Iowa Gaming Official Says Casinos Will Look Different When

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
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Election shenanigans

I put the latest info on Trump's phone call to Raffensperger in this comment.

According to experts, Trump’s conduct has potential criminal exposure:

A federal statute makes it a crime when one “knowingly and willfully … attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by … the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.”
A Georgia statute similarly provides that a “person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.”
…The hard part for prosecutors would be proving Trump’s state of mind, because the statutes require proof of knowledge and intent. Prosecutors would have to show that Trump knew that Biden fairly won the election, and Trump was asking for Georgia officials to commit election fraud. And it’s not clear prosecutors could make that case.

At least 12 Republican senators plan to challenge Biden’s Electoral College win on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to officially count the votes. The effort is being led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and includes Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), as well as new Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). Separately, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is pursuing a similar plan.

"Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed," the senators said in a joint statement. “Accordingly, we intend to vote on Jan. 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed."

Their plan is not going to succeed in preventing Biden from taking office, as majorities in both the House and the Senate would need to support a challenge against a state’s electoral votes. For an objection to be made, at least one member of both the House and Senate would need to submit it in writing. Then, the House and Senate separately convene to consider the issue. Debate is limited to two hours for each objection. After debate concludes, the House and Senate vote to uphold the objection and throw out the state’s votes. If the majority of the House AND the majority of the Senate does not uphold the objection, the state’s electoral votes are counted as cast.

• Vice President Mike Pence’s role is simply to preside over the joint session, opening and presenting the certifications from each state. In his absence, the Senate pro-tempore Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will lead the session. At the end of the process, the presiding officer announces who has won the majority of votes for president and vice president.

The most immediate danger from Trump and Cruz’s doomed election gambit is rightwing terrorism and general violence: Trump, in particular, is inciting his supporters to swarm D.C. on Jan. 6. “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” Trump tweeted last week. Four rightwing rallies are scheduled, including one headlined by George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone.
The Proud Boys and other extremists are planning to attend the rallies and may set up an “armed encampment” on the National Mall, according to the Washington Post. On social media platform Parler, the leader of the Proud Boys said that members will be there “incognito” and may “dress in all black” to impersonate leftwing protestors.

Enrique Tarrio: "The ProudBoys will turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist...We will not be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow. We will be incognito and we will spread across downtown DC in smaller teams."

Rep. Louie Gohmert has more explicitly tried to incite violence, saying the failure of his legal challenge to the election means “you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.” (clip)

• At the same time, pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood suggested that Pence could “face execution by firing squad” for “treason” if he doesn’t go along with the attempt to subvert the election.

Obstructing the transition

Biden’s transition director has accused the Office of Management and Budget of stonewalling the incoming administration’s team. OMB Director Russ Vought is not allowing key staff to meet with the transition team to help prepare the president-elect’s first annual spending plan, a move that could delay major proposals. Vought pushed back on the charges, saying that his agency needs to focus on finalizing the Trump administration’s regulations before the president leaves office.

“OMB leadership’s refusal to fully cooperate impairs our ability to identify opportunities to maximize the relief going out to Americans during the pandemic, and it leaves us in the dark as it relates to Covid-related expenditures and critical gaps,” [Biden transition Exec. Dir. Yohannes] Abraham said.

Earlier last week, Biden himself said Trump officials are not cooperating with his team, singling out the Defense Department for obstructing information on crucial national security issues. “Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility,” Biden said. The Defense Dept. finally scheduled meetings with the incoming team this week, after not briefing the transition for weeks.

• The timing of the resumption in meetings is notable because it comes after the one year anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3. NATO officials are reportedly worried about the lack of coordination from the Trump administration: "We need the incoming Biden administration to be fully briefed and ready to deal with these very dangerous issues facing NATO's security."

Sabotaging the Biden Administration

U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack is taking steps to keep control of Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia during the Biden administration. As chairman of the boards of Radio Free Europe and Asia, Pack and his fellow members have added binding contractual agreements that will make it impossible to remove him or other pro-Trump allies from the board in the next two years.

In other words, although President-elect Joe Biden has already signaled he intends to replace Pack as CEO of the parent agency soon after taking office in January, Pack would maintain a significant degree of control over the networks.

The State Department is likely to designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism “as an 11th hour effort to create hurdles for the incoming Biden administration.” The label, which requires the approval of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, would undo a major accomplishment of the Obama administration. To take Cuba back off the list, the Biden team would need to conduct a formal review, a process that might take several months.

Such a designation would impose restrictions on US foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales, certain controls over exports and various financial restrictions. It would also result in penalization against any persons and countries engaging in certain trade activities with Cuba.

The Trump administration has been rushing to finalize a myriad of rules before Biden’s inauguration. Since Election Day, the Trump administration has issued about three to four times as many new regulations as it did during other periods of Trump’s presidency. Rules that haven’t been finalized or taken effect can be suspended by an incoming president, which Biden has said he intends to do. By contrast, rules that are finalized can take months, or even years, to undo.

“As a general rule, it takes at least as much process to undo or modify a rule as it does to put the rule in place,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a professor and an administrative law expert at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “The Trump administration is magnifying that challenge for the Biden administration.”

Trump loyalists are urging the president to stymie Biden’s efforts to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are working to get the agreements submitted to the Senate for ratification, requiring a two-thirds vote, with the goal of failure. While such an outcome wouldn’t prevent Biden from rejoining the accords, Cruz and Graham hope it would make their resurrection more problematic.

A vote against them would signal GOP opposition to the world and, they hope, undermine any unilateral action by Biden to rejoin the agreements. One senior congressional aide told RCP that sending them to die in the Senate “would be the final nail in the coffin.”

Further reading: “Biden To Be Saddled With Trump’s Payroll Tax Deferral Mess,” Forbes.
Further reading: Biden will inherit a backlog of tens of thousands of visa requests from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and a bureaucratic tangle that refugee advocates say President Trump ignored or made worse.

Trump money and properties

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is employing forensic accounting specialists to examine Trump’s finances and business operations. Vance is looking “for anomalies among a variety of property deals” and trying to determine “whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks”.

The analysts hired by Vance probably have already reviewed various bank and mortgage records obtained from Trump’s company as part of the ongoing grand jury investigation, and they could be called on to testify about their findings should the district attorney eventually bring criminal charges

In yet another shady business deal connected to Trump, the United States sold the ambassador’s residence in Israel for more than $67 million. The person who bought the residence is none other than Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. The property only became available due to Trump's controversial decision to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem. Furthermore, State Dept. representatives reportedly lied to Congress about the sale, perhaps to hide that Adelson purposefully overbid.

For now, there is no alternative residence for the ambassador, David Friedman, Trump’s former lawyer, who currently uses a suite at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel or rooms at the former Jerusalem Consulate General when he spends nights in Jerusalem… As a result, the United States appears likely to end up leasing the residence it has owned since 1964 from the GOP-affiliated casino mogul.
“It is very strange that we are now paying Sheldon Adelson,” a congressional aide told The Daily Beast. “It is not above board. We have a number of questions. Did they get two independent appraisals? Was it a sweetheart deal? Was Adelson the highest donor? Was there a reason to sell it now?”

Trump’s businesses have taken in $10.5 million of donor money over the course of his presidency. $8.5 million came from the Trump campaign and related entities that Trump controls directly; $2 million came from other Republican candidates and committees. The biggest beneficiary was Trump’s NYC hotel, taking in $3,039,979 over the four years of his presidency, with $891,003 of that in just the final four months of the campaign.
Trump’s DC hotel is ramping up room prices and requiring a two-night minimum stay for two key events this month, as the president tries to squeeze more profit out of his office. On Jan. 6, when Congress is set to formally count the votes cast by the Electoral College, room rates are listed at over eight times the price of surrounding dates. Trump is encouraging his supporters to attend a protest of Biden’s win on the 6th. A room during the inauguration costs five times the normal rate, at $2,225 per night.
Trump’s Turnberry Resort in Scotland posted a £2.3 million ($3.1 million) loss in 2019, marking the sixth year in a row it has failed to turn a profit under his ownership. Since Trump took over the historic property in 2014, its losses now total nearly £45 million ($61.5 million).

The fact Turnberry remains in the red comes in spite of significant tranches of payments it has received from the US government during Mr Trump’s single term in office… the US Secret Service spent nearly £25,000 to accommodate its agents at the resort during business trips by Mr Trump’s son, Eric, an executive vice-president of the family firm. Since Mr Trump’s election, the property has received close to £300,000 from the Secret Service, US State Department, and US Defence Department

A Florida state lawmaker is calling for Mar-a-Lago to be penalized - and possibly shut down - for flouting coronavirus restrictions during a New Years Eve party. While Trump and the first lady did not attend, son Don Jr., attorney Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Fox News personality Jeanine Piro were captured on video among the maskless crowd. Guests paid as much as $1,000 for access to the ballroom to be entertained by Vanilla Ice.

State Rep. Omari Hardy: “My constituents are not snowbirds like @DonaldJTrumpJr & @kimguilfoyle. My constituents live here. This is their home, and they're going to have to deal w/ the consequences of a potential super-spreader party at Mar-a-Lago long after Junior & wife leave here on their private jet.”

Are you ready for a Donald J. Trump Airport? According to the Daily Beast, Trump has been asking aides about the process of naming airports after former U.S. presidents.
Further reading: “Jared Kushner’s family real estate business wants to raise at least $100 million in capital through Israel’s bond market… Kushner has helped spearhead a series of moves that have been applauded by the conservative pro-Israel community, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognizing Israeli sovereignty in disputed areas such as the Golan Heights. Kushner also has close ties to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Miscellaneous

The Census Bureau missed it’s end-of-year deadline to produce numbers that determine representation in Congress and the Electoral College for the next decade. The agency is working toward Jan. 9 as an internal target date for completing the current stage of processing records. "If we miss Jan. 9, it's hard to envision that we would get apportionment done before inauguration," a Census employee told NPR.

The final timing of the 2020 census results' release could undermine President Trump's efforts to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in key census numbers before leaving office… If the first census results are not ready until after Trump's term ends on Jan. 20, it would be President-elect Joe Biden, not Trump, who would get control of the numbers, which are ultimately handed off to Congress for certification.

Positions: $RSI 30 03/19 30C
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/swCCMjz
​
*This post is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as investment, financial, or other advice.*
​
TLDR: Rush Street Interactive ($RSI) is the #1 nationwide online casino company and the #3 or #4 sports book depending on the state. Short selling, unwarranted institutional wariness of share dilution and the general market focus on sports book instead of online casino has left $RSI grossly undervalued. A massive blow out at Q4 earnings will result in analyst upgrades and a rapid repricing by market makers and institutions seeking exposure to the emerging sector.
​
**Overview**
"Sports book is really just kind of a warm up in a lot of ways for an online casino where the real money is made" - Niccolo De Masi, CEO dMY technologies
​
Rush Street Interactive ($RSI) operates the BetRivers.com online casino and sports book. They are now fully licensed and operating in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia. They own and operate a casino in New York and already have a New York license making them well positioned for liberalization there. They merged with a dMY Technology Group SPAC on Dec. 31st 2020 with 240 million on the balance sheet to spend on growth.
The online casino business is fundamentally more profitable than sports betting because the average value of a casino player is estimated at $600 while a sports book player could be as little as $20. Estimates put the online casino market at DOUBLE the size of the online sports book market and the online casino industry is really just getting started as more states liberalize.
$RSI is expert at new market entry; they have been first to market in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado and even when they aren't first they are capable of capturing market share in competitive markets such as New Jersey. They also have products which women play which accounts for at least half of the market in online casino. The female market is one that the pure sports book plays miss out on.
Also for some fucking reason they operate a casino and sports book in Colombia (rushbet.co) and may make large expansions into other parts of south America as legalization continues. This means they have the expertise necessary for global expansion in the future although the states remains their primary focus and growth driver.
​
**The Financials and Strategy**
Unlike other companies in the space Rush Street is already profitable in 2020 and has a strong focus on Return On Invested Capital (ROIC). Q3 gross revenue was $71.9 Million. Q4 revenue is going to be a blow out. Combing through state gambling revenue data and breaking that down by market share my estimate is that Q4 revenue could be as high as $120 Million.
Paired with this blow out will be a **guidance raise to $500 Million for 2021**, which is 2/3 of DraftKings 2021 guidance of $750M.
https://imgur.com/a/xkfcayC
​
What is striking when compared to $DKNG is that their advertising spend was only a quarter of revenue in Q3 while $DKNG spent 155% of their revenue. This will change as they begin to focus on growth, but it shows they are very good at getting return on ad spend. This company should actually be valued close to $DKNG based on growth potential once guidance is raised.
https://imgur.com/a/RQQXtGg
​
Their focus on attracting **female gamers** is also important to their long term growth potential. The sports book plays with cross sells to casino such as $DKNG will not be able to grow through the female demographic in the same way. **This cannot be understated** as one of the major strategic advantages of $RSI.
https://imgur.com/a/xzJj26n
​
As I said before I expect their trend of rapid growth to continue for Q4 earnings, certainly going to be a blow out based on looking at state gambling revenue numbers. My estimate is that their revenue will be around 110M for Q4. I also expect guidance to be raised to 500M for 2021 due to strong performance in existing markets and the recently opened Michigan market as well as their sports book launch in Virginia.
https://imgur.com/a/ckTqHhh
​
**Short sellers have entered the chat**
The short interest on $RSI sits at 5.08 M shares as of 01/14/21 representing a 30% increase. Now why would a company already valued at 2.8 Billion and with a comparative valuation of 8-10 Billion compared with $DKNG and $PENN be so heavily shorted at such a low market cap? My conclusion is that an institution with 10s of millions to throw at shorting this stock wants to take advantage of fear of share dilution from warrant calling or to establish a better entry prior to earnings.
​
**Commander in GILF Cathie Wood is Bullish on the sector**
On Feb. 2nd ARK disclosed that they had purchased 620,300 shares of $DKNG. This is extremely bullish for the sector. I am highly confident that after Q4 earnings ARK will be purchasing shares in $RSI as well due its strategic advantages relative to $DKNG and exposure to the female demographic. For such a small market cap company this will be a major catalyst.
​
**Institutions are bullish**
Fidelity has increased their holdings to 14% as of today: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001793659/8f10b0d8-a3d2-447c-bc75-87587d0a4670.pdf
Alliance Bernstein holds a 6% position reported today: http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001793659/e883778d-e759-4a85-91c1-3242ed110720.pdf
​
**Final notes**
Jerome "The Bus" Bettis, Steelers legend and hall of fame running back, is their brand ambassador... This company knows their target audience and how to appeal to them, likely more 'classic' ambassadors to come to attract even more boomer and Gen X degenerates. Keep in mind these are the gamblers with big money to spend, the average age of an online casino gambler is 42.
This stock has been grossly underpriced due to short selling. The terms of the SPAC deal were not unfavorable and all the insiders held their shares through the merger banking on growth in the market - **management owns 77% of the company**. This is a true value play on a well managed company in an emerging industry with a market size in the hundreds of billions. I plan to hold shares long term.
​
I will post a part 2 breaking down their latest S-1 filing and Q4 revenue by state when they release their Q4 earnings date.
​
Do your own research.
References:
https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting/revenue/
https://fintel.io/doc/sec-rush-street-interactive-inc-ex991-2021-january-05-18632-947
https://s26.q4cdn.com/794539746/files/doc_presentations/2020/RSI-Investor-Presentation-15-Oct-2020.pdf
https://ir.rushstreetinteractive.com/news/news-details/2020/RUSH-STREET-INTERACTIVE-ANNOUNCES-THIRD-QUARTER-2020-RESULTS-AND-RAISES-FULL-YEAR-GUIDANCE/default.aspx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWEhWuPmzU
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/draftkings-surges-as-stake-bought-by-ark-next-generation
​
Positions: $RSI 30 03/19 30C
I will be adding 04/16 25cs each week until earnings.
Exit strategy: "What's an exit strategy?" - u/deepfuckingvalue
Update 021321: IMPORTANT after a commenter pointed out that technically they could report as late as April 2nd I AM RECOMMENDING THAT EVERYONE ROLL OUT TO APRIL 16TH 35Cs

Positions: $RSI 03/19 30C
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/swCCMjz
This post is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as investment, financial, or other advice.
TLDR: Rush Street Interactive ($RSI) is the #1 nationwide online casino company and the #3 or #4 sports book depending on the state. Short selling, unwarranted institutional wariness of share dilution and the general market focus on sports book instead of online casino has left $RSI grossly undervalued. A massive blow out at Q4 earnings will result in analyst upgrades and a rapid repricing by market makers and institutions seeking exposure to the emerging sector.
Overview
"Sports book is really just kind of a warm up in a lot of ways for an online casino where the real money is made" - Niccolo De Masi, CEO dMY technologies
Rush Street Interactive ($RSI) operates the BetRivers.com online casino and sports book. They are now fully licensed and operating in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia. They own and operate a casino in New York and already have a New York license making them well positioned for liberalization there. They merged with a dMY Technology Group SPAC on Dec. 31st 2020 with 240 million on the balance sheet to spend on growth.
The online casino business is fundamentally more profitable than sports betting because the average value of a casino player is estimated at $600 while a sports book player could be as little as $20. Estimates put the online casino market at DOUBLE the size of the online sports book market and the online casino industry is really just getting started as more states liberalize.
$RSI is expert at new market entry; they have been first to market in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado and even when they aren't first they are capable of capturing market share in competitive markets such as New Jersey. They also have products which women play which accounts for at least half of the market in online casino. The female market is one that the pure sports book plays miss out on.
Also for some fucking reason they operate a casino and sports book in Colombia (rushbet.co) and may make large expansions into other parts of south America as legalization continues. This means they have the expertise necessary for global expansion in the future although the states remains their primary focus and growth driver.
The Financials and Strategy
Unlike other companies in the space Rush Street is already profitable in 2020 and has a strong focus on Return On Invested Capital (ROIC). Q3 gross revenue was $71.9 Million. Q4 revenue is going to be a blow out. Combing through state gambling revenue data and breaking that down by market share my estimate is that Q4 revenue could be as high as $120 Million.
Paired with this blow out will be a **guidance raise to $500 Million for 2021**, which is 2/3 of DraftKings 2021 guidance of $750M.
https://imgur.com/a/xkfcayC
What is striking when compared to $DKNG is that their advertising spend was only a quarter of revenue in Q3 while $DKNG spent 155% of their revenue. This will change as they begin to focus on growth, but it shows they are very good at getting return on ad spend. This company should actually be valued close to $DKNG based on growth potential once guidance is raised.
https://imgur.com/a/RQQXtGg
Their focus on attracting **female gamers** is also important to their long term growth potential. The sports book plays with cross sells to casino such as $DKNG will not be able to grow through the female demographic in the same way. **This cannot be understated** as one of the major strategic advantages of $RSI.
https://imgur.com/a/xzJj26n
As I said before I expect their trend of rapid growth to continue for Q4 earnings, certainly going to be a blow out based on looking at state gambling revenue numbers. My estimate is that their revenue will be around 110M for Q4. I also expect guidance to be raised to 500M for 2021 due to strong performance in existing markets and the recently opened Michigan market as well as their sports book launch in Virginia.
https://imgur.com/a/ckTqHhh
Short sellers have entered the chat
The short interest on $RSI sits at 5.08 M shares as of 01/14/21 representing a 30% increase. Now why would a company already valued at 2.8 Billion and with a comparative valuation of 8-10 Billion compared with $DKNG and $PENN be so heavily shorted at such a low market cap? My conclusion is that an institution with 10s of millions to throw at shorting this stock wants to take advantage of fear of share dilution from warrant calling or to establish a better entry prior to earnings.
Cathie Wood is Bullish on the sector
On Feb. 2nd ARK disclosed that they had purchased 620,300 shares of $DKNG. This is extremely bullish for the sector. I am highly confident that after Q4 earnings ARK will be purchasing shares in $RSI as well due its strategic advantages relative to $DKNG and exposure to the female demographic. For such a small market cap company this will be a major catalyst.
Final notes
Jerome "The Bus" Bettis, Steelers legend and hall of fame running back, is their brand ambassador... This company knows their target audience and how to appeal to them, likely more 'classic' ambassadors to come to attract even more boomer and Gen X degenerates. Keep in mind these are the gamblers with big money to spend, the average age of an online casino gambler is 42.
This stock has been grossly underpriced due to short selling. The terms of the SPAC deal were not unfavorable and all the insiders held their shares through the merger banking on growth in the market - **management owns 77% of the company**. This is a true value play on a well managed company in an emerging industry with a market size in the hundreds of billions. I plan to hold shares long term.
I will post a part 2 breaking down their latest S-1 filing and Q4 revenue by state when they release their Q4 earnings date.
Do your own research.
References:
https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting/revenue/
https://fintel.io/doc/sec-rush-street-interactive-inc-ex991-2021-january-05-18632-947
https://s26.q4cdn.com/794539746/files/doc_presentations/2020/RSI-Investor-Presentation-15-Oct-2020.pdf
https://ir.rushstreetinteractive.com/news/news-details/2020/RUSH-STREET-INTERACTIVE-ANNOUNCES-THIRD-QUARTER-2020-RESULTS-AND-RAISES-FULL-YEAR-GUIDANCE/default.aspx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWEhWuPmzU
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/draftkings-surges-as-stake-bought-by-ark-next-generation
Positions: $RSI 03/19 30C
I will be adding 04/16 25Cs each week until earnings
Exit strategy: "What's an exit strategy?" - u/deepfuckingvalue
Forgot to add: http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001793659/8f10b0d8-a3d2-447c-bc75-87587d0a4670.pdf Fidelity just doubled their position to almost 15%
Update 021221: Everyone that went in on my initial entry is down 40% right now. As I said I plan to continue to buy 03/19 25Cs each week until earnings. If you’re worried about further losses wait until the day before earnings to load up, you may miss a run up though.
Update 021321: IMPORTANT after a commenter pointed out that technically they could report as late as April 2nd I AM RECOMMENDING THAT EVERYONE ROLL OUT TO APRIL 16TH 35Cs

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.

"You're going to play gotcha questions with me?" - Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), asked if he thought Joe Biden won the election

Don't Wayne On My Parade

Eleven days after the election ended in decisive victory for Joe Biden, Republicans’ continued performance of uncertainty about the outcome is as appalling and dangerous as it is unrelentingly embarrassing.

• On Tuesday, the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers briefly refused to certify the election results in Michigan’s largest county, for a very valid reason that definitely wasn’t “Detroit has a lot of Black voters and we don’t think their votes should count.” (Against all odds, a white man in a polo shirt summed up this stunt best.) The Republicans reversed course on Tuesday night, for a very badass reason that definitely wasn’t “reporters started finding all the racist memes on our Facebook pages.” As a cherry on top, Donald Trump missed the memo and congratulated his would-be coup enablers on their courage, after they had agreed to certify the results.
  
• His hopes of stealing away Michigan’s electoral votes dashed, Trump has turned to Wisconsin, a state he lost by more than 20,000 votes. The Trump campaign has filed a petition for a recount, but only in Wisconsin’s two largest, most Democratic-leaning counties, for a very solid reason that assuredly wasn’t “we’ve been through this, that’s where all the young and Black voters are.” That partial recount cost the campaign $3 million, but if you can pay Rudy Giuliani $20,000 a day to rattle off conspiracy theories at an exasperated judge, what’s a few million dollars to lose Wisconsin again?
  
• As profoundly dumb as all of this is, it is also incredibly corrosive. It’s no particular surprise that Trump fired DHS’s cybersecurity director Chris Krebs for the crime of debunking his lies about the election having been stolen from him, but it deserved immediate, unanimous condemnation. Instead, Democratic lawmakers have spoken up, while Republicans, with a few half-hearted exceptions, have sat on their hands. What will it mean for future elections that a defeated president fired an official who safeguarded this election’s integrity and then told the truth about it, and a whole political party said “sure”?
  

Republicans might be blowing up democracy in slow-motion, but at least most of them aren’t pretending to agonize over it.

• Sources who have spoken to General Services Administrator Emily Murphy say she’s been struggling with her unilateral decision to delay the presidential transition, and feeling like she’s been put “in a very difficult position.” Boy have we got great news for Emily: This one’s actually super simple. There’s no real doubt about who won the election, so you can just go ahead and sign that piece of paper! Get a marketing job and move to Paris! You’re free!
  
• In the meantime, Joe Biden has been pushing ahead with transition briefings from outside experts. Those briefings have limitations, as advisors outside of the government won’t have the most up-to-date information, and can’t share classified intelligence. The White House has refused to provide even basic coronavirus data to the transition team, and in spite of the lives hanging in the balance if sabotaging the transition creates problems with vaccine distribution, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said the department won’t communicate with the Biden team until the GSA signs off.
  

Each of Trump’s far-fetched coup maneuvers has flopped, but way too many Republicans have been happy to give them a whirl, and there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t try again in an election with closer margins. Whatever surreal elements of this year we eventually shove down the memory hole for our collective sanity, that fact can’t be one of them.

Look No Further Than The Crooked Media

On today's Keep It stream, Ira, Louis, and Aida discuss Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro's fervor over Harry Styles wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue: "The hilariousness of 'bring back manly men.' Where do you want them brought?" Watch and subscribe → youtube.com/crookedmedia

Under The Radar

Donald Trump just gave the worst possible job to a former speechwriter who was fired for having white nationalist ties. The White House dismissed Darren Beattie in 2018 after it came to light that he had spoken at a white-supremacist conference, back when that was something the Trump administration could still be shamed about. Beattie then took a bunch of taxpayer money from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), in a violation of House rules. Following that proud interlude, Trump has welcomed Beattie back into the administration fold with an appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, which was established for the specific purpose of preserving the memory of Holocaust victims. Sixty-three days until the Inauguration.

What Else?

The official U.S. coronavirus death toll has surpassed 250,000, and more than three million people are estimated to be currently contagious. Doctors on the coronavirus task force warned Vice President Mike Pence that the U.S. could see an average of 2000 deaths a day by Christmas (Scott Atlas was presumably in the bathroom), and urged Pence or Trump to stress the importance of mitigation efforts from the White House podium.
Neither of them has any scheduled plans to do so, but White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called statewide coronavirus restrictions “Orwellian,” if that’s helpful to anyone?
New York City’s public school system will shut down for in-person learning on Thursday (though bars, restaurants, and gyms are still open, lol), and Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) has joined a growing number of Republican governors in issuing a mask mandate for the first time. All straight out of Animal Farm.
The FAA has cleared Boeing’s 737 Max to resume flights, 20 months after grounding it following two fatal crashes and roughly 100 years before we will agree to step foot on one.
Trump has ordered the rushed withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, though not the total withdrawal he had campaigned on. According to one administration official, this is part of the White House’s galaxy brain strategy to light more fires than Biden can put out.
Well, here’s unelected Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) violating Senate ethics rules by soliciting donations from a federal office building. Let’s send her home, yes?
Donald Trump was terrified he would be cut in half by lasers at the opening of his Atlantic City casino in 1990, while “Eye of the Tiger” was blasting over the loudspeakers. Just a nice little image to carry close to your heart.
Rockefeller Center’s bummer of a Christmas tree has been widely deemed a metaphor for 2020. The tree’s resident owl who was just minding his own business before getting dragged into midtown can confirm.

Be Smarter

One of the biggest takeaways from this election has been “Latino voters are not a monolith,” and while much of that analysis has focused on Florida, it’s just as true everywhere else. In Texas, Trump became the first GOP presidential candidate in a century to win Zapata County, which is more than 94 percent Hispanic or Latino. Dissecting the result the requires understanding the specific character of South Texas, where most Spanish-speaking residents self-identify as Tejano. Most consider themselves American above all else, wouldn’t identify as people of color, and have positions on gas and oil, guns, and abortion that are closely aligned with the Republican Party. The Trump campaign recognized and effectively targeted that specific community, and Democrats will need more than generic messaging to win it back.

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Is That Hope I Feel?

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s policy of using the pandemic as an excuse to turn away migrant children seeking asylum at the border.
Pfizer now says that its vaccine actually seems to be 95 percent effective, and, implicitly, that Moderna can eat its shorts. Pfizer plans to apply for emergency use authorization from the FDA within days.
The FDA has issued emergency use authorization for the first at-home rapid coronavirus test.
Tiara Mack has become the first openly LGBTQ Black person elected to the Rhode Island state Senate, at age 26: “I'm going to be unapologetically Black, I'm going to be unapologetically queer, and I'm going to be unapologetically young, and I'm going to push back against the system that tells us we don't deserve justice now.”

Enjoy

Philip Michaels on Twitter: "This Senate hearing looks like the tale of a marooned lighthouse keeper and the robot butler he built to stave off loneliness."

With the closure of almost half of Atlantic City's casinos, Newark set to vote on gambling and casinos or racinos in almost every state, it seems as if the reasons for the very existence of Atlantic City are in serious jeopardy.
Israel Joffe
Atlantic City, once a major vacation spot during the roaring 20s and 1930s, as seen on HBOs Boardwalk Empire, collapsed when cheap air fare became the norm and people had no reason to head to the many beach town resorts on the East Coast. Within a few decades, the city, known for being an ‘oasis of sin’ during the prohibition era, fell into serious decline and dilapidation.
New Jersey officials felt the only way to bring Atlantic City back from the brink of disaster would be to legalize gambling. Atlantic City’s first casino, Resorts, first opened its doors in 1978. People stood shoulder to shoulder, packed into the hotel as gambling officially made its way to the East Coast. Folks in the East Coast didn't have to make a special trip all the way to Vegas in order to enjoy some craps, slots, roulette and more.
As time wore on, Atlantic City became the premier gambling spots in the country.
While detractors felt that the area still remained poor and dilapidated, officials were quick to point out that the casinos didn't bring the mass gentrification to Atlantic City as much as they hoped but the billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs for the surrounding communities was well worth it.
Atlantic City developed a reputation as more of a short-stay ‘day-cation’ type of place, yet managed to stand firm against the 'adult playground' and 'entertainment capital of the world' Las Vegas.
Through-out the 1980s, Atlantic City would become an integral part of American pop culture as a place for east coast residents to gamble, watch boxing, wrestling, concerts and other sporting events.
However in the late 1980s, a landmark ruling considered Native-American reservations to be sovereign entities not bound by state law. It was the first potential threat to the iron grip Atlantic City and Vegas had on the gambling and entertainment industry.
Huge 'mega casinos' were built on reservations that rivaled Atlantic City and Vegas. In turn, Vegas built even more impressive casinos.
Atlantic City, in an attempt to make the city more appealing to the ‘big whale’ millionaire and billionaire gamblers, and in effort to move away from its ‘seedy’ reputation, built the luxurious Borgata casino in 2003. Harrah’s created a billion dollar extension and other casinos in the area went through serious renovations and re-branded themselves.
It seemed as if the bite that the Native American casinos took out of AC and Vegas’ profits was negligible and that the dominance of those two cities in the world of gambling would remain unchallenged.
Then Macau, formally a colony of Portugal, was handed back to the Chinese in 1999. The gambling industry there had been operated under a government-issued monopoly license by Stanley Ho's Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau. The monopoly was ended in 2002 and several casino owners from Las Vegas attempted to enter the market.
Under the one country, two systems policy, the territory remained virtually unchanged aside from mega casinos popping up everywhere. All the rich ‘whales’ from the far east had no reason anymore to go to the United States to spend their money.
Then came the biggest threat.
As revenue from dog and horse racing tracks around the United States dried up, government officials needed a way to bring back jobs and revitalize the surrounding communities. Slot machines in race tracks started in Iowa in 1994 but took off in 2004 when Pennsylvania introduced ‘Racinos’ in an effort to reduce property taxes for the state and to help depressed areas bounce back.
As of 2013, racinos were legal in ten states: Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and West Virginia with more expected in 2015.
Tracks like Delaware Park and West Virginia's Mountaineer Park, once considered places where local degenerates bet on broken-down nags in claiming races, are now among the wealthiest tracks around, with the best races.
The famous Aqueduct race track in Queens, NY, once facing an uncertain future, now possesses the most profitable casino in the United States.
From June 2012 to June 2013, Aqueduct matched a quarter of Atlantic City's total gaming revenue from its dozen casinos: $729.2 million compared with A.C.'s $2.9 billion. It has taken an estimated 15 percent hit on New Jersey casino revenue and climbing.
And it isn't just Aqueduct that's taking business away from them. Atlantic City's closest major city, Philadelphia, only 35-40 minutes away, and one of the largest cities in America, now has a casino that has contributed heavily to the decline in gamers visiting the area.
New Jersey is the third state in the U.S. to have authorized internet gambling. However, these online casinos are owned and controlled by Atlantic City casinos in an effort to boost profits in the face of fierce competition.
California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Texas are hoping to join Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey and the U.S. Virgin Islands in offering online gambling to their residents.
With this in mind, it seems the very niche that Atlantic City once offered as a gambling and entertainment hub for east coast residents is heading toward the dustbin of history.
Time will tell if this city will end up like Detroit. However, the fact that they are losing their biggest industry to major competition, much like Detroit did, with depressed housing, casinos bankrupting/closing and businesses fleeing , it all makes Atlantic City’s fate seem eerily similar.

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Since McInerney is back in the news spreading conspiracy theories about our recent Presidential election, making up bullshit stories about US Special Operations raids, many will find this article I wrote six years ago helpful in learning who this guy is and what he is really about.
While many are familiar with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech, fewer have read the original drafts which include dire warnings about the future of America and what Eisenhower termed a “military-industrial complex.”
One of the original drafts, penned by speech writer Malcom Moos, reads:
“We must never let power, implicit in this combination, endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert, knowledgeable, and wise citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that both security and liberty may prosper.
In the councils of government, we must jealously guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We can ignore it only at our peril.”
The tone is softened slightly in the speech that Eisenhower delivered, but his message remained intact. Since the Eisenhower presidency, the military-industrial complex has grown and gone through a metamorphosis, the rhetoric changing to match the current threats, real or perceived, to the United States. The Cold War gave way to the War on Terror.
At the forefront of those who shape the rhetoric are often the same retired generals and admirals who staff the boards of directors of America’s largest and most powerful defense companies.
Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney carries three-star clout following an extremely impressive career. Retiring from the Air Force, McInerney served four tours in Vietnam, including hundreds of sorties as a combat aviator. Afterwards, McInerney served in a succession of important military commands. He is a graduate of West Point and also has a master’s degree from Georgetown. Since his retirement in 1994, General McInerney has also served on the board of directors for perhaps a dozen different defense and defense-related companies.
However, General McInerney says some very odd things. To the uninitiated, like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, he sounds “nuts.” When McInerney makes outlandish claims as a paid Fox News contributor, people sometimes describe him as sounding crazy. Yes, the general’s claims, a few of which we will examine here, are bizarre, but McInerney is not crazy. In fact, he is very intelligent, highly rational, and each of his words are very calculated.
The Pentagon’s Military Analyst Program When the Pentagon established the military analyst program in 2002, they did so largely to help build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Retired generals were recruited into the program by the Pentagon and given exclusive access to classified briefings, as well as tours of Guantanamo and bases in Iraq. While these analysts were presented on network news each night as being objective experts, they were actually being groomed by the Pentagon and fed talking points. Moreover, many of them had ties to major defense contractors with material interests in the war.
Former Green Beret and member of the military analyst program, Robert Bevelacqua, later said of the program that the Pentagon was telling them, “we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.” When the New York Times sued the DOD to obtain documents about the program, they found that the talking heads we saw on television were referred to as “message force multipliers” and “surrogates.”
When one retired general in the military analyst program received talking points from the Pentagon, he wrote, “good work” and “we will use it.” That general’s name was Thomas McInerney.
Malaysian Flight 370 While McIerney is known for his very hawkish stances on foreign-policy issues, he is perhaps better known for the straight-up outlandish claims he often makes. One of the most curious is the theory he advanced on Fox News multiple times when Malaysian Flight 370 disappeared somewhere over the Pacific.
The theory: Flight 370 was hijacked by terrorists, probably the pilots, who then turned off the aircraft’s transmitters and flew the plane westward. The pilots then shadowed Singaporean Flight 68 in order to hide their aircraft’s radar signature as they flew over Indian airspace. McInerney insists that the Indian radar operators would not necessarily have picked up flight 370’s radar signature as most countries don’t have their “A-team” manning the radar late at night.
If we are to accept this bizarre leap of faith, we then have to invent some way in which Flight 370 then broke away from Flight 68. McInerney insists that the Malaysian passenger plane then landed in Lahore, Pakistan, and the passengers are being held hostage.
Fox News is always quick to point out on air how General McInerney has amazing sources and contacts within the Pentagon and elsewhere—an attempt to backstop his strange claims and theories. In this case, McInerney pointed out that it wasn’t simply his sources that gave him his information, but rather that logic dictated the plane was hijacked and flown to Lahore.
But this isn’t the same type of logic advanced by Plato, Hobbes, or even Machiavelli. McInerney is making inferences based on inferences based on inferences and none of it adds up or can be verified by anyone. Despite McInerney’s incredible sources that Fox News pundits constantly reference, no one that SOFREP has spoken to in the intelligence community lends a bit of credence to this claim.
DEFCON 1 “Something is happening out there and we are asleep at the switch.”
Another interesting statement made on Fox News by McInerney is that the United States should go to DEFCON 1. Defense Condition One is America’s highest level of alert and means that nuclear war is imminent. McInerney reminds us that America has never gone to this level of alert before.
Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the United States was on the brink of nuclear armageddon with the Soviet Union, we only made it to DEFCON 2. Why would America need to raise our alert status to DEFCON 1 in September of 2014? McInerney references a variety of nebulous threats. In various interviews he says that this threat could be nuclear, an EMP weapon, or cyber-warfare attacks against our infrastructure.
Where does this threat emerge from? General McInerney said on Fox that, “unchecked, ISIS is an existential threat to the United States…” However, there is no evidence that ISIS is even remotely an existential threat to America. While ISIS can—and gone unchecked, almost certainly will—become a threat to America, the idea that a ragtag group of jihadists could destroy America has no credibility. Even the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center came nowhere close to actually destroying America.
In the same interview, McInerney then repeats his suggestion that the government raise the alert level to DEFCON 1, and that he believes that multiple American cities are soon going to be attacked because ISIS has slipped through our porous borders and are already staging in American cities to strike. He then pushes for a “massive air campaign in Iraq and Syria.”
Nuclear Iran “Getting the bombs or the components of bombs into the United States would be simple.” (End Game, 27)
At the New Hampshire Institute for Politics, McInerney commented on one of his favorite topics: nuclear Iran. In this speech, he warns America that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon, possibly hand it off to a third party, and then it could be smuggled into the United States to be detonated in a city. McInerney would have us believe that while intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying a nuclear payload can be traced back to the country that launched them, a nuclear weapon smuggled into America would leave no fingerprints as to who the culprits are.
Of course, this claim is patently false. The science of nuclear forensics would allow us to quickly identify who built a nuclear weapon set off on American soil. Iran knows this. So does General McInerney. Contrary to many alarmists, Iran is a rational state and the Iranian government does realize that, should they launch such an attack against America, the nation of Iran would cease to exist in short order.
To effect a regime change in Iran, and according to McInerney, to prevent this nuclear nightmare, he advocates a 48-hour air campaign over Iran. The goal would be to set the Iranian nuclear program back at least 5 years. This would include the use of bunker busters, 70 stealth aircraft, and 400 non-stealth aircraft to bomb 2,500 targets inside Iran.
America’s Nuclear Deterrent “It is very safe and it is very secure.”
Considering the dire threats that McInerney insists America is facing on an almost daily basis, he made one curious appearance on television to assure the public that America’s nuclear stockpile is safe and secure. On January 14th, 2014, McInerney appeared on Fox to address reports of missile launch officers being caught up in a drug investigation and cheating on their certification exams.
General McInerney responded to the question of the disposition of our nuclear stockpile by assuring us that it is, “very safe and it is very secure.” He goes on to point out that there have been some human failings in our nuclear command, but that our “nuclear-deterrent force is in very good shape.” The general pushed for modernizing our nuclear forces and said that these weapons needed to be maintained, but when it came to the personnel and overall capabilities of our nuclear deterrent, he was very positive.
For someone who often warns Americans about dire threats against our nation and even insidious conspiracies from within (in a TruNews interview, he warned that Obama is carrying out a well-orchestrated conspiracy to transform America into a communist/socialist state), it is curious how he assures us that everything is fine with our nuclear forces. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The problems plaguing our nuclear command are not just limited to our aging stockpile, a few drug users in the ranks, or cheating on exams. Major General Michael Casey, who was in command of three nuclear wings, was relieved of command in 2013. The reason? Casey was boozing it up in Moscow and hooked up with two local women at a hotel. He was drunk, incoherent, and belligerent during his trip, and went missing for hours at a time. This sounds very much like a “honey trap” engineered by Russian intelligence services.
Vice Admiral Tim Giardina was also relieved from his position as deputy chief of U.S. Strategic Command, ostensibly because he used fake gambling chips at a casino in Iowa. With Giardina and Casey relieved within days of each other there may be a real conspiracy at play here. It seems likely that beyond a few human failings, America’s nuclear forces are heavily targeted, if not penetrated, by foreign intelligence agents. This raises the possibility that U.S. military counter-intelligence decided to clean house in October of 2013.
Again, the implications of these scandals within our nuclear command would not go unnoticed by someone with the depth of experience and knowledge that McInerney has. All of this begs the question as to why he goes on television to tell us everything is fine with our nuclear forces when he is also constantly warning us about foreign threats and the destruction of American cities.
END GAME “Syria is a domino waiting to fall.” (End Game, 54)
In 2004, McInerney co-authored a book called End Game with Major General (ret.) Paul Vallely. The two graduated from the same West Point class and became reacquainted when they were both brought into the Pentagon’s Military Analyst Program.
Their book opens with, “Today, America is at war with an enemy every bit as dangerous as Nazi 51D6TASMSFL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Germany or the Soviet Union: We know it as radical Islam” (End Game, 9). In order to counter terrorism, they advocate regime change (“major policy shifts”) using military action in six countries. Afghanistan and Iraq were two that had already been toppled when the book was published. They suggested further military action in Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea.
Since 2004, Libya has experienced a regime change while Syria and Iran have both been under serious duress. Interestingly, two other countries were identified for reform rather than military action: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But, according to the book, if Saudi Arabia can’t shape up, we may have to bomb them, too. End Game tells us that we don’t have time to take these countries out in sequence, but rather we have to attack all of them at the same time (End Game, 38). To what extent McInerney and Vallely have actually influenced the policy decisions to target these countries is unknown, but it is a safe bet that they have been hard at work behind the scenes.
End Game is also filled with predictions that never came to pass. For instance, they said that, if North Korea detonates a nuclear bomb, that Japan, and maybe even South Korea, would develop their own nuclear weapons (End Game, 25). They again assert that if a nuclear bomb was detonated in America that “evidence would vaporize,” making the weapon untraceable (End Game, 29).
Regarding Afghanistan, they write that, “The force level that NATO needs to maintain in Afghanistan is relatively small, the duties in the long term, relatively easy.” (End Game, 40). When it comes to Iraq, they write, “We are confident that the Iraqi people are up to the task, based on how enthusiastically they have embraced the opportunities to vote in meaningful elections.” (End Game, 44)
Considering the author’s failed predictions for post-war Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps we should scale back from attacking the rest of these “rogue” nations all at once with massive American air power as they suggest.
Maddow Gets it Wrong “We report, you freak out.” -Rachel Maddow
Interestingly, journalists and media commentators have never really put McInerney in the spotlight for his many irregularities. On the rare exception in which a critique is offered, it always portrays McInerney as a far-out-there right-winger. Four years ago, Rachel Maddow did a story on McInerney for her show on MSNBC.
The reason for her coverage was because McInerney was supporting an Army doctor who refused to deploy on the grounds that he suspected President Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore was not a valid President. In an affidavit written by McInerney, he praises the doctor’s courage and bravery for standing by his beliefs. Yes, apparently McInerney is a birther as well.
Rachel goes on to say, “what is news is that someone with General McInerney’s qualifications is saying that maybe the President is secretly foreign.” While Rachel is correct in pointing out how preposterous it is that a three-star general would endorse such a zanny conspiracy theory, she is ignorant of the calculated intent behind his carefully worded and pre-rehearsed statements.
She then wraps up the segment with, “the real story, it seems to me, is that a guy this nuts gets paid to comment on foreign policy and wars. The birther general is on Fox New’s payroll…” Rachel is directionally correct in pointing out the strange disconnect between the fact that McInerney is a retired three-star general and that his statements don’t make any sense. However, she misses the fact that, while his statements are off-the-wall, they are never off-the-cuff.
In short, McInerney does not actually believe the bizarre things that he says on air, but rather, these are carefully worded statements fed to the public for political purposes.
The Military-Industrial Complex Thomas McIerney is constantly on television beating his war drums and warning Americans about amorphous threats to our nation. According to him, we are just days away from a horrendous terrorist attack. But McInerney is not simply a television military analyst, rather, he is an active participant in the military-industrial complex via the various boards of directors upon which he sits. What he does is not analysis, but advocacy. He is an advocate for nuclear weapons, long-range bombers, UAVs (specifically Global Hawk), and he is an advocate of going to war with a half dozen countries simultaneously.
This is not conjecture or secret information from anonymous sources, but rather McInerney’s own words. In his book End Game, he claims to have plotted the liberation of Iraq in 2002 on a cocktail napkin with Paul Vallely. They then pitched this plan to Bill O’Reilly at a party hosted by the Fox News network, who agreed to have them on his show to talk about it. In End Game, the generals write, “We knew appearing on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the plan was something of a risk. In the past, we had acted solely as military analysts. Presenting our plan came close to advocacy.” (End Game, 85)
General McIerney chose not to simply be a passive analyst, but to instead become an active participant in shaping history. He believed we could take down Iraq in 30 days, and that the rest would basically be a cake walk. The U.S. military invaded in 2003 and our soldiers fought, bled, and died in the streets fighting terrorists, Baath-party loyalists, foreign fighters, and run-of-the-mill gangsters in places like Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra for an additional nine years.
Mcinerney is not to blame for the failures of the war in Iraq, but his rhetoric is suspect when the companies he works with have a material interest in the United States going to war—wars in which the products endorsed by McInerney, such as air power and UAVs, would be employed. In order for those products to be used, the American public has to be kept in a constant state of fear. That fear can then be channeled and used as a vehicle to support war. The vehicle of choice for McInerney is radical Islam.
He isn’t a right-wing nut as people like Rachel Maddow would have you believe. If we were to take McInerney’s word’s at face value, the politics he endorses are actually divorced from any ideology in contemporary mainstream politics. Like Lyndon LaRouche, Thomas McInerney’s politics are so far out there that it is disingenuous to describe them as right-wing, Republican, or conservative. But it is highly unlikely that McInerney actually believes silly stories about Flight 370, Iranian nuclear weapons, and birther conspiracies.
Far more likely, he says these things cynically for purely political purposes.
McInerney honorably served his country for many years, but contrary to the lapel pin on his collar, what he does today is far from patriotic. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Misleading Americans with alarmism and hyperbolic statements is deconstructing our political process. An informed public is an absolute necessity for a democracy to function. When retired generals leverage their credibility to mislead the public like a pied piper for political purposes, we are in serious trouble.
When they lend their name to conspiracy theories, it only contributes to polarizing American politics and driving wedges between the American people. When politicians see that the talking heads on television are saying something that does not match up with what our intelligence professionals are telling them, it is then seen as an intelligence failure.
Thomas McInerney is not alone. He is one member of a clique of retired generals, admirals, and CIA officers who have created an echo chamber in which they cite each other as sources and stir up the political fringe of America. They do this intentionally, knowing that their alarmist messages will be diluted by the time they make their way down to more reasonable people. But in the meantime, the damage done to American politics is impossible to calculate.
This is one facet of the modern military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us of.

Ever since a Let’s Play got me into Stardew Valley, I’ve fallen in love with the world. It’s something special, a place to relax and get away from the world’s problems. Here, you can pay bills with the sweat of your own brow, make friends, fall in love, and can escape the drudgery of modern life. It’s magical in its own way.
I’ve played hundreds of hours over multiple save files. I’ve been wondering one thing just recently, however. I remember when I first asked Robin for house upgrades and the sheer bowel-emptying amount she asked for. Seriously? That much for a kitchen? Now that I haven’t left my house for the past several weeks, fear human contact, and have deep dived into the paranormal, I’m overthinking something constantly: with regards to modern housework, does Robin the carpenter over or under charge you for her work?
To figure this out, it’s going to require a fair bit of math and a lot of guesswork. I’m going to have to establish a lot of ground rules but I’m going to try and be as accurate to real world costs as I can. We need to learn four things:

• What year does the game take place so we can calculate accurate inflation?
• What is the square footage of the house and its upgrades?
• What is the exchange value of gold, the game’s currency?
• What is the cost of Robin’s labor?

Let’s tackle the first. To do this, I scoured around to look for modern conveniences. Primarily, I found these five:

• Leah mentions she has a laptop
• The carpentry shop sells Plasma screen TVs.
• There is what appears to be an old Apple computer monitor in Harvey’s clinic and Maru’s room.
• Sam has an electric guitar and what looks like a plasma screen computer monitor in his room.
• In Mr. Qi’s casino, the slot machines do not have a lever. This is important because that gives us a firm earliest date of 1963.

Another interesting factoid is the number of Cathode-ray TVs you see in Stardew Valley. These are the precursors to plasma screens, which were in turn succeeded by LCD screen TVs. Additionally, a large number of your starter houses comes preequipped with Cathode-ray TVs. Granted, this may be because the farmhouse was abandoned for many years before you came along, but there exists another such TV in 1 River Road where we often see George watching his shows. I will concede that George and Evelyn are quite old and may not have the tech savvy nature of Sebastian to get something more modern, so that can’t be an accurate measurement. Plus, Alex’s mental acumen is a little... questionable.
As for crafting recipes, there really isn’t anything worth talking about. Magic items I won’t talk about because it has no real world comparison; that also throws out the wizard shop’s items. The furniture catalog has nothing of note to pinepoint a date, and nor does Pierre’s General Store, Joja Mart, Joja Warehouse, the Blacksmith, Stardrop Saloon, or Marnie’s ranch. Leah doesn’t mention anything about her laptop, so that is of little help.
So the casino gives us a low bound. Although manufacturing of the plasma screen TV stopped in the US in 2014, plasma screen TVs were losing their market shares around 2007 and factories were shutting down. As you can buy them like hotcakes and fill a shed with them, 2007 is our upper bound.
The price for plasma screens was quite pricey for residential homes. 1995 was the year 42 inch plasma screens became commercial, and some had home installation priced somewhere around US$15,000. Still not quite the size of the queen or king sized bed you and your spouse have (the size of the plasma screen in the game), but sixty inch plasma screen TVs were sold around the year 2000, and that is plenty big. Given the size of the screen in the game is roughly three tiles just like your bed, I think it’s safe to say this is around the size of our estimate. Our rough year range is now 1995 to 2007. Let’s split the difference and say the game takes place in 2001.
We have our year.
To calculate the size of our farmhouse, we need some baseline measurement. Luckily, the game is pixelated so we can be quite accurate in our measurements. Unluckily, we have no confirmed height of anything, so we have to intuit some things. Reddit user asparagus made this excellent size chart, so while I can just use that and save myself a lot of work, let us do some measurements of our own and then measure the farmhouse with both this method and asparagus’ method.
First, there is the height of plants, but those can vary widely. For instance, you can pot prickly pear cactuses in your farmhouse, but their height can vary anywhere between one and seven feet. Plant height is a no go. The average height of a minifridge is forty three inches (109 cm) tall, so unless you are a dwarf, that’s not right either. The fences are also a good starting point, as most agricultural fencing stands at four feet (1.2 m).
Here we don’t have to do much; all fences are forty eight pixels in height. Four feet equals out to forty eight inches (121.92 cm). It doesn’t get more perfect than that!
Trigger warning: incoming math.
Now comes the really tricky part: getting the dimensions of each iteration of your farmhouse, and squinting at my computer screen like a mole in order to count pixels; we must include walls as well as that is included in square footage. Our first iteration has pixel measurements of 704x496. Add in the doorway (136x64pixels), and then we’ll still convert for square feet. 704 * 496 + (136 * 64) = 318,452 pixels/sq, which (dividing by 12^2) converts to 2,211.47 ft/sq. Damn, we’re well on our way for most modern mansions.
I have to have messed something up (205.45 m/sq, btw). The average firebox (the inside of a fireplace where you burn wood) tends to be around 32x20 inches (81.28x50.8 cm). Ours is... 72x40. Twice as large. I also haven’t even begun to calculate the farmhouse’s height because Robin is beginning to scare me.
Alright, new plan, we’re going with asparagus. I married Haley and took her measurements. She is 104 pixels tall, and since she is 65 inches (165.1 cm) according to asparagus, that gives us a measurement of .625 inches/pixel (1.5875 cm/pixel).
Side note, I really want some Twizlers right now.
So instead of having pixels as at a 1:1 ratio, we have something a little more lenient, but things are looking a little... grim. We’ll have to convert each individual amount, so we have (704 * .625) * (496 * .625) + ((136 * 64) * .625^2) for 124,395.31 inches/sq, 863.86 ft/sq., 80.25 m/sq. But still, we haven’t even begun to calculate the actual volume of our farmhouse yet, so these numbers are going to explode.
I’m beginning to think Robin is Hestia. Yoba is not the only deity in this town.
Alright, calculating the rest of the floor spaces is a little boring so let’s speedrun this.
Wall height for the farmhouse is 140 pixels, so (140 * .625) * 124,395.31 inches/sq / 12^3 = 6,298.95 ft^3 (178.36 m^3) for the farmhouse, and 25,800.51 ft^3 (730.58 m^3) using my method.
Just... let’s move on.
Second iteration has me doing a fair bit more work.
Wall height is 135 pixels, and rightmost—wait, the walls are shorter? Weird. Anyway, the rightmost room has dimensions of 486 for width by 375 for depth (and the same cubby dimensions), giving us cuboid dimensions of 24,603,750 pixels^3, which converts to 14,238.28 ft^3 (403.18 m^3), and 3,476.14 ft^3 (82.83 m^3) using asparagus' method
Middle corridor has a dimensional width of 42 pixels by 87 depth, giving us a total of 285.47 ft^3 (8.08 m^3), and 69.69 ft^3 (1.97 m^3) using asparagus' method.
Leftmost room (the kitchen) has a width of 870 and depth of 375, with a doorway of 136x64. That gives us a cuboid area of 314,019.38 ft^3 (29,173.11 m^3), and 6,388.74 ft^3 (180.91 m^3) using asparagus' method.
That gives us a grand total for a tier two home of...
... 328,543.13 ft^3 (29,584.37 m^3) using my method and
... 9,934.58 ft^3 (281.31 m^3) using asparagus' method.
So Robin added at a minimum 3,635.63 cubic feet to your house in three days by herself. Even if you extend the days and months to roughly align with our own calendar, that would be a mere nine days. How much powdered starfruit did she snort in order to do that by herself? I 100% believe Emily is the town’s dealer. I didn’t even calculate the length of the farmhouse loft. It’s doable, and even though you can’t enter it in the game, a bigger farmhouse means a bigger loft judging by the look of it.
Anyway, I’m not going to calculate the loft area right now. I’m not going to calculate the other tiers of your farmhouse either, even though that was my intent when I started this analysis. The math is easy enough, but it gets boring to type, and no doubt to read. Plus, I’m a little stunned by Robin's carpentry acumen. C’mon Robin, stop upgrading my house. Exercise with the girls, dance with your husband, smoke some weed, I dunno, RELAX.
But in a strange way, it makes a weird sort of sense. Pretty much no one plays the game with auto-run turned off, but do so for a moment. See how fast you move. That is your normal pace, and auto-run is you, an Olympian god, sprinting around town every second of every day, helping the shit out of everyone whether they want it or not, snorting the same starfruit mixture you got from Robin to keep going, who may have gotten it from Linus (my money is still on Emily). We’ve become so accustomed to seeing the run animation as our default I almost didn’t realize it doesn’t translate to modern life. The boards in your house, I almost took those as your normal 2x4 planks of wood (which actually measure 1.5x3.5, the world lies to me). They are not. They are almost the width of your entire body, and your walking pace (sorry I can’t get an exact pixel measurement) covers roughly one and a half boards, a similar length to a normal human gait. The art style fooled even me until now, but your house is massive.
Let’s just answer our other two questions. What is the exchange rate? Calculating the exchange rate of a fictional world is always tricky as they have different concepts of rarities, but I’ll give it the ol’ college try. Once again, I can’t do anything with magic. Let’s first list some things of note:

• Iridium is fairly easy to get around Stardew Valley once you are able, and that is a rare and valuable metal, with a current price of US$1,510 per troy ounce.
• You can purchase a golden column to place on your farm, and gold has a current price of US$1,643 per troy ounce
• Conversely, while the first two are rare and valuable metals, crops such as corn are valued at prices like 150g, a very unusually high amount if exchanged 1:1 to USA dollars.
• Going back to plasma screen TVs, we can use its price history and then convert currencies to Stardew Valley gold.

Now you may be tempted to say we can’t translate iridium and gold’s prices to real world market values, and normally you may be right, but there are some extenuating circumstances in the game: the town is right next to two very large mines. It is even a plot point once you clear the glittering boulder that the water carries ore from deep inside the mountain. Yes, gold and iridium are valuable, but your location to ore veins is important; gold and iridium may be uncommon resources but you have access to very specific places where they are more common, otherwise known as the scarcity heuristic). This also explains two facts about iridium: discounting magic, iridium is quite rare in the game, just like real life. Secondly, Clint’s prices make a lot more sense not only because it’s endgame material, but because iridium is super dense and has a very high melting point, thus making it a very difficult material to work with.
But by far the biggest challenge of this question is figuring out whether or not items you produce factor in the cost of your labor or not. For instance, lace is made of simple materials that even in the days of Victorian England, it was easy to get. However because lace was so time consuming to make, it could command absurd prices. Thus, one of the first things we need to discover is whether or not the game takes into account cost of labor or not.
So I am going to take you all back to school and talk about someone who’s old and dead: Adam Smith. It was he who talked about the cost of labor in his book The Wealth of Nations, and because of that, I bring up this particular line:

“...From century to century, corn is a better measure than silver, because, from century to century, equal quantities of corn will command the same quantity of labour more nearly than equal quantities of silver.”

Why did I mention corn above? This is why. Prices may vary, but agriculture has been around for thousands of years and the cost of a farmer’s labor equals about the same.
According to Dylan Baumann, Stardew Valley corn plants have a profit value of 535 gold per plant. Our corn plant profits are about as high as they can get without adding something new into the mix, and we don’t want that yet.
Let’s set some ground rules:

• Cultivatable farm space on the standard farm equals out to 3,427 spaces, but we’ll round that down to 3,350 for iridium sprinklers, iridium watering can, and scarecrows, equaling maximum farming with no loss of crop.
• We’ll keep Dylan’s ground rules, so no fertilizer.
• No preserves, jams, wine, and juices.
• No farming efficiencies and crop selling bonuses.
• No use of the greenhouse to grow crops outside of the growing season.

If you plant the entire farm with corn and stop harvesting on Fall day 28 when the growing season ends, that lets you harvest a total of 11 ears of corn per plant. Multiply that by 3,350, we get a total of 36,850 ears of corn for your entire farm. Corn is measured in bushels, and a bushel of corn can be anywhere between 40 and 60 ears of corn, but we’ll say you really pack it in for 60, meaning your growing season for corn produces 36,850 / 60 corn for a total of 614.17 bushels per year.
The USDA has a 2001 labor value of corn at US$2.92 per acre (and that matches the Iowa labor statistic), and using 156 bushels per acre, that brings our labor cost per bushel at... US$00.02. That’s a real pittance. Considering bushels of corn retailed around $2.11 per bushel in 2001, that is an incredible markup of 184.85 times.
We’re almost done with the dreaded math, I swear.
Corn retails at 100g apiece in Stardew Valley(You get 50 gold from Pierre, so he has a 100% markup), meaning the labor cost should be around 184.85 times less that amount, meaning it takes about 0.54 gold to make one ear of corn.
Your average US farmers salary $55,000 and $100,000, and we’ll take the middle of $77,500 for our measurements. Dividing the farmer’s salary by the total ears of corn our farmer grows in Stardew Valley, we get a labor cost per ear of corn in US dollars of $2.10 per ear of corn. Now we multiply this by our markup ratio to get the IRL retail cost of corn in Stardew, getting US$237.08! Damn that better be some good eating! We divide that number by the Stardew Valley retail cost of corn, netting us a real world conversion of gold of, drumroll please, $2.37 US dollars per gold in 2001.
Now just for funzies, let us calculate the actual salary of your famer in Stardew Valley. Multiplying your 36,850 ears of corn by 50 gold (your selling price of gold, not the retail price of 100g), that nets you 1,842,500 gold per growing season. Multiply that by the dollagold conversion we just calculated and your real life gross income comes out to be US$436,672,500.
Give me all of the golden clocks, wizard.
Three questions down, one more to go. Currency conversion was rather tricky because it involved quite a lot of math, but this last question, what is the cost of Robin’s labor, that requires the most assumptions. There’s an easy answer and a hard answer.
Robin’s upgrades, except for the last, require you the farmer to give her resources in addition to gold. The simple answer is you are providing materials in order to keep the raw gold cost down. This means that the first house upgrade, 10,000 gold, is strictly her labor cost as the 450 wood is all the raw materials she needs to build. 3 days * 3 months (to adjust Stardew month lengths to our month lengths) comes out to Robin working an IRL equivalent to 9 days. Taking 10,000 gold / 9 days equals a cost of 1,111.111 gold per day, and considering Robin has snorted enough powdered starfruit to have 20 hour work days, that comes out to 55.56 gold per hour.
Just to be sure, let’s see if the math holds up for the last upgrade. That one requires a cost of 100,000 gold and comes preequipped with 33 casks. You do not provide the resources for the casks, meaning that comes included with the cost. Casks cannot be sold, but the materials required to make them are 20 wood and 1 hardwood, which Robin will provide for the same 100% markup (meaning 4 gold and 30 gold respectively). 4 gold * 30 gold * 33 casks comes out to 3,960 gold. Using the same calculations for the first house iteration, we get (100,000 gold - 3,960) / (3 days * 3 months) / 20 hours for a total of 533.56 gold per hour.
Not even close to our first estimate. We could just average them together for (533.56 + 55.56) / 2 = 294.56 gold, and that would be the easy answer. It would be nice to settle for the easy answer.
Let’s find the hard answer. We are going to calculate labor cost per square footage, and luckily most of the work has been done over the course of several google spreadsheets. To find the cost of materials and money per upgrade volume we get the formula (Upgrade volume - Base Volume) / 10,000 gold. This gives us a grand total of cubic material built per gold of...
...2,573.26 in^3/gold, 30.27 ft^3/gold, 2.89 m^3/gold using my method and
...628.24 in^3/gold, 0.36 ft^3/gold, 0.01 m^3/gold using asparagus’ method.
Let’s see if the math holds up for the basement upgrade and dammit I just realized I got to do more pixel measurements now. Hold on, be back in an hour.
Alright, I’m back. We don’t need to do any subtraction for the previous volume of the house considering the cellar is its own little area, but we still need to subtract the value of the materials used for the casks. The cellar comes out to a grand total of cubic materials built per gold of...
...386.91 in^3/gold, 0.22 ft^3/gold, 0.01 m^3/gold using my method and
...94.46 in^3/gold, 0.05 ft^3/gold, 0.0015 m^3/gold using asparagus’ method.
Huge discrepancy.
Before I get into my reasoning why, let us outline what we know first.

• We’re pretty sure the game takes place in 2001.
• We have the exact sizes of each house upgrade calculated with two different methods.
• We have a certified exchange rate of US$2.37 at that point in time.
• We have two different methods of calculating the cost of Robin’s labor.
• The amount of work Robin does during her three(nine?) day job is absolutely obscene.

I come to one conclusion: Robin is a god that has settled down in the world of Stardew Valley.
Here me out. I have three pieces of evidence.
The first is when Robin is hired to take on a house upgrade job no one helps her, not even her husband Demetrius. Your house is right next to hers, so you’re not paying for travel. As we have shown by our calculations above and in the gDoc spreadsheet, that is a massive amount of work. It’s simply not possible for a human to accomplish such a monumental task. Robin claims she built her own home herself with this line from the game...

“Have I told you that I built our house from the ground up? It's definitely been the highlight of my career so far.”

...so we know her carpentry acumen is impressive enough for the job, but she has severely understated her skill. Homeadvisor pegs a house costing anywhere between US$150,000 to US$500,000 (US$102,005.53 to $340,018.44, adjusted for 2001 inflation), but even adjusted for inflation, Robin absolutely underbids the current housing market. Those inflation adjusted values, when converted to gold, come out to a range of 43,040.31g-143,467.70g. Granted, these prices are for a complete house, not adding onto a current house, but even if we half the value you are getting one hell of a discount.
The second piece is Robin’s language. The sheer passion for her work speaks wonders..

“Wood is a wonderful substance... it's versatile, cheap, strong, and each piece has its own unique character!”

...but perhaps she is just passionate about what she does. Many people are, but knowing what we do about how dirt cheap and blindingly fast she works let’s go into more detail about some things, specifically three lines. The first...

“Our little plan worked out well, don't you think? Pam and Penny seem really happy.”

...is said after Pam’s house undergoes an upgrade. “Our” plan? Sure, you are the one that buys the upgrade and Robin has to build it, but I can’t help but feel there is a double meaning behind this language. It is done out of the kindness of Robin’s heart and the materials have to come from somewhere, so she can’t do it for free, but it wasn’t about the money, as we have stated previously. It was about Penny.
Pam is a somewhat contentious person because of slobbish and slovenly nature. She is immediately and irrationally angered when Penny tries to pick the place up. She drinks heavily...

“\sigh*... My mother definitely has a problem with going to the saloon too much. But it's best not to dwell on bad things, right?”*

...doesn’t seem to understand not paying her tab has some consequences, and doesn’t realize what her habits have done to her daughter’s psyche.
Then you, the player come along. Pam is okay with the simple things in life, but you help Penny with her worries and insecurities, and then with you and Robin together, you give Penny everything she needs to help her shed those worries. She has a house that doesn have problems with rain, two friends who look out for her, her mom has a job, and most importantly she has peace of mind and in a world fraught with problems, that is truly priceless.
Then there is this line...

“Hey! I heard some weird noises last night, and woke up this morning to find the quarry bridge completely repaired! It's a miracle of woodworking!”

...and it occurs once you offer items to the community center junimos to get the quarry bridge repaired.
It is also a bald-faced lie.
The junimos are good, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve seen what Robin can do with our own two eyes. She is absolutely incredible at her job, and while I may give it to her she has no idea what junimos are or what they are capable of, we have proof that the act of restoring the bridge in one night is not out of the realm of possibility for her. A miracle, yes, but I’m certain she can beat the junimos’ time.
Lastly, there is one quote from her that is just... it opens up some very interesting questions. When she says...

“My parents were bewildered when I told them I wanted to be a carpenter. They were pretty old-fashioned.”

...how old are her parents when they consider carpentry too new-fashioned for them? Carpentry is one of the world’s oldest professions. If they were old-fashioned, why were they bewildered?
This line is just so fascinating to me. Robin is incredibly skilled, but I cannot rationalize carpentry being too newfangled for parents to wrap their head around. Who were they? Where are they from? I know your secrets, Robin, I know your parents are gods, too.
The third and final piece is the contrasting pieces of the world at large. Just like ours, it’s a little depressing. Joja Corp runs dozens of what even Cyberpunk would consider a dataslave farm. The world is flooded with consumerism run amok, Orwellian surveillance, and rampant urbanization. The Ferngill Republic is in the middle of a war with the Gotoro Empire and Kent still suffers PTSD from being in a prisoner of war camp.
Stardew Valley isn’t just a town to retire in, it is a place of respite and healing. There are three confirmed magic users deeply tied to the town’s mystical roots. The bears speak and encourage you to manage the world around you. You are rewarded for restoring balance to the valley by being able to recycle things you don’t need. Your main resource in the game, gold, also doesn’t matter that much; if it ever slips into the negative, nothing bad ever happens. You must just work to raise it back up. There is no lose condition in the game.
In many respects it is similar to the Gaiaism philosophy that all living beings are connected, each relying and depending on each other in order to maintain a peaceful coexistence. You help Shane with his nihilism and depression, Sebastian with his ability to express and accept affection, Sam with his dreams, Kent with his problems, Leah with her ambitions, Haley with her generosity and narcissism, or even simple goals like Penny’s idea of a quiet domestic life.
Whether it is the addicted, lost, or scorned, everyone is welcome and everyone can have a home in Stardew Valley. No one embodies this more than Robin who just wants a simple life. Whether it is her own house or her own boat during the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies, Robin builds it herself. The feel of wood grain, the smell of lacquer, the stickiness of stain, the thrum of the saw, and the bite of the axe. Robin doesn’t charge you nearly enough for your house upgrades because it is not about the money. Woodworking is what she loves and she lives in a place where barterism, kindness, family, and friendship substitute so many of life's modern problems and inconveniences.
Friendship increases in the game aren’t just a measurement of achievements, a means of getting more recipes, or more candles lit on a grave. You are making friends and getting to know these people for who they are and everyone’s life is bettered because of it. The amount of love I’ve seen for Linus is just staggering. Shane, in all of his melancholy and despite him not being a suitor in the original version of the game, is loved by so many. I know some despise Haley, but I love that I was able to show her what kindness can do for people.
You are in a gentle and loving place, and you are loved.
What a better place for a god to reside? A quiet town filled with peace and love, seeped in nature and the old magics of yore. A loving mate, a family to raise. Land to share with those that forage from its bounty. It’s all she needs.
Robin’s role in all of this? She desires neither worship nor admiration. She is just a friend. A god, certainly, but a friend first and foremost who is just settling down in a quiet town looking for a little peace.
​
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Image by MagicallyClueless