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Lockdown 3.0 Things to do, plus help and support.

Disclaimer I want to thank everyone for the gilds, replies and suggestions. I just do not have time to reply to everyone, but I am reading everything. I am not sure how much bigger the thread can be, I already typed this but it vanished so I think I'm at the limit. I will try to keep updating, but I don't expect the thread to be up top for much longer and will likely vanish soon, so if you need anything save it.
Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it.
Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions:
For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month!
For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k.
I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device.
Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
  • Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
  • Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
  • Now TV (I believe it's 7 days)
  • Disney+
  • Britbox
  • Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system.
Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section.
Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox.
Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like.
Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird.
Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device.
For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV.
Anime
If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two.
PC Centric software
If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12.
Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development.
The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals.
Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap.
Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam.
**BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however.
IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff.
Game Store Fronts
  • Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
  • Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
  • GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
  • Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
  • Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
  • Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
  • Games with Gold Bleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions
Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
  • Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
  • Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
  • EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
  • PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that.
Audiobooks & Ebooks
  • Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
  • Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
  • Marvel Unlimited No experience with this. ItFuckingWont wanted me to add it. A subscription service for Marvel.
Education
  • Sign Language BSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
  • BBC's Bitesize here is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change
Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
  • If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the details According to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
  • Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
  • Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
  • There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
  • Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
  • Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment.
Hope it helps someone at least
PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year
fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75!
tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books
Learning Language
Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments:
Togtogtog Gives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games
Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games
ilyemco suggested these
HEALTH
I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix.
Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7.
If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery.
HELP & ADVICE
The lockdown Rules.
Reasons to leave home include:
  • Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
  • Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
  • Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
  • Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
  • Communal religious worship
  • Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
Support
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THE ROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though)
_riotingpacifist wanted these links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Update:
Digital Art
These are Free
  • Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
  • Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
  • Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen.
Office suit software
A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
  • LibreOffice This has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
  • Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making
I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software.
Games development
D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
submitted by MrSoapbox to unitedkingdom [link] [comments]

Lockdown, things to do, help & advice.

Disclaimer I am posting this here because I got a message from the mods asking me to. I'm not from London so links aren't London centric (but hopefully still of help) and the main post is here so any updates will likely be there (I will try here but it's hard to keep up with the amount of suggestions)
Thanks.
Yes, it's hard, it sucks, it's depressing. It is something we all have to do if you want to see this virus go. Everyone knows the deal, too many think they're the exception but no one is. However, staying home is hard so maybe I can help at least one or two people with some incentives. I'll try to give links to some things that can help cure the boredom, and some support if you need it.
Most of this might be obvious to some, some might not even have internet and of course, money is a big issue, so I'll try to give some suggestions:
For streaming and on demand things such as Netflix et al, don't forget you can subscribe for free for your first month. This goes for most things in the list. If you are worried about putting in your payment details and forgetting to cancel a month later, don't worry! You can sign up and immediately cancel and you still get your free month!
For people who don't have a smart TV, you can buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick or a Roku box. The Fire stick can go as low as £20 often for 1080p. It will drop to £30 for 4k.
I picked up a 4k Roku device for £18 on Amazon once. It's fast and snappy. currently it's going for £33 for the 4k version. Having both, there is little difference between the devices. NowTV also do their own roku powered device.
Subscription based streaming sites that all offer 2-4 weeks free for first timers
  • Netflix *According to comments the second month is free.
  • Amazon Prime You can either get Amazon video on its own, or take prime with other benefits. I strongly urge those who use Amazon for buying off their store front to use [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/] as there is literally no difference except everything you buy amazon donates to a charity of your choice.
  • Now TV (I believe it's 7 days)
  • Disney+
  • Britbox
  • Amazon channels. I believe you can get all these individually but Amazon offers them as channels bound to your prime account, and they are again either free for a couple weeks (again, take them, cancel instantly) or very cheap. I recently subscribed to Starzplay for £1 for 3 months. It has some good shows on it like Fringe, doom patrol. It also has channels like Curiosity stream and shudder
If you have not subscribed to the any of the above, you can get a few months of free TV by signing up and cancelling instantly. I suggest waiting at least 5 minutes just to let it go through the system.
Some tips for Now TV. IF you already have a subscription, I've noticed you can get it cheaper by cancelling. When you cancel they will beg you to stay. Select "I can not afford it this month" and they should beg again, telling you what shows they have. If you say you still want to cancel, they'll beg one last time and offer you the subscription for cheaper. This won't work every month, but I've noticed they'll always offer it the first time, then again after a couple months. If you're subscribed to both films and entertainment do the most expensive one as it may not work both times (but it might!). You can also pick up passes from storefronts a lot cheaper sometimes, before I could pick one up on Amazon for £3 but, they seem to have cracked down on it. If you shop around (or if anyone knows of a legitimate store please let me know) you might be able to pick it up cheaper. Lastly, check their website and under your account they should have an "offers for you" section.
Completely free TV
If you do have a smart TV and/or device, there are some good free streaming apps. One I really love is called PlutoTV. I know this is on both Roku and the fire stick, as well as Ps4/Ps5 and xbox.
Pluto offers a bunch of live channels and now an on demand section, all for free. It has adverts but they are actually short (shorter than regular TV and fewer of them). Some of the channels are just streaming certain shows like Mythbusters 24/7 or Dog the bounty hunter, but it has a lot of old movie channels as well as 24/7 kickboxing and MMA. It also has a 24/7 poker channel I quite like.
Another one I like is Rakuten Viki however, I haven't watched it for a while as my fire stick is only 1080p and I have too many other devices attached. I believe it is on Roku but you have to jump through some hoops and have an account. The last I checked on the fire stick you did not. Viki offers a metric ton of Asian shows, mainly from Japan and South Korea but it does have chinese, Malaysian etc. It has subtitles. Some Japanese shows are hysterical, albeit weird.
Roku also do their own channels with free shows if you own a device.
For those who don't have a smart TV or a Streaming device, you can set up your own computer as a dedicated streaming device with Plex. It's been a while since I used it but I believe it now also offers free movies and TV.
Anime
If you are into Anime there is
The first 2 are free to watch, or offer premium without ads which you can have a trial with. Crunchyroll is the better of the two with more original choice for Japanese voice and subs, while Funimation has more Dubs. I don't believe HiDive is free to watch but you do get a 2 week trial. These are more exclusives than the previous two.
PC Centric software
If you are a gamer or like Audiobooks or anything that uses computers for things like music making, programming or graphic design
Humble Bundle offers, as per the name, bundles. A long running site that got bought out by IGN. It offers both single items and bundles you can buy individually/as a pack while also offering a separate monthly subscription for around £8-9. The subscription gives you 12 games on average per month. That's the simplest explanation but it changes somewhat as sometimes you get to pick 10 out of 14 games, or get all 12.
Humble bundle offers more than just games though. Every Tuesday they bring a new bundle of games, while Thursday (I "think) a new bundle of books. They very often have books from the Black Library giving you a ton of Warhammer books. Sometimes it's standard E-books, other times it's audiobooks. A few times a year they do bundles for graphic design, a typical bundle would include programs like Paintshop Pro Corel Painter etc, They usually go for £0.76 for tier 1 up to around £18 for tier 3, which would include 4-6 full titles with 10+ addons. They also often have Music making bundles or video editing software as well as Programming or video game development.
The bundles change often, they usually have around 11 bundles at a time that last for 20 days. Sometimes it's trash but they do often have some very good deals.
Fanatical offers the same as humble bundle except usually not as high quality, but sometimes they do have some incredible deals, and they are very very cheap.
Both humble and fanatical are safe, trusted and been around a long time, and they are NOT grey market key sites. They work with the publishers and developers. You can buy games both old and new for a lot cheaper than you would most other places. Unless it states otherwise, keys are usually for steam.
**BOTH HB and Fanatical (HB much more common) offer free games fairly often. The catch is linking your steam account to them (at least HB). It is safe however.
IndieGala is another site like above. Except, these are much much lower quality. However, they offer a metric ton of free games. Quality is low but it is legitimate, and a lot of free stuff.
Game Store Fronts
  • Steam This one is so obvious I didn't add it, but apparently many want me to. It is the best out there, and you can find almost everything, with fantastic deals.
  • Greenmangaming offers games cheaply. Again, not a grey market site (which are legal but unethical) and they sometimes do bundles.
  • GoG (Good old games) is a DRM free site run by CDPR, the makers of the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. They offer you games quite cheap and not needing DRM (such as Steam, Uplay etc which is less invasive versions of dodgy DRM from the olden days).
  • Epic Games Despite the controversy whether you care about their rivalry with valve, they offer free games ever week. Without ever having bought anything I have gained over 170 games. literally. Good games for the most part. They often give you £10 coupons as well.
  • Twitch Everyone knows twitch, but if you don't, it's a streaming service for watching gamers and girls with low cut tops accidentally bending over in front of the game. However, if you're signed up to prime, you get free games each month (and randomly between the set bunch).
  • Playstation Store Currently has January sales. Currently the free games for PS+ are for PS4: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Greedfall. For the Ps5 it is Maneater
  • Games with Gold Bleed 2 and the King of Fighters XIII is available until Janurary 15th whilst little Nightmares is available until January 31st.
Gaming Subscriptions
Like the TV versions, you can sign up to these for a free trial (or very cheap). If you do sign up to only one at a time, it should keep you busy for a few months
  • Xbox Game Pass You can do this on both/either an Xbox or PC. If you sign up to the regular one, you can get a month (maybe three!) for £1. After you have done that, you can sign up to the premium version for 3 months at £1 a month. Most people know game pass, but you can download a large selection of games for free. The premium version gives you games with gold, allowing you to keep the games forever (but can only play with a subscription)
  • Ubisoft+ I'm not 100% sure if you get a trial or not. This allows a large collection of Ubisoft titles to play for £12.99 a month. Quite expensive but good if you like Ubisoft titles I guess.
  • EA Play EA's version. Goes by a ton of names I think, EA Access, EA Play, Origin Access etc etc. There's a couple of versions of this, and it is across all platforms (PS4/5, Xbox, PC) but not sure about the switch. I "think" the premium allows you to play on all platforms, while the cheaper one on a single platform, but I may be mistaken.
  • PS Now a once terrible service that is now actually very good. Allows you to download some Ps4 games to your PS4/5 and lets you stream a massive amount of Ps2/3/4 to your PC or playstation.
There's more like nvidia's service but you need the Shield device which is quite expensive. I'll leave it at that.
Audiobooks & Ebooks
  • Audible Not sure what the current deal is but if you are a prime member you can sign up for a trial and get a free Audiobook each month for 3 months. Some warhammer books are 48 hours long, 3 of those gives you a good 100+ hours of listening!
  • Comixology Another Amazon company, but lets you download some free comics I believe.
  • Marvel Unlimited No experience with this. ItFuckingWont wanted me to add it. A subscription service for Marvel.
Education
  • Sign Language BSL here No experience myself, suggested by n21brown and asked for a few times. Didn't know SL was so popular! Listed as "Pay what you can"
  • BBC's Bitesize here is apparently good for home learning. Again, no personal experience.
If you need some spare change
Okay, I don't generally bother with it, but maybe some of this could be useful to you. These are NOT a quick way to make a fortune. These are small things you can do over time for a bit of pocket change
  • If you have prime you can get a FREE FIVE POUND GIFT CARD by literally just streaming a song from Amazon music (which is included in prime) here is the details According to the comments it's only for select people, but it's worth trying If the link doesn't work for you just google "Amazon £5 coupon music"
  • Now, these sorts of sites have been around for years, I haven't used any other than talkInsights which I must have signed up to 10-15 years ago. Basically they send you surveys and you answer them. They are confidential and don't ask for personal details in the survey. You need 2000 points and you get £20. During the pandemic they've slowed down but I probably get around £40 a year. Not much I know, but it's an email followed by a quick survey ticking boxes. Depending on your answer sometimes you get screened out, I'm not telling you to lie but just be consistent with your answers and you should be able to work out how to not get screened. Some emails are only worth 20 points, others 200. It's slow to get to the 2000 but very quick to just answer a few questions.
  • Apparently beermoneyuk is a good sub to make some pocket change with.
  • There is also matched betting. I have never done this, I don't have the patience but from what I've read, it's legitimate, it works and you can make a fair amount of cash from it so long as you do it correctly, and there's a ton of guides. I mention this because people stuck at home could get into it and as long as you're careful (I.E not entering in the wrong numbers) it's risk free AND it pisses off the betting shops. It seems people in comments have had success with it. Disclaimer A couple have complained about gambling. This arguably is not gambling. If you are susceptible to addiction do not do it. However, it's argued that there is no fun or buzz in this, and it's a very tedious and time consuming thing. Others argue you can't make the same money anymore (People were making thousands, now only hundreds if that). It's risk free providing you know what you're doing, the risks are user error, such as entering the wrong numbers. Someone pointed out that due to the lockdown, bets could potentially be cancelled due to sport stopping. So use on a side of caution. We're (mainly) adults so I'll leave it up just because this doesn't have the excitement of regular gambling.
  • Microsoft Rewards This is an easy way to make pocket change doing very little. Most people have a MS account. The rewards program offers you numerous ways to grab points, by playing free to play games, answering small questions (you don't even need to answer most of the time, just open the link and shut it) and by using bing and searching on it. I've gotten 20k points JUST by answering questions over a couple months. There are many rewards but you can grab a £5 gift card for 6k for example, or a month of game pass (and AFAIK you can make points playing the games)
  • Google rewards Someone mentioned this in the comments. I have not used it, so can not give any input on it. Sounds similar to TalkInsights which I linked. Google states "Complete short surveys while standing in line, or waiting for a subway. Get rewarded with Google Play or PayPal credit for each one you complete. Topics include everything from opinion polls, to hotel reviews, to merchant satisfaction surveys. We’ll notify you when a survey is waiting."
That's it for now. I will try to update as I go along. A long post but I hope that it can help some of you with finding something good to do that's free, cheap or a bargain. I do suggest getting prime, especially since you get free music, free delivery, free TV and music and free video games each month. In fact, there's a ton of perks and I feel I've gotten way over the cost investment.
Hope it helps someone at least
PartTimeCrazy said if you bought an Apple product you get 3 free months of Apple Arcade and Apple TV free for a year
fakehunted is upset I didn't mention wanking. Tesco have 225 sheets of Tissue for £0.75!
tale_lost suggested Project Gutenberg for a collection of free E-Books
Learning Language
Unfortunately, I don't have time to check every link listed so I will link the comments:
Togtogtog Gives a lot of links for Spanish
Board & Tabletop games
Corporal_Anaesthetic has made a list of Board games
ilyemco suggested these
HEALTH
I'm not a doctor! But if you're a smoker, something I strongly suggest is to quit. I struggled for years but in the first lockdown I quit, technically. I haven't had a cigarette since, however, I do that silly thing millennials do. I vape, but, it made quitting extremely easy. I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't for 88Vape They sell extremely cheap liquids at £1 each. You can find these in B&M but you can pick up 25 for £20 or buy your own mix.
Vitamin D deficiency has been said to be a big problem for the virus. I'd suggest (again, not a doctor!) that you pick some up. Tesco do a 3 for 2 deal. So you can pick up 270 tablets for £7.
If you are vulnerable you MIGHT be able to phone tesco and get put on their delivery saver list (currently it's paused but phoning may help. At the very least they might give you a priority slot. I did this for my mum, we didn't shop at Tesco but I phoned for her, and they put her on with no hassle, so she can always get a delivery.
HELP & ADVICE
The lockdown Rules.
Reasons to leave home include:
  • Work or volunteering where it is "unreasonable" to work from home. This includes work in someone else's home, such as that carried out by social workers, nannies, cleaners and tradespeople
  • Education, training, childcare and medical appointments and emergencies
  • Exercise outdoors (limited to once a day). This includes meeting one other person from another household in an open public space to exercise
  • Shopping for essentials such as food and medicine
  • Communal religious worship
  • Meeting your support or childcare bubble. Children can also move between separated parents Activities related to moving house
I want to add, if you are in danger you are also allowed (and must!) to get away from the situation for some reason, BBC seems to have missed this very important thing (or I am blind)
Support
FOR THOSE SHIELDING YOU CAN CONTACT THE ROYAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE. These people helped my mother with picking up her medicine from the chemist. They were very helpful and went out their way to keep in touch and do it immediately. (It's the only experience I have with them though)
_riotingpacifist wanted this links added, but I simply just don't have the time to vet and check all the suggestions here, so I will link as is:
Update:
Digital Art
These are Free
  • Krita Arguably the best in my opinion. It has a load of options, brushes and a decent UI. It works fantastic with a tablet.
  • Gimp This is a decent program but last I used, the UI was a pain, and it isn't so user friendly while misses features, but it works, and it is possible to do some incredible creations on it.
  • Medibang Paint This is slightly geared towards Comics and Manga. I really enjoy using this with my drawing Tablet. As far as I know, it also for regular tablets for Android/Ipad and is free.
You can pick up a drawing tablet on Amazon quite cheap these days! Small ones that are just a black slate such as the wacom ones are good but takes some practice to get use to, but very worth it if you can't afford a dedicated drawing tablet with a screen.
Office suit software
A couple of free applications for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
  • LibreOffice This has most the average user would need to write their own books or to work from home. There's not a huge amount of difference between the two I'm linking (since I last used anyway) so it's more for preference.
  • Open Office You can pick this up here and again, like above it's just preference.
Music Making
I'm going to direct to matthewharris806 for some links as all the programs I've used like Reason are expensive, or cheaper stuff in bundles such as Magix software.
Games development
D_Dad_Default gives some links for that here
submitted by MrSoapbox to london [link] [comments]

Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis

NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.
submitted by jeromeBDpowell to SPACs [link] [comments]

THE TIMES (Full Article) - Jordan Peterson on his depression, drug dependency and Russian rehab hell

THE TIMES (Full Article) - Jordan Peterson on his depression, drug dependency and Russian rehab hell
INTERVIEW

Jordan Peterson on his depression, drug dependency and Russian rehab hell

The superstar psychologist, scourge of snowflakes, and his daughter, Mikhaila, explain how he unravelled — and their bizarre journey to find a cure


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📷 Jordan Peterson
SHALAN AND PAUL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
Interview by Decca Aitkenhead
Saturday January 30 2021, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times

I thought this was going to be a normal interview with Jordan Peterson. After speaking with him at length, and with his daughter for even longer, I no longer have any idea what it is. I don’t know if this is a story about drug dependency, or doctors, or Peterson family dynamics — or a parable about toxic masculinity. Whatever else it is, it’s very strange.
Peterson, a clinical psychologist, is a conservative superstar of the culture wars. Born and raised in Alberta by a librarian and a teacher, he spent the first three decades of his career in relative academic obscurity, churning out papers and maintaining a small clinical practice. All that changed in 2016 when he challenged, on free-speech grounds, a new Canadian law he argued would legally compel him to use transgender people’s preferred pronouns. Practically overnight the Toronto professor became a YouTube sensation, posting videos and lectures attacking identity politics and political correctness, and dispensing bracing advice about how to be a real man. His 2018 self-help bestseller, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has made him arguably the world’s most famous — and certainly its most controversial — public intellectual.
For three tumultuous years wherever Peterson went uproar and adoration followed. His explosive confrontation with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News in 2018 resulted in the network calling in security experts after some of his supporters posted abuse and threats online. To the millions of young men who idolise him, the erudite, unflappable 58-year-old is a kind of fantasy father figure. Life is tough, he warns them; they need to stop whining, tidy their room, stand up straight and deal with it. He accuses the “neo-Marxist radical left” of trying to “feminise” men, and defends traditional masculine dominance. According to Peterson men represent “order”. To his critics he represents the respectable face of reactionary misogyny, and a dangerous gateway drug to online alt-right radicalisation.

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📷 Jordan Peterson and his daughter, Mikhaila - SHALAN & PAUL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
If his rise to fame was dramatic, what has happened since he disappeared from public view 18 months ago sounds fantastical — in his daughter’s words it is “like a horror movie”. A movie in which her father gets hooked on benzodiazepines, becomes suicidal, is hospitalised for his own safety and then diagnosed with schizophrenia. Against his doctors’ advice she flies him to Russia to be placed in an induced coma. He emerges delirious, unable to walk, and ricochets from one rehab centre to another, ending up in a Serbian clinic where he contracts Covid-19. Back home in Canada at last, from where he speaks to me earlier this month, he breaks down in floods of tears and has to leave the room. When I ask if he feels angry with himself for taking benzodiazepines, his daughter jumps in, arms waving — “Hold on, hold on!” — and tries to bring the interview to a close.

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📷 Russian roulette: Jordan and Mikhaila in Moscow, where he tried an unorthodox form of drugs detox@MIKHAILAPETERSON / INSTAGRAM
If this was a movie, its director would unquestionably be the 28-year-old Mikhaila Peterson, CEO of her father’s company. She and her Russian husband appear to have assumed full charge of his affairs, so before I am allowed to speak to him I must first talk to her. Unrecognisable from the ordinary-looking brunette from photos just a few years ago, Mikhaila today is a glossy, pouting Barbie blonde, and talks with the zealous, spiky conviction of a President Trump press spokeswoman.
According to her website she has suffered from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder, since early childhood, which necessitated a hip and ankle replacement at 17. Other symptoms — chronic fatigue, depression, OCD, nose bleeds, restless legs, brain fog, itchy skin, the list goes on — forced her to drop out of university, “and it finally occurred to me that whatever was happening was likely going to end in my death, and rather soon. After almost 20 years, the medical community still had no answers for me.” So she decided to cure herself.
In 2015 Mikhaila began to experiment with food elimination. Starting with gluten, she removed one food group after another from her diet, until for the past three years she has eaten literally nothing but red meat — almost exclusively beef — and salt. This has, she claims, cured everything. She now makes podcasts and blogs about her “lion diet”.
Needless to say the medical profession does not endorse this diet. Nevertheless, in 2018 her father adopted it and within months declared it had cured his depression, anxiety, psoriasis, snoring, gingivitis, gastric reflux, even the floaters in his right eye. He stopped taking the SSRI antidepressants that he had been on for 14 years. He was, he proclaimed, “intellectually at my best”.

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📷 Delivering a lecture in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on his 12 Rules for Life book tour in 2018 REX
Like every medical autodidact I’ve ever met, Mikhaila rattles off pharmacological jargon at 100 miles an hour, sweeping from one outlandish tale to another with breathless melodrama that becomes increasingly exhausting to follow. She wants to give me the “nitty-gritty nasty details” of the past 18 months herself, “because Dad is still not fully recovered, and he’s still extremely prone to anxiety, so any recounting of the story knocks him out for a couple of days”. After 80 minutes on Zoom, the one thing of which I’m certain is that, were I as close to death as she assures me her father repeatedly was, this is not the person I would entrust with saving my life.
The problems all began, according to Mikhaila, in October 2016. By then she, her husband and her father were consuming only meat and greens — the full lion diet would come later — and ate a stew that contained apple cider, to which all three had a violent “sodium metabisulphite response. It was really awful — but it hit him hardest. He couldn’t stand up without blacking out. He had this impending sense of doom. He wasn’t sleeping.” Peterson himself has said he didn’t sleep for 25 days, a claim that has been widely disputed, given that the longest period of sleeplessness recorded is 11 days. Mikhaila brushes this away impatiently. “He was in really bad shape, right.”
Peterson had plenty of reasons to be unsettled. His book 12 Rules would be coming out a year later; his job at the University of Toronto was in jeopardy due to the transgender pronoun controversy. “So that was incredibly stressful,” Mikhaila agrees. “And then just going from not being known to being known was stressful. But our entire family agrees, the main problem here was this weird health thing.” They consulted doctors, “who didn’t really know what was going on”, until the family GP prescribed “a really low dose of benzodiazepine”, the family of sedative drugs that includes Valium. It seemed to help. “And we were, like, OK, whatever.”

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📷 Peterson’s wife, Tammy, was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer in early 2019DANIEL HAMBURY / STELLA PICTURES
By early 2019 Peterson was a household name, his book a global bestseller, when disaster struck. His wife of 30 years, Tammy, was diagnosed with kidney cancer. “We did a whole bunch of research and it was this extremely rare cancer that is extremely deadly.” Tammy suffered all kinds of surgical complications, and Peterson spent months at her hospital bedside, terrified she would die. That summer his doctor raised his benzodiazepine dose, but instead of soothing him it seemed only to make matters worse. “Dad started to get super-weird. It manifested as extreme anxiety, and suicidality.”
On another psychiatrist’s advice he quit the drug and started taking ketamine, but cold turkey sent him into benzodiazepine withdrawal. Another psychiatrist, a family friend, told him to resume the benzodiazepine and check into a rehab clinic to help wean him back off it slowly. After six weeks in rehab in Connecticut he was in a worse state than ever, still on the benzodiazepine plus now additional drugs, unable to stop pacing or writhing with agitation. Frightened he would kill himself, Peterson transferred to a public hospital in Toronto in November, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The hospital wanted to treat him with electroconvulsive therapy, but Mikhaila and her family were having none of it. “It’s not like we’re uneducated in these things, right?” she says. “We kept telling them, no, the problem was his medication. But they wouldn’t listen to us. So we started calling rehab clinics around the world. We rang 57 of them. And this one place in Russia was, like, ‘Yeah, we do detox.’ So we thought, what do we do? It’s got to be dangerous because no one else will do it. But my family agreed, let’s give it a shot.”
The Toronto doctors “were not OK with it. We had to sign papers taking responsibility for whatever happened. And they were annoyed about it enough that they wouldn’t give us his discharge papers. Which is not even legal, right? It was a complete mess.”
In January last year, with the help of her husband, a nurse and a security guard, Mikhaila put Peterson on a private plane to Moscow. The clinic there was more familiar with detoxing patients from opiates than benzodiazepines; they took one look at Peterson and said he’d been deliberately poisoned. “And I was, like, no, it’s the meds!” To complicate matters further, the clinic intubated him for undiagnosed pneumonia. Did she feel her father was in safe hands? “Well, my husband was translating everything, which was terrifying. But the clinic looked really modern. It didn’t look sketchy.”
The medics administered propofol, the drug that killed Michael Jackson, to induce an eight-day coma, during which they “did something called plasmapheresis, which takes your blood and cleans it. Benzodiazepines have such a long half-life, there’s a theory that maybe some of the withdrawal is because you still have benzodiazepines in you. So the plasmapheresis got rid of everything.”
When Peterson regained consciousness, it became clear that they were not out of the woods yet. “He was catatonic. Really, really bad. And then he was delirious. He thought my husband was his old roommate. Oh, it was horrible.” Did she panic? “Yeah! I lost a whole bunch of hair. I’ve never been that stressed in my entire life. We’d brought Dad here and it was, like, what did the detox do? Was it too hard on his brain? I thought, I’m f***ed if this goes badly. The entire world is going to blame me, because who brings somebody to detox from these medications in Russia? It’s, like, this is really bad.”
Peterson was transferred to a public hospital near Moscow, “for people with severe head trauma, basically. It was like a Soviet-era hospital from a movie. But it was full of really — thank God — really, really, really, really skilled doctors. So I went the next day, and Dad was back!”
The doctors had put him on new drugs; he was alert. By now it was February and Peterson had no memory of anything since mid-December. He had even forgotten how to type. Over eight days he learnt to walk again, and was then transferred to another clinic to convalesce. In late February his family flew him to Florida, rented a house in Palm Beach, hired nurses and thought he would recover. But ten days later all the old symptoms came back. Unable to stop moving, in pain, Peterson was suicidal again. “And I was, like, what is going on?”
Mikhaila contacted a clinic in Serbia — “this, like, top-of-the-world private hospital” — and flew her father to Belgrade, where he was diagnosed with akathisia, a condition of restlessness classically linked to benzodiazepine withdrawal. Finally Mikhaila had found doctors who corroborated her own theory. They prescribed further sedatives and antidepressants and an opiate; her father seemed “stoned” but “at least started to relax”. Father and daughter released a podcast, updating fans on his recovery. And then Serbia went into lockdown, so she moved into her father’s clinic with her husband, their nanny and three-year-old daughter — and all five of them promptly contracted Covid.
By now my head is spinning. The blizzard of obscure pharmaceutical terminology keeps on coming, as Mikhaila reels off the names of more antibiotics and antidepressants and antipsychotics prescribed to her father, recounting her objections to this one and that one until it all becomes a blur.
The long and the short of it is that late last year Peterson flew home to Canada. His akathisia — the intense agitation and restlessness that makes him suicidal — has improved significantly but not disappeared. No one can understand why it still plagues him. He still isn’t free of meds. Having gone through several more doctors in Toronto, Mikhaila is currently corresponding online with “thousands” of akathisia sufferers, who are “telling me what worked for them”.

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📷 Christmas Day, 2020, in Toronto. Clockwise from left: Jordan, Mikhaila and husband Andrey, Julian (Jordan’s son) with son Elliott and wife Jillian, Tammy with granddaughter Scarlett ---- ELLIANA ALLON
Has she ever, I wonder, felt perceived by the medical profession as the problem? “Completely, yes. Hundred per cent. I’ve been problematic for a while.” She starts to laugh. “I’m pretty pushy when I think something is wrong.” She doesn’t have any actual medical training, though, I point out. Doesn’t she worry about the responsibility she has assumed for her father’s treatment? “But because of my experience of being ill, I’ve done a lot of research. There’s this trust people have of doctors that I don’t have. Because doctors are just people, right?”
This opinion is not uncommon in North America, where surprising numbers regard YouTube as a viable substitute for medical school. Whatever your opinion of Peterson, however, his scrupulous deference to scientific data is indisputable. His public image is defined by scholarly precision; “There’s no evidence for that,” is practically his catchphrase.
I am dying to ask him why he submitted to this medical circus, orchestrated by his daughter against his doctor’s orders, when we speak the following day. But at the end of this long and often bewildering account from his daughter, I still can’t tell if her father will be cogent or incoherent. I don’t know what to expect. And Mikhaila will, of course, be monitoring our conversation.
Peterson is as impeccably groomed, composed and meticulously courteous as ever when he appears on Zoom a day later. He looks gaunt and pale, though, and I’m struck by an overwhelming sense of his vulnerability.
As the professor is famously data-driven, I ask what medical evidence was so compelling that it persuaded him to detox in Moscow. He looks slightly blank. “I don’t remember anything. From December 16 of 2019 to February 5, 2020,” he says, “I don’t remember anything at all.” He reassures me that he did, nonetheless, consent to being treated in Moscow, so again I ask why.
“Well, I went to the best treatment clinic in North America. And all they did was make it worse. So we were out of options. The judgment of my family was that I was likely going to die in Toronto.” Why would he put his life in the hands of his family and not the medical profession? “I had put myself in the hands of the medical profession. And the consequence of that was that I was going to die,” he repeats blankly. “So it wasn’t that [the evidence from Moscow] was compelling. It was that we were out of other options.”
I’m curious about the extent to which his mental health was troubling him in the months and years leading up to the crisis. On his book tour he’d delivered a different lecture each night at 160 cities in 200 days, addressing crowds of many thousands. Feted as a psychological authority in possession of all the answers — busy dispensing advice to fans about their mental health — how worried was he about his own? “Well, I don’t think it’s a mental health issue. I think it’s a physical health issue. I have an autoimmune disorder of some sort, and much depression is autoimmune in nature.”
Now I’m confused all over again. Throughout all his medical ordeals there wasn’t ever a formal diagnosis of an autoimmune disorder, was there? “Yeah, there was,” Mikhaila jumps in. “In Russia and in Serbia. Fibromyalgia.” That isn’t an autoimmune condition, is it? “I mean,” Peterson says vaguely, “these sort of autoimmune conditions aren’t very well understood — and fibromyalgia is a good example of that. It’s terra incognita.”
Then he starts talking instead about post-traumatic stress disorder. “One of the markers for post-traumatic stress disorder is derealisation. Like when the things around you don’t seem real. And I was in a constant state of derealisation from October 2016 till …” — he checks the day’s date with a mirthless chuckle — “January 12th of 2021.”
Being Jordan Peterson, he explains, has involved five years of untold pressure. “I was at the epicentre of this incredible controversy, and there were journalists around me constantly, and students demonstrating. It’s really emotionally hard to be attacked publicly like that. And that happened to me continually for, like, three years.” In 2017, 200 of his colleagues “signed a petition at the University of Toronto to have me removed from my tenured position. And my faculty association forwarded that to the administration without even notifying me.” When he gave a talk at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, “protesters were banging on the windows. It was like a zombie attack. They arrested a woman who was carrying a garotte, for God’s sake! And I was harassed directly after the demonstration by a small coterie of insane protesters who were in my face for two blocks, three blocks, yelling and screaming.”
Was it frightening? “I guess I’d have to say yes, definitely. I was concerned for my family. I was concerned for my reputation. I was concerned for my occupation. And other things were happening. The Canadian equivalent of the Inland Revenue service was after me, making my life miserable, for something they admitted was a mistake three months later, but they were just torturing me to death. The college of psychologists that I belonged to was after me because one of my clients had put forth a whole sequence of specious allegations. So that was extraordinarily stressful.”
He was — and remains — intensely frustrated that journalists keep casting his work as “fundamentally political”. “I really don’t like upsetting people,” he says. “I’m a clinical psychologist, it’s in my nature to help people. I’m not interested in generating controversy. I’ve been trying to help people [understand] that they need a profound meaning in their life because their lives are difficult.”
His fans’ enthusiasm for his tough-love message quite unravels him. “The response has been continually amazing. I don’t know what to make of it. What should I think of the fact that I have 600 million views on YouTube?” He certainly thinks about it a lot; he references his viewing figures repeatedly, with a kind of awestruck wonder. “So it’s the scale of exposure that’s — well, I mean, it’s not unparalleled, because there is no shortage of famous people, but it’s certainly unparalleled for me! I mean, when all this hit me I was already 55 or something. I’d laboured under relative obscurity. But now I’ve had this incredible view into the suffering of thousands and thousands of people, and I can’t go out without people coming up to me. And they’re usually quite emotional, and I’m …” His voice trembles, then cracks.
“You don’t have conversations like that, that often, outside of the clinical sphere. So part of what’s overwhelming to me is how it’s direct evidence of how little encouragement so many people get.” His face crumples into tears. “They’re starving …” He breaks down. “Sorry,” he sobs, “I haven’t done an interview for a long time.” He gets up to leave and returns a minute later carrying a towel to dry his eyes.
“And things just fell apart insanely with [his wife] Tammy. Every day was life and death and crisis for five months. The doctors said, ‘Well, she’s contracted this cancer that’s so rare there’s virtually no literature on it, and the one-year fatality rate is 100 per cent.’ So endless nights sleeping on the floor in emergency, and continual surgical complications.” He looks shellshocked. “So I took the benzodiazepines.”
Those drugs are notoriously addictive, I point out; he had surely heard enough horror stories about housewives hooked on Valium in the 1960s to be wary? “No, I really didn’t give it a second thought. They were prescribed and I just took them.”
Maybe they really were the cause of all his problems. The more he talks, though, the more I wonder whether toxic masculinity might have been a culprit, too. His family history of depression might tell us something about the price to be paid for his bootstrap philosophy; that when life became excruciatingly stressful, Peterson’s stand up, man up, suck it up mentality didn’t work. At the very point when the most famous public intellectual on the planet was preaching a regime of order and self-discipline, he was privately in chaos. Parallels with Donald Trump come to mind; another unhappy man closed off from his emotions, projecting strong man mythology while hunkered down in a bunker with his family against the world.
Peterson’s critics will undoubtedly point out that he built an entire intellectual philosophy upon the principle that life is all about pain and suffering; that the strong, manly response is to square one’s shoulders and battle through it, not to take drugs to numb the pain. “No, I’ve never said that. Look, if you’re a viable clinician you encourage people to take psychiatric medication when it’s appropriate. What I really encourage in people is to understand that it isn’t useful to allow your suffering to make you resentful. And, believe me, I’ve had plenty of temptation to become resentful about what’s happened to me in the last two years.”
When I watched the podcast he made last June with Mikhaila in Belgrade, I tell him, I thought he looked angry, and wondered who or what he was angry with. “Well, pain will make you angry.” Is any part of Peterson angry with himself for taking benzodiazepines? He hesitates. “I wouldn’t say angry. But it’s not like I failed to see the irony. That was another thing that continues to make it difficult to stomach. You know, should I have known better? Possibly.”
Mikhaila interrupts sharply. “Well …” but he continues. “I mean, I did do my thesis on alcoholism.” She raises her voice and waves her arms. “This is — hold up, hold up! You had a side-effect from a medication. Should you have known better that benzodiazepines can cause akathisia in people who take SSRIs?” “No,” Peterson defers. Enunciating each word, she spells out: “This. Wasn’t. A. Benzodiazepine. Dependency. Problem. This was an akathisia side-effect from psych meds.” Her father nods. “Right. Yes, that’s right.” Mikhaila checks the time. “We have to wrap up.” He glances up. “I’m doing OK, by the way.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. But still.” Is he absolutely sure, I try once more, that what he experienced wasn’t an understandable response to intolerable stress? “There’s no way akathisia is that,” Mikhaila snaps.
Peterson’s wife is making a miraculous recovery from cancer. His greatest source of stress right now is “fear that the akathisia will come back. It’s unbearable. And there’s always this sense that you could stop it, if you just exercised enough willpower. So it’s humiliating as well.” Does it generate a self-punishing voice in his head, accusing him of being weak? “Yes, definitely.” He worries that akathisia must look like weakness to everyone else too. “It’s certainly how it appears. Grotesque, for sure.”
He suffered akathisia for 26 days in November, and five in December — “and those episodes would last five to seven hours.” So far in January he has suffered none, “but I can feel it lurking”. Every morning he takes a 90-minute sauna, scrubs himself in the shower for 20 minutes, walks for between two and four hours, “and then I can begin to have something resembling a productive day”.
One thing that has not changed is his politics. Asked about the storming of the Capitol in Washington, he clicks back into more familiar, self-assured Peterson mode. “I thought that the continual pushing on the radical leftist front would wake up the sleeping right. I saw it coming five years ago. And you can put it at Trump’s feet, but it’s not helpful. I mean, obviously he was the immediate catalyst for the horrible events that enveloped Washington — and perhaps it’ll all die down when Trump disappears. But I doubt it.” Should Trump be impeached? “I think he should be ignored.”
Incredibly, throughout all of this he has managed to write another book — Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life — the sequel to his self-help bestseller. I ask how he feels about the prospect of its publication this spring. “Well, I’m ambivalent about it because I can’t judge the book properly. I didn’t write it under optimal circumstances, to say the least, so I can’t make an adequate judgment of its quality.”
Why didn’t he postpone the book until he was better?
“I can tell you why I did it. How I could do it. It was easy. Because the alternative was worse.” He’d lost a year to Tammy being ill, then a year to his own illness. “If I would have lost the book, I wouldn’t have had anything left.” I tell him I’m amazed he managed it, and he looks pleased.
“If you would have seen me, believe me, it would have been more amazing. When I recorded the audio book in November I was akathisic almost the entire time.” His voice raises and fills with pride. “I would go to the studio virtually convulsing in the car. I was moving just frenetically, and then I’d get upstairs into the studio and force myself to not move for two hours.
“If you would have asked me to lay odds on the probability that I would live to finish the recording, I would have bet you ten to one that I wouldn’t have. But I did the recording. And it was the same with the book. Because not to would have been worse. So, to the degree that I can explain how I was able to manage it, I’m not going to talk about willpower or courage, I’m going to talk about the lesser of two evils.”
Except, of course, that he has ended up framing his story in terms of his willpower and courage.
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B Peterson is published on March 2 (Allen Lane £25)
submitted by theweeknd0nly to JordanPeterson [link] [comments]

MCAC and Playboy (PLBY) merger. Why I think Playboy has a bigger future.

As I am sure a lot of you know, Mountain Crest Acquisitions (MCAC) are in late-stage talks with playboy to take them public currently at a valuation of ~$425M meaning we should see the MCAC ticket convert to Playboys ticker, PLBY, within a matter of days, if not weeks. A lot of the people I have seen talking about the Playboy acquisition have argued that Playboy is a dying brand and are far beyond their prime, which is no doubt true, in terms of selling sexy magazines that have all but been made redundant by online pornography. However, this company and its newish CEO (of 2017), Ben Kohn, have given it a new lease of life and are changing the globally recognized brand's direction to be more of a lifestyle and sexual wellness brand. They have been seeing huge year on year growth since Kohn's appointment in 2017 across almost all revenue streams, Kohn has been a part of Playboy for many years and initially helped privatize them in the early 2010s. He is highly regarded for his marketing and sales abilities.
WHY PLAYBOY?
First of all let me offer you CEO Ben Kohn the chance to convince you: Here is his investor presentation. The numbers are extremely impressive.
If you would rather hear it from me, for whatever reason, my take is below:
For me, one of the most notable things about this deal is its the extremely rare opportunity to buy into one of the world's most known brands at such a low valuation. How many SPACs currently on the market would you be able to ask your typical man or woman on the street about the company they plan on buying and almost everytime get an answer about who they are and what they do? Playboy had a WHOPPING $3bn annual spend on thier brand across 180 countries worldwide last year!
Playboy are taking huge strides moving away from the sex negative and very 20th century ideals they built their original empire off, and closing in on an increasingly empowered and sexually liberated young demographic. The sexual wellness market is seeing massive growth among people both young and old and is expected to reach $125 billion by 2026 with an expected anual growth of 12.1% YoY, now think about the size of this market in context of how many brands do you know that are key players in this sector? It should be somewhat obvious that Playboy is in an extremely unique position to capitalize on its massive recognition in a growing market otherwise lacking recognized leaders, they plan on doing this with a strategy of M&A which are outlined below.
First, I will talk about what they are doing now to fit themselves into the market we see today. Playboy has begun a plan to increase growth via acquisitions, and started by buying leading sexual wellness reatiler Yandy at the end of 2019, and have driven direct sales up from $3.7M in 1H 2019 to $29.7M in 1H 2020. On top of this, they are working to make their own playboy.com website into a retail destination, and across Yandy and their own store they were seeing 70,000 orders a month with a AOV of $72.
During the stock redemption period Stockholders requested redemption of a total of 8,842 shares, less than 0.2% of Mountain Crest’s issued shares. As a result, Mountain Crest anticipates that approximately $58.7 million will be released to PLBY Group immediately following the closing of the transactions, with further PIPE investments of $50 million. Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy, said, “We are delighted with the overwhelming support for this transaction, which at closing is expected to inject more than $100 million of gross proceeds into PLBY Group, so that we can aggressively capitalize on our well-defined and exciting organic and acquisition-led growth plan.”.
On top of direct sales increases, Playboy continued to capitalize on their brand recognition by increasing licensing revenues YoY, with ~$400M currently in forward-booked cash flow. Note licensing is one of the most cost-effective way brands can earn revenue, with 80% cost margins and being able to create such licensing demand is a rare feature only attributed to truly globally recognized brands. I read somewhere which I now cannot find that Kohn has said (I am sure somewhat jokingly) that he believes the Playboy Bunny Logo alone is worth a billion dollars, and I can see some truth in it, the Playboy bunny is close to the levels of recognition of the Nike swoosh or the McDonalds M, even among young people who have probably never seen a playboy mag before, myself included (i have never seen it sold in the UK).
As breifly mentioned above, playboy Revenues are growing rapidly. 2020 Projected Revenues is expected to be up 75% year over year, and Projected Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be up 112% year over year, they have projected 2021E revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $166.8M and $40.3M, respectively, with an goal of $100M EBITDA by 2026.
They already have a number of CBD-based products and have plans in place to grow into the legal marijuana industry when it is eventually legalized at the federal level.
They are looking to increase their positions in the gaming industry and have recently opened a poker house in Houston, on top of their London Casino, with further plans to add more casinos in the US, and looking for sports betting partnership opportunities.
Playboy are already an established producer of apparel and maintain a realtively large presence within the market, particularly in China, where their items are sold in over 2,500 brick and mortar stores, and 1,000 online stores across the nation. In the western World they are stocked at household retailers such as urban outfitters, and have done many collabs with well regarded and in fashion millenial brands such as Supreme, Anti Social Social Club, and Alpha industries (all 3 of which have seen extraordinary growth among young people all within very short time). For me this stands out massively and shows promise on both sides of the table; These trendy and modern brands want to associate with the Playboy logo and lifestyle, showing a level of interest from consumers, but more importantly it shows that Playboy is tapped in and aware of the youth culture, an area in which they have the potential to capitalise massively on through all of their revenue streams.
One of the things i think people are most underestimating about this merger is that the current trajectory Kohn is taking Playboy along is very 2021, and is extremely focused on growth. I believe the brand to be undervalued already, and when taking into consideration the trends in Millenial and Gen Z society, I think this brand is ready to once again become a market leader in its new sectors.
A comment I saw on another DD put it well: "If Kylie Jenner thinks its cool, it probably is". It sounds stupid, but the power of social media in conjunction with its recognized logo and brand mean you cannot underestimate this companies value and potential for both short term and long term growth. Coupled with the large cash injection of over $100M and a new focus on M&A, the upside really is potentially enormous. Personally i think it is somewhat criminal this company does not have a current valuation of close to a billion USD considering its recognition, and i think Kohn is the man to enable playboy to capitalise on their extremely unique position in a rapidly growing market.
The above stats are all taken from the Playboy investor presentation given by Ben Kohn here, (as said above I would encourage you all to look at this, it is very impressive), and from MCAC press releases that can be found here.
submitted by jonooo674 to SPACs [link] [comments]

AirBNB & DoorDash IPOs | CHEWY & GameStop EARNINGS | APPLE news| STOCK MARKET NEWS [12-09]

Chewy crushes earnings reports, while GameStop disappoints. What is the latest news on Apple and the new AirPods Max? Should we buy AirBNB or DoorDash when they launch tomorrow? Let’s talk about this and more about the stock market
Hey everyone and Good Morning! So, let’s start with the recap of yesterday as we saw the Nasdaq Composite leading the way up half a percent, the SP500 up .28%, both of them closing at new record highs with the Dow Jones also up .35% to close Tuesday. The VIX also showed a steady decline through the day as it dropped almost 3%. This moves in the market were caused by the latest hopes for a stimulus deal to be agreed on by the end of current session in congress as there seems to be a lot of ground on which parties can agree on. Things have gotten worse in the economy since this hole stimulus talk has been going around, so, if both parties would have been more willing to give up some ground, people would have already gotten more support and we would probably be talking about other bills or measures that would have helped even more. So, maybe this latest Mnuchin proposal with maybe minor tweaks would be the best chance of anything happening by the end of this year.
We saw more companies advancing yesterday as over 3 thousand companies were moving up, continuing the huge bull run started in November as more than 84% of companies are moving above the 50 and 200-day moving averages. The best gaining sectors yesterday were Energy and Health Care while Real Estate and Utilities lagged behind as Large-Cap Growth companies were the only company factor analysis that lost ground yesterday, with small-caps, especially small-cap growth companies largely outperforming the markets.
You can see in this HEAT MAP that there were gains to be made yesterday in a lot of parts of the stock market, with only a few big red spots on the map.
Today we will get some numbers on the November Job openings, MBA mortgage applications and Petroleum inventories.
While we got some earnings yesterday from Chewy which dazzled again in earnings with the only small miss coming in net sales per customer, but as the number of customers keeps increasing, this might continue to go down, as not every pet owner spends the same amount of big money on pets. The company reported an EBITDA of $5.5M vs a loss of over $9M expected with the gross margin increasing to over 25% while also giving great guidance for Q4 of $1.94B to $1.96B vs less than $1.8B expected by analysts.
The company also turned around to a positive cash flow of over $30M. I really like this company and I expected it to be a good own at least for the next quarter until they reach more hard earnings comps next year.
Meanwhile, as I expected GameStop had another bad quarter despite beating some earnings estimates with a smaller loss than expected, the revenue still continued to drop over 30% on a year over year basis while comps where even worse missing the expectations by quite a margin.
Though e-commerce sales rose by more than 250% in Q3, this did not offset the comparable store sales. Margins also declined with hardware margins being the biggest reasons why. I think this company has a very though challenge on its hands with e-commerce being such a though place to compete in, I think the shift to online has been delayed for this company and I think it will struggle to survive, even though it might see a boost next quarter from the sales of the new gaming consoles that were released last month from both Sony and Microsoft. GME EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS
I wouldn’t touch this stock as I think there are far better plays out there than betting on this struggling company.
The only company that I am interested today which will release earnings results is ADOBE which is expected to have the best results ever for the company with an increase of over 12% in both EPS and Revenues. Last go around despite posting great results, the stock fell more than 4% in September and have just recovered to that price point. I expect it this time to go higher and stay that way if they manage to deliver the best quarter on the books.
Meanwhile DoorDash is pricing its initial public offering at over 100$/share which I believe is ridiculous, and it is an flat out joke of a valuation, this company has benefited a ton from this economy and still, this valuation implies that they will have over 50% of the total addressable market not in the US, but in the WORLD in the next couple of years, I don’t think this is a good investment opportunity, they will have increasing competition that offer the same thing for free or cheaper, this is a very though business to try and take over as one single company. People will also be way more likely to start going to restaurants maybe not in 2021 but for sure starting 2022 or whenever the vaccines are widely available in the entire world. I wouldn’t touch this stock at such high valuations, especially over 110$, even if I was looking for short-term gains which might end up being the case, I think there are better opportunities out there.
In contrast to DoorDash, I might be interested to buy some AirBNB if the price is right after the IPO, I think it will have a much better future, as personally I really like to rent out apartments or homes whenever I go on a vacation rather than a traditional hotel. And even though it might have a tough Q4 and Q1 next year, I expect by Q2 next year more people will be vaccinated, so more people will start and go out and travel, and with especially low comps for next year as bookings are way down in 2020 this might make the company look much more attractive by this time next year. So, between DoorDash and AirBNB, I clearly like AirBNB a whole damn lot more.
In other IPO news, RBNHD is expected to go public as soon as Q1 next year as they seek a valuation of over $20B.
Some other Boeing came for companies like Boeing which made its first 737 MAX delivery since the ban ended, as it is expected to start rolling out deliveries and upgrades for current planes at a very good rate with more good news coming from the UK which will suspend the tariffs imposed on US Goods.
While PENN gaming ran to an all-time high yesterday after news that sports betting may be launched in Michigan as early as six weeks from now, as legalization of gambling is moving faster and faster in the US, this also bolds well for DraftKings and other gambling stocks.
Also, ETSY keeps getting upgrades from analysts as they are expected to have a great Q4 suggested from the most recent November sales data.
And finally let’s talk about Apple, as they just revealed the new AirPods Max headphone yesterday, with a huge price tag of 549$, this seemed to gain a pretty bad reaction from consumers as they complained about the huge price tag with competitors like Bose and others selling similar headphones for 350$ or less. These headphones, also have a bigger price tag than even the new PS5 videogame console so we will have to wait and see if this is a successful product from Apple, I think they have gone a little overboard with the price, but rich people do tend to pay a premium for brand names. This can also be seen in the latest analyst call from JPMorgan as customers appear to favor high end models as delivery times have been increasing for the 12 Pro and 12 PRO MAX.
On the better side of things for Apple, the Fitness+ service is expected to launch on the 14th of December and it will cost $9.99/month or $79.99$/year. I expect this to be a better success for the company and to drive an even more stable increase of revenues, as subscription-based revenues are better than one-time sales.
So, I still like this company the most in the long-term and it might see a spike in the near future, especially moving closer to Q4 results and earnings. Apple is still the biggest position in my portfolio and I am not planning on changing that anytime soon.
Good luck to everyone in the stock market as the futures are mixed while writing this post with the DOW and SP500 gaining ground while the Nasdaq futures are just down for the moment.
Thank you everyone for reading! Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market!
Have a great day and see you next time!
submitted by 0toHeroInvesting to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

Why modern society is still strongly neofeudal.

The media is one of the Five Eyes (Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four) of the state, or should we say the predatory capitalist elite and their corporate legal entities veiling their legal persons; and feudalism is alive and well expressed in more colour than ever - advertising and marketing, consolidation of power (purchasing of smaller corporations, producing monstrous shady entities like Tencent), incredibly hawkish startups like Fiverr, UbeLyft, Cameo where the company in question barely even does anything; the right wing "think tanks" that sing the hymn of freemarket fundamentalism, the Nobel Peace Prize that Obama absurdly won (Nobel Prize - mentioned in that Living Color song), the odd yet uncontested way that some TV shows put in more right wing guests than left (BBCQT inviting establishment stooges like Kate Andrews (IEA / Adam Smith Institute) and Isabel Oakeshott), the open neofeudal style by which bosses can fire staff and make up a reason without it necessarily being taken to court (the UK govt played with removing funding for wrongful dismissal cases), the initial turning down of the proposed uk law to make homes fit for human habitation (now finally here for 2020); the general trend of corporations shoving all the risk on the consumer and leaning as much as possible on socialized support thanks to the calculating thinkers working for corporations; the fact that truly left-leaning (not liberal) narrative is never referenced on space-age TV, the likes of which span hundreds of potential channels continuously each day; the fact that we are over 50 years into space-age technology and yet everything beyond computer hardware is firmly chokeheld by private interests seeking to impose an alien power over others for personal gain; the fact that everyone is affected by the way that the popular crowd is drawn to celebrity influence (neofeudalism by any other name, and the cult of personality); the fact that jobs are gated by even subtle presumptive aspects like your accent in what we call in the UK the "glass ceiling"; the irresponsible flooding and underinvesting of the job market by governments that can only see as far as their kickback pay packet; the extent to which music and video game media can be financially elevated without legal restraint (unlike gambling which is at least in the formal/technical sense regulated); the attitudes from product pushers being that they should be immune to criticism or shake it off at every turn, under the river of praise from MBTI Sensing-Perceiving types (artwork and memes and mythos mind a la suspense of disbelief rather than logos thought a la conscious self-awareness and critical evaluation) and by "online reputation management"; the open overt acceptance of power being held over everyone by corporate overlords in the movie industry, video game industry and so on - are we to include then the academic and scientific establishments, and the education institution?; the way that the rich siphoning up wealth from the poor divested communities in greater and greater speed ("money is a means to get wealth - not the wealth itself" —Akala) inherently and invariably means they are accruing more power to embarrass the poor when they encounter them and encumber them systemically and indirectly and take on more sex acts with greater choice by selection (the free market); the fact that the powerful go psychologically and sociologically unchallenged by the common people each day; the fact that figures like this "Jeff Bezos makes 2219 dollars in one second which is double what the average person makes in one week. In one minute Mr. Bezos makes 2219x60=133140 dollars. In one hour Mr. Bezos makes 133140x60=7998400 dollars)." go unconsidered and unchecked and unresearched by most; the fact that there are no interactive programming tools to trace, map and prove the linkage between wealth disparity and all social ills; the lack of people like Jaque Fresco in our world (If memory serves right he had a sit down with the power elite, who would have promptly denied him anything truly leftist in vision); the implicit neofeudal psychological programming that IS advertising; the borrowing and corrupting of natural world semantic meanings for selfish neofeudal aims and means; the direct pipeline from education to military and the mandatory military service which still exists in some countries; the fact that returning a product inherently throws the customer (slave) into suspicion by the seller (master - legal power holder); the very idea of a court system ran by the state and not a jury of 3rd party independent people; the lack of a "fairness and welfare supervisor" in every workplace and the presence of "compliance officer"s; the very "free market" in free market fundamentalism which inevitably and invariably defers to which/whoever market force has the most power (today - money - working capital); the fact that being poor and working in a low pay job literally makes you poorer as you work (in real terms); the predatory and inexcusable nature of gambling; the predatory and inexcusable principle of landlords making money off other poorer humans (it should be the state which intervenes if the state is truly a good state, which we can surmise every government is implicitly claiming of itself by holding power); the lack of naming and shaming of social ills like the Nestle CEO who said water access shouldn't be a human right (God I fucking hate Snopes); the trends of people trying to make money off other people via various scams and the likes of BlackHatWorld and WarriorForum, which are innately neofeudalistic in their function, pointing to a giant pyramid scheme that drags along with the rest of modern capitalism; the innate respect given to media moguls and politicians when they are nothing special; the disrespect and disrepute given to the left wing health services of every nation; the blind acceptance of imposing imagery, themes and connotations left dirtying our minds which we call advertisements; the implicit fraud in denying people growing their own food indoors; that concepts like treason do not for most people extend to The People as an interest group; the incredibly rare use of the justification "For the public interest" and "For the public record"; the fact that the French Revolution is not associated for us in school as the birth of the first human rights (surely a non-feudal society would have no qualms or problems with teaching this truth of human history and progress); being frank about racism being too hot for school; the fact kids are now accessing hardcore pornography but not radical and sometimes dangerous ideologies and thinking; the intellectual and spiritual poverty of our age, and the lack of conscious awareness of what we are doing to ourselves with our time and the mental contents surrounding us (a wise man once said.. you will become what you surround yourself with); the mess of the Internet operated by the modern robber-barons of advertising and web traffic conversion and "upselling"; the open betrayal of the people by governments which can be exposed even in form of statistics and hard truths and evidences; the great silence of modern "intellectuals" and losers like self-help gurus (THE MODERN COURT JESTERS), who couldn't begin to address choice quotes of the great intellectual giants of human history; the platforming of celebrities and people with certain types of contours over their face that are pleasing to look at from every angle, over those humans who are better in substance, expertise, spirituality, etc.; the preservation of neofeudal lord roles in the workplace (the boss), the home (the landlord), the Internet (the website owner or advertisers), the land, parks and golf courses (the land holder or owner), and even the family (the wealth-holder parent(s) you are dependent upon); the appeal to authority; the way a poor person under free market fundamentalism must always choose the product most poorly produced i.e. the most likely to break or malfunction and cause them to lose more money, generally kept within reasonable losses or sunk costs as per investment brokers' "portfolios"; the way that moral and ethical wrong cannot by most people be pinned on day traders, Goldman Sachs starving poor people etc. by the inherent flow of the market, which will always favor the most production of immaterial and material wealth by abstraction. (In other words - although we can't fully know and intuit what will be best to produce in any given scenario, we can actually fundamentally and systemically rule out what will be bad and harmful for society - but not for the market which is the concern of free market fundamentalists); the rise of unpaid internships (strongly neofeudal i.e. the local "lord", the company owner, is "giving you an opportunity" and that's how they see it); the propaganda of war producing poor peoples' children dying for the rich few who control the military-industrial complex and massive amounts of money flowing around for rich interests, e.g. soldiers firing missiles that individually cost more than they earn per year, of course ultimately tied up as a capitalistic move/plot/bid to win more cheap oil; the way that companies are literally designed to offer minimal guarantees, insurances or protections for their workers yet they are keen to take with them each working day most of the material gain produced by each worker (remember I said corporations lean on society?); the protection of "limited liability" companies to lose money, versus the individual people who are enslaved by means of debt they cannot easily erase (this bleeds into a general distrust of the independent person compared to the corporate entity, when the people actually are in earnest and wanting to help one another, except for the psychopathic in society who can be known and traced by their behaviour and early signs in school); the fact that healthcare is not free in all countries despite the common people CONSTANTLY working to uphold the corporate masters and the endlessly rich, some of whom donate money to Internet streamers for a laugh at the shock; the mathematical intuitive rational incompetence of the science establishment, which seems to have no backbone when it comes to neofeudalism and major social issues and ills (they don't even speak up against gambling! WHAT THE FUCK IS THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT DOING AND WHY DO WE NOT PUBLICALLY SHAME THEM AS FRAUDULENT PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS - FOR THE PUBLIC INTEREST AND THE PUBLIC GOOD?) and rather, they seem to be the lapdogs of the elite, continuing to produce inventions which can easily be taken advantage of by the right wing interests - tear gas and rubber bullets for example; the lack of public awareness of state interference in a negative way; the arrival of private police forces; the hierarchy of control of the Internet based on what they call "authority sites" - prioritized by search engines.
(I apologize for the formatting but this was a train of thought.)
submitted by trueseeker2 to DebateCommunism [link] [comments]

AirBNB & DoorDash IPOs | CHEWY & GameStop EARNINGS | APPLE news| STOCK MARKET NEWS [12-09]

Chewy crushes earnings reports, while GameStop disappoints. What is the latest news on Apple and the new AirPods Max? Should we buy AirBNB or DoorDash when they launch tomorrow? Let’s talk about this and more about the stock market
Hey everyone and Good Morning! So, let’s start with the recap of yesterday as we saw the Nasdaq Composite leading the way up half a percent, the SP500 up .28%, both of them closing at new record highs with the Dow Jones also up .35% to close Tuesday. The VIX also showed a steady decline through the day as it dropped almost 3%. This moves in the market were caused by the latest hopes for a stimulus deal to be agreed on by the end of current session in congress as there seems to be a lot of ground on which parties can agree on. Things have gotten worse in the economy since this hole stimulus talk has been going around, so, if both parties would have been more willing to give up some ground, people would have already gotten more support and we would probably be talking about other bills or measures that would have helped even more. So, maybe this latest Mnuchin proposal with maybe minor tweaks would be the best chance of anything happening by the end of this year.
We saw more companies advancing yesterday as over 3 thousand companies were moving up, continuing the huge bull run started in November as more than 84% of companies are moving above the 50 and 200-day moving averages. The best gaining sectors yesterday were Energy and Health Care while Real Estate and Utilities lagged behind as Large-Cap Growth companies were the only company factor analysis that lost ground yesterday, with small-caps, especially small-cap growth companies largely outperforming the markets.
You can see in this HEAT MAP that there were gains to be made yesterday in a lot of parts of the stock market, with only a few big red spots on the map.
Today we will get some numbers on the November Job openings, MBA mortgage applications and Petroleum inventories.
While we got some earnings yesterday from Chewy which dazzled again in earnings with the only small miss coming in net sales per customer, but as the number of customers keeps increasing, this might continue to go down, as not every pet owner spends the same amount of big money on pets. The company reported an EBITDA of $5.5M vs a loss of over $9M expected with the gross margin increasing to over 25% while also giving great guidance for Q4 of $1.94B to $1.96B vs less than $1.8B expected by analysts.
The company also turned around to a positive cash flow of over $30M. I really like this company and I expected it to be a good own at least for the next quarter until they reach more hard earnings comps next year.
Meanwhile, as I expected GameStop had another bad quarter despite beating some earnings estimates with a smaller loss than expected, the revenue still continued to drop over 30% on a year over year basis while comps where even worse missing the expectations by quite a margin.
Though e-commerce sales rose by more than 250% in Q3, this did not offset the comparable store sales. Margins also declined with hardware margins being the biggest reasons why. I think this company has a very though challenge on its hands with e-commerce being such a though place to compete in, I think the shift to online has been delayed for this company and I think it will struggle to survive, even though it might see a boost next quarter from the sales of the new gaming consoles that were released last month from both Sony and Microsoft. GME EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS
I wouldn’t touch this stock as I think there are far better plays out there than betting on this struggling company.
The only company that I am interested today which will release earnings results is ADOBE which is expected to have the best results ever for the company with an increase of over 12% in both EPS and Revenues. Last go around despite posting great results, the stock fell more than 4% in September and have just recovered to that price point. I expect it this time to go higher and stay that way if they manage to deliver the best quarter on the books.
Meanwhile DoorDash is pricing its initial public offering at over 100$/share which I believe is ridiculous, and it is an flat out joke of a valuation, this company has benefited a ton from this economy and still, this valuation implies that they will have over 50% of the total addressable market not in the US, but in the WORLD in the next couple of years, I don’t think this is a good investment opportunity, they will have increasing competition that offer the same thing for free or cheaper, this is a very though business to try and take over as one single company. People will also be way more likely to start going to restaurants maybe not in 2021 but for sure starting 2022 or whenever the vaccines are widely available in the entire world. I wouldn’t touch this stock at such high valuations, especially over 110$, even if I was looking for short-term gains which might end up being the case, I think there are better opportunities out there.
In contrast to DoorDash, I might be interested to buy some AirBNB if the price is right after the IPO, I think it will have a much better future, as personally I really like to rent out apartments or homes whenever I go on a vacation rather than a traditional hotel. And even though it might have a tough Q4 and Q1 next year, I expect by Q2 next year more people will be vaccinated, so more people will start and go out and travel, and with especially low comps for next year as bookings are way down in 2020 this might make the company look much more attractive by this time next year. So, between DoorDash and AirBNB, I clearly like AirBNB a whole damn lot more.
In other IPO news, RBNHD is expected to go public as soon as Q1 next year as they seek a valuation of over $20B.
Some other Boeing came for companies like Boeing which made its first 737 MAX delivery since the ban ended, as it is expected to start rolling out deliveries and upgrades for current planes at a very good rate with more good news coming from the UK which will suspend the tariffs imposed on US Goods.
While PENN gaming ran to an all-time high yesterday after news that sports betting may be launched in Michigan as early as six weeks from now, as legalization of gambling is moving faster and faster in the US, this also bolds well for DraftKings and other gambling stocks.
Also, ETSY keeps getting upgrades from analysts as they are expected to have a great Q4 suggested from the most recent November sales data.
And finally let’s talk about Apple, as they just revealed the new AirPods Max headphone yesterday, with a huge price tag of 549$, this seemed to gain a pretty bad reaction from consumers as they complained about the huge price tag with competitors like Bose and others selling similar headphones for 350$ or less. These headphones, also have a bigger price tag than even the new PS5 videogame console so we will have to wait and see if this is a successful product from Apple, I think they have gone a little overboard with the price, but rich people do tend to pay a premium for brand names. This can also be seen in the latest analyst call from JPMorgan as customers appear to favor high end models as delivery times have been increasing for the 12 Pro and 12 PRO MAX.
On the better side of things for Apple, the Fitness+ service is expected to launch on the 14th of December and it will cost $9.99/month or $79.99$/year. I expect this to be a better success for the company and to drive an even more stable increase of revenues, as subscription-based revenues are better than one-time sales.
So, I still like this company the most in the long-term and it might see a spike in the near future, especially moving closer to Q4 results and earnings. Apple is still the biggest position in my portfolio and I am not planning on changing that anytime soon.
Good luck to everyone in the stock market as the futures are mixed while writing this post with the DOW and SP500 gaining ground while the Nasdaq futures are just down for the moment.
Thank you everyone for reading! Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market!
Have a great day and see you next time!
submitted by 0toHeroInvesting to StockMarket [link] [comments]

is online betting legal in uk video

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Legal UK sports betting sites are among the top sportsbooks in the world. Since online and offline betting is legal and embraced in Great Britain, bookmakers have been given the opportunity to openly perfect their services and features. The legal UK online sportsbooks cover sports on a global scale, so players in England can bet on sports from regions all around the world. From 24/7 availability, to live odds changing, and promotions, there is truly a lot more to benefit from when betting online. Legal, Licensing, and Regulation of Sports Betting in the UK. Sports betting in the UK is completely legal. It has become ingrained in the UK’s culture and has developed over the years. Legally speaking, you’re not able to place bets on behalf of other people. Therefore, how does this sort of rule relate to syndicates. After all, one person must place the bets on behalf of everyone participating in the syndicate. Yet, syndicates may or may not be legal, depending upon the actual nature of the scheme. Since 1960, all gambling has been legal in the UK. Legal age for sports betting and most other forms of gambling is 18. Scratch cards, lotteries & football pools legal for 16+. Gambling Act 2005 & Gambling (Licensing & Advertising) Act 2014 govern most online activities. Gambling in the UK is regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. For UK players aged 18 and over betting online is 100% legal, assuming you are accessing the site from the UK too. It really is as simple as that and there is nothing at all to worry about, whether you want to bet on the football, any other sport, or if you would rather or play at an online casino or bingo site. Proposals to strengthen age and identity verification for online gambling consultation document; More information about how we regulate the gambling industry. Useful statistics on the gambling industry. Journalists can contact our press office on 0121 230 6700 or email: [email protected] Is Online Betting Legal in the UK? Yes, since 1960, Online Betting has been legal in the UK. But your age for sports betting – 18 years old. It is regulated by the Gambling Commission in the UK who ensure that all of the companies operate in a fair manner and continue to operate to high standard. Sportsbook / Exchange in United Kingdom Advantages of UK online betting sites. What are some of the advantages of getting your betting done at UK online betting sites? Well for starters things are legal. When you register with any bookmaker that holds a UK or Irish licence, because of regulations you are going to have to be a UK resident to hold your active account with them. A common idea behind insider betting is that it would be very easy for someone working at an online sportsbook to place wagers and win. Obviously, working so close to the sports betting scene, this would certainly prove to be an advantage. Online sports betting is legal in the UK. Many of the brands that operate the largest online sportsbooks are also bookmakers in the UK or were in the past. This includes Betway, 888Sport, Bet365, William Hill and Ladbrokes.

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Legal Super Bowl Betting - Legal Betting Online - YouTube

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is online betting legal in uk

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