Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

violence in the media · Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:22 am

Thaluikhain wrote:Ok, this is a weird question, but where does the stereotype that women doing something with their mouths is inherently attractive come from?

I get facial expressions which involve the mouth, but lots of movie have people giving advice like "Randomly stick a fingertip in your mouth, it makes you sexy" and this is supposed to be serious and I'm just not seeing it.

I don't think it's any more complicated than:

1. woman puts {thing} in/near mouth
2. viewer imagines {thing} is his penis
3. profit

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Thu Aug 13, 2020 12:34 pm

If she's sucking on a lollipop in a suggestive way, I could see that. Poking herself in the mouth like she's checking if her teeth are loose, not so much.

The Adventurer's Almanac · Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:14 pm

Any rod-shaped object going into a mouth is inherently sexual, once you're dealing with horny perverts.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Aug 13, 2020 5:07 pm

The Adventurer's Almanac · Thu Aug 13, 2020 5:09 pm

God damn, that's what I call a meat bat!

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Aug 14, 2020 4:42 pm

Eyes up here buddy!

I confess not noticing and being like “wuts a meat bat?”

The Adventurer's Almanac · Fri Aug 14, 2020 4:51 pm

It's kind of hard for me to not notice when a guy's singular testicle is the size of my fist.

Post by **fbmf** » Fri Nov 13, 2020 6:01 pm

What's the COVID equivalent of a 9/11-truther? I know they exist (in disturbingly high numbers) but what are they called?

Game On,
fbmf

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:08 pm

Mostly I see them called ‘COVID truthers.’ The only slang term I’m aware of for them is ‘COVIDiot’ and that’s an umbrella term that also covers a lot of non-Truther stupidity.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Nov 14, 2020 5:58 am

I've seen the term anti-masker being used. Mostly because they all seem to like protesting against masks and the lockdowns.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:40 am

Besides "COVID truther" and "antimasker" I've occasionally seen "ratlicker", an insult brought back from the Spanish Flu when once again there were people who refused to follow protocol.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Sun Nov 15, 2020 7:30 pm

red hat, trumpist, science denier, bootlicker, and fool.

The Adventurer's Almanac · Mon Nov 16, 2020 3:12 pm

I understand all of those except 'bootlicker'. Whose boots are being licked here?

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 6:32 pm

Trump. A bootlicker is a euphemism for a sycophant.

The Adventurer's Almanac · Tue Nov 17, 2020 3:12 am

I guess the word is just so diluted that everybody uses it now, because I usually hear that slung at people who wear masks...

The Adventurer's Almanac · Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:59 pm

So with all this Gamestonks nonsense, apparently the brokerage app RobinHood just stopped allowing people to purchase Gamestonks and even went so far as to sell people's shares without their permission. Today I'm seeing a bunch of articles popping up saying that it's unlikely for any court cases to go anywhere because RobinHood said they could do that in their EULA.

I can't think of a good way to phrase this, but how... legally tenable is that position? I was under the impression that companies couldn't do whatever they want to you if you sign your rights away. I'm guessing EULAs are a form of contract law, so how does that work in these sorts of situations where the people who drafted the contract fuck the people who signed it, but they agreed to getting fucked?

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Sat Jan 30, 2021 6:04 pm

Robinhood is reminiscent of a 1928-style bank, they love to lend people money to gamble on stocks with. So when they're selling "your" stocks for you, really they owned those stocks about as much as you did.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:07 pm

Robinhood is basically a stock trading app which lends people money to trade stocks with and then sells user's stock trading data to recoup the costs of lending out that money. In theory, they're not under any obligation to facilitate trades for any particular stock, in the same way that in theory, a grocery store is allowed to decide that it does not want to sell Cheerios to you in particular. Likewise, if the right to arbitrarily reverse trades made through their platform was part of the agreement made with Robinhood (not sure on this point - I don't use Robinhood), then they absolutely can reverse trades, even if the users don't want them to.

The big question is whether what Robinhood did constitutes market manipulation. In the same way that a grocery store refusing to sell you Cheerios is okay, but a grocery store putting up a sign saying "NO CHEERIOS FOR BLACKS" is a crime, refusing to allow trades or reversing trades in order to fuck around with the stock market is illegal, even if doing those same actions for a different reason or on a different basis would have been totally fine. While it is unclear whether the EULA itself is enforceable, the odds of Robinhood getting out of this without a market manipulation investigation by the SEC are very low. All of the relevant congress critters are mad about this and want to make a show of punishing Robinhood for making the stock market look bad, after all.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jan 30, 2021 9:26 pm

It mostly appears to be the case that most if not all of the reversed trades have to do with stuff about making trades on the margin, and then the robinhood user not having the funds to pay on the margin and Robin Hood just literally not having enough money to pay for all the stock that all it's users were trying to buy.

I genuinely do not know all the legal stock trading bullshit that results in it working this way, but the upshot is that it appears to be true that RobinHood has a pretty good case that they didn't stop trades because of anything about GME stock's effect on a shitty hedge fund, but basic functioning of their app.

To that end I expect little to no investigation for market manipulation.

On the other hand I do expect some investigation of Wall Street Bets, because while what they did is market manipulation and illegal, and is exactly the kind of illegal market manipulation Chiron (the Hedge Fund) does and did when it shorted a bunch of Gamestop stock and told everyone else to short it too, it's also the case that our government understands the difference between the people who are "in the club" and are allowed to commit crimes, and the people who aren't.

EDIT: And to be clear I really do mean club shit. The WSB's people are not a bunch of poor people who just came up with a great idea, they are younger financial investment people who come from money and have bloomberg terminal access and shit.

The Adventurer's Almanac · Sun Jan 31, 2021 12:09 am

Kaelik wrote:On the other hand I do expect some investigation of Wall Street Bets, because while what they did is market manipulation and illegal, and is exactly the kind of illegal market manipulation Chiron (the Hedge Fund) does and did when it shorted a bunch of Gamestop stock and told everyone else to short it too, it's also the case that our government understands the difference between the people who are "in the club" and are allowed to commit crimes, and the people who aren't.

EDIT: And to be clear I really do mean club shit. The WSB's people are not a bunch of poor people who just came up with a great idea, they are younger financial investment people who come from money and have bloomberg terminal access and shit.

But hedge funds are privately owned companies with staff and investors and shit and WSB is a public forum anyone has access to. Even if some young trust fund assholes get blasted on coke and drive up Gamestop stock and post about it on reddit, can't anyone see that? If I get a sign and painted "BUY GAMESTONKS NAO DIAMOND HANDS BBY" and drive around my neighborhood with it plastered to my car, is that different because it happened in real life?
Basically, who do you prosecute here? The first guy who posted saying to buy GME? The entire Reddit website? Just that particular subreddit but not any of the people in it? Some third party who didn't shitpost on the internet? Elon Musk?

Foxwarrior wrote:Robinhood is reminiscent of a 1928-style bank, they love to lend people money to gamble on stocks with. So when they're selling "your" stocks for you, really they owned those stocks about as much as you did.

That... doesn't sound financially tenable?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jan 31, 2021 4:57 am

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:But hedge funds are privately owned companies with staff and investors and shit and WSB is a public forum anyone has access to. Even if some young trust fund assholes get blasted on coke and drive up Gamestop stock and post about it on reddit, can't anyone see that? If I get a sign and painted "BUY GAMESTONKS NAO DIAMOND HANDS BBY" and drive around my neighborhood with it plastered to my car, is that different because it happened in real life?
Basically, who do you prosecute here? The first guy who posted saying to buy GME? The entire Reddit website? Just that particular subreddit but not any of the people in it? Some third party who didn't shitpost on the internet? Elon Musk?

There are specific figures that promoted the idea and it's really easy to present the case against them if there's a record of everything they said. They obviously aren't going to hit everyone who ever visited the reddit, but specific people who were influential and had significant stock ownership in Gamestop maybe.

Technically they need to have "spread false information" and that's probably how you could avoid it with the sign case if they bothered to prosecute you, which they wouldn't, but given the extensive posting that is likely possible to point to.

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Sun Jan 31, 2021 5:44 pm

There's a handful of people who made millions by making this happen, and they stand to be investigated. The question is DID they lie about any of it? If they just said "this hedge fund wants to make a bunch of money by driving Gamestop into bankruptcy, and we can stop that by buying the shit out of their stock and holding it," that's not a lie.

Hell, for all I know that guy could've covered his ass and disclosed that he had already bought a shitton of shares at $20 and if so I believe the SEC can go suck a fat one. It's not manipulation to say "I bought a shitton of this cheap stock and if we all start buying it the price will go up."

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:14 pm

Zaranthan wrote:There's a handful of people who made millions by making this happen, and they stand to be investigated. The question is DID they lie about any of it? If they just said "this hedge fund wants to make a bunch of money by driving Gamestop into bankruptcy, and we can stop that by buying the shit out of their stock and holding it," that's not a lie.

I am obviously not following the specifics of WSB reddit posts that tightly, but yes, if they said that, they would actually be in the clear. The problem is it sure looks like a bunch of them made tendentious arguments for why Gamestops "fundamentals" justified a higher price as well. Probably not most of the time, but if even one post on WSB's by some of the big figures does that, the SEC can fine that person, and the main movers post a lot so probably at some point many of them did.

The Adventurer's Almanac · Sun Jan 31, 2021 7:42 pm

What kind of a fine are we talking about here? The slap on the wrist kind, or the fuck you we're taking everything you have kind?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jan 31, 2021 10:26 pm

Theoretically either or anywhere in between. This is a weird situation so I have no idea what the SEC will actually do.