Big Blue Huddle

I am not a "magician" by any means, but had been pretty good at math, algebra, etc.

The area of the rectangle changed with the additional pieces, but not its general shape. Note, that the ratio between the long and short side of the rectangle changed as well.With that change, the frame size's side ratio had to change as well to accommodate the rearranged shape of the rectangle.

The trick is a somewhat "flexible" frame, that extends/contracts, based on the number shapes in the rectangle. Designing this magician toy had probably been the hard part. Detecting the "trick" in this puzzle should not "puzzle" mathematicians for long. Pun intended...

Thanks Lenn...

Classical hit flashmobs are pretty much all over in Europe and yes, I wish my supermarket turns in to a shopera...

My granddaughter used enjoy this classical flashmob:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaHPND2QJg

Well, until she turn three or four years old that is...

Once my college and military years ended, got married, had the first kid, I had became an occasional drinker.That's pretty much the way I am nowadays, even if the kids are out of the house.

When my kids went to school, I also cut back on the occasional drinks. It's a funny story actually...

My wife and I liked having a glass of red vine after dinner most of the night. Primarily for we like one after dinner, plus the health benefit that it may have. Evidently, in school, the kids were taught that people drinking everyday are alcoholic. After one of our dinners at home, my younger kid started to cry. After repeatedly asking, finally she said,

Quote from: GordonGekko80 on February 01, 2021, 06:48:48 AM
I agree on the fact that the Rules need to be the same for everyone. Therefore:

a) DO NOT allow a stock to be over-shorted or short squeeze
b) DO NOT allow collusion, no matter if it's done by retail investors or financial institutions (the latter being forbidden by rules and regs anyways)
c) DO NOT allow the Conflict such as the one seen between Melvin Capital, Citadel and Robinhood

Point blank. I read some of the comments on the Reddit Forum; Guys advising others to hold station and sit on their position, only enter selling limits at 500 USD and above.
Don't you think that this guy saying it doesn't sell his position to make the profit? Yeh, there may be a few fundamentalists who own the position because of the "war" they started vs the Hedge Funds, but there's so many speculators in there now they don't give a damn about the money and just want to make money.

But apparently the Reddit Cowboys (this is what I have decided to call them) now are into Commodity Futures (more specifically Silver). Why? Because there is a shortage of the commodity vs the Futures (same applies for Gold btw).
In other words; Would the holders of the Futures contracts wanting to deliver the underlying there would be a shortage of the Commodity. Again, an over-shortage but this has always been a known one.

Having said that; I wish the Reddit Cowboys luck in going into physical delivery on the Futures - Warehouse Costs, Shipping, Commissions... All of those are outrageously high. Doesn't even make sense to go into Delivery on it if you don't really need it.
That is a hard one to do. Unless... they are manipulating the price yet again by colluting.

Call it what you want, but principally, the GME stock had been a "victim" of the "pump and dump" type of scheme. In the case of GME and other stocks, this scheme worked very well, especially after the Occupy Wall Street 2 moniker had been attached to the "buy and hold" advise. The OWS2 resonated with many, many people and they purchased as much GME stock as they could afford. This pumped up the stock price to an insane level, that not supported by any investment metric. The institutional investors had sold their GME and other stocks and cut their losses. They can afford to and may even get some financial aid from the feds. GameStock employees had also sold their existing stock and/or exercised their stock options.

The people initiated the "pump and dump" schema will be investigated by SEC and probably will come down hard on them. Reddit will, or already did provide the logs and the content for GME stock discussion. Based on that, it really not that hard to determine the timeline for how it started up, when OWC2 entered the picture, etc.   

What left by now the many, many people, who had purchased GME stock at the inflated price. Like my daughter, who purchased two GME stock for $400, against my advise. At least she listened and put in a stop loss order. Hopefully, she'll learn that trading based on ideology isn't the best way investing in stocks.

In my view, shorting stocks, or betting, should be outlawed. It servers no other purpose, but accelerate the demise of a company and provide a windfall to the trader.

In addition, automated, digital training should be substantially restricted, like delay the actual trading. A lot of investment/trading companies run digital trading, where the latency is measured in milliseconds. This latency determines how far ahead they can get of others trading and make couple of pennies by executing the trade before others.

I recall, back in the late 90s trading companies installed direct fiber connections to the stock market, cost did not matter as long as the latency improved. Nowadays, it's short radio wave installation preferred to the stock market. The reason is simple. Fiber transfer speed is roughly 1/3 of the speed of light, while short radio waves are roughly 2/3 of the speed of light. Basically cutting fiber connection latency in half and beat other traders, who still use fiber connections...

In college, young people do things that may impact their future employment:

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2021/01/15/dan-campbell-detroit-lions-head-coach/4182680001/

The reporter, who wrote the above article, has an even more recent, worse past record and had been called out on it:

https://prosportsextra.com/your-hypocrisy-is-showing-marlowe-alter-detroit-free-press-author-who-wrote-article-about-dan-campbell-saying-he-made-homophobic-remark-in-past-had-many-tweets-with-slurs-in-them/

There's a certain satisfaction in seeing the cancel culture backfiring on someone...

Quote from: Ed Vette on November 25, 2020, 10:53:06 AM
Lenn, as Rich said the carb needs to be cleaned. The oil should be changed but you have to use a certain grade. I just had mine serviced and the spark plug, a quart of oil and fuel filter was just $15. The labor for that and the carb cleaning was about $80. Tell them to leave it dry.

The problem with the old gas is that although it may start it won't continue to run for more than a few minutes. Always use Premium on small engines and put stabilizer in it. Even then it won't last more than a couple months.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

I don't disagree in general, but my experience had been different with my generator, about ten years old, never serviced. Well, other than changing oil, filter and spark plug by myself on occasions.

It's a 10HP  Briggs & Stratton portable generator, 10KW, electric/coil start with battery, connected to the house with a manual transfer switch. We use it when utility power is down for a longer time period, mainly for the heat, hot water, fridge, etc. That had been the case once during its lifetime, when ran continuously for close to two days. Other than that, it is turned on every two weeks for 10-15 minutes and on occasions, to trim the bushes in the back. This generator does have a shutoff valve, that always used to get rid of the fuel in the carburetor.

Most of the times there is 15 gallons of fuel available, with fuel stabilizer added, generally refreshed just before winter season starts, or in another word yearly. The backup fuel is in my pickup truck's 30 gallons tank, came handy only once.

The generator still starts and runs just fine without rebuilding/replacing the carburetor. That's probably due to having and using the fuel shutoff valve all the times...