Category: on stuff and sundry


The GameStop Affair: One Year Later

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January 25, 2022

If you’re here because you googled me after reading the Wall Street Journal article on GameStop – welcome! This wasn’t my first time in WSJ, but it’s always fun when that happens.

The article is well written, and it provides a balanced and nuanced look at the WallStreetBets subreddit’s evolution (some would say devolution) since the big GameStop affair exactly a year ago. I gave several hours of interviews for the article, and while I’m glad to see my experience described fairly, a lot was left unsaid. This post aims to provide more context, not in the least part due to all the roasting I’m currently getting in the WSJ comment section by people who think I’m a gambler or question my professional credentials. (Somehow, I can’t seem to reply to them – as a new subscriber, my comments are stuck in the moderation queue limbo. Heh.)

For example, I didn’t retire early solely because of the small fortune I made on GME over the course of 45 hours. That certainly helped, but the bulk of my 193.7% return between May 2020-May2021 came from being greedy when others were fearful, Buffett-style. Stocks that had been most affected by covid (travel, retail, energy) were on sale, and no one else wanted to buy them. I still remember the raw fear of possible failure when I sold all my Amazon shares and transferred the money into my investing account to buy a few handpicked and carefully selected stocks. (That key moment’s drama was a bit diluted by the fact that I had to click at least four confirmation pop-ups.)

When I did that, I’d been with Amazon for 10.5 years, most of them as an analyst of various kinds: a quality analyst, a business analyst in charge of fulfillment strategies in most of Canada, Midwest, and Mexico, an investigator, and finally the financial analyst at one of Amazon’s biggest fulfillment centers in North America. Long journey, many lessons, lots of opportunities to hone my skills. I’d read every single thing ever written by Buffett, attended his annual shareholder meetings, listened to every Q&A… I jumped on that once-in-a-lifetime investing opportunity when it presented itself in 2020. I write this now from my cozy apartment in the beautiful Quebec City, eight months and nine days into my early retirement, because all my preparations, and my ultimate choice to dive in, paid off beyond my wildest expectations.

If not for GameStop, I probably would’ve spent another year or so in the rat race: my early retirement (at the ripe old age of 34) was an eventual inevitability, not a lucky fluke. But since this is the one-year GameStop anniversary…

In January 2021, I made a rare discovery: I found a blind spot in my own mind. I was taking a detailed look at the previous decade (as one does) and asked myself, “Self, why did you overlook the raging successes that were Tesla and bitcoin?” And it occurred to me that I’d spent all my time making fun of those and other phenomena, and never even deigned to look at them seriously. Both Tesla and bitcoin were weird-sounding underdogs, and yet they prevailed. I realized there was a flaw in my cognition: I’d jump to conclusions and never give things another chance. That’s a bad trait to have as a human; that’s a dangerous trait to have as an analyst.

And thus a resolution was born: I would suppress my instinct to make fun of crazy ideas, no matter how strange they would seem. I would look into them without bias or prejudice, see what they were all about, check the math, and then make fun of them. Easy as pie – seemed like a fine compromise. I had no idea where that would lead me…

I curate my social media to follow only comedians or scientists: that way, I avoid political and religious drama, and every time I check my Twitter feed, I either laugh or learn something new. Some of the brainiacs I followed routinely made fun of Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets community. (Referred to as “WSB” from here on.) Despite being an avid Reddit user myself, I never once went to WSB: my exposure to that community consisted solely of cherrypicked funny screenshots people would share online. Those memes made it seem like the entire community was filled with idiots and/or gamblers. (And to be fair, that does describe a lot of them.)

I remember Friday, January 22, 2021. I remember logging on Twitter at the end of a monotone workday. I remember some Twitter brainiac I followed making fun of WSB – as I recall, he simply wrote, “those WSB idiots think they can resurrect GameStop!” Months earlier, in 2020, GME was one of the stocks I’d looked at – and recoiled from in disgust. The stock price was around $4 a share back then, and it seemed on the verge of bankruptcy. (My life would’ve been a whole lot different if I’d sought out other opinions on that day… Oh well.) But not this time: armed with my shiny new resolution, I went into the belly of the beast, and started reading what WSB had to say.

I still remember looking at the afterhours action that Friday, when it was still not too late to buy some shares: GME had gone up 51% that day, from $43.03 on Thursday to $65.01 on Friday. It was remarkable – but I didn’t want to make a move without learning more. And so I sat, and read, and learned all weekend long.

I looked at the arguments and theses of Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, aka DeepFuckingValue. I looked at what had caused the 83.1% week-over-week increase from $35.50 to $65.01. I saw (and double checked, and verified) the strange claims that 140% (yes, one-hundred-and-forty percent) of the float had been shorted. I saw the beautiful, brilliant, brave trap WSB had laid out by buying up as many call options as they could, then nudging the stock price just high enough to trigger them at the end of the week. As hedge funds scrambled to buy more shares to fill the exercised call options, the stock price went higher in the afterhours, triggering higher call strike prices, requiring them to buy more shares, and so on. All that with the stock that was remarkably over-shorted and didn’t have a lot of available shares.

Thus started the chain reaction that changed the world. Someday, someone will make a big fancy movie in the style of The Big Short, and explain this chain reaction concept in great detail and in simpler terms. Until then, just take my word for it – it was brilliant. In the year that followed, people’s notions of GameStop became associated exclusively with cult-like followers, with ridiculous memes and screenshots, with naïve simpletons losing their shirts. Most of that happened later, long after the key event. Most of the people who mock GameStop and sneer at it (I’m looking at you, WSJ comment section!) probably share the same mindset I had prior to 2021: they don’t even bother to look for themselves, to see how all of that began…

That weekend, I checked and double-checked and triple-checked the math, the insane “short % of float” figures, the number of outstanding shares and the timeline for hedge funds to deliver said shares… Everything pointed to the same indisputable conclusion: the math checked out. On Monday, January 25, 2021, I liquidated some holdings (for a net gain, of course) and started buying GME as it experienced a particularly volatile trading day. Part of my research involved looking at the daily charts and patterns: I identified a specific time slot when the selling (or shorting) activity was usually at its peak: between 11:45am-12:30pm EST. (Don’t try this at home, kids – that shipped sailed a year ago.)

That Monday, in between writing weekly business reports and dealing with routine work, I kept a close eye on the price… GME opened at $96, went as low as $61 and as high as $159, and finally closed at $76. My tactic worked: buying in lots, I acquired a substantial number of shares at the average cost of $77.90 per share: not as low as it could’ve been but far better than many others fared on that day. The following two days were a blur of anticipation and looking at the price as the squeeze continued, just as planned. The stock closed at $147.98 on Tuesday. In the afterhours, Elon Musk (who hates short-sellers with fiery passion) tweeted “Gamestonk!!” followed by a link to WSB. The afterhours price shot up to $250 as Musk’s fans poured in. I have mixed feelings about Musk, but damn, that was some brilliant trolling.

And then there was Wednesday… I remember seeing the GME stock over $300 in the premarket trading, then acting incredibly volatile right as the market opened. I remember being torn: what if it really does go all the way to the moon, the way Volkswagen once did after a brilliant short squeeze? Would I be leaving a fortune on the table? A different, more pragmatic part of myself said, “This is too good to be true – just take the money and run.” And I did: I placed a market sell order, it got filled at precisely $293, and I ended up making 276.1% in both my taxable and my Roth accounts in less than 48 hours.

The stock hit $380 that day, and $483 on Thursday, just before the rug got pulled. I still think the sheer momentum would’ve been unstoppable if not for foul play. Robinhood literally disabled the “Buy” button because that was the only way they would’ve remained solvent. Stop and think about that for a bit: a major trading platform had to do the unprecedented, and that was the only thing that stopped the ongoing short squeeze. Meanwhile, the Apex clearinghouse (and all the brokerages under it) limited or disabled access outright. My own broker, Ally (hitherto Tradeking, hitherto Zecco) disabled the login page for three days, and never satisfactorily explained why. Later on, I moved my accounts to Fidelity directly because of that.

The blockade maneuver worked for a bit, and the price dropped to $193. GME recovered and ended the week at $325, a 399.9% week-over-week increase. But the momentum was gone: the following week, the stock price began the long drop to $38.50. (That happened on February 19, 2001.)

If you didn’t experience the GameStop mania firsthand, merely reading about it will not suffice. Tens of millions of Americans – having done zero research, of course – tried jumping on that train. Some made money. Many didn’t. Someone out there bought at the very top ($483) and never regained their cash unless they did a lot of averaging down. My estranged American step-brother contacted me for the first time in 15 years to ask how to set up a Robinhood trading account. I advised him not to, and I still don’t know if he lost any money. (He never contacted me again. So it goes.)

If you look at GME’s one-year chart, you’ll see how ridiculously volatile it was in the year that followed. It jumped to $483 in late January, then dropped to $38.50 in February, rocketed up to $348.50 in March (a nice 805% return if you’d timed everything perfectly, which no one ever does), down to $132 in April, up to $345 in early June, etc. It was a real rollercoaster of a year.

GME’s one-year chart. (Source: Yahoo Finance)

I was never part of the “diamond hands ape HODL” legion: I fancy myself a strategist, and I always work on being a better tactician. I didn’t touch the stock again unless the chart showed clear support levels. Since the big spike and the plunge that followed a year ago, I’ve made 10 more swing trades: all successful, but never quite as profitable. I dabbled a bit with selling covered calls (a fine hobby when the implied volatility is so high) before selling my shares for a small profit during the final little price spike a few weeks ago. As I am writing this, at the end of a particularly choppy trading day, GME went as low as $86.29 before closing just a hair above $100.

I have no clue what the future will bring: perhaps GME will fall below $20, perhaps it will rally to $300 again. At this point, there are too many forces at work, and it’s among the most irrational stocks in the market: fun to observe, but from a very safe distance.

And as for me… A year ago, I made myself a promise: henceforth, forevermore, I would celebrate the anniversary of those three days (January 25, 26, and 27) with food, and drink, and revelry, and dance. Those 45 hours were a remarkable experience, and I’d celebrate their anniversary forever. Right now, Quebec is in the midst of a strict covid lockdown, with all the restaurants and clubs on indefinite hiatus, so there’ll be limited revelry and dancing. And yet, there’s still champagne, and cake, and the oddly cheap caviar at the local grocery store. (Very fishy, I know.)

The next three days will be a bit of a blur as I celebrate the first anniversary of the time a bunch of peasants armed with math broke Wall Street’s nose. It may have healed, but it will never be the same again. A year ago, we executed a brilliant plan, in pursuit of a beautiful dream, and we made history.

I’ll drink to that.

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Bonjour, Quebec!

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November 27, 2021

This post is about three months overdue, but I have it on good authority that time is relative. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So much has happened… The move from Toronto to Quebec City was an exercise in organized chaos: I managed to pack all my stuff (including all the small detritus of life that takes up an alarming amount of cubic space) into plastic crates, moved them into the small Uhaul truck I rented, and drove it all the way to QC with an overnight stop at a rest area. (My original estimate of completing the 8-hour move-and-drive by 6pm was wildly optimistic.) Then it was all about unpacking and moving my stuff to that shiny, beautiful second-floor apartment that is my home. Returning the Uhaul. Walking back to the apartment, ogling all the French signs and sights. I hope those first memories will never fade away.

At some point, I’ll probably forget and normalize the memory of my first month here, before I got my furniture (mostly Ikea, and a couple of used furniture stores), but it was pure chaos: sleeping on my mattress on the floor before I finally got one of the last beds available at the local Ikea. (With another Uhaul rental – those things are like cheat codes for everyday life!), then navigating through all the furniture boxes in my living room, then slooowly assembling it all over the course of three days or so. Did you know that there actual online support groups for people who try to assemble Ikea’s Malm dressers? Ask me how I know…

There were casualties: I wasn’t careful with my gaming PC (just yeeted it in the back of the truck instead of securing it on the passenger seat like the precious baby that it is), and something inside got misaligned. The nearest computer repair store fixed it, got it working again, and then held it hostage for four days because the technician didn’t write down how much to charge me. Fun times… Didn’t help that they closed early on Saturday despite telling me earlier that day to stop by at 4. I fought that particular spike of rage by finding a great deal on a used 20-gallon aquarium and acquiring three little guppies to go with it. (And a fancy thermometer. And a big wooden decoration. And a couple of little plants. And an air pump shaped like a volcano. It’s pretty fun, eh.) I’m still figuring out the exact water chemistry, and will probably have to splurge on a tap water filter to make sure they get dechlorinated water when I change it. It’s an ongoing but fun project – and when it comes to the expense/cuteness/stinkiness ratio, fish are far better pets than birds or mammals. (There are also reptiles, of course, but they’re not as cute in my utterly subjective opinion.)

Quebec City itself is beautiful… Just google its pictures and see for yourself: that’s not just one small touristy block, that’s a good chunk of the city, and there’s more beauty in other parts of it, too. All the parks have lots of trails and pathways for pedestrians, bicycles, skateboards, etc. It turns out Duolingo had lied to me, and the Quebec-French is quite different from French-French. The few times I tried saying “enchante” (pleased to meet you) to new acquaintances, the response was mostly “WTF does that mean?” Heh. It’s getting better, though: while I still can’t follow other people’s conversations at parties (just smile and nod!), I can mostly figure out what I’m reading by recognizing the key words.

It turns out the local government pays a $200/week stipend to encourage newcomers (other Canadians, or immigrants like myself, or refugees) to learn Quebec-French and Quebecois culture. It’s an intensive program – five days a week, up to six hours a day, for twelve weeks – but it sounds like an amazing deal. There’s a distinct lack of good apps that teach Quebecois French, and I will have to become fluent anyway… Might as well. Just need to send off some documents on Monday, and then they’ll slot me into the next available class, whenever that might be. Quebec’s government isn’t perfect, but this “bribe to learn” program they’ve set up to preserve and promote their culture and their language is downright brilliant. Kudos, at least on that front.

My PR (permanent resident) card is finally here, after spending seven weeks bouncing between Toronto and Quebec. (My neighbour in Toronto means well, but for some reason he didn’t write his return address on the envelope when he sent it to me.) It’s incredibly shiny and going to make my everyday life a whole lot easier. I celebrated with a meal at my favourite local diner, La Cuisine. Check it out if you ever visit Quebec City: friendly staff, great decor, delicious food, low prices. What more can one ask?

…you know how some movies have that cliché where the main character travels to a strange foreign land and just happens to bump into a local guide that speaks fluent English, has a ton of badass qualities, and is an overall improbably awesome and helpful human being? Turns out that actually happens! My new Quebecois girlfriend is a certified badass that does krav maga, knows how to ride any non-motor thingy that has wheels (roller skates, longboard, etc), loves simple and healthy living, etc. What’s even better is that she’s also open to the idea of becoming a professional nomad, doing her graphic design work on her laptop while vegging out in some cheap tropical country. My life is highly improbable, I know, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

It’s been six months and twelve days since I left Amazon for good. (Unless, of course, they decide to pay me back the 47 shares that they owe me; then I might – might – consider entertaining the preliminary notion of possibly going back.) The time flew by, and I feel so much more relaxed and healthier… This whole “early retirement” thing is great, really. Five stars, would try again, highly recommended. I could stay in the rat race another five or 10 years, become a multimillionaire, get more shiny toys, but I’d never get those years back. You can double your net worth – you can’t double your life expectancy.

To give you some idea of how sweet this life is, the only things on my calendar are:

  1. the final expanse book coming out in 3 days;
  2. liquidating all my stocks in late December because I’m quite convinced there’ll be a major correction by April. (Student loan payments will start up again. People will owe taxes on their huge 2021 gains. None of that is good news. Keep in mind that the dot-com bubble burst in March, when the 1999 taxes were due…)
  3. a cool date at the opera with gf in January;
  4. an equally cool long weekend getaway with gf and her friends at a rented cottage somewhere in rural Quebec in February;
  5. possibly a family reunion in March-April-ish?

In September 2022, I will have lived in Quebec for 12 months, which will make me eligible to join the local Freemason chamber. They’re an odd group, but I like what I’ve learned about them so far. When the world begins to fall apart (sort of like in Vancouver, which is currently inaccessible by road thanks to the flooding and mudslides), it’ll be vital to have a gigantic support network on your side. Prepping and stashing food and guns and medicine is only the first step. The second step is getting to know your neighbours (are they medics? cooks? people with no particular skills but with great vibes?). The third step is acquiring an army: a giant social network you can rely on, no matter where in the world you are. I considered other options, like Scientologists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, etc, and decided against them – and Freemasons actually seems like a fun and non-judgmental bunch, and a great way to learn new stuff, and make new local friends, and liven up ye olde social calendar. Too bad they have a strict anti-nomad policy in Quebec, thus the 12-month waiting period first.

At some point, most likely May 2023, I’ll be eligible to apply for my Canadian citizenship, and once I get that, I’ll finally start my life as a snowbird, thus completing my weird, weird metamorphosis. Until then, though, I’ll spend a couple of winters here in Quebec. It’s pretty ironic that the goal of my early-retirement journey was to live someplace cheap and tropical, yet I’ll have to live through the coldest winters of my life (since leaving Siberia in 2003, anyhow) as the last rite of passage. Heh.

And now, after a walk through the snow and a bit of exercise, I’m off to do some more gaming (gf is in Montreal this weekend) – Sunless Skies is both amazing and cheap – while listening to the excellent Ologies podcast (amazing pop science in 90-minute-long increments!), followed by a homecooked meal with a glass of red wine, and maybe another Werner Herzog movie. (It is my new quest to watch everything he’s ever written and/or directed. Two movies down, dozens to go!)

Life is good.

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Going, going…

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June 23, 2021

It’s 10:30pm, and in about seven hours I’ll embark on my revenge vacation. Thirty-seven days, seven cities, and hopefully enough memories to put a dent into the sum total of missed experiences over these past 15 months. The trip will start in Vancouver, followed by Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles (well, Huntington Beach, to be precise), Reno, Vegas, and New York. At the very end, I’ll take a ceremonial walk across the border from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. (When I was booking the trip in May, the border situation was very uncertain. It’s still a bit murky.)

Some of my best-laid plans have already gone sideways. Three AirBnB hosts in a row cancelled my reservations as soon as I booked them, followed by a mad scramble to re-book. Amtrak has confessed that they did not in fact know if the border would reopen when they sold me a suspiciously cheap ticket to a crossborder bus. (Guess who’s got two thumbs, paid $300 extra for a last-minute Vancouver/Seattle flight, and will never ride with Amtrak again? This guy!) Air Canada unilaterally changed my Toronto/Vancouver flight to an earlier time, which means I’ll have to head out before 6am instead of sleeping in a little. (I won’t lie, I’m tempted to just head to the airport right now and spend the night there to make sure I don’t accidentally sleep through.)

So, yeah, life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ On top of that, for the first time in my life I bought international traveler insurance. Judging by their dual classification of “just abroad” and “the US of A,” they probably charged me extra due to all the fun gun shenanigans the US is so infamous for. Oh well. Given the sheer randomness of all the public shootings in that fallen state (still no January 6 commission, almost six months later), I guess I’ll just have to hit the ground every time I hear a bang. Maybe slather some ketchup on myself for good measure – you know, to boost those odds. (If I do, in fact, get shot while I’m in the States… Come on, this was funny, though.)

Ontario tentatively started to reopen 10 days or so ago. It felt like a bizarrely perverse experience, eating a fairly bland (and oversalted) burger with fries and beer while other people did the same all around me, unmasked though distanced. I’ve gone out a few more times (you know, for science) and the sensation is still there, though it’s getting better. Even for someone with my wanderlust, this is one helluva long trip – the longest I’ve ever traveled, actually. I figure this sort of shock therapy is just what I need: people, museums, busy sidewalks, new sights and old friends every day… Every trip and every experience changes us, if only just a little. I know I’ll be a very different person when I return (hopefully without any new scars!) – I’m curious to learn just what those changes will be.

I’m going to hit up almost all of my old haunts, though I never lived in Portland or Los Angeles – and I’m skipping Dallas and Tampa because, you know, the plague. Southern states are the least likely to be vaccinated at this point in time. Nevada, being a very purple sort of state, is as low as Texas, with only 40% being fully vaccinated… Guess I’ll just have to dodge everyone who coughs, eh?

In a way, this will be a trip back in time, visiting all the old places I’ve lived in, all the friends and classmates I haven’t seen in years – and seeing my US family for the first time in over two years. (Or even as long as four years for some.) Just to preserve these memories, I’m taking my DSLR with its obnoxiously large zoom lens – next time I visit the US, the trip will be much less ambitious, so gotta make those memories count.

And meanwhile, I’m stuffing my shiny new 40-liter Osprey backpack with everything I can think of. (Can’t forget my laptop! Heh.) The backpack cost me a pretty penny, but I can see what all the noise is about: I keep finding more and more features and hidden compartments. That right there is as close as one can get to a Bag of Holding in real life.

And so… A few hours of sleep. A quick shower and breakfast. (I’ve tactically set aside a Tim Hortons cinnamon bun to reward myself for getting up before sunrise.) A trip to the airport before the city begins to wake up. A westward and cross-continental flight in defiance of all those pesky time zones. (In a way, it’ll take only an hour and 46 minutes. Heh.) The one revenge vacation to end them all…

Wish me luck, eh?

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Pedestrian once more

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June 22, 2021

It’s been 39 days since I left my job, and I’ve finally sold my car. It was an inevitability: at some point, you either get rid of your car or it gets destroyed in a wreck. Or it outlives you, I suppose, but that’s a bit too grim.

After leaving my job, there was no longer any reason to drive. Living in southern Toronto, in the densely populated Annex neighbourhood, everything is within walking distance. I had to actually drive to the grocery store half a mile away just to make sure the battery didn’t die from atrophy. One of peculiar things about Canada is that they’re not very flexible on car insurance: you must purchase the full liability coverage, and as an immigrant, there’s the added surcharge. In the end, my car insurance ended up being $230 CAD a month, and that’s after all the discounts I’ve managed to stack up. Add the monthly parking fee on top of that, and it’s close to $400 a month, which is a lot to pay for a glorified paperweight.

Thinking strategically, there’s only one time I’ll absolutely need a car in the next year or so, and that’ll be for my upcoming move to Quebec. (I have my heart set on Quebec City…) Even then, I’d need to get a Uhaul to move all my stuff, so once again, a car would be a liability. (Not to mention paying extra for the registration in Quebec, etc.)

I’ve had that little Kia Rio since 2013, but it was time to say goodbye. After 61,777 miles, after more roadtrips than I care to recall, we parted ways. Of course, things didn’t quite go smoothly: an overly enthusiastic car wash guy slathered absolutely everything in shampoo, flooded the car’s electronics, disabled the fuel gauge, a couple of small buttons, and half the wiper functions – and ultimately cost me about $450 in repairs and discounts. Ho hum. In the end, the car I’d bought for $24,000 USD in Vegas ended up getting sold for $3,750 CAD in Toronto: that’s an 87.4% drop in value. The purchase price is a bit high because I was an idiot and fell for every single sales trick. Yes, they actually managed to sell me anti-rain windshield treatment in the middle of the desert. (Hey, I never claimed to be wise.) Still, that investment gave me some much-needed peace of mind, since my previous three cars had been lemons that were liable to break down at least every other month. When you’re a warehouse grunt, and when missing a workday not only costs a day’s wages but potentially jeopardizes your job security… In that context, a monthly payment of ~$360 is a whole lot cheaper than spending the same amount of money on repairs. Ahh, youth.

It’s strange, adjusting to the new carless mindset. Earlier today, as I finalized the transaction with an enthusiastic guy (who also happened to be a double immigrant like myself), there was a choice of taking a 40-minute Lyft or a 1-hour-40-minute bus trip home. One of those options was literally 10 times more expensive than the other. I think you know which one I picked. Some panicky part of my brain keeps pointing out all the car-accessible places I can’t easily go to (like the town where they shot Schitt’s Creek) but even then, arranging a ride would be a whole lot easier and cheaper than maintaining a car I don’t really use. My life is simpler now, which is exactly what I’d been working toward. In many ways, I’m drifting back to the pre-Amazon version of myself, right out of college. Replacing cider with coke, reverting from being a driver to being a pedestrian.

There is a symmetry to this: the only reason I ever got a car in the first place (and learned to drive over the course of one weekend) was because of my Amazon job. That warehouse was the only place hiring in Reno during the mean, lean winter of 2009, and it was 35 miles away. There was no transit, and eventually I ran out of carpool buddies. I needed that job, so a $1,200 lemon car was the only way to go. Now that my 11.5-year journey with the company is over, so is my need for a car. It all folds in on itself, eh?

The only objective downside is that I won’t be able to get away at top speed if there’s ever a legitimate but improbably rare emergency, such as a global pandemic or a radioactive leak at the local nuclear power plant – but come on, those things only happen once a century or so. (If the Pickering Nuclear Plant goes kaboom right after I post this… Come on, it was funny, though.) Without my car, xgf and I never would’ve been able to run off on our 72-day-long AirBnB odyssey. Still, even the prospect of a mildly apocalyptic romantic adventure isn’t enough to maintain that dead weight.

This will take some getting used to… Even as my mobility is reduced, my life is so much simpler now. What I gave up in my freedom of movement, I’ve offset by making my bank account happier and my life a bit less stressful. No longer shall I have to be that jerk neighbour who drives to the grocery store a few blocks away – and if that’s not a clear-cut benefit, I don’t know what is. I hope my car leads a long and happy life before heading off to the big Kia parking lot in the sky, eh.

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In which the author predicts random stuff for the coming decade

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December 30, 2019

This is the penultimate night of the second decade of the 21st century… It’s been a wild ride. Ten years ago today, I was a warehouse temp, unsure about my future, employment, life goals, or anything much in particular. Things have changed… The temp gig became a permanent job. I’ve lived in six cities (well, eight, if you count the suburbs). Sixteen different addresses. Two countries. A fair number of adventures – and misadventures as well. One pranked billionaire. 🙂

I’m ending this decade free of debt, in perfect health, overall grateful for the life I’m enjoying, and armed with a lot of highly ambitious plans. Some are short-term, some span decades and are have already been initiated. Ten years ago, in the bad neighbourhood of Reno, I never would have imagined I’d end 2019 in Toronto (by way of Vegas, Dallas, Tampa, and Seattle). I can’t even begin to imagine where on earth (and/or other planet) I will be at the end of 2029.

In the spirit of sending my future self a message, and because everyone is equally bad at predicting what’s to come, here are some predictions for the next decade! Let’s all come back in 3,653 days to see just how far off I was.

And so, in no particular order:

  1. There’ll be an ironic resurgence of the 1920s fashion. Old-timey dances, live jazz, flapper dresses, etc.
  2. Artificial intelligence will remain a mirage. Just like communism, it’ll be only a decade away no matter when you ask them.
  3. Groundbreaking new technology we can’t quite imagine yet will come out and become commonplace. (Amazon Echo came out just four years ago, and now it’s taken for granted.) I think it might be the HUD (heads-up display) provided by an integrated (or removable) mini-computer.
  4. The US will elect a one-term president.
  5. The US will get a whole lot closer to the Handmaid’s Tale. (See congresscritter Matt Shea’s revealed plan to install a theocracy and kill all the men who disagree.)
  6. The no-fly zones over Phoenix will become extended. As of right now, they’re just a mildly funny one-day occurrences when the hot air’s density doesn’t allow planes to take off. They will become commonplace.
  7. The hologram technology will become available, then accessible, then commonplace. Watching holo-movies at home will become an amazing experience, though folks will quickly get used to them. (Remember when touchscreen phones were cool? Heh.)
  8. At least one large city (1,000,000 people or higher) will run out of water and will have to be either evacuated or placed on long-term life support with water convoys.
  9. Las Vegas will use up all the water in Lake Mead and will hijack the water from the Nevadan farmers up north. Feelings will be hurt but the big money will prevail.
  10. Age-reversing gene therapy will continue to make progress, though it won’t hit the market quite yet.
  11. CRISPR gene-editing will become more widespread. Most of the people experimenting on themselves will suffer horrific side effects (at least for the early adopters) but the successful ones will be fascinating.
  12. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger will die of old age. Berkshire-Hathaway’s stock will tumble by over 10% before eventually recovering.
  13. Space tourism will take off but the prices will be astronomical. (Get it? Get it?)
  14. North Korea will remain a dictatorship.
  15. Russia will remain a de facto dictatorship. It’ll try to gobble up more of the ex-USSR territories like it did with Ukraine.
  16. Things will get very ugly in India with the anti-Muslim tensions and the rise of the militarism. The old “yay, they’re the biggest democracy – see how successful they are?” argument will quietly and awkwardly show itself out.
  17. Ebola will reach an African city and spread.
  18. Antibiotic-resistant infections will get scarier and more commonplace. The last marginally efficient antibiotics (or the brand spanking new ones) will be very, very expensive.
  19. A major city will burn as a result of surrounding wildfires. (California? Australia? Elsewhere?)
  20. Climate protesters (of which Greta Thunberg is only the first) will get tired of asking politely and will take direct action, bypassing the voting booths entirely. Eco-terrorism will become much more widespread. Recycling and abstaining from meat will become much more prevalent, but nothing will be done about the nitrogen runoff.
  21. Rolling food crises in Africa, Central America, South America, and parts of Asia. Starvation will be prevented, but the social unrest will topple at least a couple of governments. (The whole Russian mess in 1905 began due to bread shortages.)
  22. Self-driving cars still won’t be quite good enough to drive on their own. Self-driving trucks will make significant progress, displacing hundreds of thousands of truck drivers.
  23. At least two meteorites missed by NASA will zoom by dangerously close. The one we know about (in 2029) will come close but pass by as well. It’ll get a lot of people very concerned and/or excited – like the Y2K crisis but with a more tangible negative outcome.
  24. No progress between Palestine and Israel. Further deterioration is quite likely.
  25. 3D printers will become good enough to print crappy guns and, if sufficiently advanced, replacement skin and organs.
  26. Three attempted genocides.
  27. Water wars.
  28. Widespread gene-editing will make it easier to custom-order a pet to your exact specifications. There’ll be a lot of controversy about pets with augmented intelligence.
  29. The US Supreme Court will get a permanent conservative majority, resulting in a significant rollback of social reforms and programs. (The precursor to #5.)
  30. The European Union will legalize poly marriages. Mutually consensual BDSM contracts still won’t be honoured and recognized in the eyes of the law, though.
  31. Injectable nanobots will make an appearance. They’ll regulate blood levels, monitor (or alter) hormone levels as desired, identify first signs of potentially deadly diseases. They will not be widespread just yet.
  32. Nano-ink tattoos will move around and wiggle at you.
  33. Universal Basic Income will get several medium-scale trials (between 5,000-100,000 people) and will show promising results, but won’t be adopted by any government due to preexisting notions of propriety.
  34. Bees are out. Mushrooms and seaweed are in.
  35. Salmon will become almost – but not quite – extinct. It’ll become an almost unaffordable delicacy.
  36. Chelsea Clinton will attempt to run for office, likely for the House of Representatives, possibly straight for the Senate. The former will likely succeed; the latter will likely fail.
  37. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will turn 35 in October 2024 and will become eligible to run for president. She’ll do so in either 2024 or, more likely, 2028.
  38. Facebook will go the way of Friendster and MySpace when something bigger and shinier comes along.
  39. I will finish my damn novel.
  40. I will retire. 🙂
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Giving away two of my e-books this week

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May 29, 2017

Do you like interesting books? Got nothing to read? I’ve got you. 🙂 This week (until the end of Friday, 6/02) I’m giving away 2 of my e-books.

Update: the giveaway is over, folks. Big thanks to all 500+ of you who downloaded the books, and I hope you enjoy them! If you didn’t make it in time, fear not – there are always options. If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow one book for free each month – go over yonder for details. And, as always, feel free to leave Amazon reviews if you liked the books or reach out to me directly if you didn’t. Constructive criticism is always welcome around here.

 

“50 Shades of Yay” has 50 different essays and poems on the nature of happiness, written by different famous folks throughout the ages. They’re great for getting some perspective, as well as food for thought. (We have air conditioning, indoor plumbing, pizza delivery, and worldwide web, yet unhappiness is still here among us. This book may help.)

“Legends & Lore from Around the World” is the biggest collection of mythology (15,000 pages) in the world, with ancient stories from Ireland, Japan, Africa, Native Americans, etc, in addition to the usual stuff from Greece and Rome. Reading these ancient tales for the first time can be quite an experience, both intellectually and emotionally.

You don’t need a Kindle to read them – you can just install the Kindle app on the device of your choice. (Phone, tablet, microwave…) If you like the books, please feel free to leave a nice review on Amazon, share this post and tell your friends! (Not necessarily in that order.)

Thanks in advance – and enjoy!

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In which the author binge-watches 18 episodes of Game of Thrones

Filed under: on stuff and sundry — 2 Comments
February 8, 2017

I really wanted to like Game of Thrones… I’m reluctant to start reading a book series that hasn’t been finished yet, so I avoided the books and the TV show for the longest time, all the while valiantly dodging spoilers and skillfully extricating myself from GoT-related conversations.

But then I saw the free week-long HBO trial that’s available on Amazon. After binge-watching all of Westworl, I decided to finally give GoT a try. It is well known that TV shows shouldn’t be judged on the quality of their first episode. Or the first few episodes. Or, sometimes, even their entire first season. (Case in point: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: The Next Generation.) That said, I can’t quite explain why I binge-watched 80% of the second season as well before finally cancelling my HBO trial once and for all. I plead boredom.

And so, in no particular order – and without any particular spoilers, first impressions by a complete GoT newbie who only watched the show and never touched the books:

  • The whole thing could have been avoided if a certain 10-year-old with ADHD could have been kept in check by his parents.
  • Or if a certain couple didn’t decide to copulate with a window wide open, despite being in a new location. (I assume the GoT world had binoculars, spyglasses or telescopes.)
  • Incest. Sooo much incest. I don’t think there’s a baseline for incest in medieval-themed shows, but if there is, GoT is definitely ~400% or so above it.
  • If the king’s kids don’t look anything like him and the queen’s brother is perpetually single and never dates any men, women or livestock (the sheep option was actually mentioned in one of the episodes), does it really take a dramatic plot development for their royal subjects to put two and two together?
  • What the hell kind of orbit is that planet on? If you keep getting spontaneous miniature ice ages that occur at random intervals and last anywhere between 3-15 years, you probably don’t live in a garden-variety solar system. A solar system with multiple suns would kind of make sense, but it doesn’t look like they have more than one sun in the show. (I know, I know, that’s what I get for bringing sci-fi logic into the fantasy world. I’ll leave my phaser at the door next time.)
  • Considering that all of the main characters are from the top 1% and most of them spend their overabundant free time being insufferably posh/incestuous/suicidal/arrogant, who exactly am I supposed to root for here?.. This is like the Dune, only with 5% more social mobility.
  • Do the messenger ravens have miniature jet packs? Because I’m pretty sure they routinely cross the continent in less than a day. (Whereas, by comparison, it takes the king months to make the same journey on foot.)
  • If a large segment of the population ended up living in the northern wilderness for 8,000 years, with extremely limited contact with the so-called civilization, why do they look the same and speak the same language with the same accent? (Read up on the Ainu people and how they differ from their Japanese neighbors – and that’s without a giant wall between them.)
  • In addition to jet-pack ravens, we apparently have telepathic direwolves? Not sure if the concept got explored in the future seasons, but after the rather cliché scene in the first season, I was expecting to see more.
  • If your entire empire can descend into a bloody civil war because of a single hyperactive 10-year-old kid, maybe it wasn’t such a good form of government in the first place, and maybe whoever gets the throne in the end will only perpetuate more of the same.

As always, I welcome an intelligent and/or snarky discussion in the comments.

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How to set up your very own news portal

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February 1, 2017

I’m a bit of a news junkie. Reality is always stranger than fiction, and recent events have made it stranger yet. (My sincerest condolences to the writers of “House of Cards.”)

Interesting times call for interesting news sources, and at one point last year I found that regular news sites just weren’t providing enough diverse information fast enough to keep up with my ever-growing appetite. To that end, I’ve created my very own news portal by harnessing the power of Twitter: after some trial and error, I’ve identified particularly interesting journalists and started following them in real time.

If you follow enough interesting and active people, your Twitter feed will be full of odd insights, interesting links and instant notifications about fresh news stories posted in their publications – or other news media that they, in turn, follow.

A lot of the people I follow are bloggers and writers, but they don’t produce the news so much as disseminate it. And so, in no particular order, here are the reporters and journalists whom I follow:

@costareports & @DanEggenWPost & @Fahrenthold – Washintgon Post politics
@maggieNYT – NYT White House correspondent
@SopanDeb – NYT culture writer
@DouthatNYT – NYT columnist
@JohnJHarwood – economy reporter on CNBC and NYT
@KatyTurNBC – the world’s top expert on Trump – she shadowed him (and got under his skin) since the day he announced his campain, way back in 2015.
@chrislhayes – MSNBC news host
@cbsMcCormick – CBS foreign affairs
@KatzOnEarth – freelance journo, really big on history
@elongreen – New Yorker
@AoDespair – former Washington Post journo, then a crime chronicler
@paulkrugman – the world’s most interesting economist!
@RalstonReports & @annieflanz & @MikeHigdon & @brianduggan – journos from Nevada
@froomkyn – Washington editor at The Intercept

I’m fully aware that a list of Twitter handles recorded on a personal blog might seem charmingly antiquated in the very near future, when we all get instant OmniSphere updates pumped straight into the frontal lobe via subdermal implants. Until then, however, feel free to follow any and all of the above – and leave a comment if you know any other interesting newsmakers.

(And here is my own humble account – @GrigoryLukin, should you be so inclined.)

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The world’s greatest collection of ironing puns

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August 30, 2016

I want to be a stand-up comedian if I grow up. Might want to get insurance against pun-induced brain damage, though. Decisions, decisions…

iron punning

Kudos to Felicia Day for inspiring the pun barrage with this tweet.

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The third “Kingkiller Chronicle” book is coming soon!

Filed under: on stuff and sundry — 30 Comments
June 28, 2016

I’ve recently written that Patrick Rothfuss’s Book-3 probably wouldn’t come out anytime soon. (Along with some other predictions.) Well, I guess I was wrong! In my not-at-all-obsessive quest for more video interviews with Pat, I found this recent (5/11/16) video interview.

Aside from the sheer awesomeness that is Pat’s office (I count at least 15 owl-bears), there’s also a very important update: he said he’s currently editing the book to get it shorter, better and more dynamic. In his own words, he’s going through it and trying to cut out approximately 100,000 words. It’s kind of humbling to think he’s going to cut enough words to write an average, non-Rothfuss-sized novel.

So, assuming the book is already written and currently undergoing the editing process, the release date draws closer yet. It probably won’t come out in time for Christmas, but who knows – maybe we’ll get it at some point within a year. Don’t know about y’all, but I’m going to make sure to have a week’s worth of vacation saved up and ready to use just for this occasion…

Update: it has been 2 years and 3 months since this post was originally written. Book three is not here, nor is it on the horizon. Instead, the country is ruled by an angry orange clown, and all is not well. Sorry if you got excited about reading this blog’s subject line.

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