Nobody on WSB thinks they can drive the share price in perpetuity. What they have figured out is that small investors, banded together, can manipulate the price of heavily shorted stocks using options. That can push institutional stock shorters into a scenario where they end up driving up the price of the stock even more when they have to cover their short positions on stocks with limited availability for trading (losing millions in the process). Things eventually even out and some portion of the WSB crowd ends up losing what is (to them) very significant amounts of money. Until then, however, lots of small investors make several times their initial investment while shoving huge losses onto the institutional investors. Tim Collins, from thestreet.com put it well: “A large group of retail traders have realized if they work together, using market tools such as out-of-the-money call options or low-float stocks, they can overpower any institution or short seller in the world, outside of the Fed, of course.”

In short, it's a giant FU to the institutional investors who have destroyed the market for the average investor via HFT and the arguably immoral use of options trading - i.e. shorting a company then doing everything you can to hasten or bring about the failure of that company. Shorts used to be a great way for institutional investors to hedge other investments in order to maintain reasonable target returns. As soon as some of those investors started using them to destroy companies while making huge profits I ceased caring if those investors were to lose it all.

WSB is way too volatile for me to risk my money on such an operation, but I do enjoy watching regular people make $50k on a $10k investment while those who turned the market into trading baseball cards lose tens of millions.

It will be as beautiful as Pripyat - jewel of Eastern Europe.

Full of stories of love like:
I don't like human behavior so I'll murder them all. Whoops! That was a mistake. Here is a new thing called a rainbow.
Look at all these gay people. I shall smite them with fire from the sky.
You looked back when the people were being smitten? You are now a pillar of salt.
I don't like your behavior. You must participate in ritualistic blood sacrifices to cover your transgressions against me.
I prefer a specific tribe of people over all others because some guy mutilated his genitalia for me.
You people are whiny. You shall now wander around in the desert for 40 years...and then another 40 for good measure.
I decided this land belongs to you now. Go murder every man, woman, child, and animal there. If you leave anyone alive there will be severe consequences.
Curse your parents - death. Two men having sex - death. Woman presented to a man for marriage as a virgin, but discovered not to be - death. Violation of the Sabbath - you guessed it, death. A non Levite helping to set up the tabernacle - yep, death. Promoting the worship of other gods - definitely death.

Definitely feeling the love there. Maybe the reason so many evangelicals love Trump is that he is so similar to the god they worship - angry, vindictive, petty, jealous, and desperate for undeserved praise.

These days it's more about liability. Ever hear "clean-up on aisle X" while at the grocery store? Broken glass or other items that could harm people with no shoes is not uncommon. No insurance company wants to provide coverage to stores that allow people to meander around shoeless. Obviously, some businesses (trampoline parks and the like) can't enforce a shoe rule, but they generally have to have a set of procedures that keeps glass from shoeless areas and their premiums are adjusted upward to account for the additional potential for liability losses.

Acting like Trump doesn't have freedom of speech is patently ridiculous. Trump can get any message he wants to a massive portion of the planet at a moment's notice. All he has to do is call a press conference, speak to a news paper, attend a television interview, post on the POTUS site, yell on a street corner, etc. His power to reach people is unlike anything the world even knew 30 years ago.

That doesn't even take into account the fact that free speech prevents the government from interfering in your speech. Private companies are free to restrict speech on their platforms as they want.

We have video of poll watchers being denied entry, being kicked out, being kept at a distance.
- I watched this, live, as it was happening - from a camera feed inside the room - which was full of reporters and poll watchers. For some reason, the Republicans wanted to pack the room full of their own folk during covid. The required number of watchers were in the room and were asked to observe social distance measures (just like the poll workers). There was nothing illegal here. If anything, it was a ploy by Trump supporters so they could come out after the election and say exactly what you're saying.

We have documented proof that poll watchers were told counting was done for the day and sent home. Only for counting to resume once they were gone.
- Interesting. I'll look into this claim.

We have video of poll workers blocking view of the counting area.
- See my reply to your first statement. The same people trying to pack the counting area decided to pack the lobby just outside the counting area. Many of them had no masks and social distancing definitely wasn't happening. Windows were covered with pizza boxes and the like in the hope that they would leave. There was no reason for these folk to be in the counting area. It was already staffed with observers and press and there were cameras everywhere.

All of this stuff is flat out against the law.
- With the exception of counting after observers were sent home (again, looking into it), none of this stuff is "against the law." I don't know why you feel political parties aren't entitled to have as many people as they can pack into a space observing the count. They aren't. The required watchers were there from both parties.

They even used force, personally, or through police, to prevent poll watchers from doing their job.
- Force was used to remove people who weren't observing covid protocols from packing a lobby and trying to create a commotion that distracting poll workers from doing their job.

All of this was abundantly clear when I was watching the counting live on television.

You have to remember that most of the Right in the US is comprised of a group of people who subscribe, in some form, to Christianity. This is a group of people who use logic like "if you can't prove there is no God there must be a God." It only follows that they would say "If you can't prove there wasn't massive voter fraud there must have been massive voter fraud." For them, the burden of proof is always on the other party. Further, this is a group of people who understand they can't prove God exists so "faith and belief" are at the core of who they are and it's a central theme of their religion. They "believe" Trump won and no amount of evidence indicating otherwise will overcome their core belief. I'd say that it's dangerous to conflate religious belief with secular events, but having observed that most of the white churches around here and on television are rabid Trump supporters I think it's safe to believe that Trumpism has been mixed in with the religion - at least as people perceive religion in their lives.

What are you on about? Mail-in voting in PA was part of a bi-partisan bill passed by the PA legislature back in 2019. Heck, you just have to go to the state website and you can find the bill as well as everyone who voted for it.

There's a reason none of these arguments hold up in court - they're factually incorrect. Sure, you can sell them to the OAN crowd, but when presented to a body (the court) that actually knows and understands the law they don't hold water.

There seems to be an attitude in some companies that are trying to do an old thing in a new way that says "we don't want any 'old thinkers' from established companies hampering our ingenuity." So, they go it alone and suddenly discover their cool new thing is impacted by all kinds of issues that have long been solved elsewhere. I honestly don't know if this applies to Tesla, but it would seem there are plenty of people who know how to manufacture cars without panel gaps, poor paint application, etc. If a good number of them haven't been hired by Tesla, why?

Here here! Would love to see funding for the war machine portion of the military cut to about 20% of current levels anyhow. That isn't to say I'd like to see the service members suddenly unemployed. Seems like a great opportunity to shift training and finance to building modern, reliable infrastructure across the nation. After all, things like bridges that aren't in danger of collapsing, a modern power grid, effective roads, etc. should all be considered necessary if the country really wants to "provide for the common Defence [sic] and general Welfare of the United States"

Over time, the active enlistment of the military could shrink and, hopefully, we'd see service members rotate into industries with their now very marketable and directly applicable skills.

I think we are on the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to feeling the economic impact of COVID. We can either sit through a couple decades of economic depression or try to jumpstart a transition that puts the US back on par with the rest of global leaders.

Advanced alien species using the foot for measurement. Clearly, the USA is ahead of the curve. Time for the rest of the world to catch up.

Yes - this is exactly what the science says on HIV...as well as every information packet, education course, etc. Looks like you are catching on - just 30 years late.

Funny you say that because it's actually the exact opposite. Those who use real tools out in the field generally pay substantially more for overall value. Go ask a mechanic why they pay so much more to use Snap-On or Mac instead of Craftsman. Go see how many carpenters prefer the lower cost of Black and Decker over Bosch, Milwaukie, or DeWalt. Check on the mountain climbers who prefer carabineers that are priced based on the cost of the alloy+ a 5% mark-up.

"The most dangerous people around the President are over-confident idiots"

He's not wrong in stating this. He's probably wrong as to who the over-confident idiots are. Someone send the guy a mirror.

The sort of mental gymnastics you have to do to argue that ending the pandemic does not really mean ending the pandemic, but something entirely different is pretty impressive. I feel like I just attended a church service or something. Maybe "Dewey Defeats Truman" actually meant "Dewey ran against Truman and did not succeed."