1) A mental force called resistance opposes all our endeavors, and affects everyone.

Have you ever had an ambitious dream but hesitated to act on it? Maybe you wanted to write a great novel or start an innovative new business, but a certain feeling held you back?
That feeling is called resistance – it's the force that forever keeps us from realizing our dreams and accomplishing what we were meant to do.
Anything new in our routine that takes us away from the habitual will be naturally accompanied by resistance. Resistance is negative, and it always opposes change or anything new. For example, if you feel a call to start a new business, resistance will be the voice that urges you to stay at your current job and not take a risk on a project that may fail. If you want to start a new diet, resistance will be the voice that tells you, “I can always start the diet tomorrow, even if I don’t today.”
This feeling of resistance is perfectly normal. It's impersonal and universal, and it affects anyone and everyone. Resistance also doesn't discriminate between interests – you'll feel resistance if you want to do something for yourself, like diet, or something to help others, like start a charity. We need to accept that resistance is natural and stop thinking that it targets us personally.
In fact, resistance even affects people who are experienced at what they do. For example, actor Henry Fonda, even in his late age, threw up before every theatrical performance. Being an accomplished actor didn't stop him from feeling fear each time he had to go on stage.
Resistance can manifest in many ways. Fear of failure, self-doubt or procrastination are different forms of resistance. We can learn how to defeat resistance by constantly refocusing on our dreams, committing to our craft and accepting that challenging resistance is a natural and necessary part of the journey.

2) Resistance keeps us from becoming who we're meant to be, unless we use it to our advantage.

Is there something in life you feel you were meant to do? Maybe you want to write short stories, or design furniture? That's your calling: your greatest passion that satisfies your soul’s hunger.
We each have two separate lives, our lived and unlived lives. We live everyday in our regular life, but we have another unlived life where we have an unrealized dream.
Why are you waiting for the future to start working toward that dream? Probably because you feel fear and self-doubt, which are both forms of resistance. Resistance prevents us from realizing our unlived dreams. For example, if your dream is to write a great novel, you'll feel fear – maybe a fear of rejection by publishers, or of not meeting other people’s (or your own) expectations. That fear may stop you from even trying to write.
Instead of letting resistance stop you, use it to your advantage. It's okay to feel fear and self-doubt – these emotions mean that you truly care about your dream. You wouldn't be afraid of failing at something if you weren't deeply passionate about it. Fear can be a good indication that your dream is meaningful enough to pursue.
Even accomplished people still feel fear. This is illustrated by a sentiment often expressed by Hollywood actors. The host of Inside the Actor’s Studio often asks guests why they chose certain roles. Many professionals answer that they choose roles they're afraid of; they acknowledge that fear indicates their passion for those roles, so they should pursue them.
Like these actors, you can use fear to motivate yourself. Don’t be controlled by fear and self-doubt – instead recognize that these emotions can help you orient yourself toward the dreams that mean the most to you.

3) The best way to fight resistance is to be a professional, and treat your dream like a full-time job.

How are you pursuing your dream? Do you try to work on it a few hours here and there? This is a mistake. Instead, try to think of yourself as constantly working on it – immersed in it, like a full-time job.
You can be quite creative in how you utilize your time for your dream, even if you still have a “regular” job. For example, Quentin Tarantino didn't go to film school but instead worked in a video rental store. He watched films at work and used his “free time” to direct small projects. Once, one of his projects was destroyed in a fire. Instead of feeling as if he had failed, Tarantino realized that even though he never got to finish the film, the project had still taught him more than any film school class could have.
A person like Tarantino who is dedicated and does not give up when faced with a setback is a "professional." His commitment to his craft proves it.
You can also transfer skills from your day job to your dream, even if your day job is very different. Do you go to work every day, on time? Do you keep working even when you have distractions in your personal life? You probably do. The self-discipline skills you hone at work can be applied as well toward your passion.
Like your regular job, working full-time toward your dream isn't always fun. But you often have the ability to power through your day job when you don't enjoy it, so you can also use that ability toward your dream.
Consider author Somerset Maugham, who was once asked if he wrote according to a schedule. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine sharp."
This is an important truth about professionals: they don’t sit around waiting for inspiration, but rather work hard, day in and day out.

4) A professional defeats resistance by being organized, patient and boldly facing adversity.

Let's say your dream is to write a book, and you develop the self-discipline to sit down and write every day. You'll soon realize that resistance doesn't immediately go away. In fact, resistance may even increase as you keep writing, making you doubt your passions even more. However, you can weaken resistance by being persistent and organized.
To be a professional, you must be organized and patient. The author John Updike embodied this well in his writing process. He wrote every day, but focused on pacing himself evenly through the writing process. He didn't set unrealistic goals, such as speed-writing a novel in a week.
Like Updike, try to focus on the process of your work, rather than only imagining the end result. Focusing on the process instead of trying to achieve the goal as quickly as possible will help weaken resistance. It’s okay if the process is slow, as that's normal – you must be patient if you want the best results.
As part of focusing on the process, also learn to accept that you'll always face adversity along the way. Instead of quitting when you face a problem, train yourself to view new challenges as steps to overcome to reach your goal.
Oprah Winfrey is a great example of a professional who has overcome challenges. At the onset of her career, few people expected that a talk show hosted by a black woman could gain a following, as the field was dominated by white men. She also wanted to focus on her guests' personal lives and emotions, which was uncommon at the time.
However, Oprah remained dedicated to her vision. Within months of starting, she created the most-watched morning show in America, and helped bring to light many previously undiscussed issues, such as obesity and bullying. Instead of backing down against criticism, Oprah used it as motivation to work harder, as a true professional would.

5) Professionals battle against hierarchies to achieve their goals.

Whether in the workplace, on Wall Street, in Hollywood or even in high school, everyone has had to face the structure of social hierarchies in their life. Hierarchies exist everywhere. The one thing hierarchies share is that they always oppose change, dictating a fixed place for every member of the hierarchy.
Most people define themselves in and are defined by hierarchies in their lives, and usually hierarchies are quite restrictive.
For example, many people struggle in workplaces that oppose giving creative freedom to employees. The work hierarchy instead keeps everyone in a particular role. In such environments, thinking “outside the box” is not tolerated.
When we're working within a hierarchy, we're forced to censor our actions by trying to guess what our audience (or customers) will want from us. We're forced to evaluate our success by our place in the hierarchy, and thus we're compelled to constantly try to climb within the hierarchy. Also, hierarchies encourage us to view other people as a means to achieving our goals, rather than as individuals.
Professionals do not define themselves by their place in a hierarchy. Rather, professionals battle hierarchies by remaining true to their craft, and working for themselves rather than for an audience.
For example, Steve Jobs, an exceptionally noteworthy professional, was a notorious perfectionist and steadfast believer in his vision. He insisted on deciding everything about the products he developed, from their design to how customers would interact with them. By working to realize his own vision, rather than trying to guess what others might like, he created the successful consumer electronics company, Apple.
Another example can be found with the German author Rainer Maria Rilke, who once told a young poet that he should write to please himself, not the critics. He spoke of an important truth regarding professionals: when your goal is to be proud of your own work, the work will be better.

6) Professionals commit themselves to a certain territory where they work to achieve their goal.

Whether it's writing a hit song or directing an Oscar-winning film, each one of us has our own specific calling. And the place where professionals work on their calling is called their territory.
For example, in the case of former Mr. Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger, body-builder, actor and politician, his territory is the gym. So how do you know where your territory is?
First off, your territory is where you feel “sustenance.” In this place, you feel satisfied and challenged, as if you’re bettering yourself when you spend time and work there. You can bet every time Schwarzenegger went to the gym, he felt much better afterward than he did before!
Second, your territory is the place you lay claim to through hard work, and through hard work only. Of course many other people used the gym as well, but Schwarzenegger made the space his own by working out there, day after day after day.
Third, your territory is an endless resource. The only limit to how much your territory can give you back for your work is determined by how much you put into it. Consider Woody Allen, whose territory isn’t physical like Schwarzenegger’s, but rather is the realm of film. Allen has written over seventy screenplays and directed nearly fifty films! By working hard in his territory, he has received more and more opportunities to be creative and has been able to work in his territory even more – and even expand it.
Like Woody Allen, you can shape and claim your territory through hard work and dedication.
Professionals who successfully commit to their territory don’t only benefit themselves but also even change the larger field in which they work. For example, the early work of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in their territory of computing completely changed the world. Personal computers went from being expensive, complex machines to user-friendly tools that anyone could own and operate.

Hello everyone! 2020 has ended a wee bit ago already and we still have not solved the Best Of 2020! My bad! I was too busy with work, studies, and basically being in the same room for weeks at a time, as are so many of you.
Here now it is time to celebrate the best posts of 2020. Content that was nominated in the voting threads will be listed first in the order of votes they received in each category. After that, you'll find content that was curated by me to fill up to 25 awards we got from Reddit to hand out. Each winner gets the exclusive Owl of Minerva award which grants a month of Reddit premium.
Best Text Content

• Dr. Truthlove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bayesian Probabilities - This paper by u/easwaran is a few years old but gets reposted every now and then and is a) excellent, b) excellently titled, and c) a very good read!
• Face Masks and the Philosophy of Liberty: mask mandates do not undermine liberty, unless your concept of liberty is implausibly reductive - This post by u/GDBlunt is a great and timely take on liberty in times of a pandemic.
• Humanity and nature are not separate – we must see them as one to fix the climate crisis - u/adefinitedescription posted this neat article from 2019 which I very much enjoyed.
• For MLK Day, 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail', one of the most important pieces written on civil disobedience - u/irontide posted this piece of history and, after all that went down in 2020, it was a very timely post!
• Hoarding is a Prisoner's Dilemma - Brief Game Theoretic Observations on the Response to Coronavirus - u/madambuttfriend posted this as a reddit exclusive, as far as I can tell - an enlightening discussion of game theory using experiences we all made during the first lockdown in spring.
• "Nationalism of decline is a means of manipulating people to aid in their own impoverishment for the benefit of the rich" -Jeff McMahan (Oxford) on history, idealism, and nationalism. u/ajwendland posted this very interesting and thought-inspiring article from the New Statesman philosophy column.
• No more work: full employment is a bad idea. Americans think that work builds character, that the labor market has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes, and that, even if it sucks, a job gives meaning to our everyday lives. But these beliefs are no longer plausible. - u/voltimand's submission against work, originally by prof. James Livingston, sparked heated and interesting discussions.
• The game of honesty: one can infer from game theory that honesty is strategic, and thus not necessarily a moral good. - u/gNdCWB's post is a very interesting post about game theory many of you enjoyed.
• Marxist Philosopher Domenico Losurdo’s Massive Critique of Nietzsche - An insightful discussion of two writers by u/tedmetrakas

Best Video

• A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Faces His Own Death (Herbert Fingarette, 1921-2018) - u/franksvalli posted this video early in 2020, and it is indeed rather wonderful and interesting!
• The tyranny of merit – No one's entirely self-made, we must recognise our debt to the communities that make our success possible: Michael Sandel - This video on u/IAI_admin [+3] is rather excellent, everyone should watch it!
• Suffering is not effective in criminal reform, and we should be focusing on rehabilitation instead - I find this video by u/ThoughtTime rather insightful, and it sparked interesting discussions!
• “The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart”: Why Ancient Chinese Philosophy Is Still Relevant In Bettering Our 21st Century Lives - a neat book review video by u/becoolandchilandlive that makes some concepts from Chinese philosophy rather accessible!
• Thomas Nagel - You Should Act Morally as a Matter of Consistency - this video by u/philmindset was very interesting and sparked a great discussion.
• ‘Defend love as a real, risky adventure’ – philosopher Alain Badiou on modern romance - This video was posted by u/voltimand and is a rather interesting contemplation of a central concept for human beings.
• Statues, Philosophy & Civil Disobedience - An interesting take by u/lewlewwaller on a topic that was front and center for a good part of 2020!

Community Award: Most Upvoted Content
In this section, I want to recognize content you guys liked - the most upvoted content of the year. All of them are excellent, I should add!

• Why you should hate your job | “We are being sold a myth. Internalising the work ethic is not the gateway to a better life; it is a trap.” by u/IAI_adminscored over 23'000 points.
• Life doesn't have a purpose. Nobody expects atoms and molecules to have purposes, so it is odd that people expect living things to have purposes. Living things aren't for anything at all -- they just are. by u/voltimand scored over 21'000 points.
• The Japanese Zen term "shoshin" translates as ‘beginner’s mind’ and refers to a paradox: the more you know about a subject, the more likely you are to close your mind to further learning. Psychological research is now examining ways to foster shoshin in daily life. by u/marcovaldo1 scored over 16'000 points.

Best Comments
Naturally, given the raw number of comments philosophy gets, this category will be overlooking plenty worthy comments. Nevertheless, here's some absolutely great ones that deserve recognition:

• Sometimes, a great comment points out problems with a submissions. Here, u/lightfive is talking about how contemporary philosophy is doing
• Other times, philosophy needs practical experience. u/dragonswim, in a contentious discussion on taking women's pain seriously, gave us a dose of medical experience
• Or they explain something from science. Here, u/tredlock talks about misunderstandings of quantum physics.
• Great comments sometimes simply explain ideas. u/ajmarriott in this comment explains a rather complicated argument using probabilities

People who keep this sub running award
This is a special category which I unilaterally introduce because the winner does deserve recognition

• u/ADefiniteDescription who does post high-quality content almost daily, and selflessy so. You may not see this, but there are days where content creators post lots of things, and silent days where almost nothing is posted. ADD, however, is reliably posting hihg-quality blogs, papers and podcasts to make sure y'all get your daily dose of philosophy!

​
And that's a wrap!
Congratulations to the winners! And thank you, everyone, who posts, creates content and comments. It is you all who make philosophy what it is, and it is you all who help facilitate discussion philosophy in this, dare I say, quite unique place. Thank you!

Hi,
I'm a high-school student that has often struggled in creating and maintaining good habits. The year 2020 is the year I finally tried to change for the better. After years of wasting time, neglecting myself, and going astray, I had to change. I had no idea what to implement or where to start. I just drafted some habits that I was interested in: reading, exercising, programming, and bettering my relationships. Doing these things was no easy feat, but at the end of year, I was in a much better place. I had read 12+ books, went on jogs regularly, talked more to my friends (although through calls), and released my first app. So, how?

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community. There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief."
- The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

What helped me the most was accountability, support, and community. I would tell my friends about my "bad day" and they would pick me up. I would ask my dad to go on a run with me. I would check in with my friends, who were also running. I would get inspired by subreddits dealing with the habit. People sharing. People forming their own habits.
I wanted to build an app just for this: an app to form and share habits. A community of people forming habits. I started learning the iOS development (if you want to know a little bit more about how, leave a comment). I started spending hours each day building, debugging, revising. After a year, I finished. I can proudly say that my app has come to life.
I built Chain - The Productive Social Media, an app to form & share your habits. It works pretty simply. You form a habit, post it publicly, and track your progress. You can interact through following users, commenting, and liking and saving posts. Be addicted to becoming the best version of yourself. I think the technology sector has to reinvent itself from being tons of corporations preying on your data to developers trying to better the world because that's how it started. This is my way of stepping in that direction.
This year, you can start achieving your habit goals with people around you to encourage and motivate you to climb the mountain. Here is the App Store Link. Good luck and i'm rooting for you! The app is far from perfect, but i'm getting there, please stay with me. If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or feedback, please send me a PM. I might be a little bit slow as i'm just one high-schooler working on this, but I'm giving this app everything I got.
Screenshots
Thanks. You can do this. Send me a PM if you download/like the app, it means a lot.

[Warning: Long]
here are a couple pictures
I have changed my life tremendously in the past 5 years.
When I started this mission I,

• suffered from a pretty hardcore pill addiction. I was taking 30 pain pills a day and about 10 Xanax a day. I was constantly out of it
  
• smoked about 2 packs of menthol cigarettes a day
  
• had a horrible weight problem and diet. I would bing on candy and fast food only. I would practically live off of chips. Never ate anything real. Only McDonald’s and junk food from the corner store
  
• was actively attempting suicide through overdosing. I was in a deep and dark depression.
  
• was facing a DUI and 2 counts of controlled substances and the judge was pressing jail time.
  
• failing my classes because all I could think about was my next fix
  
• was in a horrible relationship.
  

I would constantly try to change my life around but nothing seemed to work. This only led to me being more depressed. I felt like I wasn’t who I was meant to be. I was trapped in a shell of myself. This kept snowballing until one of the worst weeks of my life changed my life for ever.
The week started with my then girlfriend and me driving to go pick up pills. I was constantly lying to her about my pill addiction. I would tell her that we were going to this place to sell a part. She believed me and I got my pills. Well, we got pulled over and I fessed up to her. I told her that I had a bag of pills on me and I was probably going to jail. She grabbed the bag and told me she was going to take the fall for it because I was in school (she didn’t know I was failing out of college). Well, she got arrested and I didn’t. This sent me spiraling. The guilt weighed heavier than a mountain on me. All I could do was bury myself deeper in the drugs.
Well about 2 days later I was driving and I ended up with a dui and 2 counts of controlled substance. I was bailed out and a day later I was arrested again for PI. I was bailed out again and I went to go get my car out of impound and I was arrested again for driving without a license. I was bailed out again. My father bailed me out of every one of these. I remember the moment my life changed forever. I had just gotten my girlfriend thrown in jail for something that was my fault and was arrested three times. All in one week. All he did was look over at me and tell me that he wasn’t going to give up on me. That he was going to help me fight this.
I realized at that moment that I was letting everyone down. My girlfriend and father both had so much faith in me and I constantly let them down. I was a failure in every sense of the word.
I decided it was time that I fixed myself and became the person I wanted to. This is the point that I learned the first thing that changed my life. I couldn’t tackle every single thing that was wrong with me at once. I’ve tried it hundreds of times and every time was too overwhelming. I needed to prioritize my issues. Tackle them in level of importance. This made things more manageable. The first thing I attacked was the drugs.
I bought 3 suboxone and weened myself off within 4 months. I spent every moment of those 4 months in pain. The suboxone made it easier, but as I was running out, I was taking smaller doses. Eventually I was out. I pushed through the rest of the pain. I would smoke about 3 packs a day and eat about twice as bad as I normally did. But none of that mattered at the moment. What was important was getting off the drugs. My withdraws felt like having the severe flu for about 4 months. I would be sweating and freezing at the same time.
Eventually my withdrawals subsided and I decided to just knock the cigarettes out while I was accustomed to the pain. I decided to use the patch and I pushed myself of cigarettes. This was infinitely harder. But I had one advantage, I had momentum from the drugs. I realized that I conquered one aspect of my life so I didn’t want to lose any momentum. I pushed through the pain. At this point i hit my first speed bump. I had been in a pretty bad skateboarding accident and damaged my leg.
I was pretty sure that I tore my ACL but I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I couldn’t bend my leg anymore and it was incredibly painful. I knew that if I went to the doctor, I would need pain medication and I couldn’t afford to pay it. I made the decision to stop skateboarding and to wait it out. After about 6 months I was able to bend my leg again. I had to use a cane for about another 4 months.
Throughout this time, I started commuting myself more to school. I began attending class, I did my homework, I read the chapters, and I took advantage of any study sessions or extra cuticular activity I could find. My grades began improving substantially. I started making all A’s in my undergraduate. I changed my degree plan to legal studies. I started setting my eye on being a lawyer.
About a year after my injury I was clean off of drugs and cigarettes and I was just regaining the mobility in my leg. I had a new void, I couldn’t skateboard anymore. My leg would hurt tremendously when I jumped so I had to give up a passion I had for 15 years. My depression was creeping back until I met someone.
I can’t confirm or deny the existence of a higher power, but what i can say was that this person pushed me along my path. He lived in an apartment next to me. We got off work at the same time so he would always ask me to go to the gym with him. I would always avoid him by sitting in my car or waiting until I felt like he was gone but he was relentless. I finally caved and told him I’d give him one week. Well it turned out that I loved every bit of it.
Exercising helped me measure my personal growth in a way that was well . . . Measurable. Every week I was getting stronger. I could measure my strength increases in Pounds. My growth began again. I became obsessed with exercise. I would read books about it, I would think about it non stop and I would calculate different things to maximize my growth. Building my body up gave me confidence. The stronger I became, the more healthy ego I developed. Before, I still considered myself a loser junky. But with exercise, I was able to disassociate myself from that. After I developed a deep understanding of weight training, I turned my head to my diet. I quit eating fast food and quit drinking sodas. That led to me calculating my calories which lead to me actively do research on optimal nutrition.
At this point in my life, I had developed some theories to increase quality of life. I believed that three aspects of yourself needed to constantly be fed in order to develop a sincerely happy life. And by fed, I mean that they needed to constantly be challenged. These three laws are Mind, Body, Spirit.
Mind- always increase your knowledge and understanding. It doesn’t even matter what it is. I would challenge myself to cook more and more complicated meals, push my self to develop A’s in school, understand the mechanics of weight training for efficient lifting, or trying to understand some new concept. I would find a challenge and overcome it. Once I overcame it, I would try something slightly harder.
The same thoughts would apply to my body and spirit. Pretty much I would use progressive overload to push myself further. At this point in my life, I was confident, getting smarter and stronger every single day, and developing myself through constant introspection and viewing new ways of life.
I finally graduated with my undergraduate. But instead of going to law school, I found a new love, economics. I decided to enter my Masters Program. I spent the next 2 years busting my butt to conquer this program. During this time, my girlfriend and I got married and had a daughter. About 2 months after she had our daughter, she developed Steven Johnson Syndrome (sjs) which developed into Terminal epidermal necrolassis (TEN).
WARNING: DONT LOOK IT UP.
I’ll save you the search, it’s where your skin melts off of you. It’s pretty much chemical burns all over your body. She lost her lips, the skin on her lungs, and over 80 percent of the skin on her body. I was in the first semester of my masters. I hit another speed bump. I would drive to the hospital and do my school work in the burn ward. I’d alternate staying the night at the hospital and staying at home with my newborn with her mother. It was the most stressed I had ever been. There were two other people with SJS and they both died. At a certain point I was preparing for the inevitability that she would use to. I would help clean her wounds and apply cream to her lips so they wouldn’t weld shut. But I didn’t give up. I had spent 3 years bettering myself and she was there to support me the entire way. I refused to let her down.
Thankfully she pulled through. The doctors eventually released her but she was bed ridden for about 3 months. I spent the next three months taking care of her, my daughter, work, and my masters degree. This was probably the hardest point of my life. But I pulled through with all A’s. She healed eventually and we got married. But by the time we decided to get married COVID hit.
I spent the last year of my masters learning behind a computer. Before, I would use the resources to help me. I would borrow books from the library because I couldn’t afford them. I couldn’t do this anymore and I couldn’t afford the books. I pawned, sold, and hustler everything I could to afford the difference in money. But I pulled it off.
This brings me to today. I just graduated with a 3.9 gpa and I just had my honeymoon with my now wife. We saved up to go to Hawaii. We bought our tickets on discount during COVID and our hotel during Black Friday. We decided that I was going to climb Diamond ahead to take pictures to celebrate my graduation. We complied with every request by Hawaii to respect COVID regulations and made it to Hawaii and found out that Diamond Head was closed due to COVID. I was upset but it didn’t matter at this point.
Well, as fortune would turn, Diamond Head opened on the last day we were there. We were one of the first to hike it. We climbed the entire mountain and I took my pictures. For the record, we complied with all regulations. When I took the picture, the couple of people that were up there with me gave me about ten feet of space and I held my breathe while I took the photo.
On the way down we were actually interviewed by the local news station and ended up on the news!! They used my graduation photo and everything!
I’m now a loving father and husband, a masters degree holder, the best shape of my life, and I will be looking forward to the next part of my life!
Please, I say this sincerely. NOONE is too far gone. I didn’t start this journey until I was 28. It’s never too late to change your life to what you want it to be. Just take everything one step at a time, prioritize your tasks, push yourself one inch at a time, and eventually you can accomplish unimaginable things. If you asked me 6 years ago if this was where I’d be, I’d laugh at you. I understand that I had a support system. But my support system is only as good as I allow it to be. Seize your opportunities while they are there because they will not always be there. Go be the person you were meant to be!
I’m a little shy to post my story, but I hope it can motivate someone to change.
TL;DR: I overcame drugs, depression, poor health, and disease to accomplish a Masters degree.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.
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Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...
​
..
​
BOOM
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Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

I'm just going to copy and paste the text. My pics are hidden for privacy reasons. I just want to know what the SBs of this subreddit think.
About me:
"I am here because I have too many responsibilities and ambitions in my life to be the partner I want to be in a relationship. Simply put, I don't have room in my life for a "real" relationship right now.
That said, I am a giving person who feels most complete when bringing happiness to the lives of others.
I am also too much of an empath to be fully satisfied by one night stands. Emotional and intellectual connections are as (if not more) important to me as as a physical one.
Some other information about me:
-I am an optimist who tries to see the good in everyone. I would rather be too trusting and be taken advantage of nine times out of ten than miss out on that one in ten person by closing myself off to everyone.
-I am a staunch supporter of social justice and equality.
-I am an intelligent yet open minded individual. I am always open to bettering my understanding of the world through the perspectives of others.
-I am an introverted person. I need a little time to open up and be myself. I promise you that it is worth the wait.
I am also an open book. Feel free to ask me anything!"
Seeking:
"I am seeking a mutually beneficial relationship with someone that can occasionally spend quality time with. Someone who loves deep conversations and is open to passion in their lives.
I would greatly prefer someone of the progressive/liberal persuasion. Empathy for others is a must.
I am seeking someone open to a connection on both an emotional and physical level. I want to care about you and for you to care about me.
Intelligence is a huge plus! As is a love for cuddling.
Most of all, if this is going to work, I am looking for honestly. We both know why we are here and what we need out of this relationship. Let's be open and honest about those needs so we can find an arrangement that is fulfilling for both of us 😉"
Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this and good luck out there in the bowl!
Edit: Formatting, because reddit on mobile sucks lol.
I really appreciate all of your advice! So far, I have fixed several typos (double as, missing I, and honesty instead of "honestly").
I also had planned to remove the part about being too trusting, but u/motherdemon gave me pause. I understand that the line may invite scammers, but I put that line in because it's a foundational piece of my worldview. There are a lot of people in the world that are out to take advantage of you, but you can't let that make you jaded or closed off. Doing so means missing out on the truly compassionate people who will reciprocate and open their own hearts to you. I think I need more input before I outright remove it.
Also, I have replied to everyone, but because my throwaway account is new the mods have to approve each reply.
Thank you all so much! This has been really helpful so far.
Edit 2:
I have decided to keep the line about being too trusting. I have been pretty good at spotting scams/rinsers thus far, so I would rather share that part of me upfront and accept the risks. I mean, that's literally what I said in the quote 😅. I do appreciate everyone's concern in this regard and it is very possible I'll get burned and regret it. I would just rather be myself and hope for the best.
Also, about the open/not open contradiction. I have since edited that part of my profile to read:
-I am an introverted person. I need a little time to get comfortable and be myself around someone new. I promise you that it is worth the wait.
I feel this is far more accurate, because while I am an extremely open person (to the point that I have a habit of oversharing), I am also socially introverted. It takes me a bit of time to share my full personality with someone new. It is something I am working on, but I want to be upfront about the difficulty I have in that regard.
Thank you again for all of your responses, especially the constructive criticism! With any luck, your help will make it all the easier to find the SB that fits me well :)

1) A mental force called resistance opposes all our endeavors, and affects everyone.

Have you ever had an ambitious dream but hesitated to act on it? Maybe you wanted to write a great novel or start an innovative new business, but a certain feeling held you back?
That feeling is called resistance – it's the force that forever keeps us from realizing our dreams and accomplishing what we were meant to do.
Anything new in our routine that takes us away from the habitual will be naturally accompanied by resistance. Resistance is negative, and it always opposes change or anything new. For example, if you feel a call to start a new business, resistance will be the voice that urges you to stay at your current job and not take a risk on a project that may fail. If you want to start a new diet, resistance will be the voice that tells you, “I can always start the diet tomorrow, even if I don’t today.”
This feeling of resistance is perfectly normal. It's impersonal and universal, and it affects anyone and everyone. Resistance also doesn't discriminate between interests – you'll feel resistance if you want to do something for yourself, like diet, or something to help others, like start a charity. We need to accept that resistance is natural and stop thinking that it targets us personally.
In fact, resistance even affects people who are experienced at what they do. For example, actor Henry Fonda, even in his late age, threw up before every theatrical performance. Being an accomplished actor didn't stop him from feeling fear each time he had to go on stage.
Resistance can manifest in many ways. Fear of failure, self-doubt or procrastination are different forms of resistance. We can learn how to defeat resistance by constantly refocusing on our dreams, committing to our craft and accepting that challenging resistance is a natural and necessary part of the journey.

2) Resistance keeps us from becoming who we're meant to be, unless we use it to our advantage.

Is there something in life you feel you were meant to do? Maybe you want to write short stories, or design furniture? That's your calling: your greatest passion that satisfies your soul’s hunger.
We each have two separate lives, our lived and unlived lives. We live everyday in our regular life, but we have another unlived life where we have an unrealized dream.
Why are you waiting for the future to start working toward that dream? Probably because you feel fear and self-doubt, which are both forms of resistance. Resistance prevents us from realizing our unlived dreams. For example, if your dream is to write a great novel, you'll feel fear – maybe a fear of rejection by publishers, or of not meeting other people’s (or your own) expectations. That fear may stop you from even trying to write.
Instead of letting resistance stop you, use it to your advantage. It's okay to feel fear and self-doubt – these emotions mean that you truly care about your dream. You wouldn't be afraid of failing at something if you weren't deeply passionate about it. Fear can be a good indication that your dream is meaningful enough to pursue.
Even accomplished people still feel fear. This is illustrated by a sentiment often expressed by Hollywood actors. The host of Inside the Actor’s Studio often asks guests why they chose certain roles. Many professionals answer that they choose roles they're afraid of; they acknowledge that fear indicates their passion for those roles, so they should pursue them.
Like these actors, you can use fear to motivate yourself. Don’t be controlled by fear and self-doubt – instead recognize that these emotions can help you orient yourself toward the dreams that mean the most to you.

3) The best way to fight resistance is to be a professional, and treat your dream like a full-time job.

How are you pursuing your dream? Do you try to work on it a few hours here and there? This is a mistake. Instead, try to think of yourself as constantly working on it – immersed in it, like a full-time job.
You can be quite creative in how you utilize your time for your dream, even if you still have a “regular” job. For example, Quentin Tarantino didn't go to film school but instead worked in a video rental store. He watched films at work and used his “free time” to direct small projects. Once, one of his projects was destroyed in a fire. Instead of feeling as if he had failed, Tarantino realized that even though he never got to finish the film, the project had still taught him more than any film school class could have.
A person like Tarantino who is dedicated and does not give up when faced with a setback is a "professional." His commitment to his craft proves it.
You can also transfer skills from your day job to your dream, even if your day job is very different. Do you go to work every day, on time? Do you keep working even when you have distractions in your personal life? You probably do. The self-discipline skills you hone at work can be applied as well toward your passion.
Like your regular job, working full-time toward your dream isn't always fun. But you often have the ability to power through your day job when you don't enjoy it, so you can also use that ability toward your dream.
Consider author Somerset Maugham, who was once asked if he wrote according to a schedule. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine sharp."
This is an important truth about professionals: they don’t sit around waiting for inspiration, but rather work hard, day in and day out.

4) A professional defeats resistance by being organized, patient and boldly facing adversity.

Let's say your dream is to write a book, and you develop the self-discipline to sit down and write every day. You'll soon realize that resistance doesn't immediately go away. In fact, resistance may even increase as you keep writing, making you doubt your passions even more. However, you can weaken resistance by being persistent and organized.
To be a professional, you must be organized and patient. The author John Updike embodied this well in his writing process. He wrote every day, but focused on pacing himself evenly through the writing process. He didn't set unrealistic goals, such as speed-writing a novel in a week.
Like Updike, try to focus on the process of your work, rather than only imagining the end result. Focusing on the process instead of trying to achieve the goal as quickly as possible will help weaken resistance. It’s okay if the process is slow, as that's normal – you must be patient if you want the best results.
As part of focusing on the process, also learn to accept that you'll always face adversity along the way. Instead of quitting when you face a problem, train yourself to view new challenges as steps to overcome to reach your goal.
Oprah Winfrey is a great example of a professional who has overcome challenges. At the onset of her career, few people expected that a talk show hosted by a black woman could gain a following, as the field was dominated by white men. She also wanted to focus on her guests' personal lives and emotions, which was uncommon at the time.
However, Oprah remained dedicated to her vision. Within months of starting, she created the most-watched morning show in America, and helped bring to light many previously undiscussed issues, such as obesity and bullying. Instead of backing down against criticism, Oprah used it as motivation to work harder, as a true professional would.

5) Professionals battle against hierarchies to achieve their goals.

Whether in the workplace, on Wall Street, in Hollywood or even in high school, everyone has had to face the structure of social hierarchies in their life. Hierarchies exist everywhere. The one thing hierarchies share is that they always oppose change, dictating a fixed place for every member of the hierarchy.
Most people define themselves in and are defined by hierarchies in their lives, and usually hierarchies are quite restrictive.
For example, many people struggle in workplaces that oppose giving creative freedom to employees. The work hierarchy instead keeps everyone in a particular role. In such environments, thinking “outside the box” is not tolerated.
When we're working within a hierarchy, we're forced to censor our actions by trying to guess what our audience (or customers) will want from us. We're forced to evaluate our success by our place in the hierarchy, and thus we're compelled to constantly try to climb within the hierarchy. Also, hierarchies encourage us to view other people as a means to achieving our goals, rather than as individuals.
Professionals do not define themselves by their place in a hierarchy. Rather, professionals battle hierarchies by remaining true to their craft, and working for themselves rather than for an audience.
For example, Steve Jobs, an exceptionally noteworthy professional, was a notorious perfectionist and steadfast believer in his vision. He insisted on deciding everything about the products he developed, from their design to how customers would interact with them. By working to realize his own vision, rather than trying to guess what others might like, he created the successful consumer electronics company, Apple.
Another example can be found with the German author Rainer Maria Rilke, who once told a young poet that he should write to please himself, not the critics. He spoke of an important truth regarding professionals: when your goal is to be proud of your own work, the work will be better.

6) Professionals commit themselves to a certain territory where they work to achieve their goal.

Whether it's writing a hit song or directing an Oscar-winning film, each one of us has our own specific calling. And the place where professionals work on their calling is called their territory.
For example, in the case of former Mr. Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger, body-builder, actor and politician, his territory is the gym. So how do you know where your territory is?
First off, your territory is where you feel “sustenance.” In this place, you feel satisfied and challenged, as if you’re bettering yourself when you spend time and work there. You can bet every time Schwarzenegger went to the gym, he felt much better afterward than he did before!
Second, your territory is the place you lay claim to through hard work, and through hard work only. Of course many other people used the gym as well, but Schwarzenegger made the space his own by working out there, day after day after day.
Third, your territory is an endless resource. The only limit to how much your territory can give you back for your work is determined by how much you put into it. Consider Woody Allen, whose territory isn’t physical like Schwarzenegger’s, but rather is the realm of film. Allen has written over seventy screenplays and directed nearly fifty films! By working hard in his territory, he has received more and more opportunities to be creative and has been able to work in his territory even more – and even expand it.
Like Woody Allen, you can shape and claim your territory through hard work and dedication.
Professionals who successfully commit to their territory don’t only benefit themselves but also even change the larger field in which they work. For example, the early work of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in their territory of computing completely changed the world. Personal computers went from being expensive, complex machines to user-friendly tools that anyone could own and operate.

“How do fighters stand out amongst other classes?”
“Is there a reason to play Fighter when Hexblade exists?”
“Fighters get outdamaged by…”
As a lover of non-magical classes, I get a little disheartened when they get overshadowed by other classes in games.
Yes, Fighter is a blank-slate character and it’s the player’s job to fill it, but if they’re feeling left-out or overshadowed by other classes, there are ways to elevate them in the narrative so they can hang in the same company of wizards who can rend the fabric of the universe, warlocks whose sugar-daddy is Asmodeus, and clerics who have a direct line to their gods. I think Fighters need a little nudge from the DM to keep their out-of-combat utility on par with other classes and there are a few ways I’ve found effectively do that.
Note: These suggestions require, as with everything, cooperation between players and DM’s. Players should be doing all they can, but putting the entire onus of the story on the player’s backstory is lazy DMing in my opinion. DM’s should create opportunities for each player to shine.
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Knight Them Did your fighter do something impressive for a local lord? Congratulations; you are now SiDame PC of PCdom with all the rights and privileges therein. The Fighter has gone from being Guy with Sword to a member of the kingdom in their own right. You can lean into this by giving them advantage in Charisma checks where their knighthood would be appropriate or even offer resources from the local lord’s personal supply. This also gives built-in adventure hooks as the Fighter is now invested in the kingdom they are in.
Give them apprentices Word of your Fighter’s martial prowess has spread and they find themselves surrounded by people wishing to learn the way of the warrior at their feet. Maybe they open a school or maybe they take a squire under their wing. This offers great roleplay opportunities and gives the Fighter a respected role in the community. How do they respond to being looked to for guidance? What kind of teacher are they if they choose to become one? How does responsibility affect their character?
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Lean into the Martial Arts aspect of being a Fighter Monks aren’t the only martial artists; dedicating yourself to practicing weapon arts is a discipline in itself. Consider having your Fighter represent a school of combat with its own nuances and techniques the Fighter works hard to perfect. Maybe there’s a reclusive sword-master that can help your Fighter reach the next level. Maybe there’s a book of esoteric techniques that will give them an edge in battle. Musashi was a fighter; Guan Yu was a fighter.
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Weave their weapon into their legend Arthur didn’t chuck Excalibur the minute he found a better sword; instead of dumping an interchangeable pile of artifact weapons on your fighter, have their weapon evolve as the game progresses. What was once a simple steel longsword is now G’Th’ar’d’ric’’, The Hammer of Hell. Weave in interesting enchantments beyond the simple +X to attack (e.g. Fragarach was so called the Answerer because anyone who had the blade pressed to their throat needed to answer honestly. This could easily manifest as a Zone of Truth effect the fighter could employ out of combat).
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Give them a rival Tales of their martial might have led upstarts to challenge them. This can easily evolve into a campaign-long rivalry where the PC and their enemy continuously one-up one another in an attempt to determine who is the better warrior. A good rival can bring out the best (and worst) in a PC in their quest to determine whose sword-fu is strongest. It gives them a goal to strive for and a marker for how far they’ve come. What once was an insurmountable rival might grow to be an ally, friend, or even love as the Fighter rises to and above their level.
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“I hear the Fighter’s Guild is hiring…” Paladins/Clerics have churches, Wizards have libraries, Rogues have Thieves Guilds, Fighters should have a club they can join to hone their skills. Maybe it’s an exclusive group of warriors that sneers at magic use; maybe it’s a community-watch that values your fighter’s expertise. The Fighters Guild gives the fighter a built-in group of support and something to do with their downtime that’s uniquely suited to their niche.
And hey, when the shit hits the fan, guess who has 20-50 heavily armed friends they’ve spent the last few months helping?
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Have non-Fighters react to them Fighters are not guys with swords; they are the guys with swords. They are a cut above the rabble and elite warriors in their own right. A regular guy trying to fight a Fighter should look like a purple belt from a stripmall McDojo trying to fight Bruce Lee. Their weapons should shatter under the Fighter’s blows; their strikes should look ugly and clumsy next to the Fighters’ attacks. Highlight how the Fighter is different from others who fight with weapons and make it clear that the party is rolling with a killing machine that’s a cut above 99% of mundane fighters.
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Put them in charge of NPC units in mass battles Arthur had his Round Table, Achilles had his myrmidons, your PC’s should have their hand-picked followers who follow their example. Put them at the vanguard of major battles and have lesser soldiers form up on their banner. Is a group of soldiers more likely to follow a warlock who bleeds demonic energy, a scrawny wizard that uses words none of them understand, or a warrior like themselves who fights on the frontlines alongside them?
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Highlight their athleticism and endurance Really highlight the fact that Fighters can go all day without needing the rests that casters need. Fighters go and keep going after all the magic users are farting out Firebolts. Fighters endure blows that would kill mortals and shatter sorcerers. They are as Indomitable as their class feature and one of the hardest (if not the hardest) thing to kill in the party. Fighters can simply endure more punishment and keep fighting long after the casters in the party beg for a rest.
Also, HP is a resource that Fighters tend to have a lot of. They can do riskier things and attempt cooler stunts because the penalty for failure is less steep than other classes. Losing 10 HP to grab a burning hot key from a blaze is less of a sacrifice for someone with 200HP than it is for someone with 99.
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Build their legend Guts was the Black Swordsman; Robin of Locksley was called Robin Hood. At some point, your Fighter should pick up an epithet or two describing their heroic deeds. Slaughter a ton of orcs? You are now PC Orcsbane. Wear black armor emblazoned with a wolf’s head? Your Fighter is hailed as The Black Dog. Nothing makes a sword-and-board fighter stand out like a legendary nickname highlighting their legendary deeds and inspiring dread and awe in their wake.
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Conclusion
This is not a Fighters and Casters are mechanically unbalanced debate; I am going to assume that a group of professional game developers knows more about designing a game than I do. But casters have aspects and tools for out of combat baked into their skillset that Fighters do not.
This gets worse at higher levels when a sword-fighter is hanging out with guys who can bring the dead back to life and summon natural disasters. It’s easy for the non-magic guy to get overshadowed in these scenarios, but a little nudging and a little support from the DM can elevate the fighter out of combat while playing to their strengths.
I’m interested to hear other ways you’ve kept fighters interesting/relevant in a team full of spellcasters.
EDIT: Thanks for the silvers, mates.
Edit 2: Formatting

Apologies for the clickbait title but rest assured, there’s no scam here. I’ve come up with a list of time-tested, foolproof ways to save money that are infinitely more reliable than whatever investment scheme you’re cooking up. And speaking of cooking:

1. Learn to cook

Doordash, ubereats, skip-the-dishes, delete them from your phone. Learn to cook rice, vegetables and inexpensive proteins like beans, chicken, pork, tofu, chickpeas etc. Does your food need more flavour? Buy some salt, pepper and garlic. That’s all it takes to start. Is your food oveunder done? But a meat thermometer. Stop buying $10 lunches and $3 coffees. I used to buy $3 coffee every day. That’s $60 a month ($90 if weekends are included) On COFFEE. I bought a $50 coffee maker and it paid itself off in 2 months. Now I’ve owned it for 3 years.

1. Take care of your teeth

Brush twice a day. Try to do the same with flossing, but no one ever does it, so try to start once a week. You know why dentists make so much money? You know why they see your mouth as a goldmine? Because you won’t be able to put up with your painful, busted ass teeth for your whole life and you’re going to need them fixed. Taking care of your teeth cuts down on the amount of times over your life that you’ll wake up in the morning going “ow, my tooth hurts, wonder why” and then suddenly you’re out $500... or $2000...

1. Prioritize the importance of your physical belongings and take care of them accordingly

Do you need a flashy, expensive (or even mid-range car) to impress clients at your job? No? Then it’s OK to drive a beater. Do you need a suit for work? No? Then it’s OK to buy your daily workwear from somewhere like Costco or Walmart. Those are your low-priority items. If you rip a hole in your $10 work shirt, you can probably afford to throw it out.
However, the flip side of that is, if you need to have a suit or nice car on-hand... TAKE CARE OF THEM. Don’t wear your nice suit and dress shoes out in a snowstorm... don’t skip the oil change on the car. If you’re tech savvy, you can keep your beater smartphone or laptop meeting your needs for a long time. Do you need a top-of-the-line gaming rig? If so, spend the money on long-lasting parts (I.e. CPU), and take care of your rig; clean it regularly, watch the temps, try not to get malware. I’m still wearing a jacket I bought 10 years ago.

1. Other tips and tricks

Buy long-lasting footwear - it’s insanely easy to spend a lot of money on cheaply-made, branded (and completely awful) footwear. I’m looking at you, Jordan’s. Buy some decent sneakers and hiking boots and rotate them around accordingly
Get away from Instagram/FB if you’re in circles where people try to promote their belongings, flex or look like they can afford a lifestyle they probably can’t. Way too many people go into debt trying to look fresh on Instagram. Don’t get sucked in. Speaking of debt...
Pay off your credit cards - Credit card companies make their money off you not realizing how much 20% interest really is
Edit Wow thanks for the feedback folks! Some really great tips in the comments too (esp. liked the one about taking care of your KIDS teeth, in addition to your own!)
And to clarify re #3, I’m definitely not saying “don’t spend money on luxuries that make you happy”. What I am saying is, if (when) you spend money on luxuries, TAKE CARE OF THEM!
Bought some fancy-ass dress shoes you like? Realize you’re wearing $700 on your feet and walking through puddles isn’t a great idea. Bought the new $2000 MacBook Air? Maybe keep your un-covered drinks away from it. Finally saved up for that Lexus? Slap some snow tires on that baby and make sure you have some decent insurance. Nice new phone? Yeah? Buy the case! If you decide to go all out, don’t skimp out, just spend your money where it creates (or protects) the most value.
Edit 2 Obligatory “I am not a financial advisor” but here’s some other tips to address some complaints from offended individuals that this isn’t real financial advice:

1. You likely don’t need balance protection insurance on your credit card - It’s notoriously difficult to successfully file a claim and the coverages are much narrower in scope than they are sold as
   
2. If your bank waives account fees for carrying a minimum balance, look into getting the best account you can (e.g. a “TD all inclusive” account provides free cheques, money orders, safety deposit box etc. And is free if you maintain a $5,000 minimum balance)
   
3. You only need overdraft protection if you regularly dip into overdraft (e.g. if it’s unavoidable based on your income cycle). If it only happens once in a while, the individual ding is likely still cheaper than total cost of the protection.
   
4. When shopping for a mortgage, don’t overlook credit unions. A massive component of a lot of credit unions’ business is lending, especially residential mortgage and small business lending. Credit unions can offer rates far more competitive than banks, even to non-members
   
5. If you’re thinking about investing and can stomach some short-term volatility, look into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) - bundles of diversified securities issued by major financial institutions. Many sector-specific ETFs (including Oil/Gas, Real Estate and Finance) still haven’t recovered from COVID and it might be worth your while to look into them. COVID recession aside though, ETFs can be reliable, income-generating instruments
   
6. Financing can be a reasonable option if you’re trying to manage cashflow, but generally speaking it is better to outright buy something you can currently afford rather than finance it. Cars especially.
   

Edit - Last one, I promise

1. Protect your credit score! It’s not just a number, it’s your key to reliable, low-interest credit (which you’re going to need if you ever want to buy a house, or even just open a line of credit). Tanking your credit score and limiting yourself to alternative lending “solutions” is a very dangerous, slippery slope.

I realize now that I drank too much.
Most people who know me would claim otherwise. I don't make dramatic scenes, blackout, or get sick. I am a productive member of society, I keep up with my active son, and generally have my shit together.
But I had a habit of red wine every night, two heavy poured glasses, often followed by a final "splash" before bed. I was consistent with it for years. I finished kid bedtime and as I poured my wine from that silly boxed-wine spigot, relief poured over me.
I deserve this, I would think. I deserved it for being a kick-ass mom. I earned it for role modeling positivity to my son through a Pandemic. It was a reward for enduring brutal allergy shots with my 7 year old. It was a consolation prize for all the fun times we were missing during quarantine. It was how I relaxed at the end of a long day.
It is symbolic, I loved to rationalize. This wine marks the end of being "mom" and starting the evening as this autonomous grown-ass woman.
I think once you start imbuing alcohol with these transcendent qualities, you're shifting from a healthy relationship to an unhealthy one.
When you start perceiving alcohol as a positive tool in your self care, not having it feels like deprivation. I was physically fine if I didn't drink, but I did feel left out and grumpy. I felt less happy and mentally noted when I could remedy the problem of not drinking.
That was the red flag for me. Thankfully I didn't need to hit a rock bottom, I just needed a to start Dry January only to realize "Hey, Dry January sucks, this is HARD." And to start reflecting what that meant for me and how I felt about it.
If the idea of not drinking negatively impacted my life, what does that mean about the role alcohol is playing in it?
I went fast and hard down the Quit Lit path and much to my delight there were resources out there that resonated with me perfectly. It wasn't about being powerless and depending on a power greater than myself (not a dis to AA - it just didn't fit my personal relationship with alcohol). I discovered books and podcasts that approached alcohol with brain science! Do you really know what is happening biologically when you consume alcohol? They were about cognitive dissonance! If I WANT to drink less, why then is it so hard? They were about culture, society, and marketing! What message is the world bombarding you about the role of alcohol and what subconscious effect does that have on us?
It was a fascinating journey into the science of habits, addiction, and mindfulness.
And this is where it loops into parenting. Because while not drinking has certainly saved me money, calories, and made me a grossly cheery morning person, it has also made me a fundamentally more mindful person. And mindfulness when parenting is a serious net gain.
The other day my kid was losing his mind at the hospital during his allergy shot appointment. It was a scene, to say the least. It dawned on me that I would have once thought to myself "Man, that glass of wine tonight will be MUCH deserved!" and then try to tolerate the experience and eagerly await 8PM.
Seems relatively harmless, I know, but then I look at how I approach the situation now.
Instead of basking in my misery and awaiting my "reward," I spent that 30 minute wait after his shots reflecting.
I felt frustrated this is still so difficult for my kid.
I felt embarrassed because no one enjoys making a public spectacle.
I felt sad because my kid was so upset.
I felt guilty for, well, a whole host of reasons parents feel guilty.
I felt worn down.
And I felt those feelings, which sounds absurdly simple, but how often do we just feel stressed or overwhelmed without actually breaking that shit down? The magic happens when you give those feelings the attention they deserve and you start getting good at realizing which thoughts are productive and which thoughts are best to let go. You can validate and normalize certain feelings, which does wonders for not getting absorbed in them and giving yourself permission to move on. Being mindful in that moment meant that by the time we left the hospital, I put in some work on those feelings and felt ready to move along with my day. I wasn't counting down until evening wine, I didn't feel emotionally dependent on a magic elixir to bring me comfort. We had a shitty time at the hospital and it was done now.
I realize now it wasn't the wine that brought me comfort, it was the idea and the ritual of the wine.
The best part of drinking was getting my glass, filling it up, and taking that dramatic big sigh on the couch as I enjoyed my first sip.
That's not really about the wine then, is it? I didn't feel relieved or content in that moment because of the alcohol, it literally hadn't even reached my stomach yet. It's that I had conditioned myself for years to think I needed it to relax and destress. Our thoughts are very powerful in creating our reality. If you associate drinking with the way you best unwind, shocker shocker, you reach the point you feel like you can't unwind without it.
I feel the happiest I've ever felt in my adulthood, and I attribute much of that to spending more time reflecting on feelings and finding habits that truly benefit my physical and emotional health.
So I now do things I would have once scoffed at, like go to bed early. For a long time I felt like staying up late was vital because it was my precious "me time." I now realize that browsing Reddit on the couch is far less bucket filling than finally tackling this 8 years of sleep debt (thanks, kid).
I sip tea and work on puzzles. Yes, it may not be the hip cool way to spend my night (according to every commercial marketing firm out there) but that's something that actually relaxes me after a stressful day of Pandemic parenting. I am not buzzed or numbed in my senses, I'm meditative and calm. At peace.
I've stopped equating consumption with happiness. Food and drinks can taste good, and it is perfectly wonderful and acceptable to enjoy them! But they are not gateways to happiness. Feelings do not have to hinge on them. They don't fix things. And the more you associate these concepts with them, the unhealthier the relationship you foster with them.
And best of all, I am a much more present parent. Being mindful about this one thing has made flexing that muscle come more naturally. When I'm stressed or anxious, I spend less time wallowing in those feelings and wishing the time to pass so it can be over.
The other day featured a rough parenting afternoon and I found myself counting down until my kid's bedtime. I realized I didn't want to spend my time simply waiting for the next thing to happen and I reflected on what was really going on. I had reached my emotional capacity of dramatic play with a seven year old, I was hungry, I was yearning for some adult interaction.
So I kindly expressed I had reached my limit of pretending to be a baby bird to my son. I dug out some science magazines he hadn't seen yet to occupy him. I cut apples and cheese slices. I reached out to my friend group via text and vented and was then beautifully enriched by their amazing insight and hilarity. I wasn't waiting for his bedtime anymore and when I was finally "off the hook" of parenting, I no longer needed something to make it better. It was a far cry from "Grrrr... is it wine o'clock yet?"
Wine wasn't the answer to the things I was looking for. I've learned that feeling good about being a kickass mom is the reward. What I earn for role modeling positivity during the Pandemic is a better mindset for me and my family. The reward for surviving allergy shots is that my kid won't go into flippin' anaphylactic shock the next time he's stung by a wasp! I can grieve the lost fun times during a Pandemic because it is disappointing and sad, and a consolation prize doesn't somehow negate those very real feelings. I unwind by being cozy on the couch with my husband, writing rambling emails to friends I miss, and getting a really good night's sleep.
So I am no longer a card-carrying member of the Mom Wine Club. It didn't make me a better mom in the ways I once thought it did. I'm learning to put in the work in the moment instead. And I am much happier and healthier for it.

I'm an amateur film lover, as I'm sure many of the folks in /movies are. I will be the first to also admit that I was also one of the lucky ones last year to have 'boredom' as one of my biggest problems, and so to everyone reading this I hope you have a far better 2021.
Watching lots of movies isn't necessarily something new to me, especially in such a vast quantity, I watched a lot in 2019 as well and it's something that works for me. I know some people say they don't like watching so many in quick succession for various reasons, and that's cool, just know that this works for me and I like to think I have a fairly good memory of almost everything I've watched (certainly all of the ones that I've enjoyed). And I can safely say I don't feel burnout coming on either...at least not yet, fingers crossed.
I also feel we're incredibly lucky to live in the era that we live in, watching films has never been easier than it has now, there's so many ways, both legal and illegal. Just this year alone, we've had four major classics receive Blu-rays for the first time ever, Satantango, Los Olvidados, Roman Holiday and Beau Travail. I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating it must have been to be an amateur movie lover in previous decades without the conveniences we have today and without access to the benefits of being in film industry circles.
As a result, it becomes a case of, the more you watch, the more great movies you realise are out there and the 'never-ending watchlist syndrome' becomes a real thing. But I take that as a positive knowing that this isn't some tick-box exercise and that watching movies is a life-long journey. After all, we all watch movies for different reasons, sometimes to laugh, to kill time, to make us better people, for catharsis and various other purposes.
To keep this relatively short for the main post (I can detail further in the comments if anyone's interested) I'll post my top 5 (in no particular order) for each calendar month of 2020, varying from popular favourites to ones I feel like deserve way more attention in the general conversation.
FULL LIST HERE
Jan 2020

• Le Cercle Rouge (1970) - The first film of the year I saw and only fitting because I adore Melville's work. Anyone who loves a good heist movie should absolutely do themselves a favour and watch this. What I love about Melville is how he uses action and silence to drive the story and build suspense rather than overload you with dialogue that would overexplain things you could figure out by just observing. Treating your audience with respect is the sign of a great filmmaker.
  
• Seven Chances (1925) - Every Buster Keaton movie I watch, i'm more and more impressed with how much mileage he managed to get out of everything, from cameras, to sets, to space in the frame. For anyone looking to get into silent cinema, Buster Keaton is the most accessible place to start next to Charlie Chaplin. The blackface we could do without though.
  
• Little Women (2019) - Greta Gerwig made the best adaptation of a book that has had like 8 adaptations before it, and some of them really good, she's a genius. That's all I have to say.
  
• Mon Oncle (1958) - Tati's sense of humour is exactly my kind of humour. The production design in his films could have a book written on them. There's so much effort put into his films and watching them is a joy. There's no real structure to the movie as such, it's like a 2 hour string of gags put together all tied together by the central character of Monsieur Hulot who was the inspiration for Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean. If something light-hearted and fun like this sounds like your thing then give it a shot.
  
• Certain Women (2016) - Kelly Reichardt is one of the greatest American filmmakers working today and even though I haven't seen First Cow yet, I can safely say that it's hard to find many working right now more consistently good than her. There's a vignette with Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone that is one of the most heartbreaking portrayals of loneliness and unrequited love that I've ever seen.
  

Feb 2020

• L'Argent (1983) - the best exploration of money, its corrupting effects, Bresson's one of my all-time favs. The acting is deliberately different to what you might expect from a conventional (Hollywood for example) movie but stick with it and you'll get something viciously scathing and cynical about the current state of society. Best part, it all takes place in less than 90 minutes.
  
• Landscape in the Mist (1988) - I had a funny experience with Angelopoulos, i saw The Travelling Players first and it really bored me, then I saw this and Eternity and a Day and now he's one my all time favourite directors. One of the greatest child performances I've ever seen. Such a great exploration of the innocence of childhood, what happens when that innocence is taken away, the uncertainty from uncaring parents, and how to move beyond that and find peace and beauty in life
  
• The Big City (1963) - Ray's direction in this is overwhelmingly good tbh. There's a scene where Ray uses mirrors which is so, so good. It's feminist without feeling preachy.
  
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) - The last movie I saw in cinemas. Also Celine Sciamma, idk where I've been all this time, but I'm glad I've finally been introduced. I could go on and on about this movie. Watch this with headphones if you don't have a good sound system, it's worth listening to how much care was put into the audio-visual experience of this film. Most people seem to take their time syncing with the rhythm of this film until there's a scene (and you'll know when you see it) halfway through the movie where the film sort of transcends above everything it's being doing and then the rest of the movie flies by.
  
• Bullitt (1968) - Think I could count on one hand the number of great car chases that exist in cinema, Bullitt has one of them. McQueen's just effortlessly good in this.
  

March 2020

• Intolerable Cruelty (2003) - I really want this to get a critical re-appraisal. Maybe its because I'm a Coen Bros diehard but I find this hysterical and George Clooney bringing back Cary Grant's ghost from the past is a thing of beauty.
  
• The Assassin (2015) - Don't mistake this for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2.0 and you'll enjoy this. It's not as fast-paced and it doesn't want to be. But it's a memorable experience either way.
  
• Toy Story 4 (2019) - I've been disappointed with Pixar in the last decade but this is proof that they won't drop the ball on the thing that made them iconic.
  
• Eternity and a Day (1998) - see comments for Landscape in the Mist above. Also Eleni Karaindrou is in my top three composers of all time, her music alone is worth listening to even if Angelopoulos' films dont interest you.
  
• Paddington (2014) - I'm using this as a spot to not just highlight this but also the sequel, for once I agree with Reddit, they backed the right movie and the circlejerk for Paddington is justified. So if youve not seen them, go do that, if you've seen them already well just do it again.
  

Apr 2020

• Raw (2016) - I'm not a horror enthusiast, but this is definitely one I would recommend to everyone. Made me a bit queasy at times even though I'm not easily scared. The themes are explored in such a unique way.
  
• The Koker Trilogy - Cheating a bit here, but I'm a sucker for meta cinema and Kiarostami's an all time great for me. They're all short in runtime but what they explore is enough for two trilogies let alone one. The first movie starts off quite simply and is very accessible, and it's also a movie that never feels like its exploiting the group of people its filming for the purposes of entertainment. In a more conventional movie, you could've expected a weepy melodrama about how hard the poor have it. The next two films then build on that and what cinema means as an artform and the meta connections that it creates become something else entirely. It'll leave you thinking over it all for a while.
  
• Faces Places (2017) - Agnes Varda's a national treasure. Her work is ridiculously unpretentious and her life experience alone makes it worth listening to her, she always had fun and so did the audience too through her infectious personality and her endless curiosity for life. And best of all, its a short and sweet runtime.
  
• Down by Law (1986) - Jim Jarmusch is the king of the hangout movie. Idk how he does it, one day I'll understand how he makes such low stakes movies seem so compelling but I'm not there yet.
  
• Beetlejuice (1988) - I miss peak Tim Burton. I know Kevin Kline's Oscar that year is one of the few rare occurrences where a comedic performance won but Michael Keaton deserved it way more in my opinion. Without him, there is no movie. And the music choices are fantastic.
  

May 2020

• Secrets and Lies (1996) - This could've been really silly in the wrong hands, its the kind of premise I might expect from an Adam Sandler comedy and yet it's genius.
  
• Minding the Gap (2018) - The depiction of the lasting, ripple effect of domestic violence in this is so honest and raw and the way it's cut together is so fantastic. I'm so glad Bing Liu got the recognition he deserved for this.
  
• Dogville (2003) - in a career full of provocations, von Trier's Dogville is maybe his greatest provocation. An experiment that pulled off and then some and so dense you could write a paper on this movie alone. I will say I had a funny experience with Dogville as I put it on one day and then I tried watching it and found the way it was shot quite distracting, but then something came up about 15-20 mins into the movie and I had to turn it off and restarted it the next day. The next day it just worked I guess because I was already aware that von Trier was using a completely different camera and it didn't bother me so much.
  
• Faust (1926) - one of the absolute best silent films out there. Murnau's a goddamn master. Feels so modern, and for a tale that's been done to death, I do urge people to check out the first cinema adaptation because it's still fresh.
  
• Man with a Movie Camera (1929) - I will admit, my stamina with experimental films is pretty limited but this was a blast, and it has more innovations in like 70 minutes than most decades of cinema do. The Michael Nyman score with this is highly recommended.
  

June 2020

• Beau Travail - The ending to this is one of the best endings ever. I won't spoil for anyone who's not seen it. Definitely more austere and slower-paced for some but for those who sync with the rhythm, it's well worth it.
  
• Scenes from a Marriage - In a well-worn subgenre, maybe the best movie about marriage and divorce ever?
  
• What's Up Doc? - Really makes me wish the screwball comedy genre wasn't dead. Someone bring it back.
  
• Da 5 Bloods - Honestly I really thought this was a blast, and another case of an auteur smuggling a great film into a genre flick.
  
• A Hidden Life (2019) - I've not seen To the Wonder, Song to Song or Knight of Cups yet, but I'm just glad Terrence Malick is still making great movies. James Newton Howard and Jorg Widmer need way more recognition for their work on this for music and cinematography respectively.
  

July 2020

• The Square (2017) - So apparently this is one of the more hated Palme d'Or winners but I loved it, Ruben Ostlund's keeps making movies and I'll keep watching them. I thought this was hilarious and really well acted.
  
• Shoah (1985) - If there's a film on here I could get everyone to see, it would be this, but I have no misguided expectations considering the runtime and the material. But you could break it up into parts, there are clear stopping points in this. I would say it's the best thing I've seen this year. I think the way the Holocaust is taught in schools is not up to scratch at all and its the reason why antisemitism is still so present in society today. I think if everyone watched Shoah, it would do a good deal towards understanding how humans work and how something like this happened and how we can prevent it from ever happening again.
  
• OJ Made in America (2016) - For a subject matter that has been written about ad nauseam with dozens of on-screen adaptations, docs and God knows what else, Ezra Edelman performed a goddamn miracle making something as good as this. One of the best examinations of how America reached the point that it's at right now.
  
• Carlos (2010) - Cheating a bit here with this one, but seriously, Olivier Assayas what the fuck? How did you make something like this? Genuinely baffles me how Edgar Ramirez has been wasted ever since this movie came out. One of the best biopics I've ever seen and I think I had my heart in my mouth for the entire OPEC raid.
  
• The Right Stuff (1983) - The editing in this is flawless, so many remarkable choices in the cutting department which is why this felt so well-paced for its length. It also has an ensemble cast that has become quite famous in the years which makes it worth the watch too. Definitely one to check out for any sci-fi or space movie enthusiasts. The satire in this is razor-sharp as well.
  

Aug 2020

• Birth (2004) - Honestly feel like the flack for this was undeserved, Jonathan Glazer needs to be better funded. So well-shot, there's a long take in this that feels like it inspired Portrait of a Lady on Fire's ending. Nicole Kidman sells this as well, could've been bad in the wrong hands.
  
• Winter Sleep (2014) - I'm a sucker for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's dialogue, he writes like no one I've ever seen. For anyone unfamiliar with him but familiar with Chekhov or Dostoevsky, do check his work out. It's one of those movies which really manages to capture the complexities of life and how no person is perfect and the importance of coming to grips with the positive things that 'shitty people' do and the bad things that 'good people' do. I love the climax to this film, one scene in particular and what it has to say about class and social differences.
  
• An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) - Honestly this was 4 hours long but it felt like 2. There's no denying this is a heavy movie but for its subject matter, it seems to float through its runtime because of deeply you care about the characters by the end. It should feel very grim to get through and I guess it is in parts but you're so drawn into the world that it doesn't matter. RIP Hu Bo.
  
• Happy Hour (2015) See above except 5 hours, however this is probably lighter in tone than An Elephant Sitting Still. It's the dynamic between the four leads, the intimate details we come to know about them and how their relationship changes over the course of the story which is what makes it so weirdly riveting. This is a must-watch for Ozu/Koreeda/Rivette fans. The workshop sequence is weirdly hypnotic and such a genius way of setting up the lead characters.
  
• Life is Sweet (1990) - One of the great films about food and the love of it. Mike Leigh makes it look easier than it is.
  

Sept 2020

• I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) - Not gonna write too much on this as it's quite recent and quite popular on here. But Charlie Kaufman shows no signs of slowing down. As long as people give him the money, seriously someone keep giving him money.
  
• Tomboy (2011) - I'm kinda convinced that in the two decades Celine Sciamma has been working, she might be one of the best needle droppers in cinema ever. This film just exudes empathy for its protagonist. The lead performance is what makes this so tender and charming as well.
  
• A Face of Another (1966) - A film that never wastes its high concept premise, a stunning lead performance (considering the impediments), and a director who deserves praise equal to some of the other Japanese greats.
  
• Muriel's Wedding (1994) - Ridley Scott said he saw this 6 times and that was enough to convince me. I hope it's enough for anyone reading this too. Best use of ABBA in a movie (sorry Mamma Mia fans). Looks so basic on the surface and yet it has some of the best cinematography in any comedy I saw last year.
  
• Mommy (2014) - Best use of montage in the 21st century I've seen. I had a weird experience with this movie in that I found it quite irritating (I know Steve is supposed to be irritating) and then when the montage happened, everything clicked and it was an all-time favourite.
  

Oct 2020

• Drug War (2012) - Johnnie To's direction in this is so meticulous, it's like watching competence porn. The action scenes are back-loaded but they're worth the wait. The movie builds to its climax so effortlessly and it's a tight script, not a minute wasted. At 104 minutes, you could do a hell of a lot worse for an action movie.
  
• Ryan's Daughter (1970) - Feel like this deserves a bit more respect than it already gets in the David Lean canon. It's a case of it being compared to Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago which I feel like is why it's hard done by. The music by Maurice Jarre is fantastic and the central romance is fantastic.
  
• The Heiress (1949) - In a career full of masterpieces, William Wyler's The Heiress stands at the top for me. I gave this a watch after Olivia de Havilland's passing this year and her performance is so so good. The ending is an all-timer for me.
  
• The Vanishing (1988) - If you love thrillers, you owe it to yourself to watch this. Most people have seen it recognise it for the classic it is. The structure of the story takes a more innovative and different turn to how a more conventional movie would set this up.
  
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) If you ever wanted an interesting take on a religious story, then a take by a homosexual, an atheist and a Marxist might just be the one to watch. Very respectful of the source and proof that religious movies can be great.
  

Nov 2020

• Magic Mike XXL (2015) - Yeah honestly this slaps. This is another one of those sequels sort of akin to Mad Max Road Warrior and Fury Road, and Evil Dead 2 where it's better than the first installment because it doesn't have to spend time laboriously setting the world and the characters up. It gets straight into the story and any melodrama is avoided, it's a bro hangout movie without the baggage of 'bro culture' and there's no toxic masculinity. It's a movie that also knows its progressive without having to make it known to the audience like a lot of other (mainly Disney) blockbusters do nowadays. It also breaks rules in the cinematography and editing department by breaking the 180 degree rule. It's really low-stakes, doesn't take itself seriously at all and technically it's really well put together.
  
• A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (2016) - One of those movies where you will never be able to guess where it ends up based on how it begins.
  
• Blue Collar (1978) - For anyone who was a fan of the portrayal of class differences in Parasite, this is definitely worth a watch. Genuinely one of the best directorial debuts I've seen and the ending is a classic. Every character's motivation is so fleshed out and maybe features one of the more morbid death scenes in cinema as well.
  
• The Counsellor (2013) - Yes I also enjoyed this as well lol. This is so hypnotic if you're in the right mood. This is probably one of the most cynical mainstream movies I have ever seen and you'll know within a few minutes if the dialogue is your type of thing. I did see the extended cut for this as I heard it was better than the theatrical version which seems to be a consistent thing with Ridley Scott. Bardem gives a wild performance too.
  
• The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) - Lord is the animation in this stunning. Also this is the best adaptation of the Superman story of 2013, don't @ me.
  

Dec 2020

• Terms of Endearment (1983) - I know the Best Picture winners of the 80s seem to get the most flack from the more recent decades, which is why I, for silly reasons, put this off for so long as I have also fallen victim to caring more about the perceived hype around a film and the awards it gets rather than just assessing a film for what it is. This is a deeply touching, heartfelt movie with I guess you could call an ensemble cast that I think honestly almost anyone could enjoy. What's great is how it avoids easy chances for melodrama and it doesn't villainise anyone in the movie, it only asks us to understand where they're coming from. For anyone Jack Nicholson fans, this is a must-watch.
  
• Sound of Metal (2019) - This is such a compassionate and sensitive film right down to how it was cast, some of the best use of sound design I've seen in a movie in a long time. Again another movie that could've opted for easy choices in writing to create drama between Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke's characters or at Paul Raci's community. Parts of it are telegraphed and expected and yet they still hit you with the force of a train.
  
• Centre Stage (1991) - Maybe Maggie Cheung's career-best performance? The movie itself shows how paint-by-numbers most biopics are by juxtaposing scenes of the actual cast and crew of the film discussing the story of the subject with scenes of the actors recreating the history. I'm not sure if this was influenced somewhat by Kiarostami's Close-Up from the year before, I can't imagine it as there's only a one year gap, but regardless, very impressive. Great use of music as well.
  
• Another Round (2020 I feel like enough has been said about this already, it's certainly blowing up. Vinterberg and Mikkelsen need to work way more than they already do, The Hunt is one of the best of the last decade, and Another Round will be one of the best of this decade. The use of music is phenomenal and the movie makes me wish ensemble awards for acting existed at the Oscars because this everyone is perfect. Maybe one of the best modern movie endings I've seen.
  
• The Up series (1964-present) - This is sort of a collective nomination as I have yet to finish it but if anyone found the central conceit of Boyhood fascinating then this is one to watch. Maybe one of the greatest social examinations conducted ever and for a society thats becoming gradually more and more class conscious, this is worth a watch. Probably not recommended to binge it as video clips from previous installments do get re-used for context because of how they were aired 7 years apart for audiences.
  

For anyone wondering if I'm going to list my most hated movies, unfortunately for those lot that's not something I'm going to do, as I feel like this sub already dumps on a lot of movies as it is and I don't feel the need to add onto that any further.
If you have any questions or thoughts you'd like to share, please do; a big thing that kept me going was the conversation it let me have with others.
Thanks for reading.