and territories as feudal possession to Prince Iacopo of the house of Savoy-Acaia. The city eventually passed in its entirety to the House of Savoy, when the line of Acaia died out.
The 15th century brought Chieri a period of economic prosperity and a flourishing of the Arts with, among other endeavours, the rebuilding of the Church of Santa Maria into its present form as the Duomo. During this time the hill-top church of San Giorgio was also rebuilt into its current incarnation, and several works of Flemish art were brought into the area by rich city merchants.
The 16th century covered a period of succeeding plagues, epidemics, and wars, and (from 1551 to 1562) also brought French domination. During this period some of its citizens became followers of the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther, but this was quashed by strong opposition from Duke Emanuele Filiberto: it was in order to honour him, along with Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, that the city towards the end of this century constructed a Triumphal Arch, still present on the main street (currently Via Vittorio Emanuele II).
The year 1630 saw a terrible outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, which is still commemorated every September the 12th with the ceremony of the Madonna delle Grazie. Despite this, the remainder of the 17th century also covered a flourishing of artistic achievement, with the building of several churches and chapels in the Baroque style of architecture, as well as numerous paintings and sculptures.
In 1785 Chieri became a Principality under the control of the duke of Aosta. The late 18th century again brought French domination, this time under the conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte; but this period also witnessed the establishment of a major Textile mill, which consolidated and built upon the city's base as a medieval centre for Textile trade and manufacture.
Numerous other textile factories followed in the late 19th century, with textile manufacture originating from Chieri playing a prominent role even in international Textile Fairs. The year 1850 saw the demolition of the old medieval city gates and the privatisation of the city walls, which at that time still demarcated the limits of the entire city.
In 1871 a railroad link was constructed to the city, partly due to contributions from the municipality and from wealthy citizens, in the form of the Chieri-Trofarello branch line: this was to serve the now very significant Textile industry of the city, with the building of the railway station also serving to initiate in the surrounding area the erection of the first city quarter built outside its walls.
The early 20th century brought the electrification of the Textile industries (1909), but also the rise of Fascism in Italy. World War II caused no direct bombardments to the city despite the relocation, from the nearby major industrial centre of Turin, of numerous factories and heavy industry manufacture; German occupation of the city followed the fall of Benito Mussolini in 1943, until its liberation by American forces.
The post-war period experienced a huge increase in Chieri's population, as massive migration occurred between the 1950s and 1970s from the Veneto region and from Southern Italy (Italian: "Il Mezzogiorno"), to the major industrial centres of Northern Italy such as Milan and Turin and adjacent areas: this resulted in a population boom from approximately 14,000 immediately after the War, to 30,000 inhabitants in just under three decades.
The later years of the 20th century also witnessed the decline of Textile industry in the city, as numerous Factories were forced to close from competitive pressure from the cheaper manufacturing centres of the Indian Subcontinent and the Far East. This is being counteracted by the establishment of a new industrial area outside the city, and also by a rediscovering and redeveloping of Chieri's significant cultural and historical heritage.
Today Chieri is a growing center for the provision of a varied portfolio of commercial, retail, financial, and tertiary services.
The Gothic Duomo (cathedral), founded in 1037 and reconstructed in 1405, is the largest in Piedmont, and has a 13th-century octagonal Baptistery which includes a fine collection of 13th century frescoes. Its glass stained windows are the work of renowned glass artist Silvio Vigliaturo.
The hill-top church of San Giorgio, dominating the historical centre and offering commanding views of the entire city.
The church of San Filippo, on the principal Via Vittorio Emanuele, boasting a noteworthy example of Italian Baroque-style face-brick church façade.
The Arco (Triumphal Arch), dedicated to Charles Emmanuel I and Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy.
Notable natives
Giuseppe Avezzana (1797–1879), Italian general and politician who previously fought under Napoleon from 1813–14
Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo (1786–1842), Catholic priest and saint, died in Chieri
David Levi (1816–98), Italian poet and patriot
Giovanni Perrone (1794–1876), theologian
Roberto Rosato (1943–2010), football player
At 08:30am on Tuesday 15 October 2002, Chieri experienced one of Italy's worst civilian massacres outside of wartime when unemployed craftsman Mauro Antonello (40), a gun enthusiast with a history of mental illness, went on a shooting rampage in Via Parini street, within the Borgo Venezia quarter on the outskirts of the city.
Using four weapons (including three semi-automatic), the perpetrator killed seven people, starting with his ex-wife Carla Bergamin, at whose house the tragedy occurred. His other victims included her widowed mother Teresa Gobbo; Carla's brother Sergio Bargamin and his wife Margherita Feyles, who operated a textile workshop on the ground floor of their house; next-door neighbour Decio Guerra along with his wife; and Pierangela Gramaglia, a friend of Margherita's who also worked for them at their workshop.
The perpetrator then finally took his own life before the forces of law and order arrived on the scene.[1]
See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Italy
Twin towns — Sister cities
Chieri is twinned with:
23x15px Épinal, France
23x15px Nanoro, Burkina Faso
23x15px Tolve, Italy
^ http://www.repubblica.it/online/cronaca/chieri/chieri/chieri.html La Repubblica.it, "Fa strage e si uccide otto morti nel torinese" (in Italian). 15th October 2002
12px This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
www.comune.chieri.to.it/
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Chieri; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Indecisive? Go with a combo dinner from Mi Pueblo? We recommend the Combo #11, which includes one burrito, one taco and one enchilada.. Pick from chicken or beef. This is perhaps the freshest Mexican food around town. Mi Pueblo offers authentic Mexican cuisine at an excellent price. All orders are served with chips and salsa. If your looking for a great value try on of their 25 different combination dinners to satisfy your appetite. If your located on the southwest side of town, give Mi Pueblo a try for fast authentic Mexican food.


text:
Paranoid Enough
"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
– Kurt Vonnegut
Home About Archive Subscribe
© 2022 Dan Reardon | Make a great day today 😎
GameStop 2 – Electric Boogaloo
Congressional hearings are a waste of everyone's time. When people become outraged about something in the news that they don't understand – be it Facebook harvesting user data, Pharma Bro, or the retail trading frenzy regarding GameStop – Congress hauls up a scapegoat to atone for our societal sins. In a Girardian reading, this ritualistic sacrifice lends legitimacy to the main religion in the U.S. today: our contemporary political system.
The problem is that Congress is comprised of a bunch of old politicians. While they may have legal training, our Representatives and Senators have no understanding of technology, health care, finance, or any of the other complex systems that underpin society. So we're stuck with Orrin Hatch being confused that Facebook makes money by running ads or David Scott arguing that it is Robinhood's responsibility to monitor social media chatter to ensure investors on its platform are not being misled.
If I were king for a day, my GameStop inquisition would consist of the following people and questions.
Thomas Peterffy, Chairman of Interactive Brokers
Mr. Peterffy, in a viral interview on February 17th, you claimed, in reference to GameStop trading on Thursday, January 28th: "We have come dangerously close to the collapse of the entire system."
Can you please elaborate? What would have happened in a worst-case scenario?
Michael Bodson, President and CEO of the DTCC
Mr. Bodson, please describe in detail the function of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, including its ownership structure and who has a financial interest in the firm.
Please describe the need for capital requirements and the counterparty risk in T+2 settlement.
Walk us through who assumes risk for making the end customer whole when any given actor in the system fails.
Show us the models used to calculate capital requirements for your partner brokerages. How (and why) do these models differ between brokerages?
What is a "fail-to-deliver" for a given security? What is the process for resolving them, and what are the consequences for the party that fails to deliver?
Bonus points for hauling up John Davidson, CEO of the Options Clearing Corporation, and repeating these questions with him.
Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Mr. Powell, your magical money printer has gone "brrr" for the past year. With the explosion in money supply, are you at all concerned about inflation in capital markets, as opposed to in a basket of consumer goods?
Given the fact that the printer is running as we speak, I assume the answer is "No". In that case, please explain how your monetary policy helps Americans in the the lower 50% of income, the majority of whom do not own a home nor hold any stock (directly or indirectly)?
Matt Levine, Bloomberg Columnist
Mr. Levine, on January 25th, you explained how short interest can be greater than 100% of shares outstanding:
This does not necessarily mean a lot of people are doing evil illegal nefarious naked shorting! Really, I promise! There is no special limit on shorting at 100% of shares outstanding! Here is an explanation of how options market makers (discussed below) are allowed to short without a locate, but I want to offer an even simpler explanation. There are 100 shares. A owns 90 of them, B owns 10. A lends her 90 shares to C, who shorts them all to D. Now A owns 90 shares, B owns 10 and D owns 90—there are 100 shares outstanding, but190 shares show up on ownership lists. (The accounts balance because C owes 90 shares to A, giving C, in a sense, negative 90 shares.) Short interest is 90 shares out of 100 outstanding. Now D lends her 90 shares to E, who shorts them all to F. Now A owns 90, B 10, D 90 and F 90, for a total of 280 shares. Short interest is 180 shares out of 100 outstanding. No problem! No big deal! You can just keep re-borrowing the shares. F can lend them to G! It's fine.
What happens when all of these shares need to be covered in a small time frame – for example, were prime brokerages to trigger margin calls in rapid succession? If the float is lower than the number of shorted shares, hypothetically, how high could the price of the stock go?
Additionally, GameStop stock has been running up dramatically in price (from arguably a fair value of $40) over the past few weeks on essentially no news. See Exhibit A below.
Exhibit A: GameStonk
Shares reached $346 in intraday trading yesterday (March 10, 2021), then tumbled to $198 (-43%) in 20 minutes. The stock closed at $265.
On February 1st, you said:
I don't think, however many days we are into this nonsense, that GameStop is a particularly important story (though of course it's a fun one!), or that it points to any deep problems in the financial markets. There have been bubbles, and corners, and short squeezes, and pump-and-dumps before. It happens; stuff goes up and then it goes down; prices are irrational for a while; financial capitalism survives.
But I tell you what, if we are still here in a month I will absolutely freak out. Stock prices can get totally disconnected from fundamental value for a while, it's fine, we all have a good laugh. But if they stay that way forever, if everyone decides that cash flows are irrelevant and that the important factor in any stock is how much fun it is to trade, then … what are we all doing here?
Mr. Levine, are you freaking out yet?
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Ms. Pelosi, according to the House of Representatives Financial Disclosure Reports, you and your husband regularly make sophisticated investments in publicly traded companies and their derivatives. My question for you is two-fold:
What is your plan to address the rampant and blatant violations of the STOCK Act in Congress?
Will you sponsor (and pass, given that Democrats now control the House, Senate, and White House) a bill that ensures our elected representatives are subject to harsher trading restrictions than investment professionals?
Here's a good starting point: Any member of Congress must turn over all portfolio management decisions to a designated fiduciary representative. Communication of any non-public information to this fiduciary representative has a minimum penalty of a forced resignation, a lifetime ban from holding elected office in the future, and jail time.
Since we both know the answers to these are respectively "Nothing" and "No", I have a third question: How can I get access to your trades in real-time, as opposed to with the monthly delay of official financial disclosures? I'm looking for only a fraction of your sweet, sweet tendies.
Eugene Fama, Nobel Laureate in Economics
It's hackneyed to pick on the Efficient Market Hypothesis at this point. Dr. Fama, you are dismissed.
Keith Gill, a.k.a. Roaring Kitty, a.k.a u/DeepFuckingValue
You, sir, are a deep fucking legend.
Many people want to be writers. Few want to write.
The following quotes are for the times that you want to be a writer, but don't want to write.
Professionals Show Up
Steven Pressfield's The War of Art contains many gems.
Getting started is what's tough:
There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.
Fear is good:
Are you paralyzed with fear? That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
Do or do not, there is no try:
Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it.
Put in the hours:
Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp."
That's a pro.
The Alchemy of Working on the Right Project at the Right Time
[N]o amount of knowledge or tenacity or craftsmanship can substitute for the alchemy of working on the right project at the right time. My first book was written in response to the loss of a loved one – a grandfather who had essentially raised me – and eulogized not only a relationship, but also a particular phase of life. It took me a long time, and many false starts, to find my way to a project where I felt that same synthesis of subject and psychological state again. And when they come together, the writing itself changes: It doesn't feel like work, it doesn't feel like sentences in a holding pattern. It's just necessity. (And then it's revision, of course.)
– Téa Obrecht
The Gap Between Taste and Ability
Nobody tells people who are beginners – and I really wish somebody had told this to me – is that all of us who do creative work…we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there's a gap, that for the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, OK? It's not that great. It's really not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good. But your taste – the thing that got you into the game – your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?
A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be – they knew it fell short, it didn't have the special thing that we wanted it to have.
And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase – you gotta know it's totally normal.
And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work – do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you're going to finish one story. Because it's only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it's gonna take you a while – it's normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?
The Fear of Making Something Lame
One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great work is the fear of making something lame. And this fear is not an irrational one. Many great projects go through a stage early on where they don't seem very impressive, even to their creators. You have to push through this stage to reach the great work that lies beyond. But many people don't. Most people don't even reach the stage of making something they're embarrassed by, let alone continue past it. They're too frightened even to start.
– Paul Graham
Writing Is Similar to Trying to Seduce a Woman
Writing is similar to trying to seduce a woman. A lot has to do with practice, but mostly it's innate. Anyway, good luck.
– Haruki Murakami
In his memoir, Murakami goes into a bit more depth regarding his writing process:
When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long – six months to a year – requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
I've saved the best for last. My favorite book about the writing process – and the one I've found the most useful – is Steven King's On Writing.
What writing is about:
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.
On priorities:
It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around.
You need to read and write a lot:
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones…You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.
On the writing process:
You can read anywhere, almost, but when it comes to writing, library carrels, park benches, and rented flats should be courts of last resort – Truman Capote said he did his best work in motel rooms, but he is an exception; most of us do our best in a place of our own. Until you get one, you'll find your new resolution to write a lot harder to take seriously…
…The space can be humble (probably should be, as I think I have already suggested), and it really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
By the time you step into your new writing space and close the door, you should have settled on a daily writing goal. As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first, to avoid discouragement. I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I'm feeling magnanimous, I'll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with. No more; you'll lose the urgency and immediacy of your story if you do. With that goal set, resolve to yourself that the door stays closed until that goal is met…
…[Y]ou need the room, you need the door, and you need the determination to shut the door. You need a concrete goal, as well. The longer you keep to these basics, the easier the act of writing will become. Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.
On having support:
Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who belies in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
Persistence is key:
[S]topping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
Drugs aren't necessary:
The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.
On rewriting:
When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story…when you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
Finally, how to know if you're talented:1
If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.
I can't find this in my copy of On Writing, but the quote is floating around the internet, so I'm including it all the same. ↩
The Intoxicating Appeal of Cults
In my last post, I wrote about the GameStop short squeeze, the allure of Wall Street Bets, and how the theory of reflexivity can teach us about the broader societal implications of the trading frenzy. Two weeks later, the party is over and (once again) retail investors got the short end of the stick.
Small investors were inveigled into a trade where they lost their shirts and some big players and market makers made out like bandits. For about two days, buying GameStop stock was a "movement". That is, until it became clear that the market is brutally efficient and doesn't care about populist rhetoric. At that point, the GameStop trade turned into a game of "who is holding the bag". When your investment thesis depends on the assumption that the mainstream media is outright lying to you and that massive fraud exists in the market, it's time to get out.1
How did this happen? I'm not going to go into a play-by-play of what happened – enough has been said about this.2 Rather, I'll use GameStop as a case study for how reasonable, smart people get caught up in manias, cults, and mass movements.
Wall Street Bets is Dead…
…and we have killed her. A month ago, Wall Street Bets was a subreddit with some stupid memes and outlandish options bets, but also with people who actually knew something about finance LARPing as "retards".3 There was solid due diligence: in-depth analysis of companies' financial statements along with market sizing and strategic growth prospects. Some of the analysis wasn't that much different from the first draft of an investment memo for a buy-side firm.4
As this Reddit comment states:
Redditors never seem to stop and think about why the WSB guys know so much about derivatives trading. Or how they seem to know how to access and read from a Bloomberg terminal. Or why there are so many users there that can seemingly drop tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on complicated meme plays.
How do you think that WSB knew that GME was open to a short squeeze and a gamma squeeze play?
WSB's power users are younger finance bros. It's 30-something investment bankers and portfolio managers memeing with each other and cosplaying as "autists."
If you didn't know what a gamma squeeze was 48 hours ago, you are their exit strategy and the down payment on their next Porsche.
When the subreddit was a fringe group of people who actually knew something about finance, there was alpha to be found in its insights. Wall Street Bets was about getting some laughs in the pursuit of fuck-you money. However, over the past few weeks, Wall Street Bets was flooded with newcomers (it quadrupled in size over the course of about a week) who, along with the mainstream media, turned the GameStop trade into a "movement" and "taking on the hedge funds".
In retrospect, this was the writing on the wall:5
Gamestonk!! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021
We Are All Monkeys
Let's revisit a classic psychology experiment, which apparently never happened. Nevertheless, it is a good allegory for the GameStop trade (and the business world in general).
A scientist places five monkeys in a locked room. Inside the room, there is a ladder with a bunch of bananas at its top. Each time a monkey climbs the ladder to try to reach the bananas, the scientist pulls him down and sprays him – as well as all of the other monkeys in the room – with a stream of cold water.
After this cycle repeated a few times, the monkeys learn that climbing the ladder leads to a faceful of cold water. So, each time that a monkey begins to climb the ladder, the other monkeys in the room pull him down so they can avoid being sprayed.
The scientist removes one of the original monkeys from the room. The monkeys' self-policing continues. When the new monkey tries to climb the ladder, the others pull him down. The new monkey learns that he shouldn't climb the ladder.
Here's the kicker: The scientist replaces all of the monkeys in the room, one by one. By the end of the experiment, none of the original monkeys (the ones that had been sprayed with cold water) are left in the room. But all of the new monkeys continue to pull down any monkey that climbs the ladder, without knowing why they are doing it.
Now we modify this experiment slightly. Rather than replacing the monkeys in the room, the scientist simply adds new monkeys. But midway through the experiment, the power goes out! The scientist can't see any monkeys climbing the ladder. The original monkeys realize that this is their opportunity – they scramble up the ladder and eat all of the bananas. By the time the power comes back on, the new monkeys continue to pull one another down from the ladder and are left diamond-handing (💎 🤲) banana peels.
Cults Are Fun
It's fun to be one of the monkeys in this room. You're among a group of people who are excited about something; they have some special knowledge that promises to make them fabulously wealthy. Their knowledge is doubted by the mainstream, but their prophecies keep coming true.
They have a special language that distinguishes them from the outgroup. You are welcomed as a part of the tribe, you start to lose yourself in the fantasy of becoming rich and become swept up in the mob, experiencing a bit of the loss of self that comes from being a part of a mass movement.
There is a huge sense of urgency. You can get in on this thing, but only if you act now. Your heart beats a little bit faster – that's FOMO. You're experiencing optimism bias – because you understand what is happening, this is bound to work out for you.
All you need to do is buy in and hold on. Anyone who defects from the party line is subject to ad hominem attacks. They are relegated to the outgroup.
The goalposts keep moving. Every time a price target is reached, the ceiling is raised. $100 is not a meme. $420.69 is not a meme. $1,000 is not a meme. $10,000 is not a meme!
The mainstream media is not to be trusted. They weren't on your side to begin with – why would they be now? There is a disinformation campaign going on – your group has been infiltrated. You don't know who and what to trust, so you need to stop thinking for yourself and have blind faith in the process. Groupthink abounds.
Retail investors are selling more than they're buying? That data is suspect. You choose to ignore information from sources that you previously considered valid because this doesn't fit the narrative (fallacy) that you and the others have created.
As you begin to lose money (or unrealized gains) on your position, you dig in deeper. You become anchored to the gains that you were already counting in your head. You won't settle for anything less! You'd never buy in at these levels, but what you already have? Of course you let it ride – the endowment effect in action. You fall for the sunk cost fallacy and throw good money after bad to double down on your position.
It's hard to exit the echo chamber. You don't want to admit to yourself that you were taken for a ride; that you only have yourself to blame for the losses you endured. You want to keep believing. The ending to the story is so much better if you keep believing.
Originally I included this gif simply because it was funny, but in writing this essay, I realized that it's actually quite apt. The people who got in and out of this trade early made a boatload. The followers had a lot of fun (for a while), got caught up in the mania, and lost money.
Cults Abound
We all want to belong to something greater than ourselves. Smart people are no different – they are drawn to cults all of the time.
Look at the annual mass exodus from San Francisco to Black Rock City to celebrate Burning Man. Or Silicon Valley executives who wear Vipassana retreats6 as a badge of honor. The best startup cultures are often described as "cult-like". You either fully buy into the mission or you're out. Think Uber and its "you eat what you kill" attitude (at least until Travis left), or Roam Research, which fully embraces the #roamcult hashtag and even has a compound in Utah.
Cult Vibes (image via The Information)
Zooming out a bit, SoulCycle and other premium fitness classes are both:
A signal of wealth and
Cult-like in their intensity, adherence to strict guidelines, and hero worship of individual instructors.
Even mainstream (i.e., moderate) organized religion is simply a cult that has stopped taking itself so seriously.7 Moving to extremist religion, terrorists are relatively wealthy and well-educated. They disproportionately hold engineering degrees. Scott Alexander makes the compelling argument that this can, at least partially, be attributed to epistemic learned helplessness, the idea that sometimes the most rational thing that someone can do is to ignore an argument that they can't refute.
[A] sufficiently smart engineer has never been burned by arguments above his skill level before, has never had any reason to develop epistemic learned helplessness. If Osama comes up to him with a really good argument for terrorism, he thinks "Oh, there's a good argument for terrorism. I guess I should become a terrorist," as opposed to "Arguments? You can prove anything with arguments. I'll just stay right here and not blow myself up."
So perhaps epistemic learned helplessness (or rather, lack thereof) can help explain why smart people can be so drawn to scams, cults, and mass movements. When one is used to seeing the world in a way that others don't – and, quite frankly, feeling intellectually superior to others – it is easy to lose the humility and self-doubt that would have helped during the GameStop scenario. Being intellectually aware of the cognitive biases that we face as human beings is different from (and even perhaps inversely correlated to) the ability to step back and say, "This is crazy, I'm out."8
Cults aren't inherently a bad thing.9 Just know when you're in one and have an exit strategy for when it's time to leave.
Lessons are for sale every day.
— Dan Reardon 👽 (@danieljreardon) February 3, 2021
Hindsight is 20/20…I was also guilty of this. In my last post, I wrote about ridiculous memes causing people to storm the Capitol, then got caught in an echo chamber and became a QAnon-esque believer in the Mother of All Short Squeezes (#MOASS). I was so laser focused on seeing the stock price go even higher that I couldn't see the real squeeze taking place in front of my own eyes. I held a few positions for too long and watched unrealized gains evaporate from my account. I learned an expensive lesson – something I already knew intellectually, but now also feel. (But don't feel too bad for me, overall I made money in this whole imbroglio.) ↩
Matt Levine's archives have a good play-by-play. ↩
As this Hacker News comment points out, "retard" is an anagram of "trader". ↩
Given the strong language, perhaps a little bit closer to a few buy-side analysts discussing opportunities over drinks. ↩
Caveat emptor. Those who piled into the chatter about this trade (Elon, Chamath, Mark Cuban) fomented the speculative fervor while either:
Not holding positions or
Being smart enough to get out of the trade while it was on the upswing.
I went on a Vipassana retreat in 2017…I have some notes from the experience that will be the subject of a future blog post. Spoilers: I left early. Incredibly powerful experience. Incredibly cult-like experience. ↩
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris, is a treatise on precisely this topic. ↩
Hell, the person who wrote the book on bubbles later got caught up in one. ↩
Many cult-like companies (Apple, Tesla, etc.) push the world forward in leaps and bounds. ↩
The Battle of GameStop
Over the past several weeks, GameStop stock has traded more like a cryptocurrency than a failing mall-based retailer.
What is going on here?
In one sentence: Institutional investors short GameStop (i.e., the prevailing wisdom, at least until the past few weeks) are playing a game of chicken with retail investors & contrarian institutions who are long.1
GameStop is a video game retailer; it has been in decline for several years now. Video games have moved to an online, direct-to-consumer distribution model. Foot traffic in malls (where most GameStops are located) was down even before COVID; many mall-based retailers are struggling.
Unsurprisingly, over the course of 2020 this led to GameStop becoming one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street.
However, there were early signs that GameStop was undervalued. Michael Burry (of The Big Short fame) took a large long position in 2019, claiming video game discs are not entirely dead. In August 2020, Roaring Kitty (a.k.a. u/DeepFuckingValue on Reddit) published a video detailing why GameStop was a good play based on its fundamentals – a future short squeeze would just be the icing on the cake.
Christian Bale playing Michael Burry
On January 11th, Ryan Cohen (founder of Chewy, which sold to PetSmart for $3.35 billion), joined GameStop's board after his investment firm built up a 10% stake in the company. At this point, retail investors, especially those on the popular subreddit Wall Street Bets went crazy. They highlighted that GameStop was now a growth play. It is now led by a previously successful founder, its online business is growing at a 300% rate, and it is in the process of turning around its core business.2 As such, GameStop should be valued at a Venture Capital multiple of 10x+ revenue, rather than a measly 0.5x revenue.
This narrative is compelling. Despite short sellers warning otherwise, GameStop has continued to climb in price. All of the GameStop options issued (with a high strike price of $60) were in the money on Friday (1/22/2021), trigging a gamma squeeze as institutions who had written the options rushed to cover their positions. GameStop closed Friday at $65.01.
On Monday (1/25/2021), GameStop opened at $96.73, spiked at $159.18 (likely because of another gamma squeeze),3 then crashed with pressure from institutional shorts, closing at $76.79 (still up 18% day-over-day).
But the bulls aren't finished with GameStop. These gamma squeezes are nothing compared to what will be coming: the near-mythical "Infinity Squeeze". Most famously seen with Volkswagen in 2008, when short sellers are forced to cover their positions due to a margin call, the price of the stock rapidly rises (hypothetically to infinity) since the number of shares shorted exceeds the number of shares available to buy.
VW Short Squeeze via FT
The Allure of Wall Street Bets
Can a subreddit comprised of retail investors really move the market like this? I doubt it – all of the big swings in this stock have been caused by institutions. What this subreddit does is control the narrative.
First unveiled to the mainstream finance world in a February 2020 Bloomberg article, Wall Street Bets is profane (as I'm sure you've noticed if you clicked any of the links in this post). But Wall Street Bets isn't some sinister, market-manipulating entity. Rather, it is a virtual water cooler for individual retail investors to post memes – and emojis, oh so many emojis – about their investments.
Reading Wall Street Bets feels like the discussion at a middle school cafeteria table circa 2000. Redditors on Wall Street Bets (who refer to themselves affectionately as "autists" or "retards")4 encourage one another to have "diamond hands" (💎 🤲), the will to stay strong and not sell a stock when things are going poorly. Contrast this with the "paper hands" (🧻 🤲) of those who are weak-willed and sell a stock based on market sentiment. Companies are headed "to the moon" (🚀). Bears are not mentioned without the adjective "gay" (🌈 🐻). Self-deprecating cuckold references to "my wife's boyfriend" abound.
Despite this language (or perhaps because of it), Wall Street Bets is one of the most entertaining and informative places on the internet. People post meaningful analysis of companies that are undervalued and why they are investing. Browsing the subreddit, you get a crash course on concepts that you would otherwise learn only at a buy-side firm or working as an options trader: EBITDA multiple, book value, delta hedging, implied volatility.
But the most compelling aspect of Wall Street Bets is in its name: the bets. The ability to gain (or lose) a life-changing amount of money – with screenshots to prove it – creates an environment similar to that of the casino floor. And if Wall Street Bets is the casino floor, then Wall Street itself is the house.
The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean's 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of getting fucked by the man. When you're underemployed with $100,000 in student loan debt, your financial situation feels overwhelming. You really don't want to take the advice of your parents or CNBC talking heads5 to invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual return. At that point, what's another $5,000? Might as well buy some short-dated GME calls.
For those of use who don't fit the underemployed Millennial archetype, Matt Levine's Boredom Markets Hypothesis applies. COVID has required us to work from home, without much ability to spend for travel, dining, or entertainment. Putting money into Robinhood is a decent substitute – with the added bonus of it being an "investment", rather than consumption. In an age where the Fed will print seemingly unlimited money to prop up capital markets, better to be irrational exuberant as a part of the market than be left out of the party.
Further, the narrative presented by the GameStop trade in particular is compelling. It allows the small retail investor to play a role in market events normally only played out at the hedge fund scale (a short squeeze was a key plot element in Season 1 of Billions). The short sellers in this case aren't particularly sympathetic: Andrew Left of Citron Research released a video in which he lays out the bear case for GameStop. His main argument was a smug appeal to authority, essentially claiming "Wall Street knows better than you people on message boards".6
Billions, IRL (image via Forbes)
So sure, Wall Street Bets is irreverent, has irrational exuberance, and is guilty of hero worship (Elon Musk and more recently Ryan Cohen). But it also provides a sense of community during the stresses of COVID and provides a compelling way for the little guy to stick it to the man.
As Keynes reminded us (in the most overused finance quote of all time): "The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." When enough people believe in a vision, it can cause that vision to manifest itself. Wall Street is scared that retail investors can manifest their own vision, rather that the one dictated by the major financial players.
What George Soros Got Right
The entire GameStop scenario is a case study in reflexivity.7 Reflexivity is the idea that our perception of circumstances influences reality, which then further impacts our perception of reality, in a self-reinforcing loop. Specifically, in a financial market, prices are a reflection of traders' expectations. Those prices then influence traders' expectations, and so on.
This may seem obvious to some, but it flies in the face of the efficient-market hypothesis. As Soros states,
What makes reflexivity interesting is that the prevailing bias has ways, via the market prices, to affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect.8
What does this mean for GameStop? Because of traders' bullish sentiment, a previously failing company is now in the position where it can leverage the overnight increase in value to make real, substantive changes to its business. GameStop can pay off debt through the issuance of new shares or make strategic acquisitions using its newly-valuable shares.9 A struggling company could become solid simply not because of a change in the underlying business, but because investors decided it should be more valuable.
Reflexivity may be the best way to understand the 21st Century. Passive investing is an example of reflexivity in action.10 So is winner-take-all venture investing. Uber raised an absurd war chest, causing more investors to want to pile in, which led to more fundraising and eventually a successful IPO. The fact that Uber has not yet turned a profit, yet today has a $100 billion market cap, cannot be explained with traditional financial thinking, but can be explained by reflexivity.
The internet and instant communication only accelerates these trends. Instances of reflexivity like the strange market movements we've seen with GameStop are happening more and more – not only in financial markets, but also in the political and social realm, to incredible effect.
When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, I distinctly remember writing in my journal: "Anything is possible." I was blown away that this complete buffoon of a man, someone who the Huffington Post refused to cover as politics meme-d his way into the presidency. He was a joke, until suddenly, in a Tulpa-esque twist…he wasn't. Similarly, internet conspiracy theories spread via Facebook memes manifested themselves in the real world when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol a few weeks ago.
Our perception shapes reality. And when enough people agree on a specific perception, it becomes reality.11 As we become more and more connected, discourse will expand and and accelerate. We're going to see some strange things become reality.
Even, perhaps, hedge funds going bankrupt and newly-minted millionaires, all because of some people who wrote about a struggling video game retailer on Reddit.
Retail investors basically just shut a hedge fund down.
Citadel and Point72 are investing (backstopping) $2.75 billion into Melvin Capital who was superman short $GME GameStop
Melvin down over 30% in 2021
Melvin cap is run by Gabe Plotkin a Steve Cohen SAC protege
— Will Meade (@realwillmeade) January 25, 2021
For the best summary of the current situation, see Matt Levine. ↩
When you take into account the closures of poorly-performing stores, per-store revenue and profits are up. ↩
Options were written up to a strike price of $115 and these all were in the money. ↩
Not condoning the language, but Wall Street Bets members with trading gains often make donations to these causes. ↩
Wall Street Bets has a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with Jim Cramer, a.k.a. "Chillman Boomer". ↩
Andrew Left is an interesting character. That said, I'm not here to attack him personally, and nobody in their right mind would condone the alleged threats made against him by GameStop bulls upset by his stance on the company. ↩
Good intro to Soros's Theory of Reflexivity in this Financial Times article. ↩
The Alchemy of Finance, page 10. ↩
More details in this Reddit post. ↩
Passive investing is also helping GameStop's run – as the price of the stock increases, index funds need to buy more shares to re-weight, which in turn drives up the price. Reflexivity. ↩
This is my favorite rebuttal for those who claim "cryptocurrency has no intrinsic value". Sure – but neither does the U.S. dollar. We just all decided that it would have value, so it does. ↩
An Ode to Chess
When I was six years old, I joined the chess club at my school. I remember thinking at the time that chess club must be about the coolest after-school activity imaginable for a first grader.
Who needs video games when you've got this?
Twice a week, a man (probably just a high school student, but when you're six years old, everyone over 15 seems like an adult) came to our classroom to give us chess lessons. We learned how the pieces moved, their relative importance, and basic tactics. We studied some famous games; all of us were amazed to learn that it might make sense to sacrifice your queen in order to win a few moves later.
In retrospect, I don't think that Highland Ranch Elementary School was some bastion of intellectualism; rather, I was just an extremely nerdy kid.
Twenty years went by and I didn't think very much about chess. But over the past few months I've become semi-obsessed. In the past year, I've gone from about the 15th to 75th percentile of players on Lichess.1
Chess as Boxing
I became interested in chess about the time that I started boxing training. The two are more similar than they appear at first glance. In both chess and boxing, it is imperative that you:
Control your emotions. If you're overexcited, you will make mistakes. You need to be coldly rational and calculating to win.
Balance offense with defense. If you are overly attacking, you leave yourself open to counterattacks that will do damage. Aggressive gambits can work, but if your opponents sees what you're doing and counters, look out.
Let go of your ego. You will get beaten up (physically or metaphorically). Learn from it and get better.
Think ahead. Whether you're thinking several moves ahead or throwing combinations that will open up space for punches in different areas, what you do now impacts what happens down the line.
Always protect your king. (Keep your hands up.)
Potential future in chessboxing? Photo via Huck Mag
Beware Cartesian Dualism
Chess teaches how our physical state impacts our mental state, and vice versa. If I haven't gotten a full night's sleep, I lose way more games than I win. Same goes if I am distracted by a problem that I'm thinking about at work.
I've taken to using chess as a heuristic to determine if I'm in the right state of mind to start a project that requires a lot of brainpower. I ask myself: If I were to play a few chess games right now, would my Elo2 rise or fall? If it would fall, best to get some rest before tackling complex work or making any major decisions.
Chess requires intense focus. To win a game of chess (against an opponent at a similar skill level), you need to block out the rest of the world. Being able to think deeply solely about the pieces on the board in front of you is both an intellectual indulgence and a way to train your mind. In a world where we are bombarded with information, chess can make you a better student, entrepreneur, investor, or employee by teaching the focus required to block out the noise and attack the complex problem at hand.
Overall, I've come to see chess as a beautiful game. A good move in chess is elegant. You have to give your opponent credit for trapping you in a way that you didn't see coming. Conversely, there is no better feeling than when your opponent makes a move you knew they would make, and you have a better move to counter.
If that's not a metaphor for the business world, I don't know what is.
If I had a more directed plan of study and spent more time on tactics, no doubt I could get my rating higher. But for now, I play games mainly for entertainment. ↩
Technically Glicko-2 ↩


One source I came across reported these statistics related to keeping New Year's resolutions.
75% of us last beyond the first week…..ouch!
46% last past 6 months!
This is a continuation from a recent post. So you say you are going to make great changes in the coming year? That's great…I celebrate that with you. I'm in the same boat. Now, we all know that starting is half the battle, right? What I've been wrestling with over the past few days is the fear of losing my drive, my inspiration, my focus. Just look at those numbers above again.
2. PARTNER: This is the clincher. Ask a close friend, spouse, or mentor to hold you accountable. Additionally, it really helps if this person clearly exhibits their own ability to lead themselves well. Now, this takes a lot of humility and authenticity. And if we want it to work, we absolutely must be honest with them!
3. EVALUATE: Get your Google Calendar, iCal, or old school spiral planner and schedule dates throughout the year to seriously sit down and check on how you're doing. Recognize and celebrate the areas you've grown in, and re-engage those things you have gotten distracted from.
Just accept the fact that you will sometimes fail. That's ok. If we didn't ever fail we wouldn't have any need for Jesus!
So, give your weakness and struggles as a leader, husband, and father to God…and He will fill in the void the way only He can!


The project is prepped; we know all the whats, wheres, whos and hows – now it's time to commit all this to film. Beyond understanding where to point the camera, our job is to get the best performance out of every 'cast member'.
With experience in media training, professional stage and screen acting and teaching, we'll make sure the message is clear and emphasised correctly in the style that best suits your business.
We've worked hard to keep our production team down to just us. This ensures we remain as flexible and efficient as possible. We take care of filming, directing, lighting, audio, set dressing and generally keeping everything on track. In some cases, depending on the size and location of the production, sourcing extra crew members may become necessary (e.g. sound technician, production assistant) but normally your film crew will be Dean and Jamie.


The blog of Nov 3rd and subsequent comments brought back memories of Noel Tallowin to some of us. Ian Morgan had a feast of these in c.1975.
These are others from that field as there were very many.
It is interesting that they have been spotted in a field near Trimsaran this year. As these were from a field on the road from there to Kidwelli about 40 years ago, has it taken this long for them to 'fruit' again?
These are the ones left on my front doorstep by Noel.
If I could work out how old Christopher was, I could confirm the year! He looks about 12 so that would be 1975.
I remember it to be 1975 too, Philip. I recall taking my `giant puffball gift` from Noel Tallowin home to my parents and they said, "What`s that!"....and I replied, "Our breakfast". Happy times!


RCG|enable™ Data is a fully integrated, highly scalable, distributed and secure solution for managing, preparing and delivering data from a vast array of sources including but not limited to; enterprise systems, Hadoop, IoT data from mobile/smart devices, and unstructured data from logs and digital communications.
RCG|enable™ Data, provided as part of a RCG services engagement, simplifies the need to design, develop, deploy and secure complex data ingestion applications using multiple technologies and languages. RCG|enable™ Data speeds time to data delivery at reduced costs by simplifying and standardizing data management and data work flows.
RCG Global Services is a leading provider of world-class technology solutions for complex business initiatives with over 40 years of history in providing services to the Global 1000 marketplace. Our practices include Advisory, Data & Analytics and Business Applications. RCG services 250 clients, including 25 of the Fortune 100, across a range of markets with special focus and strong industry experience in Healthcare, Retail, Financial Services, Entertainment & Hospitality and Energy & Utilities. RCG is based in Edison, New Jersey with offices throughout the US and in 1997 established our wholly-owned Offshore Delivery Centers in the Philippines which are ISO 27001:2013 Certified, PCI Compliant and operate at CMMI Level 5.
Yes, I would like to be contacted by Cloudera for newsletters, promotions, events and marketing activities. Please read our privacy and data policy.
Yes, I consent to my information being shared with Cloudera's solution partners to offer related products and services. Please read our privacy and data policy.
I agree to Cloudera's terms and conditions.


Amiria and Amy are plotting and planning another summer tour for 2016/17. They LOVE performing house concerts!
House concerts are about enjoying music in a more intimate and special setting than a loud bar. You can hear all the notes and words, you hear the stories about each song and leave with a smiling heart, filled up with the magic of music.


Over time, the backyard has evolved. One of the ways to beautify your Phoenix area home or business is with the installation of a propane operated fire feature. Outdoor fire features provide a tranquil environment and warmth on cold winter nights giving you another place to entertain guests! At Propane Services, we are experts at the installation of propane fire features.
The fire feature experts at Propane Services are skilled at running gas lines from the main propane tank to the fire feature safely. Learn more about our services at Propane Gas Line Installation.
Let our expertise in fire features help guide you during your design process. We work with homeowners, architects, designers and general contractors to provide consultation services that ensure a proper plan for the installation of your new fire features.
Using propane for your indoor and outdoor fireplaces, fire pits, torches and barbeque grills is safe and reliable. Learn more at Propane Safety.


From the Coen brothers is a fresh story spun out of the world of the Oscar-winning film. A drifter named Lorne Malvo arrives in small-town Minnesota and influences the population with his malice and violence, including put-upon insurance salesman Lester Nygaard. The all new "true crime" case of Fargo's new chapter travels back to 1979 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Luverne, Minnesota, where a young State Police Officer investigates a case involving a local crime gang and a major Mob syndicate.
Surveillance expert Stephen stumbles onto beautiful female serial killer Joanna and obsessively follows her murderous trail for years. But Stephen turns from a passive observer into Joanna's guardian angel as their bizarre relationship blossoms.
Locked up for a minor crime, 19 year old JR quickly learns the harsh realities of prison life. Protection, if you can get it, is paramount. JR soon finds himself under the watchful eye of Australia's most notorious criminal, Brendan Lynch. But protection comes at a price. Lynch and his crew have plans for their young protegee. Upon release, JR must help secure Lynch's freedom, staging a daring prison break. As a reward, he's invited to join the crew as they plan a gold heist that promises to deliver millions.
After his predecessor perishes under mysterious circumstances, a ghostwriter agrees to help a former British prime minister finish his memoirs, but the author but finds himself in danger when he uncovers a web of secrets and corruption.


text:
Lakers Advance AGainst a Game Blazers team
by Jose Salviati | Aug 30, 2020 | Lakers, Pacific | 0 comments
The truth is, it still feels weird to talk about basketball again. The last few days have been hectic, emotional, confusing and no doubt other emotions I can't put into words. Yet, the players came together and decided they were going to entertain us again and believe me when I say I am grateful! NBA Franchises have agreed to three initiatives focused around social justice, civic engagement and voting right as part of the return to play. The suspension, the most recent one – the one made by choice, was rough on players and fans alike. Yet, something positive came from it. Sometimes you need to pause, take action and make demands to see progress.
NBA players did just that and I for one am proud to be a fan!
I'm also excited to be watching basketball again! The Lakers closed out the TrailBlazers in a game the Blazers had no business being in. That is not a knock on the Portland team, but without Damian Lillard, who was the Bubble MVP and their best player, few gave them a chance against the #1 seeded Lakers. Yet, they played well and made a game of it. The Lakers, it was clear, were going to have to earn this W.
In what was kinda a tale of two halves, the Blazers won the first. It's true that the score was tied at half, but it was the Blazers that were the team in control. They led for most of the first half, albeit by a slim margin, and saw their biggest lead of 8 come in the first 24 minutes. Unfortunately for them, there was another half to play.
In the second half the Blazers never led.
That's not to say it was a Lakers blowout, it wasn't. Given the state of the Blazers one could argue that it should have been. But, these Blazers played with heart. The were able to get close in the second half, but they never really threatened the Lakers who held on to win behind big games from their big two. Anthony Davis finished the game with 43 points and 9 rebounds making 4 of 6 from three. LeBron James chipped in with 36 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. He was in double digits in three separate categories! Someone should come up with a catchy, memorable nickname for something like that. A Double-Three? Two-Triples? Twin-Triplets?
Eh, just spitballing, but I'm close to something awesome, I can feel it! 🙂
Now, the Lakers wait to see who they match up against in the Western Conference Semi-Finals. It will be either the Houston Rockets or the Oklahoma City Thunder. Normally, winning a series before your opponent is a good thing. It was time to rest, scout, get healthy and prepare mentally for your next opponent. In this Bubble however it looks like players can go a bit stir-crazy given nothing but time. However, I'm sure the Lakers welcome the time off to allow Dion Waiters (migraine, although he was available tonight but didn't play) and Rajon Rondo (back spasms) to get healthy.
Nothing but respect to the Portland Trailblazers and C.J. McCollum specifically. He played 46 minutes scoring 36 points in an effort that, in and of itself, would have been extraordinary. But, when you realize he has been playing with an L3 vertebral transverse process fracture (non-displaced). which is just fancy words for BROKEN FREAKING BACK, you realize how unreal his performance was. Nothing but respect for McCollum putting this undermanned team on his back, his broken back, and giving them a chance to win!
Looking ahead for the Lakers things will get tougher, as they should when you advance. No sense digging too deep into the Rockets or Thunder yet. We will as soon as we know who they will play, but suffice it to say the Lakers are going to have to play very well to beat either team in the Semis. For now though, there is joy in Lakersland – their team advances!
© PeachBasket 2020. All Rights Reserved
Content Copyright PeachBasket


Looks like a nice weekend to hibernate.
Softball size hail NE of here day before yesterday - those suckers give your insurance man the willies.
Maybe we should trade homes. I'd take that 7-day forcast over any 7-day forcast here between november and march.
This is only the second time I've really gotten fuzzed up by the weather and prepared a closet for safety. We're used to thunderstorms and high winds, but this time there were seven tornadoes spotted in the area. There was one in the city next to us. The power was out for six hours. I haven't seen the news about damage to the area, but our neighborhood looks ok.
Read an article the other day that said this was going to be a cooler than normal summer for a lot of the U.S., and to expect a greater than usual amount of lightning.
I can certainly believe that, we had more than our share.
Note to bbbami: BIL sent an E-mail in which he told of being asked by a woman from Texas what the machine was in the back of his pickup, since she had never seen one. It was a snow thrower he was taking to his brother's in PA.
This hits on what has become an old family joke, since I'd said for years that my original "retirement plan" was to put the snow thrower in the pickup and drive south until people started asking what it was.
So my question is this: Is it true that people in Texas have no use for snow throwers?
Yeah..like Wahoo said, maybe the folks in the Panhandle. In my area we get an ice storm every once in a while that lasts about two days. It seems like everything shuts down with ice or a couple of inches of snow.
It's difficult for me to grasp the severity of "normal" weather of Tornado Alley. The only time I had a taste of extreme wind and severe lightning strikes was that Adirondack camping trip where the microburst did a massive blowdown of trees.
I'm watching your weather radar at NOAA right now.
Yep, it came down this way and rained another inch about noon. That was a humdinger yesterday too. Got to get out now and clean up all the tree branches laying in the yard. Some roof damage in the area.
Right now I'd welcome some of that sultry high 90's weather with lots of sun! In CT we have had nothing but gloom and drenching rain, and no real relief in sight. Being lakefront dwellers, we feel like prisoners and are getting very depressed -- summer is a joke so far. I just don't believe this -- and don't remember a summer even close to this bad in the 11 years we've lived here. Just gimme some warmth and sun so I can swim and go boating with my husband and pooches!!
15 degrees C. around here. Foggy, humid and cold when 2 days from summer.
Man......all the rain in the country and dry here in the south. None predicted through next week. Already seems like August. Going to be one long hot summer.
Been cool and rainy in northern ill for a long time. Today the forecast is for high humidity, high winds, heavy rain, hail and possible tornados with a high temp near 90. I cant wait.
Every day in the extended forecast here is a carbon copy of the 20 days before it: dry, around 100 degrees. And the only time it stays south of 97 is when it's 95 and humid.
We are in out typical summer pattern . Hot with afternoon thundershowers .
We've had so much rain I have to schedule my lawn mowing around the forecasts. Temps have been lower than normal also.
I just sold my lawnmower to my lawn guy, for the staggering price of three free mows. So I guess now I am committed to having my lawn mowed for me.
As for the weather, our usual afternoon rains that can cool down our summer days here have been absent for far too long. It has been dreadfully hot and humid, one degree short of record highs on most days last week. It is really oppressive, though as you might expect, hot weather in the summer is not exactly a surprise in New Orleans.


This is issue #9 of Salon Futura. As noted last month, this will be our last issue for a while as we need to secure new funding if we are to stay in business. The website will remain up in the meantime. See the Editorial for more details.
In the meantime we have plenty of good material for you. Alex Preston looks at Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes in the light of the recent "nihilism" controversy. Sam Jordison examines one of this year's Orange Prize nominees, from Serbian writer Téa Obreht. Our podcast looks at the often controversial subject of book covers.
The Bankrupt Nihilism of Leo Grin: Alex Preston dives into the Nilhilism in Fantasy debate.
The Tiger's Wife: Sam Jordison finds much fantastical in an Orange Prize nominee.
Eclipse 4: Karen Burnham looks at the latest book in the acclaimed anthology series.
Swords, Gold and Needlework: Cheryl Morgan looks at the opening volumes of two new fantasy series, and a postscript to an old SF series.
The Salon: Making A Book Cover: This month on The Salon Cheryl Morgan and her guests discuss how book covers are designed. With Cheryl in The Salon are artist, John Picacio, art director Irene Gallo, and former Barnes & Noble buyer, Joe Monti.
Interview: Liz Williams: Cheryl Morgan talks to author Liz Williams during the 2011 Eastercon in Birmingham.
Interview: John Clute: Cheryl Morgan talks to critic John Clute at his home in North London.
Pipeline: May 2011: Alvaro Zinos-Amaro presents some of the books due out in the coming month, as selected by our staff.
New In Store: May 2011: Books added to the Wizard's Tower store this month.
To purchase this and other issues in ebook format, visit the Wizard's Tower Bookstore.


Originally called Deishú by the Tlingit People who settled in the area over 2000 years ago, Haines is a unique and beautiful place. It's located in the northern end of the Alaskan Panhandle, nestled at the top of the longest and deepest fjord in North America. Whether you want adventure or an education, natural beauty or history, Haines has something for everyone.
Just look up as we come into port.
A state park and wildlife refuge that is home to the largest concentration of bald eagles in the world.
Visit the Bald Eagle Foundation in Haines, and experience live raptors, trainers and state of the art natural history museum.
Over 1400 hammers are on display at the world's first museum dedicated to the tool that built civilization. The Hammer Museum is truly a one of a kind.
Learn more about the unique history of Haines and the Chilkat Valley at the Sheldon Museum. Native Tlingit art and culture, work of local artists, and a gift shop supporting Haines artists and writers. Discover locally made high quality gifts and jewelry and a wide variety of books about the valley.
About 18 miles drive from Haines, this state of the art museum and cultural center hosts some of the most regarded treasures of the Tlingit people. It's a beautiful spot on the banks of the Chilkat River, and is well-worth the visit if you have the time.
Experience the tasting room at the Haines Brewery. It's right in downtown and within walking distance of the dock. Serving locally crafted beer since 1999.
Discover a wealth of artists and art shops in our small Alaskan community. Nearly all shops are walkable from the Haines dock, and each has unique and local art.
Hiking in Haines is a great way to explore the outdoors. There are a range of options — from short 1-mile coastal hikes to extended backcountry adventures. Explore on your own or join a guided tour.


Property Summary : Located in Sylvan in the 48118	zip code, this home was built in 2003 and is 5,000 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms on 1.80 acres. It has been on the market for 18 days with an original listing price of $4,850,000. 423 Glazier Rd is part of the Chelsea School District.
I was searching for a Property and found this listing (MLS® #543264208). Please send me more information regarding 423 Glazier Rd, Sylvan, MI, 48118. Thank you!
I'd like to request a showing of 423 Glazier Rd, Sylvan, MI, 48118 (MLS® #543264208). Thank you!


Large industrial sites present many challenges when trying to understand the efficiency of plant and processes and gain control of utility consumption to reduce service bills. Through Metering Dynamics systems approach to sub metering, a site visit is performed to understand the issues, identify the meters that require logging and discuss the project in detail with key stakeholders. This approach is applied to sites of all types and sizes.
One example of a site which utilised this approach to sub-metering a range of processes, buildings and incoming utility meters is a large industrial processing site based in Victoria.
This required a range of electricity meters, 240V powered data loggers and battery powered data loggers to be used which were all remotely read each day and the data sent to an EMP Multi Plus system to allow for analysis and detailed reporting on the measured quantities.
In addition the site had an existing BMS control system that the customer wished to maintain, so Metering Dynamics installed pulse splitters where required to accurately share the pulse information between the information systems and the control systems.
The result is an accurate representation of utility consumption across a large industrial site that compliments the existing control system and allows for complex reporting and consumption analysis on the measured quantities.
Who will look after my equipment in the long term?
What happens when a device requires a new battery?
How do I anticipate the long term costs involved?
These are just a few of the typical questions posed when reviewing equipment purchases.
Metering Dynamics recognised this concern and created a Managed Service Approach for sub-metering equipment which does away with the up front capital pay out and offers a fixed term, fixed price approach instead.
For a fixed price per meter per year Metering Dynamics will install, commission and take responsibility for maintaining and servicing the submetering equipment it has supplied for a fixed term. This provides the Customer with the peace of mind that they will retain an ongoing supply of accurate and reliable information and any maintenance issues will be addressed in a timely and efficient manner.


Don't feel like making a spreadsheet? No problem. Check our Best Banks chart for an easy comparison.
Start your search for a lender by checking out our picks for the best banks for student loan refinancing.


text:
package ru.fly.client.ui;

import com.google.gwt.core.client.GWT;
import com.google.gwt.resources.client.ClientBundle;
import com.google.gwt.resources.client.CssResource;

/**
 * User: fil
 * Date: 10.09.13
 * Time: 17:51
 */
public class CommonDecor {

    public interface Resources extends ClientBundle {

        @Source("common.css")
        Styles css();

    }

    @CssResource.Shared
    public interface Styles extends CssResource {

        String pColorBackground();

        String font();

        String over();

        String selected();

        String disabled();

        String tooltip();

        String disableTextSelection();

        String focused();
    }

    private final Resources res = GWT.create(Resources.class);

    public CommonDecor(){
        res.css().ensureInjected();
    }

    public Styles css(){
        return res.css();
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This page displays sold house prices for Oakford Close in Cardiff.
Oakford Close in Cardiff CF23 consists predominantly of detached houses. Properties on Oakford Close typically have values around £200,000 - £300,000, but larger detached houses can command upwards of £300,000.
Map showing Oakford Close in Cardiff.


Dominion Democracy Suite DVS 5.5. EAC approved Revision C of the Test Plan on February 1, 2018. If you would like to view documents related to this test campaign, please visit our website. Ryan Macias is the project manager on this test campaign.
ES&S EVS 6.0.0.0. EAC approved Revision 1.2 of the Test Plan on January 16th. If you would like to view documents related to this test campaign, please visit our website. Ryan Macias is the project manager on this test campaign.
Hart Verity Voting 2.2.2. The EAC received the initial version of the Test Report for this system from SLI Compliance on March 16, 2018. Jerome Lovato is the EAC project manager on this test campaign.
Unisyn OpenElect 2.0.A. The EAC approved the Test Plan for this system on March 23, 2018. Jerome Lovato is the project manager on this test campaign.
Unisyn OpenElect 1.3.0.2.A. The EAC certified the OpenElect 1.3.0.2.A voting system on March 15, 2018. If you would like to view documents related to this test campaign, please visit our website.
ES&S EVS 5.4.1.0. On March 2, 2018, the EAC approved the application for EVS 5.4.1.0 modification to include a new hardware version of the ExpressVote to the previously certified EVS 5.4.0.0 voting system. Ryan Macias is the project manager on this test campaign.


Tap The Thumbnail Bellow to See Related Gallery of "Science Expedition Mango Wood Iron TV Stand Media Cabinet Throughout Decorations 6"
Image Title: Science Expedition Mango Wood Iron TV Stand Media Cabinet Throughout Decorations 6. Filename: science-expedition-mango-wood-iron-tv-stand-media-cabinet-throughout-decorations-6.jpg. Image Dimension: 1200 x 1200 pixels. Images Format: jpg/jpeg. Publisher/Author: Cleveland Kirlin. Uploaded Date: Monday - January 21st. 2019 14:26:12 PM. Category: Architecture. Image Source: bhg.com.


Create an email alert for this search Thank you! Thank you!
Please enter your email address below and we'll send you an alert whenever a job is posted which matches this search.
You will now receive an email alert whenever a job is posted which matches this search.
We have sent you an email asking you to confirm your email address.
Please click the link in the email and then you will start to receive email alerts whenever jobs are posted which match this search.


Currently in Pre-construction, Estimated Completion - 2018. Project will consist of 459 units and 37 Storeys.
Currently in pre-constrution, 401 King Street Condos by Developer Terracap and designed by Kirkor Architects & Planners and Teeple Architects, will consist of 459 units and 37 storeys. There will be a variety of suites available, from studio units, one bedroom, one bedroom plus den, two bedroom, two bedroom plus den, three bedroom and two storey suites. The podium will have street level and second level retail space. The third floor will be used for office space only.


Baseball: The Pioneers AMCC opener vs. LaRoche will be pushed back one day and now will be played on Sunday 3/24. First pitch of the DH is still slated for 1 p.m. The games will now be played at Houghton College.
Softball: Saturday's doubleheader at Valley Forge is still on but the DH will now start at 2 p.m. and will be played at Maplezone Sports Village - 4881 Chichester Ave. Aston, PA 19014. Sunday's DH at Cairn has been cancelled.
Track & Field: Alfred State will not travel to the Cal U of PA Invitational. They will look to start the outdoor portion of their season next weekend at Geneseo.