Memes and Whatnot

To be honest I didn't have much to write about Demian  so far. I'm lucky to have the creative liberty to write about whatever has been on my mind this week. Luckily, I do have something for that: the stock market.  I've been a long time follower of Reddit's Wall Street Bets. When I heard about the plan to try screw-over Melvin Capital and other hedge funds who shorted GameStop, I figured it was time to get my feet wet into the stock market. When GameStop's stock (GME) was at $45 per share, I put a decent chunk of change into it. Last week when its value soared to over $350 per share, I sold it; this ending up giving me 600% ROI and I made quite a bit.  There's a far more interesting conversation to be had other than me making some money on the side. It's the politics and economics that's behind it all. The entire reason that it was possible to short squeeze GME was that hedge funds had shorted it over 140%. Simple explained, when a stock is shorted over ...

 Honestly, this has been a very good English class so far. I enjoyed the variety of books, plays and short stories that we read together as class. Likewise it was to fun pickup books that I had a personal interest in reading. There's no doubt that the literature that we read together and discussed had a larger impact than that of what I read on my own; knowing that I'll have to actively engage in discussion upon completing a text meant that I put more effort and care into what I was reading. That quality was often lacking in my personal reading books as it was more for enjoyment and less of analysis. My prefered type of reading isn't novels or plays or anything like that. I find articles and research papers that are tailored to my interests in politics and engineering to be far more interesting. These texts provide information in a easily digestible manner — unlike the convoluted English found in the texts we read — and I enjoy that.  I thought that the work for this class ...

To understand the situation in the Hill District during the 50s, it's absolutely necessary to understand the factors that created said situation. The two main factors were the Housing Act of 1949 as well as the Great Migration. Together, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement enabled Troy to get his promotion as a garbage truck driver, rather than a lifter.  The Housing Act of 1949 was the brainchild of the president at the time, Harry Truman. The conditions in which he was brought up and his early career choices helped to shape the choices that he made during this presidency. Truman was born to a father who was a farmer and livestock dealer; he was clearly not brought up in anything more than lower-middle class conditions. This was no more evident then when he had to drop out of college in his first year due to insufficient funds. He was able to secure a job with his meager business college experience, but made no where enough to afford adequate housing, and thus, spent most o...

Maybe it's because my family is too Indian, but we don't really have many memories that are associated with storytelling. The best I can do is a an old video of what I think was my birthday party from when I was four years old. Some context is necessary for the significance of this story to make sense. As a kid, and even now, I didn't express my wants. Whenever we'd go outside and my dad would ask do you want this or do you want that, I'd consistently say no, even if its something I wanted. I'm not sure where that behavior started, but it's something that has stuck with me until now. This video takes place twenty or so minutes before guests started to arrive for the party. You could see little me crying and complaining that we still didn't have a cake. My dad was filming him teasing me by asking why I wanted a cake. I snarkly responded with "I want a cake! Don't ask too many questions!" I think that was most assertive I've ever been in ...

I was going to write this blog about a certain someone — you know who you are — but it seems that this blog's prompt is limited to this week. In the odd chance you're reading this, hi :). Anyways I figured it's time to come back to the theme of this blog: politics.  There have been many occurences during the past week where I've made the conscious decision to judge someone and say: "huh you're a f*cking idiot." Most of this comes from all the time I  spend  waste reading through Republican Twitter accounts.  To Ewelina Krawczyk and your comment which states "To all President Trump's haters: has anybody invited you here and asked for comments?" I deem you worthy of the title of "f*cking idiot" as you've appeared to have forgotten the first amendment exists. People have the right to criticize the government. In a more self-reflective tone, me judging someone for a singular twitter comment makes me someone who jumps to conclusions ...

 I listened to episode 722: The Unreality of Now which essentially was a summary of Trump's false claims and scandals. Everything from his sexual assault allegation to his claim that mail-in ballots are a Democratic hoax. To be honest, I haven't gained much from listening to this, other than getting a sense of the magnitude of the drama that surrounds the current president. Since he's on the news literally every day, I've lost sight of just how much drama surrounds him.  In essence there are three parts to this. Part 1 is on sexual harassment. I can't say much more than DJT is a creep and should be in prison. Part 2 is on guns, which I do have opinions on. Trigger warning: Rednecks hate me. Part 3 is on polls, which again, I don't have many opinions on. Voting has been mismanaged starting all the way up from DeJoy as Postmaster General down to stupidly gerrymandered voting districts.  The second amendment states that the people have "a right to keep and bea...

 While writing satire, it's important to take a bold stance on the matter at hand. Obviously, it's impossible for every reader to understand the point being made, writing in a bold and obvious fashion increase the likelihood that the reader will understand. Satirical writing thrives on being quirky and non-obvious. It's essential that the topic and style of writing isn't one that is overused and cliche.  In hindsight, I should've written the preceding paragraph in a manner that encompasses more than just writing, but I'm too lazy to fix it so we're moving on to Banksy's artwork. The piece was the one of the Napalm Girl.  It's important to know the context to this picture, so here's the original photo of the Vietnam War:  In the original photo, the first thing that caught my attention was the Mickey Mouse and the Ronald McDonald. Both of these were considered to be staples of the American lifestyle. What's interesting about the Vietnam War was...