chicago

when it comes to bars, the best ones ime only open once a week or less (especially punk live music bars). a local dive bar that only opens once or twice a month will attract different crowd than some daily bar.

far as your “demographic” goes…where are you at if you don’t mind me asking? there’s always an underbelly of working stiffs in any area, rich people don’t clean their own toilets or prepare their own food…somebody in the area has to be working to maintain/service everything

the most i bother with celebrity stuff is lamenting when another actor/actress fucks their face/body up with bad plastic surgery.

they (they being our general society/entertainment industry, which is mostly designed around exploiting insecurities) got to jim carey recently…rip

ime, you got to do a bit of pre-filtering for common interests and shit, before deciding to socialize with people.

to me it sounds like your going to some upper-class urban bars (or going dating events…which imo are even worse than meeting people out in the wild) and naturally run into unawares people stuck in the capitalist rat-race, who you can’t relate to. could try going to smaller punk dive bars, or some kind of themed party-type bar.

or better yet to go to some less “mainstream” hobby-event, whatever that interest might be, atleast there you will have atleast 1 guaranteed interest to relate over that isnt just complaining about how much your life sucks (which seems to be a common thing at bars)

anything tied to the PA, loans included, are at risk when PA collapses. now, this is why tesla is propped up.

ultimately, PA is determined by whoever has the most $ to move around (and lowest entry/cost) between themselves

with forced buying/selling via options, and some sort of regular liquidity injection to maneuver around, it is very easy to control something that noone else is actually buying. index funds are required to allot some money to every ticker in X index, ans the overwhelming majority of $ being movdd around is via index funds.

there’s a whole wing of fintech designed around artificially inflating the price of companies right before inclusion in a big index, so they can “dump” on index funds that have to buy

there are so sooo many levels to shit, it really is the most convoluted predatory casino imagined, where 2 things are rewarded above all else…knowledge (of the underlying fundemental value) and greed. when your greed outpaces your knowledge is when people start blowing up accounts.

coordinated trades to manipulate price action is one very big and common aspect to the casino, yes. but ultimately that number means nothing unless there’s actually the liquidity at that level for you to exit your position at a profit (in order to buy in on something else trading low) or you have a position in that stock to trade on margin elsewhere.

via unique aspects to how US options work, there is a lot of forced buying/selling going on at any time on most tickers

this is why the powers that be are trying in vain to prop up the wider market, US is most over-leveraged market in the world…when the music stops (liquidity tap closed)…anyone without a chair (not utilizing proper risk management) gets forced to sell, frequently at a heavy discount, as their margin evaporates

honestly, the fact the game is rigged actually makes making $ easier than ever with just an amateur level of understanding (though there’s a limit to “scalping volatility”, eventually you make waves big enough to become the liquidity others are trying to extract) but, the fed’s liquidity injections only go so far. ultimately there are no friends on wallstreet/bankstreet, it’s a zero sum game and nobody leaves any $ on the table for anyone else if they can help it.

i will admit to not knowing the full scope of how that fed monopoly $ is moved around (that’s mostly through the banks iirc), but i do know someone/s out there is 100% trying to hunt that liquidity down for themselves somehow.

there are various rule differences between the US and most other world’s markets that when you look at them from a high-level they can be determined to exist for only one reason…to “facilitate liquidity/volatility”, to make the casino exciting. the rest of world cracked down on the worst examples after 2000-08, but the US left em for shits and giggles.

just an fyi to anyone without knowledge of the finance industry, all the big indexes and shit are dominated by various algos unless there’s a 10% move down.

overwhelming majority of “X does Y because Z” articles you see out there are just building a narrative after something has moved because it’s one giant casino, but the powers that be need people to trade otherwise there’s no liquidity to extract. combine that with short-selling (selling things you don’t know) and this is where “sell the news” comes from

so, X drops a bunch for whothefuckknows…push out fearmongering stories it’s because of (insert disaster) to get people who don’t know any better to sell when they see their retirement accounts down some big figure. or…when your the one running the US…create your own disasters

the US mostly self sufficient with oil, big oil wants this war so they can make extra stupid money gaming the oil futures markets.

once you’ve reached end-stage capitalism, where there’s no real room for organic growth, all that’s left is rent-seeking and smashing windows to “increase liquidity” in the markets (from sane/smart actors who have to hedge, even if they do know it’s all a game). the ones who don’t see the full picture or are over-leveraged go out of business and act as distressed assets to be bought out by established players.

this is what republicans do every time they’re in power, they’re abject disaster capitalists, proud in their cruelty.

all these other comments are giving far too much credit to those in-power in the US right.

the only thing that matters to republicans, all establishment US politicians really (and especially any taking $ from AIPAC), is that their lines go up. once capitalism reaches a certain point, the best way to make your line go up is to just start breaking shit.

this the republicans role within the larger US economic/political cycle. they act to actively try to crash the US economy every time they’re in power, as they’re abject disaster capitalists…smart people have to hedge when instability threatens their bottom lines, disaster capitalists run around throwing rocks at windows. those that can’t keep up and go out of business are just bought up as distressed assets by those that have been around the block a few times.

everything these sociopathic cunts do is ultimately used as a way to extract liquidity out of the US’s stock/futures/bond markets (purposefully unregulated, relative to most other markets around the world)…every…single…time.

trump is ultimately just an incredibly easy tool for the real powers that control the US to enact their disaster capitalism as they see fit

follow the money, it is the only thing actually sacred to capitalists (extra so for american capitalists)

yup, anyone who seriously questions why so much of the world hates the US has nwver opened a history book. there are many many reasons, damn near all of them generally coming back to a sovereign nation trying to check the US’s extractive, unsustainable, capitalist-colonialism

the very idea of some post-life reckoning is just a tool of social control meant to keep the workers from turning on their betters, because “it’ll all be made right in the end”.

what did the king say to the pope?

you keep em dumb, i’ll keep em poor

mandatory voting is better than any sort of voter controls, the catch is you also have to combine it with a properly funded/structured public education system designed to grow well rounded individuals capable of critical thought (instead of mindless factory drones, like the US’s).

your life will be much happier if you stop trying to placate people with stunted capability for empathy. nothing you do/don’t do will ever be good enough for someone that deep in the propaganda machine.

do whatever the fuck you want (as long as it doesn’t hurt others), and tell the manchild/woman to pound sand if it triggers them

“i don’t get why anyone complains about being sex trafficked, it worked out great for me”

got to retaliate to give the warhawks at home something to feel good about but can’t actually threaten US/Israel , and as nobody in the US/Israel gives a fuck if brown people die…attacking US satellite states is easy W

of course, this very narrative is exactly what US/Isreali aligned media wants to paint every time this happens, while word on the street is Iran is currently purging known US/Israeli intelligence assets in preparation for a longer conflict

been awhile since i watched V for Vendetta, i remember it as basically just The Purge with accents and a little more monologuing

the majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck, give them financial relief/save them time (force move to some 6hr/4day standard workweek) and you win any election.

this is why poors vote R…R’s say they’ll give financial relief while D’s promisise “economic stability” which doesn’t mean shit to the 50%+ of the country living paycheck to paycheck.

it doesn’t matter that R’s are lying through their teeth (and fucking them through a dozen sources of CoL increases)…one offers hope the other offers more of the same. when your on the bottom “more of the same” is still a boot on your neck, doesn’t matter what color it is.

wanton violence doesn’t really work, this has been tried before. you need precise and well thought out violence. last i bothered to check, something like 70-80% of the $ behind far-right america comes from like <20 people (<100 if you extrapolate that out to the world).

CNN was bought out by a trump loyalist years ago, but their reporting has been shit for ages. all mainstream US media has been compromised for decades at this point.