Skimming - definition of skimming by The Free Dictionary
Skimming - definition of skimming by The Free Dictionary
Skimming - 19 definitions - Encyclo
Skimming definition and meaning | SoftGamings
Skimming | Definition of Skimming at Dictionary.com
Casino Collectibles News - The Great Stardust Skim
Slang Meaning Of Skimming
casino skimming meaning
casino skimming meaning - win
Who killed notorious 1940s gangster Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, the father of modern Las Vegas? Was it another mob boss? The lover of his best friend's wife? One of the men he was embezzling money from? His Mafia spy girlfriend? His own bosses? The possibilities are endless—and puzzling.
(Note: be warned, kind of long background info here, but I think it’s needed) As far as interesting lives, few can beat Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel. Born February 28, 1906 in Brooklyn, New York, Siegel came from a poor Jewish family. Before he was even twenty, he’d established a profitable protection racket and a lengthy rap sheet, including armed robbery, rape, and murder. Siegel had connections—he was childhood friends with Al Capone and familiar with many of the well known New York City mobsters of the day—and he also had a taste for violence. Soon, he’d established a small mob specializing in hits for the numerous bootleg gangs of the time with Meyer Lansky, a fellow mobster. His violence and short temper led some to say he was “crazy as a bedbug,” giving him his famous nickname ‘Bugsy,’ which he even more famously despised. Siegel was making money, which he was happy to flaunt, but he wanted more. He carried out several hits for Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and eventually formed Murder Inc. with his associates, establishing himself as a skilled hitman for the National Crime Syndicate, an organization of mob families. But Siegel was already making enemies, and several assassination attempts were made on his life, some of which came very close to being successful. So, it was time to move out west. In California, Siegel helped establish gambling rackets, drug trade routes, and prostitution rings. His star was rising outside of the Underworld too, and in addition to the numerous politicians and police on his payroll, he befriended stars like Cary Grant and Clark Gable. Incredibly, while in Italy with a socialite in 1938, he met Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, whom he immediately disliked and offered to kill. The offer was declined by his lady friend. Yet Siegel was not always looked upon fondly by the upper echelons of Hollywood; he borrowed exorbitantly from celebrities, knowing he would never be asked to pay it back, and began to develop extensive plans to extort movie studios. After several trials and acquittals for failed and successful hits, it was time to leave California. Siegel’s next stop was Las Vegas where, in 1945, he purchased and developed the Flamingo Hotel & Casino, the first luxury hotel on the Vegas strip. As you might imagine, that was expensive, and over the course of its construction, costs were equivalent to over $61 million in today’s money each year. Siegel’s checks were bouncing, and many of the locals felt threatened by him. Mob bosses were beginning to lose patience with Siegel too, and he was refusing to report on business, claiming he was running the California Syndicate himself. For now, they left him alone—he'd been valuable in the past, after all. The Flamingo Hotel was a dismal failure, and people—very powerful people—were starting to get tired of waiting for the promised money to materialize. By 1947, it was gradually turning around—with the help of Meyer Lansky, now in Vegas—but for most, it was too little too late. Death: On June 20, 1947, Siegel was gunned down in the Beverly Hills home of his sometimes-girlfriend Virginia Hill. He was 41. Somewhat suspiciously, Hill had taken an unscheduled flight to Paris the day (or by some sources, week) before. As Siegel sat reading the newspaper with associate Allen Smiley, an unknown assailant fired with a .30 caliber military M1 carbine through the window, striking Siegel many times (NSFW). Two shots hit his head, with one passing through his right cheek and the other his nose. Though he was not hit directly through the eye (NSFW), a bullet-in-the-eye death became a popular trope in Mafia media, including in the Godfather, where a character based on Siegel is murdered in the same manner. The death was covered extensively in the media, which portrayed Vegas as a bastion of sin and mafia activity. As early as the day after Siegel’s death (or, as some sources have it, during Siegel’s death), however, more personal things were changing: Lansky walked into the Flamingo and took over operations. Theories: The mob is famously tight-lipped, and Siegel’s death was no exception. Despite the extensive speculation, no precise motive has ever been confirmed. There was a massive police investigation, but in a case like this, that doesn’t mean much, nor does the media coverage. The media in particular salivated over the potential for splashy crime stories, and the circumstances of this case have been complicated by contemporary coverage. Several days after Siegel’s death, for example, one newspaper ran the headline “BUGSY'S BLONDE EX-WIFE GIVES CLUES TO HIS KILLERS,” while another read “BUGSY'S EX NO AID IN HUNT.” As far as the most popular theories: A Mob hit: A mob hit seems like the most obvious cause, and it's a theory that’s been popularized by several novels and the 1991 movie Bugsy. It would certainly make sense; it was the mob’s money Siegel had been spending wildly on his unsuccessful hotel after all, and he’d been growing uncooperative. Of the proposed hitmen, the most often mentioned are Frankie Carbo (Ralph Natale, former Philadelphia boss and Mob squealer, claimed Carbo as the true killer) and Eddie Cannizarro, both Syndicate hitmen. But even here, there are several proposed reasons for the hit. As some have it, mob money from the Flamingo’s funding was going missing and Siegel was skimming off the already meager profits. Skimming could have been forgiven, if the Flamingo was a success. It was not. After a meeting of the Syndicate’s “Board of Directors,” it was allegedly decided that Siegel would die, with Lansky reluctantly agreeing. Others believe that a hit might have been ordered whether Siegel was skimming or not; the Flamingo was simply too expensive. As one historian put it, “Bugsy was a dreamer. And he was dreaming with other people’s money.” Yet many have also argued against this theory. According to one of Siegel’s emissaries in Vegas, for example, no one would have dared to order a hit on Siegel. He and Lansky were close until the end of their lives, and Lansky would never have agreed to it. And if Lansky would not agree, then Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who was “the head of everything,” would never have agreed either. And as others have argued, the method of execution (NSFW) didn’t match with typical mob methods; firing a weapon from outside a house increased the risk of missing as well as the risk of being seen. The preferred method was a clean shot to the back of the head. According to some, the oft-referenced money problems of the Flamingo also wasn’t an issue. At the time, Lansky was paying back any investor who wanted out, and the gradual uptick in its profits was quickening by the day. Personally, I don’t think the financial uptick invalidates the theory. If the hotel was starting to make more money, then that might be all the more reason to get rid of the difficult-to-manage Siegel and take over. Wire Business: At the time of his death, Siegel was embroiled in a dispute with Jack Dragna, dubbed the Capone of Los Angeles. Siegel and Dragna had had an uneasy partnership in previous years, but Dragna, far less powerful than Siegel and the New York gangs, resented the income and respect Siegel commanded. This came to a head when a racing wire service (a way of cheating on bets) between the two of them soured. Siegel wanted control for himself, and ordered Dragna to turn it over or be killed, to which Dragna agreed. After Siegel’s death, control was returned to Dragna. He had a motive, but his story would only have been one among many for a man as ruthless as Siegel, which, in a way, complicates things further—there’s a real possibility that the culprit in Siegel’s murder was someone never even considered. His list of enemies was long, varied, and probably mostly unknown. Yet another man who had reason to want Siegel dead, for example, was his bodyguard and muscle Mickey Cohen. A Cleveland gangster, Cohen was given control of the Syndicate’s West Coast gambling operations. If Siegel still lived, he would never have gotten it. Interestingly, he, like Al Capone before him, was eventually felled by tax evasion. Virginia and/or brother: The same emissary of Siegel who shot down the mob hit theory believed that Virginia Hill’s brother had carried out the murder. The brother, a marine stationed at Camp Pendleton named Bob or Bill, had seen Siegel and Virginia fighting outside the Flamingo as well as the bruises Siegel had left on her and threatened to kill him. Another of Virginia’s brothers, Chuck, was also at the Beverly Hills house when Siegel was murdered. Virginia herself has also been the subject of suspicion. Nicknamed the “Queen of the Mob,” Hill worked, among other powerful jobs, as a cash courier, laundering money and stolen goods as well as blackmailing high-ranking men through sexual liaisons. Her relationship with Siegel was tempestuous at best, and she may have been embezzling from the Flamingo. She’s also been accused of two-timing with rival mob operations, though this is unconfirmed. Eventually fleeing to Europe permanently, Hill died of an overdose in 1966, though some have alleged that she was actually murdered after she, completely broke, attempted to leverage her intimate knowledge of the Mob. Rival Mobs: Unfortunately, I can’t find much concrete information about this theory (note: story of my life researching these posts haha), but some believe that rival mob operatives wanted Siegel gone. He was a powerful—and very public—figure, which made him something of an obvious target in the cut-throat world of Mafia politics. Moe Sedway: This is a relatively new theory, emerging after Robbie Sedway was interviewed for LA Magazine after his mother’s death. Here, he alleged that Siegel’s murder was ordered by his mother Bee, the wife of powerful mobster—and childhood friend of Siegel’s—Moe Sedway. According to Bee, who wrote and scrapped a book proposal called Bugsy's Little Lunatic (Siegel’s nickname for her), Siegel had threatened her husband, who was the Flamingo’s numbers man, and therefore watching Siegel—who, remember, had been accused of skimming—closely. So Bee contacted Mathew “Moose” Pandza, a truck driver whom Bee married after Moe’s death. Moose, the perfect killer, since he had no connection to the Mob, then shot Siegel to death. The problem with this theory, however, is that Bee is the only source; as she herself said, anyone who could contradict her was dead. She also squandered most of the fortune left to her by Moe over the course of her life, and died almost penniless. All of the above: Some believe that almost all the suspects were involved. Usually, it goes something like this: “Virginia supplied the location and received some reward. Cohen knew Bugsy's schedule for the evening, but happened to not be watching him that night…Dragna ordered the hit, with the approval of Lansky and Luciano.” It’s unlikely, but it certainly has its believers, if only for the convenience of it. Final Thoughts & Questions: This case is interesting to me because of the sheer number of suspects. In the end, a mob hit seems the simplest and most likely explanation. But there were so many people with means, motive, and opportunity. So:
Why was Siegel killed and who killed him? The Syndicate, rival mobs, Virginia Hall, her brother, Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, Mathew Pandza (as ordered by Moe and/or Bee Sedway), several of the suspects, or someone else entirely?
RoyalRoad First Next Jen and Sarah spent the next week doing research. The Internet was filled with contradictory information about monetary theory and economics, and neither of them really had the background to evaluate the arguments that everyone was having. However, Sarah reminded them both, they didn't need to look at a perfect system, just one that worked. So, they started digging through Wikipedia articles and online textbooks on the history of money and how they came to be. "Hey, did you know they used to use salt as currency?" Sarah asked as she skimmed through a particularly fascinating documentary about Middle Age East African economies. "Is this some kind of joke about mining salt?" "No, it's real, look. And apparently the word salary is from the Latin word salarium for money used to buy salt," Sarah continued fascinated. Of course, they couldn't use something as simple as salt to represent money. In fact, they couldn't use any commodity either. Over the last week, one of the alien traders caught wind that gold was extremely valuable on Earth, so they'd brought them in by the ton load. Gold was still useful for electronics and some dentistry, but the price of gold, mostly propped up by its value in rarity, crashed hard. The problem with currency in galactic trading, as Sarah discovered, was that there wasn't a single commodity that was equally rare in every system. No, whatever alternative they come up to the laughably outdated barter system had to be built on something far more rare and valuable than gold. Something that even the most powerful human empires in history have struggled to collect. It had to be built on trust. "That's the system most modern currencies are based on," Sarah claimed, "you only accept dollars for work because you trust that you're going to be able to wake up tomorrow and spend it on… everything you need." "Hmm well, we can't just ask them to take US dollars," Jen giggled. This would be so much easier if that weren't true. "Why not?" Sarah asked, playing the devil's advocate. "Well… well, like you said, they won't trust it! I certainly wouldn't if I were a trader! Furthermore, who knows? Maybe they have a printer in their ship that can duplicate money! Maybe we should ask them for that next time we bring Zarko some pears," Jen said, thinking out loud. "I doubt it. The government keeps a lot of secrets about how they make Dollars , and I don't want the Secret Service knocking on my door," Sarah said. Until this week, she hadn't known that this was one of the lesser known duties of the USSS. Now that she knew it, it made the thought of attracting their attention even less palatable, "you're right. What about digital casino tokens? We can produce something that translates to Dollars and have our own system that tracks it all." "Sure, that's not too hard to make. We would have a centralized money supply, where we don't trust each end point…" Jen continued on the brainstorm, thinking in terms of the technical system, "ok, so say we make SarahBucks, and peg its value to the US Dollar. One pound of pears would be worth 1.5 SarahBucks, one pound of sirloin steak is 6.99 SarahBucks at Safeway. That still doesn't explain how we'll get people to use it." "I'm not sure. I need to think about this more," Sarah yawned, tired. "And I hate that name." They agreed that they were stuck, and that SarahBucks was absolutely a terrible name. Livermore Spaceport, Earth A month after the spaceport opening, Sarah noticed that it had become less of a tourist attraction. There were far fewer people standing around gawking at the aliens, and a lot more companies trucking their best-selling products into the spaceport for trade. After their abuse of Jen's cousin's employee pass got discovered by the spaceport authorities, Sarah and Jen had started placing their own bids on getting into the spaceport through the official channels. Thanks to their existing connections with the managers at the spaceport and a growing bank account of value, they could still get in to continue their lucrative trade for magical alien goods. A bit of a rich-get-richer type of situation. The flavor of the month were these Bohor magical air filter machines that aggressively scrubbed the air of… anything you want them to. The Bohor planet is basically the planetary equivalent of a toxic dump. Sure, it had biomes; it wasn't a Star Wars sci-fi planet where the entire planet is either a desert or an ice-cold tundra or a forest. But the entire planet had been polluted so heavily by its occupants that it lowered the life expectancy by half before the Bohors found a solution: They simply filtered their entire atmosphere through air filter machines and then buried the toxins and garbage they got out of it in a very deep landfill, somewhere where very few people lived. Pretty much the kind of solution you'd expect out of a species that created the original problem in the first place. Zikzik, the alien that was the same species as Zarko, overheard a human asking about their rocket fuel and climate change, and brought in a cargo hold of them. It was a massive hit. Earth's climate change problem wasn't nearly as bad as Bohor, but it was relatively simple to program these machines to suck carbon out of its atmosphere and… bury them in a landfill. At first, few of the human traders bought them, thinking that it was going to be at least a while before the problem became big enough that big governments were going to come to them to try to address the issue, but they had it all wrong. Soon as word got out this was an option, big companies and philanthropists started lining up at their doors. As it turned out, literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air was easier and cheaper than modifying many of their industrial practices to actually be environmentally green. They didn't need to run more efficient factories to claim to be carbon-neutral; just pump as much carbon into the air in exchange for undoing that by sucking it out of the atmosphere after! Some bean counters at a think tank in DC predicted that a few more shipments of these air filters will fix Earth's climate problems by themselves in about a decade, so every trader had a waiting list of corporations with PR problems willing to buy them. Sarah and Jen had a couple vehicle manufacturing companies on their list who were trying to get Bohor air filters to use in lobbying for looser emission standards for their dirty gasoline cars. Today, there were traders on all the landing pads, and they were all carrying air filters. Zarko's ship was there, and he was loading fruits into his spaceship with an alien looking forklift. Sarah and Jen approached his ship and noticed the truck driver standing there. "Hey Benny, tempting the poor aliens with cherries this time?" Sarah waved good, grinning and looking at his cargo. Technically, Benny is a competitor, or at least he drives for a competitor. The massive fruit conglomeration he worked for, Chuckita, had not neglected to notice the massive business opportunity sitting right here as many others have, and are now delivering straight to the aliens in exchange for massive profit margins. But Benny was a good guy. One time Jen and Sarah were having some trouble finding a buyer for a bunch of legally dubious alien psychedelics. Benny was in his late 50s, not that great with the Internet either, so he'd introduced them to whom he referred to as "my money launderer". Aka, his 22-year-old son, Benny Jr, who had a habit of buying weed and other less than legal items off the deep web. Benny Jr had found a buyer for them within minutes and even generously offered to handle the deal for them to spare them the risk of meeting some psycho hopped up on an alien high in a dark alley somewhere. "Heh! One of the bat aliens loves sweets but has a low tolerance for sour, so they treat cherries as some kind of an odd challenge fad. They eat a random cherry, and it's either so incredibly sweet they start drooling out of the mouths, or it's a sour one, and they freak out," Benny replied, in a low voice as if he were trying to keep it a big secret. "Zarko showed me a video, and it's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen". "I think I've seen that one, have you seen the one where they drink wine?" Sarah chuckled at the memory. Alien videos have been a big hit on YouTube. Some human merchants were trading fruit for aliens to take videos of the galaxy. Which they monetized, of course. "No," Benny's ears perked up. Chuckita doesn't make wine, but if selling wine to aliens was going to be a thing, they were a big supplier of grapes… "Is it gonna be a thing?" "Well guess what we brought today?" Jen also grinning from ear to ear, and holding up a big carton of low-quality box wine. "Awww seems like I'm always one step behind you guys," Benny moaned in exaggeration, "I tried to get my money launderer to tell me what aliens would want but all he does is play video games on the Internet, kids these days." Luckily, Zarko chose this moment to step out to spare them from more good-humored ribbing from the boomer. "Ah Sarah and Jen, you brought the grape wine this time!" "Yup," Sarah beamed, "and I see you've run out of air filters to trade again!" "Sadly yes," Zarko tilted his head in shame, "my ship is overdue for a cargo space upgrade, but I haven't found a port that would do it for fruit yet. Next time?" "Alright! Alright! We'll leave our special wine with you, but you better get us some extra good filters next time!" Jen scolded mockingly. Zarko has gotten a lot more comfortable doling out IOUs since the first time. "Of course. Only the best for you two," Zarko said with a greasy human smile imitation that almost made Sarah laugh out loud. It reminded her of a ridiculous cartoon sloth. "By the way," Sarah asked casually, "how much is a spaceship worth on your planet?" Zarko sobered up his expression and looked at her curiously. It was a question that other humans had asked before. To him, it was a good sign. This meant that they all dreamt of the stars. But he didn't expect such a question from someone as seemingly practical as Sarah. She had a lot of fruit, sure, but fruit doesn't build spaceships. After thinking for a while, he replied honestly, "ships aren't traded for one single item. My family traded for the parts to build mine for generations." He pointed at his spaceship. Zarko proudly explained, "this is the work of eighteen generations of trading. My family was one of the richest on Zeep-zep. For thirteen generations, they traded for each of the parts on this beauty. Then, for the last five, my ancestors traded excess food from the tenant farmers on their land to expert craftsbeings that could put it together." "Wait, eighteen generations?" Jen gasped. Eighteen generations ago, her family were probably peasants on a farm in Korea or something… "Yes," Zarko said, looking at them with a little of pity. "After getting the spaceship, my family has traded in it for twelve generations, through civil wars and disasters." He did some math on his hands, and said, "that's about four hundred of your years. That's why it's very unlikely that you will never go to space." Looking at the stunned expression on their faces, he tried to lighten the mood. Zarko said mischievously, "unless you're willing to part with some more of your fruit, in which case I'll let you sit in the back seat for a whole route!" "Hold on, back up, I'm still stuck on the multiple generations part," Sarah said seriously. "You're saying you're flying on a spaceship that started to be built thirty generations ago? That's… about a millennia for us." "Yes," Zarko answered, "and that's why only thirteen families on my planet have had the privilege of owning one in our long history. No offense, but that's why I think no human will ever own their own spacecraft for at least fifteen more generations." Something is wrong here, Sarah thought. The budget for NASA's FTL spacecraft was in the hundreds of millions. Yes, for a fruit farmer, that would be many generations of work if all their descendants worked in the same industry. But there were over three thousand billionaires on Earth, not including the tens of thousands of corporations that had assets or market value over a billion. And the prices for the spacecraft would surely go down as time went on… For a planet like Zarko's to only have thirteen spaceships over generations of their development… As they were walking away, Benny asked, "have you guys noticed something weird about the way these aliens do business?" "Yes." "God yes." They said in unison. "We've been thinking about it for a while, but these guys not having money is a major problemo," Sarah said, looking around surreptitiously, "Zarko and Zikzik keep talking about not being able to find someone who can upgrade their hulls for fruit. And sometimes they come with nothing good, and we're supposed to just drive our fruits all the way back!" "And if you think about it, if they were human ships, think about truckers who don't own their trucks. We'd have loans or something to deal with the cargo space problems, and they'd be paid for by profits in a few trips," Jen added. "The numbers he gave us for spacecraft ownership seem insane," Sarah agreed. "Your company could probably afford to order one right now, not to mention hundreds of others. They must all be dirt poor!" Benny seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one who was thinking this, "exactly! I'm thinking we just introduce them to the concept of Benjamins and solve all their problems and ours. Would certainly make the return trip a lot easier for me if I didn't have to drive all the way to Berkeley for junior to launder all this crap!" "We thought of that too," Sarah said as Benny pretended to groan again, "but we couldn't figure out how to get them to take money with no intrinsic value." "Oh that shouldn't be too hard," Benny said, who's clearly already thought through this problem in his head, "we play a little game called good cop, bad cop." "Good cop bad cop?" "Sure, it's a mind game the cops play, where they put you in a room-" "Yeah we know what it is, but how does that help us?" Sarah said impatiently, an idea tugging on her subconscious. "Well you see," Benny clearly smugly enjoying this moment where he's thought of something that the duo did not, "you two come with an empty truck next time, and you tell Zarko that you'll give him a wad of clean crisp cash, fresh from the bank, for some of his air filters. And when he asks you why he'd take the cash, you just tell him that he can give it to me in exchange for some of my fruits." "What does that have anything to do with good cop bad cop?!" Jen asked. "That has nothing to do with good cop bad cop," Sarah chimed in, but the idea was beginning to form in her head, "but it's a good start. We don't want to deal in cash. It's too risky. It could get the feds onto us and there's a bunch of laws around it that I'm not sure about." "But what we can do is have an internal money system for traders pegged to the US Dollar!" Jen completed. "Yup, so when Zarko comes back next time, we tell him he has an account with the Bank of Benny, we give him a fancy looking card that has his bank account number and give him a pin code, and we deposit a certain amount of BennyBucks into his account for giving us air filters. Then when you come around, Zarko gives you his card and pin, and gives you BennyBucks for your fruit," Sarah finished. "Aha. And then I come to you two, say, I would like to convert BennyBucks in my Bank of Benny account to good old American dollars," Benny extrapolated, completing that final step. "Yeah! We'll just wire you the money and everyone gets theirs," Sarah exclaimed, happy they've finally thought through the loop and gotten someone on board. "BennyBucks is a terrible name though," Jen said, calming everyone down a little, "and why are we getting so excited over the basic concept of currency? And why haven't aliens figured this out? Maybe it's against some kind of space trading code." "Who knows? Maybe we just try it on Zarko and see if it works out," Benny said, a glint in his eyes, "and then we expand, galaxy-tically." "Galactic credits!" Sarah exclaimed, "that's what we'll call it." They agreed that it was the least worst name that they'd come up with so far. It was boring, but when it came to finances, maybe boring and cliché was a good choice after all. "Explain again. I am trying to understand," Zarko said two days later as he offloads the air filters he'd promised. "C'mon dude, for the fifth time," Sarah exasperated, "it's not that hard. We give you a bank account card and have you set up a secret number…" Jen had spent the last two days coding up a storm. Technically, a simple debit system wasn't that hard, but she had to make a website interface that Benny could go up to and enter his account, Zarko's card information and amount, then let Zarko type in his code…etc. She'd mused that it would have been easier to just do this all in a cloud-based spreadsheet, but that wouldn't scale up if they had more customers. Sarah had the account cards laminated and designed a logo: the letters GC, for Galactic Credit, and a stylized version of a Milky Way in the background. Part of the value in a trustworthy system is to look official, and you can't get much more official than laminated cards. "Yes, I understand that part," Zarko said, clearly displaying his frustration on his facial expression as well, "but I don't understand why Benny would give me his fruit for just entering a number." "Because we have an agreement with him that he'll take it in exchange for fruit!" Sarah was sure this was the umpteenth time she had to explain this, but clearly Zarko was not getting it. "Is it similar to a debt?" Zarko said suspiciously, as if debt was this dark magic that the humans were performing on him, "I have never heard of this kind of debt before." "Yes, it's a debt, of sorts," Jen cut in. The last time he had asked this exact question, they'd said no, and that led to fifty other questions and explanations that went nowhere, so nothing could go worse if they said yes- "Ok. I don't understand," Zarko did his sloth version of a sigh, it was cute, but at the same time frustrating for Sarah and Jen, "But I can try it. I know you two are not trying to trick me. Do I get my fruits before I take off?" "Yes! You go to Benny-" Sarah started. "Yes! And that's it. Benny gives you his fruit," Jen cut her off, knowing that this was about to launch into yet another long, long line of questions they just can't deal with right now. Sarah set up a new account for Zarko, asked him for a 6 digit base ten pin code (thank god Zarko was a ten digit species) which he promptly memorized, and hoping that Jen's prototype website wouldn't fail, showed him how they were "giving" Zarko 40,000 Galactic Credits for 8 Bohor air filter machines into his account ("No, you can't have my iPad. It's on your account card now. Show this to Benny later.") "Well that worked out great," Benny said as he watched them wire him the $25,000 for his truck shipment of fruit. Though his costs were in the low thousands, he could have easily fleeced Zarko for his full 40k. But they all agreed that wasn't the point, which was to get Zarko to see the benefits of using a currency system abstracted from goods and services. "Dude, you weren't there," Sarah complained, "I don't understand why he had such a hard time understanding money. Money equals goods. Bing bang boom. It's like these guys don't have the capability for abstract thinking." "No they definitely do. You can't build spaceships without abstract math and science," Jen said, "but he clearly had a deathly aversion to using money. I think it's tied to some taboo to debt somehow. All the other species must have it because none of the aliens we've met have even mentioned anything close to a real economy." "Whatever it is," Benny sighed happily, "I'm just happy I didn't have to go home with my truck full of weird alien toys." "Yup. The next step is to get all the human traders to take credits. At least they'll have no problems understanding the benefits." Sarah made some calls to the trader licensing office at the spaceport. There she found a manager willing to part with phone numbers and contact information for the other human traders, for an "information fee" of course, and started making calls to the other human traders. It wasn't easy. Some traders were representatives of bigger food companies, and didn't have all the flexibility to make these kinds of decisions. And others no doubt were thinking of copying their system for their own profit. But they all saw the benefits of a unified network of currency debiting because they've been suffering the same problems that Sarah, Jen, and Benny had been. Over the next few days, all the human traders agreed to take galactic credit from the aliens, which they knew they could exchange for cash with Sarah and Jen. "We are officially in business." In economics, there's a distinction made between different kinds of money. There's commodity money, usually gold or silver. There's representative money, which is currency backed by commodities like gold or silver. And then there's fiat money, which is not backed by any intrinsic value, but rather by government decree, hence fiat. Galactic Credits fall into some kind of weird hybrid category between representative and fiat money. They're backed by the Dollar, which is fiat money, but also which makes them representative money. This means that the people issuing them, in this case Jen and Sarah, are not supposed to create them without also having a corresponding US Dollar in their bank account. Of course, Sarah and Jen hadn't signed an ironclad contract with the other human traders that they're always guaranteed to take their galactic credits and exchange for money, so technically that meant that one day Sarah could simply "deposit" a large number of credits in her account and buy all the goods she wanted from Zarko, or potentially the other traders. That would, however, be slaughtering the golden goose for the meat. After all, they didn't want to sell fruit or Bohor air filters. They wanted to sell the concept of money. "Why would I take this over fruit?" Zikzik sniffed. He was known as a sharp one by all the human traders. If there's any new alien fad coming down the pipeline, chances are Zikzik is the first one to touchdown with a cargo hold full of it. Unlike many of the other traders, he was fairly consistent in his dealings. This much fruit is for this much air filters. He knows his price, and he lets you know it too. Everyone suspected he kept careful records of all his selling and buying somewhere in his ship, but he's never brought them out. Maybe he just had a sharp memory. "It's very consistent," Sarah insisted, trying to appeal to his affinity for a stable and predictable exchange, "one pound of fruit today is the same as one pound of fruit tomorrow, and you can deal in fractions." Completely ignoring that most fruits are seasonal, and price changes, and inflation, she thought, let's start here. "Fractions, you say?" Zikzik seemed thoughtful, or maybe he's just scratching an itch on his snout, Sarah could never tell with these aliens. "Yes, fractions," said Jen detecting the slightest bit of opening, "you can trade your air filters for credit. Then you can trade maybe three quarters of your credits to fill your cargo with fruit. The next time you come down here to Earth, you would only need to bring half the amount of air filters as the first trip, combined with the credits you have left, you can leave with a full cargo load anyway!" Is that how that math goes, Sarah thought, but didn't cut in, as Zikzik seems to be nodding, an oddly universal gesture for affirmation. "Five eighths of the credits," Zikzik argued, "The air filters are harder to get now because the Bohor are running low, and they need time to make more." Bargaining! There we go! That's what we're talking about! Sarah almost pumped her fists in the air and gave him a high five, not a great idea given how sharp his claws are as she found out when trying to shake his hands a couple of weeks ago. "Ok, you would still have to negotiate that amount with each human trader," Sarah replied adding, "but they all deal in Galactic Credits." They signed him up for an account, gave him a card, and set up his pin code. It had only taken half an hour to get Zikzik on board, which was significantly faster than the hours they'd taken to explain this to Zarko, despite them being the same species. Was it xenocist that she'd assume it was going to take just as long, Sarah wondered. Looking at the line of traders, she sighed. This was going to be a long day. Luckily, Zikzik accepting the credits made for great advertising. He was known for being a sharp trader, so if he doesn't think it's a scam, it must not be, right? Sarah and Jen managed to get two other traders that day onto credits, and one more who was dipping his proverbial toes into the water. It was a good day. Jen had been working hard. The Galactic Credits website was now on its 16th major iteration. She'd beefed up the security on it, to make sure none of the other human traders got any funny ideas. Backups became more automatic and frequent, and there was now a rollback and dispute mechanism, not that it was being used yet. Sarah had also been working hard. She'd been sitting in meetings all day with legal, finances, and now they had a small army of people who were ready to help out if they got into trouble there. Galactic Credits is now officially a tax paying LLC incorporated in the great state of Delaware. Benny Jr, who had just finished college, had come in as well. He was no good at talking to clients, but he's what the duo would refer to as "street smart". Occasionally, the alien traders would bring in some exotic or ahem, dubiously sourced items, and he would know exactly where to convert that into cold hard cash. On the spreadsheets, his dealings were adding up to a nice fat padding on the margins for Galactic Credits, which to this point, hasn't been making any money other than in the fruit and air filters exchange business. They were now working out of a rented office in downtown Livermore, with a very nice view of a brick-lined pub that offers numerous craft beers and the old railroad that runs through the heart of town. Ironically, there's a Bank of America branch across the street, not far from the office itself, the company that had invented the BankAmericard and started the credit card revolution, seemingly oblivious to this new competitor moving into town, literally and figuratively. They had many brilliant finance experts who were working on something, surely, but established financial institutions are not always great at moving fast and adapting to changing technology. There were many regulations to worry about, and the stakes were a lot higher. There's something very quaint about the town itself. Some people didn't consider it part of the Bay Area metro area itself, but with the latest BART expansion station they recently built, that's been less and less true. Now, it was literally the town where the train tracks ended. And where the final frontier began. For the people in the office, it's also where they dreamt about a new financial revolution in the galaxy. Some people have critiqued this chapter on the grounds that established financial institutions would have thought of this idea on day one. I appreciate the feedback, but that is a rosy view of the velocity at corporations in my opinion. I've personally worked in some of these companies, and if someone brought up this idea, it would probably have taken at least a month to get the idea through various risk audits and legal reviews. In terms of technology, much of banking still operates on software that predates the modern Internet. This is one of the reasons why fin-tech startups have been able to beat them on time-to-market, despite massive institutional or financial disadvantages. It's why companies like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Venmo… etc could compete with the incumbents with the development of the Internet. Sure, an intern in engineering or tools would have a semi-working prototype by week three, but the first line of code would be pushed to production by… month three. A much more likely scenario: some startup beats them to the punch, exactly as it happens here, and the large company offers their founders or investors an obscene amount of money to buy them out. RoyalRoad First Next
Review of Martin Scorsese’s 1995 Casino [A mob movie that has many actors that will go on to be in the Sopranos].
mods please lmk if this violates the rules. i’m posting here because I write about the mob/casino and many relevant themes that are important elements of the Sopranos, in my opinion. I think they’re of the same medium and genre so wanted to post here. Hope that’s alright. Cheers! (11 min read) ———————————————————————— EDIT 2: TL;DR - Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor. ———————- Every good filmmaker makes the same movie over and over again—Martin Scorsese is no different Scorsese's Casino is a phenomenal story of the condoned chaos and "legalized robbery" that happens on a daily basis to gamblers who bett away thousands of dollars and return each day for more “FinDom,” but without any of the sexual sadism. The whole scam only persists because the house always wins: the odds are stacked 3 million to one on the slot machines, but the same shmucks return wide-eyed each day hoping for a different outcome, devoid of any rational re-evaluation required to maintain their grasp on reality, and the liquidity of their bank accounts. Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor. Robert De Niro plays Sam "Ace" Rothstein, recruited by his childhood friend Nick "Nicky" Santorno to help run the Tangiers casino, which is funded by an investment made with the Teamsters’ pension fund. Ace’s job is to keep the bottom line flowing so that the Mafia's skimming operation can continue seamlessly. De Niro's character felt like half-way between Travis from Taxi Driver (of course, nowhere as mentally disturbed) and half of the addictive excess, greed, and eccentric business-mind of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Ace’s attention to detail gives him a rain-man-esque sensibility; his ability to see every scam, trick, hand signal, and maneuver happening on the casino floor make him the perfect manager of the casino, and take his managerial style to authoritarian heights in his pursuit of order and control over what is an inherently unstable and dynamic scheme; betting, hedging outcomes, and walking the line to keep the money flowing and the gamblers coming back. I’m not claiming Ace is autistic, I'm no clinician, but his managerial sensibilities over the daily operations of the casino, from the dealers to the pit bosses, to the shift managers, are to the point of disturbing precision, he has eyes everywhere, and knows how to remove belligerent customers with class and professionalism, but ultimately is short sighted in “reading” the human beings he is in relationship with. Ace is frustratingly naive and gullible in his partnership with Nicky and the threat he poses to him, and in his marriage with Ginger. Ace has no personal aspirations to extract millions of dollars for himself out of the casino corruption venture. Ace simply wants the casino to operate as efficiently as possible, and he has no qualms about being a pawn of the bosses. While Sam, “the Golden Jew”—as he is called—is the real CEO of the whole enterprise, directing things at Tangiers for the benefit of the bosses “back home.” Ace’s compliance is juxtaposed with Nicky’s outrage upon feeling used: he gripes about how he is in “the trenches” while the bosses sit back and do nothing. Note that none of the activity Nicky engages in outside of the casino—doing the work of “taking Las Vegas over”—is authorized by the bosses. Ultimately Nicky’s inability to exert control over his crew and the street lead to his demise. In the end, capitalism, and all that happens in the confines of the casino, is nothing but “organized violence.” Sound familiar? The mob has a capitalist structure in its organization and hierarchy: muscle men collect and send money back to the bosses who do not labor tirelessly “in the trenches.” The labor of the collectors is exploited to create the profits of their bosses. The entire business-model of the Mafia is predicated on usury and debtors defaulting on loans for which the repayment is only guaranteed by the threat of violence. But this dynamic is not without its internal contradictions and tensions, as seen in Casino. In a comedic turn, the skimmers get skimmed! The bosses begin to notice the thinning of the envelopes and lighter and lighter suitcases being brought from the casino to Kansas City, “back home”. The situation continues to spin out of control, but a mid-tier mafioso articulates the careful balance required for the skimming operation to carry on: to keep the skimming operation functioning, the skimmers need to be kept loyal and happy. It’s a price the bosses have to pay to maintain the operation, “leakage” in their terms. Ace’s efficient management and precision in maintaining order within Tangiers is crucial for the money to keep flowing. But Ace’s control over the casino slips more and more as the movie progresses. We see this as the direct result of Nicky’s ascendance as mob kingpin in Vegas, the chaos he creates cannot be contained and disrupts the profits and delicate dynamics that keep the scam running. Of course I can’t help myself here! We should view Scorsese’s discography, and the many portrayals of capitalist excess not as celebratory fetishization, but a critique of the greed and violence he so masterfully captures on film. See the Wolf of Wall Street for its tale of money as the most dangerous drug of them all, and the alienation—social and political—showcased in Taxi Driver. Scorsese uses the mob as a foil to the casino to attack the supposed monopoly the casino holds on legitimate, legal economic activity that rests on institutionalized theft. When juxtaposed with the logic of organized crime, we begin to see that the two—Ace and Nick—are not so different after all. The only dividing line between the casino and organized crime is the law. Vegas is a lawless town yes, “the Wild West” as Nicky puts it, but there are laws in Vegas. The corruption of the political establishment and ruling elites is demonstrated when they pressure Ace to re-hire an incompetent employee who he fired for his complicity in a cheating scam or his stupidity in letting the slot machines get rigged; nepotism breeds mediocrity. In the end, Ace’s fall is the result of the rent-seeking behavior that the Vegas ruling class wields to influence the gaming board to not even permit Ace a fair hearing for his gaming license, which would’ve given him the lawful authority to officially run Tangiers. The elites use the political apparatus of the State to resist the new gang in town, the warring faction of mob-affiliated casino capitalists. While the mob’s only weapon to employ is that of violence. The mafia is still subservient to the powers that be within the political and economic establishment of Vegas, and they’re told “this is not your town.” I’d like to make the most salient claim of this entire review now. Casino is a western film. The frontier of the Wild West is Vegas in this case, where the disorder of the mob wreaks havoc on, an until then, an “untapped market.” The investment scheme that the Teamsters pension fund is exploited for as seed capital, is an attempt to remain in the confines of the law while extracting as much value as possible through illegal and corrupt means for the capitalist class of the mob (and the ultimately dispensable union president). Tangiers exists in the liminal space of condoned economic activity as a legal and otherwise standard casino. While the violence required to maintain the operation, corrupts the legal legitimacy it never fully enjoyed from the beginning. This mirrors the bounty economy of the West and the out-sourcing of the law and the execution of the law, to bounty hunters. There is no real authority out in the frontier, the killer outlaw on the run is not so different from the bounty hunter who enjoys his livelihood by hunting down the killers. Yet, he himself is not the State. The wide-lens frame of Ace and Nicky meeting in the desert felt like a direct homage to the iconic image of the Western standoff. The conflict between Ace and Nick, the enforcer and the mastermind, is an approximation of the conflicts we might see in John Wayne’s films. The casino venture itself could be seen as an analogy of the frontier-venturism of railroad pioneers going to lay track to develop the West into a more industrial region. I would have believed that this was a documentary about how the mob took over control of the Vegas casinos in the 1970-80s … if it were not for the viewer being expected to believe that Robert De Niro could play a Jew; it's hard to believe a man with that accent and the roles he’s played his entire career could be a “CRAZY JEW FUCK!!” I kid! But alas, De Niro is a class act and the last of the many greats of a bygone era. At times, it felt like Joe Pesci lacked talent as an actor, but his portrayal of the scummy, backstabbing bastard in Nicky was genuinely remarkable, but I might consider his performance the weak point of the movie. It’s weird to see a man that short, be that much of physical menace. There are a number of Sopranos actors in Casino. I’m sure Vincent Chase watched the movie and said to himself, “bet, i’ll cast half of these guys.”The set design and costumes were gorgeous. The styles and fashion of the time were spectacular. Scorsese’s signature gratuitous violence featured prominently, but tastefully. The camera work, tracking shots through the casino and spatial movement was incredible and I thought the cinematography was outstanding, the Western-esque wide lens in the desert was worthy of being a framed still. The Nicky//Ace dynamic is excellent and the two play off of each other well. The conflict between the two of them escalates gradually, and then Nicky’s betrayal of Ace by cheating with Ginger marks the final break between the two of them. Nicky’s mob faculties represent a brutal, violent theft that is illegal and requires the enforcement of violence by organized crime. Despite the illegal embezzlement and corruption at play with the “skimming” operation at work at the casino, the general business model of the casino stands in contrast to the obscene violence of the loan sharks. Ace operates an intelligent operation of theft through the casino, and his hands-on management approach is instrumental to the success of the casino. Nicky’s chaos pervades the casino, and the life and activities of “the street” begin to bleed into Ace’s ability to maintain order in the casino. “Connected” types begin frequenting the casino, and Ace unknowingly forces one particularly rude gambler to leave the casino, who happens to have mob ties with Nicky. The “organized violence” of the casino cannot stay intact perfectly, because the very thing holding it together is the presence of the mob. Nicky is in Vegas as the enforcer and tasked with protecting Ace but his independent, entrepreneurial (shall we call them?) aspirations lead him to attempt to overtake what he realizes is a frontier for organized crime to brutalize and exploit the characters of “the street” (pimps, players, addicts, dealers, and prostitutes) and the owners of small private businesses. Nicky is reckless, “when i plant my flag out here you won’t need your [casino/gaming] license” Nicky thinks he, and Ace, can bypass the regulations and bureaucratic legal measures by sheer force of violence alone. But ultimately Nicky is shortsighted and doesn’t have a real attachment to the success of the casino. After all, he isn’t getting profits from it (or much anyway) and isn’t permitted to play a real, active role in its daily functions because of his belligerent, untamed personality. Nicky has no buy-in that would motivate him to follow the rules or to work within the legal parts of the economy, it’s not the game he knows how to play, and win. All that he is loyal to, or deferent too, is the bosses back home; for whom he maintains absolute, uncompromising loyalty to, but still holds intense spite for. And now to the more compelling element of the narrative. Sam “Ace” Rothstein is positioned as remarkably intelligent, he makes informed decisions that aid in his skill as a gambler, he can read people to determine whether he’s being conned, he has an attention to detail—aided by the casino’s surveillance apparatus which monitors cheating—that is almost unbelievable. Ace knows when he’s being cheated, he knows how to rig the game so that the house always wins, enacting psychological warfare to break down the confidence of would be proficient gamblers, who could threaten Tangiers’ bottom line. But in the end, the greatest gamble Ace makes is his marriage to Ginger. Ginger is the seductive, charismatic, and flirtatious madame who makes her money with tricks and her sexual power. Ginger works as a prostitute, seducing men, and extracting everything she can, almost as a sort of sexual-financial vampirism. Ginger is the bad bet Ace can’t stop making even when she destroys his life, her own, and puts their daughter Amy in harm’s way. Ginger is the gamble Ace made wrong, but he keeps going back to her every time, trying to rationalize how she might change and be different the next time. Ace is not a victim to Ginger’s antics. Ginger makes it clear who she is: an addict, alcoholic, manic shopaholic who will use all of her powers to extract everything she can from everyone around her. She uses everyone to her advantage and manipulates men with her sexual power in exchange for their money and protection. Ginger had a price for her hand in marriage: $1 million in cash and $1 million worth of jewelry that are left to her and her alone as a sort of emergency fund. Ace’s numerous attempts to buy Ginger’s love—and the clear fact that no matter how expensive the fur coat and how grand the mansion, none of it would ever be enough to satisfy her—mirrored Jordan Belfort’s relationship with Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street. Both relationships carried the same manic volatility and conflict over child custody was found in both films, with the roles reversed in the respective films. Ginger may be irredeemable and a pathological liar, but Ace can’t claim that she wasn’t clear with him; when he asked her to marry him, Ginger said she didn’t love Ace. Ace replied that love could be “developed” but required a foundation of trust to develop. That trust was never there to begin with. The love was doomed from the start to destroy the two of them; two addicts, two gamblers, lying on a daily basis to one another and themselves about reality to justify their respective existences, the marriage, and Ace’s livelihood. And as Ginger pointed out, “I should have never married him. He’s a gemini, a triple gemini … a snake” Maybe astrology has some truth to it after all. Now I’m not licensed (but hey neither was Ace, and he ran a casino empire!), but Ginger has the inklings of a borderline personality: her manic depression, narcissism, drug and alcohol abuse, and constant begging for forgiveness all seem indications of a larger psychological disorder at play. In the end, Ginger runs away with all the money Ace left her and finds her people in Los Angeles, the pimps, whores, and addicts she fits in with, in turn exploit and kill her for 3 grand in mint coins by giving her a ‘hot’ dose. Overall, Casino is an incredible cinematic experience. I highly recommend watching this and seeing it as part of Scorsese's anthology of commentary on our economic system and its human victims. I’d argue that Casino, Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman all fit together nicely into a trilogy of the Scorsesean history of finance and corruption from the 70s to the 90s. ————- EDIT 2: TL;DR — Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.
I thought I would share my methodology for choosing SPACs for people starting out. Note that I am not endorsing any of the SPACs I mention here; the point of this article to help YOU find SPACs that YOU believe in. How I Use SPACs My goal with SPACs is to park cash in the current low interest rate environment and beat the performance of short-term treasuries over time (where my cash would normally be parked). I usually invest in SPACs near NAV, so if I need to pull out cash, my losses will be limited or non-existent. If the SPAC announces a target and I do not like the company, I immediately sell the position and reinvest with the next SPAC on my list. The upside of investing in SPACs is the opportunity to get in early on a top-class company (rare) going public. If you are using this strategy to invest in SPACs and to hold your cash, then it is better to diversify your holdings, so if you need to sell a position to raise cash, you will not be overly exposed to one SPAC falling precipitously for whatever reason. For reference, I hold 10 SPACs. Before researching, it helps to have a general idea on what areas you want to focus on (e.g., entertainment, technology, EV’s, healthcare). How to Research SPACs These are the three things I focus on when researching a SPACs strategy and management team: · Strong, relevant operational experience. Operational experience will not only imply good network connections in the specific industry, but it will lead to better management post-merger. Having operational experience helps convince a prospective company to jump on board with the SPAC sponsors, since it implies the SPAC sponsors will have relevant knowledge and advice to help a business improve vs purely giving generic management consulting advice. Examples: LEAP, RTP, ACND, RBAC, QELL, VGAC, etc. · Well-rounded management with extensive applicable M&A experience implying an extensive network of contacts. Wall Street and Silicon Valley are both incestuous and that is why it is good to target management teams with at least one person that ostensibly has extensive contacts in the investment industry. This will help not only in getting a merger done but can also help any time after the merger is announced or completed, as that person(s) can use his/her group of contacts to make future mergers or get additional funding. Examples: PSTH, AGCU, PACE, APSG, etc. · SPAC-related deal making experience. If management has led a successful SPAC merger before, the odds of it happening again are high because they are familiar with the process. This can also be a negative if it looks like the sponsor is churning companies for monetary gain, thus some research is important. Examples: FIII, PRPB, CCIV, WPF, GRSV, IPOD-F, etc. I notably left out university background, because schooling in itself tells us nothing. My prime focus is on business success, not schooling. Some of the sharpest and most successful business leaders did not go to the “top” schools. The main advantage of universities, especially business schools, is expanding networks, and if the university compliments later work experience, then that helps in supporting a positive outlook. SPAC Research Steps These are the steps I would recommend to start your research:
Start with spactrack.net
This wonderful website is without question the best place to start your search for SPACs nowadays. If you are looking for SPACs without announced targets, you can filter by “Searching.” Virtually every column in the table is useful, but if you are new, you can focus on “Target Focus” and “Prominent Leadership.” “Underwriter(s)” can also be telling, because big name investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, UBS, JP Morgan, Jefferies, Barclays, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs will usually be involved with credible management teams. Wall Street has a better handle than most on who is reputable. 2) For the SPACs you are interested in, click on the SEC Filings links, or google the SEC filings. Review the S-1 document. At a bare minimum you should read the “Summary” section of the S-1 to get an idea of what the SPACs mission is and what could make the SPAC unique directly from the mouth of the sponsors. Reading the Summary will not take long and is one of the best windows into seeing whether the SPAC sponsors are aligned with what you are searching for. There will usually be a section on the management of the SPAC and what makes their experience applicable and useful to a facilitating a successful merger with a great company. I am focusing on management teams, but it’s usually a good idea to review the subsections about Dilution, Principal Shareholders, and Description of Securities to get an idea of how many warrants there are, the potential impact to the share price in the future due to dilution, how warrants will be redeemed, etc., but a lot of this is repetitive between SPACs and people on this sub usually do a good job of identifying when something is “different” (e.g., with PSTH and LEAP). 3) Review the SPAC website. Spactrack.net does not always have the website, but a quick Google search can get what you want. If there is no website for the SPAC, search the capital firm that is sponsoring the SPAC and see if it has a website. These websites give more descriptions on the firms’ mission and the background of their management. 4) Do google searches of the individual members of management and look the teams up on LinkedIn. Researching the team’s background might expose you to something the S-1 or SPAC websites did not cover. You might find every member of management spent the first five years of their career in management consulting and none of the members have applicable operations experience. Or you might find that one of the directors has extensive M&A experience while another has extensive, focused operational experience in the area of interest the SPAC is targeting, yielding some useful synergies between the team members. 5) Review relevant news articles about the SPAC via a Google search. Most SPACs have a short article on Barrons, spacinsider.com, reuters, businesswire, and renaissancecapital that can be quickly skimmed. They do not always write the same thing, and you can pick up something useful from one of these sites. Other research that some claim is useful: · Review websites that shed light on who is acquiring shares (e.g., hedge funds, retail, institutions). Personally, I find this information ambiguous. · Review trading volume using yahoo finance, or your broker’s volume/price tracker. Goal of Research With everything, you are trying to craft a story on why you think a management team is qualified to find a company you believe in (or that will be popular), and each piece of information will add clarity to that story. Plus, all this information is free. The people on this sub, or any social media site are going to be biased to what they are invested in, so you should use your own judgement. Personally, I only want to park my money with people I believe are credible, and with teams who have a business objective that aligns with a focus area I want to be a part of. My biggest position is in PSTH because Ackman seems to be using SPACs as a vehicle to bolster his industry reputation vs monetary gain which means he care more about long-term performance, which cannot be said for all these SPAC sponsors. There are other examples of management teams I believe are primarily using SPACs to bolster their reputations, but I am speculating based on my research. Disclaimer Reasons to take all of this with a grain of salt:
The market is a casino
Some SPAC teams like VTIQ (NKLA) and SHLL (HYLN) did not have great management in my opinion, but found companies that were well received by the retail market
Sometimes a management team takes a complete left turn to what is described in their S-1; prominent recent examples include IPOC, NOVS, and most of the SPACs that shifted to EV-related companies
Current market conditions are leading to higher company valuations that imply limited upside even for great companies without continuously perfect operational success (e.g., over several quarters or even years)
Because of the last point, I will probably shift my cash out of SPACs and back to short-term treasury funds after some time, as we start to see most SPACs stay near NAV post-merger announcement. For now, I use my engagement in the SPAC world to keep track of new companies worth cursorily monitoring for the next couple of years. TL;DR summary: go to spactrack.net, read S-1’s and do simple google searches to find SPACs you believe in
Not Financial Advice (NFA) Warning: Wall of Text. If you hate reading just skim through the bolded/italicized Ever since I publicized my findings on DKNG, the stock has underperformed & probably has fucked a lot of people here, especially given the overly bullish stance back in June. Unless you took my advice & got into Puts then, congrats, welcome to tendie town. For the ADHD retards, here’s what the next wall of text is going to summarize: I believe at the current price of ~$30, the stock is oversold. A tech-focused, high-growth Company that has made sports betting easy to understand with an aesthetically pleasing interface similar to how Robinhood has neatly laid out stock market gimmicks so even high-schoolers can make sense of it I believe, is underpriced at these levels. Let’s get into some details as to why the stock has underperformed: First off, the news slate revolving sports with the rumored delay/cancellation of the MLB season & the NFL watching from the sidelines is in my view, just a part of why the stock has underperformed. We’ll revisit this later in this post, but I want to focus on the drivers of the stock’s recent underperformance, & why these factors are now in the rearview mirror. Part I – The Past Has Passed – SPAC-related Equity Dilution History lesson first: DKNG went public via a SPAC merger, which has exploded in popularity recently. Anyone serious about analyzing stocks going forward needs to do their homework on this, Google is your friend. A feature of most SPAC merger to public listings that creates a headwind to near-term share prices are embedded equity dilution events, usually in the form of earn-outs (stock bonuses to execs, the SPAC sponsor) & conversion of Warrants. On 5/24, the earn-outs were triggered, adding 6m shares to the share count. On 6/26, 16.3m warrants converted to DKNG, netting them ~$188m of cash. Stepping back a little, in addition to the above, on 6/18 DKNG launched a follow-on equity offering of 16M shares @ $40/Share [1], receiving $621M in proceeds. The last part is tricky to understand from a dilution perspective. To simplify, historically it’s almost a coin toss whether a Company’s shares outperform on the onset of an equity offering. While issuing shares does dilute the existing shareholder base, it theoretically shouldn’t, if the proceeds from the offering are earmarked for investments/projects that yield outsized returns. This is the reality for the long term, theory for the short-term. For the short-term, the ‘reality’ isn’t that the proceeds will be used for investments/projects that yield outsized returns, it is more about how convincing management is to investors that the investments they intend to pursue with the proceeds will outweigh the dilutive effects of issuing incremental shares. That’s a mouthful, but hopefully you get what I’m trying to convey. All of this stuff put together – the Company has increased its share count by ~39M, but now has a whopping ~$1.4Bn of cash [2]. More on this in the next section. Part II – MLB News Should Not Fucking Matter & DKNG Is Positioned As the Leading Online/Mobile Sports Platform DKNG should not be so tied to MLB news or any of this shit as the ongoing success of the NBA/NHL season + Soccer in Europe has effectively created a blueprint on how to regulate player behavior so that they maintain professionalism amidst the pandemic. I’m going out on a whim here, but I truly think the MLB threatening a cancellation of the season is pure posturing to get these fuckers to behave appropriately. Maybe a ‘bubble’ is what it takes to get these players to focus on their jobs instead of going out & contracting COVID, but I argue that isn’t necessarily required given Soccer in Europe. So there’s already a proven path here without the need for a bubble in Soccer, so MLB/NFL should be fine, and execs need to study how they got it done in Europe. Okay, back to some facts. Anecdotally, I’ve kept in touch with a handful of sports bookies from California to New York & even internationally about what they’re seeing – all of them say that since the NBA season started on 7/30 & since Soccer (especially the Premier League) resumed in June, along with other leagues like La Liga & Serie A, they’ve seen massive increases in betting. These numbers are also showing up in the official data [3]:
Average % increase in sports betting handle from April 2020 to June 2020 (handle is the total $ wagered in sports bets) from the states that reported up to June 2020 (NJ, PA, MS, RI, WV, IA, IN, NH) of +258%!
Note: NV is left out due to the site I sourced showing a weirdly negative number – so I dug into the official filings & show specifically, Sports Mobile betting growth from June since April has growing by at least +73% [4]
REMEMBER: This is for June only! No NBA, No NHL, No MLB, just Soccer, Golf, NASCAR & UFC. The data clearly shows that there was a ton of pent-up sports betting demand, which leads one Wall St. analyst to think that betting on the NBA/NHL could ABSORB the MLB’s sports betting handle (handle = total $ size of sports bet) [5]. Remember, the MLB season is still ongoing, with games being played. The entire focus is on the Miami Marlins & St. Louis Cardinals. Fucking retards. Additionally, I want to remind everyone that DraftKings.com is the #1 Fantasy sports website in the U.S. [6]. Also, since April 2020 site visitations are up +86% [7] & Google Search Trends for “Draft Kings” is up ~3xcompared to PRE-COVID levels [8]. What does this mean? They are piquing more people’s curiosity than prior to COVID/ongoing slate of sports. This is important because remember that ~$1.4Bn chest full of cash I mentioned DKNG had assembled earlier? Well, that money is being put to work & results are already coming in, which is exactly what DKNG intended to do with it. Part III – Legalization of Sports Betting in the U.S. I could write a fucking bible on this topic alone, but for now we’ll stick to some basics. Due to COVID, it’s easy to understand that each State’s financial situation is clearly in shit. Because of this, you better believe that these guys are going to start taking a hard look at how they can extract additional tax revenues, & what’s one of the easiest ways to do this? Legalization & taxation of gambling. The big players: CA, TX, FL & NY. First, CA pushing its legislation out to 2023 was fucked up, but here’s a twist I want to add to this: Anything that has to do with gambling in CA you better believe is lobbied against by not just the Tribal casino owners in CA, but by the deep pockets of Las Vegas money. Similar thing can be said for FL, but let’s take a look at some actions by LV/nationwide gambling companies that are starting to align financial incentives with guys like DKNG.
MGM / GVC Holdings JV in BetMGM - $450m total invested
PENN invests $163m into BS Sports
Caesars has a 20% stake in William Hill plus partnership deals with The Stars Group (TSG) & our winner DKNG for operating its sports books
So it’s safe to say going forward, nationwide legalization of sports betting will reap rewards for everyone involved, & no longer be something LV money is completely focused on safeguarding. Let’s also not forget that DKNG didn’t become the Company they are today because of their fancy app, but because their management team has a HISTORY of navigating the U.S.’s legal framework to get what they want out of it.
The Crown Jewel – The Internet Gambling Prohibition & Enforcement Act: I said it in a previous post, but I want to emphasize that them getting Fantasy Sports to be labeled a ‘game of skill’ by FEDERAL Law as opposed to gambling is just something for the history books. Fucking genius shit. When this happened I bet every casino from LV to every Indian Tribe that has one was against it, yet DKNG & other DFS providers won.
There’s more, but more recently: Getting into IL:
In IL, there’s an 18-month ‘penalty box’ for Companies that offer DFS to offer sports betting. Our guys at DKNG created a workaround to this situation with their partnership with Casino Queen [9]. DKNG being savvy again.
If You See Graffiti Reading "FOR A GOOD TIME CALL:", follow this "Rule of the Road"...
The following contains a transcript from a short radio broadcast that has been picked up by various listeners across the continental United States. Many have been perplexed by its sudden appearance and how it seems to preempt whatever song or radio program they are listening to at the time. It has even been known to appear on streaming programs such as podcasts or Spotify. Listeners have described hearing different episodes and there have been many situations and incidents. A 23 year old college student named Yuvisela contacted me with her account of hearing the broadcast. She and her boyfriend had encountered the broadcast while driving one sultry summer afternoon from Austin, TX. So I have this thing with waterfalls. I’m a little obsessed with them. In my free time and when I’m not paying attention in lecture, I like to look on the internet at pictures of them and daydream that I’m there: the roar of the splashing water, the white foamy spray, my bare toes dipped into the icy spring. I’ve got a Pinterest page with hundreds of falls that I would like to visit one day. Niagara, Havasu, Victoria Falls, Gullfoss, Iguazu; they’re all on there. I keep them all catalogued for my bucket list. Yet, how many people go to the grave with their bucket list hardly finished? I bet a lot. My boyfriend, Gabriel, likes to mess with me about my obsession. He’ll come up behind me while I’m on my computer or look over my shoulder at my phone and see that I’m looking at waterfalls. “Don’t go chasing waterfalls, stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to,” he’ll sing when he catches me. It’s this old song he knows, TLC or something. He’s about six years older than me. I’ll joke with him to leave me alone and quit singing that old music, ask him if he used to listen to that on an 8-track or something. “No, my older sister listened to it on CD. You know CD’s? Those little plastic things with the holes in them? That little slot in your car’s stereo, a CD goes in there. They don’t make ‘em in the new cars anymore.” We’ve had a variation of this same conversation a bunch of times. It’s kind of a running joke between the two of us—him poking fun at my waterfall obsession and me making fun of how old he is—and while he thinks the waterfall thing is a cute little quirk of mine, he also has been supportive of my passion. That’s why he surprised me with the trip that summer. He knew that I was yearning to see some of these places. He knew that he wanted to make me happy. He knew that my resources were limited. He knew that we weren’t getting any younger; I was 23 and still had a semester to go. But he also knew that we weren’t getting any richer, either. At least not anytime soon. I know I’m a little bit older for a college student, but it’s taken me a bit longer on account of having to work and stuff. I can’t take a full load every semester. Money’s always tight. I work full time and barely stay ahead, even sending some of my money to help my mom out. Gabriel offered to help me out some and we’d even talked about moving in together, but we had only been together a year at that point and I wasn’t quite ready. Before my dad had passed, I’d promised him that I was going to get my college degree and I wanted to do it all on my own. While I loved Gabriel and could see myself marrying him, I didn’t want to deal with a transition like that so close to the finish line. Besides, we were getting along so well as it was. Why mess with a good thing? And it was a good thing that kept better. Just when I thought that I couldn’t love Gabriel more, on my birthday he surprised me with the best present I’ve ever gotten. It was a little black notebook with this kind of leathery cover. While the notebook itself was nice, it was what was inside that was the true present. At some point, he had gone onto my Pinterest page and written down page after page of waterfalls, organizing them by country and state. He had put little squares beside them, boxes to check off. The last two pages were Texas and Oklahoma. He had written a note there. It read:
“Let’s start now...” -Gabriel
* * * So far, the trip had been a blast. We had started out in Abilene where we both lived and where I attended college. From there, we went to a place called Gorman Falls at this state park. It was one of the tallest waterfalls in the state and all of the foliage and moss around it was lush and green and for a while, if I crossed my eyes just right it was like I wasn’t even in Texas. We couldn’t hit all the sites in a day. It was a road trip with multiple nights in hotels. After Gorman Falls and staying at a hotel, we headed towards Austin and stopped off at Hamilton Pool Preserve. The waterfall wasn’t as tall as Gorman, but I have to say I liked it better. The water formed a curtain as it poured off of a rocky shelf and into this sunken grotto of blue green water. We stayed at this magical place for hours, swimming in the water and soaking up the sun. I could’ve stayed longer, but it was starting to get crowded, so we headed to Austin for a night on the town on 6th Street. The next day we slept in and got a late start on the road. Lunch was at a Whataburger outside Waco. We sat and ate our food and looked at our phones. I browsed Instagram and my eyes skimmed over a gorgeous site. Yep, another waterfall. I slid my phone over to Gabriel. “Look!” I said. “Am I supposed to be looking at the butt or the waterfall?” he asked. An Instagram model was standing with her back to the camera, looking up at the water in awe. “The waterfall, silly.” “Seriously, that skinny white girl ain’t got nothing on you. Better let me take a look, just to be sure.” I stood and twirled around quickly, teasing him. “Ok, so back to the waterfall. Did you look at it?” “Yeah, it’s beautiful babe. Where was this one?” “Iceland,” I sighed. “Oh, right.” “It’s not looking good for the time being. Maybe in a few years, yeah?” “Just gotta see how the election goes. I ain’t holding my breath.” See, neither of us were U.S. citizens. We were what you call DACA recipients. Both of us had wound up in America via illegal means on behalf of our parents, back when we were kids. This was when we were too young to have any say in the matter. I can hardly remember my life before, my life back in Mexico. I grew up here, went to school here. Texas and America is the only home I’ve ever known. Gabriel, he was originally from Guatemala. His situation is more or less the same. If we were to leave the country, then we might risk not being able to get back in. You could apply for eligibility to travel if you had special circumstances, but they didn’t allow travel for leisure. We didn’t even have passports. Until then, our dreams of traveling—something we both wanted to do—were just that: dreams. There was a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Obama and that DREAM act, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. You know, the dreamers or whatever? That’s what they call us. I guess they call it that because it’s just a freaking fantasy that disappears at the slightest thing—the sunrise, your phone alarm—out of your grasp as soon as you start your day. Anyways, I applied for the DREAM act, but it hasn’t been a guarantee. We’re all stuck in a sort of limbo, waiting for the people in Washington to figure out what the hell to do with us, using us as a bargaining chip. Not Gabriel though, he didn’t apply for the act. Part of it was that he was bad about procrastinating. The other part was that he was paranoid about signing up. I told him that he was an idiot and if he blew his chance to become a legal permanent resident, then I wouldn’t follow him to Guatemala if he got deported. He told me that he didn’t trust the program, that once they had you in the system they could track you easier, keep tabs on you. Said he knew a guy that got deported this way. I told him that the guy must’ve gotten into some legal trouble, a DUI or something, to have been deported. “We’re all just one slip up from some legal trouble. Hell, some people consider us illegal right now,” he had said. It was hard to argue against that, I guess. At least he knew where he stood, didn’t have that false hope. Sometimes I think it’s the hope that gets you, makes things worse. Gabriel frowned and handed the phone back to me, looked out the window and took a sip of his Coke. I suddenly felt bad and ungrateful. Here was this amazing man that had planned out an awesome road trip just for me and I was busy looking at other far off adventures, not appreciating what I had right in front of me, the moment I was living in right now. I leaned forward and kissed him. "I don't care where I'm at as long as you're with me," I said and he smiled. What I told him just then, it was true. That didn’t mean I was going to grow complacent and quit dreaming. They did call us dreamers after all. It was one of those giant truck stops, the kind that was a little smaller than a Wal-Mart or Target, but just barely. We filled up and paced around inside and looked at the aisles and aisles of candy, the funny toys and souvenirs, and the tacky t-shirts. “Hey Yuvi, whaddaya say? It’s your size.” Gabriel asked, holding up a black t-shirt with glittery letters. “PROUD TRUCKER WIFE” it read. “Only if you get that one,” I said, pointing at a T-shirt with a semi-truck on it that read “I JUST DROPPED A LOAD”. “Eww,” Gabriel said, laughing. We both wandered around on our own. They had a huge candy section and I was looking to see if they had any vero elotes candy. I had just found a bag on a bottom shelf when Gabriel came skipping up. “We are so getting this,” he said, holding up a plastic CD case. “What is it?” “Best of the ‘90s. It’s got your song on there, see? ‘Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls.’ Can we get it? It’s only 3.99.” “Ha, ok. But only if you buy me this,” I said, handing him the candy. There was traffic from hell just south of Denton on account of construction and a car wreck or two. We were stop-and-go for what seemed like an hour. I was passenger side and Gabriel idled along. “Ok. I think now’s the time to break out this bad boy,” Gabriel said as he started tearing at the plastic wrap around the CD case. “I think this is the first time I’ve even used the CD player in this car.” “Aw hell yeah,” Gabriel said as the first song started playing. “Gettin’ Jiggy With It.” “Getting what, now?” “It’s your boy, Will Smith. Y’know the Fresh Prince? Betcha didn’t know he had a little music career.” “That guy from I Am Legend and Aladdin?” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I guess. His older work is much better.” “Well I don’t know. You act like you're this old and wise millennial. You’re not that much older than me, y’know.” “I’m telling ya, my Gen-X sister raised me on all of this stuff. I think she was Gen-X. I don’t know the damn cutoffs. Anyways, she babysat me a lot growing up while Mama was working and stuff. She cultured my little ass. Ooh, here it is!” A new song started playing. I couldn’t help but laugh at how it started. “It sounds like porn music!” “Nah, shhhh. Shhh.” Gabriel bobbed his head along to the beat. The chorus started to worm it’s way into my head. The song was ok, I guess. I still can’t really listen to it to this day. “You gotta listen to this dope rap coming up,” Gabriel said. There was the sound of hissing and popping, wet logs burning in a fire. Whispers intermingled with the sound effects. One of the voices rose above the others and said “Listen!” harshly in Spanish, you know, “Escuchen! Escuchen!”, several times. We both looked at each other with wide eyes. The traffic crept forward slowly and Gabriel kept his hands on the wheel and I kept mine in my lap and that’s when he started to talk. It was this happy sounding older guy, talking right there on my car’s speakers. Gooood afternoon folks, Buck Hensley here with a special rush hour edition of “The Rules of the Road”. Hope ya’ll are doing alright out there while you’re idling on the clogged arteries of America’s highways and byways, breathing in those delicious exhaust fumes. I know that good ol’ Mother Earth likes to take a big fat rip of that stuff from time to time, although as of late she seems to be getting quite a contact high from that delicious Co2 and starting to feel the effects just a little too much. And yet you all keep puff-puffing and passing, never slowing down. What with your jet planes and your driving and your travel and your neverending consumption and your cow farts and whatnot. All I’m saying is that you folks might wanna slow down a bit on that stuff, because I’ve seen the end results and all I can say is that they are hilarious. But I understand if you wanna keep on keeping on and having a good time. All I can say is smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Speaking of good times, that reminds me of today’s special “Rule of the Road”. You’re gonna want to listen to this one as it’s all about good times. Why that was Carla’s favorite sitcom for a spell there, “Good Times”. She’d watch reruns on into the night, the TV casting a pale glow that was kinda comforting across the bed, and I’d wake up to live studio laughter and her snoring softly beside me, the serene look of slumber on her face and the years I’d wasted. Gabriel and I both looked at eachother. He shrugged and reached for the stereo. I shooed his hand away. I wanted to listen to it. The voice continued. But I digress...well now, on to today’s “Rule of the Road”. If at any point during your journey you stop off for a pitstop or a potty break and you enter a public restroom to do your business, take note of the writing on the stalls. You might notice some graffiti that reads, “For a Good Time, Call” and then a phone number listed after it. If you do notice this, then take the number down for later use. Whenever you are in dire need of a good time, then give that number a call. Now before you go off with a bee in your bonnet and tell me how you ain’t gonna call no sketchy phone number taken off a lady’s or men’s room wall, let me just tell you that this will be worth it. You can trust me. When has old Bucky ever let ya down? I know what you’re gonna say next though, you’re gonna say, “Buck, I don’t ever call no numbers on my phone. I’m deathly afraid of voices on the other line. If I can’t text and send little emojis and the like, then forget it. If I can’t use an app to order Thai food or a pizza, then I go hungry that night. I haven’t even made an appointment to a doctor since I’ve lived with my parents. What if since we can’t see each other’s faces we start talking at the same time and we talk over each other and then say, ‘oops sorry, no you go ahead’ and then we both say it again at the same time and then we both start trying to talk again and then get stuck in some sort of infinite loop?” And to that I say, “fair enough.” Don’t use the phone. The consequences of not following this rule are a little less dire than previous rules you may have heard. If you don’t follow this rule then you will simply miss out on a good time. That’s it. But you wouldn’t want to miss out on anything, would ya? Welp. That’s all I’ve got on this fine late afternoon. May the wind be always at your back, your picnic basket full of snacks, and your cheese ever be pepper jack. Ya’ll stay sane out there. Stay symbiotic. Stay lonely. I'm Buck Hensley and these are "The Rules of the Road". The voice instantly stopped and the song returned playing. Gabriel had a dumbfounded look on his face. "What the hell?" he said and tried to rewind the CD. "Umm, was that part of the song? Maybe a different version?" "No way," he said and kept rewinding and playing the song over. The little skit that we heard never returned. “Weird,” I said. “Beats the heck out of me.” “Maybe the CD is haunted. That was pretty spooky, y’know? That voice telling us to listen.” “Maybe it was like a hidden track or something. They used to put those on CD’s back in the day. And this CD was pretty cheap and has all these songs on it. Could’ve been like a pirated deal.” We weren’t really scared by the broadcast or whatever it was, just more confused. It was only looking back that we saw the importance of what we had heard and how from there our path seemed to be led a certain way.. At the time it was just this weird little thing, a funny little mystery that was forgettable for the time being. We crept along for a while without incident, the traffic slowly gaining momentum. The music on the CD played on as usual and we heard no extra voices. The songs played like they were supposed to. Everything was fine. Of course, outside of Gainesville, it hit me. I had been trying to ignore it and power through until we stopped for the night, but I had the sudden urge to pee. All that slow traffic and iced tea and a bottle of water must’ve caught up with me. This was intense. Usually I could hold it pretty good, but I had to get Gabriel to stop at the first exit we saw. It was this gas station kind of off by itself and it was all dingy and old and faded and didn’t look the cleanest. Gabriel parked and my lower stomach and bladder ached as soon as I stood up and got out of the car. I burst into the place and made a beeline towards the restroom, over in the corner past the ATM and the glass fridges down a hall with burnt out fluorescent lights. They were singles that you could lock, one for men and one for women. The floor was sticky and paper towels piled out of a trash can and a strip of toilet paper floated in a pool of standing water. A condom dispensing machine was on the wall opposite the toilet. It wasn’t the worst public restroom I’d ever used and I didn’t have many options; I was literally about to piss myself. I would have to do the hover move over the toilet seat. No seat covers in a joint like this and I didn’t have time to prep it with toilet paper anything. So I was doing my business, my thighs burning from the squat, and kind of laughing to myself at the condom dispenser machine with its brands like the “FRENCH TICKLER” and that’s when I saw it, the graffiti written in Sharpie, right there on the vending machine. It said, “For A Good Time, Call 9xx-XXX-XXXX [Redacted]”. After I finished and had washed my hands, I snapped a pic of the graffiti. I figured Gabriel would get a kick out of it. “You’re supposed to call it. That’s the rule,” Gabriel said when I showed him. “I’m too nervous. You call. You heard it, too.” “Chicken.” “Yep.” “How many of those things do you even see? I’ve seen them all the time. I bet it’s just dudes pranking each other or fucking with their ex-girlfriends.” “Well I found it in the ladies room, so hopefully it wasn’t dudes.” “Okay, you enter it in your phone and I’ll dial. I’ll try to do a caller ID block or something. Let’s just see what happens.” “Are you sure?” “Eh come on. Maybe it’s fate.” The Texas travel center appeared on the southbound side of the interstate and we were soon crossing the Red River on into Oklahoma as I transcribed the numbers from the picture to the keypad on my dialer. A large casino came into view. It was ginormous with this sort of facade of all these famous buildings on its outside. I could see Big Ben and that Roman coliseum and all these other world architecture things. The casino just stretched on and on. “Aw, not again,” Gabriel said. I had just finished transposing the number into the phone. The crazy casino had distracted me. “What is it, babe?” “Another jam.” The traffic was veering into the right hand lane, but it was still moving at a decent clip, like 45 mph or something. After a mile of this, I could see a couple of highway patrol cars parked across the interstate, blocking both lanes of traffic. A state trooper stood out in the middle, waving a flashlight thing and directing traffic to take the exit. There was still about an hour of daylight left and you couldn’t even see the light. He was just using it as a baton. Somewhere off in the distance there was a thick wall of smoke filling the evening sky with this surreal haze. “Wonder what’s going on?” I asked. “Who knows? Grassfire, maybe.” We followed the other cars and trucks down the exit ramp. Some turned right, some turned left. “Right or left? Right or left?” Gabriel asked. There seemed to be more cars turning left. Maybe they knew something we didn’t. But then, we would be stuck behind them and it was getting dark and we were already behind schedule. I wanted to get the hell out of the car. “Um, right! Right,” I said, trying to pull up the GPS on my phone. It was lagging and my service had kicked over to 3G. “Freaking Verizon,” I muttered. We drove down a highway past empty fields fenced off by barbed wire. There were houses and barns and oilfield pump jacks every so often, but not much else. No gas stations or a sign of a town or much else, really. After driving into all this nothingness for a while, my phone completely lost all signal. The cars around us thinned out and there was only a black SUV in front of us. “Hey babe, I have no service and can’t pull up the GPS. Wanna turn back around?” “Nah, let’s just keep going. We’ve come this far, yeah? We’ll hit a main road eventually, get some service.” I sighed in response as he kept driving, let him know I didn’t approve. “We’ll turn north soon, ok? All roads lead to Turner Falls.” I checked my phone every fifteen seconds, looking for a signal. “C’mon Gabe, we’re gonna get lost out here. Let’s just go back, follow the other cars or see if they’ve opened up the interstate again.” “Look, this looks like a good road. We’ll cut north here and drive aways and then cut back west towards the interstate. It’s literally impossible to get lost out here. Just trying not to lose any more time.” But it wasn’t so simple and the nervous feeling in my stomach was validated when the road we drove north on turned to gravel. The sun was long gone and our headlights cut a tunnel through the night as barbed wire whizzed by, separating us from pastures that were elevated above the road on grassy rises. I started to fear the worst, thinking of every horror movie I’d ever seen that had started out this way: the headstrong man refusing to admit that he was lost and didn’t know where he was going and the increasingly pissed off and worried girl that was with him. “Babe, please just turn around,” I pleaded. “Ok, ok. Still no signal, eh?” I looked down at my phone. Finally, there was one bar of service. “Yes! Hang on.” “Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Gabriel said, his voice growing louder. My stomach dropped as what appeared in the rear view mirror was just as scary as any sort of Freddy or Jason or Leatherface from the big screen. Part 2
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Reading I'd Trade My Life for Yours Part 1 (V3 Spoilers)
Discussion about fan made content is allowed on here, right? So, this fanfic is pretty much the highest recommended fic to come out of V3, especially for people who were unsatisfied with the V3-1 twist. I actually enjoyed V3 quite a bit, but I’ve always meant to give the fanfic a go to see what the big deal is anyway. I have actually tried to read this in the past. I think I made it to around the start of the 5th in-game chapter before stuff came up and I just lost the plot. So some of this stuff will be familiar to me, but I’ll try to put what I remember out of my mind. Anyway, here is the fanfic itself for anyone that wants to read along. This thread will just cover the in-game chapter 2 for now, which is chapters 1 through 9 of the actual story. Also, bear in mind this is more or less a blind reading. So if I skim over something that becomes more important later in the story, feel free to correct if I end up saying it comes out of nowhere later. Cracking on, the main appeal of this fanfic, as I mentioned earlier, is that it does away with the controversial chapter 1 twist. Well, sort of. Kaede still sets up the Rube Goldberg trap, but in this fanfic’s version of events, Shuichi can’t bring himself to accuse Kaede. He confesses to Rantaro’s murder, Kaede tries to tell the group he’s lying but they don’t listen to her, he gets voted as the culprit…and Monokuma announces that they got it right. The set-up behind the case hasn’t changed, Kaede is still 100% convinced that her plan ended up killing Rantaro instead of the mastermind, but Monokuma allows the group’s wrong deduction to go through anyway. When she’s alone, Monokuma takes the time to gloat about the whole situation to her, confessing that he would’ve taken either one of them as the first culprit, simply because letting the culprit win in the first case is a pain. I’m not the biggest fan of having Monokuma basically spell out his rules don’t mean anything right from the off, it kind of limits what Kaede and the others can do to try and outsmart Monokuma when she already knows they can’t use his rules against him. It definitely wouldn’t work doing this this early in the actual game, but for a re-imaging I guess it’s fine. It looks like the start of each in-game chapter is going to have something called an Amami Theatre. I…don’t really know what to make of these. It doesn’t appear to be as random as the Monokuma theatre’s, but I can’t figure out if it’s trying to be cryptic, or just a lot of poetic waxing. It sounds like Rantaro is conscious of his death, is joined by Shuichi, and also mentions himself remembering his past lives. If it isn’t just poetic waxing, I’m guessing the twist is going to be that Rantaro didn’t just survive one killing game, but several? But it might just be theatre nonsense. Now I’m not going to recap everything that happens in the fanfic, because you should really go check it out for yourself if you’re interested. But we’ll go over some of the major events. Kaede takes to wearing Shuichi’s hat for, I think, the majority of the fanfic, if not all of it? It’s a nice touch, we often say it feels like certain characters deaths are just quickly forgotten about in this series. I don’t quite get the reaction the rest of the characters have to this though. They gawp at Kaede wearing the hat the same way the characters usually react to seeing Monokuma for the first time. The two of them clearly formed a bond in their short time together, so I have no idea why it’s so hard to process that she’d want to hold onto a memento of him. Even in the early part of this story, you can tell that they’re grooming Maki to be a rival character for Kaede. She’s the most openly hostile towards Kaede, eager to remind the group that she tried to kill them in the previous trial (at least, that’s the way the group are left to interpret her trying to confess for the crime after Shuichi did.) And likewise, she brings out the aggression in Kaede. Although, going of the trial at the end of the chapter, it looks like Kokichi may also still retain his role as a rival? I’m actually interested in this, multiple antagonistic characters have some potential, especially since Maki and Kokichi are definitely not on the same page, they just both have issues with Kaede for different reasons. Also, the Monokubs? Kind of don’t need to exist in this story. Their role has been massively toned down, I think they get maybe 5 lines tops, as a group, across these nine chapters. I’m not really complaining since I found them pretty annoying in the main story, but at this rate I wonder why they’re even included at all. I hope grayimperia’s got something planned for them. I want to take a moment to just gush about some of the adorable moments in this fanfic. You can tell it’s a passion project from someone who loves all these characters, and they really capture interactions that felt like they could’ve come straight out of the main game; Gonta happily acting as a pack mule for Angie and Kokichi, Himiko pre-emptively correct Tenko calling her the Ultimate Mage before she realises that Tenko actually calls her what she wants to be called, Korekiyo trying to learn about Atua, Keebo studying after Kirumi since she teaches him how to live a practical, self-sufficient human life, and this gets Miu jealous. It just captures these characters so well and only makes me look forward to what more they’ll come up with no that the death order has changed. Now, I have the odd nitpick here and there about certain things, but really there’s only one thing in this section so far that I think is a real detriment to the story, and it’s how this story handles Kaede as a leader. The best way I can explain my problem with this can be seen with how they handle the motive of this chapter. Grayimperia kept the motives the same as the actual game, but tweaked them slightly to create new opportunities. In this fanfic, Kaede is the one to receive Maki’s motive video, in doing so learning that she’s the Ultimate Assassin. Cool. I’m invested. Let’s see what she decides to do with this information. Kaede suggests that the group watches the motive videos all together in a screening party. Again, cool idea. It’s a nice way of getting Maki’s secret out there for the group’s safety, and it doesn’t single her out when doing it, everyone becomes aware of everyone’s potential to kill. Of course, the other characters don’t know what Kaede’s real motives are, so the majority of them disagree with the idea, arguing that it would only play into Monokuma’s hands. Again, it’s a pretty sensible reaction. So, what does Kaede come up with to try and convince the others to go along with their plan? Well…I’ll just let the fanfic speak for itself.
“No, I--why are we even talking about this? Look,” she straightens her posture, preparing to put her foot down, “I know you don’t agree, Kiibo-kun, but I’m the leader, and I have a plan that we’re going to follow.”
Yikes. I cannot describe how hard I facepalmed at this line. This isn’t an argument, there’s no point being made here. She’s just insisting they do what she says because they were happy to do something completely different that she said in the previous chapter. But the worse thing… …IT ACTUALLY WORKS!? No one is anymore convinced that this is a good idea, but they go along with it now anyway just because of that line from Kaede. It makes no goddamn sense. I remember that Kaede led the group in the previous chapter. I also remember that when the group stopped agreeing with her ideas (see the Death Road of Despair) they stopped doing what she told them! And the day afterwards, when she tried to tell the others that it’s too early to celebrate just because an exisal killed Monokuma by accident, they berate her for killing the mood. Everything that happened in chapter 1 up until the trial is still canon in this story, so I can’t see any justification in the characters acting this way when only Ryoma and Kokichi support Kaede’s plan. And I wish I can say this is a one-time thing just to get the plot rolling, but they bring up the whole “ok Kaede, you’re the leader. What’s the plan?” routine several times in this chapter. I think I remember Kaede stepping down a bit as leader in the next chapter, what with the student council and all, but I think after that’s resolved she just assumes the position again, and it doesn’t really make sense if this is how she’s going to lead them. Hopefully it does get better as the story goes on, but this was the unfortunate blemish on this section. During the Insect Meet and Greet debacle, Kaede and Miu just accidentally stumble upon the secret passage in the girls bathroom and Motherkuma about four chapters earlier than the main game. Looking at the section in isolation, it does make the mastermind look pretty incompetent if the characters can just stumble across big secrets without even trying, but I do remember them doing some interesting things with this subplot, so I’ll cut them some slack. Although, they do figure out in this section that they can figure out who the mastermind is quite quickly just by having everyone ask Motherkuma to birth a Monokuma. So there’s going to have to be a reason why they can’t go through with that plan. You can also see the fanfic setting the groundwork for the student council, Angie’s already propositioning Tsumugi and Gonta and it impressively manages to do so without detracting from the plot of this chapter. As far as the case itself is concerned, it’s honest surpassed my expectations. Most fanfics kind of lose their steam when they get to trying to make new cases since, let’s be honest, mystery writing is hard. This case isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s definitely on par with the standard set by most Danganronpa cases. It has numerous red herrings, there’s a good flow to it, for the most part there’s a logical consistency to the deductions the group makes. The only part that dragged was when the group found a motive video on the corpse, and considered the person that video was about as a prime suspect. I can get the sense in someone killing for their motive video, but why would they then leave the video behind on the body for everyone else to see? This was so obviously a piece of planted evidence and seeing the smarter members of the group take it so seriously was strangely out of character for them. I think the actual V3-2 case has some pretty substantial flaws regarding the certain actions the culprit took in the case, so I can honestly say I think this is an improvement. I do want to talk about how the fanfic so far has handled certain characters, but since this is going to spoil the events of the fanfic, they’ll be spoiler tagged below. Kaede: So far, I have mixed feelings for the Kaede-protag experience this fanfic is going for. I’ve outlined my concerns with her role as the group’s leader above, but I am seeing some aspects of her character I like. There is a much more realistic sense of bitterness to Kaede that the other protags of Danganronpa just haven’t delivered on. When thinking about the mastermind, she prays that it will be someone she doesn’t like, someone she can easily hate, which is a refreshing change from the others who simply don’t want to believe that anyone in the group is the mastermind. I have no doubts that the final confrontation between her and the mastermind will be entertaining to watch ( or read, I guess) but I can only hope the iron out the bumps in her interactions with the group before we get there. Tenko: I’ve made my negative thoughts on the Tenko we got in the actual game very clear. So you’d be forgiven for assuming bumping her up to sidekick status in this fanfic doesn’t sit well with me. But far from it, Tenko in this fanfic is great! She’s the emotional support Kaede sorely needs when faced with the intense scrutiny of Maki and Kokichi. Her degenerate male gimmick has been toned way down, only really being used to berate the guys when they actually do things worth berating them over, like Kokichi being a pest or Kaito being too quick tempered. Who could’ve thought that making someone only speak derogatorily about people who actually do immoral things as opposed to at any time simply because of their gender, would make someone so much easier to tolerate? Ryoma: So, he’s not dead yet. That’s something. The story seems to be setting up a friendship between him and Gonta (though I seem to remember not much comes of this?) I’ve seen many people call Ryoma’s character wasted potential, so I’m sure there’s something planned for him, it looks like a slow burn so far. Kirumi: Kirumi kind of drew the short straw in this fanfic. She died slightly earlier than in the game and didn’t really receive any new characterisation to make up for it. Her friendship with Keebo was pretty one-sided, essentially only he got to show off a new side of his character whilst she stayed the same super maid style persona she had in the main game. It’s unfortunate, but I’m not expecting every character to get something out of this rewrite. Korekiyo: The first culprit. And like Kirumi, he’s more or less the same character as the base game, just with his most controversial aspects massively toned down. The subtext does suggest that he still kills to fulfil the promise to his sister, in this case Kirumi’s is the last death he needs to complete the mission, but he never explains that his sister is dead, or the relationship they have. It’s another one of those things that would be really unsatisfying if it had to stand on its own, but since we have the context from the other game, we can fill in the blanks. I get why they toned it down, it turned a lot of people’s opinions on Korekiyo around, I’m just saying it feels incomplete here. Tsumugi: The fanfic gives up any pretence that it can surprise you with Tsumugi being the mastermind, so instead it doubles down on it. Her character in this fanfic seems to be defined by making very on the nose references to the first two games (A casino? How dramatic! Oh, if I went there I’d feel just like a certain gothic lolita from a visual novel.) Again, this wouldn’t work if this story had to stand on its own, but assuming everyone that’s read this has played V3 already, it’s fine. Maki: My thoughts on Maki so far are kind of mixed and deeply interwoven with my thoughts on Kaede. So far, her main contributions to the story are limited to being extremely vocal in her discontent with how the group follows Kaede’s lead, though that’s less to do with her leadership skills and more to do with what Kaede did in the first trial. Our reasons may differ, but I still find Maki’s grievances compelling, which is a bit worrying since she’s supposed to be the antagonistic one in this dynamic. Hopefully, now that the cat’s out of the bag with her talent, the story will give Kaede more or a leg to stand on in this debate, otherwise this is going to be a very frustrating dynamic to sit through. I get that you should give your villains/rivals a point behind their arguments/cause but this feels like it’s taking it too far. The rest of the characters either haven’t had a big enough role so far, or haven’t deviated enough from the main game counterparts for me to develop an opinion on yet. And that sums up my thoughts on how this fanfic has handled chapter 2 so far. (I really need a clearer way of describing which story I’m talking about when I say “chapter” in these threads.) Feel free to share your own impressions so far, preferably without spoiling the rest of the fanfic.
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I've been practicing Hi-Lo count at various casinos but realized I'm probably wasting my time on single-deck games. At first single-deck was appealing because the count resets frequently (easier for a beginner to keep track) and lower minimum compared to double-deck. Also, skimming through the book Blackjack Attack, it looks like the SCORE or earnings for single-deck is $95/100 hands! [1] But I read on this sub that the 6:5 blackjack payout largely make counting a waste of time? My questions are:
How much does the 6:5 payout affect the SCORE? Don's book doesn't seem to make any mention of 6:5 payout. Some back of the envelope math (probably wrong) shows the SCORE is lowered by $22.50 with flat betting [2]
If mid-shoe entry is not allowed, why even bother with 4, 6, or 8 deck games? Taking into consideration blackjack payout and no mid-shoe entry allowed, it seems double-deck is the only option with decent SCORE.
I always see the minimum bet for double-deck higher than single-deck. Why do the casinos set it higher?
Is a $25 minimum bet out of my range if my bankroll is $1500? I've seen a rough guideline that the bankroll should be at least 100x the minimum bet but some discussion around risk of ruin would be useful.
[1] Assuming 31/52 card penetration, hits soft 17, double after split [2] Given 0.048 probability of blackjack per hand means 5 blackjacks per 100 hands. With $15 minimum bet, the difference between 6:5 and 3:2 payout is $22.50
Throughout the 1960s the G-men eavesdropped on the private conversations of Meyer Lansky by bugging his personal residence where he lived with his wife in Hallandale, FL and the hotel rooms in which he stayed when in New York City according to FBI files. Although Lansky may have had a mind for numbers in handling the casino skimming and money laundering rackets of the Genovese mobsters for whom he worked, his own words reveal a small-minded man who was both embittered by and self-deluded about his station in life. Perhaps the most shocking revelations from the recorded confessions involved jealous rants about the Kennedy family and racist tirades against minority groups. There seemed to be few in the world whom Lansky liked, and perhaps least of all was himself. During his life Lansky was perceived by the press and the public as a wealthy man — some estimates put his net worth at $300 million — who was among the most powerful gangsters in the country. However, the reality is that Lansky was just a work horse harnessed by the Genovese family in its various incarnations as reflected by his own unguarded admissions and corroborated by other evidence. After Prohibition the Italians began consolidating their control over the underworld, and by the end of World War II the Jewish gangsters were either working for the Mafia, retired or dead. The bosses assigned capo Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo to keep a close eye on Lansky in Hallandale, FL, and everywhere that Lansky went Alo was sure to follow. After Vito Genovese took over the crime family from Frank Costello in 1957 Meyer Lansky dutifully stepped into line under the new boss. Congressional testimony by flipped mobster Joe Valachi in 1963 suggested that Lansky was a proxy for the Genovese family as paraphrased by the FBI in a January 19, 1968 memo:
Joseph Valachi, an admitted member of La Cosa Nostra, in testimony before the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Government Operations, during 1963, stated that Vito Genovese and Meyer Lansky had common holdings in gambling casinos in Las Vegas and Havana, Cuba. Valachi, a close associate of Genovese, testified that Lansky and Genovese were very closely associated in racket activities over the years and that wherever Lansky operated, Genovese had an interest.
No doubt vast sums passed through Lansky’s hands but little of it was his to keep. His lifestyle hardly suggested any accumulation of great wealth. He owned a modest home in Hallandale, FL and drove a rented Chevrolet. The simple living was not an elaborate ploy to keep the IRS at bay but an accurate reflection of his financial means. Indeed, in conversations secretly recorded by the FBI Lansky made it clear to associates that he worked out of necessity. For example, while staying at the Volney Hotel at 23 East 74th Street in New York in May 1962, “LANSKY complained that the necessity of making a living was taking a lot out of him,” and “remarked how lucky people are that ‘fall into it.’” In another conversation he remarked how “some people became millionaires since the War,” and “they shouldn’t hold a job.” Lansky clearly did not consider himself a man of independent means who could afford a life of leisure. Of course, whatever personal wealth Lansky may have accumulated likely was wiped out when Fidel Castro chased the mobsters out of Cuba in January 1959 after overthrowing corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista. Upon returning stateside with his tail between his legs Lansky solicited a meeting with the FBI for the avowed purpose of providing intelligence on the communist infiltration of Cuba. The meeting took place on May 22, 1959, and Lansky stated that he “could lose heavily unless the situation changed,” and “he could not deny that the possibility of this loss contributed to his decision to discuss the Cuban situation.” Lansky’s own losses were likely insignificant compared to the reverses suffered by his Genovese bosses, and perhaps he was required to make a financial settlement with them for failing to read the handwriting on the wall. After all, it was Lansky’s job to be on top of such matters. Although Lansky later would rewrite history by telling associates that he warned the feds in 1958 that “Cuba was going Communist” the fact is that he did not do so until May 1959, and even then had nothing meaningful to offer. The G-men expressly noted that the mobster stated only the obvious, and “all of LANSKY’s comments were general in nature”:
When pressed for particulars LANSKY advised he was not in a position to furnish facts. * * * He stated he could not name any individuals in the present government who had publicly described themselves as Communists nor could he offer any facts which would set one person aside from the others as a Communist.
Frankly, Lansky’s purported concern about a communist Cuba is laughable. Neither Lansky nor his Mafia overlords cared a wit with whom they conducted business. In fact, while still in Havana, on January 5, 1959 Lansky gave an interview to Alan Jarlson from The Las Vegas Sun who reported that Lansky “talked freely” about his hope “that the new government will emerge from Fidel Castro’s liberation of Cuba and will continue to permit American gamblers to operate.” Similarly, when Lansky left Cuba on January 7, and arrived at Miami International Airport, the casino operator told Joseph Manners, a Special Assistant to the Attorney General, that “he expected to continue in business, and did not anticipate trouble from the new government.” Lansky developed his anti-communist animus only after it became clear that Castro was refusing to allow the American mobsters to continue their exploitation of Cuba. If Lansky thought his new-found anti-communist fervor — feigned or otherwise — would curry him favor with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover he sorely miscalculated. Instead, the feds exploited his gambling losses as an opportune time to investigate him. A March 23, 1960 memo from the Director to the Miami Field Office states:
You now have residing in your territory one of the very most important individuals in the national crime picture in the person of Meyer Lansky. Information developed in Bureau investigations over a period of many years indicates strongly that Lansky is a very important individual in a segment of the criminal element. In pursuing investigations in your Criminal Intelligence Program, you should not overlook the possibility of employing extraordinary investigative techniques with reference to Lansky. Because of the loss of the lucrative Cuban gambling situation, Lansky is presently in a position of having to make decisions as to his future course of action. This may be a propitious time for close coverage of Lansky.
The memo further reflects Hoover’s lingering questions about the existence of the Mafia, and its relationship to non-Italians such as Lansky. Already contemplating the distinction between a mob member who must be Italian and a mob associate who can be of any ethnicity Hoover writes:
It is desired also to point out to you the need of continuous alertness to develop the existence or nonexistence of the “Mafia.” Persons who furnish information in this field should be thoroughly interviewed for a determination of what they mean by the use of the term “Mafia.” It is the Bureau’s desire to determine whether or not this is a mere term used to characterize criminal groups made up of a preponderance of persons of Italian birth or extraction, or whether it is a term denoting something of greater significance. Complete details of any facts available should be obtained from any persons contending that it is an actual organization which can be characterized as being a “Mafia.”
The federal investigation on top of his Cuban losses added insult to injury for Lansky, and was a constant source of stress for Lansky and his wife. When the G-men visited their South Florida home on May 2, 1961 for a spot check Mrs. Lansky “went into a tirade about the ‘harassing tactics of the FBI,’” and when agents again returned on May 17 the mobster “said he felt he was being persecuted because of his name.” FBI bugs caught Lansky routinely kvetching about the prying eyes. For example, in May 1962 while staying at the Volney Hotel in New York City Lansky described the G-men as “racketeers” and the “new mafia”:
They’re nothing but racketeers, every one of them. After five years they get out, get on a big corporation’s payroll. Now what happens, you and I . . . let’s say I work for IBM. You came. They say [redacted] is doing the same business. He has no FBI guys working for him. Pop, they chop his legs off. They find him with a sweetheart, they find him with this, they find him with that. This thing’s gonna get an investigation. It’s a new mafia. The investigators are going to get investigated. It’s just a matter of time. It’s the same with those senate investigators. You remember those McCarthy hearings. That lying (obscene) with the pictures.
Lansky directed most of his anti-government enmity towards the Kennedys which was fueled by Bobby Kennedy’s mob busting campaign and Jack Kennedy’s refusal to back the Bay of Pigs invasion to topple Castro. However, Lansky also was a terribly insecure man who undoubtedly felt like a bug under the long-cast Kennedy shadow. Lansky grew up poor on the Lower East Side in New York City, his education topped out at the 8th grade, he was a national pariah with whom no person of good standing would associate, and the poor thing was short, slight and ugly. Lanksy was nothing more than a greedy troll living under a bridge in the Kingdom of Camelot, and his bitterness was palpable at the mere mention of the revered Kennedy name. For example, FBI eavesdropping on the Lansky couple at their New York City hotel room in May 1962 captured on the following conversation on the Kennedys:
[Redacted] in discussing wiretapping bill presently pending, remarked that wiretapping is okay against the Communists, but otherwise is most sickening. She stated she believed the “KENNEDYs” were acting sincerely and in their best beliefs. When LANSKY disagreed, she reminded him that he came up “on the wrong side of the fence,” to which subject replied that he was brought up on the “unhypocritical” side.
On another occassion Lansky referred to Bobby Kennedy as “an arrogant punk” who had no right to judge the mob life:
Let me tell you something. Anyone who hasn’t lived, hasn’t the right to tell anyone else anything. He’s a young boy, 37 years old. He hasn’t lived yet and he wants to tell others how to live. He’s an arrogant punk.
“Arrogant punk” or not, the mobsters feared Bobby Kennedy. An FBI bug installed at the Lansky home in Hallandale, FL picked up an associate telling Meyer on August 18,1962 that “the person everyone is afraid of is BOBBY KENNEDY. ‘He is the hatchetman.’” In order to prop up his ego Lansky routinely pontificated before others on a variety of subjects, and sounded as much a bore as the insufferable Polonius from Hamlet who missed the irony behind his quip “brevity is the soul of wit.” For example, on June 5, 1962 Lansky held court for sycophantic groupies at his room in the Volney Hotel, and told everyone what a literate man he was even though he had “no education”:
LANSKY bragged about his ability to read several books at one time. He stated he is presently reading a history book, a grammar book, and a book on French quotations. He stated these are the things you need with no education because you can get mixed up. LANSKY expounded on various subjects and his listeners expressed awe at his knowledge.
On another occasion during his stay at the hotel “MEYER remarked that Saturday or Sunday he intends to go over to the museum and buy a photograph of ‘Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer’ which is selling at $12.50.” Apparently Lansky hoped that a little culture would mask his mob stench. The self-delusion which gripped Lansky was shockingly apparent when on multiple occasions he savagely spoke with racial slurs of blacks and Latinos as “lousy minority groups” who are criminal by nature. For example, in June 1962 when discussing race with some associates at his New York City hotel room, Lanksy said the following with respect to blacks:
If you find a person stealing who doesn’t have enough to eat, there a reason. But tell me why you steal if you’ve got money in your pocket. You see these n***** [n-word] kids stealing. Their parents are ignorant, no education. There’s a certain spark in them.
He further stated that “n****** [n-word] are getting even with white people through welfare and they’re laughing at the white people.” And then when comparing Scandanavians against Latinos he stated:
They’re not only physically healthy, but their lives are more healthy. They’re cleaner. They’re not as criminal as some of the other nationalities. The Latins are more criminal. They had to steal to subsist.
Apparently Lansky conveniently forgot during these racist tirades that he was a former enforcer with Murder, Inc. Lansky may have read the classics and got his nails manicured but he still was nothing but a common thug with blood on his hands. Indeed, when Israel sent Lansky packing from the Promised Land towards the end of his life one wonders whether he had the courage and honesty to ask “what profit it a man to gain the world but lose his soul?”
Skimming [casinos] Skimming refers to the illegal transfer of funds from casinos to outside personnel without official documentation. Skimmed money is usually transferred in cash to evade taxes and to fund organized crime anonymously. The quantities of money skimmed are usually small portions of the casino`s total profit so as not to arouse suspicio... Meaning of the slang word or phrase SKIMMING. SKIMMING slang means: In the game of casino, to play a card which will take two or more cards whose aggregate number of pips equals those of the card played. Finesse (v. i.): To attempt, when second or third player, meaning of the word “skim”. It isn’t stealing in the usual sense. It isn’t taking money that belongs to some-one else. Skimming is hiding money from Uncle Sam. Every time a dollar would come into the casino, it had to be reported to the government. So at the end of the year, when the Stardust would do its 1040-EZ or whichever Skimming is a term that usually refers to an illegal activity. It is used in brick-and-mortar casinos as well as in everyday life, and it most often refers to stealing money from someone. If you hear that someone was “skimming off the top,” they were taking a portion of the business’ money for themselves while reporting a lower total. Skimming definition, floating matter that is removed from the surface of a liquid. See more. 1. A portion that has been skimmed from a liquid. 2. An embezzlement fraud in which the information on a credit card is copied, usually when the owner uses the card to make a purchase, and is then loaded onto a fake card to be used fraudulently. American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.
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