What Does Wall Street Even Do?

What Does Wall Street Even Do?

Like, really? What is it that they do? I was reading an article about how a lot of the Wall Street trading was being done by computer algorithms that once in a while just flip their shit and cause a sort of 2 second long stock market crash. Then it corrects itself and carries on. No one really understands how these algorithms actually work, but they're spending a lot of labor trying to just shave microseconds off the response times of these machines to better be able to generate more money in trading.

This should really make you reconsider and at least realize how ridiculous and useless Wall Street actually is. They are less than useless, really, they produce nothing of value and are the wealthiest people. Even worse is that their fuck ups destroy the economy leading to homeless families in a society that has empty houses.

I really can't think of a single productive thing that Wall Street traders do anymore. The institution exist for the sake of the institution existing. At one point it had something related to financing and paying dividends. Now it is just a casino game for our retirement accounts so that they maybe will keep up with inflation. This whole thing could be done in a more efficient manner if it were not up to the chaos of the free market and sociopaths Rand crazed bastards and literal robots trying to game the system by a few fractions of a second.

The general answer when asked this question is usually "We provide liquidity to help people and corporations hedge exposure to prices and therefore reduce risk" when you talk about the commodity side - which happens to be one of the worst sides possible.

As best as I can figure it, they may as well be wizards in towers conjuring vast fortunes, engaging in global telepathy while casting nations into ruins. At least LARPers aren't destroying the economy with their fake swords.

R.I.P. T-Dogg

R.I.P. T-Dogg

RIP T-dogg. He was black, but now he's dead.

This past week on The Walking Dead, we faced a great tragedy. We lost the character T-dogg to a zombie attack. Only to get another black character to join the team on the show later. Yes, that's right. They replaced the token black dude with another token black dude.

I mean, that's what it was. They got rid of a character they had no idea what to do with. Let's hope that T.1-Dogg, or C-dogg will step up and actually be written to some degree. Because all the original T-dogg had was the ability to seemingly rise above his first two seasons of terrible ineptitude. T-Dogg, the only guy with the foresight to put on armor and carry a shield. Yet he takes that shit off to go do some yard work and BAM! This guy had the shittiest luck ever.

It really was a good fake out by the writers to start this dude off strong. Especially considering his actions in the second season - which seem to be only randomly popping up in the background of the farm whenever the black quota needed to be met. Hell, he even  was able to cut an artery in his arm through the shitty luck of scraping it on a car part. Amazing how that healed up so quickly.

But yes, he was the only one who actually thought to clean up the prison guard armor, he took it off going outside. He had that because while the rest of the crew shot thousands of rounds of ammunition at the zombie horde, T-dogg was running around with a pointy stick. One he kept putting into the eye socket of zombies.

Even Daryl had a pointy stick launcher. But T-dogg just had a stick. Nothing fancy. A fucking pointy stick against an entire planet of the undead. In many senses, he was lucky he made it as long as he did, if you want to be honest about the situation.

Just think about that. They gave a child a gun with a silencer before they would even consider giving one to T-dogg. Just think about that for a minute.



I'm also not sure how Carol could be lost. Rick and the group ran out the same door Carol did after seeing T-dogg's dead body and it led to the yard where they saw Herschel and the suicide girl. How did Herschel not see Carol run out?! I just don't understand any of this. 

But yeah. R.I.P. T-Dogg, you were the best that group could have... so sad.

Obama's Forward

Obama's Forward

Well, at least now I can get back to criticizing the President without people assuming that I'm voting for Romney. Truth be told, I did vote for Obama. Though I did so holding my nose. And why, do you ask, did I pull the trigger on that vote with such hesitance? Well, because here we are and it's clear that Obama didn't even wait one fucking day before getting back to work in killing sand people.

WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday morning, as many Americans sifted through the voter data and exit poll numbers of President Barack Obama's reelection the night before, the Twitter feeds of close watchers of Yemen lit up with reports of another sort of presidential event: an apparent U.S. drone strike had killed several individuals in that country.

There was no way of being certain if the strike was indeed American, or for that matter if it was a drone strike at all, although it had all the markings of one.

"All signs (after dark, suspicions of locals, target) point to Sanhan strike being a US drone," Yemen-based freelance journalist Adam Baron wrote on Twitter.

Several other analysts concurred.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. If it were a American strike, of course, it would have to have been authorized by Obama.

Jesus fuck. Not even a single day. FORWARD indeed...

DC Comics - Robbing Your Liefelds

DC Comics - Robbing Your Liefelds

Besides having a new world of confusion under the guise of cleaning up continuity, I lean towards the not liking the new 52 camp. And really, why should I? For all their talk about how much easier it is to follow the stories and not having to need anything to get into the new adventures of whatever super hero, you really can't jump into a new book because it really is fucking confusing as to why these heroes who you though you knew are somehow just parallel universe copies of them.

Meaning, they're pretty much the same... but slightly different. It's like going to Disney world after a lifetime of going to Disneyland. Things are pretty much the same... but slightly different. It's like the Nazi's won the war in a sense. After I show you the following image as to why the New 52 pisses me off so, you'd probably wish the Nazi's took over. At least then Rob Liefeld would have been the first against the wall..

Well, at least with Hawkman, there really aren't any places to put so many ridiculous amounts of pouches on him, right? Oh, who am I kidding, it's Liefeld. I can just imagine what he does ask advice about...

"Hey, what's the bottom of a shoe look like?"
"Uh, I dunno, perfectly flat with a mirror-like sheen?"
"Thought so." 

Not to mention that the X-force cover is drawn by Greg Capullo. So it's doubly fucked up that he's ripping of someone elses portrayal of his characters and style. He then used the fake Deadpool like character to cover the other foot so he wouldn't have to draw it. That hoof like kicking foot is just amazing.

It's rather odd to see that Liefeld is using a fake Deadpool like character in DC considering he ripped off the idea and design of Deadpool from Deathstroke, originally a DC character.

But hey, it clearly says "After GC" under Liefeld's signature. So all of this is clearly a homage to Greg's work.. even if it's line by line copying. Who am I to complain about a homage... even though Greg Capullo is paying tribute to Liefeld in that original cover. Soooooooo. it's Greg paying tribute to Liefeld who is paying tribute to Greg who paid tribute to him.

It's an unbreakable circle of bad comic art. 

Voting - My Favorite Farce

Voting - My Favorite Farce

I guess I'll join in with the amount of yap yap yap that happens today on social media sites and talk about politics. Just face the facts, there's no escaping this onslaught. Just be thankful you haven't been in Ohio for the last month or so. Otherwise what you feel like today would have been your every day.

In any case, can I just say it. Voting is a farce. It just is. But at least it's a fun one because you do get a neat little sticker. So why is it a farce? Well, how about this for a good example;



That sure is some crappy calibration on the touch screen. And the description in the video, the dude who made the video said that they tested the calibration by trying to press Jill Stein to see if it selected Obama, but it didn't.

That's just atrocious. It would literally be easier to just change the recorded vote since most of the machines have no receipt or other separate record of the actual votes anyway. I'm willing to bet that that's a legit malfunction, but there's zero doubt in my mind that there's widespread voting tampering going on when it comes to electronic voting machines. There's so many places where people in partisan position control election boards and have completely unfettered access to voting machines and with most of them, you can just change the software in five minutes. It's also impossible to detect if it has been changed. 

The real kicker is also that it's illegal for anyone but the manufacturer to check the programming because of "commercial confidentially", so we're just going to have to sort of take their word for it that it registers our vote for us in the way we voted. 

Keep also in mind that it wouldn't be particularly difficult to make user-verifiable voting machine software. Just think, diebold makes ATMs that hold tens of thousands of dollars and whose job is to dispense those dollars to anyone who walks up and provides credentials, only after interfacingwith a global network of banks to ensure that there's no way to exploit these machines for gain, and that it's impractical to attempt to break into one to get the cash out......
............ But they make voting machines that have a USB port on the side that will automatically and untraceably load their new software and that the machine themselves keep absolutely no records aside from tallies.

Seriously, what the fuck?! Not a single record besides tallies. It's literally like out of a playbook of What to do if you're going to create a system in which it is incredibly simple to tamper with election results. Most places, up till recent, had a lever machines where you'd flip the switches for whoever you wanted and go K-chunk! to record your vote. Or they had ink dotted scan trons like when you were a kid at school taking a test. Those are fraud proof, so long as both party observers verified zero counts before the polls opened. So clearly, that's why they had to go.

Maybe they had to go because voting machine manufacturers wanted contracts and state governments got a bunch of cash to spend on voting machines after the whole mess in 2000 and therefore received a lot of contributions from particular voting machine manufacturers. 

Even though the candidate that you and I wanted won, it's clearly not a farce, right? I swear it isn't...

On This Day You're Voting...

On This Day You're Voting...

So on this day that you cast your vote for America, let me just remind you of two things, curtsey of George Carlin



And if that wasn't enough, have another dosage;



Yup. useless.

You're Really Considering To Vote Romney?

You're Really Considering To Vote Romney?

I mean, really? You're seriously considering to vote for Romney in a couple of days? I mean... REALLY?!
Besides winning that one debate, what has he done for you? What will he do for you? I mean, just look at how badly this dude flips on his stance...



Yeah, however bad Obama is, Romney would be ten times worst.