A DD of my Portfolio Heavily invested in Penny Stocks
I'm going to do a quick overview and DD into my portfolio atm. I believe most of the stocks I'm invested in are highly undervalued and primed for moderate to extreme gains. My whole portfolio is not in penny stocks but a significant portion is and I think relevant to this sub. This is my first publicly posted DD and would welcome any criticism or corrections that any other market watchers or casual readers think would make it better. Disclosure of my owned shares and buy-in prices will be listed in this DD. Cash Percentage - Undisclosed AAPL (Apple INC) - 8 Shares Bought at 133.9893/Currently Valued at 136.76 Market Cap: 2.29T Quick DD- On January 27th, 2021 Apple released its Q1 financial results, posting record revenue, up 21% year over year. However the day of this announcement the price fell because of all the GameStop hype. Hedge funds liquidating large portions of their portfolio in an attempt to join in the GME feeding frenzy or to help cover short losses, or create new short positions, pushed the whole market significantly down. At the time the stock was valued at 142.06, and with news of this monumental success for the company, the stock fell to 131.96 before beginning to recover. With news of their deal with Audi/Kia venture into the EV/Self-driving Car market and their previous quarters record earnings I expect the stock to recover in some way. Low-End Scenario- AAPL rises to meet its old valuation as the market decides that despite its record earnings and new ventures it is only as valuable as before. Sell Point: 142.00 Market Cap: 2.38T Gains: 3.8% Mid End Scenario- AAPL rises past its old valuation as the market rewards it for its impressive quarterly performance. Sell Point:146.00 Market Cap:2.45T Gains: 6.7% High-End Scenario- Their venture into the EV & Self-driving Car market is greeted with delight and the companies valuation reflects investors' faith that Apple will reach a level in which it competes with GM, Tesla, and Volvo in this market as well. This would add the valuation of 1/4th of Tesla onto the company. Sell Point:160.00 Market Cap:2.68T Gains: 17% Worst Case- With Increased Volatility in the market centered around the SEC investigation and Retail traders putting pressure on hedge funds you might see blue-chip stocks such as AAPL decrease in value as the largest holders of these positions sell off to try and cover riskier bets. Conclusion- Putting some amount of your portfolio into a blue-chip stock as a buffer and safer bet is never a bad thing. I also personally believe AAPL has a lot of room for growth and profit compared to other safe blue-chip alternatives. CBDD (CBD of Denver Inc) - 30k Shares Bought at 0.029/Currently Valued at 0.027 Market Cap: 108M Quick DD- CBD of Denver (CBDD) is a CBD production company, specializing in the sale of CBD products that don't contain the 420 Blaze it quality we are all familiar with. The majority of their sales currently come throught online sales via ([www.blackpearlcbd.com\](https://www.blackpearlcbd.com)). They also have plans to expand and monetize a CBD focused Social Network, I am personally very bearish on the Social Network Idea though I believe the rest of their business though is solid and currently Undervalued. Their are three major factors that I believe prime this company for a large jump in the future. While first-quarter revenue for 2021 has not been released yet, their revenue in Q4 of 2020 was 8.65M a 40% increase from their 5.96M Revenue in Q3. If they do not increase revenue any further and in fact regress back to Q3 Revenue levels of 5.96M the company itself is just straight undervalued. 5.96M per quarter is equivalent to a 24M yearly revenue, and a company making 24M a year is worth closer to 170M a 57.4% increase from it's current value. If its gains in revenue are more permanent or continue to increase the valuation of this company should easily hit the 300M mark within the next year. Secondly the new administration in the US I believe is much more likely to federally legalize marijuana in the states. This would be a huge boon to this company as a primed and ready entrant into this new market, and while competition may already exist, any increase in market size is primed to increase this companies value. Third CBDD has two subsidiaries in Switzerland (Rockflow, and GmbH&CBD Welt 24) which provide wholesale distribution throughout Europe. As the its member countries in the EU relax restrictions on Marijuana as well, CBDD is also primed to enter that market. Low-End Scenario- CBDD slowly rises to a valuation more in line with their current revenue. Sell Point:0.043 Market Cap:172.8M Gains: 62.7% Mid End Scenario- CBDD rises to a valuation in line with its quarter over quarter revenue growth. Sell Point:0.06 Market Cap:242M Gains: 222% High-End Scenario- CBDD rises in valuation based on large revenue growth as the US legalizes marijuana, & European countries lower the barrier for entry of non-THC marijuana-related products. Sell Point:0.125 Market Cap:500M Gains: 462% Worst Case- As with any penny-stock CBDD may drop out of the market entirely leaving you with no gains at all. Conclusion- I believe CBDD is primed to make a large jump in the 50% gains range with little to no change in its actual business, allowing those who buy in now to hold in hopes of Higher gains without risking losses. HITIF (Hight Tide INC) - 2k Shares Bought at 0.446/Currently Valued at 0.611 Market Cap: 282.69M Quick DD- Hightide is a conglomerate of many mid-sized marijuana dispensaries and distributors. Their Brands span from Canada to Amsterdam, as well as a recent acquisition CBDcity which has thrust them into the online marketplace as well. They not only distribute marijuana but also produce smoking products such as vapes and pipes. As with CBDD I believe the possible legalization federally in the US and the relaxing of restrictions in more EU countries will be a catalyst for increased revenue year over year. Their growth has been explosive, increasing quarterly. With assets valued at 78M alone, and profits in Q3 increasing 180% from the year before to 23.2M from 8.29M the year before, I believe it is currently valued correctly if there is no continuation of their growth. However, I believe the company will continue to grow especially if more and larger markets become available to them. Low-End Scenario- HITIF loses momentum and stops growing, if this occurs the value is probably correctly gauged and the price will remain pretty stable. Sell Point:0.6 Market Cap:277M Gains: -1.8% Mid End Scenario- HITIF gains access to the US market gaining a solid hold. Sell Point:2.16 Market Cap:1B Gains: 460% High End- HITIF gains access to the US market and using its pre-existing infrastructure and experience operating, it gains a dominant hold on the US market. Sell Point:8.65 Market Cap:4B Gains: 1443% Worst Case- A shift in the Canadian market or laws makes HITIF inoperable putting it out of business Conclusion- I believe HITIF has already reached a correct valuation for its current presence in the market, however, it's previously shown growth and the potential of new markets becoming available to it in the near future means the upside for this company is very large. INND (Innerscope Hearing) - 50k Shares Bought at 0.011/Currently Valued at 0.0267 Market Cap: 92.27M Quick DD- This DD has been posted a lot on pennystocks but here is my quick take on it. Four major factors for growth concerning this company, and comparisons to competitors Market Cap. Their main competitor in the hearing aid marketplace is EAR (Eargo Inc) who has a 2.5B Market Cap. They produce a cheaper product than this competition. While the product itself isn't cheap\* it is about 1k cheaper than EAR's flagship product. Secondly, they are launching a kiosk & point of sale network to help people figure out if they are hard of hearing and to push their product on those who are. Thirdly, and this is solely financial, they plan to become current in the near future allowing them to Uplist to larger exchanges with eyes towards the NASDAQ (though probably not anytime soon). Last but not least there currently are new Over the Counter laws coming into effect regarding hearing aids. INND is expecting 1000x sales growth when these laws come into effect. While I personally think these numbers are over-optimistic even fractional growth compared to 1000x is still a large win. Low-End Scenario- INND gets current with their financials and opens themselves up to larger scale investing. Sell Point:0.04 Market Cap:138.2M Gains: 53.8% Mid End Scenario- INND gains a foothold in the Hearing aid Market, while not overtaking EAR they do become a staple in pharmacies and large retailers. 1/4th size of EAR Sell Point:0.2 Market Cap:691.2M Gains: 769% High-End Scenario- INND becomes EAR's largest competitor equaling if not beating them into the new OTC (over the counter) market as well as providing large competition in the prescription space. Sell Point:0.8 Market Cap:2.76B Gains: 3076% Worst Case- INND does not get current with its filings and the OTC law does not come into effect how they believed it would. This forces share dilution as they try to raise capital to continue research, and apply for FDA approval again. Conclusion- I believe of all the stocks I will discuss here this is the most likely to bottom out completely, however, I also believe it has the most room to grow. INND has solid optimism around it and even just getting current with their filings will likely lead to short-term gains for any investor, not including any business side news. They have a legitimate shot at becoming the largest player in the hearing aid marketplace, and if they achieve this their valuation would likely equal EAR if not possibly expand beyond them if these OTC laws increase the 14.4billion dollar market. With large gains possible on little risk, I believe it is worth investing a small part of your portfolio here at least. USDR (UAS Drone Corp) - 2k Shares Bought at 0.445/Currently Valued at 0.79 Market Cap:31.66M Quick DD- UAS Drone Corp is the least public-facing of the companies I am going to discuss today. They are a drone company, however, they have no focus on the retail space, they design Drones for military use. This lack of a public-facing element is the reason why researching them was the hardest of any company on this list. However, as recently as last year they were valued at 560M based on production contracts. As those reached their end dates the valuation of the company plummeted to 2.4M. I believe this was an extreme overcorrection. They have recently reached a production deal with Elbit in which they will receive royalty payments from the production of TIKAD units on a mass scale. The deal stipulates the agreement is valid for 15 more years following UAS Drone Corps receiving 50M in revenue from sales. They have also been in talks with the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) for orders. I believe personally that if Israel believes these drones are combat-ready, other countries will also jump on board, specifically Saudi Arabia, The USA, and EU staples like Germany and France. They also have pre-existing contracts for an "undisclosed project" in the Asia Pacific region. The non-specificity of this is worrying, but based on the equipment it produces I believe it exists at the discretion of the customer not so much the company. With just the current Deals in place, I believe the company is criminally undervalued and has been spiking day over day, which I expect to continue. Low-End Scenario- USDR increases in value based on its current contract with Elbit. Sell Point:1.5 Market Cap:60m Gains: 89.8% Mid End Scenario- USDR's deal in the Asia Pacific region is disclosed to the public, or their production deal with Israel goes through. Sell Point:5 Market Cap:200m Gains: 633% High-End Scenario- Israel's use of the Tikad equipped drone sets an example for other modern militaries galvanizing a large influx of customers. Sell Point:16 Market Cap:640M Gains: 2025% Worst Case- The Israeli deal falls through, as well the Asian Pacific Deal, making their royalty agreement worthless with Elbit. As the companies main intellectual property becomes worthless the company crashes back to its lowest levels. Conclusion- I believe that the contacts USDR already has in the military-industrial complex based on years of operation within it will serve it well as it works its way back into the market. If only a few of the deals go through the company would instantly be insanely more valuable than it's currently considered, and the high end of this is a new force in the market producing small drones with military-grade equipment for ground combat, doing things to dangerous for soldiers to do themselves. I hope some of this is helpful to you. I wrote this mostly for myself and review, however, so please criticize, correct and disagree where you think points are wrong, poorly made, poorly written, or uninformed.
We would like to welcome all newcomers to our community. We are a piracy news community where we inform the latest news related to video game piracy, including major scene and P2P releases. Before you make a submission, we would like you to read our rules. If you are still not sure if you should post on our subreddit, then please read our FAQ before making a post, as well as our posting guidelines. You can also message the moderation team here. FAQ: Q:Hello, I am new to this subreddit, how does this work?
Very simple. If you are wondering if a game is cracked, then you can use a search bar and type in a game. If it doesn't appear, you can still post a question in the weekly question thread, or cracksupport. Please do not make a separate question post, because it will be deleted and you will be warned.
CrackStatus is considered to be the predecessor of Crack Watch. In the end of September 2016, group of CrackStatus mods were demoted due to the trust issues that the owner had with those mods. The same mods made CrackWatch. Few days later, CrackStatus was shut down by the owner, and CrackWatch took its place. Now, it's used as an archive of previous posts.
Do you guys deal with piracy in general or only video game piracy?
Only video game piracy.
Where are the download links? All I see are NFO's.
We cannot share download links to illegal content, because it's against reddits global rules. We can give you a list of domains where you can get your desired content, but after that, you are on your own. We also ask you to not share these download links with others, because we will delete them and most likely ban you. We take this rule very seriously.
What is an NFO?
NFO's are like readme.txt that scene makes. It gives you instructions, a general description of the game and some additional information.
What is the Scene? And what is P2P?
The Scene is an underground community of people who crack and share copyrighted material. They have strict rules that all scene members have to abide. P2P are independent crackers who don't follow the scene rules.
No. This subreddit is about informing people on cracks and piracy news. We don't take requests. You should try finding your answer in https://cs.rin.ru forum.
Do you guys know if X game will be cracked or will X game use Denuvo?
No, nobody knows. Don't get your hopes up, scene members won't answer your questions.
Why doesn't the Scene crack games that community wants?
Scene groups don't care about the community, they crack for fame.
Does the Scene have an official website?
No
Can I support the scene in any way?
No, just give money to the devs who deserve your money
HOODLUM releases contain minetrojan/worm/virus! Why aren't they untrusted?
Any official Scene release containing malicious content would have been instantly nuked by the topsite moderators. HOODLUM would have been kicked out from the Scene and all of their releases would be nuked, then you wouldn't see HOODLUM releases coming at all. The nukes would also provide reasoning of their nukes. So no, because they are still in Scene and no major forum has reported that their releases are malicious, we will continue considering it false positive.
Why is IGG untrusted? I used them for years! Never got a virus!
IGG has been in a lot of controversies lately. They are held responsible for shutting down one of the best piracy websites Good Old Downloads by doxing the owner and threatening to call the police on him. On top of that, they add their own DRM in their uploads, which is ironic itself. While IGG releases themselves are not malicious, their actions are the reasons why they go to untrusted list.
Why is piratebay untrusted?
Piratebay is no longer the same piratebay it once was. Their torrents are unmoderated, which means malware releases are very common and there are also reports that ISP's use them to bait the users into catching them downloading torrents then striking/fining them. There are much better websites than piratebay, see bellow the Scene group list.
When is X game going to be cracked? What is the current progress on X game?
Impossible to know. We don't have any contact with any of the scene members, and even if we did, they wouldn't tell us.
If a certain Denuvo game was already cracked, does that mean all future DLC's and updates are going to be cracked as soon as they release?
Unfortunately no. When a Denuvo game gets an update, the entire Denuvo build changes within the game. The game would have to be re cracked from the start all over again. This is why they dont get a regular update like with other games.
Where can I see status of a certain Denuvo game?
The main page of this subreddit has a stickied post called "[Crack Watch] Games". It is frequently updated
I need to find a torrent for a specific game, can you guys help me?
Do you guys think X game will be cracked, what's your opinion on...
Please refrain from posting threads like these and instead use other subreddits like Piracy if you are going to make empty speculations or opinion-based threads.
Why can't I comment or post?
You need 5 comment karma. You can easily acquire it by posting on other subreddits through Reddit, like cracksupport. It takes 5 minutes.
What are seeders and leechers?
A Seeder is someone from whom you can download a piece of file. Hence they affect the overall availability of files on P2P network. A Leecher is someone who has downloaded a file but is not sharing it back to P2P network. Hence, the overall availability of file decreases.
What is a repack?
A repack is a compressed pirated game using various compression software in order to lower the size of the game. It's most commonly used by people with limited bandwidth or people with low download speed.
What happened to Voksi? Why did he suddenly stop cracking Denuvo?
On July 25th, 2018, Voksi's computer was seized by Bulgarian cybercrime police. He was sued by Denuvo's parent company, Irdeto. Voksi has stated that his cracking days are over and that he is currently focusing on Irdeto's lawsuit against him.
What are the risks of downloading a torrent containing cracks?
It depends on a lot of things: Where do you live, how strict are copyright laws in your country and how much does the government enforce these laws. Countries like France, Germany and UK are known to have extremely strict copyright laws where they will usually heavily fine you if you are caught downloading pirated content. If you live in a country where copyright law is enforced heavily, you might need to get yourself a VPN, and unfortunately, you will also have to invest some money in getting a good VPN to protect you, because free VPNs rarely work.
How is this subreddit not shut down?
The same reason Piracy is not shut down. There is nothing illegal on this subreddit and nothing that breaks Reddit's Terms of Service. If there is, we encourage users to report it to us so that we immediately remove it.
Are you related by crackwatch.com website by any chance?
No
Where else can I find CrackWatch community?
We have discord (linked in the sidebar), Twitter (@realCrackWatch), and a backup sub on saidit.net (https://saidit.net/crackwatch).
List of video game scene crackers:
CPY/Conspir4cy
CODEX
RELOADED
SKIDROW (Has tendency to steal from P2P crackers ocasionally)
This is the story of a former roommate I had several years ago. I live in Germany, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes I make while writing this story. English is not my first language. This neckbeard’s name was Hans, and I lived with him for one year after I graduated college. He and I shared an apartment with a third person. I had always thought that Hans was a strange man, but I never tried to put him into any kind of category. In reading stories from this subreddit though, I realized that Hans was most definitely a neckbeard. When I first met Hans, nothing particularly strange jumped out at me. He was about average height and chubby, but nowhere near as fat as neckbeards seem to often get. Unlike the stereotype of neckbeards, Hans didn’t stink. In fact, his hygiene was perfectly fine. Granted, Europe places less emphasis on personal hygiene than America does, so maybe by American standards Hans would be considered stinky. He did dress in some neckbeardy clothes, but I’ll talk more about that later. What Hans lacked in neckbeardy appearance though, he more than made up for with his actions and personality. Hans spent most of his free time playing video games, often World of Warcraft. On the weekends, he often played WOW for 15 hours a day. Hans also watched a lot of anime, sometimes in his room, and sometimes on the TV in the living room with the volume turned up. This was done with the ever present unhealthy foods in his hand. On the topic of unhealthy foods, let me tell you about what Hans ate. While American neckbeards like Doritos and Mountain Dew, Hans preferred more German foods. He loved Crunchips, which are German chips flavored with paprika. They taste similar to barbecue potato chips. He also ate a lot of Kinder brand chocolate. In place of Mountain Dew, Hans drank Spezi, which is a German soda which tastes like a mix of cola and orange flavor. When Hans’s mother came to visit, which was often, she would bring lebkuchen, which are German cookies similar to gingerbread. Come to think of it, I don’t think Hans ever ate a fruit or vegetable the entire year I knew him. He did sometimes make pasta or quesadillas in the kitchen, but he would always sit in front of the TV and eat them as he watched anime. I’m sure you can imagine the horrific bowel movements this man generated as a result of this diet, and you would be correct. Hans spent easily 30 to 45 minutes on the toilet every morning. Hans worked in an electronics store during the time I knew him. He certainly knew a lot about televisions, computers, and gaming systems, but Hans thought of himself as far more intelligent than he actually was. He liked to talk about topics he knew very little about. I’m pretty sure that most of Hans’s information on these topics came from Wikipedia, as he often would have Wikipedia open on his computer. Have you seen the “bro explaining” meme? That’s about what a conversation with Hans felt like. He truly did fit the stereotype of neckbeards saying “actually”, followed by almost certainly false information. Now Hans considered himself as a special forces soldier, despite having zero training in any form of fighting style. Hans liked to wear those synthetic police pants with the big pockets. I’m not sure what you would call them in English, but you get the idea. He also wore black leather boots which looked like he bought them online for less than 30 dollars. Knowing him, he probably did. Hans also liked Star Wars and video game shirts, which, combined with his pants and boots made for a very unfashionable combination. The outfit was completed with one of Hans’s hats. His favorite was his Dallas Cowboys hat, which was weird because never had any interest in American football, not to mention the fact that we lived an entire ocean away from Texas. Hans always carried a knife. I always have my pocketknife with me too, but while mine is small and discrete, Hans’s was ugly, huge, and looked like it cost 10 dollars. No matter what was going on, that big stupid knife was always clipped in Hans’s pants. When Hans wasn’t playing WOW, or defiling the toilet with his ungodly stools, he could sometimes be found in the living room practicing his fighting skills. Along with WOW, one of the games Hans liked was Metal Gear Solid, and he said he based his fighting moves on what the main character, Solid Snake, did in the game. Why this was the game he chose, I have no idea. But while Snake was a large strong man who knew how to fight, Hans was a chubby man child who had the skill and coordination of a drunken bear. I would see him swing his fists around at an imaginary assailant, then after a minute or two he would get out of breath and sit down to drink a cup of Spezi. Once he regained his breath, Hans would get back up and practice his knife fighting skills. This consisted of more of the same. He would stand there and wave his knife around to mimic fighting his assailant. The only good thing was that German laws prevented Hans from owning any guns. If this had happened, I’m sure we would have ended up with the roof, floor, or walls accidentally getting ventilated with bullet holes. Hans was also a proud atheist. A significant number of people in Germany are atheist, but few match Hans’s interest in talking about the subject or his complete scorn for those who believe religion. Hans had a shelf of extremely atheist books, and he would proudly discuss them with anyone who would listen. Hans called religious people “Teletubbyzurückwinker” which roughly translates as “One who waves back to Teletubbies”, and is apparently used to describe a person who is stupid or childish. I’ve lived in Germany my whole life, and Hans was the first person I’ve heard use this term. It does seem to be quite popular on the internet though. I assure you it sounds nearly as ridiculous in German as it does in English. He would also go on rants to nobody in particular about how there being a God is impossible because it would violate the laws of thermodynamics. Not that Hans knew anything about thermodynamics, but that wouldn’t stop him from talking about it. For all Hans’s weirdness though, he mostly just kept to himself and didn’t bother me. As far as I know, he didn’t stalk women or talk with them in a creepy way as many neckbeards seem to do. He was certainly a strange man, but he was pretty harmless. Hans wasn’t nearly as bad a roommate as many neckbeards would be. He didn’t stink, and he never made a mess or anything like that. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I would be willing to have Hans as a roommate again. Well anyway, thanks for reading my story and I apologize again for any mistakes I’ve made while writing this.
I am 23 years old, making $6,993/year in Manila as a Social Media Analyst.
NOTE:All currency has been converted to USD (1 PHP = 0.021 USD) Intro: I hope this gives people an idea of what life is like on the other side of the world, in the Philippines. I’ve also included Ref29’s questions at the beginning to give you more insight into my background. Please know that writing this turned out to be much harder than I had originally anticipated since it forced me to confront several things about me, particularly about my mental health and my privilege. I’m aware that I’m incredibly privileged and have lived a very comfortable, sheltered life, when compared to most Filipinos, especially amid this global pandemic when practically half the country is starving. I’m really nervous to share this with all of you, but please be easy on me as this was not easy for me to do. Ref29 questions: Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it? Yes, education is held in high regard here in the Philippines, to the point that landing a well-paying job without a bachelor’s is extremely hard, if not downright possible. Parents are also expected to pay for the entirety of college, although, of course, this isn’t true for all. Coming from an upper-middle-class family, I was even more pressured to land a spot in one of the Big 4 universities, which is sort of like the equivalent of the Ivy League here. In the Philippines, college admission involves taking an entrance exam at each college that you’re applying to, so my senior year of high school was spent in after-class prep centers to prepare for this. Fortunately, I was able to major in a pre-law course in a Big 4 university, which my parents fully paid for. Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances? My parents had the mindset of “work hard, play hard,” which meant that they worked seven days a week, but compensated for it with week-long family vacations abroad between twice to thrice a year. As I mentioned, this was a very privileged upbringing. They weren’t extremely thrifty, but they definitely instilled in us values like delayed gratification and spending money only if you worked hard for it. They also insisted that my brother and I save at least 20% of our allowances, so upon reaching first grade, we were taken to the bank to open a junior savings account. Unfortunately, our business has taken a huge hit, due to policies that the current government has, so we’ve had to significantly tighten our belts. We don’t worry about putting food on the table or of being unable to afford basic necessities; however, we’ve had to do away with things like weekend shopping trips, impulse purchases, eating out every week, and international vacations for the past two or three years now. Did you worry about money growing up? It’s extremely privileged of me to say this, but no. I didn’t. I come from generational wealth on my mom’s side while my paternal grandfather owns several properties. I was always secure in the fact that if we were ever struggling financially, one of my grandparents would end up bailing us out. Do you worry about money now? Yes, I’m currently saving up to go to law school abroad. This will mean repeating my bachelor’s, but this program will open up so many opportunities for me. However, it also means having to save up at least $20,000 to make it work, and I’m still pretty far from my goal. At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net? I’m not yet financially responsible for myself. My 22-year-old brother, E, and I are still living with our parents, and they’ve refused our offer to pitch in with the bills. They both believe that as long as they’re still working, then it’s their duty to provide for their children. However, this also means that their kids are their retirement plans, which is a very common mentality in the Philippines. Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain. No, I haven’t. SECTION ONE: ASSETS AND DEBT Retirement Balance: All my money right now is being poured to fund my future studies, so I don’t have a retirement balance yet. I don’t know if this is wise or not, and this has been a great cause for my anxiety these past few months. Savings Account Balance: I have approximately $16,000 spread out across three different bank accounts right now. Miscellaneous Debt: I bought AirPods from my friend last year, and she asked me to pay her back in installments, so she wouldn’t be tempted to spend all the money in one go. I have approximately $56 left on this, which I’ll be paying next month. SECTION TWO: INCOME Income Progression: This is my first job ever. As I previously mentioned, school is extremely important here in the Philippines. In my case, throughout my elementary and high school years, I was in school from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and this was supplemented by after-class tutoring sessions and weekend advanced classes. College was basically the same since I decided to take up two minor degrees, in addition to my major, which meant that I took 8-10 classes every semester. So, I didn’t have time at all for a part-time job, which was okay, given the fact that my parents funded my education 100%. 2019-2020: I graduated from university in June 2019 and my parents asked me to start working in the family business. This didn’t turn out so good, though, since they refused to pay me a salary and would guilt-trip me whenever I’d take money from the day’s sales to pay for my expenses. When talks of a lockdown began in February 2020, I began looking for a job that would allow me to work remote since I had an inkling that our business would be shut down. Fortunately, my friend recommended me for an open position in the company that she was working at, and that’s where I’ve been since then. In addition to my full-time job as a Social Media Analyst, I also started doing freelance work early last year. Main Job Monthly Take Home: This varies. I’m considered a freelancer in my job, despite the fact that I’ve been with them since early 2020. I think they mostly do this to avoid paying me benefits, which is morally questionable but sort-of legal in the Philippines. So, I get paid a daily rate and am on a no-work-no-pay basis. If I don’t take any leaves for the month, then my take-home pay will be $582.79. Side Gig Monthly Take Home: Again, this varies. In 2020, I believe I averaged approximately $1,200 per month. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hit these same numbers this year, though. SECTION THREE: EXPENSES All expenses below are monthly unless otherwise specified. Phone Bill: This varies, depending on my data usage. Our WiFi doesn’t reach the second floor, so I’m forced to use my data if I’m working or staying in my bedroom. Our phone bills during lockdown were also suspended and have been amortized over six months since then, so I’m still paying this off. Currently, my phone bill can be anywhere from $52 to $83. Subscriptions: Spotify Premium ($3) – but this is added to my phone bill, thanks to my service provider. I also pay for Babbel ($13) because language learning is my hobby, and I’m currently learning Brazilian Portuguese. Pet Expenses: I average about $10 for my dog’s food and treats. A trip to the vet for a regular check-up is $8. My local government unit provides certain pet vaccines for free, so we get our shots from them. Other: My brother, E, and I have privately agreed to answer for the expenses that our 10-year-old brother, L, incurs. So, we pay for his food, school supplies, etc. I budget $15 for him, but I’m not upset if I have to go over this amount. Right now, though, I’m paying for most of L’s expenses since E’s business isn’t doing too hot, due to the post-holiday slump. DISCLAIMER: Face masks are mandatory, if you’re outside. People also aren’t allowed to go into establishments if they don’t have a face mask + face shield on. Both of these were worn at all times outside my home. DAY ONE - SUNDAY, JANUARY 10 10:00 a.m. – My cousin and her husband are heading to the shopping mall to run a few errands. I go with them to have my eyes checked as my last prescription was from 2019. The doctor tells me that astigmatism in my right eye has been corrected (thank god) but that my left eye has gotten worse (noooo). I buy contact lenses and have them put in new lenses in my specs. $93 1:30 p.m. – My cousin is a few weeks pregnant and is craving mushroom soup from a particular chain restaurant, so we head over there. I get a burger and offer to pay for my share, but she and her husband refuse. 5:00 p.m. – My parents are very religious and require us to attend Sunday Mass every week as a family. Our church has the recommended COVID-19 measures in place (2-3 people to a pew, contact tracing, etc.), but I’m still annoyed that the Catholic Church here is trying to claim that mass is an essential service that should be allowed to continue, even when it clearly isn’t. 6:00 p.m. – Before heading home, we drop off take-out dinner for my Grandma. She lives alone, so we try to visit her at least once a week. We talk through the gate, though, to keep her safe. 11:00 p.m. – As a social media analyst, my shift is from 12 a.m. to 9 a.m. because I have to take note of all the online traction from the day before. This has worked rather well for me, mainly because I have insomnia. Daily Total: $93 DAY TWO - MONDAY, JANUARY 11 5:30 a.m. – On Mondays, I have to analyze all social media traction from the weekend, and this has definitely cemented my deep hatred for this day of the week. Fortunately, it wasn’t too terrible this time. I chill for a bit by catching an episode of Friend Zone, a TV series from Thailand that’s sort of like Gossip Girl, except they’re middle-class and have actual jobs. 7:00 a.m. – I wake up L for his classes and begin working on my freelance job. Breakfast is leftovers from Sunday night dinner, so I have Truffle Mac and Cheese, and Garlic Parmesan Chicken Wings. My parents and E usually leave very early in the morning for their respective businesses, so it’s usually just me and L. 10:00 a.m. – I send off my social media reports and watch an episode of Fairy Tail. 1:00 p.m. – My brain is out of creative juices, so I take a nap. Before doing so, I place an order to replenish my toner ($5) and AHA serum ($5). I’m also running low on my fish oil capsules, so I order that too ($6.87). My total comes out to $19.25, due to shipping. $19.25 3:00 p.m. – L wakes up from my nap and I work some more before heading out to walk my dog. It’s cold outside – 28ºC or 82.4ºF. This is how winters in Manila look like! 6:45 p.m. – Dinner is white rice, Steamed Tilapia, and Ginataang Sigarilyas. According to Google, this translates to “Winged Beans in Coconut Milk.” I don’t know if this translation is 100% legit but it’s probably one of my favorite vegetable dishes ever. Daily Total: $19.25 DAY THREE - TUESDAY, JANUARY 12 2:30 a.m. – One of my accounts is in crisis mode, so their reports are much more finicky than usual. When I feel that my brain is about to explode from reading social media posts, I work on my freelance deliverables. 7:00 a.m. – Again, I wake up L. Tuesdays are hard for him because he has back-to-back classes, and it isn’t long before I notice that he seems a bit overwhelmed. This year has been tough for him because we moved him to a new school and this, plus online learning, meant that he’s had to adjust like crazy. It’s too much for a 10-year-old, I think. I buy him his favorite Iced Cacao milk tea (I think it’s called boba in the States) to cheer him up and order an Iced Matcha for myself ($7.89). We drink our milk teas while having a very healthy breakfast of hotdogs and rice. $7.89 11:00 a.m. – The rest of the morning goes by quickly. I send off my reports, work on my deliverables, pitch to new clients, answer e-mails, and so on. Unfortunately, two of my clients have declined to work with me again since I was a bit late with a few of my deliverables, due to the holiday season. I try to take it as a sign from the universe that I need to slow down, but I’m still pretty sad about it. 5:30 p.m. – I wake up from a nap and notice that my phone bill is due, so I pay ($53.49). I Dinner tonight is Fried Milkfish, Rice cooked with Crab Fat, and Sayote sa Sotanghon, which is basically chayote mixed with vermicelli. $53.49 Daily Total: $61.38 DAY FOUR - WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13 2:00 a.m. – Thank God, my account has ended its crisis mode, so work is a bit more chill. Again, social media traction and freelance work. When I was 15, I thought I’d be spending my early twenties in a high-paying corporate job, wearing cute clothes and going to parties afterward. Instead, I’m spending it in teddy bear pajamas. I blame Gossip Girl and Korean dramas for my unrealistic expectations. 7:00 a.m. – After waking up L and sending off my reports, I spend the rest of the day working on my freelance jobs. 11:30 a.m. – Our live-in helper, J, prepares fried chicken for lunch and I eat it with L. He still has some time left before his next class, so I play a few rounds of Among Us with him. I honestly don’t enjoy the game as much as I make it seem I do, but it’s his absolute favorite and I like having these small bonding moments with my little brother. 1:45 p.m. – My brain can’t take it anymore, and I pass out from exhaustion. 3:30 p.m. – L wakes me up from my nap and I try my best to get a few more things done. Thankfully, my next deadline involves a podcast script on a certain historical event. These are pretty easy to write, although researching them can be a pain in the ass sometimes. 4:00 p.m. – I take a break from work by checking out apartment listings because it’s fun, even though I have no plans to move out. I honestly want to, mainly because my relationship with my parents isn’t that great, and living back home has highlighted that even more. E has it worse, though, and his relationship with our dad has deteriorated so much that they got into a few physical fights during lockdown. While I can afford to move out, E can’t and of course, L is underage, so I can’t take him with me. Right now, I’m bearing the brunt of my parents’ stress and frustration, and if I leave, then it’s likely that they’ll start taking it out on my brothers. So, I don’t because I’m their eldest sister and a huge part of me feels like it’s my duty to protect them. But if worse comes to worst, then I’m ready to shoulder E and his expenses. He only started his business last year, so it isn’t super profitable yet. The post-holiday slump hasn’t been kind to him either. 5:30 p.m. – Dinner is Tinolang Manok, which is a dish that consists of chicken and papaya slices cooked in ginger-flavored broth. For me, it’s a must-eat during “wintertime.” While eating, my parents ask me what my plans are for my upcoming birthday. They’re trying to pressure me to treat the entire family to dinner, but I decline because a) I’m trying to save money, and b) COVID-19. 8:45 p.m. – I take a shower and catch a few episodes of a Chinese drama called “A Love So Beautiful.” Then, it’s back to work. Daily Total: $0 DAY FIVE – THURSDAY, JANUARY 14 3:45 a.m. – I finish my main job early, so I go and work on some deliverables, but I keep getting distracted by “A Love So Beautiful” that I barely get anything done. Before I know it, it’s nearly time to wake my brother up, and I haven’t accomplished anything at all. 5:00 a.m. – My mom brought home fried chicken from McDonalds last night for L’s breakfast, but I’m so hungry that I steal it. I order the same thing ($5.50) and schedule a 6:30 a.m. delivery to hide my crime. $5.50 7:00 a.m. – I wake up L, shower, and settle in to watch the final episode in the series. I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t get anything done until I find out what happens to Chen Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen. 12:00 p.m. – I must be more torn up about losing two clients than I initially thought I was because I end up crying while working on a deliverable. I lock myself in my room and plan to have a good 10-minute crying session, but this quickly into a full-on breakdown. I never really recognized the impact that my home situation and lack of proper sleep have left on me, but it looks like the emotional toll is too much. I’m also feeling really anxious about one of my long-time clients, who I feel is a bit disappointed with my work lately, and this sends me spiraling even more. I end up crying for a good hour or so. It would have gone on longer, had it not been for L, who knocks on my door and cuddles me for a bit. He can tell that I’m upset, thanks to my swollen eyes, so he offers to treat me to milk tea using his Christmas money. It’s sweet, but I decline. 4:00 p.m. – After working and a quick nap, I put on a Korean eye mask to hide how swollen they are. My dad gets annoyed whenever we cry since he perceives it to be a sign of weakness. I know that he’s completely wrong about this, but I’m too exhausted to argue with him tonight. 5:00 p.m. – Dinner is white rice and Pork Bistek. I don’t know if that has a proper English translation, but it’s basically pork chops and onions cooked in soy sauce and calamansi juice. I’m still feeling pretty lethargic from my breakdown earlier, so I take a cold shower to feel refreshed. 10:00 p.m. – I guess breaking down uses up a lot of energy because I’m starving, even though dinner was only a few hours ago. L is also hungry, so we ask J to buy us Puto Bumbong, which is a steamed purple rice cake topped with margarine, coconut flakes, and brown sugar. This particular stall also puts cheese and condensed milk on theirs. I personally find it too sweet, but L is in love, as only 10-year-old boys who can eat a whole jar of Nutella can be. J uses the leftover money from today’s dinner to pay. 11:30 p.m. – Work is pretty chill today, so I watch an anime called “The Promised Neverland” in-between monitoring social media traction. Daily Total: $5.50 DAY SIX – FRIDAY, JANUARY 15 12:00 a.m. – Happy 23rd birthday to me! I initially wanted to go to treat myself to a spa to celebrate my birthday, but I canceled my booking because of COVID-19. Hopefully, the Philippine government will finally get its shit together by March, which is when I had my appointment rebooked. I’m doubtful, but hopeful. 7:00 a.m. – I log off for the week and settle in to finally enjoy some no-work bliss. Kidding! I wake up L, take a shower, and work on my freelancing deliverables. Since it’s my birthday, J allows me to decide what breakfast will be and I pick chicken nuggets because I know that it’s something that L will enjoy too. 11:00 a.m. – My lack of sleep this week has caught up to me, and I pass out from exhaustion. Thankfully, I don’t have any deadlines today. 4:30 p.m. – L wakes me up, and we dress for Mass. My parents require us to attend Mass together as a family whenever it’s someone’s birthday. L isn’t allowed inside the church because of my area’s COVID-19 restrictions, so he and E sit outside. I’m jealous because the air is so stuffy inside the church that breathing through a mask and a face shield is a struggle. 6:00 p.m. – We come home and a few of my other family members are there for a...surprise birthday dinner. I’m trying not to feel annoyed at the fact that my parents went against my wishes because I know they mean well, but still. I had planned a quiet night with anime and a face mask to celebrate my birthday, but of course, this won’t be feasible any longer. I’m trying not to let my irritation show because everyone made an effort to be here, but still. Oh well, at least they kept the number of guests below 10, in line with restrictions. 6:30 p.m. – My mom ordered food from a caterer, and we settle in for a dinner of Baked Salmon in Cheese with Green Beans, Braised Chicken with Rosemary and Potatoes, and Ox Tongue with Mushrooms. They’re all pretty good, but I can’t help but dream of the face mask that I had prepared in anticipation of tonight. 11:00 p.m. – I nurse a glass of white wine, and it isn’t long before my aunt and I have managed to polish off the entire bottle. I can’t help but feel a bit sad because only two of my friends greeted me today. I know that I shouldn’t put a lot of stock into birthday greetings because they’re just words, and I know that all my friends are busy with work, and I also know that they’re going through their own mental battles right now because of COVID-19, but still. It sucks. 11:30 p.m. – A friend from Germany asks me if he calculated the timezone correctly, and he wishes me a happy birthday. As a gift, he sends me a video of snow falling out his window. I don’t know if I’m crying because I’m wine-drunk, or if I’m crying out of envy because SNOW or because I’m a teeny bit sad. Maybe it’s all of the above, idk. Daily Total: $0 DAY SEVEN - SATURDAY, JANUARY 16 2:00 a.m. – Party’s over and all my relatives have gone home. I set an alarm for 4 a.m. because I have an early-morning deadline to meet. 9:00 a.m. – I must be drunker and more tired than I thought because I completely slept through my alarm. I apologize to my client and ask for an extension. I’m hoping that he’s kind to me because it was my birthday the day before; fortunately, he grants the extension. 12:30 p.m. – E is craving Chinese food, so I hop onto Grab (Southeast Asian version of Uber) and place an order from Panda Express. They were only brought to the Philippines in 2019, and lines have been pretty long, so it was only this year that I was able to taste their non-Chinese Chinese food. I pay for our food as a late birthday treat for my brothers and also because I know that E has been denying himself a lot of things lately to have more cash to inject into his business. With delivery, the total comes out to $13. He offers to wash the dishes afterward, which I’m really thankful for. $13 3:00 p.m. – The rest of the day passes by quickly. It’s J’s day off today, so L and I do household chores. While doing them, I catch up with some of my favorite podcasts, including Military Murder and The Asian Madness Podcast. Highly recommend the two of them. And, let me know if you have any recommendations! 4:00 p.m. – I’m trying to work out whether I should buy the new Macbook Air M1 or not. I’ve been using my 2014 Macbook Air 11 since high school, but while this has been great for school, it’s a huge challenge now that I’m spending more than eight hours a day on it. The screen is too small, so my back and shoulders hurt the entire time I’m on it, and the resolution is also too low. A few people from this sub have recommended that I get an external monitor, but I don’t have a home office or a desk. I work on our dining room table because my vanity’s too small. Since we don’t have Apple Store here in the Philippines, I have to make do with a re-seller. Right now, the lowest that a Macbook Air M1 goes for is $1,102. This is something that I can definitely afford, especially since a junk shop has offered to give me $249 in exchange for my old one. But I’m having trouble being okay with buying a new laptop when my current one is working just fine. I know I deserve it after all my hard work and I know that it’ll make working much easier, but still. 6:00 p.m. – For dinner, my parents bring home take-out from a local restaurant. We eat Breaded Tofu, Butter Buffalo Chicken Wings, and Mixed Vegetables. I do the dishes afterward, which takes a long time, because dishwashers aren’t common in the Philippines, and it’s hard to manually scrub oily food. 8:00 p.m. – I work and watch anime in-between. Daily Total: $13 WEEKLY TOTAL: $192.13 REFLECTION This week’s spending was unusually high, mainly because of my phone bill and rare expenses, like eyeglasses and contact lenses. I also had way too much food delivered this week, but I felt like treating my brothers since it was my birthday, so I don’t mind that all. My usual weekly spending, however, is somewhere around $10. But aside from spending, I think that writing this money diary really forced me to confront my privilege and mental health issues, as well as my workaholic tendencies. It’s tough to admit to yourself that you aren’t happy at all, but maybe it’s time to finally face it. I feel like I also have a problem with making big splurges that will ultimately benefit me, so moving forward, I’d like to remember that while treating my brothers is totally okay, I should be kinder to myself too. There’s still a lot of issues that I need to unpack and work through, but hopefully, being 23 will give me the strength to do so. I hope you enjoyed this money diary from the other side of the world :-) And sorry for any typos. I’d edit, but it’s 2 a.m. right now, and I’m exhausted.
Post requests for the padorus you'd like to be made. Remember to search on google if there's already a padoru of the character you want. As a side note, people frequently ask for a padoru template, you can use this, this or this (for guys) There are requests for these characters:
Byleth(female and male), Claude , Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Lysithea, Marianne von Edmund (Fire emblem three houses)
Tendo Maya (Revue Starlight)
Kato Danzo, Paris, Solomon, Tomoe Gozen (FGO)
Bananya (Bananya)
Mile/Adele (didn't i say to make my abilities average in the next life)
Yaya (Machine Doll wa Kizutsukanai)
Elena, Madoka, Hikaru, and Yuni (Star Twinkle PreCure)
Mysterious Heroine X, Drunk Nero on Christmas and Hungover Nero the next morning, Sheherazade, Scathach, Marie Antoinette, Edmond Dantès, Caenis (Fate)
Rin Natsume from (Little Busters!)
Melascula (NnT)
Mashiro Okeuchi (Layers of White)
Tetsuo or Kaneda (Akira)
Spike Spiegel, Faye Valentine (Cowboy bebop)
Lisa Isaribi, Princess Hibana, Kurono Yuichiro, Inca (Fire Force)
Konoe A. Mercury, Noel Vermillion and Ragna The Bloodege (Blazblue)
Dante, Trish and Nero [Devil May Cry/ Devil may cry 5]
Kyubey [Madoka Magica]
Juliet Persia, Inugami Leon [Kishuku Gakkou no Juliet]
Reimi Sugimoto, Diavolo, Old Joseph Joestar(part 3), Pannacotta Fugo, Dire [Jojo's Bizarre Adventure]
Ichigo, Rukia, Orihime Inoue timeskip version, Soi Fon, Ulquiorra [Bleach]
TEKK - Tekkorp Digital Acquisition Corp: Who's Who of Gaming Mgmt Teams!
Team has been involved in a substantial number of the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries’ most significant merger and acquisition transactions, holding key positions at, and transacting with Scientific Games Corp, Inspired Gaming Group, FOX Bets, Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts International Holdings, PokerStars, DraftKings, Mohegan Sun, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Harrah’s Entertainment,Tropicana Entertainment, Inc., TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming, Facebook, Inc, Wynn Resorts, Dubai World/MGM Resorts Here's all the Bios. These guys are stellar! TEKK closed at $10.30 today. Still cheap! If you don't like to read... you don't like to make money!!!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Davey — Chief Executive Officer and Director Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as experience in the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member. He has served in executive management positions across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he oversaw more than ten mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2 billion in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led. Most recently, Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV: NYX), where Mr. Davey served as Chief Executive Officer and Director. The NYX acquisition provided Scientific Games with a vehicle to significantly accelerate the scale and breadth of its existing digital gaming business, including the strategic expansion into sports betting. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of NYX, Mr. Davey developed and implemented a corporate strategy that generated strong revenue growth. Mr. Davey shaped company strategy to focus on digital gaming supplier platforms and content that provided various gaming operators with the underlying gaming and sports betting systems for their online gaming business. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and his experience in the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries helped NYX recognize momentum as a public company. After the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as one of the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. These acquisitions included: • OpenBet: In 2016, NYX completed the $385 million acquisition of OpenBet. This was one of the more complex and transformative acquisitions that Mr. Davey oversaw at NYX. Through securing co-investments from William Hill (LSE: WMH), Sky Betting & Gaming and The Stars Group (formerly Nasdaq: TSG, TSX: TSGI), Mr. Davey was able to get the acquisition from Vitruvian Partners completed successfully, winning the deal against much larger and well capitalized competitors. By combining two established and proven B2B betting and gaming suppliers, NYX was well positioned to provide customers with exciting player-driven solutions across all major product verticals and distribution channels. This allowed NYX to become the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform. • Cryptologic/Chartwell: In 2015, NYX completed the $119 million acquisition of Cryptologic and Chartwell. The acquisition provided NYX with more than 400 titles of additional leading gaming content, a broader customer base, and direct exposure to PokerStars and Intercasino, part of the Gamesys Group (LSE: GYS) — two of the world’s largest online casino offerings. • OnGame: In 2014, NYX completed the distressed acquisition of OnGame, a premier poker content, platform and service provider. This acquisition provided NYX with one of the best poker products in the industry, access to several regulated jurisdictions, and a valuable talent pool that was instrumental in the growth of NYX. The addition of OnGame further established a path for NYX to continue its growth in both European and U.S. markets. These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017. During that time, Mr. Davey helped build NYX to have over 200 customers in the global gaming industry and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey’s success at NYX ultimately led to its sale to Scientific Games for $631 million in 2018. Mr. Davey joined Next Gen Gaming, the predecessor to NYX, in 2000 as the Vice President of Technology, was appointed as Executive Director in 2003 and named Chief Executive Officer in 2005. Prior to that, he was the Senior Consultant for Access Systems, a company that specializes in the provision of back-end software for licensed online casinos. Prior to joining Access, Mr. Davey worked for the Northern Territory Government specializing in matters pertaining to the internet and e-commerce along with roles in the Department of Racing and Gaming. Mr. Davey received a Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Northern Territory University, Australia (also known as Charles Darwin University). Robin Chhabra — President Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) and William Hill, and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and, from 2019 to August 2020, he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective with revenues of over $2.5 billion. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across the digital gaming value chain and includes the following: • TSG/Flutter Entertainment Merger: In 2019, Mr. Chhabra led the TSG M&A team that was responsible for TSG’s $12.2 billion merger with Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR). The merger between TSG and Flutter Entertainment is the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. The combination created the largest publicly listed online gaming company with approximately 13 million active customers and leading product offerings, which include sports betting, online casino, fantasy sports and poker. The combined entity includes some of the world’s most iconic digital gaming brands such as Fanduel, Fox Bet, Sky Bet, PaddyPower, Betfair, PokerStars and SportsBet. TSG/Flutter Entertainment is one of the most geographically diverse digital gaming and media companies with leading positions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Georgia. • TSG/Sky Betting and Gaming (“SBG”): In 2018, Mr. Chhabra led the acquisition of SBG from CVC Capital Partners and Sky plc, Europe’s largest media company, in a transaction valued at $4.7 billion. At the time of the acquisition SBG was the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing of the major operators having doubled its online market share in three years. The acquisition of SBG provided TSG with (a) greater revenue diversification, significantly enhanced expertise and exposure to sports betting just ahead of the judicial overturn of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) by the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) a leading position within the United Kingdom, the world’s largest regulated online gaming market, (c) improved products and technology as a result of the addition of SBG’s innovative casino and sports book offerings and a portfolio of popular mobile apps, and (d) expertise in deeply integrating sports betting with leading sports media companies, positioning TSG to create more engaging content, deliver faster growth and decrease customer acquisition costs. • William Hill (LSE: WMH): At William Hill, from 2010 to 2017, Mr. Chhabra served as Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Development where he led several transactions which contributed to William Hill’s transformation from a land-based gambling operator in the United Kingdom to a leading online-led international business. Mr. Chhabra led William Hill’s entry into the U.S. sports betting and online lottery markets with the acquisition of four businesses, including the simultaneous acquisitions of three U.S. sportsbooks, Cal Neva, American Wagering and Brandywine Bookmaking, in 2011 for an aggregate purchase price of $55 million. These businesses ultimately led William Hill to achieve a leading position in the U.S. sports betting market with a market share of 24% in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Chhabra played a key role in structuring William Hill’s successful joint venture with PlayTech Plc (LSE: PTEC) in 2008. The combined entity created one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe at the time of its formation and led to William Hill’s buyout of Playtech’s interest for $637 million in 2013. Prior to the transaction, William Hill had struggled in its attempt to establish a strong online gaming platform and a meaningful presence outside the United Kingdom. Mr. Chhabra has also successfully completed four transactions worth over $1.2 billion in Australia, the world’s second largest regulated online gambling market, and various partnerships in Asia. Additionally, he completed several technology and media related transactions, including William Hill’s investment in NYX, where he worked with Mr. Davey on NYX’s transformational acquisition of OpenBet. Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Eric Matejevich — Chief Financial Officer Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Trustee and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (formerly Revel Casino, which had a construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million. Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s many acquisitions and multiple debt refinancings to simplify its capital structure and provided liquidity for growth initiatives. Additionally, Mr. Matejevich was instrumental to the executive team that sold NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million. Prior to NYX, from 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the Chief Financial Officer of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino, a property under the Resorts International Holdings umbrella — a Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY) entity. As Chief Financial Officer, he provided managerial oversight for all finance functions for a six-property casino company with annual gaming revenue exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. Mr. Matejevich led the transition effort to integrate a four-casino, $1.3 billion acquisition from Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR). As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he lobbied for and was successful in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States. The Atlantic Club was the sole New Jersey casino proponent of the legislation. Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Our Board of Directors Morris Bailey — Chairman Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bailey has been a leader in turning around Atlantic City, as well as being among the first gaming executives to embrace online gaming and sports betting in the United States. In his efforts, Mr. Bailey partnered with two of the largest digital gaming companies in the world, PokerStars, part of the Stars Group, and DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG). In 2010, Mr. Bailey bought Resorts Atlantic City (“Resorts”) and initiated a comprehensive renovation which allowed for the property to be rebranded and repositioned. In 2012, Mr. Bailey signed an agreement with Mohegan Sun to manage the day-to-day operations of the casino. In addition to Mohegan Sun’s operational expertise and ability to reduce costs via economies of scale, Resorts gained access to their robust customer database. Soon thereafter, Mr. Bailey and his team focused on bringing online gaming to the property. In 2015, Resorts established a platform to engage in online gaming by partnering with PokerStars, now part of the $24 billion Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR), to operate an online poker room in Atlantic City. In 2018, Resorts announced deals with DraftKings and SBTech to open a sportsbook on-property and online. For 2020 year-to-date, Resorts has performed in the top quartile in internet gross gaming revenue in New Jersey. Mr. Bailey’s efforts in New Jersey helped set the framework for expansion of online sports and gaming throughout the United States. In addition to his gaming interests, Mr. Bailey has over 50 years of experience in all facets of real estate development, asset M&A, capital markets and operations and is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of JEMB Realty, a leading real estate development, investment and management organization. Mr. Bailey has notable investment experience within the energy, finance and telecommunications sectors through investments in the Astoria Energy Plant, Basis Investment Group and Xentris Wireless. Tony Rodio — Director Nominee Mr. Rodio has nearly four decades of experience in the gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Rodio served as the Chief Executive Officer and director of Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) (Nasdaq: CZR), one of the world’s most diversified casino-entertainment providers and the most geographically diverse U.S. casino-entertainment company, from April 2019 until its acquisition by Eldorado Resorts, Inc. in July 2020. Mr. Rodio led Caesars through its $17.3 billion merger with Eldorado Resorts, one of the largest transactions in the gaming industry to date. Additionally, Mr. Rodio was instrumental to Caesars’ expansion into the digital gaming industry and oversaw the implementation of new digital segments such as its Scientific Games powered retail sportsbook solution that now operates in various states throughout the U.S. From October 2018 to May 2019, Mr. Rodio served as Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Gaming. Prior to Affinity Gaming, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Tropicana Entertainment, Inc. (“Tropicana”) for over seven years, where he was responsible for the operation of eight casino properties in seven different jurisdictions. During his time at Tropicana, Mr. Rodio oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the company, improving overall financial results with net revenue that increased more than 50% driven by both operational improvements and expansion across regional markets. Mr. Rodio led major capital projects, including the complete renovation of Tropicana Atlantic City and Tropicana’s move to land-based operations in Evansville, Indiana. Each of these initiatives, among others, generated substantial value for Tropicana. Ultimately, Mr. Rodio’s efforts at Tropicana led to its sale to Eldorado Resorts in 2018 for $1.85 billion. Prior to Tropicana, Mr. Rodio held a succession of executive positions in Atlantic City for casino brands, including Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Entertainment (predecessor to Caesars), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Penn National Gaming. He has also served as a director of several professional and charitable organizations, including Atlantic City Alliance, United Way of Atlantic County, the Casino Associations of New Jersey and Indiana, AtlantiCare Charitable Foundation and the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism. Mr. Rodio brings extensive knowledge of and experience in the gaming industry, operational expertise, and a demonstrated ability to effectively design and implement company strategy. Mr. Rodio received a Bachelor of Science from Rider University and a Master of Business Administration from Monmouth University. Marlon Goldstein — Director Nominee Mr. Goldstein is a licensed attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in the gaming space. He joined The Stars Group (Nasdaq: TSG)(TSX: TSGI) in January 2014 as its Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary until his retirement from the company in July 2020 following the merger of TSG with Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR). Mr. Goldstein also previously served as the Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of TSG. Mr. Goldstein was also the senior TSG executive based in the United States and was one of the primary architects of TSG’s strategic vision for its U.S.-facing business. During his tenure, TSG grew from an approximately $500 million market-cap company to an approximately $7 billion market-cap company through a combination of organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goldstein participated in numerous M&A transactions and capital markets offerings at TSG, including several transformational transactions in the digital gaming industry. Notable transactions in which Mr. Goldstein was involved include: • TSG/Flutter Merger: In 2019, TSG merged with Flutter for a $12.2 billion transaction value, the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. • TSG/Fox Bet Partnership: In 2019, TSG entered into a partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet in the U.S., a leading U.S. online gaming business. Wall Street Research estimates an approximate $1.1 billion valuation for Fox Bet post-partnership with The Stars Group. • TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming: In 2018, TSG acquired Sky Betting & Gaming, the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom at the time, for $4.7 billion. • TSG/CrownBet and William Hill: In 2018, TSG simultaneously acquired CrownBet and William Hill, two Australian operators, for a total of $621 million in a multi-part transaction. • TSG/PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker: In 2014, TSG acquired The Rational Group, which operated PokerStars and Full Tilt and was the world’s largest poker business, for $4.9 billion. Through his ability to legally structure large and complex transactions, Mr. Goldstein was integral to TSG’s vision of becoming a full-service online gaming company. Additionally, he assisted in structuring TSG’s capital markets activity, which generated liquidity for acquisitions and strengthened its balance sheet. Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Goldstein was a principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig P.A., where he practiced for almost 13 years. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focused on corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, and financing transactions. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein was the founder and co-chair of the firm’s Gaming Practice, a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys representing owners, operators and developers of gaming facilities, manufacturers and suppliers of gaming devices, investment banks and lenders in financing transactions, and Indian tribes in the development and financing of gaming facilities. Mr. Goldstein brings experience and insight that we believe will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target business. Mr. Goldstein received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Emory University and a Juris Doctorate with highest honors from the University of Florida, College of Law. Sean Ryan — Director Nominee Mr. Ryan is a digital media and technology operator with extensive global experience in online payments, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile ad networks, digital games, enterprise collaboration platforms, blockchain, real money gaming and online music. Since 2014, Mr. Ryan has been serving as Vice President of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) (Nasdaq: FB), where he leads a more than 500 person global organization that manages the Payments, Commerce, Novi/Blockhain, Workplace and Audience Network businesses. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ryan was hired in 2011 as the Director of Games Partnerships to lead and grow the global Games business at Facebook. While the Director of Games Partnerships, Mr. Ryan focused on re-shaping Facebook’s games and monetization strategies to derive more value for Facebook, its users and its partners, including the addition of a Real Money Gaming offering in regulated markets. Mr. Ryan’s team helped accelerate a major trend in engagement through cross-platform games and therefore the opportunity to increase users through establishing games on multiple platforms. Prior to joining Facebook, Mr. Ryan created the new social and mobile games division at News Corp, an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch. While at News Corp, Mr. Ryan led the acquisition of Making Fun, a San Francisco social-game start-up, that created News Corp’s games publishing division. Before joining News Corp., Mr. Ryan founded multiple digital businesses such as Twofish, Meez, Open Wager and SingShot Media. Mr. Ryan co-founded Twofish in 2009, a virtual goods and services platform that provided developers with data analytics and insights for individual application’s digital economies. Twofish was later sold to online payments provider Live Gamer, where Mr. Ryan served on the board of directors. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Ryan founded and led Meez.com, a social entertainment service combining avatars, web games and virtual worlds. The white label social casino gaming company Open Wager was spun out of Meez and was later sold to VGW Holdings, Mr. Ryan also co-founded SingShot Media, an online karaoke community, which was sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) and merged into its Sims division. We believe Mr. Ryan’s experience will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target and would provide an expanded perspective on the digital gaming landscape. Mr. Ryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles. Tom Roche — Director Nominee Mr. Roche has more than 40 years of experience in the gaming industry as a regulator, advisor and independent auditor. Mr. Roche joined Ernst & Young (“EY”) as a partner in 2003 and opened its Las Vegas office. He was subsequently appointed as the Office Managing Partner and Global Gaming Industry Market Leader. In 2016, Mr. Roche relocated to the EY Hong Kong office to supervise the expansion of the EY Global Gaming Industry practice in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Roche has been integral to numerous transactions that have shaped the current gaming landscape, including: • Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) initial public offering: Mr. Roche was the lead partner on Wynn Resort’s initial public offering, which raised $450 million in 2002. • Harrah’s Entertainment/Apollo Management Group & Texas Pacific Group: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory advisory services on the buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company at the time, for $17.1 billion. • Dubai World/MGM Resorts: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory and due diligence advisory services to Dubai World in its approximately $5.1 billion investment in MGM. Dubai World bought 28.4 million MGM shares, or 9.5 percent of the casino operator, for $2.4 billion. It then invested $2.7 billion to acquire a 50% stake in MGM’s CityCenter Project, a $7.4 billion 76-acre Las Vegas development of hotels, condos and retail outlets. • MGM Growth Properties (NYSE: MGP) initial public offering: Mr. Roche provided tax and structural transaction services to MGM Resorts in the creation of MGM Growth Properties, a publicly traded REIT engaged in the acquisition, ownership and leasing of large-scale destination entertainment and leisure resorts. MGM Growth Properties raised $1.05 billion in its 2016 initial public offering. Mr. Roche also directed EY advisory services to boards and management teams for profit improvement and technology related initiatives. In addition, Mr. Roche provided advisory support to the American Gaming Association on several research projects, including those specifically related to sports betting, the revocation of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) and anti-money laundering best practices in the gaming industry. Equally, he has assisted government agencies in numerous international locations with enhancing their regulatory approach to governing the industry especially in the online gambling sector. Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Roche served as Deloitte’s National Gaming Industry Leader and as the co-head of Andersen’s Gaming Industry Practice in Las Vegas. In 1989, Mr. Roche was appointed by then Governor of the State of Nevada, Robert Miller, to serve as one of three members of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board for a four-year term, where he was directly responsible for the Audit and New Games Lab Divisions. As a board member, he spent a substantial amount of time assisting global jurisdiction regulators enact gaming legislation in the design of their regulatory structure. During his career, Roche has been involved in numerous public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. His background includes providing casino regulatory consulting services to casino licensees and to federal and state agencies including the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and industry associations such as the Nevada Resort Association and the American Gaming Association. We believe Mr. Roche’s highly regarded reputation as a gaming auditor and advisor in the gaming industry will be valuable for us and a potential business combination target. Mr. Roche is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is licensed by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy and Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California.
The transcript of *the* lecture. You know which one. (the 2 final paragraphs are in the comments because of stupid reddit character limit)
How many of you here have personally witnessed a total eclipse of the sun? To stand one day in the shadow of the moon is one of my humble goals in life. The closest I ever came was over thirty years ago. On February 26, 1979, a solar eclipse passed directly over the city of Portland. I bought my bus tickets and found a place to stay. But in the end, I couldn’t get the time off work. Well, anyone who lives in Portland can tell you that the chances of catching the sun in February are pretty slim. And sure enough, the skies over the city that day were completely overcast. I wouldn’t have seen a thing. That work I couldn’t get out of was my first job out of college: A sales clerk at an old Radio Shack store in beautiful downtown Worcester, Massachusetts. On my very first day behind the counter, a delivery truck pulled up to the front of the store. They carried in a big carton, upon which was printed the legend TRS-80. It was our floor sample of the world’s first mass-market microcomputer. The TRS-80 Model I had a Z80 processor clocked at 1.7 megahertz, 4,096 bytes of memory, and a 64-character black-and-white text display. The only storage was a cassette recorder. All this could be yours for the low, low price of $599. This store I was working in had seen better days. At one time, it had been near the center of a thriving commercial district. But like so many other New England cities, the advent of shopping malls had, by the early ‘70s, turned it into a ghost town. Worcester’s solution to this problem was decisive, to say the least. The city’s elders apparently decided that if they couldn’t beat them, they would join them. And so several square blocks at the heart of the city were bulldozed into oblivion, destroying dozens of family businesses, including the site of a pharmacy once operated by my great-grandfather. In their place was erected a vast three-level shopping complex, with cinemas and a food court. When the dust settled, only a few forlorn blocks of the old Worcester remained standing. My Radio Shack store was in one of those blocks. Then, to add insult to injury, Radio Shack opened a brand-new location inside the shopping center, less than 500 feet from my store. So now patrons has a choice between a clean, well-lighted establishment with uniformed security and acres of convenient parking, or a shadowy hole in a seedy old office building next to an adult movie theater. Consequently, I had plenty of time to fool around with the new computer. I taught myself BASIC programming. Then I learned Z80 assembly. Both, of course, so that I could write games. I also created self-running animated demos which ran all night in the store window for the edification of the winos who peed in our doorway. Strangely enough, the few customers we had didn’t seem to be interested in our new computer, even after the 16K memory upgrade. In fact, most of the people who set off the buzzer on their way through the front door weren’t there to buy anything at all. They were there to exploit a free promotion which was the bane of Radio Shack employees for over forty years: The Battery of the Month Club. The idea of this promotion was simple. Customers got a little red card upon which was printed a square for each month. Twelve times a year, the lucky sales clerk got to punch out a square and give the customer one brand new triple-A, double-A, C, D or 9-volt battery. Of course, customers weren’t allowed to choose just any grade of battery. At the time of my employment, Radio Shack offered three different levels of battery excellence. First were the alkalines, powerful, long-lasting and expensive, hanging behind the counter like prescription medication in gold-embossed blister packs. These were most certainly not available through the Battery of the Month Club. Next were the high-end lead batteries, sturdy, dependable batteries, moderately priced, and prominently displayed near the front of the store. These were also not available through the Battery of the Month Club. Finally, at the bottom of the barrel, were the standard lead batteries. These were literally piled in barrels, cunningly located way at the back of the store, in a dark corner near the TV antennas. Remember TV antennas? Customers who came in looking for their free Battery of the Month had to walk the entire length of the premises, past the CB radios and stereo headphones and remote-controlled racing cars. Nothing would stop them. On the first day of every month, like clockwork, those customers come in waving their little red cards. I would look up from my programming and wave them to the back of the store. It didn’t matter that the batteries were only worth twenty-nine cents. It didn’t matter that most of them were already half dead. They came. They grabbed. And, as far as I can remember, not one of them ever paid for a damned thing. I was such a crappy salesman. I was young and foolish. I thought my education in game design was happening at the keyboard. I almost missed the lesson coming through the front door. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only person fooling around with games on micros. All over the country, people like me were experimenting. Scott Adams was coding what would soon become the world’s first commercial adventure game. Remember adventure games? My future employer, Infocom, was being founded, along with other legendary companies like On-Line Systems, Sirius, Personal Software and SSI. Those were exciting times. Teenagers were making fortunes. Games were cheap and easy to build. The slate was clean. But in 1979, the biggest news in gaming had nothing to do with computers. § On the morning of the autumn equinox, September 20th, a new children’s picture book appeared in the stores of Great Britain. This picture book was rather peculiar. It consisted of 15 meticulously detailed color paintings, illustrating a slight, whimsical tale about a rabbit delivering a jewel to the moon. On the back jacket of the book was a color photograph of a real jewel shaped like a running rabbit, five inches long, fashioned of 18-karat gold, suspended with ornaments and bells, together with a sun and moon of blue quartz. According to the blurb underneath, this very jewel had been buried somewhere in England. Clues pointing to its location were concealed in the text and in the pictures of the book. The treasure would belong to whoever found it first. The book was called Masquerade. It was created by an eccentric little man with divergent eyes and a talent for mischief named Kit Williams. Within days, the first printing was sold out. And the Empire That Never Sleeps found itself in the grip of Rabbit Fever. Excited readers attacked the paintings with rulers, compasses and protractors. Magazine articles and TV specials dissected the clues, floated theories, and followed with keen delight the reckless exploits of the fanatics. One obscure park, unfortunately known by the nickname Rabbit Hill, was so riddled with holes excavated by misguided treasure seekers that the authorities had to erect signs assuring the public that no gold rabbits were to be found there. Some hunters ended up seeking psychological counseling for their obsession. The craze lept over the Atlantic Ocean and invaded America, France, Italy and Germany. It sold over a million copies in a few months, a record unrivalled by any children’s title until the advent of Harry Potter. Over 150,000 copies were sold in foreign translations, including 80,000 copies in Japanese, despite the fact that the puzzle was only solvable in English. It didn’t matter that the Masquerade jewel was only worth a few thousand dollars. Many seekers spent far more than that in their months of exploration and travel. It was the thrill of the chase. The possibility of being The One. Treasure hunts, secret messages and hidden things seem to exert an irresistible appeal. They’re fun to look for, and to talk about. And this fact of human psychology has been exploited in computer games since the earliest days. It finds expression in the hidden surprises we call Easter eggs. Atari’s Steven Wright is credited with coining this term in the first issue of Electronic Games magazine. The first Easter egg in a commercial computer game appeared in an early Atari 2600 cartridge called, simply enough, Adventure. By a sequence of unlikely movements and obscure manipulations, players could discover a secret room where the words “Created by Warren Robinet” appeared in flashing letters. Over the decades, Easter eggs and their evil twin, cheat codes, have become an industry within an industry. Entire magazines and Web sites are now devoted to their carefully orchestrated discovery and dissemination. They’re part of our toolkit, our basic vocabulary, the language of computer game design. Computer gamers may have been the first to refer to hidden surprises as Easter eggs, but we certainly weren’t the first to use them. Painters, composers and artists of every discipline have been hiding stuff in their works for centuries. The recent advent of VCRs and laserdisc players with freeze-frame capability exposed decades of secret Disney erotica. Thomas Kinkade, the self-appointed “Painter of Light,” amuses himself by hiding the letter N in his works. A number beside his signature indicates how many Ns are hidden in each painting. Picasso, Dali, Raphael, Poussin and dozens of other painters concealed all kinds of stuff in their paintings. A favorite trick was hiding portraits of themselves, their families, friends and fellow artists in crowd scenes. El Greco loved dogs. But the Catholic Church forbid him from including any in his sacred paintings. So he hid them, usually within the outlines of celestial clouds. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich chafed under the political censorship imposed by the Soviet Ministry of Culture. His symphonies and chamber works are loaded with hidden signatures and subversive subtexts which, had they been recognized, would have sent him to Siberia. Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is filled with musical allusions to the rituals of the Freemasons, the ancient secret society of which he and his mentor Haydn were members. But the most famous purveyor of Easter eggs is that champion of the late Baroque, the ultimate musical nerd, Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was a student of gematria, the art of assigning numeric values to letters of the alphabet: A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. By comparing, sequencing or otherwise manipulating these numbers, secret messages can be concealed. Bach took particular delight in the gematriacal numbers 14 and 41. 14 is the sum of the initials of his last name: B=2, A=1, C=3 and H=8. 41 is the sum of his expanded initials, J S BACH. These two numbers show up over and over again in Bach’s compositions. One of the better-known examples is his setting of the chorale “Vor deinen Thron.” The first line of the melody contains exactly 14 notes, and the entire melody from start to finish contains 41. Another of Bach’s favorite games was the puzzle canon. A canon is a melody that sounds good when you play it on top of itself, a little bit out of sync. “Freres Jacques” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” are familiar examples of simple, two-voice canons. But a canon can employ any number of voices. And you don’t have to play each voice the same way, either. You can change the octave, transpose the key, invert the pitch, play it backwards, or any combination. Finding melodies that make good multi-voice canons is a fussy and difficult art, of which Bach was an undisputed master. Now, in a puzzle canon, the composer specifies the basic melody and the number of voices, but not the relationship of the voices. The student has to figure out the position and key of each voice, and whether to perform them inverted and/or backwards. Bach wrote quite a number of puzzle canons. The most famous, BWV 1076, is part of a fascinating story. One of Bach’s students was a fellow by the name of Lorenz Mizler, founder of The Society of Musical Science. This elite, invitation-only institution devoted itself to the study of Pythagorean philosophy, and the union of music and mathematics. Its distinguished membership reads like a Who’s Who of German composers, including Handel, Telemann and eventually Mozart. Applicants for membership in the Society were required to submit an oil portrait of themselves, along with a specimen of original music. With nerdly efficiency, society member number 14 decided to combine these admission requirements into a single work. He sat for a portrait with Elias Haussmann, official artist at the court of Dresden. This portrait, which now hangs in the gallery of the Town Hall in Leipzig, is the only indisputably authentic image of Bach in existence. The Haussman portrait shows Bach dressed in a formal coat with exactly 14 buttons. In his hand is a sheet of music paper upon which is written a puzzle canon for six simultaneous voices. In 1974, a manuscript was discovered which proved that this canon was the thirteenth in a series of exactly 14 canons based on the ground theme of the famous Goldberg Variations. As if these musical gymnastics weren’t enough, Bach liked to hide messages in his compositions by assigning notes to the letters. His initials B-A-C-H correspond to the pitch sequence B-flat, A, C and B-natural in German letter notation. This theme makes its most memorable appearance in the last bars of his final composition, The Art of Fugue, published soon after his death in 1750. The word “fugue” comes from the Latin fuga, which means flight (as in running away). So the art of fugue is the art of flight, the art of taking a theme and running with it. Bach wrote hundreds of fugues, but none as sublime as this sequence of 14. In the last and most complicated fugue in the series, the first and second sections develop normally. This is followed by the B-A-C-H signature, and then suddenly, without any warning or structural justification, the fugue stops dead in its tracks. One of the composer’s 20 children, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, claimed that Bach died moments after those last few notes were written. This story is probably apocryphal. The Easter eggs in Bach’s music are a pleasant obscurity, known chiefly to professors and students of Baroque music. But in March of 2002, when this lecture was first delivered, those Easter eggs were the talk of the entire classical music industry. Sitting near the top of the classical music charts that month was a compact disc on the ECM label called Morimur. It is performed by the Hilliard choral ensemble together with a talented but, until then, little-known violinist, Christoph Poppen. The music on Morimur is based on a gematriacal analysis of Bach’s Partita in D Minor for solo violin. This analysis, by German professor Helga Thoene, assigns numeric values to the duration of notes, the number of bars, and the German letter notation of the Partita. In doing so, she claims to have discovered the complete text of several liturgical ceremonies encoded in the notes. The CD presents these hidden texts, superimposed over the original music. The result was strangely melancholy, dark, haunting, and very, very popular. Quite a few music critics attacked this disc. They didn’t buy Professor Thoene’s analysis, dismissing it as a combination of numerology and canny marketing. Their caution was not without basis. Numerology is a slippery slope down which many a fine mind has slid to its doom. Allow me to offer an amusing anecdote from my own experience. Back in the early ‘90s, before the Internet took off, one of the more popular online bulletin board systems was a service called Prodigy. I bought an account on Prodigy so I could join a fraternal interest group, and gossip with fellow members around the country. One day, a stranger appeared on our bulletin board. Right away, I knew we were in trouble. This fellow, whose name was Gary, began spouting all kinds of apocalyptic nonsense about worldwide conspiracies, secret societies and devil worship. At first we tried to be polite. We questioned his sources, corrected his histories, logically refuted his claims, and tried to behave in a civilized manner. But instead of soothing him, our attention only made him worse. His conspiratorial warnings became urgent, approaching hysteria. He began to threaten people who disagreed with him. To coin a phrase, Gary went All Upper Case. But his most urgent warnings weren’t about the gays, the Jews, the Rockefellers or the Illuminati. According to Gary, the greatest enemy of mankind was Santa Claus. Gary claimed to possess a secret numerical formula that “proved” beyond a shadow of a doubt that Santa Claus was an avatar of the Antichrist. Intrigued, we pressed Gary to reveal his formula. In doing so, we walked right into his trap. We should have known he had a book to sell. I fell for it. I sent him the fifteen bucks. Less than a week later the book arrived. Above an ominous photograph of the Washington monument was emblazoned the title: 666: The Final Warning! Inside this privately printed 494-page monster, Gary reveals a simple gematriacal formula which he claims was developed by the ancient Sumerians. This formula assigns successive products of 6 to each letter of the alphabet: A=6, B=12, C=18, etc. Imagine my dismay when I applied this ancient formula to the name “Santa Claus,” and obtained the blasphemous sum of 666, the Biblical Number of the Beast! I went on Prodigy and reported to the stunned members of our interest group that Gary was right, after all. There could be no doubt that, according to the unimpeachable wisdom of ancient Sumeria, Santa Claus was the AntiChrist. I then went on to point out several other names which, when submitted to Gary’s formula, also produced the sum 666. Names like “Saint James,” “New York” and “New Mexico.” Soon the bulletin board was filled with discoveries like “computer,” “Boston tea” and, most sinister of all, “sing karaoke.” Gary left us alone after that. I got my $15 worth. But Gary is hardly the first person to connect secret codes to the Bible. People have been looking for Easter eggs in the Bible for hundreds of years. The Hebrew mystical tradition of kabbalah can be described as a gematriacal meditation on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. The advent of computers has made the application of numerology to the Bible fast and efficient. The latest spate of Bible-searching was instigated by a book published in 1998 by Michael Drosnin, a former Wall Street Journal reporter. His book, The Bible Code, applied a skip-cypher, in which every nth character in a text is combined to form a message. By applying his skip-cypher to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, Drosnin claimed to have discovered predictions of World War II, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and both Kennedys, the moon landing, Watergate, the Oklahoma City bombing, the election of Bill Clinton, the death of Princess Di and the comet that collided with Jupiter. He also found predictions of a giant earthquake in LA, a meteor hitting the earth, and nuclear armageddon, all scheduled to occur before the end of the last decade. The Bible Code spent many weeks on the bestseller lists, spawning several sequels and dozens of imitators. The Bible has certainly attracted its share of crackpots. But for the real hardcore egg hunters, nothing can rival the ingenuity, the tenacious scholarship, the stubborn zeal of those who seek the answer to the ultimate literary puzzle. A poisonous conundrum that has squandered fortunes, destroyed careers, and driven healthy, intelligent scholars to the brink of madness, and beyond. Who wrote Shakespeare?⁴ The essays and books devoted to the Shakespeare authorship problem are sufficient to fill a large library. Several such libraries actually exist. Not even a day-long tutorial, much less an hour lecture, can begin to do justice to this complex, bizarre and dangerously tantalizing story. Nevertheless, for the unacquainted, I will attempt to summarize the issue in a few paragraphs. The undisputed facts of Shakespeare’s life and career could be scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin. We know for a fact that a man named William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in or around the village of Stratford-upon-Avon. We know that he had a wife and at least three children. We know he bought property in Stratford, was involved in several lawsuits with his neighbors, and died there in 1616, aged 52. We also know that during those same years, a man with a last name similar to Shakespeare worked as an actor on the London stage, eventually becoming co-owner of some of the theaters there. We also know that, about the same time, a number of most excellent poems and plays were published in London under the name Shakespeare. We do not know for a fact that the landowner in Stratford and the actor in London with a similar last name were one and the same man. We do not know for a fact that either man had anything to do with the poems and the plays. All we know is that those poems and plays have, in the four hundred years since their composition, come to be regarded as a pinnacle of Western culture. The works attributed to Shakespeare appear to have been written by a man or woman who knew something about just about everything. They’re filled with references to mythology and classic literature, games and sports, war and weapons of war, ships and sailing, the law and legal terminology, court etiquette, statesmanship, horticulture, music, astronomy, medicine, falconry and, of course, theater. Therein lies the problem. How could a farmer’s son of uncertain schooling from a mostly illiterate country village, a man of practically no account at all, wield such encyclopedic learning with so much eloquence and wit, so much wisdom and human understanding? For the first 150 years, nobody questioned the traditional history of the Bard. Then, in the late eighteenth century, Reverend James Wilmot, a distinguished scholar who lived just a few miles north of Stratford, decided to write a biography of the famous playwright. Dr. Wilmot believed that a man as well-educated as Shakespeare must have owned a fairly extensive library, despite the fact that not a single book or manuscript is mentioned in his will. Over the years, he speculated, some of those books must have found their way into local collections. And so the good Reverend Doctor scoured the British countryside, taking inventory of literally every bookshelf within 50 miles of Stratford. Not a single book from the library of William Shakespeare was discovered. Neither were there found any letters to, from or about Shakespeare. Furthermore, no references to the folklore, local sayings or distinctive dialect of the Stratford area could be found in any of Shakespeare’s writings. After four years of painstaking research, Dr. Wilmot concluded, to his own dismay, that only one person contemporary with Shakespeare of Stratford had ever demonstrated the wide-ranging education and expressive talent needed to compose those poems and plays. That man was the multilingual author, philosopher and statesman, inventor of the Scientific Method, Chancellor to the Courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James, Sir Francis Bacon. Dr. Wilmot never dared to publish his theory. But before he died he confided it to a friend, James Cowell, who, in 1805, repeated it to a meeting of the Ipswich Philosophical Society. The members of the society were suitably outraged, and the scandalous matter was quickly forgotten. Then in 1857, a lady from Stratford -- Stratford, Connecticut -- published a book called The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded. In this book, Miss Delia Bacon, no relation to Francis, claimed that the works of Shakespeare were written by a secret cabal of British nobility including Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney as well as Sir Francis Bacon. Delia Bacon’s book electrified the world of letters. Battle lines were drawn between the orthodox Stratfordians and the heretical Baconians. Literary societies and scholarly journals were formed to debate the evidence. Hundreds of pamphlets, newspaper articles and essays were published defending each side, and ridiculing the opposition with that self-aggrandizing viciousness peculiar to tenured academics. Armed with her explosive book, Delia Bacon journeyed to Stratford-upon-Avon and, unbelievably, obtained official permission to open Shakespeare’s grave. However, when the moment came to actually lift the stone, Delia’s self-doubt precipitated a catastrophic nervous breakdown. She later died penniless in a madhouse. Around 1888, things began to get a bit out of hand. U.S. Congressman Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota became interested in the Shakespeare controversy. One day, browsing through his facsimile copy of the First Folio of 1623, he noted that the word “bacon” appeared on page 53 of the Histories and also on page 53 of the Comedies. He also noted that Sir Francis Bacon had written extensively on the subject of cryptography. Donnelly began counting line and page numbers, adding and subtracting letters, drawing lines over sentences, circling words and crossing them out. The result was a complex and virtually incomprehensible algorithm which he claimed was invented by Bacon to hide secret messages inside the First Folio. The greatest Easter egg hunt in the history of Western civilization had begun. Here are just a couple of the sillier highlights. A doctor named Orville Owen of Detroit constructed a bizarre research tool he called the Wheel of Fortune. This wheel consisted of two giant wooden spools wrapped with a strip of canvas two feet wide and a thousand feet long. Onto this canvas he glued the separate pages of the complete works of Bacon, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Greene, Peele and Spenser, together with Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. By cranking the spools back and forth, Dr. Owen could quickly zip across the pages in search of clues and cross-references. Employing a large team of secretaries and stenographers, Owen claimed to have uncovered a complete alternative history of Elizabethan England, as well as several entirely new Shakespeare plays and sonnets. Listen to this hidden verse, supposedly penned by the mighty Bard himself, which inspired Dr. Owen to build his Wheel of Fortune. Take your knife and cut all our books asunder And set the leaves on a great firm wheel Which rolls and rolls, and turning the fickle rolling wheel Throw your eyes upon Fortune That goddess blind, that stands upon a spherical stone that, turning and inconstant, rolls in restless variation. After publishing five thick volumes of this rubbish, Owen announced the discovery of an anagram indicating that Bacon’s original manuscripts were buried near Chepstow Castle on the river Wye. Owen spent the next fifteen years and thousands of dollars excavating the bed of the river with boat crews and high explosives. He died before anything was found. A fellow named Arensberg wrote an entire book based on the analysis of the significance of a suspicious crack in the tomb of Bacon’s mother. A ray of sanity finally appeared in 1957. To those familiar with the science of cryptology, the name William Friedman needs little introduction. During World War II , Colonel Friedman was the head of the US Army’s cryptoanalytic bureau. He is credited with cracking the Japanese Empire’s most sensitive cipher. After the war, the Colonel decided to apply his expertise to the study of the Shakespeare ciphers. He interviewed several of the experts in the field, and prepared a detailed scientific analysis, which he published under the title The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined. His conclusion? In a word, bunk. According to the standards of cryptologic science, not one of the hidden messages purportedly discovered in Shakespeare’s works was plausible. The rules used to extract these messages from the texts were non-rigorous, wildly subjective, and unrepeatable by anyone except the original decypherer. The people involved were not being dishonest. They were channeling their preconceptions. They were trapped in a labyrinth of delusion, mining order from chaos. “Angler[s] in a lake of darkness.” Lear III.6. You would think that Friedman’s cold and ruthless exposure would be enough to silence the heretics once and for all. Not a chance. The books and TV specials and Web sites and conferences and doctoral dissertations keep right on coming. I should point out that the Shakespeare authorship issue is not only the preoccupation of cranks and weirdos. A substantial number of respected authors and Shakespeareans have expressed serious doubts about the traditional origin of the plays. The list includes Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Sam Clemens, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles and Sir John Gielgud. Living skeptics include the artistic director of the New Globe Theater, Mark Rylance; Michael York, Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, and even that most revered and scholarly of contemporary Shakespearean actors, Keanu Reeves. The current leading candidate for the authorship is Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, a theory first proposed in 1920 by an English schoolmaster with the unfortunate name J. Thomas Looney. What is it about Bach, the Bible and the works of Shakespeare that inspires this intense scrutiny? Nobody’s looking for acrostics in Chaucer or Keats. There are no hit CDs of the secret chorales of Wagner or Beethoven. For the answer, we need to recognize the unique roles which the Bible and Shakespeare have played in the development of Western culture. No other single work of literature has influenced Modern English more than the translation of the Holy Bible published in 1611 under the auspices of King James I. The King James Bible exemplifies the meaning of the word classic. It has been called the noblest monument of English prose, the very greatest achievement of the English language. It has served as an inspiration for generations of poets, dramatists, musicians, politicians and orators. Countless people have learned to read by repeating the phrases in this, the only book their family possessed. Our constitutions and our laws have been profoundly shaped by its cadences and imagery. But even the glory of the King James Bible, compiled by a committee of 46 editors over the course of a decade, pales before the dazzling legacy of the Swan of Avon. The lowest estimate of Shakespeare’s working vocabulary is 15,000 words, more than three times that of the King James Bible, and twice the size of his nearest competitor, John Milton. His poems and plays were written without the aid of a dictionary or a thesaurus. They didn’t exist yet. It was all in his head. When Shakespeare had a thought for which Elizabethan English had no word, he invented one. The Oxford English Dictionary lists hundreds of everyday words and phrases which made their first appearance in the pages of the Bard. Addiction. Alligator. Assasination. Bedroom. Critic. Dawn. Design. Dialogue. Employer. Film. Glow. Gloomy. Gossip. Hint. Hurry. Investment. Lonely. Luggage. Manager. Switch. Torture. Transcendence. Wormhole. Zany. Hamlet alone contains nearly forty of these neologisms. Who today would have this audacity, this giddy exuberance of invention? Only one other English author even approaches Shakespeare’s facility for coining new words: Sir Francis Bacon. In the modern era, the record holder is Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, who, interestingly, also happens to be the second most quoted author in English, after Shakespeare. Everyone has been profoundly molded by the influence of the King James Bible and Shakespeare. Like it or not, all of us peer at the world through the lenses of these great works. They are the primary source documents of modern English thought, the style guides of our minds. Contemplating these dazzling jewels of wisdom and eloquence gives rise to an extraordinary feeling. A potent, rare and precious emotion with the potential to completely upset your life. An emotion powerful enough to make a man abandon his wife and children, forfeit career and reputation, lay down his possessions and follow his heart without questioning. That sweet, sweet fusion of wonder and fear, irresistible attraction and soul-numbing dread known as awe. Awe is the Grail of artistic achievement. No other human emotion possesses such raw transformative power, and none is more difficult to evoke. Few and far between are the works of man that qualify as truly awesome. It is awe that convinces a rabbi to spend a lifetime decoding Yahweh from the Pentateuch. Awe that sends millions of visitors each year to the Pyramids of Giza, Guadalupe and Mecca. It was awe that drove poor Delia Bacon to her doom. Now, please don’t come away from this lecture thinking that the key to awesome game design is the installation of Easter eggs! Ordinary games, with their contrived Easter eggs and cheat codes, are like the Battery of the Month club. You have to trudge down to the back of the store to get what you really came for. If super power is what people really want, why not just give it to them? Is our imagination so impoverished that we have to resort to marketing gimmicks to keep players interested in our games? Awesome things don’t hold anything back. Awesome things are rich and generous. The treasure is right there. One afternoon, I was sitting alone behind the counter at that old Radio Shack store. My boss had stepped out for some reason. An elderly woman walked through the front door. Like most of our customers, she was shabbily dressed. Probably on a fixed income. I assumed she was there for her free battery. But instead, she placed a portable radio on the counter. This radio came from the days when they boasted about the number of transitors inside on the case. It was completely wrapped in dirty white medical tape. The woman looked at me, and asked, “Can you fix this?” Slowly I unwrapped the medical tape, peeling away the layers until the back cover of the radio fell off, accompanied by a cloud of red dust. The interior of the radio was half eaten away by battery leakage and corrosion. I looked at the radio. I looked at the old woman. I looked back at the radio. I reached behind me, where the expensive alkaline batteries were hanging like prescription medication, and removed a gleaming nine-volt cell from its gold blister pack. Then I pulled a brand-new transistor radio from a box, installed the alkaline and helped the lady find her favorite station. No money changed hands. She left the store without saying a word. Awesome things are kind of like that. Bach offered his students very specific insight into the source of awe. In addition to B-A-C-H, two other sets of initials are also associated with Bach’s music. These initials are not hidden in the notes. Instead, they’re scrawled right across the top of his manuscripts for the whole world to see. The initials are SDG and JJ. SDG stands for the Latin phrase Soli Deo Gloria, “To the glory of God alone.” JJ stands for Jesu Juva, “Help me, Jesus.” Bach wrote all of his great masterpieces sub specie aeternitatis, “under the aspect of eternity.” He did not compose only to please his sponsors, or to win the approval of an audience. His work was his worship. Bach once wrote, “Music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul. Where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.” The name of the power that moves you is not important. What is important is that you are moved. Awe is the foundation of religion. No other motivation can free you from the limits of personal achievement. Nothing else can teach you the Art of Flight. Computer games are barely forty years old. Only a few words in our basic vocabulary have been established. A whole dictionary is waiting to be coined. The slate is clean. Someday soon, perhaps even in our lifetime, a game design will appear that will flash across our culture like lightning. It will be easy to recognize. It will be generous, giddy with exuberant inventiveness. Scholars will pick it apart for decades, perhaps centuries. It will be something wonderful. Something terrifying. Something awe-full. A few years ago I was invited to speak at a conference in London. My wife joined me, and we took a day off for some sightseeing. We decided to visit England’s second-biggest tourist attraction, Stratford-upon-Avon. It was cold and rainy when our train arrived. Luckily, most of the attractions are just a short walk from the station. We visited Shakespeare’s birthplace, a charming old house along the main street which attracts millions of pilgrims every year, despite the complete lack of any evidence of Shakespeare ever having lived there. We went past the school where Shakespeare learned to read and write, although no documents exist to prove his attendance. We visited Anne Hathaway’s cottage, the rustic country farm where his wife spent her childhood, although no record shows anyone by that name ever having living there. Finally we came to the one location undeniably associated with Shakespeare: Trinity Parish church, on the banks of the river Avon, where a man by that name is buried. This beautiful church is approached by a long walkway, between rows of ancient gravestones, shaded by tall trees. The entrance door is surprisingly tiny. No cameras are allowed inside. The interior is dark and quiet. Despite the presence of busloads of tourists, the atmosphere is hushed and respectful. A few people are seated in the pews, deep in prayer. An aisle leads up the center of the church. The left side of the altar is brightly illuminated. On the wall above is a famous bust of the Bard, quill in hand, gazing serenely at the crowd of pilgrims. On the floor beneath, surrounded by bouquets of flowers, at the very spot where Delia Bacon lost her mind, the gravestone of William Shakespeare bears this dire warning: Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here Blest be the man who spares these stones And curst be he that moves my bones. Every year, three million pilgrims arrive from every nation on Earth to approach this stone and consider the likeness of a man whose body of work can only be described as awesome. By contrast, the right side of the altar is dark and featureless. Nobody of any consequence is buried there. The only point of interest is a wooden case, of simple design, carved of dark oak. Inside the case, sealed beneath a thick sheet of glass, lies a large open book. A plaque on the case identifies this book as a first edition of the King James Bible, published in 1611, when Shakespeare was forty-six. Not many pilgrims visit this side of the altar. Most of those that do simply glance at the book, read the plaque and move along. A few, more observant, note that the Bible happens to be opened to a page in the Old Testament: the Book of Psalms, chapter 46. No explanation is given for this particular choice of pages. For the initiated, none is necessary. If you are of inquisitive bent, if you are intrigued by English history and literature, if you value your peace of mind, cover your ears, now. In the year 1900, a scholar noticed something about the King James translation of Psalm 46. Something terrifying. Something wonderful. The 46th word from the beginning of Psalm 46 is “shake.” The 46th word from the end is “spear.” There are only two possibilities here. Either this is the finest coincidence ever recorded in the history of world literature. Or, it is not.
To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far. -- Cecil Rhodes, Last Will and Testament
This is the 3rd post in a series on South Africa and Apartheid and so far in the first two neither Apartheid nor South Africa even exists. But we are to the mid climax. In first part we discussed how our groups of players: Afrikaners, British, Xhosa, Zulu, minor tribes, other ethnicities got to what would become South Africa. In the second part we discussed how the Zulus and Xhosa knocked themselves out of the game leaving the British and Afrikaners as the main players standing for who got rule what would become South Africa. We also discussed how the British policy was non-viable. This part is going to discuss how the British changed course and consequently won control. We are also going to get to the genesis of the Western Left's hatred of the Afrikaners and the genesis of Apartheid, We'll end on the creation of the Union of South Africa which while not the Republic of South Africa will allow me to stop talking about "Southern Africa", "territory that will become South Africa".... But unfortunately you will have to sit through this one more post where South Africa doesn't exist yet. Cecil Rhodes was born in 1853 the sickly asthmatic 5th son of a not particularly notable clergyman. He'd remain sickly his entire life dying in 1902 at the age of 48 from the sorts of deterioration of the heart and lung one wouldn't expect to see until a man was at least well into their 90s. In that short span he would: become one of the richest men in the world; found several countries; change the entire economic structure of the territories that would become: South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe; found 2 major corporations: the British South Africa Company and De Beers; rethink British imperialism inventing what would become the British Commonwealth; becoming one of the defining figures and great visionaries of the Victorian Age; trigger the 2nd Boer War; demonstrate the strategy changing nature of the machine gun decades before World War 1; be the only genuinely important Prime Minister of the Cape Colony; invent the concept of corporate armies; play a large role in saving the South African wine industry and most importantly be the only individual getting his own post in this series. :) Rhodes was sent to South Africa at the age of 17 so that the British weather didn't kill him. Rather than doing the normal thing and spending the money (amounting to a decade or less of a comfortable middle class salary, but no great fortune) on living with some gambling and girls thrown in he decided to head to the newly discovered diamond mines in Kimberly and started buying up small diamond mining operations leveraging each mine's output and outside financing to buy the next. Later he partnered with leading financing and trading firms so by 1888 had what amounted to monopoly control of diamond industry turning De Beers into the diamond powerhouse it remains to this day though the last pieces wouldn't fall into place until 1890. He by the 1880s De Beers was throwing off enough excess profits that he could pay investors and continue expending De Beers while being able to found the predecessor to the British South Africa Company operating much further into the interior opening up Bechuanaland and Rhodesia as colonies using his own profits to fund the administrative expenses much as the East India Company had done a century earlier. Rhodes believed that British policy wasn't viable because it was petty. A vibrant healthy economy throws off an enormous amount of tax revenue. Petty colonialism, like the kind the British were engaging in would never generate much profit because of its very short term nature. Britain should make money by investing in the local economy, spend some on upkeep, reinvesting most of the profits and just skim a little of a forever growing payout. What Britain had tried to do with the American colonies encouraging economic development was the right approach. The problem was London had been shortsighted and selfish turning the local administrators against them. The independence of the USA wasn't a strategic failure it was the result of poor tactical implementation. The problem the British were facing in Southern Africa was similar and since the policies had been similar the results would be as well. The Afrikaners had no reason to be loyal to a Britain which had spent almost a century making very clear that it had no interest in their welfare or society beyond some ports which were frankly not nearly so important since Suez had opened. Rhodes changed policy to have Britain stop acting like a colonizing power and start acting like the domestic government of South Africa as much as possible .Outlining his changes to colonial governing policy:
Colonial financing -- utilize profits from business ventures fund army. Rhodes' companies were good examples of this the British charter and the backing of British troops allowed him to make excess profits which allowed him to incur expenses which the previous skinflint administration could never have tolerated. For example British colonial bonds generated an average return of 4.7%. Investments in independent American bonds generated an average return of only 2.9%. The difference was not being taken into account when the Colonial Office calculated their return on investment which to Rhodes' mind was simply lousy accounting.
Long term investment -- In general rewire the metrics used at the London Colonial Office to focus on long term investment not short term profits.
Demographics -- The British were the world's first people. Physically populate as much of the world as possible. Assimilate other people's into the British way of life. In South Africa in particular he intended to win the hearts and minds of the Boer.
Stability -- The previous administration had focused on stability because instability created upheavals that increased administrative costs. For too long British colonial policy was to tolerate and coexist with local culture. To create a profitable economy agricultural efficiencies are going to need to be introduced. That means 90% of the natives are going to freed up to work in a manufacturing and processing workforce. It also means the agricultural tribal traditional culture is going to be completely destroyed. Instability not stability should be policy. Seek to replace local culture with British culture to enhance the potential for economic growth.
Glory to British not England -- English colonies exist for glory of England. British colonies self exist. England's glory is that is the Birthplace of the 1st people not how much of the world remains completely non-British while in some vague unimportant sense recognizing Victoria as their Queen.
Representation -- As long as colonial governments respond to a English democracy they will be unrepresentative of their people. Create a democratic institution which provides representation for all British people in a British Parliament. There should be an English parliament for England. Invite the United States to join this new institution. "Inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity" (NB: this is essentially the British Commonwealth, though of course the USA was not invited)
Devastating defeat of enemies -- Colonial policy was designed to solve conflict cheaply. Small military victories do not undermine the hostile's economy nor their society and thus don't accomplish much. They simply delay and prolonging the problem created by the enemy allowing the enemy to choose points in time to achieve advantage. Avoid costly wars certainly but when war is needed seek to inflict devastating defeat so the subject people realize their inferiority. This realization facilities undermining their institutions and thus during the peace their way of life easily becomes more British. Further a willingness to war like this makes challenging Britain very costly and risky for potential enemies and thus wars will be far less frequent. The financial people are correct that the aggregate cost of inflicting devastating defeats infrequently is higher than more frequent small wars but the benefits are far greater. War carried out towards devastating defeat becomes a form of investment not a pure non-productive expense.
Scope -- The British were far to unambitious in their aims. The goal of British colonialism should be "all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise". The scope was, "the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire"
map of Cecil Rhodes' proposed British Empire You'll notice that all of Africa was in the map. Rhodes was of the opinion that Africa was incredibly rich in minerals and peoples. But it wasn't exploitable for profit because of a lack of transportation infrastructure. Rhodes was pushing to start fixing this by creating a full African north-south railway connecting "Cairo to the Cape". Rhodes' BSAC conquests were designed to drive north while he used his political influence to push the Egyptian conquest further south into Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and then a business similar to BSAC run by Sir William Mackinnon to push into Uganda. For the northward push (primarily in what today is Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana) Rhodes was directly implementing his policy using a private army funded from the British South Africa Company. The Ndebele and Shona (Zulu tribes) were handled easily by the devastating defeat principle. Rhodes' forces demonstrated how effectively Maxims (a primitive form of machine gun) and barbed wire worked against simple rifles, spears and long shields achieving kill ratios never before seen in the history of warfare. As an aside these battles against the Zulus would also be used by those military theorists and historians who correctly anticipated in the later 1890s through 1910s how devastating a war between the great powers would be using these weapons against each other. Rhodes through BSAC had managed to push north of Lake Mweru and to the Northern tip of Lake Nyasa. Which almost connected with Sudan were it not for German East Africa (Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania) in the middle. In theory an alternative route through the Belgian Congo would also work but the gold mines in Tanzania kept Rhodes focused on taking German East Africa. Further Rhodes met his match in ruthlessness when it came to the Belgians. When Rhodes' negotiating agent sought a development contract for mineral-rich Katanga (in Congo) the native ruler Msiri refused. King Leopold II of Belgium obtained the same concession by having his agent signing it to Belgium himself over Msiri's dead body in the name of the "Congo Free State". At the same time Rhodes worked with the Colonial office and in 1890 British issued the "1890 British Ultimatum" to Portugal. This ultimatum by the British government forced the retreat of Portuguese military forces from areas which had been claimed by Portugal on the basis of historical discovery and recent exploration, but which the United Kingdom claimed on the basis of effective occupation. Portugal had attempted to claim a large area of land between its colonies of Mozambique and Angola including most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia and a large part of Malawi, which had been included in Portugal's "Rose-coloured Map". This ultimatum violated the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 which to that point had been the longest standing peace treaty in history. Who owned what by the early 1900s Take a look at the map above and imagine the British controlling the north-south line connecting to a British/Portuguese line running east-west in the south and a joint French/British/Italian line running east-west in the north. From there local government and companies could construct smaller feeder lines creating a modern rail system. Hopefully and you start to see how Rhodes intended to start developing the transpiration infrastructure needed to create a strong African economy. All this was going to be for naught though if Southern Africa ended up as a Boer state hostile to British interests on the model ZAR (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, Transvaal Republic). So Rhodes decided to run for Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and solve the problems of British strategy explicated in part 2. The primary problem the Boer had with British government is their divide and conquer approach. The British tilted to whomever was losing (a standard British policy they would also follow in Palestine) which for decades meant treating the Boer and native Africans as both being subject peoples while favoring the native Africans against the Boer. In Rhodes mind you could not expect to get loyalty from people you were obvious disfavoring. The British were the ones turning the Boer into enemies. So in 1892 Rhodes instituted the Franchise and Ballot Act. This was seen as a compromise between factions in the Colonial Office and the traditions in the Cape Colony for a broad democracy (anyone with £25 in property could vote) and Orange and ZAR's (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, Transvaal Republic) more exclusive democracy. Rhodes raised the amount of property to £75, an amount specifically chosen to disempower many of the native Africans while allowing many Boers to vote. With a Boer and British based democracy locked in the Cape Colony's democratic powers could be strengthened, creating more self rule and making the involvement of the London Colonial Office less obvious. This concept of using a not explicitly racial criteria while instituting laws with racist intent is very modern. Various Liberals in the London Colonial Office especially missionaries disagreed strongly with Rhode's policies. They had been the ones advocating for the enlightened colonialism that was British policy. Missionaries in particular saw their role as: combating godlessness, superstition and backwardness. In particular encourage better use of land; encourage paycheck work; become trusted advisor to tribal leaders. The slogan "Bring the 3Cs into Africa" referred to Commerce, Christianity and Civilization. To their mind Rhodes' vision of British Imperialism was straight up military tyranny. If followed he would make England no different than a modern day Genghis Khan, creating a empire loathed by a vast expanse of subject peoples who would unite against it from all directions. Instead interfering minimally and being seen as an ally while slowly educated the elite in British custom and religion would cause a gradual consensual change that would build British alliances that would last centuries. Plus such an approach would fulfill the Lord's Great Commission (term for Jesus' command to convert the entire world to Christianity) in a way that honored God rather than shamed him. One need only look at how the Spanish, Portuguese and Balkans had thrown off Islam after centuries to see how ineffective military tyranny was at long term conversions that didn't require force. So in their mind: No the London Office should stand by its traditional values of: monopoly companies and plantations run in (unequal) partnership with indigenous elite. free trade, free (and indeed forced) migration, infrastructural investment, balanced budgets, sound money, the rule of law and incorrupt administration. As far as their Boer, in their mind the Boer were the primary impediment to enlighten British rule in South Africa, being Christians they were obligated to agree with the missionaries on the vision of the White Man's Burden and Enlightened Empire. Rather than making concession to the Boer they needed to be crushed to demonstrate the moral difference between the Boer and the British. With Rhodes' change in policy tilting towards rather than away from the Boer the Western Left came to truly hate the Boer in 1890s. Since the point of this series is the analogy I'll add that I wrote two posts about more or less the same groups of Liberal Christians turning against Israel again having to do with Israeli/Jews discrediting Liberal Western values and thus interfering with the Great Commission: WCC churches and Quakers. Rhodes in debates before and at the time considered this Liberal Empire stuff to be simply aspirational. Without economic interference there wasn't enough money to fund anything like what the Liberals proposed. He'd point to facts like that after a century of such rules in India they had increased the secondary schooling 7x to a whopping 2% while England with not nearly as many well funded missionary organizations was over 16%. Rhodes hoped to unify all of Southern Africa around this compromise approach to the franchise. ZAR however rejected this compromise. By the mid 1990s approximately 1/3rd of their white population were British (Anglicans). ZAR had every intent of maintaining religious based voting criteria (i.e. citizenship in ZAR was only open to people who were members of several Dutch Reformed Churches, see part 2). Obviously for Rhodes a situation where British people were the disempowered minority was intolerable. Additionally the ZAR were maintaining an anti-Cape Colony / anti-British / anti-Rhodes trade policy. It was becoming increasingly clear there would need to be regime change. So in 1895 Rhodes organized an attempted coup d'état now called the "Jameson Raid" (yes the same Jameson who went on to be Prime Minister 1904-8 of the Cape Colony after the 2nd Boer War). The Afrikaners were more astute than natives had been caught wind of the early organization and waited until the forces were committed trapping hundreds of Rhode's people creating a great embarrassment. Its at this point that the Boer made by far the greatest mistake of their history as a people. The 4 years between 1895-9 were when they made the choices that led to their ruin. The British were really embarrassed. A colonial governor who had a crown chartered corporation had been caught red handed engaging in a serious act of war against another sovereign state with no approval from Parliament. The Colonial Office admitted as much and forced Rhodes out of office in 1896. The Afrikaners had real negotiating leverage to work out a deal. It obviously would be extremely important that the next leader of the Cape be friendly. But they didn't decide to negotiate. Instead they started flirting with the Germans, while not actually signing a formal alliance with Germany that at least had the potential to provide them real protection. The flirtation however, turned a nasty incident into a serious threat to all British interests in Southern Africa forcing a British response. In Britain an alliance of Jingoists (populist military hawks) angry about the humiliation of 1st Boer War, Conservative Imperialists who wanted to end Boer independence especially in the ZAR (the 3 core values for Conservatives at the time were: Union with Ireland, the Empire and the superiority of the British race), Liberal Imperialists who supported Rhodes' vision and Missionaries who hated the Boer formed pushing for a war. Seeing this alliance form against them the Afrikaners did nothing to avert the danger. Rather they made a mistake many 2nd tier powers do when it comes to 1st tier powers. The Afrikaners confused the light force and weak will the 1st tier power is willing to spend on them with the amount of force the 1st tier power is capable of employing if it so chooses. Having beaten the British handily in the 1st Boer War when they were fighting the C-team (as I called in part 2) the Afrikaners grossly underestimated what they would face against a British army that had a political mandate for victory, what Britain's A-team would look like. Preparing for something slightly worse than the 1st Boer War the Boer began a serious arms buying program in 1897. ZAR also got more belligerent in their rhetoric which led to a formal alliance with the Orange State and Boer guerilla groups that could support the war effort in the Cape. The Boer had about 63k troops including some foreign troops. . The British were determined not to lose the 2nd Boer War. This was going to be the British-A team. By the second phase of the war between British soldiers, soldiers from other colonies and local Africans providing auxiliary Boer were facing a 500-600k man army. Nor was the command third or even second rate as it had been in the 1st Boer War. For example, the top military command would be Herbert Kitchener who was fresh from the victorious Anglo-Egyptian invasion of Sudan. Kitchener after the 2nd Boer War would go on to be the Commander-in-Chief for the armies in India and a decade after that the UK's Secretary of State for War during World War 1. He's this guy: Kitchener famous 1914 recruiting poster The cost to maintain that army would be £60m / year far more than Britain could ever pull out of Southern Africa (GDP and inflation adjusted the Boer War would cost the UK about $250b). The first phase of the war was a Boer offensive while the British were still deploying troops in October–December 1899. Once the British were done they conquered all pockets of resistance in the Cape and Orange as well as essentially the entire ZAR territory January to September 1900. The Afrikaners decided to fight when surrender was the better option. Leading to a guerrilla war between September 1900 and May 1902. The British simply could not afford to keep an army of that size in the field for years dealing with guerilla tactics until the Boer admitted they were beat. Facing time pressure the British felt they had no choice but to come down hard. The British cut the guerilla war short by instituting a scorched earth policy against areas giving support to guerillas in the ZAR (most of the ZAR). ZAR men were mostly in the militias. Scorched earth destroyed the food supply in the ZAR so the British threw the women and children in concentration camps. The army hadn't prepped for needing to support massive numbers of civilians so malnutrition and disease were rampant in the concentration camps. This disease and malnutrition resulting in a camp death rate of approximately 30% annually. A policy amounting to genocide. Pro Boer forces in the UK generated widespread opposition to the camps so the military response was to not confine woman and children and instead leave civilians on the now barren earth to die of starvation and exposure. Actual POWs were deported to Bermuda and India preventing the Boer from standing any chance of liberating them. African tribes that had lost territory to the Boer began moving in. While both sides had agreed not to arm natives or recruit tribes. But the British weren't going to fight for the Boer if tribes decided to take advantage of their defeat. The Boer were quickly losing everything they were fighting for: freedom, their lands, their family, the self dependence and surrendered rather than have their population geocoded to oblivion, being left with no economy and whatever lands they managed to hold being assaulted on all sides by natives who would take it from them. The Boer society that emerged from the surrender did not have separatist attitude. Destitute Boers now willing to work in the minds and alongside black Africans swelled the ranks of the unskilled urban poor competing with the "uitlanders" in the mines. The new economy was unambiguously focused on gold causing mine production to swell enriching the British interests. The Afrikaners were both physically and psychologically crushed, and wouldn't be causing any more problems for decades. In the UK the war came to be seen as excessive especially as the financial cost of the war sunk in. The Conservatives' suffered a spectacular defeat in 1906 driving the Conservative Prime Minister at the time (12 July 1902 – 4 December 1905) Arthur Balfour from office. He comes up rather regularly on this sub in his later role as Foreign Minister. As the Boer are no longer resisting the British Empire the shift towards more pro-Boer policies from England continues. In 1909 the British Parliament dissolves the British colonies of: Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal and combines them into a Federal Union of South Africa. This makes South Africa into a Dominion (essentially Australia's status at the time). Jan Smuts (an Afrikaner) resurrects Rhodes' idea of a Common Wealth and the British embrace it. And so we conclude part 3 our story of how the British eventually won and South Africa came to exist. How the Western Left started to hate the Boer, a hatred they would resurrect later. And how the first steps towards apartheid were taken. Whew that was longer than I intended!
Online Gaming Law Clears Up Confusion. Previously, Germany’s online gaming industry existed in a grey area. Until 2008, online poker and casino gaming was unregulated. To address the changing The possibility for obtaining a license for online casino games will be subject to separate laws of the individual federal states. Likely, the legislators will model the laws on the specifications for a license to operate a land-based casino. The requirements for obtaining a license to offer online sports betting, virtual slot machines and online poker are very similar and only vary in Online gambling laws around the world. Today almost every country has its own rules regulating the land-based gambling. However, the situation with online gambling is more ambiguous. As can be seen, the attitude towards local and foreign operators differs fundamentally from country to country. The only place you can’t gamble is online — and that’s only partial. Online gambling laws in Germany let you play the lottery online, and you can bet on sports and horse races online through the lottery. You just can’t play slots online 100% legally. It’s currently a grey market. Until now, online gaming in Germany has existed in a grey area. New Laws Turn Grey into White . The 2012 Interstate Treaty on Gambling set out a framework for governing the industry. 15 of Germany’s 16 states initially accepted the Treaty. It was subsequently adopted by the Schleswig-Holstein region in 2013. However, although the Treaty created a framework to manage the industry and protect Consequently, online gaming operators serving German customers are advised to adopt appropriate and extensive risk management systems and to familiarise themselves with the extensive requirements. The German AML Act is particularly strict on customer due diligence and on gambling-related payment transactions. Virtual currencies, understood as a type of digital money/e-money, are not regulated under gambling law in Germany but are subject to financial/banking regulation. Unless virtual Is downloading legal in Germany? Let´s start from the very beginning. German law consider that sharing content protected by copyright is illegal. That means, that you should be careful when using P2P programs such as Emule or Torrent because when we download any content from those online tools we are, at the same time, sharing it with other users, and that is the main problem. We are sharing As things stand now, online gambling is largely outlawed across Germany with the exception of the two dozen or so operators who have licenses to operate in Schleswig-Holstein. There are no other legal gaming sites in Germany, and there’s no way to obtain a license to offer games. German gaming laws violate EU rules regarding free trade and competition. The EU has chastised Germany for its harsh stance Germany. Germany has a vibrant eGaming sector. As one of the biggest countries in Europe, Germany’s online casinos provide punters with a fair gambling approach. The sector is notwithstanding competitive and strictly regulated by a licensing authority. While the establishment of online casinos has faced legal hurdles in the last few years, online casinos established in other countries have access to the German market. It means Germans can join internet casinos even if they do not operate Online Poker Will Become Legal in Germany. Online gaming in Germany has always been in a "gray" area. Formally, since 2008, the Interstate Treaty on Gambling (ITG) is ruling. According to this law, online games within the country were banned, but the prohibition didn't apply to play through offshore sites.
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